Duong Huong - The Zenith

He and Vu step aside as the nun passes by. The smell of soapberry spreads in the air, because the nun’s clothes are washed in soapberry. There are three old soapberry trees in the corner of the temple, healthy and bushy, with lots of pods all year long. He often saw the nuns go to the garden and bring back full baskets, then line up the berries to dry them on a steel grate resembling a huge fish grill. On afternoons with pouring rain when vapors from crevices rose up to mix with the white cloud, the two women would sit silently while the berries were drying, their silence stretching on until the evening meal, when a nun would light altar candles and tweak the oil lamp on the old bamboo table.

“What are they thinking in that lingering silence? Maybe they don’t think about anything at all; many people can’t imagine that they are really so simple and intellectually empty that they don’t have much at all to think about. Because those who don’t think, cannot act with so much courage…”

Many times he has asked himself that question. He has never found a satisfying answer. He remembers that the first time he was at the temple he had seen all the doors locked like in a warehouse. He had summoned Le and the administrative officers for a discussion. When he had learned the truth, he had hurriedly ordered that the guards let the abbess and at least two novices return. This had been his primary condition in agreeing to stay at this place for rest and recuperation. Two days later, the guards had brought a group up the mountain. He knew that they were implementing his instructions, but he did not know why such a large group was needed.

“It can’t be that they have agreed to let twelve venerables and nuns return to the temple,” he had thought.

But he had rejected that hypothesis right away because it was improbable. He had backed into his room to observe. It was true that twelve venerables had appeared in the temple patio, but they did not have permission to return. They had come only to accompany their superior back to the old place. According to tradition, that was a way by which students could show their respect to a teacher. He saw ten tall and healthy monks, full of life; because only those with enough physical and mental health would be able to meditate in such isolated mountains. Those ten hefty men surrounded a tiny old woman, not taller than five feet, with a calm face and the very ordinary features of an average Vietnamese woman. She held a bamboo pole in her hand.

“With this very pole, the old lady went down the mountain after the officials forced her to leave the temple, and now, with this same pole she climbed up a mountain over three thousand feet high, needing no one to carry her on their back. And this tiny old lady is over eighty years old!”

Perhaps because the abbess was seven years his elder, he felt embarrassed and sad simultaneously. Perhaps because the legal might that had forced her into exile was his very own political system, of which he was the official spokesperson. He couldn’t find a precise explanation.

In the yard, the abbess had climbed up to the third terrace and given her disciples instructions:

“Hail to Buddha, we again stand on the ground of our house. All of you please open all the doors, clean all the shelves, and light incense and candles. And you, nun, your duty is to arrange the flower vases. We will chant prayers to welcome our honored ones back to the old abode.”

“Hail to Buddha, we will comply as you direct.”

He had noticed the respectful manner of all ten monks in front of an old and tiny nun, and a thought had invaded his mind:

“Later on, of all these respectful disciples, which one will push the old lady down the ravine to replace her as the boss of this temple? Which one will put arsenic in the bean-braised tofu or in the cabbage soup?”

But on the far side of the patio, temple bells were ringing. The sounds of a beaten wooden gong and the chanting of the twelve disciples followed. The air filled with the fragrant smoke of incense. He had listened to the regular and continuous chanting, knowing that there was another force residing within our lives, an invisible force, of a kind that was not to be measured by integers as one can calculate the strength of human muscle power.

These memories suddenly coming to mind make him contemplative for a moment. But he also realizes that Vu is waiting for him. He says: “The abbess gave us permission, we can enter the temple.”

“Big Brother, you’ve never been inside?”

“Never. I don’t dare intrude into the land of the ordained. The fact that we’ve pushed ten monks down to the lower reaches of the mountain bothers me. Why don’t they choose another location?”

“I don’t know for sure who chose this spot. But surely this is the best one for Sau and the others to prevent everyone from coming to see you.”

“They are brilliant with respect to those things.”

He smiled while imagining that anyone who wanted to ascend all the way up Lan Vu mountain must appear in the lens of the guard company not for just a few seconds or minutes, but for more like half a day even if they were athletic or professional climbers. Under these conditions, only a wild hare or squirrel could hope to escape surveillance. His enemies in the Party had thought carefully when they had chosen the peak of Lan Vu instead of a dark tunnel as in an old European “oubliette” where people were sent to be forgotten. Here even on top of a magnificent mountain, he had no way to gossip with trusted associates either in his own room or in his doctor’s quarters. All the walls contained listening devices. Each time Le led a technician to change a “bug” he knew it, because each time they carried a canister of mosquito spray on their back. Le would invite him to “take a walk in the woods to stretch his flaccid legs” while Le would “spray for mosquitoes.” He always had to wait for a few hours before the smell of the spray would dissipate, then he could return to his room. Since he never crossed the brick patio to enter the temple proper, the Buddha statues were lucky not having to taste the insect spray. Today, they could use Buddha’s domain to chat with each other for a while.

“Are you are sure that we can talk safely here?” Vu asks for the last time to bolster his confidence.

“Trust me; I’m old but not yet senile,” he replies, looking straight in the eyes of his loyal follower, the only one left who had survived life with him.

“I apologize…but…”

“I understand.”

They are silent for a moment, as memories have returned with each word, each thought. Then trembling, Vu asks:

“Big Brother, do you cough a lot?”

“Don’t worry, I am much better. The remaining problem is my heart. But it’s rare to reach seventy, I have lived long enough.”

“You must take good care of yourself.”

“You, too. But, on second thought, neither of us have any way of prudently taking care of ourselves. Life’s just a gamble.”

“Yes, just a roll of the dice.”

“Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that life has its limits; so, too, does our health. I cannot do anything more at this time, but I still want to know what is going on in our nation.”

“But…”

“Just let me know. We have endured the most dangerous times. I hope you haven’t forgotten that?”

“But you are now very weak, Elder Brother. We who must die cannot hold off the destruction that time brings on.”

“But I am not yet blind, or deaf, and my brain is not yet paralyzed. I still want to know what’s going on outside of here, outside these walls of white clouds, outside this enchanting prison.”

“I don’t have enough courage, please forgive me.”

“I am the one who must apologize to you. I am the one who owes you a debt. I put too much hardship on your shoulders.”