Duong Huong - The Zenith

At fifty, you know what Heaven plans for your destiny;

At sixty, act as you wish.

Stopping at the gate, he bent over to kiss Miss Ngan before he climbed into the carriage and whipped his horse into a trot. The sounds of the horse’s hooves, fast and hard, broke the calm rural air. In the pace of a horse that had been kept enclosed because of the rain, one sensed an uncontrollable force mixed with the unsettling danger of a freedom that had endured repression. Miss Ngan stood there to look at the carriage until it disappeared in the row of trees.

Most of the people in Woodcutters’ Hamlet stayed at home that morning. Many called out to one another to go up to work on the cassava fields, but in the end they dallied around home to launder piles of clothes, to rake up scattered hay, to clean and straighten up their rooms. Many things had mildewed after all the rain.

Close to noon, as the women were getting ready to cook lunch, loud footsteps were suddenly heard on the paths. First came small children; then curious teenagers; finally, villagers, men as well as women: all had dropped whatever they were doing to go gawk at “Miss Ngan being arrested.” They were neither hesitant nor shy about loudly calling out to neighbors, from the patio of one house to another, from this hedge to that one:

“Hey, do you know yet? Mr. Quang’s young wife has been arrested by the police. Let’s go see what is going on.”

“Hey, stop what you’re doing. Did you hear the news? Mr. Quang’s green-bloused girl has been grabbed by the neck!”

“What did she do to deserve this?”

“There was a warrant from the province saying she laundered money and specialized in scamming wealthy families.”

“Scamming Mr. Quang? That’s really insane. He doesn’t cheat, so how could there be such a silly thing?”

“Everybody knows he’s clever, is street smart, and has eaten with the best and worst. The important point is that he’s frustrated. His wife was sick for almost a year and then she died almost a year ago; when has he touched anyone?”

“Don’t believe that. He traveled widely and often; there was no lack of women.”

“You think it’s easy? Why don’t you try it?”

“Why do I have to try? With my wife at home, anytime is a good time; I just lie down. I only worry that my strength isn’t enough for the game.”

“That is why you can easily exaggerate. Say your wife dies, I dare you to touch the clam of your neighbor. They would slash your throat with a knife.”

“There is no lack of singles and widows.”

“Single like Vui? I invite you to try! Widows like Huong with the chicken pox face and Lan with infected eyes down in the lower section? If you will play there, I will treat you to three feasts with wine and steamed rooster in rice. Well, will you do it?”

“Nah, not those women. I pass.”

“That’s life: either too high or too low. The ones you like: off limits. With a bed or a mat all ready, one cannot even stick it up. Therefore, frustration. Frustrated like that, when a girl as beautiful as a fairy appears and prepares a pipe, even the most saintly ones would succumb, no less Mr. Quang.”

“I don’t see a con artist behind her face.”

“How can one know the inside of the dragonflies’ tangled nest? Those women who turned regimes upside down or destroyed families were and are always beautiful. Average women like your wife or plain ones like mine never get to eat more than rice husks; even if they wanted to cheat, it wouldn’t work.”

“All you do is think of sullied things.”

“I eat rice with salt and touch my knees, I tell the truth. I don’t talk flowery or curvy.”

“But I can’t believe Mr. Quang was scammed. It’s like the story of a rooster with four spurs or a horse with four manes.”

“Mr. Quang is really smart, but if you look at his background he is only a muddy-footed country person like us. Being good at networking and having all his life made his living elsewhere makes him sharp, but no matter how sharp you are, there comes a time when you must bow your head to that thing hanging in the crotch of your pants. Do you know the line used to humble intellectuals?”

“What do you mean by ‘intellectual’?”

“Those wearing long robes, with white feet and hands, the opposite of those like us who work with the hoe or cut wood, sporting short shirts and black feet. The saying goes: ‘First come the intellectuals, and second the farmers.’ Intellectuals are the literary ones, the gentlemen, all the high and low mandarins, and all those who administer the capital and the villages. Another saying: ‘Even when filled with literature and learning, if you’re obsessed with a cunt, you will still fall into big muddles.’”

“Really! I wouldn’t know.”

“If you don’t, then you must listen before you talk. What makes you think and insist that Mr. Quang cannot be fooled? Life is not as simple as you think.”

“Yeah, possibly.”

The villagers poured out into the streets to look at the young wife of Mr. Quang: she was cuffed at the elbow and led by some twelve men of the village militia, with rifles on their shoulders and faces as stiff as stone, with the police chief at their head. This display of force was not impressive, because their enemy was only one young woman, with no weapon in her hands, and tears of fear pouring down a pale but still so beautiful face. Walking behind were more than thirty curious youngsters, a volunteer audience and very attentive. Once in a while, a soldier wanting to show off the power of the government would turn around and shout aimlessly:

“Disperse, you hooligans; disperse!”

“Go home and study; this is none of your business.”

“Go, I tell you; go home!”

But all their threatening was like water off a duck’s back. The group of curious children ran alongside the police all the way to the village office, making a parade without drum and horn. At the office, they ran this way and that when they got shooed away, but when the militia guards were inattentive, they again impudently sneaked back to watch “Miss Ngan of Mr. Quang” being tied up, a scene that had not taken place in Woodcutters’ Hamlet since the land-reform years. They followed when she was led off to the cell in the village storehouse, a five-minute walk away. It was a small house, all closed up like a box with only one heavy wooden door locked by a huge key, with four walls of double brick and no opening or window for ventilation. Long ago that house had held tea for the governing mandarin. In the time of the land reform, the revolutionary government had used it to sequester powerful landowners. Once, more than ten people were detained in that closed space, eighteen square meters. One corner had ashes for a toilet. In the opposite corner was a broken vat holding drinking water for the prisoners. After the land-reform rectification campaign, there had been an order from the district to demolish the building, but the village chairman had second thoughts because it was still of some use. He had people come in to clean it up and paint it white to erase all the bitter memories and neutralize all the remaining stench. Since then the building had been used as a storehouse for the village, to keep tables, chairs, pots and pans, trays and basins, plates and bowls and teacups — all the objects needed for celebrations and receptions for official guests. The village literary group, operating only seasonally, also stored banners and signs there. In another corner, all mixed up, were drums without rim or with holes, two rusted horns, a guitar, two stringless mandolins, and a bunch of moth-eaten flags.