The Beauty of Humanity Movement (145 page)

T
estimates the various costs with his father’s help, converts this from đ’ông to dollars, then rounds off the number. “Twelve thousand dollars,” he says, underlining the zeros roughly. “Three hundred dollars each if the roughly forty people who are his regular customers were to contribute.”

T
’s father shakes his head. “That’s far too many people. You could be dead before it was ever your turn. And it is far too much money to ask anyone to contribute, in any case.”

“That’s less than people spend for one night at the Metropole,” says Maggie.

“What do they charge for a bowl of ph
there?” T
’s father asks.

“About seven dollars.”

T
’s father coughs like a cat bringing up a furball. They’ve never paid more than seventy cents for a bowl of ph
. “Do they import the beef from France?” he says. “
Ôi z
i ôi
.”

——

H
ng has been waiting all morning to see someone from the kitchen. He is impatient and agitated by the time a young man, just a boy really, finally comes to the ward to speak with him. The boy hovers at the end of the bed, looking like a dog used to being kicked. H
ng struggles to begin with a compliment: “The ph
has a warm fragrance,” he says, “but did you taste the broth? Did it really seem sweet enough?”

“We don’t taste it, Grandfather,” says the young man.

What terrible teeth the boy has. H
ng leans back on his pillow. “But how can you know if the balance is right, if it is seasoned sufficiently, if you don’t taste it?”

“It is because we are a hospital. We have so many to serve, we do not have the time to check and adjust.”

H
ng can hear the embarrassment in the boy’s voice; he clearly knows the shame in this. “But even a factory must check and adjust,” he says. “If even the tiniest mechanism is out of alignment, the whole outcome is compromised, is it not?”

“Yes, Grandfather,” says the boy.

“Did your mother not teach you the way?” H
ng asks with all the kindness he possesses.