The Beauty of Humanity Movement (120 page)

H
ng has no energy to get undressed, drained by the effort of those words. Do words come before footsteps or is it the reverse? Does the order in which you acquire them dictate which you’ll first lose? H
ng
sleeps like a baby now, new to the world. He is at a loss to name the shapes and shadows that appear in his dreams. He is a blank slate upon which history will write its story. But he will wake before the story’s end, he is sure of it. He will counter the lies written there. He will fill in the gaps that remain.

T
he sky is heavy and grey, and Maggie sits behind T
and his father on the Honda Dream II, riding like a Vietnamese lady with her jacket on backward and a mask over her mouth. She seems more and more Vietnamese each time T
sees her. She now eats her noodles noisily in the way that makes them taste best, and much to his relief she does not grip him around the middle anymore when she sits behind him on the motorbike—she has developed her motorbike muscles.

Arriving at the bank of the river this morning, they find several of H
ng’s other regular customers but no sign of the old man himself. He must have been forced to move to a new location. Usually they would have had news of this through the network of mouths in the Old Quarter. When the others see Bình pulling up, they know not to take the situation personally. They simply shrug and get back onto their motorbikes and seek some alternative place to start the day.

But T
and his father both worry about H
ng’s absence. Was the celebration the other day too much for him? Could he be unwell? That evening, after dinner at home, they climb aboard the motorbike and make their way to the shantytown. The dirt road down to the pond punishes T
’s behind, forcing him to stand for the last stretch as if he were riding a horse.

Bình parks the bike by H
ng’s shack, which appears to be secured with a chain and padlock. The lady next door, sitting on her threshold weaving a basket from river grasses by the light of a spitting fire, tells them she has not seen the old man in a couple of days.

H
ng’s cart and brazier are gone, so he must have set off with the intention of serving breakfast. Did she see him that morning? Was there anything unusual? Did he seem well enough? Might he have had a flu?

She had not seen him that morning. He leaves hours before she wakes up. “He did leave a bowl of pork and rice on my doorstep after your party, but he has not spoken to me for over forty years.”

That is a lifetime of silence between neighbours, almost two of T
’s lifetimes, and yes, thinks T
, she is never here at Tet, and even the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival she was not among the thirty people who lined up with their bowls, despite being his closest neighbour.