The Beauty of Humanity Movement (126 page)

The old man groans, rousing from sleep, as T
rests a bucket of soapy water on the floor and sits down on the edge of his mattress. T
peels back the bedcovers and unties the straps of H
ng’s splint. It looks awful: a purple bruise runs all the way up his leg past his knee, the foot is so swollen the skin is stretched taut and the ankle is slightly twisted.

T
squeezes excess water from the sponge. “We spoke to the lady who lives next door to you the other day,” he ventures, as he washes soap from between the old man’s toes.

Old Man H
ng sighs. “She sings to herself sometimes. When she’s bent over washing her pots in the pond, I can hear her. She’ll turn around and smile for a moment, a smile just for me. It really is the most beautiful thing a man can see.”

“She said you have not spoken to her in some time.”

The old man raises his head and looks at T
through his milky eyes. “Ðạo?”

“Yes, H
ng?” says T
.

“She was so beautiful, but not like your Amie,” he says, sinking back into his pillow. “Her beauty was only on the outside and I was fooled into believing it was something deeper.

“She could not read herself, but I read to her, I read everything you wrote and she drank in your words and she used to say that maybe one day I would have a restaurant again, and there you would be, surrounded by the men who so admired you, and she would work for me
and all would be as it had once been, only even better because you would be free to write and the girl would always be beside me. And then she shattered this most perfect dream.

“It was my fault,” H
ng continues. “I failed you.” How could H
ng, the one who has acted as patriarch of their family, guardian of the ancestral shrine, possibly have failed Ðạo? T
has seen him do nothing but protect and keep alive the memory of his grandfather.

“You did not fail me, H
ng,” says T
.