The Beauty of Humanity Movement (106 page)

Mr. Võ shrugs and reaches for the sketch. He looks at it blankly. “I’ve been open for sixty-seven years, T
. I’ve seen a lot of people come and go through my door.”

He gestures at the pile of work on the floor. “Time for me to close up shop.”

As soon as Maggie turns off the shower, she hears a knock at her apartment door. Mrs. Viên must have blown a fuse again. She steps out of the soapy puddle around her feet and wraps a towel around her hair. She pulls on her robe, kicking her abandoned shoes out of the foyer and into the bedroom.

But it’s not her neighbour. It’s T
. “Is everything okay?” she asks. “Is it H
ng?”

“It’s about your father,” says T
, his black eyes darting across her face.

“My father?” Maggie stares at him in confusion.

“Do you have a minute?”

“Of course I do. Come.” She gestures, leading him down the hall. Maggie sits down at the kitchen table and wraps her arms around her waist, bracing herself for whatever T
has to say.

T
leans forward in his chair, places his hands between his knees and says, “I found some of your father’s drawings at Café Võ.”

Maggie feels as if she has been punched in the stomach. “But I went there a few months ago,” she stammers. “I had a careful look at all the art—not every piece was signed, but I did ask him whether he had any of Lý Văn Hai’s work. He said he must have been one of H
ng’s customers. That’s how I found H
ng in the first place.”

“The sketches were in the chest Mr. Võ keeps in his backroom,” says T
. “Your father even inscribed one of them to Mr. Võ, but he claims to have no recollection of him.”

“None at all?” she says. How is it that in the face of concrete evidence her father still remains invisible?

“The drawings are of tigers,” says T
, “big, very muscular. In the last one, two of them are attacking each other—kind of tangled up together like a puzzle.”

Maggie stands up and rushes out of the room to retrieve her father’s drawings. She returns to the kitchen and unfolds them on the table in front of T
, smoothing her palms across them.

“He always did animals,” she says. “Did they look anything like these?”

T
studies the sketches for a moment. “But these ones look like they were done by a child.”