The Beauty Of Humanity Movement Part 3

"Come," his uncle said, luring him out of the shadows. "They might roar like tigers, but they have the soft fur of kittens, I promise you."

Uncle Chin seemed immune to the volume and violence of the men's voices. He darted around the room, ducking under gesticulating arms while balancing a full bowl of ph in each hand, sidestepping sudden movements, changing his direction mid-step. Uncle Chin was a dancer, keen to teach his nephew the steps.

"Your height is an advantage," he said kindly. Hng hardly had to bend to lift empty bowls, replenish water gla.s.ses and bottles of fish sauce, replace clean spoons and chopsticks in canisters and wipe sticky rings off the surfaces of the low tables.

Under Uncle Chin's calm and steady direction, Hng grew accustomed to the tone of the room. Soon it was no longer a wilderness of ferocious animals, but an orderly zoo. The same people congregated at the same tables each morning, certain men commanding more attention than others. They spoke of liberating the peasantry, the cla.s.s struggle, the proletariat and bourgeoisie-ideas that might not have meant anything to Hng, but certainly became familiar to him through their frequent repet.i.tion. As did the names of foreign men with big ideas: Stalin, Marx, Lenin. Zh De, Zhu nlai, Mao Zedng.

Hng no longer flinched when someone stood up abruptly, throwing back his chair and bursting into spontaneous verse, or set the spoons on a table jumping as he pounded a fist for emphasis. He performed his tasks proudly and began to find the grace in his own feet. His height also gave him a further advantage his uncle had not foreseen. He could study the texts the men placed on their tables, make out the words they jotted down in their moleskin notebooks, marvel at the sketch of a tablemate's likeness-the magic of pencil on a page.

Hng was captivated. These men were different from all the men he had ever known, and it was not just the absence of ploughs. Their foreign ways piqued his curiosity and he took it all in, eyes and ears aflame.

Hng's limited education had given him the basic ability to read, though he'd had little opportunity to use this skill since arriving in the city. His uncle, illiterate himself, looked upon an abandoned newspaper as nothing more than good fortune for his fire. As he got older, Hng found himself attempting to read over the men's shoulders. He found himself repeating, furthermore, some of their more well-worn phrases at night before his uncle came to bed: We must overthrow the forces of oppression and degradation. Communism is key to our liberation. By means of guerrilla warfare, if need be. Our allies are the Comintern and the Communist Party of China, but the future must be fas.h.i.+oned by Vietnamese hands.

Through years of repet.i.tion, Hng shed his provincial accent, acquiring some sense of the liberation about which these men always spoke. He never revealed this transformation to his Uncle Chin, who still spoke with a peasant's accent, still betrayed his humble origins as a matter of principle perhaps, despite all his years in Hanoi. Not until his uncle pa.s.sed away did Hng dare to speak in the clipped tones of the Hanoi dialect to which he did not feel entirely ent.i.tled.

Hng was twenty-two years old when he inherited his uncle's shop, and while he missed his uncle more than he knew it was possible to miss someone, he was ready to do his memory proud after apprenticing under him for eleven years. It was 1944, a world war going on. H Chi Minh's Vit Minh, the People's Army, were fighting the j.a.panese who had occupied the country three years earlier, displacing the embattled French, but people still needed to eat breakfast, perhaps more so than ever. A bowl of ph can offer critical sustenance and a reason to get up in the morning, even in the most troubling of times. Certainly, a wife or mother could provide breakfast if need be, though most did not and still do not bother with the effort of ph, and wives and mothers, furthermore, did not have the news.

Under his owners.h.i.+p, Hng is proud to say, the ph shop continued to be as much a place for conversation as for food, much of it by then bubbling up in the dark, southwest corner of the room around an outspoken young man named o. There was something special about this young man-Hng had noticed it immediately-an aura of light seemed to spill from him and suspend anyone in the vicinity in a state of grace.

o was the most articulate critic Hng had ever heard. "Yes, of course we must rid the country of the French," he said to his colleagues when the colonialists returned after the j.a.panese withdrew in 1945, "but we must fight just as hard against the Confucian norms that have enslaved our people for centuries. The enemy lies within us as much as it lies out there."

Hng found himself forgetting his tasks whenever o commanded the room; he stopped and listened along with everyone else. o made the complicated politics of the time seem perfectly intelligible. "Politics must not be the domain of the learned and the privileged," he insisted, "but that of every man and woman, especially the ones behind the ploughs." No longer did the conversations in the shop strike Hng as somewhat removed from the experiences of people of humble origins; o was speaking both about him and to him.

Hng found whatever excuse he could to be near the man- replenis.h.i.+ng the fish sauce on his table more often than necessary, making sure to clear his bowl the moment o laid his chopsticks across the rim.

