The Zenith (44 page)

Abruptly, Mrs. Tu ended the discussion and, in a flash, changed the subject:

“In this house we have very superior raw sugar. Anyone who wants chrysanthemum tea with very superior raw sugar, please ask.”

“Marigolds, yes?”

“Sisters, you know nothing! You can’t use marigolds for tea. If you do use them, you have to throw it out, it’s too harsh. One uses only white mums or the tiny yellow ones, the kind that is small like a shirt button.”

“Who can brew tea as well as you to know this!”

“In hot weather drinking chrysanthemum tea is refreshing. Well, please do have some.”

The way Mrs. Tu had ended her disquisition and changed the subject was more clever than what a professional stage director would have done. The villagers wanted more details but dared not ask any further. The wall clock in Mr. Quang’s house lazily struck three. The visitors bade their hostess farewell and left. No one had any desire to go up or down to their fields. They all went home, freshened up, turned blankets and mats to dry, trimmed branches in garden nooks, weeded—tedious tasks undertaken to run out the afternoon, as they waited for a chance to gather after dinner.

As the sun finally began to set the evening meals were set out. The villagers ate hastily, eager to get back outside. Without any plan or forewarning, everyone from all sections of the village began to gather in front of Secretary Vui’s house—an entire crowd, some carrying flashlights, others storm lanterns, others oil torches that burned effusively. But the front gate of Miss Vui’s house was locked and both the yard and the house were pitch dark.

“How strange! Where can she be?”

“Some saw her this morning in the store buying materials.”

“Maybe she’s at that joker Quy’s house! When Miss Ngan was grabbed, there were only the police chief and the militiamen. We didn’t see Quy at all.”

“That Quy signed the order for the police chief to execute. He’s hiding his face now; of course that’s so. How can a firstborn son bring police to collar a stepmother like that? Only a gangster!”

“So why is Miss Vui hiding her face?”

“You forget that she took Quy’s order to go to Khoai Hamlet to investigate Miss Ngan’s background and there learned the story of Mr. Quang building a house for his wife’s father? In this whole village she is the only one who went all the way into the dragonfly nest.”

“Under the circumstances, if she’s not the chairman’s right hand, then she’s his left hand.”

“No wonder: I saw them gossip with each other. It looked really cozy.”

“Oh well! Climb a ladder and ask heaven. People blow hot and cold. These two don’t look each other in the face anymore.”

“How do you know that?”

“The day I pulled some sacks of charcoal past Miss Vui’s house, I saw Quy coming out, his face dark like a water buffalo’s vagina. I ran across Miss Vui a
couple of days later and when I pretended to inquire about Quy, her face ballooned like a cracked vat. She said, ‘I don’t know and I have nothing to do with Quy!’”

“Oh-oh! Are you in trouble now! How dare you compare the chairman’s face with a water buffalo’s vagina? If I squawk, you’re finished.”

“I dare you to tell. ‘Dark like a water buffalo’s…’ is merely an old saying. I just use it as it is.”

“I am just joshing you a little bit. I didn’t expect them to split so fast.”

“What do you expect? People hook up with people like a latch knot: you undo it, then tie it; tied, you undo it again—like a game. There is nothing permanent in life.”

“But Quy is the chairman. How dare the committee secretary undercut her boss?”

“That, only heaven knows. OK, time to sleep. Tomorrow morning I have to weed cassava. If we don’t do it tomorrow, in a few days the tubers will wither and there will be no crop. All the work of planting and tending will go to waste.”

“Absolutely correct! True that cassava doesn’t bring us money, but it does let us feed pigs and gives us flour for rainy days. We should not let the crop go to waste. Time to go.”

Thus the villagers encouraged one another into leaving; they had wasted the whole day following this dramatic play. Whatever would happen tomorrow, would certainly happen in any event. For the villagers, the rows of cassava were waiting.

The flickering lights moved along the winding paths, past the gardens and the lines of hills. The chatting melted away into the spacious envelope of the mysterious night sky.

At the top of Lan Vu mountain, there was a sudden slash of fire that resembled a shooting star. Someone said, “Oh! A shooting star. Why is there a shooting star in the spring?”

“It’s not a shooting star; it’s a falling star. When a star falls, someone has just died.”

“When an owl or hog bird cries, a person has gone on. But a falling star tells us that a saint’s exile on earth has expired and he is returning to paradise.”

“Is that true? Heaven and earth are hard to explain.”

The next day, rain cascaded again. So plans to work up in the cassava fields were canceled. People sighed, because the more the rain fell, the thicker the
grass grew, its roots plunging into the ground as fast as a wind blowing, in no time flat growing right through the cassava tubers. Cassava that has been invaded by grass either rots or has no taste, or tastes faintly bitter, useful only for feeding pigs, not people. They had to put on raincoats to go weed the fields; if they didn’t do that, they would have to do some other chore. Not here the smooth white shirts of those who have the leisure to just enjoy their time on earth.

