The Zenith by Duong Thu Huong

with pleasantly open gestures, living with a heavyset woman, avaricious and caustically argumentative. Behind her back people called her “the fat bitch with the filthy mouth.” And they ranked her principally according to the way she used her loud mouth with its thin, haughty lips: “Pay the price” or “No credit: settle in cash”; quarreling with or swearing indiscriminately at the neighbors’ children and grandchildren. She also constantly stuffed her mouth with junk food—a never-ending indulgence. Without taking into account her maliciousness or her way of putting on airs with money and wealth, just considering her mother’s appetite, many times the daughter blushed in front of her friends.
    As if to have her boyfriend know full well her resolution, Van explained: “When my dad’s father was very sick, he called my grandmother and father into his room to ask that he marry my mother, Bong. A week later, before hedied, he spoke of this again. So, after the mourning period, grandmother arranged the marriage for them.”
    “Why did your grandfather force your dad that way?”
    “I don’t know. Because my grandmother didn’t know and my dad didn’t know.”
    “Even though your father didn’t love your mother?”
    “Everyone—in the family and in the neighborhood—knew that.”
    “In the family, grandfather was God. One word from him was an order.”
    “Now would your father demand that you marry someone you don’t love, like your grandfather once did?”
    “Never!” Van replied right away, automatically. “I would never accept that.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the times have changed. Now modern women wear shorts in public. I’m not that modern but I don’t live in feudal times either.”
    They laughed chokingly, seeing how lucky they were to live in a new age, with freedom to love and to marry each other according to their own desires. He returned home, repeating to his parents their funny exchange, assured that every suspicion had been resolved. Nevertheless, his parents sought every excuse to thwart this marriage. The prospect of an alliance with the teacher Vuong and his wife the wholesale fish sauce dealer brought numerous anxieties to their hearts. His father looked for causes because, according to custom, there had to be some hidden and awful connection if one were to force a child to repay a fearful debt. No one misunderstood this truth: that Mr. Vuong had to live with Tuyet Bong was the same as accepting the harsh conditions of hell or purgatory for the rest of your life, an entire life bartered away in an exchange. And the last point was the important one: every such marriage—strange and unfortunate—often left behind destructive tendencies for future generations.
    Popular speculation had provided many theories to explain all this. Some held that Old Mr. Secretary, father of the teacher Vuong, had once gone with Mr. Licentiate, father of Tuyet Bong, to Laos to dig for gold. Once, when the pit had collapsed, the latter had saved his friend from death. Then, out of gratitude for saving his life, Old Mr. Secretary had promised to marry the only daughter of his savior to his only son.
    But many others instead insisted that the story of panning for gold was too far-fetched: both men grew their fingernails long and couldn’t even hold a knife securely—how could they have found the strength to follow a group of miners to pan for gold?
    Gold always flows in the same veins as blood. In this line of work, if you are not the chief honcho of a pit, having bags filled with cash and a brain filled with devilish schemes, then most likely you take up working in the pit as an ordinary ruffian or rascal, unafraid of quarrels with guns and knives, or you might be at a dead end, without another livelihood, ready to throw your life away as so much straw or grass…In actuality, both “old men” were born gamblers. Year-round they gambled, winning a lot but also not infrequently losing. During one