Now on the ground the two girls looked down at their roughed-up clothes.
“Mr. President!”
One girl spoke out and looked up at him.
The president was stunned: it was that pair of eyes! Those doe eyes; the final fixation on that night of celebration four years ago. He recognized the young girl from years past who had stared at him across the fire. In an instant, the images, the colors, the sounds, the memories of that evening’s walk with the chief of staff were reborn. Completely. Revivified. After four years, suddenly the ashes of forgotten memories were cleaned away by a gust of wind.
“The late children’s festival. That night of celebration moved to the fourth day of the sixth month.” The thought moved like lightning. At the same time, a succession of thunderclaps exploded, pressing his head to burst open: “Then she was fifteen! Now she is nineteen!”
Yes, it was her!
It seemed that he had stood there silent for a long time, embarrassing the girls. They looked at each other, then at the tree, then down at the ground.
“We’re sorry, Mr. President!”
“We didn’t see you, sir.”
“We…”
He didn’t understand her babbling words. He only saw her delicate doe eyes, which looked like deep lakes or dewdrops dangling on a leaf, her curved lashes blinking incessantly like the fluttering of a sparrow’s wings. He saw clearly only her full red lips tainted with pieces of fig innards that highlighted her two rows of teeth as bright as pearls. He found her face filled with innocence but having as well that special seductive magnetism given by heaven to a woman who would be known as capable of “rocking the nation and upsetting a city.”
He cannot remember what he did to calm the girls down. He also cannot now remember how the girls bade him farewell and how they took their leave. He cannot remember now what he had said to her at the parting moment. His spirits had been topsy-turvy. His heart had beaten as hard as if he had been in his twenties. In that stormy state, sounds coming from all four sides had sounded like a huge choir singing around him — the singing of an invisible, imaginary crowd. Could it have been a forest ghost or a mountain god? The happy cries of a forest lord or dangerous screams from a gaggle of old sorcerers? A fleeting fear had made him stand still. He had stood like that for a while after the girls were long gone. He had listened carefully to the singing of the mysterious choir, had felt the air trembling and twirling, had seen gigantic and shapeless waves curve around and soar. Miraculous space was an ocean and he was a boat that had been thrown to the waves without his consent, without his calculation, without his hesitating…
A…a…a…
A…a…a…
He had listened to the sounds ringing from the four points of the forest, following him as a wake follows a ship that has been jolted and pushed into misadventure, some cruel melodrama authored by destiny.
That night he had written in his pocket diary: “Tan Mao Year.”
In the Mao month.
Noon. I had…
But even the most intelligently curious mind could not have completed the unfinished sentence.
“Mr. President, please come in for your meal.”
For a while now the chubby guard has been standing behind him.
“You all have already eaten a while ago?”
“Sir, the company cook is preparing lunch.”
“Oh, is that so?” he mutters. For a time he had been eating irregularly, not even three meals a day. Often he even forgot to eat, and eat well, so that the people could trust in his good health. Forgetfulness is the faithful friend of old age, a friend we can’t shake off no matter how much we try. He turns and enters the room to sit down before the tray with his breakfast. A bell-shaped bowl has a lid covering it. He turns over the hot lid, moist from steam:
“Ah, so today the cook gives us rice gruel.”
The fragrant smell of onions and herbs arises; that fragrant smell so familiar to cooks of long ago. Rice gruel with onions and herbs is light on the stomach as well as a remedy for flu. He has known this fragrance since early childhood.
“Sir, please take your food before it cools,” the chubby guard reminds him, his eyes not leaving the president’s hands.
He bends his head down to see the finely sliced scallions and the herbs as nicely cut as Chinese bean thread noodles, sharply reminding him of the time when he was sick and the girl showed off by cooking rice gruel for him. The gruel unskillfully cooked by the girl had whole rice grains in it and the scallions were still on their stems.
“Little one, you’re a girl from the mountains…! Mountain Girclass="underline" you are our nightmare, little one, our private nightmare…”
“Oh, please, Mr. President…” the soldier blurts out, tilting his head to hear some low noise. After a minute:
“An airplane is coming up, Mr. President, do you hear it?”
“I don’t hear anything. The ears of someone over seventy can’t compete with those of an eighteen-year-old,” he answers with a smile.
He looks to the east. The sun had already been up for some undetermined time. It is a completely ordinary day; the sun wants to hang just like a ripe orange suspended in the air, as a gentle sun, not one of sheer brilliance. A sun still undecided in the middle of a dream; a drowsy sun that could signal something ordinary like a burning areca nut or something like a carriage furiously bringing fire to burn all the land on a cursed planet. The white clouds still swirl like the sea around the mountaintops, but around the sun is a light blue halo. A blue completely surrounded by a strange darkness.
That blue was the color of endless summers. Why has it appeared today?
While he stands looking at the sky to the east, the phone in the corner of his room rings stridently. The chubby guard runs in to answer and comes back to report:
“Mr. President, sir, the helicopter has arrived. The office invites you to go down to the landing strip.”
“Has Chief Vu come up?”
“Yes, Chief Vu will accompany you with a bodyguard to take part in someone’s funeral in Tieu Phu hamlet. After that, Chief Vu will follow you back to the pagoda. The program has been set.”
“I will change clothes.”
“Sir, you need to finish all your rice gruel, as the day is very cold. The first squad of guards will come up here to accompany you down to the landing strip.
“Clothes must be chosen.
“Mr. President, sir, all is ready.”
6
The mountain roads curve back and forth like a chicken’s entrails. Hearing the sound of music, one might think it was close at hand, but the curved road makes its source rather far off. On both sides of the way, bushy bamboo blocks a traveler’s progress. But the special singing to send off a soul is continuously melodramatic. First notes from a one-string zither, then those of a flute and a two-string fiddle. As the first refrain ends, up comes the voice of a male singer, low in tone:
“.…Soul, oh soul, don’t you turn your head back
Soul, oh soul, don’t regret your earthly life”
Like blossoming buds in spring, like colorful and fresh leaves in the summer, turning yellow in the fall or in frigid winter, life on earth is in the Master Craftsman’s hands. Who can escape this great game?
From nothingness, our parents give us human incarnations; we cry as we greet life; we laugh the laugh of a child; we set off on our way, under the burdens of carefree youth, and put them down when our breath weakens and our health evaporates.
“Water runs down and hair changes color.
The Master Fisherman spread his net over the four seas.