Duong Huong - The Zenith

Khoai Hamlet was the poorest hamlet in Hung My village. But for generations Khoai Hamlet had had beautiful women. Its residents had only this as a point of pride and only this to compensate for the hardships they endured from generation to generation. In particular, the girls in this village had very light complexions. Even when they worked long hours in the fields, only their hands were a little darker from the sun, compared with women from other villages. People said it was because of Khoai Hamlet’s proximity to rivers and mountains, the clean and breezy air making the complexions of the girls and women fresh all year round. Second, their eyes resembled those of Cham women, large and deep with long and curvy eyelashes. It was said that years earlier, a group of prisoners from Champa had been exiled to Khoai Hamlet to cultivate virgin land for a victorious general given the prisoners by the court as a reward for his services. The defeated Cham soldiers then lived and mingled with local people, and, because they were good carpenters and masons, generating wealth for the general, they gained permission to marry local sons and daughters. The children of such couples therefore had large eyes, so clear but so sad, like autumn’s ending.

Miss Ngan was born in this poor hamlet that took great pride in the attractiveness of its women. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire district, but before any provincial official or district worthy could take notice, she fell for Ngan’s father, a village teacher. He had grown up in a miserably poor family in a poor village, but because he was the only child, his mother and father had tightened their belts so that he could learn enough words to become a first-grade teacher. He was extremely indebted to his wife for marrying him and not joining the regional organization or waiting for some other wealthier, more upscale suitor. From her childhood on, Miss Ngan had heard her father recollect:

“Your mother had been selected for the regional cultural organization. She was inferior to no one. Only good fortune made it possible for me to marry her.”

When fully grown, Ngan’s beauty was greater than that of her mother. Her father both taught and worked in the fields and he wove baskets in the evening to earn enough money for her to study up to the junior high level. He nourished an unhidden dream:

“You are more beautiful than your mother was. And you have been educated. Certainly later on you will be happier than Miss Nga from Moi Hamlet; one day you will take a plane or boat to pass beyond the seashore.”

So her future was planned in advance, like a painting that had first been carefully sketched before an artist came to apply the paint. She would be selected for the central cultural organization or the central political headquarters. She would go to places like Russia, China, and other countries as naturally as eating her daily meals — what an honor for the entire extended family!

Her parents were preoccupied about their two sons and in their minds assumed that Ngan would apply herself exactly to their plan. By sixteen, her striking beauty was seducing many in her circle, not to mention a few young teachers in the district’s junior high school. Like a light that attracts insects at night in the middle of the fields, inviting the moths to come and dance, intoxicating them, then burning them, Ngan’s fresh and smiling disposition led to punishment for many classmates, because the school forbade students to follow their affections before they had reached adulthood, which was by law eighteen years of age. After witnessing many young men fall off their horses for her, it was her turn to be thrown down — not by those naive boys her own age, but by a literature teacher, an exemplar, married, with three children: Teacher Tuong.

Nobody really knew how their affair began. Teacher Tuong lived with his wife and children in the family compound for teachers in the district school, a row of houses with tile roofs and narrow patios, divided into small lots, all similar in construction and materials, built cheaply and sloppily. In front of this housing compound there was some open land used by teachers and students for volleyball and basketball. Behind the compound was a vegetable garden that enabled the teachers to make ends meet. People often saw Teacher Tuong with a can watering the kohlrabi and cabbage in the afternoon; and his wife could be seen at dusk with her pant cuffs rolled up, briskly chasing chicken around the pen, or out around midnight with her flashlight, picking up eggs. She was a small woman, very skinny, always with an air of sadness showing on her face, which was somewhat pointed, like a bird’s head. They had lived in the commune since their marriage, Mr. Tuong having been appointed to the district school after graduating from the mid-level provincial teacher training college. His wife sold medicines in a pharmacy. They had three sons, the oldest thirteen, the middle one eleven, and the youngest, most likely unplanned, only three. Who could ever imagine a romantic, passionate love affair occurring between a young woman of sixteen, strikingly beautiful like a full moon, and a teacher close to his forties, who, when he forgot to shave, had a face dark like a closed jar, his clothes old and tattered, his teeth and fingers stained yellow by tobacco smoke? When the story broke — that is, when Ngan became pregnant — everyone was beside themselves with astonishment. They all wanted to know the reason for what was to them a totally unjustifiable romance. The story of the teacher and the student falling in love made noise everywhere, pushing forward like fire spreading or water boiling over:

“A devil’s work; definitely an evil spirit!”

“There is no evil spirit, that’s just old superstition. I think the guy’s a smooth talker. People say men fall from their eyes, women from their ears.”

“Eyes and ears, yes; still, there must be a reason. Why on earth would a young girl fall in love with an old man the same age as her father? She must be mad! If not, then this guy gave her Love Potion Number Nine. Once my cousin, a laborer in Tay Bac, had a Thai girl put a love charm on him. Each time he tried to find his way back down to the plains he turned mad, rolled his eyes, and mumbled all in Thai. The family had to let him go up and live with that woman.”

“Until now?”

“Exactly! His wife had to wait five years to ask the village to give her a divorce so that she could remarry. Their two children were sent to my aunt and uncle to be raised.”

“I don’t believe in love charms or potions.”

“I do!”

“I think this teacher has a way of enticing women and girls that we don’t know.”

“What way?”

“Maybe hypnotizing. This guy may look skinny, but when he looks at anyone, they feel as if they’ve been nailed down, no longer able to move. I think that girl’s soul was sucked out by those eyes.”

“Perhaps. But why didn’t he ever seduce others? Doesn’t every class have more than a few pretty ones?”

“True. Before this he had no affairs? If it’s a question of seduction, of promiscuity, something would have happened long before. Fifteen years have passed; there was no lack of pretty girls; why wait for Ngan?”

“Because destiny planned it. When the month and day arrive, the child comes out of the mother’s womb. Just so, when the month and day arrive, disaster also shows its face.”

“You think of it as a disaster? I believe it’s good fortune. Nothing else: sleeping with a virgin girl as beautiful as a fairy. No different than finding paradise.”

“But after paradise comes hell. I just heard that Ngan’s father aggressively sued the school, and took a knife demanding to kill Teacher Tuong, who had to flee to the city. I heard he accepted his punishment to relocate elsewhere.”