When he wasn't speaking, o was writing in his notebook. Hng would cast his eyes discreetly over the man's shoulder and take in some of his lines. One day Hng read a poem he found particularly striking. It was o's ability to capture something between bitter and sweet that caused Hng to speak directly to him for the first time. "The balance of yin and yang," Hng said.

o turned in his chair and looked up at Hng. "Just like your ph," he said.

Hng felt the rare heat of flushed cheeks in that moment and averted his eyes. o, meanwhile, copied the poem onto another page of his notebook, tore out the page and pressed it into Hng's hands.

This single gesture made Hng want to improve himself. He began to gather the newspapers the men left behind each morning and read them for company at night, the company he had longed for since his uncle's pa.s.sing. He read them by lantern light, lying on the mattress he used to share with his uncle in the windowless room at the back of the shop.

One morning, o handed Hng a package. "I brought you these," he said. "I noticed you have quite an appet.i.te for reading."

"You are too kind," said Hng, all but silenced by the gesture. He had never been the recipient of a gift in his life.

The package contained a collection of mimeographs. Essays about the history of the Vietnamese alphabet and the birth of modern Vietnamese poetry. Articles about the Russian revolution, the theories of the German thinker Marx, notes on Leninism by the great revolutionary H Chi Minh.

It took months of Hng's labouring at night to finish reading them, longer still to really understand them. On certain points he needed clarification. He would underline the relevant sections and look to o the following morning.

"Here," Hng would point, "where H Chi Minh speaks of revolutionary ethics, is he appealing to Confucian notions of duty?"

"It's his way of communicating new ideas without alienating those who are very attached to the old," said o. "You'll find he does the same with certain elements of village culture."

Where Hng could not follow the path from a concept to its realization, he would put it to o. "But we are not a nation of factory workers," he said one morning. "Where will the Party find the proletarian ma.s.ses?"

"Ah, this is just as Mao said of China," o explained, taking time to sit with Hng after breakfast and explore how the various theories of communism could be applied in Vietnam. "Mao s.h.i.+fted the emphasis away from industry to agrarian reform, tailoring it to the Chinese situation," o said. "Our man will no doubt do the same."

Their man was the great H Chi Minh, who had further escalated the intensity of the war against the French with the declaration of the Democratic Republic's independence in 1945.

"What is this Atlantic Charter H Chi Minh keeps speaking of?" Hng remembers asking o.

"It's an agreement between the Allies that nations have a right to self-determination. It's the chairman's way of convincing the Americans that they have to recognize our independence."

"He's very smart to use their language," Hng had said. "It's just like he did when he began our Proclamation of Independence with the words of the American Declaration: 'All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.' Uncle H strengthens his case by appealing as much to their sentiments as to their political sensibilities."

"Nicely put," o said, eyebrows raised. Hng had surprised them both with this first expression of opinion. "And good memory," o added, tapping his temple.

"I've memorized many things," Hng said. "I know most of your poems by heart."

"You honour me," o replied.

Silence fell between them. Hng had meant to honour, but o's attention made him glow with embarra.s.sment. He did not mean to boast.

There was so much Hng did not know, leading him to study in even greater detail the essays contained in the pamphlets o shared with him. In part, he felt the need to compensate for the fact that he was not out there alongside the Vit Minh soldiers, risking his life in battle.

In 1954, the war was won. The French were finally defeated by the Vit Minh at the battle of Dien Bien Phu. Hng was prepared to give his soup away for free, to keep the shop open all day so that the men could drink and play games in celebration, but they would not relax, would not linger, least of all o, who immediately turned the conversation to the realities of a free Vietnam and the role learned men like them would play within it.

It appeared the Workers' Party had already given some thought to this question. In the days immediately after liberation, the Party issued a series of proclamations calling upon artists and intellectuals-people literate and educated in ideology-to lead the ma.s.ses toward awareness of their enlightenment and teach and disseminate the principles of Lenin and Marx. Spokesmen sought to recruit them by shouting about revolutionary duty from rooftops; officials plastered posters onto the walls of Hng's shop.

"But wait a minute," o was the first among the men in the shop to say. "Is this really the job of the artist? To be a Party mouthpiece, a sloganeer?"

In the end he was punished for posing such questions.

Had Miss Maggie's father also risked his life in this way? Hng wonders. In all likelihood yes, since he was sent to a camp the same year Party officers came for o and his colleagues. But if he suffered the same fate as o? Then Ly Vn Hai never returned.

Old Man Hng is sitting in a chair in a linen closet. He is snoring, his mouth wide open and toothless, an untouched gla.s.s of green tea sitting on a shelf. Maggie closes the door quietly and the old man wakes up, looking froglike and confused.

"My teeth," he says, patting his lips.

