“Well, cherry flowers blossom all over the patio,” he cries out. “When we left I didn’t see them.”
“Sir, when we left there was still some lingering fog. You also were in a hurry and didn’t pay attention. This is the second time they have blossomed. After this, there will only be some late-blooming branches. The abbess told me that.”
“Is that so?” He stops and touches some clusters of flowers. The cold, wet, soft petals are caressing and comforting on his skin. The light from the east reflects off the diamondlike dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. He shuts his eyes to enjoy the gentleness of the petals and listens to the whispering of the early wind. When he opens his eyes, her face has risen on the other side of the garden, opposite him. She is fresh in a dark blue tunic; her gaze is soft and clear, her face pleasing and bright. He knows that it is her: her today, her liberated from hatred and humiliation, her at the age of twenty, with an undying love, waiting for him on the other side of U Tich River, waiting…
He speaks: “Now, I tell you, Love, a gentle and lovely woman, a passionate wife and so naive, my own little bird. Dear lady, I am preparing to leave to meet you.”
THE BRIGHT LIGHT
The president died exactly on National Day, September 2, the year of the rooster, 1969. His traitorous followers knew that this coincidence carried a curse and would lead to a punishing blow to their position from destiny. Therefore they tricked everybody by reporting that he died on September 3.
From the moment he shut his eyes, it rained for an entire week, a pouring rain as if from a waterfall; white water swept the earth and sky. The Red River billowed with water; there had never been so much water in an autumn. Usually at that time the riverbed would withdraw and the lakes become so still and clear that one could see the weeds at the bottom. But that September, the Red River was foamy red, noisy and wicked as if it were the stormy season. All over Hanoi, the water had no chance to run off. It flooded the sidewalks, overflowed the thresholds of houses, circled around in the intersections. All over the country, people clustered around the foot of lampposts, listening to the speakers describing the funeral. They cried as if a communal assassination had taken place in their nation.
The funeral was held at Ba Dinh Square under a downpour. Soldiers stood in line, in their soaking wet uniforms. People spilled out from the square into the side streets, wearing black pants and brown shirts with mourning ribbons covered in plastic. The official pillars of the state stood on the dais with guards holding umbrellas to protect their heads. The speeches were emotional like the emotions in life. Words of gold and jade were poured out to applaud the accomplishments of the great leader of the nation, the father who had given birth to the revolution, the one who had led countless followers, who had trained a successor generation to carry on with loyalty and dedication!
During the funeral, who knew where the trembling soul of the president stood? If it was smart, it should be under the shade of the trees by the gate to the Ministry of Defense, even though it would have to bear the cold water like a whipping. Wherever it was, surely it could observe in its entirety all the acts of the play. The people wept; of course the little people, but even those who had plotted him harm cried loudly as if their own father had died. They cried miserably with overflowing tears, with their throats obstructed by pain, their noses running. Their speeches were punctuated with noisy nose-blowing, and this unattractive sound was amplified when broadcast over the public airwaves.
The president’s prediction proved correct: they cried for real.
But his explanation proved wrong: they did not cry from a realization that, someday, they would have to face him before the tribunal of all existence; they did not cry from shame or embarrassment over an encounter that would occur on the far side of the U Tich River. Oh no, for none of these romantic reasons.
They cried because they could no longer harm him, because they could no longer search for him and wish for his death, because such is the game of power. The ultimate reason that they cried: they understood truly who they were. To understand oneself is the most difficult learning one can obtain in life. One can discover this self-awareness only in special circumstances and by rubbing elbows with others, because the features of a person can be recognized only in the mirror of others. His death provided that very opportunity. For many years, they had held the country’s power, having at hand an entire hierarchy of lackeys from high ranks to low, from pillars of the dynasty to the guards in all the camps or those who gave out merits and demerits in the countryside. His traitorous subordinates had believed in the efficacy of their structure, that they were the reigning king on the throne and he was the abdicated monarch living in the back palace who had to do whatever they asked of him; that they were the genuine heroes and he only a gilded plaque where heroes who have decomposed into the mud were listed; and that the arch of triumph they were building would stand on this land forever and that his accomplishment was only a prelude like the vestibule one must cross before entering the main hall. At the funeral all those dreams turned to smoke. They understood that his power could only generate resentment on their part but could never be appropriated.
His power had been a compass created by the hand of a saint or a devil; the evocative impact of a saint in the imagination of many; the unusually innovative ability of an unusually seductive charm. A champion’s strength in belief, in emotion, in hallucination — all mixed, intertwined, and set over time and forever lodged in the soul. Full of magic containing simultaneously every contradiction — the culmination and the sediment of a great game.
Thus, at destiny’s call, they understood that they were nothing before this old man — even though they had invested so much effort to promote themselves as “stars brighter than a thousand candles” that appear in the skies over the nation.
Like a storm or a flood or a fire, this communal emotion spread during the funeral. They understood that he still lived even thought his heart beat no more; that they had to continue to use his shadow to cover their heads; that their arch of triumph would never be erected if they could not rely on the name of their Elder Brother. Because, in the end, even if they suffered from wounded pride, from their hatred of their own inability, or from the unfairness of the Creator, they were only foxes jumping around looking for food under the tiger’s tail. They needed him, even after he had eluded them with his death.
The old tiger was dead. But his continued presence was an essential requisite to ensure their power as well as their glory in the eyes of their subordinates, so at all costs they must have a corpse filled with straw. That is why, almost immediately, the Ba Dinh tomb for him went into construction.
Thus, they continued to betray him, because the president had officially written in his last testament that, upon his death, his body must be cremated, its ashes spread evenly over the rivers, and afterward his name should be carved on a small rock on the modest hill in Vinh Phu province. But betrayal, just like wickedness, never stops once it starts.
However, since the second day of September, the year of the rooster, 1969, a sword has hung dangling in the Hanoi sky; a huge and visible sword. One can clearly see it on fall days when the skies are a cloudless, crystal blue after a stormy rain. That sword blade aims straight at the flagpole in Hanoi, waiting for destiny to fall at any time and cut down the red flag with the yellow star, to end the fraudulent and brutal regime, to destroy those monsters who sucked blood from the necks of the very people who had nurtured them.