by Camilla Gibb
“Even in my dreams I am making ph.”
Bình sits down on the edge of Hng’s bed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could have your own ph shop again,” he says. “Just like the old days.”
Why is Bình saying this? What is the point?
“What if you had that shop today?” T asks, joining his father.
“Today it would be very different,” says Hng, indulging them. “For one thing, we would have running water.”
“And a refrigerator, maybe even a freezer,” says Bình. “You’d get a lot more life out of your food.”
“Those stainless steel counters are good,” T adds, “really easy to clean.”
“If you put the kitchen in the back and had a door to the alley, you could take deliveries,” says Bình. “Anh could just send the meat up every morning.”
Bình and T continue to build this fantasy shop, discussing square footage and the relative merits of various locations. T reckons you could fit twenty tables with four chairs each on the ground floor of your average tube house in the Old Quarter.
And then they introduce reality—the cost of it all—and Hng stops them there. “Enough now. Don’t agitate an old man’s heart.”
But they are grinning like children at Tet in the days when the government still allowed firecrackers. What is the matter with them?
Bình puts his hands between his knees and bends forward; he has a speech to make, it would seem. But what he says could do more than agitate an old man’s heart; it could break it completely. “We have the money for your shop.”
But where does such an extraordinary amount of money come from?
“It doesn’t matter where it comes from,” Bình says. “It matters that it comes as a gift. It matters that you accept it as a gift, because it is destiny, and one must not hide from destiny. What is rightfully yours, what was taken from you long ago, is being returned.”
Hng feels the weight of loss in this moment. Of those men who taught him more about the world than a simple peasant ever could have hoped to know.
“Perhaps it is too late,” he says.
Hng sinks back into his pillow and closes his eyes for just a minute. He thinks of Lan. Perhaps things do return, but never in the form that they left you. Lan is an old woman now, an old woman to his old man. The years of poverty have humbled her. She is a better person for it, Hng supposes, but in some ways, he wishes she could have lived in a world where it was possible to be young and vain. Like Vietnam today. Like these spoiled children with their cellphones and gadgets and new clothes, and their desires for bigger, faster motorbikes and their dreams that they will go to Saigon and become famous. Will they be better for it? Sometimes hardship forces humility and virtue where it might not naturally arise.
Hng is thankful he knows good children, children who possess the manners and values of old, like T.
Hng pats the thin skin in the middle of his chest, feeling for the vial of MSG he now carries on a string around his neck. It is not nearly so expensive these days, but having done without it for so long has become a matter of pride. Everything is available now; it would be easy to become lazy.
Imagine if he did have his own shop again. Even though he would not be bound by deference to inheritance, he would still wish to replicate Uncle Chin’s shop. Forget these stainless steel counters and poured concrete floors T and Bình are talking about. Forget hiding the kitchen away in the back like some western restaurant. He’ll be out there cooking in front of the open window, chatting to everyone who passes, inviting them in. He’ll find a place with an old tiled floor that they can clean and polish. He’ll nail rattan screens to the walls, a soft back against which to lean, a cushion to absorb sound, and he’d like some of those whirling ceiling fans the French used to install in their establishments.
He’ll eschew the common trend of plastic tables and stools in favour of the old heavy teak furniture that tells people you are welcome here as long as you like. A man his age is likely to proceed more cautiously, if at all, knowing how Vietnam can do a somersault or backflip overnight and suddenly half the population is dead, in labour camps or prison or hiding in a bomb shelter or fleeing altogether because the country is tied to the yoke of some colonial master or native despot. Hng hopes the seeds of Vietnam’s destruction don’t lie in this fever of capitalism that has infected the country, a fever that is beginning to infect him as well, but even if that is the case, he has lived long and hard enough to know Vietnam will recover. It always does.
He opens his eyes. These two men—his family—wait expectantly. “Give an old man some time to consider all this,” he says.
He dreams of Lan wading among lotuses, only to awake to find her sitting by his bedside, picking at the seam of his trouser leg. “I’ll sew it up again when your leg’s all better,” she says.
“Is it too late?” he asks.
“Too late?”
It’s a good question. He is old, but not too old to contemplate running a business. He’s been running a business all these years, hasn’t he? Surely it would be easier to be settled in one place. His question has more to do with a fear of failure than anything else. He would wish to be able to recreate an environment like that of Ph Chin & Hng, but how can he hope to do so without his memory? So much from that time has slipped away.
“Tell me everything you remember, Lan. Please,” he says, feeling the rise of panic. “Tell me names.”
