The Zenith (53 page)

He understood that they had found for him only a temporary remedy, but it was still a forced arrangement. He felt his freedom being violated.

At the end of that week, on Saturday, he saw the shadow of a woman appear. Routinely each Saturday everyone went to the family compound except the bodyguards. Their shelter was only a few yards from his house; one could hear noises from either side of the walls. He seemed to have forgotten about “the female comrade serving the resistance.” He seemed quite surprised to see a woman approaching his quarters as the evening meal had just ended; in the sky only a bright yellow cloud remained that shed colorless rays on the deep black trees of the forest. In that light and in the desolate space, the image of the woman was most frail and lonely.

He wondered, “Who can it be? Who is coming here at this time?”

In principle, the guards were not allowed to receive family members in the off-limits area. If a family came up to visit, guards could take a break and meet their loved ones in an area called “Reunions” or, more romantically,
the “House of Happiness.” That house was about a stream and two hills away. Curious, he continued to peek through the window, following the one who walked with her head down. It seemed as if she were carrying some objects that made her gait both hurried and quite unbalanced: an uneasy and painful gait. The image did not stir any feeling of admiration, only pity. Pity for a man is bad, but twice as bad if it is felt for a woman.

“What a stupid business,” he said to himself in an unpleasant manner, as if against himself. Then he looked down at the pile of documents. But an intuitive feeling told him that the woman with the unsteady walk was of concern to him and not to the guards. He then recalled the “temporary solution” that General Long had talked about and immediately a cry pierced his heart:

“Hell! This is the woman they have chosen for me.”

Putting the materials down, he sat absentminded.

There were no good-looking single women left in the women’s association. All had been taken. Top among the fair ones were Van, Vu’s wife; Sau’s second wife; and Miss Tuong Vi, who came from the central performance troupe. These latter two were nicknamed the Two Ladies.” Then followed the “Three Dainty Ones,” Lan, Hue, and Nhi; three women well known in the resistance zone because of their graceful looks and domestic skills. They were tasked to assist all the international welcoming ceremonies and important celebrations, making flower displays, cakes, and all the popular dishes, as well as teaching the other women how to apply makeup. Even though they lived in the woods, these women were all pretty stylish, and spoiled with shipments of luxuries, silk, cosmetics, and French cigarettes.

On this subject, he had declared, “It is a habit. At my age, habit is stronger than one thinks.”

The women relied on that to make their demands: “It might be the jungle, but we’re still women.”

It was he who had supported them. A handful of annoyed ones commented behind his back:

“He lived with Westerners for twenty years. He likes to drink French wine and is gallant like the French.”

During celebrations, he saw that the women discreetly sprayed perfume on the collars of their dresses or on the satin ribbons in their hair. The nice smell and their smiles made the forests less somber.

Now he thought that of all the women he had seen, not one of them had this twisted walk, and nobody had the name Thu. It was clear that all the beautiful
women already belonged to somebody. Left was this “comrade who serves the resistance,” who must be the ugliest one left in the women’s association, from whom even men who were deprived would turn away their face. That fact was undeniable.

“However, she will still come.”

He sighed and stood up, rearranging his clothes. At that moment, the guard entered and said, “Mr. President, the female comrade from the women’s association is here.”

“Thank you. You may retire.”

The guard walked out in a flash. Detached, the president looked after the young lad then wondered, “What am I going to tell her and still be polite? Because I didn’t choose this woman. If it is a meeting forced by destiny then it is worse than what happened with that Paris seamstress, because it is tied to prior events. That would make him and her most uneasy: a lovemaking without love; not even mutual agreement to release a body’s pent-up physical needs, but simply an act to support the resistance. This is both hypocritical and senseless.”

The thought depressed him. But he still remembered that he was expected to be the host when a guest was coming. He stood up and walked out under the sloping roof to greet her. The woman, as he guessed, had just put her feet on the first step of the stairs. From on high, he saw the top of her head first: a small head with thin hair parted on both sides, and tied in the back with a shiny aluminum three-prong clip.

“Her hair is as thin as that of an eighty-year-old lady,” he thought to himself. “How painful. I have never seen such thin hair, to a point where I can see clearly her scalp. And it is not white but brownish.”

That thought floated on by. He remembered, while in Paris, he had often met old women who had lost almost all their hair, exposing pink scalps. Those women had passed beyond the age of emotion and desire, and had lost all ability to do anything useful; they walked slowly on the sidewalks all day long, or in the parks alone, or around the water fountains to look at the trees or to feed the birds. They always wore cloth or wool hats; only on extremely hot days would they unwrap their protective covers and reveal for all to see their pitiable bare heads: the mark of old age, the undisputable verdict of time!

“This woman is still young, why did she lose her hair so quickly? Because of the mountain climate, the stream water, or the hard life? But these bad conditions are shared by all. Why do the other women still have the right to ‘display the shiny flock of hair,’ to speak like a third-class poet?

By this time, the guest had taken the last step; she looked up. Their eyes met; her whole body suddenly shriveled up, from narrow shoulders to peanut-size knees; it all gathered in out of embarrassment. He did not know why but he, too, was embarrassed to witness the unconcealed fear of the woman, and he felt that this encounter was brutality.

