The Beauty of Humanity Movement (80 page)

“Sometimes I miss when the world was like this,” one of T
s father’s old friends says, “when neighbours cared about neighbours, and someone would cut someone else’s hair, and in return, the one with the new haircut would massage the haircutter’s feet. Now, I have to say, that is a very fine television you’ve got there, very fine indeed. Do you have satellite?”

T
s mother will sometimes put a stop to all the reminiscing, saying there are many chapters in a life, not all of them happy, but they are lucky to have the assurance that another chapter will come even if it is in the afterlife when the soul takes up residence in a new body.

T
has personally not given much thought to the afterlife. A strange thought occurs to him in that moment: What if his soul were to be reborn in a Vi
t Ki’êu’s body, or even that of a total foreigner? Would
life be fundamentally different? It certainly would be if he could choose the particular body, because he’d opt for someone wearing football cleats, a striker who boots the winning goal in the FA Cup—
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
the crowd going wild.

“T
, I kept the fish warm,” says his mother, pointing toward a clay pot.

T
kneels and spoons rice and a few nice chunks of white fish and ginger in broth into a bowl, then sits down on the floor with his parents. He lifts a few grains into his mouth.

“I meant to tell you, I dropped in on the old man after work today,” says his father. “He seems a bit worn down by his accident, don’t you think? Did you notice the absence of coriander among the herbs this morning?

“Everything I said seemed to drag him back to the past. I suggested that perhaps I could build him a better cart. He pointed at each of the wheels, and the axle, and every single wooden board in turn and told me this long, meandering story about how he had acquired each piece.”

This sounds like one of H
ng’s wandering metaphors, something his father would never understand. Bình is a straightforward man who puts one foot in front of the other day after day. He is quietly resigned to what is past and he accepts most of the present. Sometimes it frustrates T
that his father doesn’t speak out, doesn’t even complain when the Party introduces some ridiculous new law like the one they’re proposing to force everyone to wear motorbike helmets next year.

T
s father would have preferred to hear H
ng say,
Excellent. Thank you very much. This cart is really just a heavy piece of crap I built out of scraps forty years ago. I can’t wait to replace it
.

“And then you know what, T
?” says his father. “After he has worn me down with this very long story about his cart, after he has refused to
consent to me building him another one, he suddenly says to me, ‘Did I ever tell you that you had a baby brother?’”

“What?” T
says, putting down his bowl.