The Zenith (85 page)

He turned off the flashlight and crawled into a thick bush, knowing that when one is not sure of an escape route, it is best to sit tight in the dark. It was less dangerous than making squishing noises and revealing his location with the flashlight. Indeed, the sounds were getting closer and the wind brought the cursing of the soldiers to his ears:

“Slow down! Your mare bumped into my horse.”

“I can’t help it—it’s so dark.”

“We have to wait for them to cross the road before we can move forward. Don’t push your horse.”

“I did not. It just jumped on its own.”

A voice intervened, surely from the fort’s captain: “Enough, you guys. Don’t fight with each other. When we return, there will be a pot of chicken soup to fill us up.”

The soldiers kept quiet.

The captain again said, “Let’s speed up a little. Don’t forget that these hill people know the forest ways a thousand times better than us. They are born with the forest trees.”

“Reporting, Captain: we are really trying but there are too many vines. This stretch of road is a bitch.”

“Because it’s a bitch, we need your professional skill with a knife. Try hard. I think we are almost there. No matter what they do, they cannot be faster than the horses.”

The sounds of their movements mixing with the hissing of the horses became even clearer. Soldiers in the front slashed at the vines, preparing a way for the horses to advance. Since the sun had set they had been under orders to chase down An and Nong Tai, but their horses had been blocked from entering the forest. If the worn trail had not been covered tightly by the hanging green vines, the soldiers would have already caught him when he was lying under the blanket next to the stream, in the most compromising situation imaginable.

“Now I have regained my composure, and if we do clash I can still take out some guys before I die.”

That thought was a consolation to An. An insect bit his neck; the pain was so excruciating he almost cried out. Reaching back with his hand, he seized a toxic ant the size of a black bean. He squeezed it to death but the ant still managed to bite the tip of his forefinger, which started to burn from the acid pain. At the same moment, a scream was heard:

“Tiger! Tiger!”

A hail of bullets erupted right after the terrifying scream.

An smiled to himself: “Those are too many rounds to deal with the king of the jungle.”

After the firing ended, An clearly heard the captain’s voice:

“Do you see it?”

“No. Reporting, Captain: right by the horse’s foot I saw a bunch of bones from a torso with the flesh all eaten.”

“Where?”

Then he heard the outpost commander shout: “Dismount. Bring the electric lantern over here.”

There were footsteps running; talking to horses; the slapping of riding crops on backs; then silence. Perhaps the soldiers were tiptoeing around Nong Tai’s headless body and bones. Then the captain spoke in a tremulous voice:

“Two guns? This tiger finished both of them?”

“Yes. It must be a big one.”

“I never heard of a tiger eating two people at the same time.”

“Reporting, Captain: tigers do not kill two people at one time because when a tiger catches one victim, the other one has time to run or shoot. But it can carry a cow on its back and still run swiftly. This time, perhaps the two highlanders met their last call; perhaps they sat and rested; perhaps they walked close together. They may be woodsmen but they underestimated these forests.”

“We cannot locate the heads.”

“Tigers never eat the head; only foxes and wild boars. Foxes do not eat at one place; they normally fight each other and take their prey far away. I believe foxes have dragged one body and both heads. It must have been one big pack of foxes.”

“That’s right. Only foxes and wild boars could clean it up this fast. I believe the round of bullets we shot chased them away. Looking at the pile of ribs, we know they were really famished.”

Another moment of silence passed, then a soldier said, “Captain, let’s return. Here the blood stinks.”

“Pick up the two guns,” the captain ordered. “Our mission has been accomplished without wasting one drop of our blood. Those who betrayed the nation and are foreign spies have been punished by wild animals instead of a people’s court.”

An heard repeated coughing from a soldier; it must have been the unlucky one who had to pick up the two guns smeared with dried blood. After that: the sound of horses being mounted, the whipping of crops, whispering, and, at last, galloping horses. Then the sounds grew fainter and fainter.

Waiting for the noise of the running horses to completely subside, An came out of the bushes, knelt down, and reflected:

“Oh you, King of the Jungle—you saved my life!”

From that year on he lived in an isolated hamlet of the Van tribe, so remote that not even Lao would set foot there. Two years passed in the belief that he would never see his country again. His country was no longer Vietnam, because that name only evoked rage in him. On the back side of propaganda pamphlets that he would pick up in a tiny market in a Lao village, he wrote out with a bit of pencil the sordid story of his family. In the third year, he began to understand that he must return to the hostile territory that was once his homeland, to Hanoi, a city hell he thought he would never see again. In the middle of these mountains, among a people who spoke another language and lived a different culture, he could write thousands of pages that no one would ever care to read, and thus his escape would become pointless. He had prolonged his life to vent his rage, but, in the end, this longer life had sunk him in useless darkness.

