The Beauty Of Humanity Movement Part 10

They were sitting together in front of his shack after a late supper- Lan weaving a basket, Hng whittling bamboo chopsticks-when he described the pounding in his head being like that of a blacksmith forging a horseshoe on an anvil.

"Come," she said, placing the partially finished basket by her side and patting her thighs. "Lay your head here."

Hng hesitated. Whatever touch had pa.s.sed between them before had been accidental, or inadvertent.

"It's all right," she said. "I used to do this for my brother when his head hurt from too much studying."

Hng eased himself down onto his back and inched his way up so that his head finally rested in her lap.

"Relax your weight," she said. "You won't break me."

Oh, but how wrong you are, he thought to himself. He could feel his head becoming liquid, melting into her thighs as she drew those sensuous circles around his temples and pressed her fingertips between his eyebrows and on either side of the bridge of his nose.

"Close your eyes," she instructed him.

He hadn't realized they were still open.

"Tell me a story," he whispered.

"But I'm not the storyteller," she said with a quiet laugh.

"Then you are the healer," he said, feeling himself drifting off to a place too sublime to be earthly.

That memory alone is enough to part the dark clouds in his head this morning. A ray of light, however fleeting, propels him to gather his things, load up his cart and set off into the day.

On Miss Maggie's agenda today are two more ateliers. As they set off down the street, T prays that the dandy peac.o.c.k was just an aberration and that some decency prevails in the world of contemporary art.

They are once again confronted by twenty lanes of traffic between them and the lake. "The quiet inside," Miss Maggie says of her own accord, closing her eyes for a second before stepping off the curb.

Unusually, T cannot find his own quiet this morning. He is worried about the old man. Hng doesn't appear to be limping anymore, but his movements have really slowed down since his accident, and something was missing from the ph this morning: it had tasted only ninety per cent complete. T had also spied two neatly folded grey blankets stacked underneath the old man's cart at breakfast, leading him to wonder if Hng might actually be sleeping at the factory, having lost the energy to travel back and forth.

With Phng being so moody and the old man out of sorts, T begins to wonder if the problem isn't astrological. There's not much one can do to negotiate with the planets other than breathe deeply, still the mind with some Zen practice and wait until they orbit back into alignment.

Ts meditation tends to be of a strictly mathematical nature. He recites pi to himself as he glides across the lanes of traffic. He's at twenty decimal places by the time they reach the lake, fifty-two by the time they reach the Old Quarter.

The sun is putting in a rare appearance. Steam rises where shopkeepers have scrubbed and rinsed the pavement. T puts on his wraparound sungla.s.ses, which instantly add swagger to his walk. He might not have Phng's good looks, but he knows how to look cool- he hopes Miss Maggie can appreciate this. He wonders if she's ever had a Vietnamese boyfriend. She's probably used to American-style dating: eating hamburgers before seeing a Hollywood blockbuster, maybe with Russell Crowe, and then kissing in the back seat of the guy's car. Ahh! But they do not live with their parents, so perhaps he is inviting her back into his apartment and they are getting naked while the wide- screen television is blaring some hip hop on MTV.

The thought of none-of-this-waiting-until-married business stirs him up. How many men does the average thirty-something-year-old American woman sleep with before she is married? How many times has Miss Maggie had s.e.x? All that experience might actually lead her to be thoroughly disappointed with a guy like him, he realizes.

They make their way down a winding back alleyway sticky with fish guts and scales. The artist they have an appointment to see lives at the dead end of this alley. Curiously, he has taken the name of a Filipino island-Mindanao, he calls himself. To change one's name is to defy the parents and the stars; what kind of son would do such a thing? The answer soon becomes apparent.

Against the long wall of his tube house, Mindanao has a row of barrel-chested, straw-stuffed mannequins that must have been left behind by the French, all topped with papier mache heads. A Vietnamese emperor, a legionnaire with an opium pipe in his mouth, Presidents Bill Clinton and Hu Jintao. The last of the mannequins is topped with the fishbowled head of a Russian cosmonaut.

The rest of his work is even more shocking. A series of paintings hang on the wall, all repulsive nudes with inflamed mouths and genitalia, one of them delivering a pig out his a.n.u.s. There are serpentine men poking each other with their p.e.n.i.ses through what looks to be an American flag. A mannequin with a Vietnamese face hangs from the ceiling, suspended by ropes twisted around its clay t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. The head lolls to one side, tongue hanging out, eyes about to explode.

T is staring aghast, stunned by this creature and his disgusting art.

