by Camilla Gibb
Fatty and sweet, in his assessment. 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, ôi zi ôi, 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 testicles, 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 Ðạo 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 Ðạo had managed to escape their clutches? What if Ðạo had had fifteen more years?
“What happened to your father in the end?” Hng asks.
“The Fall of Saigon,” she says.
So the man escaped the North only to be killed later in the South.
“Was he much older than your mother?” Hng asks.
“Eighteen years.”
There had been twenty-one years between him and Lan. Was it a matter of just three les
s? Could they have had a daughter like the lovely young woman sitting in this room with him right now? Might something between them have lived?
T has just dropped off his new German clients at the Metropole two hours earlier than scheduled. He doesn’t know whether it was the couple or the driver he was forced to work with since Phng called in sick to work this morning, but the day has lacked any particular joy. The couple seemed unimpressed with his list of famous German composers. “Ich glaub, mich laust der Affe,” they said, which T thought must be the German equivalent of really, except with more words.
T finds himself at the bar where he and Phng have a beer at happy hour on days like this when tourists have had their fill and just want to leave the dirt of Hanoi behind in their hotel pool. Sometimes, if Phng has some thinking to do, you can find him here alone. But happy hour isn’t particularly happy for T without Phng. In fact, everyone in the place looks rather bored and unhappy, and T feels like a very big loser until he is relieved by the ring of his cellphone.
He answers it loudly. But who is this speaking? It is some lady called Miss Maggie Lý who speaks Vietnamese with a strange accent. She says she’s calling from the Sofitel Metropole. Have the Germans complained about him to the hotel management?
“It’s about your Mr. Hng,” she says.
Oh no, thinks T, is the old man in some kind of trouble? Has he shamed himself on hotel grounds?
“I’m afraid he was in a bit of an accident.”
T throws some đõng on the table, then jogs down the street. He has been dreading a day like this. The traffic has no mercy for an old man pushing a cart. A moment of hesitation or misstep can prove fatal for a spry sixteen-year-old.
T bursts through the front doors of the Metropole, beer riding up his throat. He quickly scans the lobby. Everything is giant: the pillars, the potted palms, the guests. The man behind the front desk directs him to take a seat. T feels tiny sitting in the gilt-edged chair, his feet barely touching the floor. He whistles nervously and swings his legs until he notices the concierge scowling at him.
The man from the front desk approaches and asks if he might like to have a cup of coffee in the courtyard while he waits; Miss Maggie will be just a few minutes longer. T is about to decline, but something about the situation tells him not to. This is a highly unorthodox invitation. He is a tour guide, not a guest. They don’t even like to have tour guides sitting in their expensive chairs; they certainly don’t invite them to have coffee. He worries the stage is being set for the delivery of some very bad news.
The bellhop escorts him through a bistro and onto the teak deck of a poolside bar. T plants himself in a giant wicker chair that looks like a prop out of a movie. He would much prefer a beer at this hour, but a waiter serves him coffee—coffee in a cup and saucer rather than a glass as he is accustomed to. T looks slyly to his right and left before stuffing the piece of chocolate resting on the side of the saucer into his jacket pocket. He eyes the sugar cubes next, both white and brown.
He suddenly floats to his feet at the sight of the light-skinned beauty in the trim black suit who is entering the bar—it’s her, the mysterious woman who appeared at breakfast yesterday! Before he can think of what he might say if he were to approach her, she is standing before him.
“T?” she says.
T nods, stunned by the coincidence. “Miss Maggie Lý?” he asks tentatively.
“Thank you for coming,” she says, hand outstretched, her manner crisp, professional, American, her accent strange. “I’m sorry you’ve been kept waiting.”
“Is the old man all right?” asks T.
“He’s okay. I sent the doctor to see him and nothing’s broken. He’s a bit shaken by the whole experience though, and his cart’s quite bashed up. I don’t think he can manage to get it home. I asked if I could call anyone for him and he gave me your card. He was carrying it in his pocket.”
T is relieved the old man hasn’t been seriously injured, but he’s also a bit ashamed by the situation. The staff probably think Hng is some kind of homeless person.
“Do you, uh, know Mr. Hng very well?” T asks.
“Me? No. We met for the first time yesterday morning.”
This only increases T curiosity, but before he has had a chance to pursue this any further she is standing up and smoothing her trousers over her thighs in a way T finds a bit too sexy. “If you don’t mind waiting in the lobby,” she says, “I’ll just bring him down.”
