The Beauty Of Humanity Movement Part 19

Phng asks T to press play on the CD player he has brought with him-a recent purchase and a real Sony, no Chinese imitation-and the musical accompaniment begins. It is a track of synthesized violins and whispering ghostly voices. It's like being inside a temple full of ancestors. Phng's falsetto floats there among the voices and then-boom- drops an octave and takes charge with a melody that is beautiful, a tone that is rich.

He has taken a traditional song and transformed it into a modern and emotional ballad even better than the one from t.i.tanic by Celine Dion. As he reaches the chorus, the old man above begins banging his cane on the floor, clattering energetically, so much so, in fact, that he is interrupting their concentration.

Maggie leaps up from where she is sitting, rus.h.i.+ng over to the staircase, the first among them to realize that Old Man Hng is actually banging his way down the stairs.

Phng stops singing. A note hangs in mid-air. T presses the stop b.u.t.ton on the CD player and everyone rushes over to the staircase, each of them reprimanding the old man: "It's too soon for you to walk."

"Stop right there."

"Are you crazy?"

"You're only going to injure yourself."

But the old man is determined, hopping down one more step and leaning into his cane. And he is singing! Singing in a terrible, loud voice like a very drunk man doing karaoke.

T's father is tugging the old man's s.h.i.+rtsleeve: "Hng, Hng, let's sit you down," but the old man carries on bellowing the words, having lost track now of all tune. And then he loses control of his body, clutching his chest, gasping for breath, leaning into his cane as if he will fall over. T's father wraps his arms around him and together they crash to the floor.

T and Phng kneel beside them. "Don't move him," Bnh wheezes from underneath Hng. "Get an ambulance. I think he's had a heart attack."

Voices of the Dead.

Hng wakes thigh-deep in muddy water. He has walked kilometres from his own home to trawl a net through a giant crater where just three weeks ago some thirty thousand people lived crammed together in rows of traditional houses, and the mystique of Kham Thien Street was still very much alive.

He used to hear stories about the street when he was a boy serving in his Uncle Chin's restaurant, of its bars and inns promising music, beautiful women and drink. One day, Hng used to think, one day when I have some money. But by the time he had some money, he had no time for leisure, and by the time he could afford a night of leisure, the Party had put the bars and inns out of business, outlawing gambling and prost.i.tution as foreign social evils.

Hng was an innocent. He had wanted nothing more, had in fact never imagined anything more than sitting in one of these bars and, in return for a few 'ong, listening to a beautiful lady sing a song just for him.

And now that he is finally visiting the street? It is under water. It is the winter of 1973 and the Americans have obliterated the entire neighbourhood. The vast majority of residents were evacuated to the countryside when the U.S. destroyed the train station a week before, but the poor, the sick and the stubborn remained behind. Some of them are now fis.h.i.+ng alongside Hng in the muddy crater, which quickly filled with the heavy rains. They are recovering pieces of metal: tin cans and bombsh.e.l.ls they'll be able to use as cooking vessels; the fuel tank of an airplane, which will make a good tub for was.h.i.+ng clothes. They lift tattered bits of cloth from the water, parachute silk and torn tarpaulin dangling like seaweed in their hands. But as Hng quickly discovers, where there is tattered cloth there is also likely to be a body. Or a piece of body. He screams as a disembodied head b.u.mps against his thigh, its eyes rolling loose in their sockets. He screams and retches and squeezes his own eyes shut.

He hears voices around him. Voices of the dead. A man shouting below him. But perhaps those dead-the innocents-are speaking to him from above, from heaven. He tentatively opens one eye. Someone is bathing his feet. He is lying in a bed in a room full of identical beds, moss-green paint peeling from the walls. A woman's voice says, "Hallucinating. The painkillers will do that."

He recognizes that voice; it is Anh. His bed is surrounded: Anh and Bnh, T, Maggie and Phng.

"You fell over, Hng, do you remember? Coming down the stairs."

Bnh looks wide-eyed and unlined, just like he did when he was a boy with questions in his eyes. "We were so worried," he says. "We thought you'd had a heart attack."

Hng runs his palm over his chest. He is intact. He is not a headless torso or a disembodied head.

