But they could also be crying real tears.
“Tears mixed with salt really will roll down from their eyes, because they will cry first of all over their fate. Because they know for sure that someday they, too, will go down to the grave, the last place for every human life. A place for gathering in — common to all — that none of us can miss. There, they will have to face me!”
That thought makes him shake his head, depressed. He quickly drinks a sip of tea because he fears the soldiers will notice his mood. They would think that he has lost his self-confidence, has become an old, enfeebled patient. Many times in the past he had passed on the streets of Paris old people who walked while talking or laughing to themselves. He thought: “Pity to watch the old ones.”
Now could such pity be directed his way? A muffled laugh rises in his thoughts: “If only I could laugh to myself and talk to myself as they did!..But — the worst thing is that I don’t even have that much freedom. Even worse, my memory is not fatigued from traveling over the years. It refuses to sink into the fog. It does not want to fade with age. The biggest punishment for a person is to have their old body house a sharp memory. Memory forces me to live in hell day after day. Memory is the one who builds you a permanent court of justice. Memory is the one at your side from whom you cannot run nor can you dare repudiate. Without our memories, would not life be lighter?”
He bends his head to continue drinking tea, looking at the yellow liquid that resembles the color of the curry he had eaten before he had left Guangzhou in China. The rest house at Guangzhou — a vacation that had been exactingly prepared like a contemporary over-the-top Broadway play. The whole time he had been there, the cook had made only Vietnamese and Chinese dishes. For his last meal, the Chinese cook had gotten the idea of cooking Indian food for a treat, knowing that he was soon to leave. The meal had been good. Before getting on the helicopter he could still taste the flavor of curry mixed with oil in the rice. It made the color of the dish quite attractive: a smooth and shiny yellow, a color depicting warmth or happiness.
A military helicopter had taken him that night back to Hanoi. They had told him they had to use a helicopter to fly real low and so avoid the antiaircraft defenses. War often turns misjudgment into farce. To ensure his safety, they had been forced to use a ragged, obsolete piece of machinery.
The pilot had seemed nervous, even agitated. He wanted to say something but stopped. The president had looked at the soldier and immediately felt confident.
“I have ridden in carts drawn by buffalo. Riding in your plane is a luxury. Don’t worry.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot had replied, then sat down at the controls. The president’s four bodyguards had sat at each of the four corners as specified. The flight began. When the helicopter had risen up the necessary height over Guangzhou, it had shaken and bumped around like a buffalo cart rolling over crumbling mountain roads. The moving air around them was like many waves continuously dropping down, mixing in with the clouds. The night was ink black. He could see only a vast black space, with no moon or stars. And so they had flown in silence to the next zone. But once the helicopter had crossed the border, tracer antiaircraft rounds shot up, plowing narrow lines of red fire. Each time, those lines of fire had come closer. He knew that they had entered the no-fly zone defended by the antiaircraft units in the northeast area, from Lao Cai to Quang Ninh. The pilot brought the helicopter down under the red streaks made by the tracer bullets. His stress had caused his eyes to bulge out from his face and sweat to roll profusely down his nape, soaking the collar of his uniform. Sweat had also run down to his hands. The president still remembers the image of those hands, thick and firm, with hair on top and on the last knuckles of the fingers. He recalls fixating on those hands, as did his bodyguards. They had been unable to do anything but breathe anxiously and glue their eyes on the hands of the pilot. That had been the longest plane ride in his life. Each minute going by had been an anxious one — listening to the puffing sound of the old engine, waiting to see what would happen. The pilot and the four very young guards dared not say anything: he knew fear had turned them so stonily silent.
Finally, the pilot breathed a sigh of relief and showed him the Long Bien bridge. He tilted his head to look through the glass to see the familiar bridge in the faded light of a city during wartime. Without turning his head backward, he said, “Inform the president: we will land in a few minutes.”
Hesitating a little, he had continued: “If nothing special happens.”
The president had replied, “If something special happens or not, one person is in charge. On this plane you are the pilot, not me.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot answered, eyes looking straight ahead. At that moment, the helicopter started to circle. The soldiers, who had just begun to relax, now again were afraid, and their worry contaminated the small cabin.
The plane circled a second time, then a third.
Silence weighed heavy in the air. Strangely, however, at that moment a calm suddenly came over him followed by a playful smile.
“Certainly, every game has to end. At least, the people will see the last scene of this play. Won’t that have some benefit?”
The pilot suddenly turned around and spoke: “Mr. President, the landing lights are placed in the wrong position.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, Mr. President, one hundred percent.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that if we land based on the landing lights as positioned, the plane will fall right in the middle of Dinh Cong Lake.”
He was quiet; he could almost hear the wild beating in the chests of the four guards. After a few minutes, he asked, “Have you been flying for a while now?”
“Mr. President, not quite as long as some others but I know all the airports of the country like the palm of my hand,” he replied with the determined manner of one who is cautious and has a sense of responsibility.
The president was satisfied, because from the start he had trusted this person, a soldier among thousands whom he had met only for the first time. He smiled and said, “In the old days, great weavers wove in the dark. They only needed to hear the sound of the shuttle and the tempo of the thread bobbins to know what was going to happen. The palace selected outstanding weavers for the court using this criterion. We call such proficiency a test that challenges the skills of expertise. I find you are a good pilot. Therefore, just use your expertise.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot replied. He finished flying his fourth circumnavigation then began to set the helicopter down in the middle of a pitch-dark area. Suddenly, the guard on the president’s left grabbed his arm and squeezed, half in seeking comfort and half in wanting to protect him from danger. The grabbing fingers — hard as nails — hurt him, but quietly he bore the pain. Then they heard the wheels touch ground.
The pilot had turned around to ask, “Mr. President, should we keep the lights on or turn them off?”
“Keep them on to give us light,” he had replied.
Right then, like magic from a devil or a saint, an entire building materialized before their eyes: the central building of the military airport. All the glass windows were brightly lit but no one could be seen. By instinct, he turned toward the line of landing lights, and caught the gaze of the pilot at the same time. This row of lights was placed along the lake. Black-painted steel posts kept them off the surface of the water. The instant when they clearly could see the scene was when all the lights were turned off like the torches of flying ghosts. At the same time, the large doors of the central building of the military airport had opened wide. Out from the hangar had stepped a group of people, eight in alclass="underline" Ba Danh, Sau, four bodyguards, and two others, for sure high-ranking cadres at the airport.