"The doorman found them lying beside you on the road," says Maggie. "I don't think they'll be of any use now, I'm afraid."

"Never fit right anyway," Hng mumbles.

"And these," Maggie says, offering him the battered remnants of his gla.s.ses.

The old man turns the gla.s.ses around in his hand as if they are unfamiliar to him, then tucks them into his s.h.i.+rt pocket with a self- conscious word of thanks. He cups his knees as if he's about to stand up. His pant leg is torn and grease-stained, and Maggie sees a nasty cut running down the length of his thin, hairless leg.

"Don't get up," Maggie says, her hand against his shoulder. "You're bleeding, Mr. Hng. I'm going to get the doctor to see you."

The old man dismisses this with a wave, saying he's quite all right, nothing broken, just a little sc.r.a.ped and bruised. He apologizes for wasting her time.

But what was he doing pus.h.i.+ng his cart up Ngo Quyn, one of Hanoi's busiest streets? Maggie wonders. Surely this isn't the route he takes home after breakfast. "Were you coming to see me?" she asks tentatively.

The old man hangs his head. The thin grey hairs barely cover a scalp battered by decades of sun and rain. Yes, he was coming to see her. Unfortunately he still has no recollection as to why.

"Did you have something you wanted to tell me?" she asks hopefully.

"Perhaps I did," he says, nodding at his knees.

"Listen. I'm going to get you a room so you can rest up a bit. Get off that leg."

"No, no." He waves his hand. "That really isn't necessary."

But she doesn't want to let the old man go. She made the mistake of a.s.suming she would have more time with her mother; she's not about to repeat it.

-- Hng has never seen a bed so big. Even after bathing in hot water, he fears dirtying these white sheets. He rubs the b.a.l.l.s of his feet into the thick, green carpet and opens all the cupboards one by one. Empty but for two lonely white robes and matching pairs of slippers. So much room. Everything he has ever owned could fit into one of these cupboards, but nothing he has ever owned would be good enough to be kept here.

He pulls on the trousers of the bellhop's uniform Miss Maggie has left hanging behind the door. They're too long and a bit tight at the waist, but he admires the gold piping that runs down each leg. Very smart indeed.

He tests the corner of the bed, which yields unexpectedly to his weight, then lies back against a cloud of plush pillows. He stares at the wooden beams of the sloping ceiling and wonders how one's back fares with such a lack of support and how many ducks lost their feathers to the pillows on this bed. He reaches for the booklet on the pillow to his left. It is a menu for something called room service. Miss Maggie had said he could just dial nine and order anything he wanted to eat. Anything at all. But Hng has never used a telephone. He has never operated a television either and is reluctant to press any of the b.u.t.tons on the device she referred to as the remote control.

When Miss Maggie stops by in the early afternoon to check on him, she presses a b.u.t.ton on the device and turns the television on for him. "These arrows," she says. "This is how you change the channel. Now, what can we get you to eat?"

On the last page of the room service booklet, he finds a list of items translated into Vietnamese, but unfortunately, little of the food is familiar to him. He has never tasted Club Sandwich or Caesar Salad or Cheese Plate. He opts for ph, curious to know what a ph might taste like when made from ingredients where money is no object.

Fatty and sweet, in his a.s.sessment. Really rather unappealing. Designed for something other than Hanoian tastes. Still, he is surprisingly hungry and spoons the broth into his mouth while staring at the television. A channel called CNN broadcasts news of the Americans in Iraq. They are always at war, it seems. He presses an arrow. Black men dance on a channel called MTV. Hng has never seen a black man in his life. Look at all that gold jewellery. And their lady friends, oi zi oi, they are nearly naked! Where is the Bureau of Social Vice Prevention now? Busy arresting people for making jokes about the Party when naked ladies are dancing in the rooms of the Metropole?

Someone knocks twice, then pushes open the door to the room. Hng places his bowl aside and quickly presses the arrow that takes him back to the war on CNN.

Today is a day of many firsts. Hng was forced to endure a dentist once, but this is the first doctor who has ever examined him. The doctor wears a white coat and tie and seems ridiculously young to have such an important job; he may be even younger than T. Not that Hng believes western medicine to have any particular authority. He's rather suspicious of all its pills and gadgetry and its lack of regard for yin and yang.

The doctor asks Hng to bend forward so that he can examine the back of his head, then has him take off his trousers so that he can look at his leg. But why is he interested in Hng's eyes, his armpits, his tongue, his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, and why is he making him count backward from one hundred?

"How old are you, Mr. Hng?" he asks.

Hng honestly doesn't know. He's not even sure what year it is. What does it matter, after all? He marks time in months, following the phases of the moon; it is months that are meaningful, seasons and tides. Years are little more than an invention of a government fond of marking anniversaries by building monuments to revolutionary martyrs.

