Duong Huong - The Zenith

Every family — classy or humble, rich or poor — counts on the relationships between generations as the most reliable protection for their lineage. Maternal love, like paternal concern, has always been regarded as humanity’s most sacred emotion. Right after birth, a child hears this lullaby:

A father’s work is like the Taishan mountain;

A mother’s devotion is like water from a spring.

This cradle song will be repeated over and over throughout childhood. And when the child becomes a young man or woman, on their wedding day — the most auspicious day of their life — he or she must kneel before the altar to the ancestors and honor those who gave it life and nurture. This ritual demonstrates appropriate respect and gratitude; this ritual gives a warrant to filial piety.

Circumstances change. Weddings under the revolutionary authority have no betel nuts, firecrackers, or silk scarves. Enamored, boys and girls just glance at each other the night before; the next morning they make an announcement to the whole community, to the Party, to various groups, or to the women’s committee of the village. Parents now have no opportunity to say anything, the children having already received an official seal on their marriage license. As soon as the ink dries, all the groups stand up to make announcements and speeches, advising the newlyweds to be unified, to be conscientious in their work, to execute all the duties to the nation and the family. After that, it’s peanut brittle candy with green tea in lieu of large or small wedding banquets; hand clapping replaces red firecrackers and silk scarves. People must bend their heads before power and its new protocols. But revenge hides in the silent shadows. And when the time comes, scores are settled.

Thus, the nightmare of the young child in the middle section poured a tempest of fear and anger into the villagers’ souls. Except for the demented, no one would want a child to turn around and put a knife in their parents’ back. Those who are parents usually sacrifice without reservation so that their children can benefit from food and education, and can become “somebody” better than themselves. We have been taught for many generations that only a mother pig would roll over on her piglets; only a bitch would fight over her chow with her puppies; and that humans cannot behave in such ways. It is parental sacrifices like that that entitle them to demand filial piety from their children. This self-evident logic, shaped by natural laws, always succumbs to a destructive reality. The dream of moral reciprocity is indeed large like the sea, but the reality of human love, of selflessness, is like a meandering river flowing between low and narrow dikes. For years, life proceeds as the water flows between the two banks of hope and deception, of trust and mistrust, of love and resentment. Similar to the earth turning around the sun: an endless motion, a nonstop rotation until the day when the cosmos becomes some insane spirit’s pile of ashes in its last turn. Trapped by the law of this tireless rotation, we must salvage our self-confidence in the moments of greatest danger. Without faith — even insane faith — how can there be life? Rural people need to protect their homes; they need to trust that their children will become aware of their sacrifices, that they will become filial ones meriting all the hardship, the weariness, and the devoted sacrifices of so many years. Parents need a warranty that, one day, when they lie in the coffin, the children who follow behind the hearse will shed tears of genuine love and not cry just because they have to perform for the sake of the neighbors or just because they want to pay back the expenses of the household and the patio and the money left for them. Parents need to be compensated with fairness, just as love should be compensated by love.

At its start, the drama of Mr. Quang’s family was only an entertaining opera, but slowly it evolved into a clandestine tragedy, more exciting by the minute, resonating with the perpetual worries simmering behind the doors of so many households. When the “mother fighting child” nightmare of young Hoa in the middle section happened, the gnawing and hidden anxieties in people’s souls suddenly burst over the community like a storm, and people changed the name of the “mother fighting child” nightmare into that of “father-son blood fight” to better reflect reality.

The “father-son blood fight” had mysterious elements that could not be explained. The village police chief himself, after being questioned for “acting in a sloppy, mechanical manner, not clear minded and after careful investigation,” recounted that when he came to Mr. Quang’s house to read the order and ask that Miss Ngan demonstrate the legality of her relationship with Mr. Quang, the young wife had spoken loudly:

“We are legally married. I will show you the marriage license.”

Her voice had been decisive. Then she had hurriedly gone into an inner room and unlocked the imposing, three-compartment cabinet made from heavy wood to look for the paper. Her confidence had disturbed the police chief, because if her marriage was indeed legitimate then the order to arrest Miss Ngan as a prostitute would be false. In such a situation, he would be charged with the crime of being accessory to a fraud and harassment of a citizen. His heart had started to pound. But the more Miss Ngan searched, the more desperate she became. In the end the frightened woman cried out:

“Who has stolen my marriage license? I swear with you all that we had registered properly in Khoai Hamlet; my own uncle, the village chairman, did the paperwork.” But then all her screaming and crying were useless because the police chief and his militiamen posse believed that their order to act was indeed legitimate, and, if it was a legitimate order, they had to punish an “immoral woman who undermined society’s wholesome moral values.”

The strange thing was that once the district reported to the provincial police, the latter had immediately dispatched agents to release Miss Ngan from detention. At that same moment Mr. Quang had brought their marriage license back to his young wife. It was he himself who had taken it and not some unknown burglar. No one dared ask about these unusual developments but it was the subject of universal gossip. Some advised that Mr. Quang had guessed events beforehand and lured his son into a trap. Others believed that Mr. Quang had taken the marriage license from fear that his son would steal it and destroy it. The imposing cabinet was an heirloom from prior generations, and as the firstborn son Quy had the right to keep a key. The father’s carefulness had unintentionally coincided with the bitter son’s effort to humiliate his stepmother, who was the same age as his own daughter. Some people thought that what had happened had been crafted by some devil or divine spirit, as no right-minded child would have behaved as Quy had. Furthermore, because no ordinary father would have harmed his own son. That this had occurred is what people in the past would have called a “witches’ brew” and this family must have had connections with the world of spirits, for that was how such unusual things happened. The mother had been captured by a hungry ghost; now the son had been blinded by a devil. All acted insanely as if they were manipulated by a wicked witch, or an invisible demon. They were moving corpses, or wooden puppets under strings manipulated by a world of ghosts.

There was no lack of theories or shortage of analysis. The war of chattering mouths dragged on for days, for months. But everyone shared one sentiment: fear of a devastating reality, a reality that shook the hearts of all parents. They tried to find the truth.