The Beauty of Humanity Movement (137 page)

He has taken a traditional song and transformed it into a modern and emotional ballad even better than the one from
Titanic
by Céline Dion. As he reaches the chorus, the old man above begins banging his cane on the floor, clattering energetically, so much so, in fact, that he is interrupting their concentration.

Maggie leaps up from where she is sitting, rushing over to the staircase, the first among them to realize that Old Man H
ng is actually banging his way down the stairs.

Ph
ng stops singing. A note hangs in mid-air. T
presses the stop button on the CD player and everyone rushes over to the staircase, each of them reprimanding the old man: “It’s too soon for you to walk.”

“Stop right there.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You’re only going to injure yourself.”

But the old man is determined, hopping down one more step and leaning into his cane. And he is singing! Singing in a terrible, loud voice like a very drunk man doing karaoke.

T
’s father is tugging the old man’s shirtsleeve: “H
ng, H
ng, let’s sit you down,” but the old man carries on bellowing the words, having lost track now of all tune. And then he loses control of his body, clutching his chest, gasping for breath, leaning into his cane as if he will fall over. T
’s father wraps his arms around him and together they crash to the floor.

T
and Ph
ng kneel beside them. “Don’t move him,” Bình wheezes from underneath H
ng. “Get an ambulance. I think he’s had a heart attack.”

H
ng wakes thigh-deep in muddy water. He has walked kilometres from his own home to trawl a net through a giant crater where just three weeks ago some thirty thousand people lived crammed together in rows of traditional houses, and the mystique of Khâm Thiên Street was still very much alive.

He used to hear stories about the street when he was a boy serving in his Uncle Chi
n’s restaurant, of its bars and inns promising music, beautiful women and drink. One day, H
ng used to think, one day when I have some money. But by the time he had some money, he had no time for leisure, and by the time he could afford a night of leisure, the Party had put the bars and inns out of business, outlawing gambling and prostitution as foreign social evils.