The Beauty of Humanity Movement (83 page)

As he sits in a café down the road from the hotel sipping a second Coke through a pink straw, T
wonders if he should go and visit Old Man
H
ng. He, of all people, would understand why T
could not continue with the art tour. He feels compromised: he has never quit an assignment in his life. Perhaps H
ng could offer him some kind of absolution. But T
would feel embarrassed if his need were obvious. He needs a pretext for an unexpected visit.

I know, T
thinks; H
ng has to walk great distances in those awful slippers every day, surely he could use a better pair of shoes. Old men don’t normally wear running shoes, but then H
ng is no normal old man. T
knows just the place to get a good knock-off pair of Nikes. He pays for his Cokes and sprints with purpose out the door.

Half an hour later, he is walking toward H
ng’s shantytown, whistling while he swings a plastic bag containing a bright-white pair of size seven knock-off Nike Air Force high-tops. Walking this route only confirms the wisdom of his choice of gift for the old man. It is three kilometres southwest of the Old Quarter, at least two of them on cracked asphalt, open drains running at the edge of the roads, and oops!—that’s unfortunate—there goes a small dog disappearing into a sewer without a grate.

T
turns down the dirt track toward the pond. The old woman who slipped in the mud the other night is collecting stones from the road, dropping them into her extended apron; a young man is tugging at small tufts of grass. There’s no litter along this track, not a single plastic bag or battered tin, or any dogs or cats for that matter either.

T
finds the old man at the pond’s edge, scrubbing his big pots. It’s muggy here, mosquitoes circling T
s head as he squats down beside him. He hopes H
ng no longer eats the fish from this pond—they must be radioactive with poisons from the tire factory on the other side of the railway tracks—look at that cloud shimmering over there like soy sauce in a hot pan.