“Chief, please leave immediately, Leader Sau is waiting.”
Vu laid the briefcase on the desk and said slowly: “Who gives that order?”
The secretary looked up with big, round eyes and lowered his voice as if he had to whisper: “Leader Sau himself called by phone not ten minutes ago. He called not just once but twice.”
“He called twice because he likes to exercise his voice,” Vu replied.
But when he saw the shocked face of the secretary, confused and terrified, he quickly added: “Prepare my documents.”
“Yes, Chief. Leader Sau said that it’s a special meeting, so you don’t need to bring any documents as usual.”
“That’s fine.”
Vu put the leather briefcase in the cabinet, and folded some newspapers to bring along. He had planned on such reading to pass the time while driving. But once in the car, he felt anxious so he threw the stack of papers in a corner.
“What special development could have happened today?” Vu thought to himself. “For a long time he hasn’t called me urgently like this, not since the day when the pack of cards was flipped open.”
On getting out of the car, he passed the guards — bones and flesh standing as still as wooden statues, faces held up at a right angle, chests extended as ordered, rifles pointing straight up toward the sky. Their profession was to be just like that: a display of earthly force, a means of threatening and menacing outsiders. Such display was familiar to him, so why had he suddenly felt different, surprised and unfriendly? For a long time now, he had seen in this daily exhibit only a boring presentation. But today, he realized that it had been set up solely for him, designed to warn him alone. The emotionless faces of those wooden statues hid a danger that he couldn’t yet detect. As if there were some kind of unseen plot filling up space; as if there were some kind of suffocating gas in the air, or a snake’s venom, or a poison…an invisible killer slipping into his lungs. He abruptly turned around to look at the soldiers even after he had already stepped inside the garden. Then he tried to analyze his strange sensations but was unable to come up with any satisfactory explanation. In such a state, he walked through the garden full of vibrantly colorful spring flowers, while his mind searched in the midst of a dark tunnel of bewilderment and suspicion. Before climbing to the third floor, he glanced up and saw Sau already standing there, looking down on the garden. He waved at Vu. Vu’s face flushed as he thought that Sau might have witnessed him turning around and looking at the soldiers; and very likely had guessed at the secret thoughts being born in his brain. The soldiers were Sau’s, chosen by him, paid by him personally, and he personally designed their privileges and applied disciplinary fines. Those soldiers without question would follow his personal orders. That was a reality known to all.
Sau waited for him in the hall so that they could together walk into the reception room, which was very spacious, more like a place to play pool or ping pong. Next to some couches set beside one another, there was a table along the left wall, also ridiculously large, on which there were many assorted glasses and cups from different countries lined up in a long file for tea and filtered coffee. A young lad was busy there preparing drinks.
Stepping into the room, Sau ordered: “Stop, leave it all there.”
The servant disappeared at once like a ghost. Then Sau’s hand pointed him to a low armchair: “Sit down. Today I have business to take up with the Department of Foreign Affairs. I can’t receive you as long as usual. We shall work together quickly.”
Having already sat down, Vu stood up at once, saying: “If you are busy, I will leave. We can meet another time.”
“The matter is urgent; that’s why I summoned you so hurriedly.”
“Even if urgent, I will still work according to procedures. I don’t want to bother others. I don’t accept working in a patchwork manner.”
Sau stopped and looked at him attentively, as if stunned. Apparently nobody had dared talk with him that way for a long time. Apparently, too, it was very hard for him to swallow. And, apparently, he was not prepared to react to such a situation. An awkward moment passed.
He suddenly smiled: “Why, now, do you get angry so easily? In the past people said you were cool like Jell-O…”
“However you are born, you die the same way. That’s how it was put.”
Playfully, Sau shook his head: “That’s not true. Your character changes with time. I have changed, not to become angry like you, but more playful. There’s this interesting point…”
He started laughing loudly, a very delighted laughter: “What I am going to say is not easily understood by those like you who have Confucian blood running thick in you; in fact, it even seems absurd…Listen here…”
Sau approached close to his armchair, bent over, and laced each sentence with a delightful and unhidden malice: “In my old age, I suddenly like to look at pretty girls. It’s like cigarettes or pipes — you stop for decades then suddenly you crave them…If not for my work, each morning I would go to West Lake. There, at sunrise, groups of girls come to exercise and row boats, all of them about sixteen or seventeen, all pretty as if in a dream.”
As he finished talking, he turned and went to the table against the wall, to pour coffee into two black cups. Vu quietly looked at the crow’s-feet around his eyes, realizing he had aged even though he still had that big and tall body with a light skin, the gift of a princely body bestowed by heaven, that he usually assesses half seriously and half in jest during casual discussions: “My body has enough strength to hold twelve different lifetimes, with enough agility to serve thirty-six women with dedication, from nubile ones to middle-aged beauties.”
Behind every one of his jokes there is always someone buried in some deep forest corner, on some isolated trail, or in some dark prison cell. Vu looks at his pink, fat nape reaching up from the collar of his black shirt and wonders: “This morning, who is implicated in all these flirty jokes?”
Sau had come back with two cups of coffee in his hands. The aroma diffused throughout the room. He squinted and asked: “Don’t you find this coffee exquisite?”
Vu replied: “I’ve only smelled it, not yet tasted it.”
“Silly, you only need to smell coffee to know its quality. You are not yet a connoisseur.”
“I have never held myself out to be a connoisseur of anything. But, based on my experience, there are many foods that you only smell and don’t eat. Like fried fish marinated in poison, for example. When I was still living in the small town at home, I saw my neighbor bait a dog that way.”
“Ha, ha…” Sau burst into laughter, laughter that resonated throughout the room and then out into the hall. A girl poked her head in, then disappeared at once. Sau put a cup of coffee in front of him and said, “Drink…You do have a gift for argument…Really, I should have assigned you to run the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
“Really?” Now Vu also laughed. “Then correct the mistake; it’s still not too late…”
He started to sip his coffee.
On the other side of the table, Sau also began to drink quietly. A huge gold ring on his fourth finger, about the size of a railroad screw head, reflected on the black glaze of the imported cup.
Vu ponders as he looks at the twinkling reflection on the porcelain glaze. Black coffee in a black cup. How exquisite! You really should be an interior decorator for private homes or a painter for the stage. That way fewer people would die unjustly. Meanwhile, Sau had put his cup on the table and stretched out against the low armchair. The collar of his black shirt contrasted with his fair and pink complexion, still full of sensuality even though blotted with age spots. He likes the color black. He has dozens of black shirts. In receiving foreign guests or when appearing before the people, he has to wear white shirts and suits, but on other occasions he always wears black shirts. This is a preference worth noting. It could be his careful way of grooming, caring for his smooth skin. It also could be to create an image of a gangster in black dress or of historical martial artists dressed in black. No one dares to discuss this openly, except Vu. One time, he opened the topic, going on the attack: