Duong Huong - The Zenith

Sau waited for him in the hall so that they could together walk into the reception room, which was very spacious, more like a place to play pool or ping pong. Next to some couches set beside one another, there was a table along the left wall, also ridiculously large, on which there were many assorted glasses and cups from different countries lined up in a long file for tea and filtered coffee. A young lad was busy there preparing drinks.

Stepping into the room, Sau ordered: “Stop, leave it all there.”

The servant disappeared at once like a ghost. Then Sau’s hand pointed him to a low armchair: “Sit down. Today I have business to take up with the Department of Foreign Affairs. I can’t receive you as long as usual. We shall work together quickly.”

Having already sat down, Vu stood up at once, saying: “If you are busy, I will leave. We can meet another time.”

“The matter is urgent; that’s why I summoned you so hurriedly.”

“Even if urgent, I will still work according to procedures. I don’t want to bother others. I don’t accept working in a patchwork manner.”

Sau stopped and looked at him attentively, as if stunned. Apparently nobody had dared talk with him that way for a long time. Apparently, too, it was very hard for him to swallow. And, apparently, he was not prepared to react to such a situation. An awkward moment passed.

He suddenly smiled: “Why, now, do you get angry so easily? In the past people said you were cool like Jell-O…”

“However you are born, you die the same way. That’s how it was put.”

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: