These memories suddenly coming to mind make him contemplative for a moment. But he also realizes that Vu is waiting for him. He says: “The abbess gave us permission, we can enter the temple.”
“Big Brother, you’ve never been inside?”
“Never. I don’t dare intrude into the land of the ordained. The fact that we’ve pushed ten monks down to the lower reaches of the mountain bothers me. Why don’t they choose another location?”
“I don’t know for sure who chose this spot. But surely this is the best one for Sau and the others to prevent everyone from coming to see you.”
“They are brilliant with respect to those things.”
He smiled while imagining that anyone who wanted to ascend all the way up Lan Vu mountain must appear in the lens of the guard company not for just a few seconds or minutes, but for more like half a day even if they were athletic or professional climbers. Under these conditions, only a wild hare or squirrel could hope to escape surveillance. His enemies in the Party had thought carefully when they had chosen the peak of Lan Vu instead of a dark tunnel as in an old European “oubliette” where people were sent to be forgotten. Here even on top of a magnificent mountain, he had no way to gossip with trusted associates either in his own room or in his doctor’s quarters. All the walls contained listening devices. Each time Le led a technician to change a “bug” he knew it, because each time they carried a canister of mosquito spray on their back. Le would invite him to “take a walk in the woods to stretch his flaccid legs” while Le would “spray for mosquitoes.” He always had to wait for a few hours before the smell of the spray would dissipate, then he could return to his room. Since he never crossed the brick patio to enter the temple proper, the Buddha statues were lucky not having to taste the insect spray. Today, they could use Buddha’s domain to chat with each other for a while.
“Are you are sure that we can talk safely here?” Vu asks for the last time to bolster his confidence.
“Trust me; I’m old but not yet senile,” he replies, looking straight in the eyes of his loyal follower, the only one left who had survived life with him.
“I apologize…but…”
“I understand.”
They are silent for a moment, as memories have returned with each word, each thought. Then trembling, Vu asks:
“Big Brother, do you cough a lot?”
“Don’t worry, I am much better. The remaining problem is my heart. But it’s rare to reach seventy, I have lived long enough.”
“You must take good care of yourself.”
“You, too. But, on second thought, neither of us have any way of prudently taking care of ourselves. Life’s just a gamble.”
“Yes, just a roll of the dice.”
“Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that life has its limits; so, too, does our health. I cannot do anything more at this time, but I still want to know what is going on in our nation.”
“But…”
“Just let me know. We have endured the most dangerous times. I hope you haven’t forgotten that?”
“But you are now very weak, Elder Brother. We who must die cannot hold off the destruction that time brings on.”
“But I am not yet blind, or deaf, and my brain is not yet paralyzed. I still want to know what’s going on outside of here, outside these walls of white clouds, outside this enchanting prison.”
“I don’t have enough courage, please forgive me.”
“I am the one who must apologize to you. I am the one who owes you a debt. I put too much hardship on your shoulders.”
“Brother, please don’t say that. This entire nation is indebted to you. Even if I took on more, it would still not be enough.”
From each shelf of the altar, red wooden statues touched with gold leaf look out at them intensely. The president thinks that his secret conversation with Vu does not go beyond the wooden eyes and ears. The smell of incense slowly rises up, and, for the first time, he understands that he is stepping up to another, a new, realm, entering a new space. He suddenly utters a sigh.
“What is the matter, Elder Brother?”
“Nothing. Tell me so that I clearly understand what’s happening in our country.”
“But…”
“Don’t worry. I can take it.”
“The situation is very bad. Our strength was not enough but they decided on a general offensive. General Han met me and told me that, in the battle at Nam Phai, the entire command staff was wiped out, except for General Han, who escaped because he was in Ha Tinh. The bodies of soldiers clogged the ravines; the streams could not flow through.”
“I had guessed that when they keep urging me to write poetry to inspire the people.”
“The terrible thing was not only that. Han returned to the front for only two days before his family received word of his death.”
“He must have been killed while on the road, for sure in Thanh Hoa province.”
“I suspected that, too.”
“For a long time Thanh Hoa has turned into a bandit haven.”
“Yes, many know this.”
“Pity his whole family.”
“Yes, his young child is not yet ten while his wife has suffered a serious joint ailment for three or four years now.”
“Is there any other reason? Or was it just because he kept in touch with us?”
“For sure. The paper and the radio talk only about victories. Deserting soldiers were stopped at the crossroads on the forest road from Quang Tri to Ha Tinh and were brought to the reeducation camps for deserters. Nobody in the north knows the truth about the battles. But I believe Han was assassinated for another reason.”
“I understand,” he replies, and suddenly feels a frigid wind blowing up and down his spine: “Too many people have been hurt because of their connection with me.”
“You cannot say that.”
“But it’s true. Even me. I have been hurt for being me. It’s the truth.”
“Elder Brother, don’t torture yourself.”
“As you see, I am not blind or deaf, nor losing my mind. I must bear some responsibility before the people.”
Vu looks at him angrily: “There is nothing more you can do for ‘this’ people — the people to which you belong must bear responsibility for themselves.”
“Aren’t they your people, too?”
Vu sighed: “They are also mine, true. But oftentimes I feel so dispirited. Because we can’t change our race like we can change our clothes.”
“But it’s our nation. Even if we want to reject it, we can’t.”
“Because we cannot reject it, we suffer.”
“On this planet, surely there are other peoples that deserve to be as miserable as we are. But many cannot recognize that they must be miserable due to some cause or some condition. As long as they don’t yet realize that something true and real is justly causing their misery, then that sense of misery doesn’t last.”
The President drops this very vague comment, prompting Vu to look inquisitively at him. He seems to be pursuing something in his mind, his eyes aimlessly looking at the temple patio. Vu waits a few seconds then says:
“You said…”
“What I want to say is that every nation has its strengths and its shortcomings. But to accept and to look straight at the core of our shortcomings is an extremely difficult thing to do.”
The two of them remain silent. Vu anxiously looks at him:
“You are too old and have had too much suffering to think about such things. Life runs within set banks; better to let the stream run its course.”
As for the president, he pensively recalls a spring day in the war zone of Viet Bac along the Chinese border. Then, exactly at the lunar New Year, everyone at headquarters competed in cooking traditional dishes. Among all these, the foremost was congealed duck’s blood with pig intestines. Not only the cooks but all the headquarters staff it seemed had jumped in to prepare those important dishes. At noon, his staff brought him the duck’s blood with pig insides on a tray. During wartime, a mere mouthful of meat was considered a banquet, because there were long periods when everyone at headquarters had only cassava instead of rice. The previous year, a soldier in the intelligence company went crazy from eating only cassava for six months in a row. He was from a well-to-do family, and so had no experience in enduring scarcity. Six whole months without a grain of rice or a piece of meat or fish for your stomach, just cassava every day, first eaten boiled, then for a while eaten broiled, and then afterward boiled again but now in a soup of salt and wild leaves; this man from town took sick, his complexion turned green, his stomach extended as if he were pregnant. One morning, when seeing his adopted brother bring up a basket of boiled cassava, he suddenly jumped up crazed in the yard, screamed as if a devilish spirit had entered him, stripped off his clothes, took hold of his head, and ran into the woods.