The Zenith (82 page)

The teacher in That Khe district had taught him that the profession of writing history is the profession of heroes, daring to exchange their own lives for truth. Because all kings fear truth, they want historians to bend their pens to write as commanded. So many heads of historians have fallen
under the swords of imperial executioners, but history is continuously written with their dry, blackened blood.

“Thus I must become a historian. Not one who writes about the nation’s history, but one who will record the lives of my loved ones.”

He held both women tight, looking at them for the last time so as to permanently register the images in his heart as well as his mind. Then he asked his wife, “How many rings do you have left?”

“Altogether five.”

“Keep the smallest one I made for you when we married. Give me the rest. As for cash, maybe we do not have much, but give me some to spend along the roads.”

“No, we have quite a bit of cash stored since last year. Let me give all to you.”

“How much?”

“About fifty thousand.”

“I only need half of it. Keep the other half for food.”

His wife went into the bedroom. He looked at her svelte back and thought: “You will not have the chance to go to the market, or cook Lang Son sour soup, my beloved wife. Our life together has been cut short like a stalk of rice at the harvest. Oh heaven, the day Little One was presented to the king was the very day disaster came to roost in our family. And changing our surname from Nong to Chi was about as stupid as you can get.”

Dong returned with a stack of paper bills in one hand. In the other she held a small case the size of a chicken’s gizzard. Putting the pile of money on the table, she opened the case and pulled out a string of rings, of the large size without stones or carvings, the kind long-distance merchants carry as cash.

“You must put the gold in your underwear. I sewed a pocket inside the waistband.”

“I understand.”

“Put the bills into many different pockets in your clothes. If you lose some from one, you will still have more in the others.”

“I understand.”

“And you must take along the vial of ointment for colds and the medication for stomachaches. There is also a flashlight, a lighter, a knife for the woods, and snakebite antidote. Is it complete?”

“All are in the duffel bag.”

“Let me see your duffel bag.”

“Nothing is missing,” An answered while thinking to himself, “The one most important thing missing is you, and our Little One; because I cannot take you along on this journey of misery. But we will see each other in the other world, another land, the meeting place of all living things. We will meet again. But all my beloved ones, before we meet again, I must do this to make things right.”

For the last time, he bent down to embrace the two women with a hard squeeze, to smell the intimate scent of their shiny and straight hair, rubbing his face against their smooth faces. Then he stood up.

“Don’t go to the door. Don’t follow me. Kiss the kids for me.”

“You…!” Both cried out.

He lowered his voice: “Don’t cry. Look as if nothing has happened. We have no other way.”

He went down the stairs, not turning back even once.

In the hallway, An called Nong Tai over and said, “Do you have money in your pocket? Can you lend me ten thousand? I planned to buy some stuff and ask someone to bring it back home, but I did not take enough money.”

Nong Tai looked at him. “When will you pay me back?”

“Next week. Oh, I forgot…Payday is in two weeks, at which time I will repay you right away, not a day later.”

“In my pocket I have only enough to buy a couple of sesame balls. I left my money in the barracks.”

“It is almost time for changing the guard. Will you see if the comrades will let you leave one hour early?”

“OK, let me ask.”

The corridor was long enough that their conversation would not have been heard by the two other guards. He knew that the ruse would succeed because usually highland people do not know how to lie. Three minutes later Nong Tai returned.

“Let’s go; the two comrades agreed I can leave early. We will go to where I left my bike so we can cycle back to the camp.”

“Agreed.”

They left together. When Nong Tai had his bike, the two quietly rode through three streets; they were convinced that nobody had followed them. “Let’s stop at the sidewalk,” An said.

Nong Tai understood him immediately and got down from his bike. The two went up on the sidewalk and stood under the shade of a tree.

An asked, “Do the other two guys know that sooner or later they will die?”

“Nobody says anything but all three of us quietly understand it will be so. We have the afternoon shift. The thing always happens in the afternoon, therefore only the three of us witness it. The other group has the shift from midnight until noon the next day; they know nothing.”

“So why didn’t you three plan an escape?”

“Where to escape now? Every morning they call roll before going to exercise; in the afternoon they do it before bedtime. However, if they want to escape they will not talk to me because I am a Tay. And I, I cannot plan with them at all. Because they are Vietnamese. Minister Quoc Tuy is Vietnamese like them and Miss Xuan is a Tay like me.”

“Do you think they suspect that I have asked you to escape?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because they think we are people of the mountains: trustworthy and stupid; that we would not dare to do so.”

“Good. Because we are stupid, we will escape death. And they are from the lowlands and smart; therefore, they hold in their hands certain death. Now there is not much time. We have to get to the train station; hopefully we will not miss the train, thanks to the public security pass that you have.”

“But… what about my clothes and money in the barracks?”

“Are you crazy? It’s better to live naked than die draped in a military uniform in a coffin. Let’s go.”

They biked straight to the Hang Co station. There, the two bought tickets for Vinh to the south. As An predicted, Nong Tai’s public security pass helped. It gave them priority to buy tickets under the justification of being sent on “special duty.” As soon as they boarded the train, its engine whistled and it pulled out of the station. An put down his duffel behind his back then sat down, his eyes gazing out the window.

“Farewell to you, city of my enemies; a city I had dreamed of for so many months when I was still at the northern front; a city I thought was a paradise but which has now turned into a hell. This is the very place that will be the dark tomb in which my loved ones will be buried forever. Farewell, you gigantic and atrocious monster.”

