Duong Huong - The Zenith

In this dangerous situation, maybe because heaven guided and earth advised, or maybe at the prompting of a guardian angel, he acted wisely. Pulling out his loudspeaker still dangling on his neck like a talisman, Quang blew noisily and brought a sudden frenzy down on the quiet construction area like villagers running from the enemy in war. The sound of the loudspeaker spread from the workers’ camp to the area of the cadres supervising construction. After hearing the loud thumping of running steps coming closer and closer, he then turned to the woman who had been attacked:

“Miss, stay put; do not run away, understand? Keep your torn clothing intact, keep the scene of the man struggling with you untouched. That is what happens, don’t be ashamed. You’ll get me in trouble if you leave now. Do you understand? If people ask what happened, just tell the truth.”

“Yes, I understand,” the woman replied, and suddenly he recognized her vaguely familiar voice. But it wasn’t until all the lights at the site were turned on brightly that he realized that she was the girl in the green blouse, the one who had nicknamed him “the good-looking old man.” Yes, it was her. Thus, just like that, it seemed that fate united them.

What happened next was nothing complicated. Once the bright lights came on, the sight of a bruised woman with torn clothes and a beaten man down on the ground with a freshly bloody face and the fly in his trousers open let the onlookers understand right away everything that had transpired. No need for too many opinions. After many years of struggling to make a living, Mr. Quang had learned the lesson well:

“To protect the moral authority of the Party and the nation!”

He knew that the situation could flip upside down like the turning of a hand, and he himself would become the sacrificed pawn in that new game. That was why he insisted that the supervising committee for the work site invite the police to come and make an investigative report. And immediately, he mobilized the workers to demand that the local authorities, the construction site supervisors, and the provincial labor union act as official witnesses. Even though it was night, representatives of these three organizations had to come and sign statements. Skilled in speaking, Mr. Quang simultaneously used the situation to announce in front of the crowd:

“We take in wandering wives and daughters who have left their homes to seek a living on the land of others; we cannot allow them to be raped. If we don’t do our duty fully, people will spit in our faces. Today it’s a woman of Ha Tay, tomorrow it might be one from Phu Tho or from our own community. On everyone’s behalf, we insist that the government protect the innocent and punish the thugs. If those thugs infiltrate into the ranks of Party cadres, the government must punish them more severely.”

“We are one with Mr. Quang!”

The other two contract bosses agreed instantly, seeing their interests being protected under the circumstances. If the event had happened to them — since they were not like Mr. Quang, “one who went without food and spoke like wind, had a heart hard like cast iron, and tendons harder than steel”—they would ultimately have blamed the woman as “a whore who seduced a cadre” and they would have found a way to kick her out of the work site, the sooner the better. Therefore, hiding behind his back, they bravely repeated the same refrain:

“We are totally of one mind with Mr. Quang. Public Works has the duty to protect its workers.”

“To preserve the impeccable moral authority of the Party and the nation, we demand that the culprit be punished.”

Like a tsunami, rage swept over those peasants who wore the garb of workers; their rancor thundering all over their tiny world. The disaster Miss Ngan had suffered might well be waiting for them one day. The humiliation that she had tasted could very well be the bitter gift their fates had reserved for them at some dark instant in their future. In the lives of those people with muddy feet and dirty hands, self-pity was like a stove that was always on, with its pilot light of hatred and incipient protest continuously burning. In such situations, feelings of solidarity arose simultaneously as their sense of humiliation was provoked. The men as well as the women saw in the tattered woman a reflection of their own pride, a mirror giving back their own destiny, reflecting back generations of meager lives struggling for existence. No wonder that, after the hard, sharp words from Mr. Quang, their anger exploded, like water rushing through when a dike is broken. A crowd surrounded the deputy head of the construction office, who now raised his head to look at everyone with dull eyes. They screamed; they cursed. They spat at him, they kicked his back. The administrative cadres as well as the head of the construction security unit all signed the report in the face of such worker anger. After that, there was no alternative but for the head of the office to discipline the offender by transferring him to supervise the rock-pile site at Yen Bai. Things transpired the way dominoes fall — one upon another. The head of Public Works seemed perplexed for several days, as if he did not want to understand what had happened. But then with his lazy habit of not thinking, he quickly recovered his ordinary rhythm. Besides, he didn’t need to worry himself too much, for there was no lack of willing brownnosers. One subordinate may fail but ten others will line up to take his place. Within two weeks he found another assistant administrator. The new flunky was smaller, handsomer, and worked harder.

After this incident, Mr. Quang became famous, not only within Public Works but also all over the town, as a hero, a Prince Valiant come to life. Thus everybody was happy.

When everything had returned to normal, the romance commenced. Ngan found a way to meet him at the inn, with a gift in one hand and two bottles of medicinal wine in the other.

“Please, let me thank you, sir. If it hadn’t been for you, I would not have escaped that guy.”

“It was nothing. I am a man; if I meet with injustice, I can’t ignore it. Others coming across such an immoral thing as that would certainly do as I did.”

“Life is not like that. You just speak humbly,” she said with determination, leaving him without a comeback. Then he saw the two bottles of wine that she put on the table.

“You brought wine for me?”

“Yes, exactly right. Why are you surprised?”

He smiled: “Who fermented this wine?”

“I did.”

“So, you’re an alcoholic?”

“No! Not an alcoholic, but I know how to drink.”

“Really?”

“First, nobody thinks women should drink. But we are a bunch of painters. We stretch our arms all day long. At night when we go to bed, we feel pain from our shoulders down to our hips. My aunt steeps a mixture of herbs in wine made from good sticky rice. Drinking one cup at night before bed takes away the pain. I follow her instructions, and indeed there is no pain and I sleep very soundly.”

His thoughts quietly wandered. For the first time in all his life someone had given him wine, and it was a girl! In more than forty long years living with his wife and children, she’d never thought of buying him a gift, nor had his children. In this family, it seemed as if he had had to take care of everybody, worrying about everyone else’s life, with never a reciprocating concern. Always it had been: “Tell your father, he will decide.” “Whatever you want, tell your father. He’ll make it work.”

To Mr. Quang this had seemed only natural, because he had been the father, the husband, the pillar of the family. All the inconveniences of life had piled so many heavy burdens on his shoulders. In carrying them all, he had had no time to think of himself. Now, at sixty-one, he suddenly felt his heart shifting; within him there was another man who needed attention and love.