Duong Huong - The Zenith

“One’s life is such. When you look sideways you think it is a joke, but when you look straight it becomes a tragedy.”

“That’s how we know — to live is tough.”

“You turn this way then that way, old age dashes in. Not behind your back but smack in front of you.”

All became silent. Suddenly both rooms were dead quiet like an empty temple because this was the first time they had looked straight at what they feared. This fear coexists with them forever and ever, like a shadow, but nobody dares speak its name, nobody dares articulate its meaning. People avoid the topic, they cover it up using every sort of pretext, like family honor, like the sanctity of blood relationships, like parental responsibilities. But in reality, it hides in the darkest corner of one’s soul: those irreverent children, those tactless ones who do not hesitate to bring their feelings out into the open, to parade them in broad daylight. Without anyone saying it, people still remember every word, so strident and bitter, from Old Lady Cuu’s daughter-in-law:

“You think having an old mother is a light burden, don’t you? We enjoy the house and your fields, yes, but you are sick, one has to buy medicine for you. When you die, one has to do a funeral, a banquet now and then, and one has to wash your skeleton to replace a wooden box with a terra-cotta one; all that requires money, don’t think that we just clap our hands and it all gets done.”

Not every family has a cruel and greedy daughter-in-law as did Mrs. Cuu; but since life is hard, whether you like it or not, one needs to look at realities clearly. But people’s hearts usually reject hardship. Besides, the hearts of people need some sweet illusions. Children come from us; they grow thanks to the blood and milk of their parents. Who wants to believe that someday they will hand you a chipped bowl to use for your rice?

After a moment of silence, a man spoke up: “Children are gifts from heaven. Parents give them life but heaven gives them character. Then and now, everyone relies on sons. So within this very hamlet, I can’t say more, is there any father whose funeral was more elaborate than Mr. Do Vang’s?”

“Miss Vui is a special case; why bring her up?”

“One father and one child, when he died he had nice brocade garments. There are some who have seven children, working hard like buffalo all year round and going bankrupt raising the children to adulthood. Yet when they lie down, they have to listen to them arguing about how much each should contribute to the funeral costs. In this life, we are better or worse, all thanks to our good deeds in past lives. In the morning, nobody can foresee what the night will bring. Nobody can plan the time when we go to the grave. Enough, gentlemen, pour me some wine. In spring swallows fly to and fro. Let’s empty our cups to celebrate the New Year. Miss Hostess, please join us.”

Miss Vui quietly finished her cup along with the men. Nobody said more. The villagers had come excitedly to her house to gossip about Mr. Quang and his sons, but that story ended up trespassing on the secret, private lives of each of them. And those secrets often told more about the winter of life than its spring. The committee secretary recognized that point. After the round of wine, she requested that the youth group sing to gloss over the gloom. However, the guests left in groups of five or three at a time. She was sure they would continue the discussion in their homes, because underlying the gossip was the fundamental foundation of everyone’s life — where happiness and pain intertwine to make a single thread constituting one’s destiny. Perhaps what happened between Mr. Quang and his children was an alarm, preparing each family for all the storms waiting for them — a cry from the seabird that warns boats to be careful before an unseen iceberg or surprise tempests in the dark ocean ahead.

The group of young people then left as well. Miss Vui sat in front of the altar and looked at Mr. Do’s photograph and whispered:

“Father, you were wise in life and divine in death, please come back and show me the way.”

Mr. Do looked out straight at the face of his daughter with a most stern expression that she had never seen before.

“We made the wrong move, totally wrong. Now we have to find a way to undo it.”

She pondered and considered what she had done. She had gone all the way to Khoai Hamlet to investigate Miss Ngan’s family and the love affair of the mismatched couple. She was the only person who knew the beginning and the end of such things and thus was the one to report back to Quy and the villagers. People would eventually ask: Whatever prompted her to be so enthusiastic? Not because she was submissive to the chairman’s request, because she is never submissive to anyone. She had done everything according to her own thinking. Therefore the argument “the secretary was following the chairman’s order” would not persuade many people. It would be as if a worker were digging a deep well in the dirt to find the water main below; the villagers would dig to the end for the reasons that compelled her to spend her time and money to go all the way to Khoai Hamlet. They will find them with little difficulty. And then the arrowhead will point her way:

“From just last night to tonight, the situation has turned upside down. Can anyone predict when a move will be made?”

She let out a sigh. Last night, before New Year’s Day, the whole village had listened to her report, happily laughing, lifting up and lowering down their wine cups, and carrying her up to the blue skies because she satisfied their curiosity; they looked at the saga of Mr. Quang’s family as a fun comedy for spring festivities. Today, Act Two had been quickly performed, but it was no longer just the personal story of Mr. Quang’s family; it suddenly touched upon the affection between fathers and sons — as an emotional rope wrapped around a large tree trunk, very close to the old saying: “Pull the rope and you shake the forest.” She instinctively sighed again with the thought that she had been clever but not wise: pulling the rope without thinking of shaking the forest. Now, given what had happened, there was no way to reverse events. After a moment of hesitation, she recalled what her father had taught her:

“Hold out your hands to catch water from heaven; how can you ever catch everything that people say?”

That clever saying brought her some calm. She consoled herself: “To heck with life. Isn’t it useless to worry about catching the rain from heaven?”

Thus, again as always, Miss Vui was her father’s daughter: Mr. Do Vang, the one with a pragmatic mind. She knew that she could ignore all the village gossip, because in the past such gossip hovered like kitchen smoke over the roofs of those who had clout or who stood out from their neighbors. Something she could not ignore was Mr. Quang himself. For a long time, she had known that he was a popular person, with a good heart and generous to his neighbors; but, too, he did not shy from pulling out a sword to confront those with wicked hearts. Even though she had let her imagination fly around the man with a thick beard, she could not have foreseen that he would calmly speak loudly for his children and the neighbors on all four sides to hear the truth: “Before I married your mother, for a whole year I took her to Truc Vang mountain.” If he dared speak so boldly, what would keep him from insulting her to her face in a rude and cruel manner when he learned that she had gone all the way to Khoai Hamlet? Just thinking about this made her whole body hot and her face feel as if burned. With sweat breaking out on her head and on both temples, she looked back at Mr. Do and spouted out these words: