The Beauty of Humanity Movement (139 page)

“You should get your wife to shave you when she comes in,” says the orderly.

“My wife?” H
ng says gruffly.

“That old lady. Or ask your granddaughter, then,” he says, pointing at Maggie.

H
ng looks down and picks at the grey blanket.

“It’s okay,” Maggie says. “Do you want me to shave you?”

H
ng strokes his chin.

“I’ll get you a razor,” says the orderly. Maggie lathers a bar of soap in her hands over a bowl and daubs the foam onto the old man’s face. He raises his chin like a curious turtle. She draws the razor over his puckered skin with some apprehension, having never shaved a man before.

He purses his lips for her as she skims off his whiskers. He turns his head to the left, then right, so she can shave his neck.

“Do you have a camera, Maggie?” H
ng asks when she is done, running his palm over his smooth cheek while studying his reflection in the back of a spoon.

“You want me to take a picture?”

She pulls her phone from her purse while he composes his face into a frown. “A little smile?” she suggests.

“No,” he replies, shaking his head. This is exactly how he wishes to be preserved.

T
enters the ward and approaches the bed just then. “You look good,” he says. “How are you feeling?”

“Trapped,” says H
ng.

“I brought you a cup of coffee from outside,” T
says, handing him a paper cup and peeling back the lid.

The aroma takes H
ng right back to that day at Café Võ. The draw had been primal; the smell of coffee should no longer have existed.

“Sometimes you have to give them something, H
ng,” Võ had lectured. “You didn’t learn this, did you. They have taken everything from you because you didn’t co-operate.”

“I wasn’t an informant,” H
ng said blankly.

“If you’d simply stepped forward and given the Party someone, anyone, they would have commended you. You would have been able to protect the rest of them.”

“Who did you give them?” H
ng demanded, gritting his teeth.

“One who’d left me, in any case,” said Võ. “I don’t even remember his name. They had their eyes on him already because of his education in the U.S.; they would have condemned him anyway.”

H
ng feels his eyelids growing heavy, drooping like leaves after a heavy rain. He tries to fight the narcotic wave that is now overtaking him, tries to shout above the roar:
Was I the fool not to play the game? Should I have sacrificed someone to spare the rest?