by Camilla Gibb
“But I should have understood, Hng. I could see what the words meant to you. I was very young. It was foolish of me. I honestly thought I could protect you.”
“Protect me? How?”
“I feared they would come and find those papers.”
“They did come,” says Hng, his mouth hanging open. “They set fire to my shack.”
“I panicked, Hng. I didn’t want to lose you.” Lan hangs her head, her chin falling into her chest.
They arrived too late and found nothing. They did not charge him with any crime. They did not drag him away or kill him. Take away his eyes, tongue or hands. They left him to his life on the shore of a muddy pond, to live in silence beside a beautiful girl named Lan. A girl who had tried to save him, but in so doing had lost him.
Provenance
It’s a brooding early morning with a sagging sky, creating a mood that T would find despairing even if they were not faced with the prospect of eating an inferior bowl for breakfast every day for the indeterminate future. The ph at the end of Mã Mây Street seems particularly inferior now that T has had his own experience of cooking. He thinks the problem is less the cook’s failure to trim enough fat from the meat than it is his laziness in not skimming off the grease that rises to the surface of the broth before he reboils it.
“If that were his only problem, it would not be so bad,” says his father, turning his spoon over unenthusiastically. “Hng would never be so lazy.”
“Never,” T and Maggie say in unison.
“If Hng had his own shop again, it would certainly be cleaner than this,” he continues. “Can you smell the toilet?” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“Imagine it,” Bình says, drawing an imaginary banner of a bright, lucky red sign through the air, the words Ph Hng hanging on a building on a popular street in the Old Quarter, a shop with big, clean glass windows and an open door inviting customers to take seats on proper wooden chairs inside rather than at plastic stools on the greasy pavement.
T sees a gleaming, stainless steel counter. Perhaps a gas stovetop, which would reduce the need for wood. Bright new linoleum, easy to clean. A refrigerator to keep the meat fresh and the herbs from wilting. Shelving for a stack of new, white ceramic bowls and large lidded pots.
“There’s a closet full of unused dishes at the hotel,” says Maggie.
T’s father adds a sink with hot and cold running water. An indoor toilet and perhaps a room at the back where the old man could live.
“This is crazy,” says T, putting an end to this fantasizing. They could never hope to save the kind of money this would take. Even if T and his father were men who gambled at the cockfights, no number of wins could amount to that kind of money.
“What if we formed an association?” says his father.
“You’re serious about this,” T says, pushing his bowl to the centre of the table and abandoning his soup altogether.
“Well, he can’t carry on as before. And he’s never going to retire. We have to find a way to make it easier for him.”
“What do you mean by an association?” Maggie asks.
“Like a ho,” says Bình.
“It’s a fund you can turn to when you need a big sum of money fast,” T explains. “Like for a wedding or a funeral or to build a house. Usually the association is between relatives, everyone contributing a certain amount—you keep it small and close so that everyone remains honest and has his turn at the lot.”
“We could invite Hng’s regular customers to participate,” says Bình.
Maggie asks how much everyone would need to contribute, perhaps calculating her own savings, but this raises the bigger question of how much it would cost to get such a shop up and running to the point where it could turn enough of a profit to sustain itself.
T jerks his notebook out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He’s just the man for this job. Rents have soared in the past couple of years, but he thinks it might still be possible to lease the ground floor of a building in the Old Quarter for the equivalent of about eight hundred U.S. dollars a month. And then, of course, there are the taxes and licensing fees, the equipment and supplies, and the bribes that must be paid to the police. Finally, the tables and chairs and kitchen equipment and ingredients.
T estimates the various costs with his father’s help, converts this from đ’ông to dollars, then rounds off the number. “Twelve thousand dollars,” he says, underlining the zeros roughly. “Three hundred dollars each if the roughly forty people who are his regular customers were to contribute.”
T’s father shakes his head. “That’s far too many people. You could be dead before it was ever your turn. And it is far too much money to ask anyone to contribute, in any case.”
