The Beauty of Humanity Movement (148 page)

The wait leaves her feeling ravenous. Maggie orders room service, her favourite—a burger and fries. Eating a hamburger in the heart of Hanoi might seem like a contradiction, but it’s the type of contradiction Maggie lives every day. She
is
that contradiction.

The phone rings just as she’s swallowing her first bite. Maggie picks up the phone, wiping her lips on a napkin.

It’s Professor Devereux—Simon—from the art school. He’d asked her to keep him updated. Said generously, “If there’s anything else I can do.” And she’d completely neglected to do so—she’d taken the name of the dealer in Hong Kong from him and run.

“I’m really sorry,” she says. “I just got caught up in the chase. I hope there will be some resolution later today.”

“If you’re truly sorry you’ll let me take you out for a drink,” says Simon.

Maggie laughs, taken aback. He’s flirting. Asking her out. She places a cool palm against a hot cheek.

“Do you know Bobby Chinn’s?” he asks.

“The restaurant at the end of the lake.”

“Why don’t you meet me at the bar there at nine tonight. We’ll celebrate your resolution.”

Maggie laughs again, feeling foolish. And then she surprises herself by saying yes. “But how will I know it’s you?”

“I’ll know it’s you, I’m sure of it.”

Maggie rolls her eyes. Are French men really like this?

“I have an unfair advantage,” he admits. “I found your picture on the Walker Center’s website.”

She does her own research as soon as she hangs up the phone, looking him up on the Internet. Simon Devereux has a PhD in art history from the Sorbonne. He wrote his thesis on French influences in Bùi Xuân Phái’s work. His photo, though, is somewhat surprising. He’s not Vi
t Ki
u, but half Vietnamese: given his last name, his father must have been French. She pushes the tray of food on her desk away.

Every time he wakes she is there at his beside, old Lan but still beautiful, busy with some embroidery she sets aside as soon as his eyelids flutter open.

“I’ve forgotten all the poetry,” he says.

“I’m sure you’ve just put it away for safekeeping,” she says, patting H
ng’s hand. “What about that first one from
Fine Works of Spring
. You knew it by heart.”

“Even that, I’m afraid.”

She leans over his bed. “The cherry blossom has lost its scent,” she says in a voice as silken as when she was a girl. “The trees of the North have forgotten the season.”

“You remember it?”

“I listened well,” she says. “The bird that rests here is a carrier pigeon arrested in mid-flight.”

“Oh, Lan,” says H
ng, suddenly feeling very strange, wobbling inside like his organs have become unmoored.

“The bird has forgotten the message he’s been sent to deliver. Ashamed, he begins to repeat the words of the morning’s broadcast …”

“Oh, Lan. How I’ve missed you.”

“Ah, H
ng, I’ve been here the whole time.”

Maggie rushes over to T
’s house this evening, having just heard back from the purchasers in California. She feels euphoric: victorious and relieved, genuinely proud of T
for being so convincing, nervous and giddy at the thought of meeting Simon Devereux later, embarrassed that the latter feelings should even be part of the mix. It’s a drink, just a drink with a man she’s never met. Today is the culmination of a year- long search for her father’s work. His timing is uncanny.

She apologizes to Bình for dropping by unannounced, but he silences her with a smile, his silver-capped eye teeth sparkling in the light. “We are always happy to see you,” he says, leading her across the courtyard by the hand.

Bình’s hair is gleaming wet under the fluorescent light of the kitchen. Maggie notices a black smudge on Bình’s neck, the same black on Anh’s palms, and she’s moved to think that a man with a glass eye is still concerned enough about his appearance to dye his hair.

T
steps into the kitchen then with just a towel wrapped around his waist, his chest as hard and shiny as a polished apple. “Out of water,” he says, before realizing Maggie is there. He folds his arms across his chest self-consciously.

“It’s good news,” says Maggie. “It worked. You made it work, T
. I couldn’t wait to tell you. They’re going to give us $10,000 for the Bùi Xuân Phái—actually $9,998, they bargained for a luckier number— and my father’s drawings.”

“Whoa-hoa!” Bình shouts, leaping up and fetching the bottle of whiskey that sits prominently displayed on a shelf. “It’s never been opened,” he announces proudly. It was a gift from his colleagues when he left the factory years ago.

Anh fetches four glasses, which Bình fills to the top. Maggie shudders at the mere smell of the whiskey.

“Let us toast to the health of the old man,” says Bình, raising his glass.

Maggie raises her glass and offers a toast of her own. “To the return of things that have been lost.”

H
ng admires the white length of his leg in its plaster, but curses it at the same time. He’ll be stuck in this bed for several more weeks.