The Zenith (59 page)

“I am your neighbor. Do you remember me?”

He hears someone talking at his ear. He turns over to see a meticulously dressed man leaning against the wall, looking at him with a pair of warm eyes, smiling.

“Maybe…” he replies with embarrassment, trying to recall this stylish look, the fashion of the 1940s, the hair wavy and a light-colored shirt collar turned out to cover the dark jacket:

“The truth? I kind of remember…It is old age…” he replies, one more time trying to conjure the identity of this hefty man with hair à la Yves Montand, the eyes in parallel, the nose bridge regular and the mouth bright pink, lips turned up, definitely the kind of man who is talkative and…

“I am Tran Phu, not the Tran Phu who was general secretary of the Party during the First Uprising, but the one who was a classmate in 1947, during training at Nam Mai Hamlet. Do you remember now?”

“Ah, ah…now I remember,” Vu answers. “Because you said you were a neighbor, I kept searching among my acquaintances in the old hamlet, my birthplace.”

“Lying next to each other for two months, hammock to hammock, foot touching foot. We were more than neighbors. It’s lucky that we were of different dispositions, or else things might have happened.”

“True,” Vu confirms and bursts into laughter.

Tran Phu asks, “Are you still tired?”

“It’s better.”

“Sit up to straighten out your back then try to get off the bed and take a few steps. After the first few steps, you will want to go down the hall and back at a speed just enough to carry you forward. That’s the best way to get your blood flowing. You will recuperate very quickly; I believe that.”

“Thank you. I also hope so.”

Casting his eyes in curiosity to watch the other, Vu says, “And you, what is your secret that time seems not to have touched you at all? It has been more than twenty years. After the first few minutes of surprise, I find you keep most of your old demeanor.”

“I have changed quite a bit. Twenty years is not a moment. You do not see my tummy?”

At that moment Tran Phu pulls the lapels of his blouson to let Vu look. Vu finds his stomach to be quite ordinary. Very normal even for a man of forty.

Vu says, “I see nothing. At the most the waist is eighty centimeters. Compared with others, that is an ideal number.”

“Oh, no…I cannot accept it. Do you remember in the old days I was famous in the front as ‘Tran Phu with the frog’s waist’? My waist was sixty, not a millimeter more. My stomach was smaller and firmer than those of the ladies.”

“Are you crazy? That was more than twenty years ago.”

“The fact is that it is a weakness to let ourselves atrophy over time. I know an old man who is over eighty and his skin has no wrinkles, his waist is still sixty-eight, not more nor less.”

“Eighty and skin without wrinkles? You are joking. Sorry, but I can’t believe it.”

“You must believe. Then, you’ll come to believe. I will explain to you right now: beautiful women keep their beauty by rubbing their face. Massaging is a traditional method to keep beauty as well as health. In Persia people sell hundreds of different perfumes for bathhouses to serve customers; of course those customers are only royalty, aristocrats, or wealthy businesspeople. But even massage cannot prevent skin from wrinkling, as the masseuse has to pull the skin across the horizontal, forcing it to expand. When it expands, it changes form. Thus, massaging makes the blood flow and the skin pink, fresh, and healthy, but still the skin continues to wrinkle. To correct this shortcoming, people have to adopt a new method.”

“Your theory sounds very appealing. Now I am growing very curious,” Vu replies with a smile that is both open and full of awakened alertness.

Tran Phu also smiles. “You don’t believe it yet. Whether you believe or not, it is all the same to me. I am not that Son Dong character who sells medicine in the middle of the market just to pull some coins out of your pocket. I act only according to the motto ‘If you see something nice but don’t tell
anyone, you are too greedy; and if you see a hole in the middle of the road but don’t yell out a warning, you are too nasty.’”

“Oh…don’t swing a big hammer like that…Well, tell me about the special techniques of that eighty-year-old man with the smooth skin.”

“That old man is a master of the Nhat Nam teachings. He lives next to the Dong Da dike. If you wish, I will take you there for a visit, and at the same time you can watch his disciples practice. I believe you will fall completely in love with this martial art. And the technique to keep skin from wrinkling is very simple: slap yourself!”

“Slap?” He almost can’t believe his ears. “What did you say? Slap?”

“Slap!”

“Slap? I don’t understand.”

“Slap, but it is not slapping your enemy, nor slapping until you see fireflies in the eyes, nor slapping to make the nose and mouth bleed, nor slapping to dislocate the jaw and break the front teeth. It is not slapping the other to inflict injury or death. It is still slapping, but just enough to make the blood flow, to ward off the process of aging while preserving the original resilience of the skin. Here, I will show you how it’s done.”

Tran Phu then lifts both hands up at the same time to slap his face, first both sides of his jaw, then slowly up each cheek to his temples until his hands meet on his forehead: smack, smack, smack, smack…

Vu can’t stop him, being both surprised and confused before that exciting demonstration. A moment later he lowers his voice and whispers, “Stop, stop! I understand now. We should not disturb the people around here.”

Tran Phu immediately lowers his voice, too: “Why even pay attention to those walking corpses? To live cheerfully, just pretend they don’t exist for us to see.”

Vu is frightened by the arrogance of Tran Phu’s manner, so he hurriedly stands up, even though it makes him a little dizzy.

“Let’s go out to the hall. I will try to see.”