“That’s less than people spend for one night at the Metropole,” says Maggie.
“What do they charge for a bowl of ph there?” T’s father asks.
“About seven dollars.”
T’s father coughs like a cat bringing up a furball. They’ve never paid more than seventy cents for a bowl of ph. “Do they import the beef from France?” he says. “Ôi zi ôi.”
——
Hng has been waiting all morning to see someone from the kitchen. He is impatient and agitated by the time a young man, just a boy really, finally comes to the ward to speak with him. The boy hovers at the end of the bed, looking like a dog used to being kicked. Hng struggles to begin with a compliment: “The ph has a warm fragrance,” he says, “but did you taste the broth? Did it really seem sweet enough?”
“We don’t taste it, Grandfather,” says the young man.
What terrible teeth the boy has. Hng leans back on his pillow. “But how can you know if the balance is right, if it is seasoned sufficiently, if you don’t taste it?”
“It is because we are a hospital. We have so many to serve, we do not have the time to check and adjust.”
Hng can hear the embarrassment in the boy’s voice; he clearly knows the shame in this. “But even a factory must check and adjust,” he says. “If even the tiniest mechanism is out of alignment, the whole outcome is compromised, is it not?”
“Yes, Grandfather,” says the boy.
“Did your mother not teach you the way?” Hng asks with all the kindness he possesses.
“She died when I was very small.”
Hng aches for the boy, just as he once did for Bình. “I tell you what,” he says, drawing the boy toward him, touching his forearm, extracting his name. “When I am better, when this damn leg is healed, I will teach you. Now, which bones do you use for the stock?”
“The cheap ones. From the neck.”
“But no no no,” Hng says, cringing. “It’s all about the marrow. You want knuckle bones, leg bones, tail. And you can get these cheap if you have a relationship with the right butcher.
“Beyond that, it’s largely about the time of year—how much rain has there been, has there been enough grass for the cows, how is the soil where your onions and ginger are grown? And what if the star anise is old and losing flavour? How might you compensate? There are ways.”
“I would very much like to learn,” the young man says, looking more like a new puppy now than a beaten dog.
He says he will go to temple and pray for Hng’s full and speedy recovery.
Hng cannot ask the young man to spare himself the effort. He will readily take all the help he can get.
T’s parents are in the courtyard, his mother feeding her new chickens, the ground now covered in seed, his father squatting in front of the brazier pouring the tart juice he has extracted from tamarind pulp into the broth for a canh chua cá. He cooks this fish soup on days when T’s mother says she just can’t bear the thought of cooking or eating meat, usually days she has spent up to her elbows making sausages. Bình prefers cooking his hot and sour fish soup out here on the open fire; he bought the stove in the kitchen five years ago, but after using it once, declared he didn’t like electric heat. He says it changes the taste of thi
ngs.
T squats down beside his father and passes him a series of small white bowls. Bình tips diced pineapple, bamboo shoots, sliced red chilies, sugar, fish sauce, tomato wedges and fat cubes of white fish in turn into his rolling broth. They are engulfed in its aroma: the sourness bites the back of T’s tongue.
“I’ve been thinking about how to get Hng that money,” Bình says, as he skims the surface of the broth with a slotted spoon, his wrist making a gentle figure eight.
“Me too,” says T, tapping his temple. “The wheel is spinning but going nowhere.”
“You told me about the prices that Bùi Xuân Phái’s work fetches now. What if we were to sell my Phái drawing to these men Maggie is dealing with in California?”
T is astonished his father would even consider such a thing, having guarded and protected the drawing for so many years. “I could ask Maggie what she thinks it might be worth,” he says tentatively.
“I leave the handling of it to you.”
The following morning, T removes Bùi Xuân Phái’s naked lady from the chest in his parents’ bedroom and rolls her up carefully, wrapping her in newspaper, making sure every inch of her is covered. He holds her high above his head, not wanting her to be jostled about on these busy streets she has never walked down before, thinking how strange this bustling city would look to Bùi Xuân Phái if he were alive to see it today.
