“With more honeyed words, more polished words? Is that what you mean? I am like the rest of you, not a writer.”
“Talking with you is damn hard. You intentionally don’t want to understand. It is clear that the Old Man is fond of you and trusts you more than the rest of us. Once people like and trust each other, they become more sympathetic. The war is getting tense; we have to draft all soldiers and enlist the entire people. The Old Man needs to rest, to take care of his health, so that he can receive delegations of heroic soldiers returning from battles. No one can do this except the Old Man.”
“I’m not clear if I really have the honor of being loved and trusted by the Old Man as you said, but the truth is, besides him, nobody can do it. That’s the plain truth; even the blind can see it. If this were not the plain truth, your grave would be green with grass. And not only yours.”
Vu laughed silently in his stomach: “You really are an honest fellow sometimes, Vu. Either that or you are a second class actor.”
Lifting his empty coffee cup, Vu tilted his head and slowly said:
“You run the Party’s organizational machine; you know the personal history of each person like the back of your hand; you should know very well that before I joined the revolution, I had been well educated. My ancestors taught me that whenever someone truly cares for you, you must respond with fundamental trust and with loyalty. If the Old Man likes me, I cannot reciprocate like a thief or a traitor.”
Sau laughed, even though only faintly: “Oh, for sure you are a stickler for words.”
That said, he abruptly got up as if a scorpion had bit his butt and started pacing with big steps in the room. Like a mirror the glassy tiles reflected his tall and hefty image. His shoes were polished to a shine. Vu had the impression that Sau listened carefully to the knocking sound of his heels on the floor, as if he were counting each footstep…One of Vu’s colleagues with the same rank had once told him that in a meeting with Sau, he had let Vu’s colleague sit tight in a chair for an entire half hour, while he circled around and around without seeming tired, like a salesman showing off a new style of shoes.
Vu thought: “You don’t have the smarts to understand that all tricks grow tiresome if overperformed. All contrived threats from literature and the arts need to change.”
Looking him over from head to feet, Vu said:
“You appear still quite limber. You can still serve the ladies for a long while…”
Looking at Vu’s playful eyes, Sau realized that he had made a wrong move. His face hardened, but he smiled and sat down in front of Vu, stretching his arms behind the armchair, as if his recent display was only part of his early morning exercise, a habit to invigorate the start of day for those who must rub the seat of their pants on office chairs.
“I thank you; thanks to heaven my machinery still works well. That’s without using herbal medicine.”
Then, as if to avoid a blow from Vu, he suddenly cried out as if he had just remembered something important:
“Damn, I’ve been so busy lately, I forgot to call the Old Man. And you?”
“The Old Man has not called me for a long time as well,” Vu replied coldly.
Sau rushed to say:
“If so, I will arrange for you to visit him. Every now and then, it’s good to go back and visit the mountains.”
“It’s up to you,” Vu answered summarily and stood up.
At the same instant Sau, too, jumped up, quickly like a cat, to grab Vu’s arms tightly:
“Let me phone to have them make arrangements. You can leave tomorrow.”
That’s why Vu is here, at the domestic airport reserved for the air force, right at seven o’clock in the morning. Now, seated, he drinks his tea and stares at the bloated fog on the other side of Dinh Cong Lake. Waiting.
5
Since waking up, the president has stared into the east, waiting for the sun to rise. But white clouds cover all four directions.
The clouds submerge the mountaintops in a vast white ocean. From the crevasses to the deep ravines, the watery mist curls upward like smoke, a kind of wet, cold smoke infused with the smell of forest tree and the fragrance of wildflowers. Those gigantic moving mists look like blind dragons feeling their way toward an unknown destination. Those dragons at times crawl across the rows of mountains by stretching out their strange bodies, at times crunch together and pile up in the valleys, forming images of fighting monsters. The sky has no horizon; unseen are the swaths of forests, high or low, over three ridges of mountains. Even the temple garden is immersed in fog. The white mist hovers just outside the window of his room.
Seated and looking at the sea of fog, the president puts a finger on his pulse and counts…ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven…the numbers jump without stopping. At this age, it’s hard to master one’s body. The president knows he is waiting for one person, and the apprehension keeps coming on even if he does not want it to:
“Why, for no reason, am I in this awkward situation? A few years ago, everything was different…”
He wonders but knows he has no answer.
About five or six years earlier, he had thought that all things were settled. The chess game was over. The old gown wasn’t even in the trunk but had been burned up. All the pictures, too, had turned into ashes to be mixed with dust. Even with all that, still his heart is beating hard.
He thinks to himself: “Whatever; from every perspective there is no way to salvation. Once the path has become entangled with thorny vines and the well has been filled in, no longer is there any reflection off the water in which to look for a vision of the one who was…” But all of a sudden, an opposing voice speaks out in his souclass="underline"
“It was a wrong move. It was the most humiliating move that could happen in the life of a person, especially for a man.”
The president sighs. “I had no other choice.”
The opposing voice says: “It was not that you didn’t have an alternative way. The problem was that you didn’t have the courage to choose another path.”
He replies: “But now, one door has closed. What has passed is over and done with.”
His mysterious opponent bursts into despising laughter: “Everything is not finished as you imagine. Every failure always brings along consequences that the loser cannot fully measure. This is a warning from me to you!”
The clouds have not dissipated.
“Why so much fog this morning?”
Unable to stay seated, feeling half paralyzed and half anxious as if he were perched on charcoal, the president stands up. As soon as he puts his feet down on the steps, the chubby soldier rushes in from the temple patio and stops him:
“The fog is very bad for you; please stay inside.”
“I’ve sat here since this morning.”
“Please wait a few moments, when the fog clears you can go out to the patio.”
“Did you see the abbess and her attendant?…One is seven years older than I am and the other is a weak woman. Both have been out on the patio since early morning; they didn’t wait for the sun to be over the mountains.”
“Yes, but…”
“Let me go out for a while for some fresh air. Staying in the room too long, I will suffocate from sadness and my limbs will be paralyzed.”
“Sir…”
But he has forcefully brushed the soldier aside and decisively stepped down onto the patio. There by the cherry garden he stands fixed like a stone. The fog comes over his face cold and wet, with a faint and fresh smell of the mountains. In the main temple, the candles flicker, the sound of the wooden gong mixes with the normal chanting of prayers, a kind of music that has become familiar to him. Every so often when the prayer chanting stops, the dripping sound of dew on the tile roof is clearly heard, a mossy roof that has turned blackish. With time, the wooden door frame has also taken on a darker shade. In this desolate and enchanting setting, the light from the candles grows more iridescent and vibrant.