Meatloaf in Manhattan Read Online Free PDF Page B

as the porter carries him across the street and up to the old man’s rooms.
    Over the following days Luc nurses Ny with all the tender care of a loving parent. His kindness is unwavering, his patience unlimited. In his fever Ny calls out for his mother, mumbling that she is waiting for him on the platform. When Ny recovers his strength, Old Man Luc takes the boy to the place his fevered mind had yearned for. And so, every night from that day onwards Ny sits at the same spot on the platform where he last saw his mother. Nibbling on a banana skin, he recalls the look in her eyes as she disappeared into the steam from the train. He imagines her in faraway places, building a new life for them. As each train arrives he seeks out the face of every passenger, certain that one will be that of his mother. Old Man Luc understands the needs of the boy. As each midnight approaches Luc takes Ny back to his house to sleep.
    Gradually, imperceptibly, Old Man Luc and the boy grow to love each other and the man becomes the father Ny never had. During the day Ny helps at the stall, keeping the flowers refreshed, the buckets topped up with water. Whenever the flowers are blue he arranges them in the bucket so that the petals point to the place where his mother disappeared. Blue to counter the red of the hat of the man who spirited her away. Old Man Luc talks to his friends about the last war and the wars before that one. Passengers stand around, in huddled groups and singly, waiting for their train to come or go. Ny looks up at them and then fingers the flowers, willing them to buy. When a purchase is made Luc places the notes in a rusty tin box he keeps at the back of the stall. Most nights there is enough money for a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup from Madam Pham’s shop on Duong Loi Street. Ny and Old Man Luc always laugh as they spoon in dollops of hot chilli sauce to keep out the cold.
    Back at the room where they sleep, in the square by the ruined Catholic Church, next to the snake-blood shop, Ny listens as Luc tells stories from the past. He stores every word, every detail and image in his memory so he can rerun them in the dark of the night. He asks the deepest questions of detail and nuance. Ny is quicker to learn than a baby fox. Luc teaches him to read in classical Vietnamese, in awe of his capacity, never having met anyone, boy or man, who could absorb all around him with such hunger and vision. All Ny’s senses seem to meld together. He begins to see people and things, happenings and weather systems by the colours they invoke in him. He knows every single detail of the room where they sleep. The precise shape of the cracks in the walls, the way the shadows from the street form on the ceiling, the paths the cockroaches take across the floor.
    Old Man Luc notes well this remarkable child. It gives him pleasure to watch Ny exploring the jumbled piles that inhabit their rooms: old clocks, some ticking some silent; newspapers and magazines, some twenty years old and yellowing (like the old man himself). He observes Ny picking up a tin box, long buried under a pile of silk scarves. ‘Open it,’ he says. And Ny prises free the lid. Inside are some stones, a bird’s feather, and a beautifully embroidered cap. Luc smiles and begins another story to beguile his young charge and to add another sparkle to his spirit.
    â€˜They were left,’ he says, ‘by a traveller who stayed in this room many years ago. He was a wise man from the Hmong tribe, a voyager on a quest, who became famous in the region for his strange clothes and demeanour and for his silky jet-black hair, hair that reached far down his back. We would sit late into the night,’ recalls Luc, ‘talking and gesturing, learning bits of each other’s language and stories, having the best of times. He seemed like an ancient spirit, one who had travelled through many lives. I was privileged by his visit. One I have never forgotten. Then