"Old enough," he says unhelpfully.

And here the doctor goes with gadgetry, pressing a metal disc against Hng's chest, some amplifying device through which he listens to his breathing.

"Do you smoke, Mr. Hng?" the doctor asks, pulling the pipes out of his ears.

"No, sir."

"Have you been having any chest pain, shortness of breath?"

"I have been feeling a bit weak recently," Hng admits.

"I can hear some fluid around your lungs. I think it might be a good idea to have an X-ray," he says. "I'll write up a requisition for the hospital."

The hospital. The hospital was bombed to bits during the war, and the memory of that carnage is still uncomfortably vivid. Hng has neither the money for such a visit nor the will.

"How is my leg?" he asks.

"Your leg is fine," says the doctor, "it's just a superficial injury. Keep that cut clean with soap and water and I'll give you some antibiotic ointment you can apply twice a day. But," he says, writing something down on a notepad and tearing the page out for Hng, "I really would recommend an X-ray."

He doesn't need an X-ray. He needs the right food; food is the best medicine. Obviously his qi has been depleted. He needs to eat congee with tofu and perform some yoga or tai chi; he has neglected to do his exercises of late.

He is relieved when the doctor departs and Miss Maggie returns. She brings a cup of tea for each of them. English tea in a china cup. She pulls a chair up close to the bed and sits down. She asks him how he is feeling and what he thought of the ph.

"Just fine," he says, "just fine." He does not want to be impolite or seem ungrateful.

"You're being polite, aren't you," she says.

He is taken aback. Is this the American style? He can only imagine so, having never met an American before. "Well, ahem," he says, clearing his throat. "Of course there is always room for improvement."

"Do you remember why you were coming to see me this morning?" she asks.

"I regret, Miss Maggie, that my memory is not what it once was. It is no doubt a consequence of my advanced age."

"The doctor seems to think there might be something more serious going on, Mr. Hng. Maybe it's not your memory, but something to do with the amount of oxygen getting to your brain."

Breathing exercises, he thinks. Tai chi. Flow.

"Perhaps you know this already," Hng begins, "but back in the days when I had a ph shop I had a regular group of customers who came in for breakfast-artists and intellectuals all. You said your father was sent to a camp in 1956? Well, that is the same year that these men began to publish their work. They produced a literary journal and six issues of a controversial magazine. They saw these publications as platforms for artistic expression and political debate, but of course the Party was not interested in such things and they were condemned for squandering their energy on something other than the revolutionary message. They refused to produce the socialist realism the Party demanded of them. This was their crime."

"Are you suggesting that my father might have been part of their circle?" she asks, leaning forward in her chair, her delicate hands on her knees, a hopeful smile on that lovely face.

He is reminded again of Lan in the days when she was eager for his stories, the way she looked to him for more. Tell me, she would say. Teach me. Why does o say love is like a game of Chinese chess?

Hng has a horrible dawning realization that it may be this intoxicating similarity to Lan that has led him here to the hotel. He might have remembered something about her father, but the urgent need to make his way here could just as well be rooted in something more selfish.

He feels ashamed for thinking Miss Maggie beautiful. For the fact that her desire to know something about great men of a lost time reminds him of someone else. He still cannot actually say with any certainty that he knew her father.

"My shop was not the only place where such conversations took place," he says, "but it was known. It had a reputation. It attracted people interested in art and debate, but I'm afraid it's impossible for me to recall all of their names."

"Do you know if any of them are still alive?" she asks.

Such a painful question, made all the more so by its directness. Hng searches, but can find no poetic device that will serve him here.

"Those who were not successfully re-educated were either killed or tortured to such an extent that they soon died from their wounds," he says plainly. "That is the tragic truth of it."

"Or they managed to escape," says Miss Maggie.

What a notion, Hng thinks, as he leans back against the cloud of pillows and casts his eyes upward. This is the top floor of the hotel; beyond it, perhaps some colonial idea of heaven. Escape is not a possibility Hng has ever considered before. He has never even heard it suggested, not even in a whisper, that anyone ever escaped from the camps. But then it would hardly have been in the Party's interest to advertise such a thing, to suggest re-education was not always successful, that there were those who would have preferred to flee south or even board a leaky boat heading out into the treacherous waters of the South China Sea than submit themselves to a course of ideological enlightenment.

"So your father-he managed to escape?"

"My mother was a nurse at the re-education camp," she says. "She got him out and they fled south. He lived for another fifteen years."

Isn't that interesting, thinks Hng. All these decades later a Vit Kiu girl raised far away in America has offered the possibility of an alternative outcome. In fact, she has gone beyond possibility and offered proof. What if o had managed to escape their clutches? What if o had had fifteen more years?

"What happened to your father in the end?" Hng asks.

"The Fall of Saigon," she says.