The Zenith (28 page)

The very first night Mr. Quang had brought Miss Ngan to the village, when the relatives and the whole village were still tongue-tied not knowing how to address her properly, Ms. Tu cheerfully made invitations:

“All are invited to drink tea and eat sweets. Today is a banquet so that my auntie can be introduced to her new neighbors!”

Then she called out to Miss Ngan loudly: “Auntie Ngan: show yourself and greet the neighbors. Just leave everything else to me; I’ll get it done.”

Clearly, her stance was authoritative: an official naming and confirmation that no one had the right to question. They then had to acknowledge to one another:

“Young she is, but according to social ranks within the family, she gets to sit on the inner mat.”

“That Tu really is so loyal to her uncle!”

In the end there was no alternative other than to accept the female stranger, barely eighteen years old, as a maternal aunt, as a paternal aunt, as a young grandmother—all according to the prescribed generational ranking of relatives—while nevertheless feeling hidden resentment at her status.

Thanks perhaps to a stroke from heaven or to a gift from the earth, Ms. Tu came to assist Miss Ngan cook the meal that evening. In the parlor, tea was not even over before she brought up a tray full of delicacies.

“Please, dear guests, please sit yourselves on the mats. My aunt is still cooking the mung bean dessert, so she’ll just eat in the kitchen with no fuss.”

“No, please. If she does that, how can we swallow? These days it’s democratic, with equal rights, equal powers; men and women must sit and eat together in good fellowship.”

“Thank you, sirs; we are not being difficult. The two of us have everything in the kitchen, wine, meat, and all the stir-fried and braised dishes that you have here; nothing is missing.”

After she was done talking, she ran to the kitchen to permit the guests to be at their ease.

Then the meal began. All six of them—Mr. Quang, his brothers-in-law, and three neighbors—were quiet because the wine was good and the food was even better. In truth, unpleasant topics don’t go with a good meal. They
have to wait until the eating is over. When pork, chicken, and fish bones cover the tray, when good wine has reached the veins, then tongues get untied and words slide out from the brain’s nooks and crannies. It seems that Mr. Quang’s two brothers-in-law waited for the wine to settle in before starting to press their case, something they took as their highest responsibility toward the soul of their sister who had died not yet a year ago.

“Thank you, Big Uncle, for giving us food that’s filling and wine that’s ‘relaxing.’”

The older brother-in-law began: “Now that we have finished eating, we have something to say.”

The younger one cleared his throat to continue.

The host smiled: “Please, be natural; it is said that when wine goes in, words go out! The elders said this, so it must be true to some extent.”

“Nephew Quynh is at the maternal grandmother’s home, in pain, sad and confused. We don’t have to tell you why he left…”

“You are mistaken, I have no idea why. But when that little twerp left home and dropped out of school, he could have had a hundred reasons. I don’t have time to guess what games they keep in their pockets.”

“You, Big Uncle, have wined and dined out in the world for decades. We are just hicks who stick near our gardens and mountain. We dare not, but if we dared, we do not have sufficient skill to argue with you. But in reality, Quynh’s current situation is driving the whole clan crazy.”

“The whole clan crazy? Are you serious or are you joking? But your clan or mine? That fact must be clear.”

“The maternal clan, your wife’s clan. First is grandmother. Then, the two of us here. People say: if the father dies, there is the uncle; if the mother dies, the aunt will nurse.”

“I understand that!” Mr Quang interjects, then laughs loudly.

His laugh resonates through all five rooms, even in the kitchen. Ms. Tu and Miss Ngan strain their necks to listen.

“So, when the mother dies, the aunt nurses; but the mother of Quy and Quynh did not have a younger sister, so the two of you must play that role. Excellent! I have never seen such a deep love being expressed. Now that you show such compassion, please do take care of Quynh. Thus you both can help me, taking some weight off my shoulders. Your nephew has good fortune, having both his paternal and maternal families for support. Having both sides, the left and the right, gives one a lucky fate as red as red sticky rice, and a fortune as firm as a fort. If you two can help him fully, the maternal family’s reputation will be so much better. I have raised him all these years; I
think I have nothing to regret. Now, if, at sixteen, he wants to enjoy favors coming from the maternal side, it’s quite commonplace. Everyone in this life must have both father and mother, not to respect one and despise the other.”

He turned to his three guests, his neighbors, and said: “Taking advantage of their presence, my neighbors can be witnesses: I hereby relinquish to both of you my parental rights. From now on, for Quynh, his schooling, food, and clothing, and then, in the future, his marriage, are all the responsibility of his grandmother and you two. Quynh will agree to this. And his mother in heaven will be very satisfied.”

The two brothers-in-law did not even have an opportunity to reply when Mr. Quang called out to the kitchen:

“We’re finished eating; if you have sweet porridge, bring it up.”

“Right away, Big Uncle,” Ms. Tu replied. In less than a minute, a tray of sweet porridge was brought out; the six men continued with their dessert. Expecting a riposte from the brothers-in-law, the three neighbors ate with curiosity mixed with despair. But those two only bowed their heads, eating without looking up. The dessert was no longer sweet but bitter to their throats. Before the dessert was finished, Mr. Quang called for his wife to wrap cakes and candies as gifts for his former wife’s mother with such a smiling and natural manner that the brothers-in-law could only accept the package then run out into the street without being able to utter a good-bye.

Left were the three neighbors and the host, drinking water while picking their teeth and chatting. Night in the deep woods is always more quiet than down in the lowlands. Mr. Quang turned on the Victrola to let the neighbors hear some music. In half an hour, some women and girls gleefully entered the patio, some waving flashlights, others carrying torches.

“Mr. Quang, please turn it up louder; let us listen, too.”

“Say, any candies from the city left? We came to get some sweets to go with our nightly chitchat.”

“Where is the new mistress of the house? Please light the lamp so that we can all have some cheer.”

The storm lamp, hung in the middle of the patio, lit up the whole house to the kitchen. Ms. Tu carried the pot of sweet porridge, big as a pot of rice soup during the Mid-Autumn Festival, to serve the guests in the communal way of eating: a basket of bowls and clean spoons was put on the table for all to serve themselves. When the pot was empty, Miss Ngan opened new boxes of cookies and candies. In the countryside, eating and drinking are a fixed
custom, even when people are condescendingly reminded, “A bite bigger than your mouth can bring you down.”

The following days took turns passing by like acts in a disingenuous drama where the actors and spectators disdain the parts they have to play. For certain, the actors were those whose feelings had been bruised. Chairman Quy was not accepting, as everyone had predicted. He had his hands on power. Like it or not, power is a force that can be witnessed but not touched. With his title of chairman, he could easily mobilize his direct subordinates like the head of police, the chair of the women’s unit, the secretary of the youth brigade, et cetera. Additionally, there was a nameless, shapeless, invisible power that everyone could feel and even smell: the force telling everyone how to live. Quy believed unequivocally in that force just as strongly as he trusted in the seal of the village government, two talismans that he held firmly in his fists.

First, Quy had to ally with his youngest brother, because every struggle turns on force. The stronger the force, the quicker the victory. In this struggle, the most trusted allies have to be your close relatives. “Brothers are like arms and legs; husband and wife are like shirts you take on and off.” In the past, Quy and Quynh had not been close, partly because there was a big gap in their ages, partly because Quy had felt that his parents had favored their youngest son over him. And Quy ran the risk of not inheriting a large portion of the family assets if his naive and flirtatious brother was preferred. According to the common rule, a youngest child has a right to inherit if both parents agree and the oldest son has flawed abilities and attitudes, or has a congenital mental deficiency. The chairman does not feel threatened as to lack of ability, but that very clever mind of his might prove to be a double-edged sword when one’s capacities turn around to “kill their owner.” But now, the appearance of “a cheap broad from nowhere wearing a green blouse” provided an opportunity to test his youngest brother’s heart, to win him over and turn him into an effective right hand, something he had done with almost all of his opponents in Woodcutters’ Hamlet since he had become village chairman.

As for Quynh, everything was the opposite. The youngest brother was spoiled, still at a romantic age and more concerned with having a good time than worrying about life. Sometimes, if he were asked, “Who will get the big house?” Quynh would smile and reply: “Yesterday, today, and tomorrow all belong to my father.”

They would probe a little more: “Do you mean to say that Mr. and Mrs. Quang do not plan to write a will?”

He would turn red and retort: “My parents can still wrestle water buffalo; they don’t need to worry about a will.”

After that, nobody could get a word out of his mouth. To be fair, Quynh was a good one, liking only to play and not work. From his birth until his mother’s death, Quynh had not thought about anything. Everything had been provided for him by others. Even when his mother had died on the roadside while he had been away, sleeping over at the neighboring hamlet, he was not like others who would have felt torn apart, with remorse so haunting that you can’t eat or sleep. But Quynh had not felt a bit shocked. When the family had scolded him, he felt sad for a few hours until mealtime, when with a full stomach his concerns would disappear. At night, he slept like a toddler; just like a three-year-old child. The relatives grew tired of talking, of complaining, to Mr. Quang, who only smiled and said:

“Parents give birth to children, but heaven gives them character! What can I do? In my family, only the twins are concerned about work and think about what comes first and what comes later. But they both enlisted on the same day.”

Then Mr. Quang would sigh, sadness filling his eyes; only families with enlisted children would understand him.

“During wartime, tears drop as a waterfall. Weeds grow in the gardens; no ferries cross the deserted river.”

These couplets echo his thoughts:

“My family situation is similar; the smart ones leave for war, the stupid and the awkward stay behind.”

“It’s not just us! Everywhere it’s like that. The nation is the same for all. The war comes; the wind blows open every door.”

People considered Mr. Quang to be a forgiving and easygoing father. They also concluded that Master Quynh was big but not wise; maybe not that frivolous, but surely not mature enough to know how to be frugal, how to meet family expectations and be polite in general. Especially in his schooling he had made his mother unhappy more than once.

Thus, one could not understand why this awkward, heartless, and silly boy left his home the first day his young stepmother appeared. Perhaps this was the biggest question for the neighbors, and most of all for the chairman. He trundled down to the lower section to find out why. It didn’t take long to discover the reason. Just two days later, the village people knew that
Master Quynh was in love with his stepmother. At the very moment Miss Ngan set foot in his home, the young man had been stricken by the blinding beauty of the young woman in the green blouse. In his mind he had thought she was the wife that heaven had sent him, because together he and Miss Ngan fit the golden formula for marriage, “a girl older by two; a boy by one,” a formula that had been tested for thousands of years. This dream had come in a wink and then had crumbled away the very next instant. The whole drama played out in the young man’s heart in less than half a day; from the morning when Mr. Quang’s horse carriage brought the new bride to the village to the disappearing of the sun, when Quynh had quietly left home for the lower hamlet.