“I thought life had calmed down.…I thought I had solved the problem and there were no more worries. But just now, everything has changed.”
Now the ship that is his life has been pulled by the wind from forgetfulness to longing. He can no longer pretend to live like a saint. He must now face up to every ordinary pain, the pains that run in all the channels of an ordinary life, a life that for so long he had refused to live.
Might it be that because ordinary people see beforehand the kind of hell that now confronts him, they easily avoid it? For him, could the pain now be appearing when his strength has diminished, making its taste more bitter?
Damn those old, penetrating and sad songs. He now really hears them only when his sun has almost set:
“Father, oh, Father, why do you leave the little ones?
Summer’s sun has not gone, but fall is here.
Then the winter brings the north wind back.
Father has left, the house has lost its roof.
Who will spread their arms to protect the little ones?”
Before him he visualizes almost thirty heads, each circled with the white cloth band of mourning; pairs of red eyes, swollen with crying; wailings rising in concert, in the harmony of a farewell song; the whole company standing on both sides of the coffin; beyond are dripping candles and bowls of rice each with a boiled egg on top and flowers amid the incense smoke.
“When I come to die, will any of my children cry for me like all those children of the woodcutter?
“Oh, no; my two children will stand among a noisy crowd and whisper: ‘The president is dead.’ Or a little more elegantly if they have been well educated: ‘The president has passed away.’ If they would shed a tear or two, it would only be infectious drops picked up from the common sadness; only a chain reaction, as when people sneeze because the one next to them has sneezed, or one laughs loudly, losing one’s breath, following the spirit of the surrounding crowd.
“My children will never know that this president was the one who created them, that the blood flowing in their veins is his, that their skin and flesh are no different from his, that their hearts, brains, livers, lungs, all their genetic diseases or their idiosyncrasies are from that same person. They will never know all this.
“My fate is much worse than that of the woodcutter in the Tieu Phu hamlet, because at the very least, he had blessings. A real father, with real power. Did he not know well what he wanted, what he could do, and what needed to be accomplished?”
The portrait of the deceased reappears before his eyes. He remembers clearly the handsomely curved eyebrows above eyes both welcoming and taunting. A defiant look: a seasoned life and a firm disposition marked the corners of his mouth with chiseled insets and the straight bridge of his nose with bamboolike resilience. Special is the bushy beard, jet black and curly like that of a European; it frames his square jaw, like that of the folk hero Tu Hai, which was dubbed a “swallow’s jaw.”
“This peasant dared confront his fate. Even lying in the coffin, he still had this resolved look of someone who defies all obstacles that block his way. And those sad songs sending off his soul, could they break the heart of the one who has just closed his eyes? Oh no, absolutely not. The woodcutter was a blessed father, because he brought good fortune on his son. These chants should be for me, just for me!”
He thinks this bitterly, and this bitterness makes his tears continue to flow. The tears flow in zigzags on both temples, through his hair:
“This woodcutter was a worthy father. At least, he had raised his youngest son until the boy was thirteen. Those thirteen years, in stormy times, in sunny times, in the winter rain, he had provided protective arms. That son had tasted the sweetness of a father’s love; he had been secure, enjoying a warm childhood. That woodcutter deserved to be a father. That genuine father is a model putting me to shame as long as I shall live. Why did I put on earth those lost drops of blood, those children without father or mother? Giving birth to children that you cannot protect is not even worthy of animals. From that point of view, I am an irresponsible and incapable father. Moreover, I allowed those unscrupulous people to pursue them like wild animals after prey. Death runs behind them like a shadow. Therefore, not only am I an incompetent father, I have no conscience either.”
The pain comes in waves, as if someone is punching him from down below all the way up to his heart. And those punches are at times jabbing, at others nonstop. The president recalls a first-class African-American boxer, one who was famous everywhere when he was young. In his training room, this boxer had the habit of puckering his mouth each time he threw a punch. Each time the sandbag got hit, his face was all frown, and his lips shook, an action resulting from either an uncontrollable smile or the pressure of some state of mind; and his face had the look of his going through extraordinary pain.
“My heart is like such a sandbag being punched by an invisible person. And this invisible person smiles after each punch. A real smile, instead of some contortion brought on by a twisted mind.”
Should he get up, turn on the light, and call his doctor?
But, if he does so, the doctor will discover his tears. Not only that he had cried, but that he had cried for a long time, and that he had cried a lot. The hair on both of his temples is still wet; the pillow on which he rests his face is also wet; the lids of his eyes are swollen. Those things cannot be erased quickly.
“I am too old; why should I live any longer under these circumstances?”
Suddenly, a thought comes upon him, like a sigh arising from an incredible depth. He is not surprised. Nothing should take you by surprise. This is totally contrary to his own feelings when he had first heard the panicked cries of the son of that unfortunate woodcutter. That cry now blends into another, silent cry. The muffled cry of his own son. The son whose face he does remember; the son he purposely abandoned and intentionally forgot.
9
“Ha, ha, ha, ha.”
The laughing of some ghost exploded by his ears. More accurately, it was a fit of laughter like pouring rain on a stormy day battering a corrugated roof; a very strange kind of laughter, accompanied by a hoarse reverberation in the throat like the shrieking of a bunch of wildcats. The laugh seemed to come from deep down out of an immense grave or from an abandoned castle buried in the core of the earth:
“Who’s that? Who has such a terrifying laugh?”
He digs in his memory. Who had had that strange laugh and where? That laugh contained the growling of wild animals as well as the hissing of a twisted wind inside a deep dark hole. Both strange and familiar at the same time, it seems…
“Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha.”
The pain disappears as he concentrates his memory to find this ghostly laughter…But he can’t find anyone. At this moment, the laughing one says:
“Really, you don’t remember me?”
He lifts the pillow from his face so that he can intensely peer into the room’s darkness. The electric light outside still clearly shines its rays through the cracks around the door. The giggling of the card-playing group can still be heard softly in his room. Nothing much different: