The Zenith (92 page)

The man goes on, but by now the president’s ears are ringing and all he can sense is the sound of rain falling somewhere, noisily, on a corrugated roof, perhaps the roof of the port prison. Fits of angry rain. Above the roof is the sky; sometimes light blue, other times dark with storm, then thick with smoke and fog. Heaven: only those imprisoned can understand completely changes in the sky’s appearance. So many days, he had looked at the skies over the port to remember those of his hometown. Then suddenly she appears on the corrugated roof, looking at him with a young and innocent smile; exactly like the nineteen-year-old girl she had once been, sitting on a branch eating fruit, in the woods of the north, two rows of teeth white and shiny like pearls and lips stained with the juice.

He calls out to her but his mouth is glued shut by some kind of sticky sap, and his tongue can’t move.

“Is it possible that I have died and they sealed my mouth with this sap?” he thinks, but then he hears the sound of cards being turned outside his room. When he opens his eyes, he sees clearly the blue night-light.

“No, I am here…I am on top of Lan Vu. Opposite this building is the temple complex, where the Abbess with shiny black teeth lives with her disciples. Clearly I just went to visit there and they treated me to ginger tea and rice porridge, the kind that is soft like ripe bananas.”

He composes himself, and looks around the room one more time. The elegant guy in the ivory suit has disappeared. Where he had leaned his back against the wall is now the black-and-white photo that he likes a lot: cherry blossoms. That picture had been a gift from her when they had their daughter. There is not a day when he does not look at it. It is all that is left of her;
all that remains of her in this vast and isolating world. Cherry blossoms. Messengers of spring. Cherry blossoms. An undying reminder of a love short lived.…

He tastes a saltiness. Are they his tears or lost seawater returning?

“Oh!…my youth…the old song…”

He begins to remember that song, then another one returns, churning within him down to painful longing:

The singing resonates inside him, digging down into his every cell; it makes his body and soul dissipate like grains of sand. He feels the waves whip him as his flesh and bones are ground down and mixed with the troubled air of the storm. He knows he is no longer himself, because he sees himself bobbing on the tips of the waves; a cluster of sea foam longingly clinging to the moving seaweed of hatred and desperation.

There is a loud knocking on the door, which then opens. The electric light outside is bright. He hears the doctor’s voice:

“Mr. President, please allow me to see you. The guard heard you, so he called me over. Please stay in bed.”

He is silent. The doctor listens to his lungs and heart. He shivers when the stethoscope touches his skin. But the doctor’s fingers are very soft and warm. The touch of this man provokes secret thoughts:

“Warmth is the best substance for life. Warmth both shapes and sets borders to the fire of passion. My life’s most passionate desire was to ignite the flame of revolution. But that revolution did not bring happiness to people. A smaller fire of passion burned in my heart for her. In the end she was destroyed by the fire of that hell. Oh, how sad to see a useless waste of human striving. My life erupted like a savage fire, a misplaced fire, an insane use of energy. I am inferior to any normal person, like this doctor, for example. He can use his energy to warm up patients, to warm a woman’s body or to sing love songs.”

“Mr. President, you seem to be fine but full of troubled thoughts, therefore your sleep is not calm. Will you agree to take some sedatives?”

“Oh no. Losing sleep is part of old age. And talking in your sleep is for the young. However, in old age, people tend to dream, a symptom of dementia’s onset. Tell the truth: Do you find me starting to be confused?”

He laughs, and so does the doctor: “Well, that is funny.”

The president continues, “I hope I don’t become confused before I get
into the coffin. But now, go back to your room and resume your sleep. Don’t worry too much about me. I no longer have the right to eat fully or to sleep soundly.”

“You will be tired with little sleep.”

“Tomorrow morning I’ll make it up. Tell them not to wake me for breakfast.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t worry; go back to sleep. And you, you have the right to sleep late tomorrow because you had to get up in the middle of the night. What time is it now?”

“Three twenty a.m.”

“Very good. There is plenty of time for more sleep.”

“Good night, then!”

The doctor closes the door. He hears him telling the two soldiers to move the table and chairs to the other side of the main temple so that their voices will not be heard so clearly. He suddenly remembers his surprise at hearing the doctor sing; his voice was sweet and the words pierced his heart with brutal strokes:

He realizes he has returned to the monument, where her face is opposite his and between them is a crystal net woven from a thousand teardrops. He calls her but she does not reply. Why did she remain silent for so long? Why didn’t she complain or curse him, even once? That way, his heart would be lighter. Her silence is like an oil vat that, in hell, feeds the flames forever burning his soul.

“Her silence sentences me to life. Before her pure soul, her naive trust and her true and passionate love, I am a criminal for a thousand generations.”

But not him alone. Those who killed her will also have to pay the price. Only a year after she died, Ba Danh and Sau had a special prison built on the island of Tuan Chau with the intention of keeping General Long there forever. But after some discussion, they feared international protests, so they forced him to go work at the planned parenthood office, with the responsibility of putting IUDs in women. Was not all this dirty comical game the Creator’s revenge? Because her heart had been so pure, because her beauty was God’s gift, her goodness was recognized by both saints and devils. Therefore, those who looked the other way when she died now endure
misfortune, mishap, and humiliation. When for any reason whatsoever, cruelty takes a step through the temple door, it will continue straight on into the hall and no sword or dagger will stop it.

In the morning, Vu telephones and says just one sentence: “Elder Brother: the great task has turned rotten.”

Shocked, he wants to ask more, but on the other end Vu has already put the phone down. Le had told him that Vu had entered the hospital three weeks earlier, having fainted unexpectedly, but he had received no further medical report about his friend’s condition. Thanks to the phone call this morning, he understands why Vu’s health had taken such a turn for the worse. And he knows that the doctors could do nothing to cure him. That’s how life goes.

“Heaven, the great task has turned rotten!”

The last shroud of hope has fallen away and the truth is exposed. The exquisitely beautiful fairy of the imagination is nothing more than a disgusting fox in real life. After hearing Vu’s thick and hoarse voice, he understands that this is the end.

“I have no further reason to sustain this corrupt and brutal regime, a regime that I created but which has betrayed me after it betrayed the people. I cannot continue to coexist with it. It’s become a monster that came to term inside the country’s well-meaning heart, but, right after its birth, bit the neck and sucked the blood of the mother who had carried it and painfully given birth to it. My heaven, how horrific that bloody and painful birth. Horrific to my people and horrific especially to me.”

The darkness before him suddenly turns into pitch-black ink, the Chinese kind that calligraphers use to write on red paper. His mind brightens with an old image, how each spring Confucian scholars would sit grinding the ink they would then use to write poems about their dreams and hopes for the future. Those sacred characters materializing on bright red paper while outside the rain would be falling gently on the garden of cherry blossoms, and farther away white herons would be gliding over the bright green fields. How beautiful were these odes from the spring; the Chinese characters undulating like curving dragons, like curling clouds; the black, so very black; the red, so bright red. Life is always the intertwining of extremes, it seems. Why not then employ the dynamic of this competition? The thought comes abruptly, surprising him:

“Why can’t I use my death like the old scholars used the black ink to glorify the vibrant red, to symbolize a glorious future for the people? Why
didn’t I think of this stratagem before? It is perfect for my next move on the chess board of circumstance. This is the most effective way to choke the monsters to death, to compensate the people for my mistakes. It is also the quickest way for me to find my love.”

Immediately, his heart seems lighter, like that of someone who for a long time has felt his way through the darkness to finally discover the light.

“How splendid! This death will bring both escape and rescue. Why do I think of it just now? Well, my useless brain, you are really to be blamed…”

He pushes the blanket aside and sits right up. For a long while he has known his horoscope as well as the palm of his hand; he knows that the day to return to dust is the Mui day of the Hoi month in the Tan Hoi year (1969). He turns on the light and removes from the cupboard his old torn horoscope, the one that he’s had for more than sixty years. Opening the chart, he reflects on the unfavorable alignment of the stars on that day when Death will come to shear off his life with a sickle. There is nothing out of place; his memory is totally accurate.

“Well, why live another two years in this imprisoned and absolutely hopeless life? Why go on playing the role of a wooden puppet inciting innocent children to join a miserable and stupid war, only to be sentenced later by history as an old king who was a coward and had no conscience? Departing in such a way will offer the best chance to be redeemed; it will give me calm when facing the soul’s highest court of judgment.”

He folds the chart, puts it back in the cupboard, and then goes to the desk, looking in the drawer for the last testament he had partially drafted the year before. He will finish it tonight because he has decided to die on the coming September 2. According to the old customs, anyone who dies on the anniversary of the founding of a dynasty, religion, or sect of martial artists demonstrates a fated rendezvous with death that cannot be denied by its followers.

The next morning, the chubby soldier comes to begin the new shift at 7:30 as usual.

The president says, “Let’s go up the mountain and then have tea when we return.”

“But…Mr. President…”

“I want to climb the mountain to stretch my legs. I am not hungry yet.”

“Mr. President, I have to get the doctor’s approval…I dare not…”

“Don’t worry. I take full responsibility. The doctor is still sleeping.”

Then, without waiting for a reply, he steps forward. All the chubby soldier can do is quickly follow him and take his arm.