Mindanao is telling Miss Maggie that the Party regularly closes down his shows. This might be one of the first times in Ts life that he thinks the Party is one hundred per cent right. "The economy might be post- communist, but the cultural climate certainly isn't," Mindanao says. "I'm constantly being charged with depicting social evils and undermining public morality, both by the Ministry of Culture and Information and other artists alike."

He carries on, boasting about getting fined, being followed by the Bureau of Social Vice Prevention and having his studio regularly ransacked. "What's saved me," he says, "is the support I get from foreign inst.i.tutions, because they aren't subject to the same kind of scrutiny. But it gets exhausting. I'm considering moving to Hong Kong. It's where most of my work sells, in any case."

He leads Miss Maggie over to a series of lacquered panels perched on easels, which he says he's doing as a commission for a gallery in Singapore. He explains his technique: he has cut up old propaganda posters-"Nixon's Headache," "Greater Food Production Is the Key to Expelling the Americans," "It Looks as if Uncle H Is with Us in the Happy Day"-changing the order of the words and distorting the messages, then overlaying these with the brown resin of traditional lacquer.

"I refuse to produce this benign nationalistic art the Party still encourages," he says. "All those soft pictures of girls in ao dais, rice paddies, water buffalo and the like. It's just c.r.a.p. They all do it, virtually every one of my contemporaries. Even the ones with talent. I would rather see s.h.i.+t on a canvas."

"Do foreigners actually buy that man's art?" T whispers to Miss Maggie when Mindanao leaves her to wander around the room.

"Sure," she says. "Quite a number actually. I take it you don't like it?"

"I think it's disgusting," T cannot refrain from saying. "Disgusting and useless."

"Well," she says, "at least he's got a point of view. Time will be the judge in the end."

So much for Zen. The palindromic prime numbers T calculates as he walks over to Phng's house this evening are overrun by a torrent of words. Time will be the judge? She cannot be serious: time will only reveal a guy like that as an animal! Nationalistic art or p.o.r.nography- are these really the only two artistic choices? One portrays the country as backward; the other portrays the country as perverted. Why would artists willingly engage in either if they weren't backward or sick themselves? He knows he crossed a line by expressing his disgust to Miss Maggie, but he couldn't help it. He was equally appalled by her calm reaction to that freak's work. She might look Vietnamese, but her tastes are evidently very American.

T takes a run at Phng's bedroom door; he cannot continue to manage all these thoughts on his own. He smashes his shoulder into the skull and crossbones, once, twice and a third time, when the door finally gives way. He collapses onto the mattress where Phng is lying in the same heart-covered boxer shorts he was wearing days ago, again with his headphones on, the bottle of rice whiskey within reaching distance nearly empty.

T doesn't even greet his friend. He rubs his shoulder and says, "You should see some of the c.r.a.p that gets pa.s.sed off as art today. These deviants are getting paid thousands of dollars to s.h.i.+t all over canvases! I couldn't hold my tongue today, Phng. The Vit Ki'eu lady from the hotel was admiring this artist's work and I told her exactly what I thought of it."

T lies back and covers his eyes with the crook of his elbow. "I bet he comes from Saigon," he says, and they both know what that means- drugs and prost.i.tution flourished there during the war, ruining the morals of one generation then the next.

Phng sits up straight on his mattress. "Put these on," he says, pa.s.sing T the headphones. "Listen to the words."

It's some gangsta rap about a killing spree. Alleys full of dead n.i.g.g.as and pregnant hos.

T is nodding his head to the beat when Phng suddenly yanks the headphones off his friend's ears. "Ugly, no?" he says. "And violent. Very, very violent." Phng's eyebrows are flying up his forehead. "So maybe the U.S. is not just tall buildings and Disney World and movie stars. It's not all progress and pretty."

That's very true, thinks T. It's a world without morals and dignity. Miss Maggie's indifference to the insult and indecency of Mindanao's work tells him more than he needs to know about Americans. How can he possibly continue with this tour? His New Dawn facade has officially cracked. What if more of his opinions start leaking out? He'll be fired; perhaps his tourism licence will be revoked. Better he should make a pre-emptive move and quit this a.s.signment, despite the request coming from so high up.

"Cheers, my friend," Phng says, reaching for the nearly empty bottle. He drains it, then burps. "Do you ever think you might not get married?"

T raises his eyebrows. What's this all about? Of course T doesn't think this; not getting married is not an option.

