The Beauty of Humanity Movement (41 page)

H
ng had felt all the communism in his body drain out of him as she spoke. All the colonial resentment too. The politics and history of Vietnam lay in a puddle at his feet. “You deserve the best pastries and the finest chocolate,” he said. “You deserve a man who adores you and spoils you with such things.”

“But I have a man who adores me and spoils me, don’t I?”

H
ng had stood there feeling stripped naked. He was powerless in her presence; this was now clear to them both.

“Here,” she said, holding out the shirt to him, “try this on. It only has one sleeve, but I’ll find the material to make the other one eventually.”

By the time she did finish making the shirt they were no longer speaking. The silence between them was as deafening as the raining bombs of the American War, but where the latter came to an end, the former waged on. He could not believe she was capable of such destruction, but in hindsight, the seeds had been there all along.

H
ng interrupts the driver as the taxi nears the shantytown, asking if he could just stop and let him off at the end of the dirt road leading down to the pond. H
ng would feel ashamed to arrive home in such an extravagant manner.

“I wasn’t going to drive down there anyway, my friend,” says the driver. “Bad roads. Bad people. You be careful.”

What do you know of it?
H
ng wants to say. The taxi driver has obviously mistaken him for a visitor. H
ng slams the car door and stomps down the unlit road in his bellhop’s trousers, determined to look forceful and confident despite the pain in his leg. It has started to rain, and as soon as H
ng is out of sight of the taxi he reaches down, brushes his hand against the mud at his feet and runs a streak of it across his cheek and through his hair.

Father and son are taking turns pushing the cart toward the shantytown, but T
is losing patience by the time they get to the track leading down to the pond. It has taken them an hour and a half to get this far, and it takes the strength of both of them—two hands on each handle of the cart. How the hell does Old Man H
ng do this on his own? T
is grateful that it is at least dark; he really wouldn’t want anyone mistaking him for a food seller with a rickety old cart.

They discover the track muddy and difficult from the early evening rain, and T
is pissed off that his Nikes are getting dirty.

“It’s a pair of shoes, T
,” says Bình.