Duong Huong - The Zenith

“I have ridden in carts drawn by buffalo. Riding in your plane is a luxury. Don’t worry.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot had replied, then sat down at the controls. The president’s four bodyguards had sat at each of the four corners as specified. The flight began. When the helicopter had risen up the necessary height over Guangzhou, it had shaken and bumped around like a buffalo cart rolling over crumbling mountain roads. The moving air around them was like many waves continuously dropping down, mixing in with the clouds. The night was ink black. He could see only a vast black space, with no moon or stars. And so they had flown in silence to the next zone. But once the helicopter had crossed the border, tracer antiaircraft rounds shot up, plowing narrow lines of red fire. Each time, those lines of fire had come closer. He knew that they had entered the no-fly zone defended by the antiaircraft units in the northeast area, from Lao Cai to Quang Ninh. The pilot brought the helicopter down under the red streaks made by the tracer bullets. His stress had caused his eyes to bulge out from his face and sweat to roll profusely down his nape, soaking the collar of his uniform. Sweat had also run down to his hands. The president still remembers the image of those hands, thick and firm, with hair on top and on the last knuckles of the fingers. He recalls fixating on those hands, as did his bodyguards. They had been unable to do anything but breathe anxiously and glue their eyes on the hands of the pilot. That had been the longest plane ride in his life. Each minute going by had been an anxious one — listening to the puffing sound of the old engine, waiting to see what would happen. The pilot and the four very young guards dared not say anything: he knew fear had turned them so stonily silent.

Finally, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief and showed him the Long Bien bridge. He tilted his head to look through the glass to see the familiar bridge in the faded light of a city during wartime. Without turning his head backward, he said, “Inform the president: we will land in a few minutes.”

Hesitating a little, he had continued: “If nothing special happens.”

The president had replied, “If something special happens or not, one person is in charge. On this plane you are the pilot, not me.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot answered, eyes looking straight ahead. At that moment, the helicopter started to circle. The soldiers, who had just begun to relax, now again were afraid, and their worry contaminated the small cabin.

The plane circled a second time, then a third.

Silence weighed heavy in the air. Strangely, however, at that moment a calm suddenly came over him followed by a playful smile.

“Certainly, every game has to end. At least, the people will see the last scene of this play. Won’t that have some benefit?”

The pilot suddenly turned around and spoke: “Mr. President, the landing lights are placed in the wrong position.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, Mr. President, one hundred percent.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that if we land based on the landing lights as positioned, the plane will fall right in the middle of Dinh Cong Lake.”

He was quiet; he could almost hear the wild beating in the chests of the four guards. After a few minutes, he asked, “Have you been flying for a while now?”

“Mr. President, not quite as long as some others but I know all the airports of the country like the palm of my hand,” he replied with the determined manner of one who is cautious and has a sense of responsibility.

The president was satisfied, because from the start he had trusted this person, a soldier among thousands whom he had met only for the first time. He smiled and said, “In the old days, great weavers wove in the dark. They only needed to hear the sound of the shuttle and the tempo of the thread bobbins to know what was going to happen. The palace selected outstanding weavers for the court using this criterion. We call such proficiency a test that challenges the skills of expertise. I find you are a good pilot. Therefore, just use your expertise.”

“Yes, sir,” the pilot replied. He finished flying his fourth circumnavigation then began to set the helicopter down in the middle of a pitch-dark area. Suddenly, the guard on the president’s left grabbed his arm and squeezed, half in seeking comfort and half in wanting to protect him from danger. The grabbing fingers — hard as nails — hurt him, but quietly he bore the pain. Then they heard the wheels touch ground.

The pilot had turned around to ask, “Mr. President, should we keep the lights on or turn them off?”

“Keep them on to give us light,” he had replied.

Right then, like magic from a devil or a saint, an entire building materialized before their eyes: the central building of the military airport. All the glass windows were brightly lit but no one could be seen. By instinct, he turned toward the line of landing lights, and caught the gaze of the pilot at the same time. This row of lights was placed along the lake. Black-painted steel posts kept them off the surface of the water. The instant when they clearly could see the scene was when all the lights were turned off like the torches of flying ghosts. At the same time, the large doors of the central building of the military airport had opened wide. Out from the hangar had stepped a group of people, eight in all: Ba Danh, Sau, four bodyguards, and two others, for sure high-ranking cadres at the airport.

“They will die tomorrow, those with unlucky fates. The four bodyguards will be destroyed instantly,” the president thought to himself. “But the two airfield officers? Will their lives go on for one or two more days, or the whole week?”

The lights on the grass had started to come on. The pilot asked, “Mr. President, can I turn off the engine?”

“OK, it’s time to do that.”

A stepladder had been brought over by the airfield officers. The president stepped down, and warmly shook the hands of his two subordinates.

“So glad you are back, Eldest Brother. Welcome.”

“Greetings to you, Mr. President. Were you pleased with the scenery and the friendly people of Guangzhou?”

He had smiled. “Yes, I am very pleased, extremely pleased. Thank you, younger uncles.”

And his life then had returned to its normal routine.

For many days afterward, his mind had been preoccupied by the image of the helicopter pilot. For sure, he had lost his life along with the four young soldiers. He had never seen them again. His regular guards were rotated periodically, faster than the wind changes the season. What about the gifted pilot?

In his eyes, that pilot had saved his life. His was one of the faces that obsessed him almost all the time. That face was a mirror reflecting back such a bitter truth: he was powerless vis-à-vis those to whom he was indebted.

“I am the most powerless among the powerless. I am so grateful but am the most faithless one among all those who don’t repay their gratitude. It is a truth that no one can believe. It is also a humiliation that I cannot share with anyone.”

Vu puts on his coat and walks into the hallway.

He sits on a wooden bench and listens indifferently to the noises coming his way. Earlier that morning at about five a.m, the patient opposite him had breathed his last. The doctor on duty summoned the morgue attendant and the personnel management cadre to come and complete the procedure to transfer the corpse to the morgue. The other patients wiggled their necks somewhat like worms to observe everything with unfocused, dispirited eyes. Terror has turned their already pallid faces into completely colorless ones. The atmosphere got so stifling that Vu put on his coat and silently left the room.