The Zenith (25 page)

Mrs. Quang acknowledged everybody very slowly with a vague general salutation to all at once, as she didn’t greet anyone by name. Then she sat down on the corner of the settee that Miss Vui had arranged for her, and turned her face to look out at the patio, where the rain was falling sideways without stopping.

After pouring tea for the new guest, Miss Vui ran to the kitchen to give warning. The storage cupboard had to be opened immediately, enough sweet rice quickly scooped out to cook another pot to eat with roasted pork. The villagers quipped that Mrs. Quang was eating with more salt than before. Her every meal must have meat or fish. She would not be satisfied with varieties of sweet rice like all the others. The hostess, as well as all the women of the hamlet’s middle section, prepared everything with evident excitement. This was a rare opportunity for them to observe the mysterious
illness that the whole region was discussing. Since the Mid-Autumn Festival, Mrs. Quang had not set foot outside. Along with her hunger affliction, she had lost the habit of working as well as the ability to socialize normally with her neighbors. She would not move her limbs or touch anything, nor take care of the garden, tend to the chickens and pigs, or sweep the courtyard. She only made special dishes for herself. She forgot all ordinary concerns for husband and child. With loss of memory she could not even remember the names of her neighbors. For a while now Mrs. Quang had lived as if cut off from everyone. The two huge wooden doors were always latched tight. People saw her cross the yard only on the rare occasions when her youngest son, Quynh, returned to cook for her or move the beehives. Villagers looked at her with eyes of veiled curiosity, as they would look at one with special mental problems. It was no surprise that as soon as she settled her bottom on Miss Vui’s large settee a crowd gathered around her to chat; men as well as women could not conceal their itching curiosity. But as if Mrs. Quang were unaware of where she was, to anyone who asked, she just nodded, then she turned her head to look out at the tiled courtyard while smiling faintly. Silent until she was brought a tray full of sticky rice with braised pork, red rice, and sesame rice with honey, she quietly held a pair of chopsticks and said:

“Please do eat, ladies and gentlemen.”

Saying this and not waiting for any reply, Mrs. Quang started eating with intent. People dispersed to other tables, but, while eating, still watched her. The hostess ran back and forth, from the parlor to the kitchen, keeping in charge but never taking her eyes off the patient. Every conversation, every discussion evolved as a commentary behind the back of one person: Mrs. Quang. She herself was unaware of everything. She ate two platefuls of sticky rice with roasted pork; no one else dared to touch them. Then she pulled the plate of sesame rice closer to her. The men lowered their heads, pretending to pay no attention, but anxious glances passed among them. After eating up the sesame rice she looked over at the remaining half plate of red sticky rice at the other corner of the table.

Standing behind her, Miss Vui shouted out alarmingly: “Ladies in the kitchen, please bring up a new plate of red rice.”

“Right away, miss.”

The women scattered to the kitchen, then one quickly ran in carrying in both hands two plates of bright red sticky rice:

“Madame, here are two plates, not just one.”

No one had anything to say, but all understood that once her chopsticks touched
a plate, that plate would be contaminated with a germ more dangerous than those causing fever and dysentery. No one would dare touch such a plate with their own chopsticks. Those who had to be at her table ate cautiously while shaking. A nameless fear stabbed them. Even so, there was fair compensation to offset their fear: their curiosity was satisfied. As the four men at Mrs. Quang’s table were sharing the last bites on their plates of rice, Mrs. Quang had already cleaned up both her new plates of red sticky rice. To sum up, by herself she took care of five plates of sticky rice along with a large bowl of roasted pork.

The four male guests quickly withdrew from this battlefield of appetites to find a place to smoke. Their fear showed. They were terrified of catching her horrifying condition. Even the hostess did not escape that fear, whispering to her two nieces:

“Take the tray to the back of the garden and bury it, the deeper the better.”

At that moment, Mrs. Quang stood up and said aimlessly in the middle of the house:

“Thank you, Hostess. Good-bye everyone; I am leaving.”

Without waiting for her hostess, she put on her raincoat and hat and walked out to the patio. When Miss Vui ran out of the kitchen to bid Mrs. Quang farewell, she had already left, so Miss Vui saw only a swath of the light blue raincoat flapping behind the kitchen.

Twenty-four hours later, everyone in Woodcutters’ Hamlet heard that Mrs. Quang had died.

It happened on her way home, in the bamboo forest between the middle and upper sections of the hamlet. She had sat down on the side of the road, leaning on a rock, her hat over her face. Sadly, her youngest son had gone to visit a friend in the next village and, having fun chatting away, decided to sleep there overnight. It was a brutally cold day and no one was out on the road. That was why it was not until early the next afternoon that people came along the road to see an old lady sitting and sleeping in the cold rain. Suspicious, they approached and moved the hat. She was stiff like a rock. Because she was the mother of the village chairman, there was no shortage of people who would run fast to the office of the upper section to give word. Quy immediately sent people to the city to inform Mr. Quang while he and other hamlet elders made funeral arrangements.

Always and everywhere, for being the mother of someone with power and position, one automatically enjoys a more ostentatious ceremonial than do
average women. Of course, her son was the village chairman. No one person had to prepare tea and betel nut, buy cigarettes, arrange for a band with drums and horns to immediately arrive at the house; sounds of music and singing just rose up all over the hamlet. If you were not the mother of the village chairman, your family would have to take care of the banquet, the betel and tea and the money in the envelopes, before the drum and horn ensemble from the funeral home could be summoned. From the one who played the horn or the two-string zither, to the drummers that sang the soul-sending songs, all the musicians were professionals who started their career in early youth and have patiently preserved their professionalism through many repressive campaigns of the revolutionary government. There had been long periods when they had to hide their instruments, pretending to retire. Everyone duly played the role as ordered with one heart, a common resolution, to obey the order of the district chairman or the village chairman:

“The Party and all the people with one heart carry out the mission of building a new people, a people of socialism.”

Following that criterion, a wedding could only have green tea to drink and cakes and candies to eat. To economize, clapping hands replaced firecrackers. As for funerals, it was absolutely forbidden to play drums and horns and there could be no banquet, no funeral cortege, no flags or banners. Most of all no monks could be invited to pray for the dead. All those traditional customs were counterrevolutionary, corrupting people’s minds and causing damage to socialist morality.

Time passes; life goes on. Bit by bit, sad affection for those departed encourages people to no longer fear the government so much. Everyone asks:

“No socialist government in the other world? If no one worships our ancestors, they will become roving hungry ghosts. If those buried below become hungry ghosts, how can living people prosper?”

“No drums, no horns, no songs to send off dead souls: How can the dead find the way to heaven? If they cannot get to heaven, their only option is to go to hell and become food for the devils. Thus children and grandchildren turn against fathers and grandfathers, shoving such close kin into the tiger’s den and snake’s mouth.”

“Alas, the revolution is only a few decades old, but our ancestors have lived maybe thousands of years. Who knows the right path, the wrong one? To be safe and sure, we should do as our elders did for years.”

Such clandestine discussions began within the confines of each home, hidden behind walls and closed doors. But slowly they began to spread to gatherings
around a pot of tea, a tray of wine. Then finally they followed the peasants to the fields, into the gardens, and stoked a hot fire in the heart of the hamlet.

As ever, what is to happen, will happen. Villagers exploded in violent protest when the secret police came to seize the first family who dared call the musicians back to their old ways. The host had paid a special insurance fee far beyond the musicians’ wildest dreams, which gave them the courage to risk their comforts. Besides, he hadn’t dared challenge the government all by himself. Even when his old father was still struggling on his deathbed, he had gone to each house and appealed to everyone to rise up together. Because every house had an old father or a weak mother, and because funerals held up the sky over each family, everyone wholeheartedly joined him. The protest occurred quietly in the dark. The local officials were totally unaware, thus they grabbed the family of the deceased in a rude and cocky manner, not knowing that the people had prepared to resist. As soon as they saw the chairman and the policeman cross the door into the funeral home, sounds of drums exploded loudly. Hearing the alarm, elders came over and surrounded the courtyard—close to four hundred salt-and-pepper and white-haired heads. In addition, women and children stood in an outer circle like an army of shields. The unusual situation unsteadied the officials’ legs. They more humbly asked:

“If you want to return to the old ways, you must answer to the law. We are here just to remind everyone.”

“We do not consider funeral rites to be old ways. We consider them as filial piety. You said they are ‘old ways,’ meaning that for thousands of years now, our ancestors were all a bunch of idiots who did stupid things.”

“We didn’t mean that.”

“Old customs? So, what do you mean? Please explain clearly in front of all the people. Here, sooner or later, whether we like it or not, each family has to arrange this filial responsibility, this reassurance. No one can avoid what is necessary to be human.”

“Orders from higher authority state clearly: horn and drum music is an old custom of the past. Our duty is to enforce, not to explain.”

“If tomorrow the district commissar orders you to dig up all the ancestors’ graves, you will close your eyes and do it, without thinking whether it’s right or wrong?”

“You go too far; the Party would never order such an irrational or inhuman thing.”

“They sure do!…You forget but we don’t: the year of the rooster, your superiors
ordered the Lan Vu temple to be destroyed and used two temples farther down the mountain for people’s education classes. The village elders had to remonstrate with the province commissar, to beg Mr. Loi Den, before the temples were spared. Fortunately, during the dark years Mr. Loi Den needed our donated shelter and food, eating cold rice and salty cabbage brine from our homes.”

At that, the head of the village police lowered his voice:

“OK; if you ladies and gentlemen want to follow the old customs, please do it quietly. We will stay out of it.”

After saying that, he signaled the village chairman to leave. As soon as the two stepped beyond the door, the drums and horns burst out loudly, partially as an order, partially as a taunting.

The village police chief whispered in the ear of the village chairman:

“Don’t play around. There was an old saying: ‘When they speak with one voice, even the monk will die.’”

The village chairman was at a loss, not knowing what to say, seeing this guy reputed to be so tough and mean suddenly submitting so easily to a crowd. Three months later, the village chairman’s father died and the drum and horn musicians were immediately summoned. He personally brought the musicians offers of betel nut, cigarettes, and envelopes with cash.

From that day until now, there had been many new village chairmen and heads of the village police. But none of them ever brought up funerals and weddings in Woodcutters’ Hamlet. All followed ancestral customs as if they were the natural order of things. Higher officials pretended not to hear or see.

Thanks to this political evolution, Mrs. Quang’s death brought on every formality: drums and horns, hearse, banners and flags, flowers and incense, and not meagerly either. The compound was squeaky clean after two seasons of the hunger illness eating its way through provisions, but Mr. Quang borrowed three cows and three hundredweight of pork for his wife’s funeral. Local opinion worried:

“That debt: when will he ever pay it all back?”

One with a fouler mouth said, “Really, she is a hungry devil: dead already but still demanding stacked trays full of food. Perhaps the husband has to comply in full, fearing her coming back to haunt him.”

In any case, everyone on the mountain could not help but bow their heads in respect before such a husband.