Duong Huong - The Zenith

Years of plenitude and seasons of abundance usually come unexpectedly. Who could have predicted that, when Mui was eleven months old, Little One would become pregnant for the second time? She had suddenly become sleepy all the time, drifting off even during meals. And little Mui, still nursing, had come down with diarrhea. No one was quite sure what was happening when an old lady neighbor said:

“This means that the mother is pregnant with child, so her milk is now contaminated…If a baby drinks contaminated milk, then nothing can stop the diarrhea. How come no one knows this?”

“Oh, truly, no one knows this,” Nang Dong had replied.

It was clear that little Mui had to be weaned right away. Fortunately, being a very good baby, she cried for only two nights then turned to taking powdered milk, sucking loudly on the bottle. It was also the case that she had been sleeping with Nang Dong, to the point where she was much more used to the smell of her aunt than to that of her own mother. It was said that the firstborn in any family tends to be somewhat slow, not very smart. But Baby Mui was extraordinarily smart. On Saturdays, as soon as the sun started to set, she would go out to the balcony to wait for her uncle Thanh. The flow of people rolling through the street did not confuse her. Sometimes she waved her hand as soon as she saw him stop for a red light at the intersection. The black Vinh Cuu bicycle without mudguards was well known to her, as it promised many a fun ride. As An pulled the bicycle up on the curb, he would look up to the balcony and could see her right away with her ingratiating smile, her face radiant and her black eyes shining. On occasion An almost felt like he were still living in Xiu Village. For, in those faraway years, in the evenings when he and Nang Dong would come home carrying firewood, Little One would be waiting for them at the corner of the house on stilts with the same quiet and radiant smile now displayed by little Mui.

Their gentle, sweet life continued until the day Little One gave birth to her second child, in the year of the monkey, Binh Than (1956). One Saturday afternoon, when he was just about to step into the house, Nang Dong rushed out, took hold of his neck, and, with a face showing both pride and mystery, solemnly and mysteriously whispered: “A boy. Three point six kilograms. Fifty-eight centimeters long.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful, we have now both sweet and long-grain rice,” he answered.

Nang Dong was taken aback for a second then looked at him and said, “It’s funny what you say.”

“How? Did I say anything wrong or mistaken, making you laugh?”

“No, it’s neither wrong nor mistaken.” She smilingly looked at him: “It’s not just a question of sweet rice and long grain. Do you forget how extremely important a boy is to a father?”

“Of course, I understand the importance of a boy to continue the line. From now on I will let you take care of the new baby, the VIP, and I will take care of little Mui, since she is the less important one.”

“Are you going to the hospital to visit Little One?”

“No, tomorrow I will go to the market, prepare dinner, and take Mui to the zoo so she can watch the tigers and the bears. Going to the hospital will be your responsibility.”

An did not understand why he reacted so. He can still remember the wild-eyed look of his wife at his answer. That look followed him as he went inside. It obsessed him like a problem without a solution. It was not until very much later that he realized it was instinct that had told him to behave as he did. That he already had the premonition that black and sinister shadows of vulture wings were spreading above their heads at the moment Nang Dong told him the news, news that should have brought extreme joy to anyone. The next day, he took Mui to the zoo on his bicycle. On the way back, she insisted on stopping in front of the president’s palace so she could watch the guards. But they had not been there for more than a few minutes before the guards approached and asked for their papers. An showed his military ID.

The guard examined the paper carefully, then said, “This is a protected zone. You should take her to another place.”

“I didn’t want to bother you. It’s only that she wants to see.”

At that moment, little Mui spoke up: “I see soldiers.”

Probably because of the innocent babbling of the child, the soldier felt softhearted so he went away. Nonetheless, An’s heart clouded up. He looked at the house behind the pruned trees.

“What happiness is it when the father lives in a castle while his daughter sits outside looking in? What use is this twisted love affair? Had Little One failed to catch the eyes of the old king, she would have found a husband more fitting for her circumstances. In the countryside there is no lack of happy marriages. Our house on stilts was three times as large as these cramped homes in the city. Particularly the house of the father-in-law: a whole sawmill could fit in just one of its big rooms. We had land, buffalo by the herd, and pigs galore. The hundreds of hens we had laid so many eggs that we couldn’t eat them all. We had woods and streams, wild and domesticated bees, and animals to hunt. Sure, life is more convenient and civilized here but land is at a premium and people’s generosity is a luxury. Did we make a mistake by leaving the mountains to come here?”

He had not finished thinking along those lines when another soldier from the guard post approached. He looked to be the officer in charge of the guards. He said in a dry, unmistakable voice, “This is a zone that requires strict security. I suggest that you take the child elsewhere.”

Not bothering to answer him, An turned to Mui and said, “We can’t stay here, baby. Uncle will take you to Ngoc Ha market and I’ll buy you a ball. Do you hear?”

Then he climbed on the bike and pedaled away. He could not help but feel angry:

“Hey, man, you who are the father of this little girl here,” he whispered to the brother-in-law he had never met. “Could you ever have imagined this situation? A child stands in front of her biological father’s house yet is not allowed to enter; nay, not even to look at it. A child who is chased away from the entrance to her father’s house. Does a crazy situation like this, I wonder, make you feel bad, my president? Now your daughter is too small to understand it. But later, when she grows up, will she consider you to be a decent father or will she think that you have been an insensitive, heartless person willing to throw away the very blood of your offspring? Can it be that your splendid, magnificent palace does not have a room to accommodate your wife and children? Or is there a secret, a black reason, why you accept our Little One living with the common people? Could it be because she comes from the mountains that she is forced to undergo the persecution of your court? The very court that periodically comes out with orders that ethnic minorities are to be privileged!”

The suspicions and anger that had been buried in his soul all these years suddenly surfaced. So did curses; they sprouted and multiplied in his brain like a forest of bamboo shoots emerging in the spring. Without noticing, he ended up biking around and returning to Hoang Dieu Street, so he could further mark in his mind the appearance of these magnificent palatial residences now occupied by the pillars of the new imperial order. Afterward, he continued riding through Phan Dinh Phung Street so as to take another look at other residential palaces, palaces the occupants of which he had learned by heart, so that hatred and grudges kept on boiling in the quiet lake of his soul.

“These are palaces reserved for tiny-eyed and black-lipped society ladies and not for our Little One, even though she is a thousand times more beautiful.”