"Did I ever tell you how my parents met?" Phng continues. T knows Phng's father was a soldier when he met his mother, a village woman. He had an awful job with the People's Army, scouting for land mines along the border with the South. Phng's father used to tell him about how he would be sent on ahead of the troops and usually find himself in some village at night, where people were obliged to feed him and give him a bed because he was one of the good soldiers fighting for the freedom of the country.

"My father was sleeping in this house one night, and he got up to go and pee outside. When he came back inside he climbed into the nearest of the son's beds. Except it wasn't their son he crawled into bed with, was it?" says Phng. "It was their daughter.

"But how was he supposed to know? All the children were bald; their heads had been shaved because of lice. The girl screamed and my dad was so terrified he slapped his hand over her mouth to quiet her. They stayed in this position all night, both of them trembling with fear.

"The next morning, the girl's father wouldn't look at either of them. He just said, 'Take her. Take her away.'

"But what was my father supposed to do? He said to this man, 'Look, I'm a soldier. My job is to locate land mines. This is the middle of the war. I sleep in a different bed every night, if I sleep at all. I can't possibly take the girl with me.'

"The girl's father said, 'Take her or I will kill her.'"

"oi z'oi oi," says T. "That girl is your mother?"

Phng nods. "He had to take her," he says, shrugging. "He threw her over his shoulder and ordered her to stop screaming. She was only eleven years old. He had to hide her in holes and tunnels, and he left her with water and rice cakes, and he always promised to return, even though every time he went to search for land mines he thought he would be killed. She's never forgiven him."

"But they've been married forever," says T. "And they have you and your sister."

"Still," says Phng.

Is this why Phng can't commit to any girl? Is this why he's been depressed? Whatever Phng's reason for telling him this story, T finds himself pausing in the doorway of his own family's kitchen when he gets home, watching his parents play dominoes on the floor.

They defy astrology; whatever the planets are doing, his parents remain at peace with each other. It's both comforting and frustrating. T knows marital relations are not always so smooth. He doesn't find his parents' example particularly instructive. Divide the ch.o.r.es, show respect to each other, spend time together playing dominoes and drinking tea. His father cooks as much as his mother does; they both have full-time jobs and they see themselves as equals.

T cannot imagine romance between them, but his father once told him that his mother was the only girl at the factory who did not giggle and turn her head away when she spoke to him. She neither covered her mouth nor fluttered her eyelashes in obedience. "It was very rare for a girl to look you in the eyes back then," he said. "Very rare and very powerful."

T was mortified to hear this. Her direct gaze meant his mother felt pa.s.sionately toward his father-and who wants to think of one's mother in this way? But he is grateful that his parents chose each other, when so many marriages of their generation were forged by arrangement or circ.u.mstance. He is particularly grateful after hearing Phng's sad story.

Ts parents have had their struggles, but these are ordinary struggles. A difficult life was normal in the dark days before i mi, when all they could afford was a room in the Old Quarter separated by a curtain from a family in the next room. Ts father pointed out that room to him once because T didn't believe it when his father said that all the people in the rooms of four adjacent buildings had had to share a pit latrine and an outdoor kitchen. Their water even had to be carried from a communal pump three streets away.

Sometimes their old neighbours from those days come to visit, and T listens to them reminisce, making light of hard times, laughing when they say things like: Can you believe sixteen of us shared that one small pot of rice? And oi z'oi oi, the rats, do you remember? How did the vermin get so fat when we were all so hungry? Remember the time Anh wove a hammock for the colicky babies? It cured them all completely. And then when my wife had the liver pains, Anh managed to find liquorice root.

"Sometimes I miss when the world was like this," one of Ts father's old friends says, "when neighbours cared about neighbours, and someone would cut someone else's hair, and in return, the one with the new haircut would ma.s.sage the haircutter's feet. Now, I have to say, that is a very fine television you've got there, very fine indeed. Do you have satellite?"

Ts mother will sometimes put a stop to all the reminiscing, saying there are many chapters in a life, not all of them happy, but they are lucky to have the a.s.surance that another chapter will come even if it is in the afterlife when the soul takes up residence in a new body.

T has personally not given much thought to the afterlife. A strange thought occurs to him in that moment: What if his soul were to be reborn in a Vit Ki'eu's body, or even that of a total foreigner? Would life be fundamentally different? It certainly would be if he could choose the particular body, because he'd opt for someone wearing football cleats, a striker who boots the winning goal in the FA Cup- Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! the crowd going wild.

