Duong Huong - The Zenith

“Anyone who wants rice cake or pork roll to snack on while drinking, let me know.”

“No.”

The most patriarchal of all the husbands replied, “Today is the first day of the New Year, so nobody has enough space left in the stomach to hold your rice cake and pork rolls, mistress. But to have fragrant roasted peanuts with Lua Moi whiskey is exquisite. Who can complain?”

“Townsfolk are real specialists. Just ordinary peanuts, but after they roast them, they taste so sweet to the tongue. No matter how much wine you drink, they still taste good. After eating a handful of peanuts roasted in our homes, our throats choke up.”

“They have a secret recipe. Many times I have bought some hung liu spice in the hamlet market. I mix it with sugar and salt to marinate the peanuts for six hours, then dry them first before I roast them. So I use all the right methods but at the end they are awful, with that smoky, burned flavor.”

“My goodness, if listening alone could make us skillful, then who could make a living as a cook or running a restaurant? They have to keep their secrets. It is said that in Hanoi, some become wealthy just by roasting peanuts, or selling steamed and grilled sugarcane soaked in grapefruit flowers, or cooking green mung bean soup with tangerine peels, calling it in Chinese luc tao xa . Each pot of luc tao xa can feed seven or eight mouths and build a three-story house.”

“With little land and too many people, they must struggle fiercely to make a living, so they are smarter than us rural folk.”

“As you said, from the point of view of Mr. Quang and his wife, wasn’t it smart of him to tell off Quy and his family this noon? Like it or not, he is the most ‘citified’ person in this village.”

“I knew it right away.”

The very patriarchal husband laughed out loud: “Your seat is hardly warm and yet you bring up Mr. Quang’s family saga. You’re too hot-blooded. Can’t you wait for us to finish the first round of drinking?”

His voice was full of provocation and arrogance. The very bitchy lady could not stand it and said, “Everyone has given in to you but that’s still not enough? Your ego is not just as big as a basket, it is more like a mountain.”

“Stop, stop! You two are just opposites, like water and fire. Good thing you never married!”

“Stop, stop. Turn down your fire, little lady.”

“OK, I’ll shut my mouth right now.”

The bitchy one seemed to be pouting; her husband, who was sitting at the same table as the bossy, unhenpecked man, calmly said, “My wife is still kind of childish. She is a fine person.”

Both rooms suddenly became quiet for a second; then, after people had heard what had been said, together they all laughed out loud, the young men shouting and clapping hands loudly:

“Hats off to you; such a wonderful husband!”

“Hail to you, we vote you to be role model for all husbands, getting our votes for ‘most well behaved husband’ in the hamlet. Hey, you girls, open your eyes wide and look, OK. Just take him as your ideal when looking for a husband.”

The laughter, the teasing exploded in all four corners. Previously, few had dared openly to compliment their wives, especially in front of a crowd. Really, it had indeed been quite rare. But despite the hubbub of both praise and teasing, the model husband continued sitting quietly, sipping his whiskey. Having accepted his henpecked status, all the teasing for him was like water on a duck’s back. Maybe, though, he had a distracting thought? The others thought so, and when the bursts of laughter died down, they all turned toward the man who normally was considered the least talkative in the hamlet, who never participated in any public discussions.

“Today the toad opens his mouth; for sure now we will have a big storm! You, dear brother, do you have anything to teach the village at the start of spring? Please speak up.”

The man put his cup on the table, but his gaze never moved from the tiny waves reflecting off the strong liquor.

“Put it aside; Mr. Quang’s family affair is not an issue about citified folks or country folks. It’s between father and son. It could happen to any family, either in remote mountains or down in a city. It should make us think about our own fates.”

Everyone turned quiet. They were mute for a long while because no one had thought of this. Now that someone had recognized the fact and had given it a name, they backed off, because a truth had been right in front of their eyes and nobody had seen it, like the traveler who lost his way and had just plunged on to slam against a rock or step right into a ravine. There had been such blindness because people looked at whatever happened in Mr. Quang’s family only as an operetta or a play — only as something that they would occasionally watch with much curious excitement and think about as someone else’s story, a story involving only actors using lipstick and blush powder, and wearing costumes encrusted with gold, dragonfly-ear hats, and high boots, who spend the year singing and dancing onstage.

Just now someone had pointed out to each of them that such melodramas could just as well play out inside their own homes. This warning was like a crack of thunder hitting them right by their ears. The crowd was silent as if struck dumb. They had to wait for the shock to pass. After a while, when they had regained their calm, their heads started to clear. They then considered whether that story held any danger in their own circumstances.

“You could be right. But you are not Mr. Quang. Neither am I.”

“You are not Mr. Quang because your wife’s hair is not yet gray. Neither am I, because I am determined to go before my wife.”

“Who gives you permission to go before me?” the wife responded immediately in a raised voice, adding, “You have to wait to do my funeral, then you can go.”

“Yeah, you are spoiled by the love of your husband, and are used to leading him by the nose. No one can set a time: birth has its fixed time but death has none.”

“That’s so right!”

“Maybe in our families there will be no scene where a son falls for his stepmother, and no scene in which another son takes his wife and children home to create turmoil in front of the ancestors’ altar on the first day of the New Year. But who can guarantee that their children will be filial and treat their parents well? I don’t have to say it, ladies and gentlemen; you all have known this for a long time.”

“Exactly! There is no shortage of stories. In the past, people concealed and covered up such tragedies; putting up with them while swallowing tears in a kitchen corner. In the old days, our elders said, ‘Every family has a jar of smelly fermented fish. You must know how to cover it tightly to keep the neighbors from smelling the foul stink.’”

“But the business of ‘covering it tightly’…that stuff might be more stinky than stirring up shit in the privy just to smell it. Do you all remember the story of Old Lady Cuu, who starved to death?”

“I do! How can you forget that story?”

“Then any of you ladies here want to starve to death like Old Lady Cuu?”

“No, a hundred times no. We are women with brains like grapefruit who can’t see farther than two handspans, but we are not that stupid.”

“Old Lady Cuu was not stupid. Her husband died when she was twenty-nine, leaving a thatch house and broken wall. All by herself she went up and down to the fields, made charcoal, gathered wood, and raised bees to gain a living. Someone so enterprising cannot be stupid. Her problem was she loved her child too much, trusted her child too much, when, in return, the child did not love his mother. He listened only to his wife, was completely dominated by her, and let his mother die of starvation.”