The Beauty of Humanity Movement (27 page)

Under his ownership, H
ng is proud to say, the ph
shop continued to be as much a place for conversation as for food, much of it by then bubbling up in the dark, southwest corner of the room around an outspoken young man named Ðạo. There was something special about this young man—H
ng had noticed it immediately—an aura of light seemed to spill from him and suspend anyone in the vicinity in a state of grace.

Ðạo was the most articulate critic H
ng had ever heard. “Yes, of course we must rid the country of the French,” he said to his colleagues when the colonialists returned after the Japanese withdrew in 1945,
“but we must fight just as hard against the Confucian norms that have enslaved our people for centuries. The enemy lies within us as much as it lies out there.”

H
ng found himself forgetting his tasks whenever Ðạo commanded the room; he stopped and listened along with everyone else. Ðạo made the complicated politics of the time seem perfectly intelligible. “Politics must not be the domain of the learned and the privileged,” he insisted, “but that of every man and woman, especially the ones behind the ploughs.” No longer did the conversations in the shop strike H
ng as somewhat removed from the experiences of people of humble origins; Ðạo was speaking both about him and to him.

H
ng found whatever excuse he could to be near the man— replenishing the fish sauce on his table more often than necessary, making sure to clear his bowl the moment Ðạo laid his chopsticks across the rim.

When he wasn’t speaking, Ðạo was writing in his notebook. H
ng would cast his eyes discreetly over the man’s shoulder and take in some of his lines. One day H
ng read a poem he found particularly striking. It was Ðạo’s ability to capture something between bitter and sweet that caused H
ng to speak directly to him for the first time. “The balance of yin and yang,” H
ng said.

Ðạo turned in his chair and looked up at H
ng. “Just like your ph
,” he said.