“Mr. President…”

Her lips quivered for a while before she could utter those words.

He quickly replied, “Miss, please do come in.”

“Yes…” the woman answered, breathing heavily. As soon as she was inside the house, she took her bag from her shoulder and hung it on the back of the chair, and then she laid the mat and the blanket she had carried under one arm down on the floor. He glanced at her and right away saw a white pillow within the quilted blanket, both wrapped neatly in the individual mat with several rounds of parachute strings.

“Those strings will be used to hang the mosquito net after the duty is completed,” he thought quietly to himself. The organization must have briefed her carefully that she must hang this net in the front room of the house, where it would be concealed by the large bamboo curtains hanging from ceiling to floor. There, there is no other pillow, no other blanket, no room for a second person. Thus she has to bring all these things with her. The careful and neat preparation is like a small unit of sappers preparing to attack a large fort. How pitiful!”

Visualizing the woman crossing the stream and traversing two hills with the mat and blanket, he says to her, “You’ve been walking; please sit down and rest.”

He went to prepare a new pot of tea. The water had boiled at three in the afternoon and had not retained enough heat to keep the tea leaves settled, so they were floating on top. He had to shake it awhile for the water to turn a light yellow color:

“Please have some tea. I just received a gift of some cane sugar.”

He took the jar of Quang Ngai cane sugar and put it on the table:

“Miss, please…”

“Mr. President, my name is Thu, Minh Thu. The association has another Thu, Bich Thu.”

“Yes? So there is another one, named Bich Thu?” he repeated mechanically. He racked his brain trying to remember if he had ever met a female comrade named Thu but came up empty.

Meanwhile, the woman drank some tea. She seemed to be truly thirsty after walking to his residence, even though it really wasn’t that far. Her wrists
were small and skinny like those of a child; her neck displayed long, twisted veins that could not be shielded under her light blue shirt. Sitting in front of him, he could see clearly her thin hair sticking to her scalp, exposing brown spots. Her skin was brown but not the honey-cake color that people thought so highly of.

He dared not look at her long, knowing she was fluttering like a snipe. His heart was filled with boredom mixed with pity. Pity for whom? Perhaps for both of them—the poor woman and the president. Life is a cruel drama, truly; full of scenes that are impossible to anticipate. Or is it no more than a traffic accident?

Turning his head toward the window, he looked at the afternoon light, which had taken a slightly purple tint, then said aimlessly, “Does the women’s association grow lots of vegetables?”

“To report to Mr. President, our garden has all kinds: green cabbage, chrysanthemum leaves, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Eggplants and tomatoes are very good this year.”

The poor woman had seized the silly question as her way out, replying enthusiastically with a flourish.

“Really? You gals are pretty good.”

“Yes. The leading ones are very enterprising. We had to send people down all the way to the border to buy the seeds.”

“Have you ever been near the border?”

“Mr. President…”

She looked up toward him with a terrifying air, and immediately he recognized he had made an unforgivable mistake. Those assigned near the border, or down in the cease-fire area, were those full of energy; besides having strength, they needed to be quick on their feet, intelligent, with attractive physiques. The woman who sat curled up in a chair before him met none of these criteria.

“Oh, I just asked that. You can go only when the office assigns you.”

“Yes.”

“All of us have to do what the revolution orders; the duties of the organization.”

“Indeed, yes.”

“Miss Thu…” He almost asked a stupid question: “Miss Thu, how old are you?” Such questions were permanent fixtures in his head to use with the youth groups: “Little Hong, how old are you? Come get the candies and give some to your friends”; or, “Little Thanh, how old are you? Now you get the gifts. Will you save some for your parents?”

Those questions were still fresh in his brain because just the previous Sunday he had distributed candies to some children. The president cleared his throat as if a cough had stopped his question:

“Miss Thu…Miss Thu, do you hear from your family regularly?”

“Well, I have nobody besides an older sister. But she followed her husband to Thailand for business when my parents died. I could not keep in touch with her. For me, family is the revolution.”

“Good. The revolution is the extended family; it is the communal roof over all of us,” he replied, suddenly realizing that he had turned bland. He no longer used the sharpest words, even in his meetings with the motivation cadres. His words were like wilted vegetables, warmed-up soybean husks, foods reserved for cows or pigs. But the woman seemed satisfied. She looked at him, blinking her eyes, and it was not clear if she was flirting or just showing her happiness.

“Not only is she homely but she looks really dumb. For sure, there is not a thought in her head, except for whatever was stuffed in by others,” he silently observed

Suddenly his limbs felt tired:

“I will have to hold this woman, will I not? In a few minutes I will have to do to her all that sex requires. This is not avoidable. I will have to release my body from all the pressure. I will need to keep my wits sharp because the resistance will go on for a long time. Because of this, nothing will be better than to annihilate all the hopes that any normal man might have; to bury the world of feelings. I represent responsibility. What I do is carry the nation’s weighty load. If in the old days there was someone who, in the name of duty, had to marry Chung Vo Diem, now I have to copy that old hero and perform.”