The Beauty of Humanity Movement (11 page)

T
s English might be better than Ph
ng’s, but T
knows that in many ways it was Ph
ng who taught him what foreigners really want. T
prides himself on being an excellent memorizer, and initially relied on the vast and readily accessible number of facts stored in his brain. He has memorized, in particular,
The Big Book of Inventions
, so if a tourist comes from, say, Norway, he can impress him by asking, Do you know the invention for which Norway is most famous? The aerosol spray can.

The tourist will then turn his blue eyes to his companion and say,
Really
. I had no idea.

In 1926 by Mr. Erik Rotheim, chemical engineer, T
might add. He also attempts to wow with statistics—a communist education encourages such things—the land area of each administrative division in the country, for instance, the number of university graduates from various faculties, the lengths of the Mekong and Red rivers and the Great Wall of China.

Really
.

It was Ph
ng who pulled him aside one day and said, “When they say
really
, it actually means
that is very boring
.”

“Really?” T
asked.

“Really.”

T
believes it is shared wisdom like this that has made them the A-team. But he is still learning, and perhaps that is what he likes best about his job. No pain, no gain, as the Americans say.

This morning, he and Ph
ng are escorting a middle-aged Canadian couple to some nearby villages. T
likes the Canadians, even if their most exciting invention was only the garbage bag. (
Really
. In 1950 by Mr. Harry
Wasylyk of Winnipeg, Manitoba.) They are generally kind, though it always amuses him how they introduce themselves with variations of: Hello, nice to meet you, we are from Canada, see the maple leaves sewn onto our knapsacks? Our country might be right next door, but it’s a world apart from its southern neighbour; in fact, we offered refuge to a great many draft dodgers who did not believe the Americans should be in Vietnam—horrible, horrible war, horrible, horrible U.S.A., horrible, horrible George Bush, and Iraq, now don’t get me started on Iraq …

Yes, yes, T
will nod and smile, because he does not want to speak a truth they will find complicated or disagreeable. This is what is meant by saving face. The war was a long time ago, well before T
was born, and besides, in his opinion, an opinion shared with most of his friends, everything great was invented in the U.S. Blue jeans, for example. And Nikes and Tommy Hilfiger. And MTV and Nintendo and the Internet. And furthermore, the Vietnamese
beat
the Americans; they don’t go around boasting about it, but it’s true. It wasn’t like the Chinese, crushing the Vietnamese for a thousand years, or the French who tortured and killed for decades, making the Vietnamese slaves in their own country and taking every decision out of their hands.