"T, I kept the fish warm," says his mother, pointing toward a clay pot.

T kneels and spoons rice and a few nice chunks of white fish and ginger in broth into a bowl, then sits down on the floor with his parents. He lifts a few grains into his mouth.

"I meant to tell you, I dropped in on the old man after work today," says his father. "He seems a bit worn down by his accident, don't you think? Did you notice the absence of coriander among the herbs this morning?

"Everything I said seemed to drag him back to the past. I suggested that perhaps I could build him a better cart. He pointed at each of the wheels, and the axle, and every single wooden board in turn and told me this long, meandering story about how he had acquired each piece."

This sounds like one of Hng's wandering metaphors, something his father would never understand. Bnh is a straightforward man who puts one foot in front of the other day after day. He is quietly resigned to what is past and he accepts most of the present. Sometimes it frustrates T that his father doesn't speak out, doesn't even complain when the Party introduces some ridiculous new law like the one they're proposing to force everyone to wear motorbike helmets next year.

Ts father would have preferred to hear Hng say, Excellent. Thank you very much. This cart is really just a heavy piece of c.r.a.p I built out of sc.r.a.ps forty years ago. I can't wait to replace it.

"And then you know what, T?" says his father. "After he has worn me down with this very long story about his cart, after he has refused to consent to me building him another one, he suddenly says to me, 'Did I ever tell you that you had a baby brother?'"

"What?" T says, putting down his bowl.

"That was my reaction," says his father. "My mother apparently had another son a few years after me but he lived for less than an hour."

"But why tell you now?"

"I have no idea."

T hates to think it, but it sounds like Old Man Hng is unburdening himself of secrets. His father is too close to see it.

Hng is not one for drink, but Bnh left him a bottle of rice wine, suggesting it might relieve the pain in his leg. Hng does feel pain. Not just in his leg, but in his chest. He is lying on his straw-filled mattress, a single candle burning for o, seeking comfort in the quiet babble of voices in the dark beyond his shack, sipping from a gla.s.s-strictly for medicinal purposes.

Over the years, Hng has tried to strike a balance between painting a portrait of o that gives Bnh some sense of the man's importance, and apologizing for his behaviour as a father. "He was busy fathering a movement when he might have been fathering a son," he once said to Bnh. How could Bnh possibly understand that his father's neglect was not personal?

While Hng has tried his best to keep o's memory alive for Bnh, the introspection of the past few days leads him to the sad conclusion that he has failed. What was he doing giving Bnh a baby brother with one hand then taking him away with the other? The only true portrait of o is one that includes his poetry, the poetry that ran like blood through him, but Hng no longer has any of it, neither in his possession nor in his memory.

Hng's greatest regret in a life of considerable regrets is that it never occurred to him to write o's poems down while he still could. Instead, he shared them with a girl who proved herself unworthy. He was deceived into believing love mattered more than legacy. He squandered the thing that mattered most.

Our Place in Buddha's Universe.

T and Phng are standing behind a giant potted palm in the lobby of the Metropole waiting for Miss Maggie. T sees his friend eyeing her up and down as she shakes the hand of a European man in a pinstriped suit before walking over to them.

"She's an important person, Phng," T hisses. "VIP."

"So? She's still a woman," Phng says, stuffing his hands into his pockets and fiddling with the keys at the end of the chain hooked to his belt loop. His forearms are tanned, and thick veins disappear beneath his s.h.i.+rtsleeves above the elbows.

For a minute, and not for the first time, T hates his best friend.

"Good morning, Miss Maggie," T says brightly. "Please let me introduce one of the finest drivers from the agency."

"Pleased to meet you," she says in English.

"Phng doesn't speak English," T takes some pleasure in saying. "It is why he is just the driver and I am the guide."

"So, are you ready to go?" Miss Maggie asks, switching to Vietnamese.

"Actually, Miss Maggie, I wanted to have a word with you about the current arrangement."

"Is there a problem?"

"I just don't think I am the best tour guide for your purposes."

"Sorry," she says, shaking her head, "I'm not sure what you mean."

"I would like to resign from this a.s.signment."

"Oh," Miss Maggie says. "What's the problem exactly?"

"No problem, Miss," says T, desperate to escape without confrontation.

"Well, there obviously is."

T stammers and looks to Phng for help.

"Miss," Phng says, rallying for his friend, "T has found some of the art he has been exposed to over the past couple of days deeply offensive on a personal level."

"Oh," says Miss Maggie. "I'm sorry, T. I'm really sorry to hear that."