The Beauty of Humanity Movement (69 page)

“Who are the people?” he heard Bình ask of the dishwasher. “Every day he talks about ‘the people.’”

“Well, we are,” said the woman. “All of us.”

“But why is he so angry at all of us?” Bình asked.

The woman shrugged, unable to offer the boy an answer.

The following morning, the ninth day of the officers’ appearance, the young poet Trúc rose, crossed the floor and reported himself for duty. On the tenth day, the calligrapher and his cousin followed.

“There are many different ways of fulfilling our revolutionary duties, comrades,” Ðạo pleaded with those who remained. He then turned to the officers, addressing them directly for the first time. “Why not allow us the freedom to develop a national literature? How better might we serve the revolution than to tell the stories of a people liberated from imperial rule after centuries of struggle?”

“And what qualifies you, a man who stubbornly refuses to do his duty, to know best?” one of the officers asked, jabbing a firm finger into Ðạo’s sternum.

H
ng saw the anger in Ðạo’s jaw. He placed his hands firmly on Bình’s shoulders. The officer raised his gun and pointed it briefly at Ðạo’s head before nudging his new recruits out the door.

H
ng has a memory of Bình holding out a small fistful of clean chopsticks just as a man fills the doorway of his shop. The light is too dim to make out the man’s face, but the row of shining medals pinned across his chest suggests he is neither an officer of the Department of Propaganda and Political Education, nor a recruiter for the Literary Association for National Salvation. He is a comrade of a different order altogether.

The men who remained allied with Ðạo had released the second issue of their journal,
Fine Works of Autumn
, the day before. H
ng
had found anonymous notes stuffed under the front door of the shop twenty-four hours later:
We have been waiting for this, We are hungry, You give us hope, Please continue
, read the bulk of the messages.
Your disease could be fatal unless you seek immediate help
, read a solitary note he did not pass on to Ðạo.

The man in the doorway thwacked the butt of his rifle on the floor. The chopsticks cascaded from Bình’s hands, clattering on the tiles. The boy’s fear was enough to propel H
ng forward, but the officer simply swept H
ng aside with a steely arm, walking straight over to the men seated in the far corner of the room. Three armed men followed him in, guns held tightly to their chests.

Ðạo rose, while the rest of the men remained seated, silent. Bình looked from his father’s face to the officer’s face, then up to H
ng’s. H
ng pulled the boy toward him, pinning him against his solid thighs.

The officer stood before the men with his feet planted firmly apart, his hands stiff on his hips. He spoke with a chilly lack of inflection. “There’s a particular scourge of arrogance and narcissism that seems to afflict artists and intellectuals,” he began. “You’ve been brainwashed by foreign ideas and been made slaves to your own egos. This sickness of the self needs curing. It has already perverted your politics. Must we really wait to see what it will infect next?”

“Comrade, sir, I assure you we believe fully in the theories of Marx and Lenin,” said Ðạo. “We believe absolutely in communism, the most wonderful ideal of mankind, the youngest, the freshest ideal in all of history. But if a single style is imposed on all writers and artists, the day is not far off when all flowers will be turned into chrysanthemums.”

Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend
, H
ng thought to himself. Ðạo was alluding to Chairman Mao’s
invitation to artists and intellectuals to share their criticisms in order to shape and strengthen China’s new order.

But the beauty of Ðạo’s language was wasted on these men. They remained stone-faced, unimpressed. Two of them moved toward Ðạo and lifted him up by the elbows, suspending him above the ground.

“This is a warning to you,” the officer said. “If you do not cease and desist with your publications, if you do not find a way to use your energies for the revolutionary good, you will have no garden left in which to grow your stupid, ugly flowers.”

H
ng felt Bình’s spine twitch against his thighs as the two men dropped his father. Ðạo winced as he went over on his ankle. The officer bent at the waist and swiftly spat into the bowl of ph
in front of Ðạo, wiping his satisfied lips on the back of his hand before departing.