When T unrolls the picture for Maggie, she gasps and covers her mouth. When she finally drops her hands, she has the face of someone who has just eaten something extremely delicious.
She puts on plastic gloves, snapping them at her wrists like a forensics expert on CSI. She smooths down the curled edges of the paper, picks up her magnifying glass and studies every inch of it for what feels like an hour.
She uses words like provenance and pedigree. She talks about the purity of the drawing’s lineage, having had only one owner all these years, and the fact that it was passed from Phái himself to T’s grandfather Ðạo, directly from one artist to another. She praises its condition as pristine and unadulterated. Pure. She commends them all, Ðạo, Bình and T, for their care and respect in handling it.
“Your father’s really prepared to sell it?” she asks.
“If it can get us the money for Old Man Hng’s shop, yes, he’s prepared to sell it.”
Maggie’s eyes sparkle as she peels off the gloves and rubs her hands together. “I think it would fetch well over ten thousand dollars,” she says.
“Can we ask for twelve?”
“We can try,” she says, picking up the phone.
This way of tackling things so directly, without apology or ritual, seems a bit reckless to T, but it certainly does move things along. He can just imagine what happens when deals go sour, though—no blessing to protect you, no Buddha or ancestor to make things right. This is one obvious downside to capitalism.
Maggie apologizes to Mr. Thanh for calling so late but says she has a proposal to make that she is quite sure he’ll find of interest. She is in possession of a natural and fitting addition to the Võ collection— an immaculately preserved piece that could, in fact, serve as its celestial heart.
Maggie puts her hand over the receiver and gestures to T. “I want you to describe the piece to him,” she whispers. “From your heart.”
From his heart. Where feelings live. Subjective feelings. Gulp.
“One minute, Henry. I’m just going to pass you to someone. He’s the best one to describe it.” She passes the phone to T, taps her chest and whispers again: “From your heart.”
“Hello,” says T, clearing his throat. “Mr. Thanh? Yes, well, this is a drawing that has been in my family for fifty years. You have heard of Nhân Van? No? Well let me tell you,” he begins, launching into a brief history.
“T,” Maggie whispers, tapping her chest again. “Heart.”
“Um, Mr. Thanh? What I can tell you is that it is a very personal drawing. Very private. Like Bùi Xuân Phái must have loved this lady. She has her naked back to him and her hands to her face. Maybe they have just been intimate with each other. Perhaps she is crying.”
T looks over at Maggie. She holds the tips of her index fingers to her lips and nods her head, her eyes a bit teary.
Mr. Thanh asks what they want for it.
“Twelve thousand dollars and the Lý Văn Hais,” says T.
He doesn’t dare look over at Maggie again. He hangs up the phone. Maggie reaches out to him and wraps her arms around his shoulders. She pulls him close, so close that he can feel the rise of her breasts and her sharp hip bones. Having never been hugged in his life, T’s instinct is to turn into a plank of wood. Mr. Thanh has said he will confer with his associates and get back to them later in the day.
The wait leaves her feeling ravenous. Maggie orders room service, her favourite—a burger and fries. Eating a hamburger in the heart of Hanoi might seem like a contradiction, but it’s the type of contradiction Maggie lives every day. She is that contradiction.
The phone rings just as she’s swallowing her first bite. Maggie picks up the phone, wiping her lips on a napkin.
It’s Professor Devereux—Simon—from the art school. He’d asked her to keep him updated. Said generously, “If there’s anything else I can do.” And she’d completely neglected to do so—she’d taken the name of the dealer in Hong Kong from him and run.
“I’m really sorry,” she says. “I just got caught up in the chase. I hope there will be some resolution later today.”
“If you’re truly sorry you’ll let me take you out for a drink,” says Simon.