“Well,” she says calmly. “It’s hard to know where to begin. There were so many of them. What about Chin Ðt and Huy Phc. Their poems always sounded very similar to me. And that Chinese man with the crooked nose who wrote stories about village life. And Xuân Quô’c Quý, the mute who brought his brother along to say his words aloud.”
Her recollection is extraordinary; she’d been acquainted with these men only through Hng’s descriptions of them, yet physical details and specific phrases that Hng has absolutely no memory of spill without any apparent effort from her mouth.
“And, of course, Ðạo’s teacher, Phan Khôi,” she continues. “He was always very serious, wasn’t he? He might have been the founder of modern poetry, but by the time of Nhân Van he was only concerned with essays and intellectual statements. I’m just a simple woman, but I much preferred Ðạo’s work. He had a passionate heart, that one.”
It is as if decades have collapsed, and they are once again sitting together on a woven grass mat under a weak moon and her skin is pearlescent, her hair long and loose around her shoulders, only she is the one telling the stories and it is he who is hearing them for the first time.
“I’ve missed you, Lan,” he says again.
“I’m right here, Hng.”
The young man from the kitchen approaches the bed carrying a bowl of congee. He has brought two spoons.
“How would you like a job, Dong?” Hng asks. “Working for me in a kitchen.”
“I would like that very much, Grandfather.” There are two things he must ask of the young man, things he must ask of T and Bình as well. First, they must never again visit H Chí Minh’s mausoleum. It is very, very bad luck for business. And second, they must all go to the temple and ask the spirits for their blessings. The communists did such a good job of stamping out religion that young people today don’t know whom to pray to. Buddha is no help with matters of money. Consult Buddha on matters of the heart. Ask the ancestors for help with business. This is responsible capitalism.
Lan holds out a spoonful of congee to Hng. Hng opens his mouth and closes his eyes.
T and his father have been eating inferior ph in the shop on Mã Mây Street for several mornings in a row, even going so far as to compliment the cantankerous old man who runs the place. T has given his father a lesson on the white lie and how it acts as a harmless social lubricant, and he seems to be taking quite naturally to this foreign practice. “Your broth has a very good aroma,” T’s father says, slurping it up with noisy enthusiasm.
“Do I know you,” says the owner,
“or do you have an evil twin at home?”
“Who taught you the recipe?” Bình asks the next day.
“Why do you care?” says the owner.
“Look, what are you doing here every day?” the owner asks toward the end of the week.
“It’s a public place, isn’t it?” says T.
“People like you make me want to quit my job.”
“Actually,” says T’s father, seizing this opportunity, “we were wondering how much you pay to rent this place.”
“Rent?” he bellows. “I own the damn building.”
T’s father proceeds carefully, scratching his chin. “Do you have any idea what the rents are like around here?” he asks. He lowers his voice and whispers: “I bet you could make fifty times the amount of money you make selling ph if you were to rent out the space.”
“A guy said that to me once,” says the owner, “but it turned out he wanted to open a nightclub. I don’t want a nightclub in here, or some kind of opium den. My wife, kids and grandkids live upstairs.”
“What about renting it to another ph cook?” T’s father asks. “Keeping it as a restaurant.”
The owner leans his chin on his broom handle. “Do you have anyone in mind?”
“Old Man Hng,” T’s father says.
“I thought he was strictly a street seller.”
“His fortunes have recently changed.”
“Oh yeah?” says the owner, and T knows his father has this old bastard by the balls.
The Afterlife
For the first time ever, T’s father asks him to drive the motorbike. T pushes it out into the alleyway and his father climbs on board behind him, saying, “My eyesight is not so good at night anymore.” A great surge of passion for his family comes into T’s throat, the recognition of his duty as eldest and only son.
They are off to see the old man at the hospital. Lan is there at his side as she tends to be more often than not, lifting Hng’s spirits with her presence. T has responded to Hng’s request for a notebook and pen, and day by day he is making notes, recording the words she feeds him line by line. They grow silent when T and his father approach the bed, sharing secrets.
This evening T recounts the story about the owner of the shop on Mã Mây Street, and Old Man Hng chortles with satisfaction. The end of his time in hospital is in sight now that they have removed his cast.
“I’d like to see the shop as soon as I can manage,” he says. “Me and my assistant cook.”
T is taken aback. Did Hng not teach him the recipe? Train him as apprentice? “Did you not like my ph?” he asks.
“You made a fine bowl,” says Hng, “but it takes a particular type of person.”
