Duong Huong - The Zenith

A…a…a…

A…a…a…

He had listened to the sounds ringing from the four points of the forest, following him as a wake follows a ship that has been jolted and pushed into misadventure, some cruel melodrama authored by destiny.

That night he had written in his pocket diary: “Tan Mao Year.”

In the Mao month.

Noon. I had…

But even the most intelligently curious mind could not have completed the unfinished sentence.

“Mr. President, please come in for your meal.”

For a while now the chubby guard has been standing behind him.

“You all have already eaten a while ago?”

“Sir, the company cook is preparing lunch.”

“Oh, is that so?” he mutters. For a time he had been eating irregularly, not even three meals a day. Often he even forgot to eat, and eat well, so that the people could trust in his good health. Forgetfulness is the faithful friend of old age, a friend we can’t shake off no matter how much we try. He turns and enters the room to sit down before the tray with his breakfast. A bell-shaped bowl has a lid covering it. He turns over the hot lid, moist from steam:

“Ah, so today the cook gives us rice gruel.”

The fragrant smell of onions and herbs arises; that fragrant smell so familiar to cooks of long ago. Rice gruel with onions and herbs is light on the stomach as well as a remedy for flu. He has known this fragrance since early childhood.

“Sir, please take your food before it cools,” the chubby guard reminds him, his eyes not leaving the president’s hands.

He bends his head down to see the finely sliced scallions and the herbs as nicely cut as Chinese bean thread noodles, sharply reminding him of the time when he was sick and the girl showed off by cooking rice gruel for him. The gruel unskillfully cooked by the girl had whole rice grains in it and the scallions were still on their stems.

“Little one, you’re a girl from the mountains…! Mountain Girl: you are our nightmare, little one, our private nightmare…”

“Oh, please, Mr. President…” the soldier blurts out, tilting his head to hear some low noise. After a minute:

“An airplane is coming up, Mr. President, do you hear it?”

“I don’t hear anything. The ears of someone over seventy can’t compete with those of an eighteen-year-old,” he answers with a smile.

He looks to the east. The sun had already been up for some undetermined time. It is a completely ordinary day; the sun wants to hang just like a ripe orange suspended in the air, as a gentle sun, not one of sheer brilliance. A sun still undecided in the middle of a dream; a drowsy sun that could signal something ordinary like a burning areca nut or something like a carriage furiously bringing fire to burn all the land on a cursed planet. The white clouds still swirl like the sea around the mountaintops, but around the sun is a light blue halo. A blue completely surrounded by a strange darkness.

That blue was the color of endless summers. Why has it appeared today?

While he stands looking at the sky to the east, the phone in the corner of his room rings stridently. The chubby guard runs in to answer and comes back to report:

“Mr. President, sir, the helicopter has arrived. The office invites you to go down to the landing strip.”

“Has Chief Vu come up?”

“Yes, Chief Vu will accompany you with a bodyguard to take part in someone’s funeral in Tieu Phu hamlet. After that, Chief Vu will follow you back to the pagoda. The program has been set.”

“I will change clothes.”

“Sir, you need to finish all your rice gruel, as the day is very cold. The first squad of guards will come up here to accompany you down to the landing strip.

“Clothes must be chosen.

“Mr. President, sir, all is ready.”

The mountain roads curve back and forth like a chicken’s entrails. Hearing the sound of music, one might think it was close at hand, but the curved road makes its source rather far off. On both sides of the way, bushy bamboo blocks a traveler’s progress. But the special singing to send off a soul is continuously melodramatic. First notes from a one-string zither, then those of a flute and a two-string fiddle. As the first refrain ends, up comes the voice of a male singer, low in tone:

“.…Soul, oh soul, don’t you turn your head back

Soul, oh soul, don’t regret your earthly life”

Like blossoming buds in spring, like colorful and fresh leaves in the summer, turning yellow in the fall or in frigid winter, life on earth is in the Master Craftsman’s hands. Who can escape this great game?

From nothingness, our parents give us human incarnations; we cry as we greet life; we laugh the laugh of a child; we set off on our way, under the burdens of carefree youth, and put them down when our breath weakens and our health evaporates.

“Water runs down and hair changes color.

The Master Fisherman spread his net over the four seas.

Life — a vagabond — is like the flashing wings of the butterfly…”

He listens to the singing, quietly surprised because this is the first time he has heard such verses, even though he has lived in his own country for so many years now:

“Why only now do I know of these folk songs? Did they just pass by like a wind and I didn’t pay attention all those years? Had the government forbidden the people to sing such sentimental lyrics? But life is both birth and death, melancholy is the living twin of happiness.”

“Mr. President, please let me carry your overcoat.”

A guard steps up to take the overcoat he has just taken off. He gives him the overcoat; then suddenly a throbbing pain runs through his spine. Sweat wets his forehead; he dabs at it with a handkerchief but it won’t subside. As the hour of Sending Off the Soul approached, he had intended to visit the unfortunate family, but he had no right to make them wait. Besides, so many people had to accompany him. To his front, the first squad is walking with the village chief, a tall, lanky woman who looks partly French, having shoulders broad like a cross and so bulging with muscles that any man looking at her would feel intimidated. She wears traditional clothes, a long hanging blouse made of thin blue cloth, trousers of shiny black satin; but then she had put on canvas shoes with white laces, the kind athletes wear. Her face is large with slanted eyebrows and jaws spread wide on both sides, and a neck thick like a column but red. Her strength and her firmness would overwhelm the powers of ten men combined. At his back walks the second squad with the deputy village chief and the village policeman, the two men equally small and short and similar in age and dress, wearing cadre shirts and green khaki pants. But the police chief has a large leather belt to hold his pistol. The two squads form a small detachment of four rows. The path is narrow, but on his left is Vu and the medical doctor and on his right the commander of the guard company, Le. Thirty yards behind them is an armed platoon to fend off kidnapping by aerial assault.

“Mr. President, please take your medicine before attending the funeral.”

It’s the doctor’s turn to make the request. The president stops and swallows a handful of medicine with a cup of ginger water Then they continue walking. This portion of the road is more rugged. On both sides, the bamboo does not bend over but intertwines into a wall. The leaves weave themselves into a bright green roof. It’s high noon, thanks to the roosters crowing from the hamlet to the east to the hamlet on the west, from the higher villages down to the lower ones. The crowing of the roosters, like the melancholy sounds of the singing, doesn’t stop, as if they cannot break the unseen silence that rules over the scene, reinforcing it instead. This silence is uncompromised like clear crystal and more unyielding than steel. A vast silence. It seems as if it hides some forest over the sky’s horizon.