Past noon, the rain completely stopped just as lunch was finished. Sitting around to drink water and pick their teeth, the villagers heard the blowing of a car horn on the rural road. It was a rare noise that was heard only several times a year. At New Year, it had to be the sound of the drama troupe’s vehicle. Once in a blue moon, it might be the sound of a medical team coming to inspect for serious diseases such as malaria, hepatitis, or diphtheria, or to check the gynecological health of women and young girls. For inhabitants of Woodcutters’ Hamlet, the noise of a car was thus synonymous with a happy event. With it came the presence of a fairy with lipstick and blush, with brilliant skirt and shirt under the lights, or doctors in white lab coats. On that afternoon, when the horn was heard, everybody was puzzled and asked one another:

“How strange, what team is this?”

“Why didn’t we get any word? Not from the chairman or the vice-chairman, or the women’s secretary or the youth secretary.”

“It can’t be a birth-control campaign.”

“That birth-eradication program has been stopped temporarily. I heard the central government is reevaluating it.”

Villagers came out to see who it might be, just like those gawking city people who usually form a crowd to watch a demented and naked patient escaped from the hospital, showing her breasts and butt on the streets. On the sandy road running through the three sections of the hamlet, a jeep painted the color of harvest gold was inching along slowly like a beetle. The road was narrow and bumpy. The jeep went straight to the upper section, followed by twenty kids, all loudly screaming while running behind it. In the middle of the upper section, the driver stuck his head out and asked those standing along the side of the road, “Will you please tell me where is Chairman Quy’s house?”

So it was discovered that it was a police vehicle, full of policemen. A quick bolt spread fast among the crowd along the road:

“The police are coming to Chairman Quy’s house!”

This is the first time they had seen a police car since the land reform.

“For sure the car comes to take Miss Ngan to the provincial capital.”

“Correct! Only the province has the authority to sit in judgment. It’s not land-reform time, when villages could set up courts. Whoever said yesterday that village officials could investigate her is wrong.”

“The village police chief—who else?”

“If he said that, then it was a lie. If villages could investigate and sentence, then heads would roll and blood would flow; later on, rectification of errors over and over again.”

“Why didn’t you speak up yesterday? I saw you in front of the storehouse where they shut in Miss Ngan.”

“I eat when invited; I speak when asked. Obviously, to speak to the air under heaven is for the demented.”

“OK, be quiet and watch! They have arrived.”

The villagers crowded the way to Quy’s house. About twenty minutes later, the team of provincial police returned with Chairman Quy. But the chairman had not one bit of the bearing of someone who holds power. Those standing farther away saw him walk with his head bowed, his face emptied of blood. At the door of the jeep, he climbed up and slid inside, sitting all the way in the corner so that he did not have to see anyone and no one could see or bother him. Those standing close by could see clearly the sweat dripping from his forehead and temples down his long and pointy face all the way to his chin. They also could see clearly his hands shaking madly and his lips quivering white. These strange sights made the crowd hold their breath; their instinct told them that something important was about to happen. When the jeep turned around to approach the storehouse, villagers stepped back to both sides of the road, no one saying a word. When the car then moved forward, they silently followed it, walking as if in a funeral procession rather than as a gaggle of onlookers looking to satisfy their unhealthy curiosity.

The jeep stopped in front of the storehouse and the team of provincial police jumped down first; then it was Quy’s turn. He stepped up to open the lock, but he struggled and could not. One of the provincial policemen snatched the key and opened it himself. Two others entered the temporary prison and a minute later emerged with Miss Ngan, her face full of red pimples from mosquito bites. The last officer, probably the leader of the team, turned to ask Quy:

“Have anything else to say?”

There was no reply.

The policeman who had opened the storehouse door now pulled handcuffs out
of his pocket, opened them, and handed them over to Quy, saying not a word more. Quy, silent like a corpse, put both hands in the cuffs before the shocked bewilderment of all the witnesses, including Miss Ngan.

The policeman looked at the victim who had just been released:

“Do you need us to take you home?”

“What?” Miss Ngan replied mechanically, as if she had not understood what had been said.

The policeman repeated in a softer tone: “Can you go back to your family on your own, or do you want us to take you there?”

“Ah, no…I can…Thank you all.”

“Then, good-bye to you and we wish you a speedy return to your normal life.”

He spoke in a calm manner but could not hide the natural attraction that any man would feel when standing before a beautiful woman.

“OK, I bid you all farewell and thank you all again,” Miss Ngan replied. Her liveliness began to return.

The police team put Quy in the jeep and took off. The people of Woodcutters’ Hamlet stood dumbfounded, staring at the vehicle as it left their village. They just stood like that until the dust totally settled and the noise of the motor could no longer be heard. Then some woman suddenly said:

“The poor young miss, her face is covered by mosquito bites just like dry oatmeal covers the bottom of a bowl. From only one night. During the land reform, my sister was imprisoned for several months.”

“Talk about the land reform: then people turned into monsters and monsters took on human shapes.”