Duong Huong - The Zenith

“I thank you; thanks to heaven my machinery still works well. That’s without using herbal medicine.”

Then, as if to avoid a blow from Vu, he suddenly cried out as if he had just remembered something important:

“Damn, I’ve been so busy lately, I forgot to call the Old Man. And you?”

“The Old Man has not called me for a long time as well,” Vu replied coldly.

Sau rushed to say:

“If so, I will arrange for you to visit him. Every now and then, it’s good to go back and visit the mountains.”

“It’s up to you,” Vu answered summarily and stood up.

At the same instant Sau, too, jumped up, quickly like a cat, to grab Vu’s arms tightly:

“Let me phone to have them make arrangements. You can leave tomorrow.”

That’s why Vu is here, at the domestic airport reserved for the air force, right at seven o’clock in the morning. Now, seated, he drinks his tea and stares at the bloated fog on the other side of Dinh Cong Lake. Waiting.

Since waking up, the president has stared into the east, waiting for the sun to rise. But white clouds cover all four directions.

The clouds submerge the mountaintops in a vast white ocean. From the crevasses to the deep ravines, the watery mist curls upward like smoke, a kind of wet, cold smoke infused with the smell of forest tree and the fragrance of wildflowers. Those gigantic moving mists look like blind dragons feeling their way toward an unknown destination. Those dragons at times crawl across the rows of mountains by stretching out their strange bodies, at times crunch together and pile up in the valleys, forming images of fighting monsters. The sky has no horizon; unseen are the swaths of forests, high or low, over three ridges of mountains. Even the temple garden is immersed in fog. The white mist hovers just outside the window of his room.

Seated and looking at the sea of fog, the president puts a finger on his pulse and counts…ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven…the numbers jump without stopping. At this age, it’s hard to master one’s body. The president knows he is waiting for one person, and the apprehension keeps coming on even if he does not want it to:

“Why, for no reason, am I in this awkward situation? A few years ago, everything was different…”

He wonders but knows he has no answer.

About five or six years earlier, he had thought that all things were settled. The chess game was over. The old gown wasn’t even in the trunk but had been burned up. All the pictures, too, had turned into ashes to be mixed with dust. Even with all that, still his heart is beating hard.

He thinks to himself: “Whatever; from every perspective there is no way to salvation. Once the path has become entangled with thorny vines and the well has been filled in, no longer is there any reflection off the water in which to look for a vision of the one who was…” But all of a sudden, an opposing voice speaks out in his soul:

“It was a wrong move. It was the most humiliating move that could happen in the life of a person, especially for a man.”

The president sighs. “I had no other choice.”

The opposing voice says: “It was not that you didn’t have an alternative way. The problem was that you didn’t have the courage to choose another path.”

He replies: “But now, one door has closed. What has passed is over and done with.”

His mysterious opponent bursts into despising laughter: “Everything is not finished as you imagine. Every failure always brings along consequences that the loser cannot fully measure. This is a warning from me to you!”

The clouds have not dissipated.

“Why so much fog this morning?”

Unable to stay seated, feeling half paralyzed and half anxious as if he were perched on charcoal, the president stands up. As soon as he puts his feet down on the steps, the chubby soldier rushes in from the temple patio and stops him:

“The fog is very bad for you; please stay inside.”

“I’ve sat here since this morning.”

“Please wait a few moments, when the fog clears you can go out to the patio.”

“Did you see the abbess and her attendant?…One is seven years older than I am and the other is a weak woman. Both have been out on the patio since early morning; they didn’t wait for the sun to be over the mountains.”

“Yes, but…”

“Let me go out for a while for some fresh air. Staying in the room too long, I will suffocate from sadness and my limbs will be paralyzed.”

“Sir…”

But he has forcefully brushed the soldier aside and decisively stepped down onto the patio. There by the cherry garden he stands fixed like a stone. The fog comes over his face cold and wet, with a faint and fresh smell of the mountains. In the main temple, the candles flicker, the sound of the wooden gong mixes with the normal chanting of prayers, a kind of music that has become familiar to him. Every so often when the prayer chanting stops, the dripping sound of dew on the tile roof is clearly heard, a mossy roof that has turned blackish. With time, the wooden door frame has also taken on a darker shade. In this desolate and enchanting setting, the light from the candles grows more iridescent and vibrant.

“Oh! The light of a fire…Why is it like firelight?”

His heart breaks with a savage cry. The candle flames in the pagoda remind him of another flame, years back in the deep forests of the north…the distant flame of the maquis…flames that danced, that popped and exploded like so many eggplant and mustard flowers. A huge house, with strings of multicolored paper flowers cut by the clumsy hands of kids who hung them on the pillars. Spaced among the flowers were sheets of glistening gold paper. He knew well that in order to have those glistening sheets, for an entire year the young man in charge of the youths had had to collect and save the wrapping paper from his cigarette packs, the sole luxury he allowed himself.

He remembers as if all the youthful faces illuminated that night by the flames were shining bright with happiness.

But, what year was it really? It couldn’t be the year Binh Tuat (1946), because that year the resistance movement had taken shape, material requirements were mostly in place, even the printing plant for making Blue Buffalo notes was up and running. It must have been Dinh Hoi (1947). Yes indeed, the year Dinh Hoi.

One afternoon, at approximately three thirty or close to four, judging by the slant of the sun’s rays through the leaves, he had had his head bent down in reading a document when he suddenly heard continuous chattering. When he looked up, he saw the chief office administrator smiling broadly:

“Mr. President, in a little while please join our celebration.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“Don’t you remember that we are still celebrating the Children’s Festival?”

He was briefly surprised and said: “I thought I had done this and had distributed candies to the children.”

“Mr. President, you did celebrate and distribute gifts to children from two to ten years old. But today it’s the turn of older children, those over ten, especially the young cadets from fifteen to seventeen who study together to prepare for travel to friendly countries.”

“Ah, is that so?” he replied, then thought of the two thick piles of documents waiting for him on the shelves.

“I still have so much work.”

“May I report that those youth are eagerly waiting for you. They have practiced their songs and dances for a month to welcome this day of celebration. Should you not come, I am afraid…”