The Zenith (43 page)

“There was a warrant from the province saying she laundered money and specialized in scamming wealthy families.”

“Scamming Mr. Quang? That’s really insane. He doesn’t cheat, so how could there be such a silly thing?”

“Everybody knows he’s clever, is street smart, and has eaten with the best and worst. The important point is that he’s frustrated. His wife was sick for almost a year and then she died almost a year ago; when has he touched anyone?”

“Don’t believe that. He traveled widely and often; there was no lack of women.”

“You think it’s easy? Why don’t you try it?”

“Why do I have to try? With my wife at home, anytime is a good time; I just lie down. I only worry that my strength isn’t enough for the game.”

“That is why you can easily exaggerate. Say your wife dies, I dare you to touch the clam of your neighbor. They would slash your throat with a knife.”

“There is no lack of singles and widows.”

“Single like Vui? I invite you to try! Widows like Huong with the chicken pox face and Lan with infected eyes down in the lower section? If you will play there, I will treat you to three feasts with wine and steamed rooster in rice. Well, will you do it?”

“Nah, not those women. I pass.”

“That’s life: either too high or too low. The ones you like: off limits. With a bed or a mat all ready, one cannot even stick it up. Therefore, frustration. Frustrated like that, when a girl as beautiful as a fairy appears and prepares a pipe, even the most saintly ones would succumb, no less Mr. Quang.”

“I don’t see a con artist behind her face.”

“How can one know the inside of the dragonflies’ tangled nest? Those women who turned regimes upside down or destroyed families were and are always beautiful. Average women like your wife or plain ones like mine never get to eat more than rice husks; even if they wanted to cheat, it wouldn’t work.”

“All you do is think of sullied things.”

“I eat rice with salt and touch my knees, I tell the truth. I don’t talk flowery or curvy.”

“But I can’t believe Mr. Quang was scammed. It’s like the story of a rooster with four spurs or a horse with four manes.”

“Mr. Quang is really smart, but if you look at his background he is only a muddy-footed country person like us. Being good at networking and having all his life made his living elsewhere makes him sharp, but no matter how sharp you are, there comes a time when you must bow your head to that thing hanging in the crotch of your pants. Do you know the line used to humble intellectuals?”

“What do you mean by ‘intellectual’?”

“Those wearing long robes, with white feet and hands, the opposite of those like us who work with the hoe or cut wood, sporting short shirts and black feet. The saying goes: ‘First come the intellectuals, and second the farmers.’
Intellectuals are the literary ones, the gentlemen, all the high and low mandarins, and all those who administer the capital and the villages. Another saying: ‘Even when filled with literature and learning, if you’re obsessed with a cunt, you will still fall into big muddles.’”

“Really! I wouldn’t know.”

“If you don’t, then you must listen before you talk. What makes you think and insist that Mr. Quang cannot be fooled? Life is not as simple as you think.”

“Yeah, possibly.”

The villagers poured out into the streets to look at the young wife of Mr. Quang: she was cuffed at the elbow and led by some twelve men of the village militia, with rifles on their shoulders and faces as stiff as stone, with the police chief at their head. This display of force was not impressive, because their enemy was only one young woman, with no weapon in her hands, and tears of fear pouring down a pale but still so beautiful face. Walking behind were more than thirty curious youngsters, a volunteer audience and very attentive. Once in a while, a soldier wanting to show off the power of the government would turn around and shout aimlessly:

“Disperse, you hooligans; disperse!”

“Go home and study; this is none of your business.”

“Go, I tell you; go home!”

But all their threatening was like water off a duck’s back. The group of curious children ran alongside the police all the way to the village office, making a parade without drum and horn. At the office, they ran this way and that when they got shooed away, but when the militia guards were inattentive, they again impudently sneaked back to watch “Miss Ngan of Mr. Quang” being tied up, a scene that had not taken place in Woodcutters’ Hamlet since the land-reform years. They followed when she was led off to the cell in the village storehouse, a five-minute walk away. It was a small house, all closed up like a box with only one heavy wooden door locked by a huge key, with four walls of double brick and no opening or window for ventilation. Long ago that house had held tea for the governing mandarin. In the time of the land reform, the revolutionary government had used it to sequester powerful landowners. Once, more than ten people were detained in that closed space, eighteen square meters. One corner had ashes for a toilet. In the opposite corner was a broken vat holding drinking water for the prisoners. After the land-reform rectification campaign, there had been an order from the district to demolish the building, but the village chairman
had second thoughts because it was still of some use. He had people come in to clean it up and paint it white to erase all the bitter memories and neutralize all the remaining stench. Since then the building had been used as a storehouse for the village, to keep tables, chairs, pots and pans, trays and basins, plates and bowls and teacups—all the objects needed for celebrations and receptions for official guests. The village literary group, operating only seasonally, also stored banners and signs there. In another corner, all mixed up, were drums without rim or with holes, two rusted horns, a guitar, two stringless mandolins, and a bunch of moth-eaten flags.

When the police chief turned the lock, a whole bunch of rats jumped out, crawling between his legs, rushing to get outside, and disappearing into the hedge on the side of the road. The air from this holding cell escaped like a breath smelling of rat urine and wetness and blew right in people’s faces.

“You, sister, go in.”

A militiaman led Miss Ngan up to the door and began to untie her. At that moment, everyone saw that her blouse had been torn at the armpit. When she had been arrested, she had resisted and a struggle had broken out between her and those who were trying to do their duty. She had cried quite a bit and looked exhausted and absentminded to the point where she could not even move her arm. The soldier who escorted her had to untie the rope until the very last knot:

“You, sister; go in there! Are you deaf just standing there?”

Miss Ngan still stood silent, as if she did not hear the order of her jailer; her eyes, filled with tears, were blurred with fear and fatigue.

“You heard the arrest warrant, why don’t you comply?” the police chief shouted. After that, seeing that the suspect did not acknowledge his words, he raised his arms and pushed Miss Ngan’s back: “Go inside!”

Pointing at the room scattered with stuff, cheap and moldy, he sharpened his voice: “Go in. Now your home is in there.”

Miss Ngan was pushed in like she was a sack of rice husks The police chief pulled the door, locked it, and said to the air, “Sometime between now and night someone will bring you food.”

After that he turned to his aides and gave an order: “Find someone to bring her a meal. Tomorrow, the government will decide.”

Then, he took a few steps toward the curious children and other onlookers, casting a stern look at each one. They were as silent as a pile of unhusked rice, staring back at the human face of power. A fear long buried suddenly popped into life, turning them confused and reticent. Waiting for the
silence to pass, the police chief cleared his voice like an actor preparing to step out on the stage. “Folks: please listen carefully. The duty of each citizen is to work; because work is glorious. Therefore I ask you all to resume your tasks. We should not let productivity go to waste. As for social evils, we, representatives of the government, have the duty to rectify them. First, I, individually and as village police chief, promise in front of you all that these matters will be diligently pursued. We will destroy to their roots all harmful dangers and so defend the life of our community as well as the happiness under each roof. OK; anything to say?”

The man stopped and looked at each one.

“Hurrah!” someone yelled, certainly one who needed to curry favor with the village authorities. But the rest of the crowd remained silent, perhaps because the just delivered official discourse had not yet worked its way through their brains. or because the sight of a woman tied at her elbows reminded them of what had happened to many during the great proletarian land-reform campaign. Past fears returned. The one who had shouted “Hurrah!” seeing no one else echoing his sentiment, quietly slunk to the back. The police chief saw that his heartfelt lecture had fallen flat. Embarrassed, he changed his tone and shouted:

“If no one has anything to add, then disperse!”

With that, he ran off immediately. His subordinates followed. The curious onlookers stood where they were, gazing in silence and apprehension at the huge lock. Some inquisitive children ran over and stared through the crack of the door, hoping to see the prisoner, but the heavy wooden doors were so tightly fitted that there was no opening even for a pin or a toothpick to squeeze through, so they grew disappointed and left.

As the sun reached its zenith for the day, even the most curious had to depart—they were hungry. They hurriedly cooked their meal, hurriedly called for their children, and hurriedly ate so that they could go to Mr. Quang’s house and see what was happening. There the gates were open wide, but no one could go inside, because Mrs. Tu was sitting squarely on the steps to the central room. From there she could see each person as they crossed through the gate. She spoke up cheerfully as if nothing at all was going on in the world:

“Please do enter and enjoy some water, ladies and gentlemen. Today take the opportunity to rest in the shade. This sun fries the cassava fields like coal feeding a furnace. About an hour or so ago, I was weeding cassava and my nephew told me. The two of us ran back like mad to arrive just as Miss Ngan was
being taken away. Quy’s wife and kids were standing on the patio. They had been summoned to watch the house. I chased the bunch of them away.”

“How could you dare do that?”

“Why couldn’t I? Quy may be village chairman, but in the family, he must still look up to me. His mother gave him birth sick with seizures and all by myself I took care of him. When he was seven, he had a skin infection for an entire spring. I had to bend over to clean his scabs until my back hurt and my eyes got blurry. It was me again who boiled water with herbs to bathe him and rubbed on ointment to cure him. His mother was useless; she didn’t know what to do. From the very day he got the chairman’s position until now, he’s been snotty and conceited. The public security militia and the village police chief would not dare take a step like this without an order from him. A son who ignores the face of his own father to this extent is not human.”

“I heard it might be an order coming from the provincial authorities.”

“If the province had ordered it, then the provincial police should have taken care of it, not those coolie faces from this village. Of those twelve militiamen who came to this house and tied up Auntie Ngan, six slipped out of their mother’s pelvis to me, who cut their umbilical cords and washed them up. I will go to each of their houses, flap my skirt in their faces, and wait to see what they will dare do to me.”

“They’re just low-level flunkies. Big shots give the orders, they just bow and jump to it.”

“During the land reform there was no lack of big shots who denounced their fathers, their mothers, spitting on their parents and calling them oppositionists and traitors. And what did they ever achieve?”

“True enough, they are not human; but when they are put to orders, how can they dare resist?”

“Gold is tested by fire. The good separate from the bad during hard times. When it’s easy, everyone smiles; when times are happy, who doesn’t clap their hands?”