The Beauty of Humanity Movement

by Camilla Gibb

  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 Khâm Thiên 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 prostitution 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 đ’ông, 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 fishing alongside Hng in the muddy crater, which quickly filled with the heavy rains. They are recovering pieces of metal: tin cans and bombshells they’ll be able to use as cooking vessels; the fuel tank of an airplane, which will make a good tub for washing 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 bumps 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 Bình, T, Maggie and Phng.

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

  Bình 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 Bình. “It never would have healed properly on its own.”

  Bình 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, Bình, just tell me the people—the patients, the doctors, the nurses—”

  “Everyone here is alive,” says Bình. “I assure 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 washing 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 Café Võ. The draw had been primal; the smell of coffee should no longer have existed.

  “Sometimes you have to give them something, Hng,” Võ 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 Võ. “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. Võ’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 Ðạo’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 Nhân Van are hidden under his mattress, as well as Fine Works of Spring and Autumn, and dozens of poems written in Ðạo’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.

  Butterflies hatch from cocoons inside his stomach. Is it possible? Is it possible she is here at the hospital? Bình appears to be touching her forearm. Her hands are resting on the metal bar at the end of his bed.

  “Bình,” Hng croaks, soft wings caught in his throat.

  “You’ve been calling out for her all day,” he says.

  Is it true? Has Bình 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 butterflies 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 Bùi Xuân Phái 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 Bùi Xuân Phái 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 Lý Văn Hai’s honour either, except perhaps the shoebox 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 space,” says T.

  She looks over at the writing desk, a cherry wood antique with brass 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.

  She sweeps it all aside.

  “You have the pictures your father drew for you,” says T. “And the one my father did. And the paper with his name among the contributors. Do you have incense? Some fruit?”

  Maggie fetches her father’s drawings and unfolds them on the desk. She places two squares of chocolate and an orange beside them. She lights a thick red stick of incense and the smoke curls upward, engulfing them both.

  Maggie can feel the heat of T’s shoulder bleeding into hers as they stand side by side and raise their hands.

  Hng dreams of the artist who has just returned from America. “Sit,” Hng says, thrusting a bowl into the man’s hands. He watches the man slurp the noodles and drink the broth, his expression becoming human again. He burps, wipes his mouth on his sleeve and says, “I will not forget your kindness,” then stuffs some bills into Hng’s hands.

  Hng stares at the foreign currency, knowing it is worthless to him.

  “Sorry,” says the artist. “Let me pay you like I do at Café Võ.”

  Hng says that won’t be necessary, but the man pulls a notebook from his sack and quickly sketches something with a pencil. It is a drawing of Chairman Mao with a stomach full of fish. One of those fish has the face of H Chí Minh. The artist tears the piece of paper from his notebook and hands it to Hng.

  “Who was that?” Ðạo asks as Hng stares at the drawing in his left hand and the foreign bills in his right.

  “An artist who just came back from America.”

  “That must be Lý Văn Hai,” says Ðạo. “Everyone used to hate him because he got a scholarship and left. They used to hate him because they wished they could be him. How long do you think it will be before he is punished for that American education?”

  Ðạo takes the drawing from Hng’s hand to get a better look. “Wow. He’s not afraid of anything,” says Ðạo. “I wonder if we could convince him to join us. He could do illustrations for the journal.”

  Ðạo looks at the money Hng is clutching in his hand. “Hng,” he says, “he paid you in American dollars. That’s a small fortune. You better hide it.”

  Hng pats his shirt pocket.

  “What are you looking for?”

  He turns his head. It is Lan, old but still beautiful Lan, sitting by his bedside.

  “The dollars,” he says. “I must remember to tell the girl.” “What girl is that, Hng?” she asks, reaching for his hand. “The Vit Kiu,” he says, but as soon as it comes out of his mouth he doubts her existence. She must be another one of those imaginary creatures who keeps appearing in his dreams. People known becoming unknown, faces dissolving into clouds, voices disembodied. His dreams are crowded with such illusions.

  “Never mind,” he says.

  “You mean Lý Văn Hai’s daughter?”

  “You know her?” Hng wheezes.

  “There is only a metre between our shacks, Hng. Sometimes I can even hear you sighing in bed. That night the girl brought the chocolate fungus—after she left, you asked yourself aloud who her father might be, so I told you. The illustrator.”

  Hng is still in shock when Lan pulls a small glass vial by a string out from underneath her blouse and holds it before his face, twisting it round so he can admire it from all angles. It is a collection of precious MSG crystals, most expensive and cherished of all spices, impossible to f
ind in the decades after independence. She is proud to tell him she has collected it grain by grain over the years as payment for embroidering pillowcases. She has kept the vial nestled between her breasts, close to her heart.

  Not since colonial days has Hng been able to afford this magic powder that makes one’s food burst with flavour and colour. “There’s a fortune in there,” he says.

  She lays the vial down on his chest.

  “But surely this is not for me.”

  “I have been collecting it for you,” Lan says. “In any case, it is not so expensive these days. You can now find it everywhere.”

  “But still—”

  “And you are the cook.”

  “Was the cook. Will be. If I ever get out of here,” he says, tapping his plaster cast.

  “It won’t be long, Hng.”

  “Tell me, how is everybody in the shantytown? I worry about them when I’m not there to cook.”

  “Times are better now, Hng. No one is going hungry.”

  “So they don’t need me anymore.”

  “It doesn’t mean they aren’t all wondering when they will next taste your food. I hear them reminiscing about their favourites. Your spring rolls, your roast duck, that pig’s ear salad.”

  “What about Phúc Li?” Hng asks of the legless man who lives on the other side of him. “His mother told me she was teaching him to sew labels into shirts so he could work in a factory.”

  “I don’t know, Hng. She doesn’t talk to me. None of them do.”

  “But why?”

  “Because of you, Hng,” she says as if he is dim-witted. “Because they are loyal to you.”

  It is true, she has no visitors, no apparent friends; she has lived without conversation or companionship for years. But what is a life if you cannot say to another: Grey sky today, isn’t it? Did that thunder keep you up last night? How’s your cousin, your bunion, your mushroom- hunting, your game of chess? How she must suffer in isolation, must question her entire existence.

  A great rush of feeling overcomes him. “You weren’t literate,” he says, “you didn’t know the worth of those papers.” He bites the tremor that now afflicts his bottom lip.