"It was your leg, not a heart attack," says Anh. "You must have fallen unconscious from the pain. They put in three pins and two metal plates."

So he has had an operation. He lifts the sheet and sees the length of his leg encased in solid plaster.

"We should have brought you to the hospital in the first place," says Bnh. "It never would have healed properly on its own."

Bnh clearly blames himself. "I am a stubborn man," says Hng.

But Hng is also a man afraid of this place. The Americans destroyed this hospital with their bombs, and even though it has been rebuilt, Hng still fears the presence of ghosts. The spirits of the dead have not properly been put to rest. "Please, Bnh, just tell me the people-the patients, the doctors, the nurses-"

"Everyone here is alive," says Bnh. "I a.s.sure you."

The ward smells like boiled chicken, antiseptic and the dusty fog of old men's urine. An orderly in pale green taps Hng on the shoulder with a plastic cup of pills, an awful lot of pills, Maggie notes. Hng reaches awkwardly, his plastered leg now held aloft by a barbaric-looking contraption, throwing the pills into his mouth and was.h.i.+ng them back with the dregs of some weak tea.

"You should get your wife to shave you when she comes in," says the orderly.

"My wife?" Hng says gruffly.

"That old lady. Or ask your granddaughter, then," he says, pointing at Maggie.

Hng looks down and picks at the grey blanket.

"It's okay," Maggie says. "Do you want me to shave you?"

Hng strokes his chin.

"I'll get you a razor," says the orderly. Maggie lathers a bar of soap in her hands over a bowl and daubs the foam onto the old man's face. He raises his chin like a curious turtle. She draws the razor over his puckered skin with some apprehension, having never shaved a man before.

He purses his lips for her as she skims off his whiskers. He turns his head to the left, then right, so she can shave his neck.

"Do you have a camera, Maggie?" Hng asks when she is done, running his palm over his smooth cheek while studying his reflection in the back of a spoon.

"You want me to take a picture?"

She pulls her phone from her purse while he composes his face into a frown. "A little smile?" she suggests.

"No," he replies, shaking his head. This is exactly how he wishes to be preserved.

T enters the ward and approaches the bed just then. "You look good," he says. "How are you feeling?"

"Trapped," says Hng.

"I brought you a cup of coffee from outside," T says, handing him a paper cup and peeling back the lid.

The aroma takes Hng right back to that day at Cafe V. The draw had been primal; the smell of coffee should no longer have existed.

"Sometimes you have to give them something, Hng," V had lectured. "You didn't learn this, did you. They have taken everything from you because you didn't co-operate."

"I wasn't an informant," Hng said blankly.

"If you'd simply stepped forward and given the Party someone, anyone, they would have commended you. You would have been able to protect the rest of them."

"Who did you give them?" Hng demanded, gritting his teeth.

"One who'd left me, in any case," said V. "I don't even remember his name. They had their eyes on him already because of his education in the U.S.; they would have condemned him anyway."

Hng feels his eyelids growing heavy, drooping like leaves after a heavy rain. He tries to fight the narcotic wave that is now overtaking him, tries to shout above the roar: Was I the fool not to play the game? Should I have sacrificed someone to spare the rest?

The only person Hng could have imagined sacrificing is himself.

A Stone in His Heart.

Tu is lying in the dark of his reclaimed bedroom when his cellphone rings in the pocket of his jeans, which lie in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. Who would be calling him in the middle of the night? Oh no, comes the dreaded thought, Hng is dead. T throws his legs over the sheet and grabs his jeans.

"Maggie," he exhales with relief. "Maggie," he says again.

"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" she says, her voice quiet, faraway.

T flicks on the light.

"Professor Devereux tracked down Mr. V's collection," she says.

"Maggie! Where?"

"In Hong Kong," she says quietly.

"But, Maggie, what's the matter?"

"It's been sold to a group of Vietnamese-American businessmen," she says, hiccuping back tears.

"Maybe they'll agree to let you have your father's pictures," says T.

"The dealer I spoke to said the purchasers were intent on keeping the collection as a whole. Preserving its integrity."

"Well, if they believe in integrity, they will believe in you," he says.

"That's sweet of you, T."

"You must talk to them."

"I've got a conference call booked with them first thing in the morning. In just a couple of hours, in fact-evening there."

