Duong Huong - The Zenith

“Thank you. I just heard the scream of a small child down in the valley. Do such accidents happen often?”

“Not often; but every year, according to the local people. Mr. President, you need not overly concern yourself about it. It’s not good for your health. I already sent my deputy to take some guards down the mountain to help.”

“Can’t the government do something to prevent such accidents?”

“Yes, of course. But…” the commander replies with some surprise, his eyes shining with a devilish light and irreverence.

Once again the president realizes he has blurted out an unwise question.

“I know that acts of God or destiny are beyond human intervention. Nevertheless, the government should do as much as it can—”

“Yes, it does!” Le interrupts him. “The government will certainly take the victim to a clinic. From here to the district town is very far. The family alone can’t do it. And the government will help with the funeral if the victim is too poor. First the Youth Brigade, then the village Party secretary, after that others as well.”

“I would like to visit the victim’s family,” the president says, surprising himself with this sudden thought. Le stands still for quite a while. Then, attempting a smile, he politely says, “Mr. President, you are still under treatment and still in a situation where you must pay strict attention to the pace of your recovery. Attending the funeral at this moment would be very unhelpful. In addition, from the top of the mountain down to the valley is more than three thousand feet. A young soldier would feel tired, so for you…”

“You brought me up the mountain and now you are reluctant to take me down?” the president says coldly.

The commander, again shocked by the unusual reaction, says, with a stupid look and his voice rising,

“Mr. President, when we bring people up the mountain, we must mobilize military aircraft. At this moment, every aircraft has been sent to the front to carry the wounded.”

“What?” He raises his voice in retort, not hiding his anger. “Every week I receive a report from Central Party Headquarters. Each report is full of news of successes. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Sir.” Le bows. It is hard to read what is behind the narrow but square forehead that thrusts up like a cliff, a notable forehead resembling Stalin’s. Le often bragged and threatened his comrades: “Don’t cross me! Don’t you see this forehead — one exactly like the Great Stalin’s!”

At this moment, the commander lowers his head in thought. After a moment, his back stooped low, he says, “Mr. President, if you have decided, I will report back to Hanoi.”

The president stands up and walks to the garden, realizing that the brown-faced fellow is slowly stepping back and away. Now anger squeezes his heart; a wave of suffocation surges up his throat. At the same time, his lungs fill with a hot steam, like that rising out of a steamship’s boiler. Both the steamship that had taken him from the country and the one that had brought him back had had the same fire now burning his breast.

A plum branch stabs at his temple. He quickly closes his eyes. At this instant, the cry of the boy in the valley rises again. This time the boy stops screaming. His cry is now only a moaning floating in the wind. He thinks, “I guess perhaps help has arrived.”

Out of the garden he heads toward the gate with the three arches. The wind blows from all directions. After halting a moment, it thrusts through the clefts in the mountain, chasing the clouds over to one corner of the sky to unveil a space of sweet blue. Thanks to the clear sky, the president now sees the clumps of woods below. In the space among the pines, the bodyguards’ quarters look like matchboxes lined up in a row. Next to that is the weather station, built from stones quarried during French times. There is a winding road that leads down deep into the valley where a medical team can now be seen taking the injured one on a stretcher back to the village. The group walks one by one like a file of ants.

Looking from up high, the president thinks he is watching ants holding on to each other while climbing a reed stalk.

“Father, oh, Father.”

The wind changes direction, blowing from the valley up the mountainside. The cry of the boy swirls up and unfolds. He cries without stopping. Perhaps the father did not survive. Pity the one with the unfortunate destiny and pity the child who is about to endure life as an orphan.

He thinks and instinctively closes his eyes. The sound of the wind in the pinewoods throws itself into a vast space.

The president feels the wind touch his face, feels the damp cool of spring, of old forests, and of all the wildflowers on the mountain’s flank.

“Father, oh, Father.”

Suddenly, he opens wide his eyes because of a pressing question: If I die, will the child cry? Will he love me like that son of a woodsman, crying for his father?

This thought stops him in his tracks, his feet planted before the three-arched gate, as if he had just banged his head on a stone wall or been hit by an ill wind.

Obeying orders, the young bodyguard had been sitting in front of the temple but never ceased to watch the president. Seeing his pale face, the guard rushes up:

“Mr. President, please return to your room. You might catch cold or slip and fall. Since morning, the ground has yet to dry.”

Then he grabs the president’s shoulders tightly and guides him toward the house. The president wants to brush off the guard’s grip but his own arm is warm. His entire body is also warm, and, when pressed against him, that warmth gives vitality and gladdens the soul. All you need is to stand beside such a person and you will get this feeling. A good and healthy youth. He thinks and agrees to follow him into the room. There the tea has been cooling. He sits and drinks his tea with bitter thoughts.

“He will never cry for me, because he doesn’t know whose child he is. Forever, he will never know who is his birth father.”

Then he mocks himself for being wrong when he thought that the woodsman was the unfortunate one. Who is the more unfortunate?

Now he understands why he had the sudden desire to go down to visit the victim.

A bitter longing mixed with a searching curiosity flowers in his heart; he wants to attend the funeral of the woodsman because he wants to experience the funeral of a real father.

Even the Lingzhi tea cannot suppress the suffocating heat in his chest. He has a hard time breathing even though his room is large and he has opened the windows to let in the cool air of the mountains and forests. An electric heater had been placed at the foot of his bed; it gives warmth and has no smoke from charcoal. Compared with the old days, such comforts make people feel good.

“Not to say it isn’t a touch of luxury.” So he thinks to himself as he remembers the bamboo and the dried branches that the two temple women use for heating.

The frame of his electric heater holds a picture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs dancing near a fire. The blinking flames illuminate the dwarfs holding hands, endlessly circling around the beautiful young girl with blond hair. With dull eyes the president, gazing a bit long at these fairy-tale characters, suddenly stands up and goes to the window. The wind now blows along the ribs of the mountain, singing through the forests he has visited. The sloping forests threaded throughout with pine trees sweep down from the high mountain peak to the foot of the Lan Vu pagoda and rise again to the foot of the sky to the north. Lower still on the second ridge is the forest of bamboo, all kinds of bamboo — yellow ones, lime-green ones, interwoven with thorny ones, making for an unending royal symphony in the summer nights. Bamboo covers the mountain slopes as far as the woodcutters’ village, flowing down to the foot of the mountain, there connecting with fields of tea and cassava. Then follow the terraced fields, themselves followed by fields over which the white herons can fly straight like those in the delta, fields that are cut up like patches of a fresh green dress; dotted by little hamlets and extending to the southern horizon. Before, at the New Year, people from all around would climb three mountain terraces to attend services at Lan Vu pagoda when the plum-tree orchards around it were in full bloom, a blanket of white flowers that looked like a cloud, and the wild plums also blossomed along the well-worn trails. Those who worked from dawn to dusk with mud on their feet and hands waited for this pilgrimage at a miraculous moment of their year, the moment that triggers all the secret longing, the moment that calms all the pain and loss of life that has passed to nurture the breath of hope in those who seek to ascend the trail. Is it possible that the pure white of the plum blossoms, the delicate whiteness of the apricot blossoms, the spring fog, the white clouds on the mountaintop, and the flickering white steam in the crevices could create a magical sight — an intoxicating symphony of unsullied whiteness making one feel the power of purity and eternal rejuvenation?