Duong Huong - The Zenith

As he processed these thoughts he noticed a minister’s wife ride by in a Volga, her neck shortened by the layers of fat that rose all the way to her chin, and her eyes tiny slits the thinness of a thread watching the streets in full haughtiness. That afternoon the weather was gorgeous but An could not escape being drowned in dark thoughts. Was he pitying Mui? Or Little One? Or could it be that he felt his impotence before fate? It was not until that evening when his wife came back from the hospital with the happy face of a child who had just gotten a gift that he could temporarily put aside his bitter observations.

Nang Dong told him, “In three days we will bring Little One home. I won’t have to take the meals in to her.”

“Is she in good health?”

“Our Little One?” His wife laughed. “She is fine and happy. But I can see that you are biased toward women. You don’t ask about the newborn.”

He burst out laughing. “It’s because the whole society is already biased toward the males, that’s why I do the reverse. Don’t you like it?”

“Yes, I do,” she responded at once. An knew that Nang Dong was extremely happy to be by his side. He was a liberal type who did not care for richness or wealth. Neither did he care too much about descendants. The years of study at the district school had given him an outlook entirely different from other men his age. This came somewhat like a gift from the creator. On many occasions his wife had asserted, “Oh, how lucky that we live on two sides of the same hill!”

And he would rejoin: “Lucky that I had a neighboring girl already waiting for me when I was born.”

Nang Dong gave a twist to his answer: “You mean because I am older than you, by fifteen days?”

“You could have been older than I by fifteen years, you would still be my wife. That was what destiny had in mind.”

“Gosh!..” his wife burst out. “You must be the most clever liar on earth.”

Their conversations always ended in laughter. An had yet to see another couple as close as they were. When they were young, he did not in the least doubt his happiness. But after Little One gave birth to the boy, a cloudy premonition lodged permanently in his mind, even when he was at his happiest. He would remember the quotations he had learned from the history professor, the one teacher to whom he owed most while studying in That Khe district.

“Beautiful women are like flowers; they blossom early and die in the evening, because blue heaven has bestowed upon them a gorgeous beauty that causes many people to covet and envy them.”

The beauty of Nang Dong and her sister had only grown more and more pronounced, to the point of surprising him. Time, it seems, had no effect on them; on the contrary, the months and years seemed to have matured their beauty, making them more attractive, more mysterious. On numerous occasions An had witnessed passersby stop, struck dumb by the sisters’ beauty; they looked at them as if they were seeing river or mountain goddesses. In Hanoi, one could “light torches to illuminate the forest” and never find that kind of beauty — enough to make fish stop swimming and birds fall to earth.

An felt like he had been in love with Nang Dong since the day he was born. It was only much later that he realized his wife surely must have provoked desires on the part of men who came across her. In that way, he came to understand why the old king could fall head over heels in love with Little One. It’s impossible for any man not to be moved by the sharp-swordlike beauty of such women, who, besides, have simple and holy souls that promise years of family happiness. Although Nang Dong was totally unaware of all these things, An realized that he was in possession of a magnificent fortress. To protect that fortress, one needed both intelligence and courage. The pride inside him was always accompanied by vigilance. In the case of Little One, did the old king think like he did, he wondered. Or could it be that, given the fact that he was the king, instead of treasuring the rare love of a soul like hers, he would give himself the luxury of considering her beauty to be no more than an exotic dish?

These dark thoughts he dared not express to anyone. An did not want to burden the minds of the two sisters, whom he loved more than he loved himself. He became a silent witness to all their happy and joyful and hopeful conversations.

“Will you go to the Presidential Palace tomorrow?”

“Yes. A driver will come for me at nine.”

“Have you thought really hard about what you will need to tell him?”

“There is not much to prepare. I will tell him only one simple sentence: since we have now both a boy and a girl, we need to legitimize our relationship before the law.”

“That will do. Tomorrow will be a busy day. I will prepare dinner earlier than usual, and you should remember to breast-feed the boy at eight.”

The following day was a Sunday. An took little Mui out in the morning, telling the two women that he would be home late. At lunch, he took his niece to a pho restaurant, then to the circus for the three o’clock matinee. After the circus, they went home. Little Mui went straight to sleep while he quickly gobbled down some food so he could get back to his barracks. He did not ask at all about how Little One’s meeting with the father of her children had gone. An still remembers the questioning look of his wife as she was ironing her sister’s dresses. As for Little One, she was so busy feeding the boy that she did not have time to worry about the unusual silence of her brother-in-law. Or it may have been that she was so filled with happiness and projections of the future that she was not paying much attention to what was going on around her.

An blamed himself for having been so strangely indifferent; an indescribable sadness was tearing him apart. So one day passed after another. Whether he was in training or out on exercises with the soldiers, An felt like he was living in a dream, as if his feet were not on the ground but walking in the clouds. He could not understand why. Sometimes his memories took him back to Xiu Village, with reflections on happy days. At other times memory took him back to That Khe town, to the school where he had stood way above the other students. Or he would picture the tea-fragrant house of his history professor, whose wife was a jasmine tea merchant. He had sometimes come by to help the family fold tea bags while listening to the professor tell all sorts of stories, both apocryphal ones and official ones from Chinese history or from Vietnam’s own dynasties, tales from the San Guo Ji (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) or Dong Zhou Lie Guo (The Vassal Countries of Eastern Zhou), which the professor knew by heart. At other times he felt his heart oppressed with a vague concern that was surrounding him like a gigantic spiderweb.

One Saturday evening, after military exercises, An grabbed a bicycle. After going only a few hundred meters, the front inner tube exploded. He found a repairman, who explained, “Sorry, Comrade. There is no way to fix it. You need a new one.”

“Please try real hard. We don’t live in a time when I can be given a new inner tube.”

“I already looked carefully. I promise you: if I can’t fix it, no one can. That’s guaranteed.”

There was no option but to take the bike back to camp and borrow one that usually carried food. Because the food bike had priority, its inner tubes were always new. The food team lent him the bike on the condition that it be returned the next day at noon so that they could have enough time to get to the afternoon market. After arguing awhile, An was able to extend the time to 3:30. That would give him enough time to take Mui to see the music and dances of the town’s youth group. Content with his victory, An hurriedly pedaled to Hanoi. By the time he arrived, the streetlights were already on. Mui was not standing on the balcony waiting for him as usual; he was definitely late, he thought to himself as he walked the bike through the long hall under dim lights. In the yard, he saw little Mui playing with two other kids, the grandchildren of an old lady in the neighborhood. Seeing him, the little girl rushed out to kiss his cheeks.