Duong Huong - The Zenith

So saying, the abbess again smiles benevolently. And again he notices the two rows of black and shining teeth.

“Clearly she is an old Vietnamese lady, with black teeth and a satin skirt. Seventy years ago, she must have been a bright and lively village girl, full of spirit. But she refused to accept a normal life with its normal pleasures in the village; instead she has spent time learning scriptures in order to become a disciple of the Buddha.”

So he thought to himself as he replied sympathetically, “Venerable, your explanation is just superb. Clearly you have spent lots of time on the scriptures.”

“I dare not accept your praise, Mr. President. Anyone who has ‘begged’ at a temple door, or who has read carefully the words of the Supreme One, can explain this a lot better than I, your humble servant.”

And without waiting for him to respond, she turns toward the back room and asks: “Don’t you see, my child, that the pudding dish is near empty? Our temple may not be rich but it never lacks hospitality.”

“I am sorry. I was so caught up listening to you.”

He smiles at seeing the venerable abbess still so sharp. Her way of avoiding topics that she does not wish to discuss shows that her reactions are still very quick. He finishes the last piece of pudding in the fashion of neighbors well acquainted for more than half a century, saying, “The pudding was simply delicious. Venerable, let me thank you as well as the nun here for your wonderful hospitality. With your permission, I would like to come back sometime and bother you.”

“Mr. President, that you set foot in our place is a big honor for us humble folks.”

He stands up, as does the abbess, who brings her hands together in a lotus gesture.

When he gets back to his room, the clock shows nine twenty-five. That means that the conversation in the temple lasted an hour and a half. In that time, the aroma of voi tea boiled with ginger and the beautiful smile of the abbess, with her two rows of shining black teeth, had saved him from the chasm of despair. Now he is alone with himself once again. He sits down on a chair and resumes being afraid of the time stretching before him. His solitude returns. Where can he run to and hide? Should he go into the woods? That’s not possible. Should he go down the mountain? There’s no reason. Besides, he will not turn himself into a mental case in front of those charged with guarding him inside this beautiful prison. His self-respect does not allow him to act irresponsibly. Looking up at the bookshelves, he notices dozens of volumes that he has left partially read, books marked with bamboo wafers. Pulling out three of them, he begins to turn one, page by page. The lines of type go past him like so many soulless dots, with no meaning whatsoever. Sighing, he folds the book closed, putting the bamboo wafer right where it was. On the temple patio, the enormous white clouds still keep going by one after another. And the plum branches filled with white flowers still slightly sway outside the window, making his heart ravenlike, gnawed by memories of white snow.

“I cannot go on enduring these pangs of conscience. This is worse than death.”

He stands up and picks up his cotton-padded coat, intending to walk out again. But the wet and cold coat forces him to realize that he cannot go anywhere at the moment. He has no choice but to sit down again amid his four jail-like walls, face-to-face with his own tribunal, which is himself.

Rehanging his coat on the hook, he lowers himself down on the chair. Watching the white clouds roll through the patio like so many pieces of cotton, he remembers the abbess’s words.

“Even the Supreme One was once murdered by a follower, one who had put on his monk’s robe, one who had become a priest — even such a one was motivated by greed. How can one then blame a common person? Let’s not hold a grudge toward those turncoat comrades. The one to blame first of all should be myself. Yes, me. Either because I am a coward or a dummy, or both.”

This time, he no longer feels like defending his record. Is the attorney in him dead? That thought indifferently goes through his head as he thoughtfully watches a tattered cloud dragging itself across the patio. The form of this cloud suddenly makes him self-conscious:

“The roads of life being twisting and turning, how can one know which path to take? For our people I went to Paris yet destiny took me to chilly Moscow, fate chased me back toward Eastern shores. My whole life, I have been formed and pushed by chance. Is a man’s life a sequence of ‘drifting duckweed and floating clouds’?”

“The France of Diderot and Voltaire opened its doors and invited me in. But another France, that of top-hatted bureaucrats attired in shiny, gold-buttoned uniforms, slammed its door in my face, just like a butler slams the door to beggars. The enslaved people of small and weak countries are chased away from all the roads leading to happiness, and the only cobblestoned slope that welcomes us is the very one leading directly to hell. By the time I realized this, it was already too late.”

And that hell has unmistakably arrived, no doubt this is true. But who can be courageous enough or contrite enough to dare open their eyes and look into it? He remembers the shock when, for the first time, he saw people queuing for their turn to buy food. His car had black windows and no one realized that he was inside. The car sped by but there had been enough time for him to see the common people. And that image of misery hit him like a hammer. That year, his heart was still humming joyfully the melody of “Forward to the Capital.” Two years had not been enough time to blur the glorious colors of victory or to cool the ardor in his veins. Busy with work, he did not have time for going incognito among the people. Whatever little time he had, he had spent it with her, but their rendezvouses were always after midnight, when all the activities of the common people were over. On that morning he had had an appointment with a foreign history professor. Because the subject of the meeting had to do with the national museum, he had suggested that they meet there. He had then asked his driver to choose a new route so that he could see something of the people’s lives. Since leaving the maquis, that was the very first time he had had an opportunity to observe the people’s activities. What he saw was not as pretty or as reassuring as he had expected. The masses appeared before his eyes — in person but fighting and in wild confusion — as if they were a herd of sheep contesting their way back to their pen. The faces that caught his eyes were thin, hunger-ravaged ones; faces dark and resigned, marked by patience and shame; faces in terror as they were repressed by fear, waiting, suffering, and hatred. Faces of people who were at the edge of going into institutions for the mentally infirm.

Repressing a sense of shock, he had tried to ask the driver naturally, “Does your family have to wait in line like that to buy rice?”

“Mr. President, we’re lucky to belong to the priority list. The government has rice and food items brought to our very office.”

“Who is in this privileged position?”

“All of us, Mr. President, who directly belong to the Administrative Office of the Central Management Committee of the Party. Besides those are the special offices belonging to exceptional ministries like the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Defense…and, above all, the Ministry of Trade and Food because that is precisely their preserve. Personnel belonging to those ministries are considered like the children of kings and lords in the old days.”

“And what makes one a child of kings and lords?”