T watches Miss Maggie Lý leave. T does not have a lot of experience with Vit Kiu, at least not of the up-close-and-personal variety. Until very recently the Vit Kiu were not much welcome. This one has a nice slim body and a musical sway to her hips, though she’s tall for a Vietnamese woman. It must be all that milk in the American diet. This would also explain her perfect teeth. Milk and hamburgers. He wonders what she looks like naked. Whether she strips off all her clothes before crawling into bed with her husband. But no, she is a Miss, not a Mrs. Her boyfriend then. An even dirtier thought.
T reaches for the sugar cubes and pops a few into his pocket. A waiter catches his guilty eye.
Old Man Hng has never looked so smart: he is wearing black trousers with some gold piping down the side like he belongs in a military band. Rather than sticking to his head as it normally does, his grey hair is a bit frothy. He smells good, too, if a bit feminine, like flowers. He looks far better for having had this accident, in fact.
T leaves Miss Maggie with a New Dawn business card and a confident wave, saying, “If you ever need the services of a tour guide in future.” Friends in high places, he thinks. Hng waves a confident goodbye of his own, saying, “I hope to see you again at breakfast.”
But why does he hope to see her again at breakfast? What the heck is going on?
“Hng,” says T as they walk down the hotel steps, “what happened?”
“Taxi cut me off,” he says, limping and gripping T by the forearm. He wades straight into the traffic, pointing over at his cart lying on its side on a traffic island, its front panel completely torn off.
“But why were you here?” T shouts. “This isn’t on your way home.”
“Maybe I get bored of the same route,” says Hng, lurching up onto the island. “Now help me pull this upright.”
“Hng, I think we should get my father to fix your cart before we try and move it.”
“Come on, T,” he says, stubborn and determined. The old man tugs one of the handles while T crouches down and leans his back against the side of the cart, grunting as he tenses his thighs and strains upright.
Hng pushes the cart forward on the traffic island and it careens to the right. The wheels are askew.
“Seriously. My dad can fix this,” says T.
But the old man refuses to accompany T home, insisting he needs to get back to the shantytown. He always insists on this point. Even that time when T found him in agony after he had anaesthetized himself with rice wine and pulled out the broken stumps of three teeth after being punched by a police officer, Hng had refused to come back to their house. He hadn’t eaten for at least two days. Ts father sent for a dentist instead, one who, at considerable expense, relieved Hng of the rest of his upper teeth and gave him a set of rejected dentures designed for a much smaller mouth—dentures that seem to have gone missing in the mysterious course of today’s events.
Several times over the years T and his father have insisted the old man come and live with them—it is the Vietnamese way—but Hng always wins in the battle of insistence, offering no other reason than “a man knows where he belongs.”
T feels no man belongs in such a dirty, shabby place, least of all Old Man Hng. He has always wished the old man’s goodness could be rewarded with a better standard of living, a decent place to live, but he knows it is useless to keep trying to convince him to abandon the shantytown. He lives a quiet life of routine, remaining loyal to the people and places he knows, serving breakfast each morning, then returning home to his shack on the shores of a
dirty pond.
The Beauty of Humanity
Hng agreed to take Ts money for the taxi fare, simply to put an end to the boy’s questions. He is mortified by every aspect of this situation, and with T involved now, Bình and Anh will also worry. Worst of all, he can offer none of them a coherent explanation of what happened.
The taxi crawls through streets crowded with people making their way home. They are carrying babies and groceries and news of the day, looking forward to a meal with their families, Hng supposes, the type of life he might have lived if circumstances had been different. The view through the window unsettles him, detaching him from the streets he knows.
Today’s incident has, furthermore, prevented him from fetching the supplies he needs for tomorrow’s breakfast. To come from a poor place and make a better life means marrying yourself to the work that will improve things. ph is Hng’s rightful wife and mistress, just as it had been for his Uncle Chin.
“You should caress the beef as you slice it,” he remembers his uncle instructing him as he got older. “If you treat it tenderly, it guides you toward the grain. Tend your broth as if she is a sleeping beauty; keep watch over her, only waking her in the final hour with a splash of fish sauce.”
Although he has been loyal to Uncle Chin’s recipe, Hng has had to adapt to the vagaries of circumstances over the years. There was a time when he’d made ph from almost nothing. He hadn’t known it was possible, but inappropriate love for a girl had driven him to it, had drawn him back into the bosom of ph, his willing mistress and reliable wife.
He had been sitting outside his shack with Lan one evening long ago, a full moon straining through the clouds, when he first admitted to himself that he was in trouble. Lan’s grandmother joined them less frequently by then, saying the poems and the stories just lulled her to sleep and what good was she to anyone with idle hands? She nevertheless encouraged her granddaughter to spend evenings with Hng, saying the girl needed an education and where else was there any chance of that.