The Beauty of Humanity Movement (37 page)

Several times over the years T
and his father have insisted the old man come and live with them—it is the Vietnamese way—but H
ng always wins in the battle of insistence, offering no other reason than “a man knows where he belongs.”

T
feels no man belongs in such a dirty, shabby place, least of all Old Man H
ng. He has always wished the old man’s goodness could be rewarded with a better standard of living, a decent place to live, but he knows it is useless to keep trying to convince him to abandon the shantytown. He lives a quiet life of routine, remaining loyal to the people and places he knows, serving breakfast each morning, then returning home to his shack on the shores of a dirty pond.

H
ng agreed to take T
s money for the taxi fare, simply to put an end to the boy’s questions. He is mortified by every aspect of this situation, and with T
involved now, Bình and Anh will also worry. Worst of all, he can offer none of them a coherent explanation of what happened.

The taxi crawls through streets crowded with people making their way home. They are carrying babies and groceries and news of the day, looking forward to a meal with their families, H
ng supposes, the type of life he might have lived if circumstances had been different. The view through the window unsettles him, detaching him from the streets he knows.

Today’s incident has, furthermore, prevented him from fetching the supplies he needs for tomorrow’s breakfast. To come from a poor place and make a better life means marrying yourself to the work that will improve things. ph
is H
ng’s rightful wife and mistress, just as it had been for his Uncle Chi
n.

“You should caress the beef as you slice it,” he remembers his uncle instructing him as he got older. “If you treat it tenderly, it guides you toward the grain. Tend your broth as if she is a sleeping beauty; keep watch over her, only waking her in the final hour with a splash of fish sauce.”

Although he has been loyal to Uncle Chi
n’s recipe, H
ng has had to adapt to the vagaries of circumstances over the years. There was a time when he’d made ph
from almost nothing. He hadn’t known it was possible, but inappropriate love for a girl had driven him to it, had drawn him back into the bosom of ph
, his willing mistress and reliable wife.