“When he said that, how did his face look?”
“I don’t remember, because I was bent over, wiping my tears.”
“Was he smiling or crying?”
“The president was also crying. He held me and said, ‘They really lack compassion, they have no empathy for us.’”
“‘Us’ here is who?”
Little One looked at him as if she did not understand what he was trying to say.
An answered himself: “‘Us’ here means he, you, and the two kids. To speak naturally: four individuals in one family. If it were a normal family, then it would be a complete family.
In the same instant, another bitter question arose in his mind: “Unfortunately there is another and different ‘us.’ That ‘us’ is a small group that includes me, my wife, and you — three related people who cannot be separated; a relationship that is living and intimate. This relationship stands outside the president’s awareness as well as his concern. But ironically, what happens to him will strike our heads like the sword of destiny. It will not bring on glory or wealth but, for sure, nothing but painful loss. Intuition never lies to us.”
He looked at Little One’s sad eyes and his heart hurt. What would he do now? What could he do to salvage the situation, to protect his loved ones from the wicked wind? He: the only man in this tiny family. Why did destiny push them to this point? An felt suffocated. He stood up to open the windows facing the yard. He turned around and said:
“Dear one: now we must be calm to think. I do not clearly understand the Politburo’s intentions. In the past vigilance was needed when a king became too enamored of a queen. Especially when the king was old and the wife was young and beautiful. The worry of our national leaders is based on the corrupting experiences of history: Duong Minh Hoang was passionate about Duong Qui Phi; Tru Vuong was enamored with Dat Ki. In our history, General Trinh Sam was passionate with Dang Thi Hue. But all these cases are totally different from our situation. All these beauties of Chinese kings lived in luxury with silks and precious jewelry. Each step Duong qui Phi took was on a water lily made of gold. Dat Ki’s castle was decorated with silk and brocade and each of her meals was worth several taels of gold and her coach was carved from jade and made with gold from its cushions to its roof. Then, court mistress Dang Thi Hue of our country, relying on Lord Trinh Sam’s love for her, freely abused gold and silver, brought many relatives to the court, and covered for her brutal brother Dang Mau Lan. Wherever he went, Mau Lan robbed people of their wealth. Whomever he met, women or young girls, if they pleased his eyes, he would order his soldiers to set up curtains in the middle of the marketplace so he could rape them over and over. Whoever dared resist, he would kill them right then. His brutality and troublemaking angered both the people and the court officials. Many complaints submitted to the king requesting punishment for Mau Lan were all ordered by his relative in the palace, Mau Phi, to be torn up or burned. In the end, an officer stabbed him to death then voluntarily turned himself in to Trinh Sam. In contrast to those three cases, we have no connection to luxury or brutality. We live here like below-average people. I am the only male in this family, and I have never robbed or raped anyone. Your children were born in the most plebeian of clinics, with no medical staff from the president’s office. Little Mui and her sibling have grown up just like any other kid in a low-level cadre’s family. We have never had any benefit or advantage; we have never touched any property or power of the state. How can they treat us like this?”
Nobody could answer him. Both women cried gently, their heads lowered. An understood that no one could answer him other than heaven itself, but only if heaven would be moved by compassion for their situation. But he had never encountered such a heavenly being. The various spirits and the souls of all the ancestors that they worship were often mere smoke that floated over the altars on New Year. Now he did not know where to find the mind of heaven.
“Do you dare ask the Old Man directly about what I have said?” An asked, his voice rising, and Little One cried louder, her sobbings more pronounced. His wife looked at him, begging. Anger continued to overflow in him as a pot of rice soup comes to a boil on a simmering fire.
“Little One, you must ask him for clarity, for your life, and the life of your children.”
“I did ask, but the president said he must live as an example. And that, if I love him, I have to accept that. And when the two children grow up, the situation will change.”
“When the kids grow up? Heavens, he is now over sixty! Will we have to wait for him to get to be eighty in order to live in an official manner with the people? How sad for our Little One! How bitter for the children of an old king! Our nephews — kids who, whether they like it or not, are related by a blood tie…”
Then another question rushed to him that he could not suppress: “Dear one: Do you truly love him?”
Little One looked at him, perplexed: “What are you asking?”
“I want to ask if you truly love him or do you love him just because he is the country’s president?”
“I love the president…I love…” she replied, then burst into stronger sobbing.
Dong looked at him, angry: “What’s the matter with you? Did a horsefly bite you?”
“No,” An replied awkwardly. He realized that his anger had pushed him too far. Perhaps he had wished for his sister-in law to have a different destiny. The strings of a tragic destiny had tied her up with an old king — an old king she happened to love. Love is so tauntingly unsettled! Not because he was someone with high position but foremost because he was a good husband, even though only a husband on occasion.
“Is this old man a good talker, a great flirt with women?” he wondered to himself, but immediately he intuited that this old king was not a good talker in that way but was able to move Little One’s heart with soft and passion-ate words that younger men couldn’t summon forth; that he could make her love him by tender and sweet gestures that locals were incapable of performing — all the foreign manners that he had acquired from the West. Such strength was not that of a hunter who raises his rifle to aim at his prey, because it was not intended to harm the prey but only sought to conquer its heart. Such strength was shapeless but he sensed it forcefully as if it were a fire burning. Such strength he had held in his hands as well. He thought back to warm nights in Xiu Village, when he would return from the town of That Khe. In the spacious house with dancing light full of neighbors, his uncle would have prepared a large container of wine. The deep wooden tray would be full of savory appetizers along with cakes and fruit. His aunt would have roasted a basketful of sunflower seeds before preparing tea to serve the guests. The neighbors, old and young, would sit around the room. Standing in the center, the student would recount all the stoic, pastoral, and magic stories of the lowlands as well as ones from other mountain regions — the complete warehouse of knowledge that his teacher in the district school had handed down to him. His uncle, sitting next to him, would give him a look both loving and proud, bending his head to conceal his pride from the guests. His uncle was renowned for his salve made of tiger, bear, and deer horn gelatin. Knowledgeable and wealthy people everywhere would come for gobs of the thick, pasty ointment produced in his house. The very money the uncle had made from selling those jellied ointments had been used to pay for seven years of An’s education. But when hearing An praise the sound of a Truong Luong flute or comment on the death of Quan Van Truong or describe the Bach Dang battle with a shout of “Sat That,” the uncle would feel the admiration of those who are illiterate before one who is fluent in reading and writing. And that admiration walked very close to the edge of fear or passion. The conquering power gained by becoming cultured had been the most important conditioning agent during An’s youth, even though he had been only a secondary student. An understood that all he knew was only one small grain of sand compared with the president, who had traveled to the four corners of the world for twenty years, who spoke both Chinese and Western languages. His stored intelligence was thousands of times larger than his own, and thus, that Little One loved him was not a strange thing.