The Zenith by Duong Thu Huong

to his surroundings. About halfway along, suddenly someone cried out in panic:
    “Stop! Please, Mr. President, stop!”
    “Don’t take another step. Please, Mr. President, don’t!”
    Looking up, he saw two girls dangling from a large branch of a fallen tree. They were frantically looking for a way down, their faces very red, their mouths spattered with fig grains. He knew they had been up there sharing the figs, so busy with eating them that they did not see the pedestrian inadvertently invading their world and breaking up their rare opportunity to snack well. When they had suddenly recognized him, they had no time to get down, therefore they had frantically called out to stop him. Then the pair desperately sought a way to escape.
    “Be careful! Be careful or you will fall.”
    It was his turn to cry out in fear when he saw the two of them hugging the tree, sliding down at one scoop like little monkeys.
    “Careful!” He cried out and could not help smiling.
    “Why don’t you come down slowly? Sliding like that, you might fall easily and tear your clothes.”
    Now on the ground the two girls looked down at their roughed-up clothes.
    “Mr. President!”
    One girl spoke out and looked up at him.
    The president was stunned: it was that pair of eyes! Those doe eyes; the final fixation on that night of celebration four years ago. He recognized the younggirl from years past who had stared at him across the fire. In an instant, the images, the colors, the sounds, the memories of that evening’s walk with the chief of staff were reborn. Completely. Revivified. After four years, suddenly the ashes of forgotten memories were cleaned away by a gust of wind.
    “The late children’s festival. That night of celebration moved to the fourth day of the sixth month.” The thought moved like lightning. At the same time, a succession of thunderclaps exploded, pressing his head to burst open: “Then she was fifteen! Now she is nineteen!”
    Yes, it was her!
    It seemed that he had stood there silent for a long time, embarrassing the girls. They looked at each other, then at the tree, then down at the ground.
    “We’re sorry, Mr. President!”
    “We didn’t see you, sir.”
    “We…”
    He didn’t understand her babbling words. He only saw her delicate doe eyes, which looked like deep lakes or dewdrops dangling on a leaf, her curved lashes blinking incessantly like the fluttering of a sparrow’s wings. He saw clearly only her full red lips tainted with pieces of fig innards that highlighted her two rows of teeth as bright as pearls. He found her face filled with innocence but having as well that special seductive magnetism given by heaven to a woman who would be known as capable of “rocking the nation and upsetting a city.”
    He cannot remember what he did to calm the girls down. He also cannot now remember how the girls bade him farewell and how they took their leave. He cannot remember now what he had said to her at the parting moment. His spirits had been topsy-turvy. His heart had beaten as hard as if he had been in his twenties. In that stormy state, sounds coming from all four sides had sounded like a huge choir singing around him—the singing of an invisible, imaginary crowd. Could it have been a forest ghost or a mountain god? The happy cries of a forest lord or dangerous screams from a gaggle of old sorcerers? A fleeting fear had made him stand still. He had stood like that for a while after the girls were long gone. He had listened carefully to the singing of the mysterious choir, had felt the air trembling and twirling, had seen gigantic and shapeless waves curve around and soar. Miraculous space was an ocean and he was a boat that had been thrown to the waves without his consent, without his calculation, without his hesitating…
    A…a…a…
    A…a…a…
    He had listened to the sounds ringing from the four points of the forest, following him as a wake follows a ship that has been jolted and pushed into