"I'll come and wait with you."

"Would you really?"

T is already stepping into his jeans. Anything for you, Maggie. Anything at all.

The drug the doctor is administering gives Hng disturbing dreams. One time it is Party officials threatening to break his other leg unless he reveals o's whereabouts. They are tearing apart the room at the back of his ph shop, looking for evidence of counter-revolutionary activity. They will find it soon enough-all six issues of Nhan Van are hidden under his mattress, as well as Fine Works of Spring and Autumn, and dozens of poems written in o's own hand.

Another time he is on the streets during the American War. He is hunting for cicadas and worms when he comes across a sight he has become numb to, that of a woman's arm lying in the gutter. The ring finger has been cut off, but the bracelets around her wrist remain, and Hng realizes the only way to get that silver will be to sever the hand from the arm. He picks up the arm and shakes it, just to be sure, and the bangles clatter together at the wrist, too tight to slip free. But she will love these, he thinks, as he puts the arm down and looks around him for a piece of metal, preferably something serrated.

These dreams never come to a conclusive end, but in this case, Lan is suddenly standing before him, old Lan, but still beautiful. Her fine bones, her delicate skin, her precious jewel of a mouth.

b.u.t.terflies hatch from coc.o.o.ns inside his stomach. Is it possible? Is it possible she is here at the hospital? Bnh appears to be touching her forearm. Her hands are resting on the metal bar at the end of his bed.

"Bnh," Hng croaks, soft wings caught in his throat.

"You've been calling out for her all day," he says.

Is it true? Has Bnh brought her to his bedside? Or is he confusing this with a hazy memory from a few years ago? He can picture her, old like she is now, standing inside his shack at the end of his straw-filled mattress, holding a bowl of chicken broth and rice. He is sick, he has been forced to pull out some teeth, she is kneeling now by his bedside, pressing a cold wet cloth against his forehead, murmuring something to him, a poem possibly, placing a white pill on his furry tongue.

And then she is gone.

But she is here. Now.

In this moment Hng can't remember why they have not spoken for so many years, why he has avoided her gaze, why he has carried a stone in his heart.

"I was dreaming, Lan," he says, releasing b.u.t.terflies from his mouth. "I was dreaming that I was going to give you silver bracelets."

She shakes her arm and several bangles fall from her elbow to her wrist. A familiar sound. A sound as clean and clear as mountain water, something he hasn't heard since he was a child.

-- Henry Thanh and his colleagues have charitable intentions. They believe the collection should be returned to Hanoi, its rightful home, where they want to see it housed and displayed as a permanent collection. At the museum perhaps. They've even suggested hiring Maggie to scout for the right location, but when it comes to her father's art, they are resolute.

"What happens when someone claiming to be the great-grandson of Bui Xuan Phai turns up?" Henry Thanh asks Maggie over the phone.

"Look, I can't prove to you that he's my father, but if I were looking to capitalize on something, I'd be the one telling you Bui Xuan Phai was my great-grandfather."

"Fair enough," says Henry. "But if we make an exception, we'll be setting a precedent. The collection's worth is the sum of its parts. Each and every piece."

Maggie hangs up the phone and turns to an expectant T. She shakes her head.

"Don't give up, Maggie," he says. "Come. We need to pray."

"Pray?" Maggie doesn't consider herself a particularly spiritual person. Her mother used to take her to temple once a year when she was a child, though it seemed she had lost faith herself.

"At your father's altar."

T must register the look of hesitation on Maggie's face, because he reaches for her hand and squeezes it. "Maggie, do you not have an altar for your father? But who is listening to him in the afterlife? Who is feeding him?"

Maggie's mother didn't have a shrine in Ly Vn Hai's honour either, except perhaps the s...o...b..x she kept hidden at the back of her closet. But then it's not a wife's job. A shrine is a descendant's responsibility; it's hers.

She doesn't even know where to begin.

"Clear a s.p.a.ce," says T.

She looks over at the writing desk, a cherry wood antique with bra.s.s fittings that came with the apartment. The desk has served as a dumping ground for receipts, loose change, keys, the few pieces of mail that have arrived for her from her bank in Minneapolis and the IRS.