Duong Huong - The Zenith

The older woman with the manly laugh scolded the girl. Then she bent over to look at the deck of cards in her hand. Quy knew it was time for him to leave. He nodded to bid farewell to all:

“I thank you, ladies.”

“At your service…”

As soon as he turned his back the peals of laughter rose anew. In the bright door frame, girls passed back and forth, some in white shirts, some in purple, and some in pink.

“Some horsey whores out of the paddock,” Quy almost blurted out loud, but was able to control himself.

His eyes stayed glued on the bright rectangular opening; something there pulled him like magnets pull iron. He did not understand. Standing awhile in the darkness, clandestinely looking at those girls, he suddenly felt as if he had just lost something, but could not find words to describe it. He tried to figure out what was going on in his heart but could not, asking himself, “What is this? What did I lose? What do I want?”

There was no answer.

Then all of a sudden a bitter anger could be felt in his throat and he said out loud:

“Just a gang of man-hungry whores; any guy who takes one will fall apart sooner or later. Definitely ‘Coolie Girls.’ A few months ago that other whore was parading just like this.”

In the night, his voice resonated loudly, bouncing back from the rough and empty buildings. He panicked, fearing the people inside could hear him. He turned and ran. The path in the complex snaked around piles of sand and gravel, scattered heaps of bricks, piles of wooden timbers, of half-wet cement mixture covered with many layers of wet jute bags. In the dark with his soul in flight, Quy stepped on a stone and fell forward into cement that was still soft. The wet mixture covered his face, one shoulder, and an arm. After he was able to stand up, Quy started to realize his situation:

“How can I show my face in the streets like this? But before I get to the streets I have to pass the guard at the gate.”

He put down his leather attaché case and looked inside to find some newspaper with which to wipe his smeared face. At that moment, the lye water entered one eye and irritated it. The stinging multiplied, a terrifying development. That physical pain crawled up to the top of his head and mixed with another pain, more devastating — a realization of his inability and humiliation. His tears flowed, mixing with the lye to make the whole area around his eyes and cheekbones burn as if they were cut. The pain caused him to sob and he found that he could not stop his crying. In front of Quy’s eyes there was only a vast space where black water would not stop falling. It seemed as if all the blood in his veins now became black, totally black, inky black. The dark blood spread all over his body. His whole body shook in an insane desire to cut someone’s throat, to crack someone’s skull, to stomp someone under his feet, to relieve the pain he was enduring. While wiping his slush-smeared face, Quy closed his eyes tightly to let tears wash out the lye that clung to his lashes. Then, in his mind, he carried out many scenarios for revenge: he would burn down the majestic house of the provincial Party secretary; he pointed a gun at a gathering crowd like a child who smashes an anthill; he sat on the head of the provincial Party secretary, the guy with a big belly who once scolded him as if he were a three-year-old child during a provincial conference of cadres; he pointed his penis and squirted urine on the guy’s slippery and fat face; he spat on his beautiful gray hair always straight-parted; he climbed in the Volga car, took the driver’s seat, and made the old man run behind the car to eat dust.

The final image seen by Quy’s burning eyes was one of himself riding on the white chest of a naked woman. He kneads her breasts, pinches them, bites them. Her small nipples are almost severed, they are dangling and attached to the breasts only by tiny pieces of skin, looking like two lotus seeds. He bends over and pulls them off with his blackened fingers, with the delight of a child who has just pulled the legs off a grasshopper. Then he rapes her, rapes her with all the passion and hatred piled up over so many lives; he rapes as if it were the only way to exist on this earth. He rapes her insistently from moonrise until noon of the next day. He rapes her until her skin, fresh like congealed fat, fresh pink like eggshell, becomes floppy, discolored, and pale, and at the end transparent, like frog eggs. Beautiful like a rose, she is raped until she becomes weak, exhausted; until she barely breathes. When he stands up to button his trousers, she turns totally into mush. What is left on the ground is a pile of some shapeless and torn rags.

A pile of green rags.

The season for mushroom gathering passed as if it were a festival. People say that January is the month to have fun, but for Woodcutters’ Hamlet, January is the month of hard work. On the seventh, eighth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, villagers go to the temple and don’t think about money or food. Otherwise, every day is translated into money:

“Today, how much did you get?”

“Five point seven kilos.”

“Only so-so.”

“How so-so? It’s less than Minh’s family down in the lower section. They are also only one mother and one child like me and on average she gets seven point five kilos.”

“Can’t compare with them. Both mother and child are strong like bears. They climb mountains like the San Diu, San Chi people.”

“You are doing pretty well, too, each day almost ten kilos.”

“All three of us work without stopping for breath, with sweat running down our backs. At night the thighs are painful. But, thank goodness, it’s worth it. This year’s mushroom harvest is three times better than the cassava one.”

“You are right, growing cassava brings nothing.”

Miss Ngan was a newcomer, but she kept up with them all; even though she foraged by herself, every day she collected more or less four kilos of mushrooms. Mrs. Tu boasted to everyone:

“Auntie Ngan came to live in Woodcutters’ Hamlet, yet without even warming her seat, she already works better than thousands of others.”

“Thousands of others” here included the three members of Quy’s family and the gaggle of know-nothing women whose tongues itched with envy: “With that little red-and-green blouse, how can she climb the mountain? No doubt, though, that she can climb on top of her husband’s belly!”

Only Mr. Quang could confirm the point about “climbing on top of her husband’s belly”; but climbing the mountain to pick mushrooms was common knowledge. Every day, the whole village weighed and counted. Each family had a notebook for record keeping; it was a competitive practice among families as well as a way to indirectly encourage effort; but oftentimes it only created jealousy. Thus, at the end of the mushroom season, those who pouted their lips and despised the girl “in the red-and-green shirt looking like a grasshopper” were all embarrassed and hung their heads in silence. The painter from the city had done better than all the local women. Many a time, children playing on village paths sang:

“Red blouse, green blouse.

It’s a grasshopper.

From where, from where,

Did you fly here?”

Mr. Quang understood how those old lines were picked to point to someone. His wife never wore a red shirt — the only color she liked being green — but the phrase “red blouse, green blouse” was used by villagers to expose women who paid extreme attention to their looks. By her own labor, his wife had the right to refute any defamer. As Mrs. Tu said: “From now on, to anyone with a loud mouth saying bad things, Auntie Ngan only has to take a stick and throttle their throat…”