The Beauty of Humanity Movement (85 page)

“Well,” says H
ng, clearing his throat. “They’re quite something. Is this the latest fashion?”

“That would probably be the Nike Air Jordans, but these are still pretty cool. Do you like them?”

“Very much,” says H
ng, “thank you.” He places them alongside Grandfather Ðạo’s portrait on the ancestral altar. “I wouldn’t want to dirty them, though.”

——

Having sent T
on his way with a small packet of lotus seeds for his mother, H
ng worries he has made the boy feel insecure. He understands T
s concern about the worth of one’s life. What strikes him is that he hasn’t heard this type of concern expressed in a great many years. Men of Ðạo’s circle might have wondered such things, but no one since would dare posit a question with the individual at its centre. It’s the freedoms of Ð
i m
i, H
ng thinks. In some ways, T
s generation shares more with their grandfathers than with their fathers.

He should have told T
that a hero is just a man, a person who makes mistakes from time to time. It is natural when speaking of the dead that we tend to remember the heroic things rather than the flawed. H
ng has for so long been invested in giving Bình a portrait of his father as a hero that it seems he has forgotten T
. The boy might actually be better equipped than someone of his father’s generation to understand the imperfections and contradictions that characterize a man, however great.

Ðạo had dedicated a poem to H
ng in the last issue of
Nhân Van
, though H
ng had not read it until years later. He’d never been able to bring himself to turn the pages beyond the editorial that had determined Ðạo’s fate. It was Lan who finally pushed him to do so. Lan with her insatiable appetite, begging him for more. He turned the page of the magazine and stared.