The Beauty of Humanity Movement (141 page)

And then she is gone.

But she is here. Now.

In this moment H
ng can’t remember why they have not spoken for so many years, why he has avoided her gaze, why he has carried a stone in his heart.

“I was dreaming, Lan,” he says, releasing butterflies from his mouth. “I was dreaming that I was going to give you silver bracelets.”

She shakes her arm and several bangles fall from her elbow to her wrist. A familiar sound. A sound as clean and clear as mountain water, something he hasn’t heard since he was a child.

——

Henry Thanh and his colleagues have charitable intentions. They believe the collection should be returned to Hanoi, its rightful home, where they want to see it housed and displayed as a permanent collection. At the museum perhaps. They’ve even suggested hiring Maggie to scout for the right location, but when it comes to her father’s art, they are resolute.

“What happens when someone claiming to be the great-grandson of Bùi Xuân Phái turns up?” Henry Thanh asks Maggie over the phone.

“Look, I can’t prove to you that he’s my father, but if I were looking to capitalize on something, I’d be the one telling you Bùi Xuân Phái was my great-grandfather.”

“Fair enough,” says Henry. “But if we make an exception, we’ll be setting a precedent. The collection’s worth is the sum of its parts. Each and every piece.”

Maggie hangs up the phone and turns to an expectant T
. She shakes her head.

“Don’t give up, Maggie,” he says. “Come. We need to pray.”

“Pray?” Maggie doesn’t consider herself a particularly spiritual person. Her mother used to take her to temple once a year when she was a child, though it seemed she had lost faith herself.

“At your father’s altar.”

T
must register the look of hesitation on Maggie’s face, because he reaches for her hand and squeezes it. “Maggie, do you not have an altar for your father? But who is listening to him in the afterlife? Who is feeding him?”

Maggie’s mother didn’t have a shrine in Lý Văn Hai’s honour either, except perhaps the shoebox she kept hidden at the back of her
closet. But then it’s not a wife’s job. A shrine is a descendant’s responsibility; it’s hers.

She doesn’t even know where to begin.

“Clear a space,” says T
.

She looks over at the writing desk, a cherry wood antique with brass fittings that came with the apartment. The desk has served as a dumping ground for receipts, loose change, keys, the few pieces of mail that have arrived for her from her bank in Minneapolis and the IRS.

She sweeps it all aside.

“You have the pictures your father drew for you,” says T
. “And the one my father did. And the paper with his name among the contributors. Do you have incense? Some fruit?”

Maggie fetches her father’s drawings and unfolds them on the desk. She places two squares of chocolate and an orange beside them. She lights a thick red stick of incense and the smoke curls upward, engulfing them both.

Maggie can feel the heat of T
’s shoulder bleeding into hers as they stand side by side and raise their hands.

H
ng dreams of the artist who has just returned from America. “Sit,” H
ng says, thrusting a bowl into the man’s hands. He watches the man slurp the noodles and drink the broth, his expression becoming human again. He burps, wipes his mouth on his sleeve and says, “I will not forget your kindness,” then stuffs some bills into H
ng’s hands.

H
ng stares at the foreign currency, knowing it is worthless to him.

“Sorry,” says the artist. “Let me pay you like I do at Café Võ.”

H
ng says that won’t be necessary, but the man pulls a notebook from his sack and quickly sketches something with a pencil. It is a
drawing of Chairman Mao with a stomach full of fish. One of those fish has the face of H
Chí Minh. The artist tears the piece of paper from his notebook and hands it to H
ng.