He realized that he had left so that, someday, he could return. He must now return to that very place where cruelty had spilled forth; where the souls of his loved ones were waiting for him. Back then, just to stay alive, he
had left any way he could. Now, similarly, to get revenge, he must return in any way he could. Return, return, return!

So decided, it still took five more years before he could find a way. It happened when scores of the first North Vietnamese soldiers began to pass through the Truong Son Mountains in preparation for the fierce war to liberate Saigon and, after that, to expand Vietnam’s border all the way to Siem Reap in Cambodia. It was the year of the cat, the springtime of that year. The previous fall, enemy planes had started hunting down frontline soldiers in the forests of the Truong Son Mountains. Bombs started falling in areas marked on maps as unknown or as having North Vietnamese soldiers working away, hidden under camouflage. Because America was a great munitions warehouse, the Saigon army could drop bombs generously, like the Bac Lieu gentlemen throwing money into gambling under the ancien regime. Thanks to that development, he encountered a group of soldiers killed by bombs and thus rejoined the North Vietnamese army with a stolen military identity card: First Lieutenant Hoang An of the infantry, ethnic Tay, from the city of Dong Mo in Lang Son.

He was placed in a new unit made up entirely of survivors from battalions, companies, and platoons that had taken so many casualties that they had been stricken from the order of battle. Hiding under the name of someone already dead, he understood that his life now had only one purpose. That day, he swore before heaven:

“Nong Van Thanh has died for eternity.

“So has Chi Van Thanh.

“Only one name, Hoang An, is left on this earth.”

FINAL SUPPLICATIONS

Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk…

Clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk…

The steel panel hanging from the tree oscillates wildly. A large, awkward, and mean-looking fellow, most likely recently selected from the rock pile or the sawmill, swings a huge hammer against the panel to announce breakfast. This rudimentary instrument appears to be effective, as its long-lasting sound resonates all over the hospital compound, almost as loud as a fire truck’s claxon.

When the sound stops, the cart comes from the end of the hall bringing that morning’s food to the patients. From the rooms, people who care for the patients start bringing containers or bowls and plates out to receive breakfast portions for their loved ones. Vu observes them quietly: a society withering away; a battlefield for life and death; a place where fear and pain and hope converge; where time effaces and smudges; where life for the living is but repetitious habit.

“This kind of life is not just the nameless people in row upon row of suffocating houses. Even the extremely intelligent, or at least those who could be a model for clear thinking, integrity, and self-respect, have many times accepted this life of routine, no different than unsophisticated country women who elbow their way to the food carts.

“Thus, they don’t have to keep their eyes glued on the ladle that stirs the pot of meat porridge, or to count the rice rolls that the attendant doles out to see if there is a full set of eight pieces and not seven only. Thus, they are not unhappy for not having a winter blanket or some money to give to their sons on the day they enlist. But, to be exactly truthful, they live only through movements already determined by machines or, more accurately, as puppets moving to a script written for them.”

The morning when he had received word that Miss Xuan had been killed, Vu had met with those he considered “role models of conscience.” As it was before office hours, it was to their private homes that he had rushed. First,
he met with Prime Minister Do. He did not have to wait even one minute because the prime minister was already up, dressed, and sitting in his office. In front of him was a cup of coffee and his copy of the old fifteenth-century court history of Vietnam—a book that was on the table every time he paid the prime minister a visit. That perennial book was open and the host was reading it attentively, his face bent close to the page. When Vu entered, the prime minister hurriedly got up, not to shake his hand but to shut the doors. When he turned around, his face was covered with tears:

“Brother…” Vu said; the prime minister quickly waved his hand to signal silence. Then he closed his eyes and from them streams of tears rolled down without stopping. Losing control himself, Vu also wept. The prime minister was leaning against the door; Vu stood in the middle of the room. The two men faced each other without a word and wept together as other men would drink tea or sip wine. They wept clandestinely, suppressing any louder sobbing for fear that the guards in the hall outside would hear. They wept, controlled and in silence. Then Vu understood what pain and humiliation were. Those overflowing tears were in regret both for the life of a beautiful and unfortunate woman, and to release the turmoil in their hearts. A powerless man is ten times worse than a weak woman. They had been born to be men, beings meant to embody strength and power. A man who cannot act knows only how to drown bitterness and rage with tears, no differently than a child of five. Realizing this fact first, Vu looked up and wiped his face. The prime minister continued to weep, his long and thin fingers covering his square face. Vu focused on those fingers because people usually called them “spear” fingers. They shook from the root to the tip, similar to wild grass shaking in a strong wind: