“They’re just low-level flunkies. Big shots give the orders, they just bow and jump to it.”
“During the land reform there was no lack of big shots who denounced their fathers, their mothers, spitting on their parents and calling them oppositionists and traitors. And what did they ever achieve?”
“True enough, they are not human; but when they are put to orders, how can they dare resist?”
“Gold is tested by fire. The good separate from the bad during hard times. When it’s easy, everyone smiles; when times are happy, who doesn’t clap their hands?”
Abruptly, Mrs. Tu ended the discussion and, in a flash, changed the subject:
“In this house we have very superior raw sugar. Anyone who wants chrysanthemum tea with very superior raw sugar, please ask.”
“Marigolds, yes?”
“Sisters, you know nothing! You can’t use marigolds for tea. If you do use them, you have to throw it out, it’s too harsh. One uses only white mums or the tiny yellow ones, the kind that is small like a shirt button.”
“Who can brew tea as well as you to know this!”
“In hot weather drinking chrysanthemum tea is refreshing. Well, please do have some.”
The way Mrs. Tu had ended her disquisition and changed the subject was more clever than what a professional stage director would have done. The villagers wanted more details but dared not ask any further. The wall clock in Mr. Quang’s house lazily struck three. The visitors bade their hostess farewell and left. No one had any desire to go up or down to their fields. They all went home, freshened up, turned blankets and mats to dry, trimmed branches in garden nooks, weeded — tedious tasks undertaken to run out the afternoon, as they waited for a chance to gather after dinner.
As the sun finally began to set the evening meals were set out. The villagers ate hastily, eager to get back outside. Without any plan or forewarning, everyone from all sections of the village began to gather in front of Secretary Vui’s house — an entire crowd, some carrying flashlights, others storm lanterns, others oil torches that burned effusively. But the front gate of Miss Vui’s house was locked and both the yard and the house were pitch dark.
“How strange! Where can she be?”
“Some saw her this morning in the store buying materials.”
“Maybe she’s at that joker Quy’s house! When Miss Ngan was grabbed, there were only the police chief and the militiamen. We didn’t see Quy at all.”
“That Quy signed the order for the police chief to execute. He’s hiding his face now; of course that’s so. How can a firstborn son bring police to collar a stepmother like that? Only a gangster!”
“So why is Miss Vui hiding her face?”
“You forget that she took Quy’s order to go to Khoai Hamlet to investigate Miss Ngan’s background and there learned the story of Mr. Quang building a house for his wife’s father? In this whole village she is the only one who went all the way into the dragonfly nest.”
“Under the circumstances, if she’s not the chairman’s right hand, then she’s his left hand.”
“No wonder: I saw them gossip with each other. It looked really cozy.”
“Oh well! Climb a ladder and ask heaven. People blow hot and cold. These two don’t look each other in the face anymore.”
“How do you know that?”
“The day I pulled some sacks of charcoal past Miss Vui’s house, I saw Quy coming out, his face dark like a water buffalo’s vagina. I ran across Miss Vui a couple of days later and when I pretended to inquire about Quy, her face ballooned like a cracked vat. She said, ‘I don’t know and I have nothing to do with Quy!’”
“Oh-oh! Are you in trouble now! How dare you compare the chairman’s face with a water buffalo’s vagina? If I squawk, you’re finished.”
“I dare you to tell. ‘Dark like a water buffalo’s…’ is merely an old saying. I just use it as it is.”
“I am just joshing you a little bit. I didn’t expect them to split so fast.”
“What do you expect? People hook up with people like a latch knot: you undo it, then tie it; tied, you undo it again — like a game. There is nothing permanent in life.”
“But Quy is the chairman. How dare the committee secretary undercut her boss?”
“That, only heaven knows. OK, time to sleep. Tomorrow morning I have to weed cassava. If we don’t do it tomorrow, in a few days the tubers will wither and there will be no crop. All the work of planting and tending will go to waste.”
“Absolutely correct! True that cassava doesn’t bring us money, but it does let us feed pigs and gives us flour for rainy days. We should not let the crop go to waste. Time to go.”
Thus the villagers encouraged one another into leaving; they had wasted the whole day following this dramatic play. Whatever would happen tomorrow, would certainly happen in any event. For the villagers, the rows of cassava were waiting.
The flickering lights moved along the winding paths, past the gardens and the lines of hills. The chatting melted away into the spacious envelope of the mysterious night sky.
At the top of Lan Vu mountain, there was a sudden slash of fire that resembled a shooting star. Someone said, “Oh! A shooting star. Why is there a shooting star in the spring?”
“It’s not a shooting star; it’s a falling star. When a star falls, someone has just died.”
“When an owl or hog bird cries, a person has gone on. But a falling star tells us that a saint’s exile on earth has expired and he is returning to paradise.”
“Is that true? Heaven and earth are hard to explain.”
The next day, rain cascaded again. So plans to work up in the cassava fields were canceled. People sighed, because the more the rain fell, the thicker the grass grew, its roots plunging into the ground as fast as a wind blowing, in no time flat growing right through the cassava tubers. Cassava that has been invaded by grass either rots or has no taste, or tastes faintly bitter, useful only for feeding pigs, not people. They had to put on raincoats to go weed the fields; if they didn’t do that, they would have to do some other chore. Not here the smooth white shirts of those who have the leisure to just enjoy their time on earth.
Past noon, the rain completely stopped just as lunch was finished. Sitting around to drink water and pick their teeth, the villagers heard the blowing of a car horn on the rural road. It was a rare noise that was heard only several times a year. At New Year, it had to be the sound of the drama troupe’s vehicle. Once in a blue moon, it might be the sound of a medical team coming to inspect for serious diseases such as malaria, hepatitis, or diphtheria, or to check the gynecological health of women and young girls. For inhabitants of Woodcutters’ Hamlet, the noise of a car was thus synonymous with a happy event. With it came the presence of a fairy with lipstick and blush, with brilliant skirt and shirt under the lights, or doctors in white lab coats. On that afternoon, when the horn was heard, everybody was puzzled and asked one another:
“How strange, what team is this?”
“Why didn’t we get any word? Not from the chairman or the vice-chairman, or the women’s secretary or the youth secretary.”
“It can’t be a birth-control campaign.”
“That birth-eradication program has been stopped temporarily. I heard the central government is reevaluating it.”
Villagers came out to see who it might be, just like those gawking city people who usually form a crowd to watch a demented and naked patient escaped from the hospital, showing her breasts and butt on the streets. On the sandy road running through the three sections of the hamlet, a jeep painted the color of harvest gold was inching along slowly like a beetle. The road was narrow and bumpy. The jeep went straight to the upper section, followed by twenty kids, all loudly screaming while running behind it. In the middle of the upper section, the driver stuck his head out and asked those standing along the side of the road, “Will you please tell me where is Chairman Quy’s house?”