The Beauty of Humanity Movement (155 page)

The second reserved table is for family. This morning, Bình, having discovered a particular talent for faces, is sketching Maggie’s portrait. T
is collecting the empty bowls, helping out as he does each morning, having recently quit his job in order to introduce H
ng to such capitalist concepts as improved margins and net profit per bowl. Ph
ng, who holds the dubious distinction of being
Vietnam Idol
’s runner-up, is wearing headphones and tapping a pencil against a bowl. Maggie is reading a note from the charming young professor with the French name who sits at the next table. Lan, H
ng’s aproned partner in the restaurant and all things, thinks she has been discreet as the go- between, dropping the note into Maggie’s hands. She might think no one in this new family of hers has noticed, but H
ng watches Maggie’s eyelids flutter as she looks over at the professor and bites down the smile of a woman newly in love.

H
ng has his moments of wondering whether this is the afterlife or the present life. But then he asks himself, Does it matter?

W
HAT
I
REFER TO HERE
as the Beauty of Humanity Movement—a liberal interpretation for fictional purposes—is more commonly known as the
Nhân Van–Giai Ph
m
affair, after two publications
Nhân Van
(Humanism) and
Giai Ph
m
(Fine Works).

This controversial chapter in Vietnamese history was first exposed to the West through the writings of Hoàng Van Chí in
The Nhân Van Affair
and
Hundreds of Flowers Blooming in the North
, published in 1959 by the Congress of Cultural Freedom in Saigon.

Ðạo is an entirely fictional creation. The group of men involved in publishing the journals was, in fact, led by the great revolutionary poet Phan Khôi, who only appears as a minor character in this novel. I have attributed the essence of some of Phan Khôi’s lines to Ðạo, notably: “We believe absolutely in communism, the most wonderful ideal of mankind, the youngest, the freshest ideal in all history,” and, “But if a
single style is imposed on all writers and artists the day is not far off when all flowers will be turned into chrysanthemums,” (page 132). The crimes of the Party listed on page 137 were articulated by Phan Khôi in one of his editorials.

Neil L. Jamieson’s
Understanding Vietnam
(University of California Press, 1993) offers a thorough account of literature and communism in Vietnam, for anyone interested in reading more about the subject.

Very few Vietnamese novels have been translated into English. The exception is the work of the North Vietnamese writer D
ng Thu H
ng, whose novels were, in the 1990s, the first by a Vietnamese writer to be published in the U.S. These novels, which continue to be banned in Vietnam, offer rare insight into the conditions in Vietnam, and particularly Hanoi, in the 1980s.

W
ITH LOVE AND THANKS
to Heather Conway, Hà Qu
ng Ph
ng, Tr
n Th
Lan, Drew Harris and Sherifah Mazwari for the shared experiences in Hanoi.