Duong Huong - The Zenith

“With the condition…”

Oh, what a supreme and impossible dream for a father and a mother!

Though in pain as if each segment of his intestines had been cut, Vu realized that his hope was every day moving farther away. Moving away toward infinity. In this bitterness, each day his son more and more resembled Tung, Van’s spoiled younger brother. From appearances, this resemblance drew surprised comments from both families. First, the nose spread too large on the face, with both nostrils large and thick, and with a tip shaped like a garlic clove, always shiny. Then two tiny eyes under extremely bushy brows, the kind people call “caterpillar brows.” Due to his appetite he very quickly grew fat. The fatter he got, the more prominent became his cheeks, erasing all remnants of his once attractive youthful features. Vu did not much believe in the art of physiognomy, but his son’s appearance gave him despair because, from experience, he knew that physical changes to one’s features are often followed by changes in one’s spiritual life and one’s morale. Not much later, his suspicions were proved right. During grade school, Vinh had always been ranked as an outstanding student. Crossing over to the first year of high school, he dropped to the rank of only an average student. The very next year, he fell into the category of “special needs students,” and it was all downhill from then on. Vinh was often written up, and his wife had to visit the teachers almost daily. Vu noticed that his wife always brought gifts along, some that he had bought when abroad on official business; some from the countryside, where special local delicacies were available such as garden-raised chickens, fresh ocean crabs and shrimp wrapped in banana flowers, fresh fruit, and homemade candied fruit.

Once, he couldn’t help telling his wife: “You’re going to spoil our son one hundred times over if you keep doing this. Vinh doesn’t have any inner drive. I’ve seen it many times: he pokes his head into the packages you bring to the teachers, like a circusgoer, careless, as if it’s all a joke. He seems to think that he can spend his energies having a good time and being stupid while his parents do everything to give him a life. Please stop it; if you don’t, your son will become a totally useless person like his uncle. That ugly resemblance is already on display.”

Blushing red from her face down to her legs and arms, his wife turned around and lamented: “I know that my family is inferior to yours. My brother was a dumb student. Why didn’t you pick a wife who was well educated, with writing covering her from head to toe?”

“Don’t be petty and proud. You should think seriously about our son’s future. To do that we need to look straight at the truth. The truth is that the more Vinh grows up, the more he likes to play around. His uncle Tung comes by to take him out at any time. And you keep protecting both of them. To study like this, sooner or later he will be a social misfit.”

“Nobody in this family is a social misfit. Don’t be too strict with your son. He is a stubborn child, so we have to pick a certain way to bend him. Look around. How many successful people passed through this kind of naughty childhood? There are illiterates who became successful. It is said, ‘A good horse often has flaws…’”

Vu was forced into silence. Fed up but silent. What else could he say? He felt powerless. What could he do to turn the situation around?

The child was their joint product, but her contribution was the larger. All during the pregnancy, she vomited and always felt sick. Her pregnancy was a thousand times more difficult than that of others. She was not born for getting pregnant and giving birth. This boy child was her life’s lucky lottery. There would not be a second chance. For seventeen years she had often been pregnant but then miscarried. She would miscarry one month and become pregnant again a few months later. This unhappy sequence kept on repeating, to the point where her family and even her colleagues thought of her going to the maternity clinic like a common chore. No pregnancy survived its fourth month. With the magical assistance of heaven and earth, when she was forty-one, at the age that ends all women’s hope of becoming a mother, she succeeded in having Vinh. That was why, for her, this child was like a king without a throne. The peculiar thing was that this circumstance could turn around entirely a mother’s point of view. During the early years of their courtship, Van often showed open contempt for her brother by referring to him as “Tung the pig.” Now that their own son so resembled “Tung the pig,” her feelings for her brother grew more affectionate and tender. But for Vu, each time he watched uncle and nephew chat, or play around, or flirt, or eat, he could not but feel terrified. A man past his forties with no beard and a teenager with thick bushy hair around the lips. Both had fleshy, bloated faces. Both had such bushy eyebrows that their eyes were left as slits hiding in shadowy darkness. Both had a voluptuary’s gaze when their eyes gauged a young girl or a woman. A horselike, hissing laugh was identical in both and so unbearable that he had to leave. At twelve his son already had a fat belly, just like his uncle in his youth on the day when Vu had set foot on the threshold of Mrs. Tuyet Bong, the village seller of fish sauce.

“How can we tell to which port life’s boat will sail? How could I have guessed my only son would inherit all the disgusting traits of his maternal family? I loved Van, believing that her essence flowed from her father, Mr. Vuong, the teacher, not knowing that along with the delicate and dainty traits of her father, she nevertheless was filled with the seeds of her mother’s character, that seller of fish sauce famous for her bad temper and unattractive presence. Is this marriage the greatest failure of my life? A failure without redemption?”

The Phu Luu district was known for its prosperity. When they reached their full-moon years, they were known as a handsome young man and a pretty gal. Then they were sent to Hanoi for middle school, dandy and sophisticated students with ironed clothing, well supplied by their families so that they might keep up with their peers. Romance happened easily when they all were in the same boat; she read a novel while he turned a newspaper’s pages. Romance also blossomed easily when they were together in summer camp as “boy scouts” and “girl scouts,” when they sang foreign songs such as “Serenade,” “Come Back to Sorrento,” or “Santa Lucia.” Furthermore, Van was pretty. She was known as the beauty queen of Phu Luu. And to top it off, both of them were at an age to dream of love. Moreover, they had no worries about making a living and the stormy wind of revolution had yet to touch them. Besides…

Oh! How many more such “besides” for him in resuming an analysis of a marriage some three decades old? But he remembers the first time he took her home to surprise his parents, in the style of young men in those days. His parents stood dumbfounded for a while before they were able to return the greeting of the beautiful guest who was such a good match for their son.

That night, his father called for him and gently told him: “Times have changed. Now nobody would dare marry off a son or daughter without their consent. I find this practice in harmony with what is right. But for one person to live with another is the most difficult thing in this world. Don’t forget that. Once you promise to live with a woman, you have promised to carry half of the responsibility for that person’s entire life. That is why you have to be careful.”

“Father, are you referring to Van’s family circumstances?” he somewhat passionately queried directly. “But the two of us have the same values. Even Van herself recognizes that her mother lacks proper virtue. Once Van admits this, she must know how to behave correctly.”