The Beauty of Humanity Movement (132 page)

“H
ng? H
ng!”

They grabbed each other by the shoulders, greeting each other like long-lost brothers, but then suddenly, awkwardly, they snapped apart. They had never really spoken before, knew each other only by reputation through mutual customers. They were rivals, in fact, and only desperate circumstances, not familiarity, had drawn them into such an unusually affectionate embrace.

“They haven’t closed you down?” asked H
ng.

Võ shrugged.

“But how is it they allow you to remain open?”

“I give them information they’re looking for from time to time,” he said.

H
ng couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Võ,” H
ng said, “you do understand, don’t you? They are using you as an informant.”

“I do my revolutionary duty, that is all,” said Võ, launching into a lecture on the subject.

H
ng had turned away in disgust. He walked back to his cart and resumed pushing his load, though one considerably lighter. His brazier and pots had been stolen during those brief dispiriting moments inside the café.

Handing T
back his notebook, H
ng says only this to the boy: “Ask yourself how it is that Mr. Võ has been able to hold on to his shop, how the place was not taken from him, how he kept his doors open through all the worst years.”

“He’s sold the shop now. His wife is dying. They decided to go back to their village.”

The man is lying, H
ng thinks. He is quite sure Võ never had a wife.

Managing two jobs leaves T
feeling capable and exhausted in equal measure. Only time will tell whether he will collapse or adapt to this new schedule and workload. He finds some genuine satisfaction in serving a grateful public, in filling the house and people’s stomachs with warmth and good flavour and sending them off into the day— greater satisfaction, he has to admit, than he has experienced serving foreigners lately at work.

After a week he is operating like a well-oiled machine, and perhaps the ph
was really only on the okay side of good in the beginning, because now people are paying compliments like: Ah, that satisfies. Ah, the old man has taught you well.

At the start of the following week, though, they have uninvited guests. People are strewn about the kitchen noisily slurping their broth when they hear a knock against the frame of the open door. T
’s customers drop their spoons into their bowls and raise their shirt collars to conceal their faces. T
’s ladle droops in his hand. His mouth hangs open.