These dark thoughts he dared not express to anyone. An did not want to burden the minds of the two sisters, whom he loved more than he loved himself. He became a silent witness to all their happy and joyful and hopeful conversations.
“Will you go to the Presidential Palace tomorrow?”
“Yes. A driver will come for me at nine.”
“Have you thought really hard about what you will need to tell him?”
“There is not much to prepare. I will tell him only one simple sentence: since we have now both a boy and a girl, we need to legitimize our relationship before the law.”
“That will do. Tomorrow will be a busy day. I will prepare dinner earlier than usual, and you should remember to breast-feed the boy at eight.”
The following day was a Sunday. An took little Mui out in the morning, telling the two women that he would be home late. At lunch, he took his niece to a pho restaurant, then to the circus for the three o’clock matinee. After the circus, they went home. Little Mui went straight to sleep while he quickly gobbled down some food so he could get back to his barracks. He did not ask at all about how Little One’s meeting with the father of her children had gone. An still remembers the questioning look of his wife as she was ironing her sister’s dresses. As for Little One, she was so busy feeding the boy that she did not have time to worry about the unusual silence of her brother-in-law. Or it may have been that she was so filled with happiness and projections of the future that she was not paying much attention to what was going on around her.
An blamed himself for having been so strangely indifferent; an indescribable sadness was tearing him apart. So one day passed after another. Whether he was in training or out on exercises with the soldiers, An felt like he was living in a dream, as if his feet were not on the ground but walking in the clouds. He could not understand why. Sometimes his memories took him back to Xiu Village, with reflections on happy days. At other times memory took him back to That Khe town, to the school where he had stood way above the other students. Or he would picture the tea-fragrant house of his history professor, whose wife was a jasmine tea merchant. He had sometimes come by to help the family fold tea bags while listening to the professor tell all sorts of stories, both apocryphal ones and official ones from Chinese history or from Vietnam’s own dynasties, tales from the San Guo Ji (Romance of the Three Kingdoms) or Dong Zhou Lie Guo (The Vassal Countries of Eastern Zhou), which the professor knew by heart. At other times he felt his heart oppressed with a vague concern that was surrounding him like a gigantic spiderweb.
One Saturday evening, after military exercises, An grabbed a bicycle. After going only a few hundred meters, the front inner tube exploded. He found a repairman, who explained, “Sorry, Comrade. There is no way to fix it. You need a new one.”
“Please try real hard. We don’t live in a time when I can be given a new inner tube.”
“I already looked carefully. I promise you: if I can’t fix it, no one can. That’s guaranteed.”
There was no option but to take the bike back to camp and borrow one that usually carried food. Because the food bike had priority, its inner tubes were always new. The food team lent him the bike on the condition that it be returned the next day at noon so that they could have enough time to get to the afternoon market. After arguing awhile, An was able to extend the time to 3:30. That would give him enough time to take Mui to see the music and dances of the town’s youth group. Content with his victory, An hurriedly pedaled to Hanoi. By the time he arrived, the streetlights were already on. Mui was not standing on the balcony waiting for him as usual; he was definitely late, he thought to himself as he walked the bike through the long hall under dim lights. In the yard, he saw little Mui playing with two other kids, the grandchildren of an old lady in the neighborhood. Seeing him, the little girl rushed out to kiss his cheeks.
An wanted to take the girl to the house, but the old neighbor said, “Just leave her here to play…her mother told me so…”
This seemed odd, but An didn’t feel comfortable asking anything further of the old lady. He went upstairs, where the two women were waiting for him by a tray table with food. Seeing their faces, he understood half of the truth, but he said, laughing, “You must be about to faint from hunger, right? Sorry I’m late. Let me wash my face and then we can eat. I had to borrow the bike from the food team; mine has a burst inner tube.”
“The army doesn’t even have enough inner tubes to use?” his wife asked.
“Inner tubes are rationed for all government-issue bikes. And the priorities do not extend to shirts, underwear, rice, and food. What do you have to feed me today?” An said, changing the subject.
Dong replied, “Today I made banana shoots with steamed pork and Vietnamese shrimp paste.”
“Next meal, I suggest you cook traditional sour beef soup.”
“People say that the sour beef soup of Lang Son is better than ours in That Khe, because they add spices to the broth — grilled onion and ginger, cinnamon, star anise, and other things — as secret ingredients. If you want, when I am free I will go to Mam Street to try it out. After eating it a few times I will figure out the recipe.”
“Yes, why don’t you try that? Lang Son sour soup has been famous for a long time.”
Thanks to this dialogue, they were able to forget temporarily all the troubles and finish their meal. But when tea was served, he could not pretend to be cheerful. The gigantic spiderweb encircling them was pulling tight its choking threads. He was the male, the eldest of the family; he must be the first one to speak the truth:
“Now, let’s deal with our issue. I am waiting to hear.”
Little One was still silent but his wife said, “On Sunday, the issue was presented to the president; he agreed but had to wait for the consensus of the Politburo. On Monday the subject was brought up because that was the day of a regularly scheduled meeting. But the president’s idea was not accepted. Not one supporting vote.”
“For what reason?”
“Because they do not want the president to have his own family. They want the president to be only the elderly father of all the people. Thus…thus, that was the resolution of the Politburo.”
“They forced the president to accept their decision? Or did the president want to follow them?”
Dong remained quiet. Neither his wife nor Little One could reply. But An wanted to get to the core of the issue. He asked Little One:
“You saw the Old Man what day after that meeting?”
“Friday. Around eleven a.m., the president sent a car to pick me up.”
“How did he explain it?”
“The president said that, by Party principle, the minority has to surrender to the majority.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said that he knows I have suffered lots of disappointments…that we have to be patient and live in the shadows for a while to wait for an opportune moment to persuade the Politburo members.”