“Yes, you are a thousand times capable and powerful. But nonetheless, you came into this family’s home after me. Before the ancestral altar of the two women, I have the right to light incense. Now, under these circumstances, my wife and I are those who will care for your offspring. In the end, you will be indebted to us, dear old king.”
That evening passed ponderously. Later in bed, Dong held him tight. They made love in a quiet way, like their first time by the stream of Son Ca Falls, at the age of fifteen with all the welling up of a wild and boiling zeal. He slept till nearly noon the next day. When he woke, his wife had gone to market and Little One had taken the two kids down to the yard to play with the old lady neighbor. An opened the window wide to look at the three of them playing under the old tree. His eyes were glued to that scene but his mind was all foggy, and totally empty; not one thought appeared distinctly. Not one feeling could he put into words. An felt that he had become a wooden statue that could walk around and talk, but was devoid of feelings. He remained in that unreal state for a long while until his wife returned. Dong put the food basket on the floor and looked attentively at her husband. Then, as if feeling his strange mental state, she took him into the bedroom, where she held his head gently, pressing it against her bosom. Her familiar warm flesh and the tender softness of his love made him slowly rise from the cold water of his emotional numbness. He burst into tears. He cried loudly like a woman; painfully, like one who is hungry and cold; he cried like a child lost in a train station.
4
The following Saturday, An would have no time to cry.
As he pedaled his bike up to the house, three soldiers dressed in civilian clothes, including Nong Tai, the only Tay tribesman in the security guards, looked at him with dark eyes like those of the monster bats that live in deep caves. It was as if their gaze contained a frightening but silent scream, a suppressed fear. An nodded his head in greeting, then walked to the corridor. Those dark looks from the security guards followed him, withering his spine like a kind of hot, molten lead. But his heart did not pound hastily as before. A week had been enough for him to have thought about and planned for all contingencies that could happen to his family. The treasury of history stored in his memory helped him prepare to act. Stepping inside the house, An closed the doors behind him tightly and was surprised to find the two women holding each other and crying. It was all they could do. Their cries were ones of fear and rage. It was no longer sadness over their destiny but the reproachful lament of those who had been stampeded, raped, who live in fear before a death that slowly approaches like a hearse that will someday haul them away. An stepped forward, not waiting for the women to speak. He saw right away the swollen, purple, beaten face of Little One. He sat down, holding her arms and pulling up her shirt to see the scratches, bruises, and scars left by the ropes.
“Who tortured you?”
“Quoc Tuy!”
“The minister of the interior? The one who ambushed you when you were at the northern front?”
Little One nodded.
An turned to his wife and asked, “Where were you then?”
“I was in the yard with the children and the old neighbor. As I stepped inside the house, he chased me back into the yard. I could not resist because he pulled out his gun and threatened to shoot out my brains if I screamed.”
“Even if you screamed, it would only be heard by the old lady and the three guards. It is not without reason that they arranged for all of you to be in this house. That miserable bastard came here what day?”
“He came every day from Monday until today. Each time at about three in the afternoon. Each time he ordered the soldiers out to the streets to stop anyone who might enter the corridor. Each time they beat and tied up our sister.” Then his wife screamed: “It is so humiliating, Husband.”
Holding the smooth arms of Little One, he asked, “What did he say to you, that dog from the highlands?”
“He said he had had eyes for me since the resistance, when he met me crossing the stream; that if I were smart, I would have agreed to be his wife since that day; that he had sworn that, sooner or later, he would have me.”
“Then what?”
“I told him I am the wife of the president; that we have a son and daughter, that he cannot rape me. He showed his teeth, laughing that the old man of mine was far away; that he wouldn’t hear my screams. Here he is the king, he said; he can have whomever he wants. If he wants to kill someone, the person will be killed. Now he wanted me to lie under his belly. Because that was the Politburo’s order. The Politburo had decided that I will be his wife. ‘Think about it,’ he said, ‘I am much younger than that old man of yours. If his stick is made of wood, mine is made of steel. If he takes you to the third heaven, I will take you to the ninth one. If he gives you two kids, I will give you twelve, one after the other. Be smart, shut your mouth, and spread your legs.’”
At each part of her recounting, her tears flowed.
An felt red-hot steel pellets rolling around in his heart. An episode from history returned, resonating in his ears: “The government was cowardly, therefore Dang Phi slept with the Ngu military lord, leaning on this officer to protect her troubled and promiscuous son, Dang Mau Lan.”
He thought: “My sister-in-law did not decide to sleep with a Ngu military general, but she is raped, humiliated, and tortured. Then this old king is ten times more cowardly than were the Trinh Lords of years past. The peril cannot be overcome. If I don’t run fast and fly far, my whole family will be turned into headless ghosts, wandering forever in darkness. My sister-in-law’s painful injustice will be permanently consigned to silence and then forgotten. Each woman’s life will be abandoned like a corpse bobbing on waves. My sister-in-law did not sin. From childhood to adulthood, she never said one word that hurt anyone. Her soul is childlike and pure. Her goodness measures three times more full than that of all the people who surround her. I have to survive to clear her of dishonor. I have to live to be witness to this horrible, brutal act.”
The teacher in That Khe district had taught him that the profession of writing history is the profession of heroes, daring to exchange their own lives for truth. Because all kings fear truth, they want historians to bend their pens to write as commanded. So many heads of historians have fallen under the swords of imperial executioners, but history is continuously written with their dry, blackened blood.
“Thus I must become a historian. Not one who writes about the nation’s history, but one who will record the lives of my loved ones.”
He held both women tight, looking at them for the last time so as to permanently register the images in his heart as well as his mind. Then he asked his wife, “How many rings do you have left?”
“Altogether five.”
“Keep the smallest one I made for you when we married. Give me the rest. As for cash, maybe we do not have much, but give me some to spend along the roads.”
“No, we have quite a bit of cash stored since last year. Let me give all to you.”
“How much?”