The Beauty of Humanity Movement (116 page)

He will roast a whole pig on a spit. He has done this only once
before, years ago for a wedding banquet in the shantytown, fashioning a spit out of an axle and digging an oblong pit for a great fire that three young men had to feed for twelve hours. He did not ask where that pig had come from. How could he blame people who had been hungry for so long, particularly on an occasion of such celebration?

H
ng will pay for this pig himself. He will speak to Anh, perhaps travel to the countryside on Saturday in search of a discount; he will barter like the expert he is. He will dig another oblong pit, spreading the coals unevenly so that the fire will be hotter near the shoulders and cooler by the back and loins. He will make sure to cover the ears and the penis so that they do not char and crumble away—an oversight on his part the last time.

T
he old man has specially decorated his shack today. T
thinks the red streamers fluttering from his roof are a bit excessive; this isn’t a wedding, after all. H
ng greets them robustly with two-handed handshakes. He has dressed up for the occasion, wearing his Metropole trousers, the ones that make him look like a trumpet player in a military band, topped with an old jacket of Bình’s, the sleeves rolled up, a red silk handkerchief tucked into the breast pocket.

H
ng brings out a jug of rice wine as soon as they arrive. Ph
ng is the first and last to fill his glass. They recline on grass mats and straw-stuffed pillows the old man has laid down on the ground in front of his shack, and chew some betel nut at his insistence, a practice T
’s mother normally disapproves of but is willing to ignore on this occasion.

T
chomps down hard on a leaf wrapped around slivers of betel.
He is pulling bitter red fibres off his tongue when Maggie finally arrives out of breath, apologizing for being late.

She is Maggie but no longer Maggie. She is wearing an indigo-blue
áo dài
embroidered with golden cranes that hugs the perfect peaches of her breasts and skims her narrow waist, her hips. Her hair is pulled back, her skin glows and T
wishes he could bury his face in her neck and run his hands up and down her silk-covered body.

“What does your name mean?” he finds himself asking as soon as his breath returns.

“My name?” she says, shaking her head and kneeling down beside him. “I don’t know. I was named after a Scottish woman my father boarded with when he was at school in the U.S. It’s short for Margaret.”

“You should have a Vietnamese name,” T
says. “To match your
áo dài
.”

T
can smell the pepper sweet of lavender emanating from her skin. Show some respect, he silently berates his penis, folding his hands in his lap. He turns his head to the left to admire the pig, the whole roasted pig that H
ng is tending just metres away from them. It is a lavish and very expensive thing the old man has done: threading the entire animal on a spit and turning and roasting it for hours and hours until it has reached this glowing perfection.

H
ng’s neighbours have begun to line up with their bowls. The old man has special power—he is the heart of this place, was the heart of the Beauty of Humanity Movement—he brings people together, keeps them fed.