The Beauty of Humanity Movement (150 page)

H
ng is thankful he knows good children, children who possess the manners and values of old, like T
.

H
ng pats the thin skin in the middle of his chest, feeling for the vial of MSG he now carries on a string around his neck. It is not nearly so expensive these days, but having done without it for so long has become a matter of pride. Everything is available now; it would be easy to become lazy.

Imagine if he did have his own shop again. Even though he would not be bound by deference to inheritance, he would still wish to replicate Uncle Chi
n’s shop. Forget these stainless steel counters and poured concrete floors T
and Bình are talking about. Forget hiding the kitchen away in the back like some western restaurant. He’ll be out there cooking in front of the open window, chatting to everyone who passes, inviting them in. He’ll find a place with an old tiled floor that they can clean and polish. He’ll nail rattan screens to the walls, a soft back against which to lean, a cushion to absorb sound, and he’d like some of those whirling ceiling fans the French used to install in their establishments.

He’ll eschew the common trend of plastic tables and stools in favour of the old heavy teak furniture that tells people you are welcome here as long as you like. A man his age is likely to proceed more cautiously, if at all, knowing how Vietnam can do a somersault or backflip
overnight and suddenly half the population is dead, in labour camps or prison or hiding in a bomb shelter or fleeing altogether because the country is tied to the yoke of some colonial master or native despot. H
ng hopes the seeds of Vietnam’s destruction don’t lie in this fever of capitalism that has infected the country, a fever that is beginning to infect him as well, but even if that is the case, he has lived long and hard enough to know Vietnam will recover. It always does.

He opens his eyes. These two men—his family—wait expectantly. “Give an old man some time to consider all this,” he says.

He dreams of Lan wading among lotuses, only to awake to find her sitting by his bedside, picking at the seam of his trouser leg. “I’ll sew it up again when your leg’s all better,” she says.

“Is it too late?” he asks.

“Too late?”

It’s a good question. He is old, but not too old to contemplate running a business. He’s been running a business all these years, hasn’t he? Surely it would be easier to be settled in one place. His question has more to do with a fear of failure than anything else. He would wish to be able to recreate an environment like that of Ph
Chi
n & H
ng, but how can he hope to do so without his memory? So much from that time has slipped away.

“Tell me everything you remember, Lan. Please,” he says, feeling the rise of panic. “Tell me names.”

“Well,” she says calmly. “It’s hard to know where to begin. There were so many of them. What about Chi
n Ð
t and Huy Ph
c. Their poems always sounded very similar to me. And that Chinese man with the crooked nose who wrote stories about village life. And Xuân Quô’c
Quý, the mute who brought his brother along to say his words aloud.”