“Good, let me escort you,” Tran Phu replies, then wraps his arm around Vu’s back. His hands are warm and firm, the sign of a steady body. Vu feels comfortable walking beside this man, a reassurance of security and warmth. They walk along the hall. With each step, Vu’s memory slowly fills with flashbacks of those nights in the woods more than twenty years ago. Back then, the officer named Tran Phu was already very well known as a commander full of potential; all day long he would boast to the enlisted men about his ‘frog’s waist.’ Everywhere he went, soldiers would flock around, mouths open, to listen to his stories. Nobody knew for sure what kind of stories,
but they certainly were frivolous, because after a silence the whole group would burst out laughing. They laughed crawling around; they laughed as if they had communal epilepsy; they laughed like the demented. Even though they trusted him due to his battlefield experience, his superiors remained suspicious about the odd persona of this lad from Hanoi.

At that time, they had to attend training sessions during the day. At night, even once he was up in his hammock, Tran Phu still would not want to sleep; he would poke his foot over to Vu, forcing Vu to crawl outside his net and listen as Phu whispered all kinds of comical stories. The two of them had to cover their mouths to laugh quietly. In those days they were young men. Now, that springtime of their lives is just a memory. Tran Phu, too, might also be thinking about something, because his constantly moving mouth is silent. In quiet they walk many rounds up and down the hall then sit down on a bench.

“Are you tired yet?”

“At the beginning, a little fuzzy. Then after completing the first round it felt normal.”

“That’s good. Your body will heal satisfactorily.”

“Who tells you that?”

“The doctor.”

“The head of the ward? The one I met this morning?”

“Exactly. You are lucky. He’s the one with the best credentials in this hospital. He decided to extend your coma to let your body heal more quickly. I monitored your breathing as we were walking, and I recognize that this fellow is experienced.”

“I find you no less experienced.…Did you study medicine?”

“No, but I read. I direct a publishing house for culture and information. Thus, I am forced to read. Also, when we reach old age, sooner or later, whether you want to or not, diseases will come. The best course is to understand them first before those uninvited guests invade your home.”

“When did you switch your profession?”

“Right after the liberation of the capital.”

“But…”

He is about to ask something then suddenly stops. During their friendship, Tran Phu was commander of Battalion 507, assigned to the capital district. He was valued as a most outstanding officer, thanks to his knowledge, his initiative, and an unusual power of intuition. This lad from Hanoi with mincing gait and bright red lips, both talkative and sensual, had, of course, made many ladies fall madly in love with him. He was also the kind
whom superiors trusted, being able to ask soldiers to jump fearlessly into the fire. Why had he wastefully left the army when his career had been so promising? Vu asks himself. But then, he knows that there are truths that lie outside ordinary logic. And the ordinary logic of the majority contains nonsense when we look at things from another angle.

Perhaps Vu has had to pay a high price to attain this insight.

As if Vu had guessed his secret thoughts, Tran Phu opens wide his mouth and laughs: “You regret my military career, right? Because many soldiers under my authority are now wearing big medals, while I am only a mere cultural assistant, not even a commissar, not even climbing up to get the title of office director. But this was out of my own free will; my own choice. When the nation was in danger, as a citizen’s duty, I had to hold a sword. But the battles are over; I hand it to others to keep. An officer’s career is not what I am fond of. Between hats and uniforms and a life disengaged, I chose the latter.”

“Before now I might have been puzzled, but now I know you had a reason.”

“Thank you. My motives might be unreasonable to someone else. That is why my words might offend others; those in your office, for example. But life is not long enough to please everyone. We have to do what we desire as long as it is not immoral or inhumane. Now I will accompany you to your room. Take another glass of milk before going to sleep. I guarantee that tomorrow you can eat rice porridge with meat.”

They return to Vu’s room. Obediently he drinks a glass of warm milk before going to sleep. And indeed, his sleep turns out satisfactory. The next morning, he wakes up and sees Tran Phu already chatting with the head doctor. Both seem excited.

Seeing Vu awake, they turn around and say, “We wish you a good morning.”

Tran Phu says it first. The doctor follows, smiling.

“Today you will eat rice porridge with meat. Congratulations as you transition to another phase of your recovery much faster than ordinary people.”

Vu smiles and replies, “It must be my kind friend who proposes to the doctor that I am making progress?”

“No. No one has the right to propose. Professional decisions are always one-sided. Professional advice is always arbitrary. It follows professional principles only,” the doctor answers while raising his arm to bid farewell, as others are calling noisily for him at the end of the hall. Tran Phu enters the room
under the cold looks and harsh stares of people hanging around. But he appears oblivious to all of them. At the head of Vu’s bed, he goes through the pile of oranges, bananas, and all kinds of cakes and candies in the little cupboard.

“You should not eat these. Let me give them to the other rooms. Even though this is called the Viet-Russian hospital, reserved for high-ranking cadres, many people do not have enough money to buy fruit. These packages of cakes we can give to charity. At your age you should not eat these ‘state-enterprise’ candies and cookies. I will share mine with you.”

Without waiting for Vu’s answer, Tran Phu leaves the room and returns a little later with an aluminum basket in which he puts all the fruit and candies, taking it away without saying a word. Vu says nothing. He silently mixes his milk, quietly embarrassed because of the attentive looks from bystanders. But the hunger that has returned with racehorse speed reassures him. While drinking his milk, he looks at the trees swaying outside, feeling as if he were in a strange land, a place where he had never before set foot and thus distinct from the world where he had lived. It is a permanent disruption from all the days that are now behind him; a new continent that has opened up upon his return from death.

After the meal, Tran Phu returns with a basket full of fresh fruit. He arranges them nicely on the cupboard at the head of the bed, saying, “You have started to eat savory porridge. That means you can eat all of these fruits. No more restrictions. Here are flan and the madeleine made by my sister. You can have them when you drink your milk or hot tea.”

“Thank you. I feel bad that you have spent so much time on me.”

“Not as much as you thought. All is prepared by my younger sister. I have been spoiled since I was young, even though there were many mouths in the family. Go take a nap; we will see each other again tomorrow.”