“I’m not the right type of person?” T asks, truly offended now.
“Your life needs to depend on it,” says Hng. “Only a very poor person who needs a better life will marry himself to this kind of work. You have other choices, T.
“Want to see my leg?” he asks then, throwing back the covers and looking proudly at his yellow matchstick. He agitates to get up, reaching for Bình’s arm. “Get my shoes for me, will you, Bình? They’re under the bed. Latest fashion, eh, T?”
“Are you sure you’re ready to walk?” Bình asks.
“I’m supposed to exercise it every day.”
“That’s different from walking on it.”
“He’s right, Hng,” says Lan, putting her hand on Hng’s chest. “Give it a day or two.”
Hng sighs, rolls his eyes, collapses backward. He’s clearly not used to all this attention, all the fuss, being told what to do, but from the smile that returns to his face when he settles into his pillow, T thinks he is actually quite enjoying it.
Lan pats the papery, parched skin of Hng’s hand. “Bad dream,” she says gently, touching his cheek. She strokes his mole with her leathery fingertips. “Do you ever think that without this mole your life would have turned out differently? You might not be here, for instance.”
“But then I wouldn’t be here with you,” says Hng. “Maybe that is why I was born with it.”
Maggie leans against the frame of the doorway of the ward, holding a brown paper–wrapped package to her chest. She doesn’t want to interrupt: Hng is staring intently at the old woman sitting at his side. She is wearing faded black communist-era clothes and the same black slippers Hng always wears, or used to. Her thin grey hair is pulled back in a bun, and they could be brother and sister if it weren’t for the way she is looking at him.
It’s a look of old love, of something knowing and decades deep. Something she wishes her parents could have shared.
The woman kisses Hng’s forehead, then slumps back in her chair. “Oh, Hng,” she says, immediately heaving herself forward to wipe away a tear clinging to the old man’s lower lashes. “You old fool. I’ve known you for almost forty-five years; I don’t think it’s a sin if we’re not married. Do you even know if it has enough room at the back? Not that we need much, but we’ll probably only have room for one altar.”
They are planning a future together, as much of a future as they have left.
Maggie asks the young man who is soon to be Hng’s apprentice to give the old man the package when his visitor leaves.
“But she never leaves, Miss Maggie. He is never on his own.” She will hold on to her father’s framed picture for the time being, then. She has the others at her apartment, delivered in person two days ago by the dealer in Hong Kong, unwrapped by Simon shortly thereafter. There will be another occasion, a more appropriate one to give the old man this picture—at the grand opening of his new shop. The past will be revealed and given a place to hang in the present.
Ph Nhân Vãn
The pots are new, and so is the stove over which Hng is perspiring as he greets people on Mã Mây Street through the open window. Despite his limp, he can stand here for hours in these new shoes; they make him feel as if he could walk on the moon. In truth, his keen apprentice does much of the walking for him. Dong does the market run every morning, takes deliveries, carries the steaming bowls to tables, keeps the shop clean, swept and tidy.
Hng admires his establishment every morning. He basks in the heavenly white of the newly plastered walls. Look at that fine fridge standing there. He likes its gleaming newness and won’t ever remove the manufacturer’s sticker. And hasn’t Bình done an exquisite job of restoring the old wooden shutters and the latticework around the door? He’s even created cupboards in the backroom for him and Lan according to Hng’s description of the closet he once admired in a room at the Hotel Metropole. Bình has also built a chest big enough to hold two altars: Ðạo and Lan’s grandmother are now getting acquainted. There have been no complaints from either of them so far.
Hng is particularly proud of the sign. PH NHân VĂN it says on the outside of the building, words painted by a local artist in exchange for one hundred bowls of ph. That artist sits now with colleagues and professors from the Hanoi University of Fine Arts at a table permanently reserved for them. A framed picture of two Indochinese tigers entangled in battle hangs on the wall above their heads—an inspired work by Lý Văn Hai, an alumnus of the school, Maggie’s father—a sober reminder of the brutality waged between brothers in earlier times.
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 Hng to such capitalist concepts as improved margins and net profit per bowl. Phng, 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, Hng’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 Hng watches Maggie’s ey
elids flutter as she looks over at the professor and bites down the smile of a woman newly in love.
Hng has his moments of wondering whether this is the afterlife or the present life. But then he asks himself, Does it matter?
Author’s Note
WHAT 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 Phm affair, after two publications Nhân Van (Humanism) and Giai Phm (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 Dng Thu Hng, 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.
