The Beauty of Humanity Movement (31 page)

Someone knocks twice, then pushes open the door to the room. H
ng places his bowl aside and quickly presses the arrow that takes him back to the war on CNN.

Today is a day of many firsts. H
ng was forced to endure a dentist once, but this is the first doctor who has ever examined him. The doctor wears a white coat and tie and seems ridiculously young to have such an important job; he may be even younger than T
. Not that H
ng believes western medicine to have any particular authority. He’s rather suspicious of all its pills and gadgetry and its lack of regard for yin and yang.

The doctor asks H
ng to bend forward so that he can examine the back of his head, then has him take off his trousers so that he can look at his leg. But why is he interested in H
ng’s eyes, his armpits, his tongue, his testicles, and why is he making him count backward from one hundred?

“How old are you, Mr. H
ng?” he asks.

H
ng honestly doesn’t know. He’s not even sure what year it is. What does it matter, after all? He marks time in months, following the phases of the moon; it is months that are meaningful, seasons and tides. Years are little more than an invention of a government fond of marking anniversaries by building monuments to revolutionary martyrs.

“Old enough,” he says unhelpfully.

And here the doctor goes with gadgetry, pressing a metal disc against H
ng’s chest, some amplifying device through which he listens to his breathing.

“Do you smoke, Mr. H
ng?” the doctor asks, pulling the pipes out of his ears.

“No, sir.”

“Have you been having any chest pain, shortness of breath?”

“I have been feeling a bit weak recently,” H
ng admits.

“I can hear some fluid around your lungs. I think it might be a good idea to have an X-ray,” he says. “I’ll write up a requisition for the hospital.”

The hospital. The hospital was bombed to bits during the war, and the memory of that carnage is still uncomfortably vivid. H
ng has neither the money for such a visit nor the will.

“How is my leg?” he asks.

“Your leg is fine,” says the doctor, “it’s just a superficial injury. Keep that cut clean with soap and water and I’ll give you some antibiotic ointment you can apply twice a day. But,” he says, writing something down on a notepad and tearing the page out for H
ng, “I really would recommend an X-ray.”