The Beauty of Humanity Movement (110 page)

“Mr. Võ,” says T
, “I see you are making some changes.”

“I must prepare for what is to come,” he says sullenly.

“What is to come, Mr. Võ?”

“It’s time for me to sell the shop and take my wife back to our village, where she can spend her last days in peace.”

“I’m sorry to hear your wife is no better,” says T
, though he is not so sorry that he refrains from asking about the art. “You’re taking it all with you?”

“I’m selling it,” Mr. Võ says matter-of-factly.

“Everything? Even the stuff in the back?”

“Everything. Life is a circle—just as we are born with nothing so we shall die.”

The room feels terribly hot to T
all of a sudden, the air close and chemical. “But who are you selling it to?”

“One of those dealers,” says Mr. Võ with a dismissive wave. “They’ve been after me for years. I will soon have to pay for a funeral. I already owe the money for my wife’s operation. Everything costs too much money these days. Ð
i m
i does not make everybody rich, you know. Some of us it just makes poorer.”

T
leaves without another word—his hands clenched, his nails cutting into his palms. He punches the frame of the door as he passes through it, then pounds his way down random streets, his heart and mind competing for most agitated. He chews on some negative integers and finally, nearly an hour later, calms down. He takes shelter from the rain in a crumbling doorway on Tạ Hi
n Street and spies a tiny bar across the road. He darts between the lanes of traffic and crouches through the door of the bar. The room glows red from the light of paper lanterns, the operative language appears to be Englamese and the music is the kind of rock that old white men
like. Places like this make T
feel like a tourist in his own town.

He orders a beer from a very pretty waitress who tells him there is no
bia h
i
in this place, only bottles from Germany and places like that. T
sips his expensive beer and wonders to whom Mr. Võ might have sold his collection. He’s determined to find out—he doesn’t care how long it takes or whom he annoys along the way. Mr. Võ might need the money, but doesn’t he realize he has just given their history away? What if it all ends up in foreign hands, lost to Vietnam forever?

T
pulls his pen and notebook from the inside pocket of his jacket and flips through lists of new English words until he reaches a blank page. He draws a line down the middle of the page, making two columns. On the left-hand side he begins to write the names of all the artists he can remember, on the right-hand side, descriptions of the pieces of artwork he can recall hanging on the walls of Café Võ.

He makes his way counter-clockwise around the room in his mind, starting with the three Bùi Xuân Pháis. He moves on to what he remembers seeing in Mr. Võ’s chest, the more dramatic works coming most readily to mind—not just Lý Văn Hai’s tigers, but Nguy
n Di
p’s
Requiem for Uncle H
, where a face made of bricks is demolished by a sledgehammer. He remembers a painting of a Russian cosmonaut landing in a rice paddy, several portraits of men with stony faces and bleeding eyes, and a good number of naked ladies.