The Beauty of Humanity Movement (23 page)

Ðạo had made references in his poetry to tragedies that had not even befallen them yet, as if he could intuit the future. He had sought to warn people of what was imminent, hoping to inspire them to action. And H
ng had marvelled at his ability to do so in such few perfect words.

“He was fearless,” H
ng told the woman. “He had a scar, just here, a mark of courage that ran two inches across the bone of his cheek.”

H
ng had offered the woman his bed for a week as payment, while he himself slept outside. The frame for Ðạo’s portrait—that, he hadn’t
been in a position to make for years, not until he found a way to sell ph
again and someone paid him with a piece of glass.

H
ng notices a spiderweb glistening at the edge of the frame now. He can picture Bình as a boy, his face contorted in concentration as he counted the silk rings of a web. The fate of those on earth depends upon honouring the ancestral spirits, and H
ng has kept Ðạo’s memory alive for Bình, whose father disappeared when he was only six years old.

H
ng peels the silken web away with his forefinger, lights a stick of incense and offers up his hands in prayer. He wishes Ðạo well on whatever higher plane he now inhabits and he prays that they will know each other in the next life. But there are things H
ng must impart before he allows the spirits to take him on that journey. At a minimum he has a recipe to pass on. “The taste of home” is how an artist had once, long ago, described his ph
.

My God, thinks H
ng. That someone. His hungry eyes hovering above a bowl. The man had been travelling; he had come by ship from America and his legs were still wobbly. He was carrying his belongings in a sack and he said he hadn’t had a bowl of ph
in years. H
ng had wondered how the man could still be standing.

The man’s name was Lý Văn Hai, H
ng is sure of it. He must tell Miss Maggie Lý that he did once meet her father, if only briefly. He will make his way to her fancy hotel tomorrow and do just that, he thinks, patting the card in his shirt pocket.