Maggie laughs, taken aback. He’s flirting. Asking her out. She places a cool palm against a hot cheek.
“Do you know Bobby Chinn’s?” he asks.
“The restaurant at the end of the lake.”
“Why don’t you meet me at the bar there at nine tonight. We’ll celebrate your resolution.”
Maggie laughs again, feeling foolish. And then she surprises herself by saying yes. “But how will I know it’s you?”
“I’ll know it’s you, I’m sure of it.”
Maggie rolls her eyes. Are French men really like this?
“I have an unfair advantage,” he admits. “I found your picture on the Walker Center’s website.”
She does her own research as soon as she hangs up the phone, looking him up on the Internet. Simon Devereux has a PhD in art history from the Sorbonne. He wrote his thesis on French influences in Bùi Xuân Phái’s work. His photo, though, is somewhat surprising. He’s not Vit Kiu, but half Vietnamese: given his last name, his father must have been French. She pushes the tray of food on her desk away.
Every time he wakes she is there at his beside, old Lan but still beautiful, busy with some embroidery she sets aside as soon as his eyelids flutter open.
“I’ve forgotten all the poetry,” he says.
“I’m sure you’ve just put it away for safekeeping,” she says, patting Hng’s hand. “What about that first one from Fine Works of Spring. You knew it by heart.”
“Even that, I’m afraid.”
She leans over his bed. “The cherry blossom has lost its scent,” she says in a voice as silken as when she was a girl. “The trees of the North have forgotten the season.”
“You remember it?”
“I listened well,” she says. “The bird that rests here is a carrier pigeon arrested in mid-flight.”
“Oh, Lan,” says Hng, suddenly feeling very strange, wobbling inside like his organs have become unmoored.
“The bird has forgotten the message he’s been sent to deliver. Ashamed, he begins to repeat the words of the morning’s broadcast …”
“Oh, Lan. How I’ve missed you.”
“Ah, Hng, I’ve been here the whole time.”
Maggie rushes over to T’s house this evening, having just heard back from the purchasers in California. She feels euphoric: victorious and relieved, genuinely proud of T for being so convincing, nervous and giddy at the t
hought of meeting Simon Devereux later, embarrassed that the latter feelings should even be part of the mix. It’s a drink, just a drink with a man she’s never met. Today is the culmination of a year- long search for her father’s work. His timing is uncanny.
She apologizes to Bình for dropping by unannounced, but he silences her with a smile, his silver-capped eye teeth sparkling in the light. “We are always happy to see you,” he says, leading her across the courtyard by the hand.
Bình’s hair is gleaming wet under the fluorescent light of the kitchen. Maggie notices a black smudge on Bình’s neck, the same black on Anh’s palms, and she’s moved to think that a man with a glass eye is still concerned enough about his appearance to dye his hair.
T steps into the kitchen then with just a towel wrapped around his waist, his chest as hard and shiny as a polished apple. “Out of water,” he says, before realizing Maggie is there. He folds his arms across his chest self-consciously.
“It’s good news,” says Maggie. “It worked. You made it work, T. I couldn’t wait to tell you. They’re going to give us $10,000 for the Bùi Xuân Phái—actually $9,998, they bargained for a luckier number— and my father’s drawings.”
“Whoa-hoa!” Bình shouts, leaping up and fetching the bottle of whiskey that sits prominently displayed on a shelf. “It’s never been opened,” he announces proudly. It was a gift from his colleagues when he left the factory years ago.
Anh fetches four glasses, which Bình fills to the top. Maggie shudders at the mere smell of the whiskey.
“Let us toast to the health of the old man,” says Bình, raising his glass.
Maggie raises her glass and offers a toast of her own. “To the return of things that have been lost.”
An Old Man’s Destiny
Hng admires the white length of his leg in its plaster, but curses it at the same time. He’ll be stuck in this bed for several more weeks.
“You are longing to get back to cooking, aren’t you,” he hears Bình say as he and T approach.