So he thought as he set eyes on Hanoi for the last time.

“Brother Thanh,” said Nong Tai, “Brother Thanh, I am thinking…”

“About what?”

“Why are we going south? By advancing deeply into the flat plains of the central provinces, we will be like foxes caught in the open fields, like fish
thrown up on the hills. Why don’t we turn back to That Khe? There we know all the main roads and shortcuts. We know the streams and forests. Anywhere we hide, we can dig up roots or trap animals to keep ourselves alive.”

“Stupid: That Khe is the first place they will look. We cannot hide forever in the woods. Moreover, even if we escape the encircling net and cross over the border, we will fall into the hands of Chinese soldiers. They will immediately turn us back over to the Vietnamese government.”

“But in the central provinces, a strange place?”

“Only in a strange place can we hope to escape. It is much shorter from Vinh to the border with Laos than from our homes to the northern border with China.”

“How do you know that?”

“I must know to save myself. I must learn all the necessary details before I start the journey.”

“But on the other side of the border is the land of the Lao. Do you know them or not?”

“The Lao and the Chinese are like the deer and the tiger. We cannot compare one with the other.”

Their whispers were buried in the loud grinding of the steel wheels on the rails. Then An said, “Go to sleep.”

“I am not sleepy yet. And it’s hard to sleep with an empty stomach.”

“Right. Nobody can sleep when they’re hungry. Go to the cafeteria to buy some bread. After we eat, we will drink lots of water. It’s easier to sleep with a full stomach. We must sleep to have strength for tomorrow.”

Nong Tai got up and went to the cafeteria at the end of the train to buy two big loaves of bread sprinkled with salt and pepper and two containers of water. The two ate quietly then fell asleep sitting up. The train shook their heads as if they were bouncing rubber balls. They slept very soundly until the loudspeakers announced:

“The train is arriving at Vinh. Please check your luggage.”

An opened his eyes wide. The train moved forward then stopped completely, and they got off, passing along the station platform in a fog. It was only four a.m. Horse carriages were lined up in a row outside the station. Their drivers sat around drinking tea or wine in the row of stalls along the street. To get government transportation you had to line up for at least ten hours until you could purchase a ticket.

An took Nong Tai for a stroll then focused on a driver with a daredevil air and a handlebar mustache.

“Hello to you. We have a special assignment up on the border. Do you think you can help the two of us?”

“Who are you?”

“We are public security and a military officer. Here is an identification certificate for the two of us.”

“Public security and a military officer enjoy priority for government transportation. Every three days there is a car going to the border crossing. You comrades rent a room and inform the local police to make arrangements. There will be a departure the day after tomorrow in the morning.”

“Our assignment is an emergency. We cannot wait.”

“But you comrades cannot hire our horse carriages. Going up the mountain road is very expensive. Here, we usually take passengers going only to towns around Vinh.”

“We can pay no matter how expensive. The agency will reimburse us.”

The horse carriage driver looked at them with suspicion: “A carriage usually takes eight passengers.”

An interrupted him: “We will buy eight tickets plus the cost of luggage for eight. We hope you accept.”

“OK…let me see.”

“And we will pay additionally for the feeding of the horses on bad roads. If you need to change the horses along the road, we are ready to cover that, too. As long as we can make good time to complete our assignment.”

“OK!”

The driver stood up with an unexpected swiftness. He pulled out some change to pay the woman for his tea then took the two men to his horse carriage.

An gave him two-thirds of the fare, adding, “The balance I will pay when we see the border post appearing before our eyes.”

“Comrade, you are a very generous person. Therefore heaven has led you to meet up with me. To say it straight, my horse is number one among all the horses that run in this town,” he explained with great pride. “No horse would dare go against mine up the road to the border, because I am the only one who feeds his horses corn mixed with honey. The others feed their horses only hay all year ’round.”

After carefully putting the money in his shirt pocket, the driver climbed onto his seat and turned the carriage completely around to go west.

As he listened to the galloping of the horseshoes on the road, An stuck his neck out to look around.

“Vinh is not much larger than the town of That Khe. But the style of the
houses here is a bit different. Why are we seeing all these red-painted barrels like that one?”

“You comrades are here for the first time, right?” asked the driver.

“Yes. Exactly correct,” An said.

The driver pointed his whip to the rows of rolling mountains at the horizon ahead and said, “The Lao wind blows from the west. It is so fierce that wherever it blows, everything dries and easily burns up. The government distributes those red-painted barrels for families to store water. Lazy ones who let the barrels get low will be reported and will be warned or disciplined.”

“The city fire department is paid with government salaries to do this work. Why force all the people?”

“The fire department here is three times larger than in other cities. But even if there were twenty times more firemen, they could not put out the fires brought by the Lao wind. The Lao wind is also called a fire wind; it starts the fires, no need for people’s negligence in addition.”

“Really! That is scary,” An replied, thinking to himself: “Lao wind! How dangerous; and we are going toward that cavernous oven. No disasters are more dangerous than those created by people. There is nothing in nature more cruel than people going after one another.”

Then he turned to tell Nong Tai, “Did you hear what the driver said? From today on we are going to operate in this hot Lao wind. Now we sleep to get some strength.”

“The road shakes us like dice, how can we sleep?”

“Then just close your eyes.”

The driver turned and added: “It’s true; any minute you close your eyes is good for that minute. In a little while, when the sun rises, your eyes will be blinded as if needles were piercing them. Visitors from the north all complain about the hot sun of Nghe An.”