“Dear Vu, but there is only one thing…” Thuan replied.
“What?”
“That the Old Man agreed to pay the price. He himself had no objection.”
“Given the procedure on decision-making, by himself the Old Man could not carry the day against twelve. To be more precise, only Do wanted to support him. But in the end he was pressured by the majority, therefore he changed his mind to follow you all. Thus, for good reason, the Old Man was an absolute minority. The Old Man relied on your understanding, you who had been both his comrade and his younger brother. From the beginning of the revolution until now, everything was done based on feelings of brotherhood. But the Old Man did not realize that things had changed; that the convivial past had died. And its dying really began right after the army left the mountains and jungles to control the cities. From that point on, all brotherly comrades became no more than merchant partners with their goods on a ship in the ocean; to protect their interest in the cargo, they would throw anyone overboard just to lighten the load. Then, as you looked on, the Old Man was no longer a beloved older brother but simply an animal to be sacrificed up to the god of the revolution. Above all, this revolution brought profit to all of you worthy beneficiaries. Am I right or wrong?”
Thuan did not answer; he stood like a statue, his eyes glued on his slippers, the kind made from perforated leather with open heels for use inside the house. Vu looked down on those fancy shoes; without knowing why, the sight of them intensified the fire in his heart.
“You are more lettered than the other eleven Politburo worthies. You are fluent in both Chinese and French; by heart you know the old and new annals. You knew damn well that when the Old Man married Miss Xuan, one man married one woman who married one husband; it was not some polygamous arrangement like that of our famous mandarin under the Nguyen dynasty, Nguyen Cong Tru and his third wife. Tell me clearly: Why was it OK for Nguyen Cong Tru but not for the Old Man? Did you ever think of that before?”
“To tell you the truth, I never thought about it this way.”
“Well, to tell the truth, what were you thinking of? What was in the brainy skulls of those who considered themselves the Old Man’s trusted younger colleagues?”
Thuan did not answer.
Inside himself, Vu felt a falling wall of flames pushing him down, almost turning him into ashes along with all those who were related to him.
“I have to get away from here,” he thought to himself. “I have to go right away. I cannot stand this guy in the striped pajamas and open-heeled shoes. This man who nonchalantly smells his fragrant roses in the garden.”
Trying hard to suppress his rage, he said, “I must go; there are the Old Man’s two children. I want to warn you up front: if you do not immediately stop them, these hoodlums will carry on and those two kids will perish. Then you yourself will not survive if you still have a conscience, or whatever’s left of one.”
“Hey, Vu,” Thuan said, still looking down, staring at the grass as if seeking moral support or consolation from the green stalks, “I know you are very angry with me. It’s lucky you haven’t reached the point of rage or revenge. Because everybody knows that, emotionally, you are closest to the Old Man; that in the resistance zones it was you who went to the city to meet Miss Thanh Tu; that it was also you who intervened to stop Miss Minh Thu from bringing her sleeping gear up to his house; that it was you who took Miss Xuan over there, too; that you were the one person Miss Xuan trusted and relied upon to organize her entire life; that you were the only one with whom the Old Man could talk about everything without reservation or formality. We have not forgotten all those meetings. We only needed to hear the two of you laughing to know how deep the affection was. Then, we were all very grateful to heaven for providing the Old Man with such a sympathetic and companionable younger colleague. Because all of us were busy with family, only you could volunteer your time to be with him. We also know that it was because of that closeness that you were shortchanged, as the Old Man held himself back, never proposing any favor or any special promotion. As for you, you also held back because of that relationship, so you silently accepted the downside. For that sacrifice, whether or not we wanted to, we had to respect you. For me, I ask for your understanding, if that is possible. Really, I didn’t expect things to turn out so terribly. Really, I wish the Old Man had kept his private life in the dark, to thoroughly validate the image of a father of his people, a patriarch filled with feelings and convictions for the extended family of the nation. I believed that our arrangement made good sense. It was I who suggested that Miss Xuan agree to live in a little second-floor flat in the old quarter just like any other citizen. Because I believed that providing such an uncomplicated example would bring the Old Man more prestige in all our eyes.”
“So: it was you! It was you who made that decision?” Vu said with surprise, continuing: “I argued so many times with the Party’s Central Administrative Office. Perhaps because of that they kept silent before all my screaming. Now I know that you were the culprit and that they were the ones who had to throw out the garbage.”
He stopped a few moments to process his many memories, then asked, “But, if you were using simplicity to create prestige, why didn’t you personally practice it first? Why didn’t you ask for a simple thatched-roof house with climbing vines on the fence out in the suburbs, rather than live in this overly imposing house?”
“You forget that I must administer the work of a nation.”
“So the Old Man is just a puppet for you guys?”
“The Old Man is higher than us by a head. He is the top leader of the people.”
“Because the Old Man is the top leader of the people, therefore the woman who sleeps in the same bed had to live in an ordinary flat in a narrow alley. And the woman who sleeps with you lives in this spacious, majestic villa. Because the Old Man is the top leader, the very soul of the Fatherland, his young wife had to be killed by you all, killed as if she were a rabbit, while the women who sleep with you all — I want to emphasize here that this includes my own wife — can ride in Volgas to go shopping, to buy clothes, candies and cakes, and cosmetics, at the international stores. By what moral principle do you guys authorize yourselves to do such things?”
Thuan did not answer; he squished some invisible thing on the grass; he did not look up. A lonesome and cold spring breeze was blowing. After a while Thuan cleared his throat.
“I apologize. I am disappointed that our talk has hit a dead end.”
“We hit the dead end because you all refuse to assume responsibility. You are all just like kids who throw rocks at a bird’s nest: when a stone hits someone, cutting his head, and he falls down and bleeds, they all run away. Is that comparison accurate or not?”
“I have never had a concrete answer from Brother Sau. When I called this morning, he was not home. The secretary on call said that he was running in the sports center. I think her death is an act of overreaching excess by the minister of the interior. It’s possible that Sau only gave some general instruction. Quoc Tuy acted according to his own hoodlum instincts. They assigned him; I had warned Sau about this minister’s criminal past, but Sau ignored it, saying that we should trust the innovative and constructive abilities of revolutionary cadres.”
“What that means is that this is beyond the scope of your duties. Or more accurately, you have no responsibility whatsoever.”