The Beauty of Humanity Movement (113 page)

“Not exactly,” she says. “He sounds very French.”

T
stares idly at a painting propped up on the arms of a chair. A man looks out a window, a faint reflection of his face in the glass, a grey sea beyond.

“Do you like that?” Maggie asks.

“I don’t know,” says T
, shrugging

“Well, how does it make you feel?”

The confusion must show on his face. “What’s your instinctive reaction?” she asks. “What does your gut say?”

T
’s gut doesn’t really speak except when it’s hungry or interested in a girl. His instinct makes suggestions occasionally, but he largely ignores them. “Kind of lonely?” he ventures.

“That’s interesting,” she says with a glimmer of a smile that T
doesn’t know how to interpret.

“Am I right?” he asks tentatively.

“It’s not a question of right or wrong, T
. It’s subjective.”

Subjectivity is a dangerous business: the party certainly doesn’t encourage anyone to have an independent opinion. But has he not just put his hand into subjectivity’s fire? Does he see loneliness where she sees hope?

“What is your subjective opinion?” he asks.

“It’s like he has lost something or perhaps someone at sea, or maybe he wishes he could be on the other side where he imagines a better life for himself. Whatever the case, something is more compelling out there in that empty space than in the world that surrounds him. You feel his alienation, and yes, it is lonely,” she says.

Hah! thinks T
, so I am both subjective
and
right.

“I know that feeling,” she says. “We probably all do. That’s the power of art. Do you?”

Ôi z
i ôi
, he thinks, what a question. He clears his throat before answering. “Sometimes by Hoàn Ki
m Lake you can have thoughts about, you know, life, feeling small, why we are here on earth. It doesn’t matter if all that traffic is honking at your back.”

“Is that loneliness, or existentialism?” she asks.

He opts for loneliness, not knowing the other word. “It’s lonely because these are thoughts you cannot share with anyone.”

“But you have just shared them with me.”

H
ng has nodded off while sitting on the grass mat outside his shack, listening to Lan appreciate his soup for a third night in a row, her
delicate swallow, her contented sigh. He has slipped into a dream of floating on water. He is lying on his back, the sun high in the sky, dragonflies roosting on his stomach.

“Foreign lady for Mr. H
ng!” Van shouts, tearing H
ng from his pleasant reverie.

“Goodness gracious, Van!”

“I’m sorry to disturb you again,” says a figure in the dark.

He knows her voice but her face is in shadow. “Come inside, dear, so I can see you,” he says. “If anyone has disturbed me it is this one here. The dim-witted boy thinks I’m deaf.”

Van ignores this, fixated on the box in Maggie’s hands.

“Ah, a lemon meringue pie,” H
ng says, nodding at the box himself.