“This woman is still young, why did she lose her hair so quickly? Because of the mountain climate, the stream water, or the hard life? But these bad conditions are shared by all. Why do the other women still have the right to ‘display the shiny flock of hair,’ to speak like a third-class poet?
By this time, the guest had taken the last step; she looked up. Their eyes met; her whole body suddenly shriveled up, from narrow shoulders to peanut-size knees; it all gathered in out of embarrassment. He did not know why but he, too, was embarrassed to witness the unconcealed fear of the woman, and he felt that this encounter was brutality.
“Mr. President…”
Her lips quivered for a while before she could utter those words.
He quickly replied, “Miss, please do come in.”
“Yes…” the woman answered, breathing heavily. As soon as she was inside the house, she took her bag from her shoulder and hung it on the back of the chair, and then she laid the mat and the blanket she had carried under one arm down on the floor. He glanced at her and right away saw a white pillow within the quilted blanket, both wrapped neatly in the individual mat with several rounds of parachute strings.
“Those strings will be used to hang the mosquito net after the duty is completed,” he thought quietly to himself. The organization must have briefed her carefully that she must hang this net in the front room of the house, where it would be concealed by the large bamboo curtains hanging from ceiling to floor. There, there is no other pillow, no other blanket, no room for a second person. Thus she has to bring all these things with her. The careful and neat preparation is like a small unit of sappers preparing to attack a large fort. How pitiful!”
Visualizing the woman crossing the stream and traversing two hills with the mat and blanket, he says to her, “You’ve been walking; please sit down and rest.”
He went to prepare a new pot of tea. The water had boiled at three in the afternoon and had not retained enough heat to keep the tea leaves settled, so they were floating on top. He had to shake it awhile for the water to turn a light yellow color:
“Please have some tea. I just received a gift of some cane sugar.”
He took the jar of Quang Ngai cane sugar and put it on the table:
“Miss, please…”
“Mr. President, my name is Thu, Minh Thu. The association has another Thu, Bich Thu.”
“Yes? So there is another one, named Bich Thu?” he repeated mechanically. He racked his brain trying to remember if he had ever met a female comrade named Thu but came up empty.
Meanwhile, the woman drank some tea. She seemed to be truly thirsty after walking to his residence, even though it really wasn’t that far. Her wrists were small and skinny like those of a child; her neck displayed long, twisted veins that could not be shielded under her light blue shirt. Sitting in front of him, he could see clearly her thin hair sticking to her scalp, exposing brown spots. Her skin was brown but not the honey-cake color that people thought so highly of.
He dared not look at her long, knowing she was fluttering like a snipe. His heart was filled with boredom mixed with pity. Pity for whom? Perhaps for both of them — the poor woman and the president. Life is a cruel drama, truly; full of scenes that are impossible to anticipate. Or is it no more than a traffic accident?
Turning his head toward the window, he looked at the afternoon light, which had taken a slightly purple tint, then said aimlessly, “Does the women’s association grow lots of vegetables?”
“To report to Mr. President, our garden has all kinds: green cabbage, chrysanthemum leaves, cabbage, and kohlrabi. Eggplants and tomatoes are very good this year.”
The poor woman had seized the silly question as her way out, replying enthusiastically with a flourish.
“Really? You gals are pretty good.”
“Yes. The leading ones are very enterprising. We had to send people down all the way to the border to buy the seeds.”
“Have you ever been near the border?”
“Mr. President…”
She looked up toward him with a terrifying air, and immediately he recognized he had made an unforgivable mistake. Those assigned near the border, or down in the cease-fire area, were those full of energy; besides having strength, they needed to be quick on their feet, intelligent, with attractive physiques. The woman who sat curled up in a chair before him met none of these criteria.
“Oh, I just asked that. You can go only when the office assigns you.”
“Yes.”
“All of us have to do what the revolution orders; the duties of the organization.”
“Indeed, yes.”
“Miss Thu…” He almost asked a stupid question: “Miss Thu, how old are you?” Such questions were permanent fixtures in his head to use with the youth groups: “Little Hong, how old are you? Come get the candies and give some to your friends”; or, “Little Thanh, how old are you? Now you get the gifts. Will you save some for your parents?”
Those questions were still fresh in his brain because just the previous Sunday he had distributed candies to some children. The president cleared his throat as if a cough had stopped his question:
“Miss Thu…Miss Thu, do you hear from your family regularly?”
“Well, I have nobody besides an older sister. But she followed her husband to Thailand for business when my parents died. I could not keep in touch with her. For me, family is the revolution.”
“Good. The revolution is the extended family; it is the communal roof over all of us,” he replied, suddenly realizing that he had turned bland. He no longer used the sharpest words, even in his meetings with the motivation cadres. His words were like wilted vegetables, warmed-up soybean husks, foods reserved for cows or pigs. But the woman seemed satisfied. She looked at him, blinking her eyes, and it was not clear if she was flirting or just showing her happiness.
“Not only is she homely but she looks really dumb. For sure, there is not a thought in her head, except for whatever was stuffed in by others,” he silently observed
Suddenly his limbs felt tired:
“I will have to hold this woman, will I not? In a few minutes I will have to do to her all that sex requires. This is not avoidable. I will have to release my body from all the pressure. I will need to keep my wits sharp because the resistance will go on for a long time. Because of this, nothing will be better than to annihilate all the hopes that any normal man might have; to bury the world of feelings. I represent responsibility. What I do is carry the nation’s weighty load. If in the old days there was someone who, in the name of duty, had to marry Chung Vo Diem, now I have to copy that old hero and perform.”
Even after all that reasoning was concluded, his spirit was not at all convinced. The will just disappeared.
“How strange! All of a sudden I have no sexual desire. Totally empty; totally unfeeling.”
He knows that the man in his body is extremely robust and that his sexual needs exceed normal limits. Many times he had told his buddies, “I am only an old man from my head to my belly button. Below it, I am still young.”
That statement had spread like a fairy tale.
And yet…and yet…
Standing before this woman, the part below his belly button turned into that of an old man, too.
He panicked: “How pitiful! The hand of the clock points at the number six. It is something nobody predicts. When I lived alone, it was wild like a fighting horse, now it gathers all four legs to surrender. Demonic! Can it be that this woman can destroy the sexuality of anyone who stands before her?” he wonders.