The Zenith (9 page)

Playfully, Sau shook his head: “That’s not true. Your character changes with time. I have changed, not to become angry like you, but more playful. There’s this interesting point…”

He started laughing loudly, a very delighted laughter: “What I am going to
say is not easily understood by those like you who have Confucian blood running thick in you; in fact, it even seems absurd…Listen here…”

Sau approached close to his armchair, bent over, and laced each sentence with a delightful and unhidden malice: “In my old age, I suddenly like to look at pretty girls. It’s like cigarettes or pipes—you stop for decades then suddenly you crave them…If not for my work, each morning I would go to West Lake. There, at sunrise, groups of girls come to exercise and row boats, all of them about sixteen or seventeen, all pretty as if in a dream.”

As he finished talking, he turned and went to the table against the wall, to pour coffee into two black cups. Vu quietly looked at the crow’s-feet around his eyes, realizing he had aged even though he still had that big and tall body with a light skin, the gift of a princely body bestowed by heaven, that he usually assesses half seriously and half in jest during casual discussions: “My body has enough strength to hold twelve different lifetimes, with enough agility to serve thirty-six women with dedication, from nubile ones to middle-aged beauties.”

Behind every one of his jokes there is always someone buried in some deep forest corner, on some isolated trail, or in some dark prison cell. Vu looks at his pink, fat nape reaching up from the collar of his black shirt and wonders: “This morning, who is implicated in all these flirty jokes?”

Sau had come back with two cups of coffee in his hands. The aroma diffused throughout the room. He squinted and asked: “Don’t you find this coffee exquisite?”

Vu replied: “I’ve only smelled it, not yet tasted it.”

“Silly, you only need to smell coffee to know its quality. You are not yet a connoisseur.”

“I have never held myself out to be a connoisseur of anything. But, based on my experience, there are many foods that you only smell and don’t eat. Like fried fish marinated in poison, for example. When I was still living in the small town at home, I saw my neighbor bait a dog that way.”

“Ha, ha…” Sau burst into laughter, laughter that resonated throughout the room and then out into the hall. A girl poked her head in, then disappeared at once. Sau put a cup of coffee in front of him and said, “Drink…You do have a gift for argument…Really, I should have assigned you to run the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

“Really?” Now Vu also laughed. “Then correct the mistake; it’s still not too late…”

He started to sip his coffee.

On the other side of the table, Sau also began to drink quietly. A huge gold
ring on his fourth finger, about the size of a railroad screw head, reflected on the black glaze of the imported cup.

Vu ponders as he looks at the twinkling reflection on the porcelain glaze. Black coffee in a black cup. How exquisite! You really should be an interior decorator for private homes or a painter for the stage. That way fewer people would die unjustly. Meanwhile, Sau had put his cup on the table and stretched out against the low armchair. The collar of his black shirt contrasted with his fair and pink complexion, still full of sensuality even though blotted with age spots. He likes the color black. He has dozens of black shirts. In receiving foreign guests or when appearing before the people, he has to wear white shirts and suits, but on other occasions he always wears black shirts. This is a preference worth noting. It could be his careful way of grooming, caring for his smooth skin. It also could be to create an image of a gangster in black dress or of historical martial artists dressed in black. No one dares to discuss this openly, except Vu. One time, he opened the topic, going on the attack:

“You are really very seductive in a black shirt…contemporary and youthful, too…in a black shirt, you look ten years younger…that way you cheat life out of ten extra years,” Vu had told him once during a lunch break at a conference when all the delegates had sat down at their tables. Sau had appeared shocked, he couldn’t believe all that his ears had just heard. But Vu had carefully added: “I think that it’s the way you use colors to shine over the others. It’s an old game, been around since the beginning of the century, actually, nothing new to it at all. Furthermore, what you do is already enough to create an impression. The mechanisms of power are in your hands—with the power of life and the power of death. Why do you still need to wear black shirts?”

“You, you…” Sau had stuttered, his face pale with anger. The people around them were also pale from fear. But Vu had calmly looked at him. A split second passed; Sau smiled. Responding to this smile, Vu had smiled, too, the smile of someone about to step up to the gallows. In that moment of dead silence and cold animosity, Sau had said with warmth and friendliness: “Have you been stung by a bee? How does the wearing of a black or white shirt have any influence on the people’s welfare?”

Vu had smiled cynically: “It does! Wearing black shirts saves on soap. That way, you are a good role model for young people. The only thing is, ten kilograms of soap cost less than a bottle of French perfume, which I see you bring home from every trip abroad. You carry a suitcase full for your primary and secondary ladies inside and outside your home.”

“I
give up,” Sau had politely replied but then added: “You need to be more understanding of others. Not everyone can live like a monk as you do. Men are like roosters; they must know how to show off their combs and wiggle their tail feathers.” At this, he smiled faintly and left. The other delegates had sat dead still while shuffling their chopsticks and passing bowls around…

Three weeks after this, Vu’s oldest brother came up from the countryside. He didn’t rest after the drive and together they went to the flower garden by West Lake, where the rock jetties are covered with duckweed roots and dead ephemera. Right away, without any hesitation, his brother said:

“Someone told me everything. Do you plan to die?”

“I am still alive because I don’t fear him. Otherwise, my grave by now would have been covered with green grass.”

“He is an unusually dangerous type. His kind only comes along once in a while. Have you already forgotten the lesson of Le Dinh?”

“I have not. But I am not in the same situation.”

“I am very worried for you…If something should happen to you…”

Vu squeezed his brother’s hand and looked at his face with great warmth and trust:

“Dear brother, in such a situation, we can only rely on family loyalty. We will do all that we can. Success or failure is up to heaven.”

The elder brother choked with emotion: “I only worry about you; as for me, I will pass. In our family, you are the only one with hair, I am bald. They won’t pay any attention to me.”

“I am no different from you. We have no line of retreat.”

They held hands and said nothing more, because at that moment, from the Quan Thanh temple, a couple emerged. They crossed Co Ngu Street and walked toward the brothers.

Sau’s voice suddenly rose and startled him: “Why, by now you must be able to assess things accurately, yes?” Immediately Vu put down his cup of coffee.

“Good! Indeed, it’s very good.”

Sau leaned completely back against the chair, in a posture of commanding nonchalance, his arms positioned symmetrically on the arms of the chair.

“Are you hooked on coffee or on tea?”

“I like both, but I’m not hooked on anything. Now, tell me what you have to say.”

“Obviously something’s up.”

He stopped as if waiting for Vu to continue asking.

Fully familiar with Sau’s tactics, Vu distractedly looked out the windows,
as if he had forgotten the matter, or the subject was nothing to be concerned about.

Finally, Sau drank the last of his coffee and said:

“The office just informed me that the Old Man has requested to go down the mountains and visit with some citizen.”

“What citizen?”

“A woodsman who fell into a ravine and then died on a stretcher on the way back to the village. I’ve asked you to come so that you can go and advise the Old Man to give up this idea. Right now we are in the middle of a hundred, a thousand things to do. The Old Man shouldn’t complicate matters.”

“The Old Man is president of the country. He established the Party…How can I mentor him? Who came up with this weird idea?”

“This is not a weird idea but an intelligent recommendation. Brother Ba has decided on this. It is also Ba who had the idea, right now, that you are the only one who can explain things to the Old Man.”

“Explain things to the Old Man!”

Vu dropped the cup of coffee and sprang up. An anger burned away inside his body, spread to his veins, pulled at all his muscles, and tightly squeezed his heart. He suddenly found himself shaking, his voice also shaking accordingly.

“What are you saying? For me to tell the Old Man what to do?”

“No…No…I apologize.”

Sau also jumped up and he suddenly stuttered, out of some confusion:

“I spoke badly…I forgot the right words…I sincerely apologize to you. But Brother Ba said, at this time, you are the one closest to the Old Man, the one who can sway him.”

“I am not the only one, the whole people are close to him. That’s the honest truth. If all of you have forgotten that, then I want to remind you.”

“I know! I know!” Sau replied, and all of a sudden his lips turned white, the drops of coffee forming clear brown spots on them as he drank.

“I am sorry I used the wrong words. This happens to lots of other people as well, because we are just Party cadres, not thinkers or writers.”

“What do thinkers and writers have to do with this? They’re just clowns who dance around in roles written out for them,” Vu shouted inwardly, wanting to spit this out into Sau’s face, but an intuition about the need to be moderate stopped him. Pretending not to pay any attention to what Sau had said, Vu lifted his coffee cup and sipped to the last drop. Then, as if he had regained his equilibrium, Sau cleared his voice and said:

“The truth is, I am thoughtless sometimes because I am too busy. I keep
thinking that the Old Man is convalescing, so it’s best to let him rest. Besides, at the moment all helicopter units are activated for combat duty. The Old Man needs to be understanding toward us. The country is at war.”

Vu looked straight into his face: “You really think that I can tell the Old Man what you told me earlier? Do you think that’s possible?”

“Oh, no! I don’t want to say that you must report back to him those naked concerns just like that, but in a different way and with different words.”

“With more honeyed words, more polished words? Is that what you mean? I am like the rest of you, not a writer.”

“Talking with you is damn hard. You intentionally don’t want to understand. It is clear that the Old Man is fond of you and trusts you more than the rest of us. Once people like and trust each other, they become more sympathetic. The war is getting tense; we have to draft all soldiers and enlist the entire people. The Old Man needs to rest, to take care of his health, so that he can receive delegations of heroic soldiers returning from battles. No one can do this except the Old Man.”

“I’m not clear if I really have the honor of being loved and trusted by the Old Man as you said, but the truth is, besides him, nobody can do it. That’s the plain truth; even the blind can see it. If this were not the plain truth, your grave would be green with grass. And not only yours.”

Vu laughed silently in his stomach: “You really are an honest fellow sometimes, Vu. Either that or you are a second class actor.”

Lifting his empty coffee cup, Vu tilted his head and slowly said:

“You run the Party’s organizational machine; you know the personal history of each person like the back of your hand; you should know very well that before I joined the revolution, I had been well educated. My ancestors taught me that whenever someone truly cares for you, you must respond with fundamental trust and with loyalty. If the Old Man likes me, I cannot reciprocate like a thief or a traitor.”

Sau laughed, even though only faintly: “Oh, for sure you are a stickler for words.”

That said, he abruptly got up as if a scorpion had bit his butt and started pacing with big steps in the room. Like a mirror the glassy tiles reflected his tall and hefty image. His shoes were polished to a shine. Vu had the impression that Sau listened carefully to the knocking sound of his heels on the floor, as if he were counting each footstep…One of Vu’s colleagues with the same rank had once told him that in a meeting with Sau, he had let Vu’s colleague sit tight in a chair for an entire half hour, while he circled around and around without seeming tired, like a salesman showing off a new style of shoes.

Vu thought: “You don’t have the smarts to understand that all tricks grow tiresome if overperformed. All contrived threats from literature and the arts need to change.”

Looking him over from head to feet, Vu said:

“You appear still quite limber. You can still serve the ladies for a long while…”