“Please, sir. Have some while it’s still hot.”
“Thank you.”
He picks up a piece of the fried paste and tastes it in front of the anxious eyes of the young guard.
“It’s truly very delicious. This is the first time I have had this.”
The guard is beaming: “Fried mung bean paste is one of the most delicious vegetarian dishes. But they prepare it only on special occasions, for it’s rather time-consuming.”
“How do they do it?”
“First of all, they have to steam the mung beans as they would any steamed rice dish. After that, they have to pound it in a mortar to make it into a thick paste. You mix this paste with some starch so as to make it somewhat gluey. Then you add a pinch of salt and spices. You then mold it into patties and have them deep fried. Today, the abbess used peanut oil to fry them. But they would taste better if they were deep fried in sesame or sunflower oil.”
“How clever you are. You can become a chef anytime.”
“This morning I helped the abbess with pounding the mung beans, and I was able to hear her explain all sorts of vegetarian dishes.”
“It seems that life in a temple can be quite a rich experience, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“I ask only as a joke. Life for a monastic person is truly very simple. The difficulty lies in keeping and adhering to that simplicity.”
“Yes, sir.”
Knowing that the young man might not fathom what he had just said, the president pats him on the shoulder.
“Stop. You don’t have to stretch your mind fighting with these intellectual debates. Just trust that their lives are entirely different from ours.”
“Yes, sir,” the guard answers happily, as if he has just been able to rid himself of a big burden. He then takes away the food with an elated mien as if he were a general just coming home with a whole convoy of war booty. The president has finished the deep-fried mung bean paste, but did not touch the cook’s bowl of pork congee.
Only a few seconds later, the guard can be heard loudly laughing on the other side of the patio. He cannot see him because of the unceasing movement of the white clouds floating across it, which are like a band of God’s oxen being herded over a fairy meadow. Those white oxen keep walking past his eyes. Suddenly, his solitary situation meshes with those white clouds to send a chill through his heart. The president is taken aback; never has he felt such terrible solitude as he does today. A strange loneliness to the point of crunching chill, of limb paralysis. Lonely as if there were an invisible net dropping on him, tying him up in its cruel mesh. He becomes short of breath. He feels that he cannot endure even one more minute of this crushing loneliness even though all his life he has had solitude as his constant companion. He suddenly shudders with fear.
“How can I be so weak? Is it because of old age that I have become a stranger to myself, a miserable person even in my own eyes?”
So he berates himself. While sipping his tea, he looks into the bottom of the cup, trying his best to find in the gently rocking yellowish water an association, a memory about streams, a thought of long ago about tea parties, thin wisps of steam that wave over still hot dishes. Anything that would make him forget his solitude. But that is impossible. For his solitude is the twin of his forgetting. The more you forget and run away, the more solitude comes back to haunt you: two garrotes tightening around his neck.
He stands up; if he were to stay seated he would suffocate. Throwing his long coat on his shoulders, he walks out. As soon as he opens the door, the white clouds rush to his face, wetting it. The large tiles under his feet slush with water as if rain had just fallen.
From the other side of the temple, the guard yells: “Please go in, Mr. President. It’s very cold.”
The guard flies across the patio and takes hold of his waist as he is about to descend the stairs.
“Mr. President, please go back inside.”
“Oh no. I get a headache sitting inside the whole time. Besides, I have to go and say thanks to the abbess for her deep-fried patty.”
“Mr. President, it’s already a great honor that your chopsticks touched our vegetarian food. You don’t really need to come over.”
It is a nun speaking, her loud voice reverberating from the other side of the cloud. She is only a couple of dozen steps away but he can’t see her through the white fog. It is truly a setting from the extremities of a mountain. Only when he puts his feet on the threshold of the middle temple building can he see that the nun is sitting and pounding betel leaves for the abbess. Before he can say anything, the abbess walks out and says, “Please, Mr. President, please go right in because it is very cold. Should you by mishap catch a cold, we would not know what to do to redeem ourselves in the eyes of the people.”
“Please, you are even older than I,” the president replies, walking inside.
The nun abandons the mortar and steps in right after him, closing the door. The screeching sounds of the closing door startle him. Then he realizes how familiar this screeching sound was to him in his youth. The old wooden houses were all built on the same model, and the sound of the doors screeching on their wooden posts makes him sad, thinking of days long gone.
The abbess asks him to sit down facing her, on an antiquated ironwood chair, which despite its age is still very strong with a patina that reflects like a mirror. The guard sits behind him, on a stool of woven rattan that the nun brings over to him. In the middle of the room, a brazier is crackling as it burns. From time to time, the nun takes a stick and pokes around so as to make the coal burn red. The whole room gives an air of simple warmth and antiquity. The nun pours tea water into a set of rare Bat Trang cups to honor the guest. The nuns drink nu voi (lid eugenia) boiled with ginger.
The smell of the tea water brings back memories of his mother: “Venerable one, voi with ginger is very flavorful. Do you use this refreshment also during the summer?”
“Mr. President, in summer we consume fresh tea leaves or dried mum petals.”
She turns to the nun: “You have mung bean pudding for dessert. Why don’t you offer some to the president?”
“I am sorry, venerable teacher. I am so forgetful.”
The nun goes to the next room, where the soft pudding is being kept for guests. He quietly looks after the woman in a long saffron dress, then vaguely thinks: “Why doesn’t she seek a family like so many other women? Is this place really a prayer hall or is it only a temporary shelter for her, somewhere to hide and forget a past of suffering, filled with unhappiness? A kind of surrender to Fate, just like me, an old king stuck in a hole on top of Lan Vu Mountain.”
The nun comes out with a dish of mung bean pudding topped with white cornstarch.
“Mr. President, would you taste this pudding, us poor nuns’ fare?”
“Thank you very much. I just had a taste of your deep-fried bean patty, it was excellent. I am sure your pudding must taste just as good.”
So saying, he takes up a piece of the pudding and bites into it. He then washes it down with a sip of the voi tea prepared with ginger. It was simply wonderful. He realizes this tea ceremony is helping to alleviate his depression. He looks up at the ancient wooden structure, wondering why it has taken him so long to visit this place. The tiled patio is like a wall separating the secular world from that of the monastery, and crossing it seems like crossing a frontier between two kingdoms that are, if not hostile, at least incompatible. Why should it be so?
“It’s truly delicious. This goes marvelously with voi tea.” He then laughs and adds: “I have been here more than a year, yet only today do I dare come into the temple. I didn’t realize what I was missing. Had I taken the liberty of troubling you sooner I would have had a taste of this pudding long ago.”