Duong Huong - The Zenith

Following that criterion, a wedding could only have green tea to drink and cakes and candies to eat. To economize, clapping hands replaced firecrackers. As for funerals, it was absolutely forbidden to play drums and horns and there could be no banquet, no funeral cortege, no flags or banners. Most of all no monks could be invited to pray for the dead. All those traditional customs were counterrevolutionary, corrupting people’s minds and causing damage to socialist morality.

Time passes; life goes on. Bit by bit, sad affection for those departed encourages people to no longer fear the government so much. Everyone asks:

“No socialist government in the other world? If no one worships our ancestors, they will become roving hungry ghosts. If those buried below become hungry ghosts, how can living people prosper?”

“No drums, no horns, no songs to send off dead souls: How can the dead find the way to heaven? If they cannot get to heaven, their only option is to go to hell and become food for the devils. Thus children and grandchildren turn against fathers and grandfathers, shoving such close kin into the tiger’s den and snake’s mouth.”

“Alas, the revolution is only a few decades old, but our ancestors have lived maybe thousands of years. Who knows the right path, the wrong one? To be safe and sure, we should do as our elders did for years.”

Such clandestine discussions began within the confines of each home, hidden behind walls and closed doors. But slowly they began to spread to gatherings around a pot of tea, a tray of wine. Then finally they followed the peasants to the fields, into the gardens, and stoked a hot fire in the heart of the hamlet.

As ever, what is to happen, will happen. Villagers exploded in violent protest when the secret police came to seize the first family who dared call the musicians back to their old ways. The host had paid a special insurance fee far beyond the musicians’ wildest dreams, which gave them the courage to risk their comforts. Besides, he hadn’t dared challenge the government all by himself. Even when his old father was still struggling on his deathbed, he had gone to each house and appealed to everyone to rise up together. Because every house had an old father or a weak mother, and because funerals held up the sky over each family, everyone wholeheartedly joined him. The protest occurred quietly in the dark. The local officials were totally unaware, thus they grabbed the family of the deceased in a rude and cocky manner, not knowing that the people had prepared to resist. As soon as they saw the chairman and the policeman cross the door into the funeral home, sounds of drums exploded loudly. Hearing the alarm, elders came over and surrounded the courtyard — close to four hundred salt-and-pepper and white-haired heads. In addition, women and children stood in an outer circle like an army of shields. The unusual situation unsteadied the officials’ legs. They more humbly asked:

“If you want to return to the old ways, you must answer to the law. We are here just to remind everyone.”

“We do not consider funeral rites to be old ways. We consider them as filial piety. You said they are ‘old ways,’ meaning that for thousands of years now, our ancestors were all a bunch of idiots who did stupid things.”

“We didn’t mean that.”

“Old customs? So, what do you mean? Please explain clearly in front of all the people. Here, sooner or later, whether we like it or not, each family has to arrange this filial responsibility, this reassurance. No one can avoid what is necessary to be human.”

“Orders from higher authority state clearly: horn and drum music is an old custom of the past. Our duty is to enforce, not to explain.”

“If tomorrow the district commissar orders you to dig up all the ancestors’ graves, you will close your eyes and do it, without thinking whether it’s right or wrong?”

“You go too far; the Party would never order such an irrational or inhuman thing.”

“They sure do!..You forget but we don’t: the year of the rooster, your superiors ordered the Lan Vu temple to be destroyed and used two temples farther down the mountain for people’s education classes. The village elders had to remonstrate with the province commissar, to beg Mr. Loi Den, before the temples were spared. Fortunately, during the dark years Mr. Loi Den needed our donated shelter and food, eating cold rice and salty cabbage brine from our homes.”

At that, the head of the village police lowered his voice:

“OK; if you ladies and gentlemen want to follow the old customs, please do it quietly. We will stay out of it.”

After saying that, he signaled the village chairman to leave. As soon as the two stepped beyond the door, the drums and horns burst out loudly, partially as an order, partially as a taunting.

The village police chief whispered in the ear of the village chairman:

“Don’t play around. There was an old saying: ‘When they speak with one voice, even the monk will die.’”

The village chairman was at a loss, not knowing what to say, seeing this guy reputed to be so tough and mean suddenly submitting so easily to a crowd. Three months later, the village chairman’s father died and the drum and horn musicians were immediately summoned. He personally brought the musicians offers of betel nut, cigarettes, and envelopes with cash.

From that day until now, there had been many new village chairmen and heads of the village police. But none of them ever brought up funerals and weddings in Woodcutters’ Hamlet. All followed ancestral customs as if they were the natural order of things. Higher officials pretended not to hear or see.

Thanks to this political evolution, Mrs. Quang’s death brought on every formality: drums and horns, hearse, banners and flags, flowers and incense, and not meagerly either. The compound was squeaky clean after two seasons of the hunger illness eating its way through provisions, but Mr. Quang borrowed three cows and three hundredweight of pork for his wife’s funeral. Local opinion worried:

“That debt: when will he ever pay it all back?”

One with a fouler mouth said, “Really, she is a hungry devil: dead already but still demanding stacked trays full of food. Perhaps the husband has to comply in full, fearing her coming back to haunt him.”

In any case, everyone on the mountain could not help but bow their heads in respect before such a husband.

For seven full weeks Mr. Quang stayed at home. He asked monks to come and pray for her on the day her soul returned, otherwise commonly known as the forty-ninth day after death. Then, instead of music, chanting and the ringing of wooden gongs were heard throughout the night. He presented thirty trays of food to serve relatives and neighbors. Then, early the next morning when the sky was still black as ink, he took the horse cart down to the town. The neighbors heard the clip-clopping of horseshoes on the patio and saw the storm lantern dangling on the carriage frame, spilling light through the fog:

“He is a foreman on a construction site, why is he taking a horse cart? He must be building houses and selling goods, too, no?”

“Only heaven knows. Someone with as many friends as he has can do anything. Now he is indebted up to his neck. He’s got to find ways of making money.”

“True, talent comes with bad luck. Heaven gives a way to make money, then it sabotages you with a wife transformed into a hungry devil.”

“That’s nonsense, as if when a hungry devil afflicts a family, the only way out is to bury it alive.”

“What you say, sir, is frightening to the ears. But pity us, it is really terrifying. Since my birth until today, I have never seen such a thing. Just thinking about it is enough to give me goose bumps.”