The Beauty of Humanity Movement Read Online Free PDF Page B

before Ði mi. Maggie had made her way to Nguyn HuâuHuân Street later that same day. She paused in the doorway for a few minutes as her eyes adjusted to the light. Huge cracks ran across the tiled floor as if the building had survived an earthquake, and the thick metal bars on the windows gave it a penal air. A few men sat on low wooden stools drinking coffee and a fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting a greenish pall over the room.
    The walls were crammed with pieces of art hanging so closely together it was as if they formed a continuous mural. Maggie moved around the room, looking at each piece in turn, noticing how many of them were neither signed nor dated.
    As she neared the kitchen, the café owner, Mr. Võ, shuffled forth in black slippers, broom in hand. She introduced herself, but he did not smile. Older Hanoians have recoiled at her American accent before, but his lack of warmth made her particularly cautious. According to the artist, Mr. Võ was notoriously wary of foreigners, especially those interested in art. He’d been hounded by dealers and collectors in recent years.
    “I was told this is where you could see the real old Hanoi,” she said, which did at least soften his expression. “You knew all of these artists?” She gestured at the walls.
    “Of course,” he said.
    “Did you ever know a Lý Văn Hai?”
    Mr. Võ’s bottom lip curled upward. “He must have been one of Hng’s,” he said, with a shrug.
    Maggie shook her head, not understanding.
    “He’s a phseller,” said Mr. Võ. “Years ago he had a shop where a lot of artists ate breakfast, but now he’s on the street, always moving.”
    “Do you know how I can find him?”
    “They say you find him with your nose.”
    But it had taken more than her senses. After three months of asking virtually everyone on staff, every artist and dealer she knew, every driver or tour guide she found waiting in the lobby of the Metropole, she finally got lucky. Yesterday she met the new sous-chef who has been hired in the kitchen—a French-trained Indian woman named Rikia Saddy who speaks enviably flawless Vietnamese.
    “I’ve heard he makes the best phin the city,” the woman said, pouring Maggie a cup of coffee as thick as melted chocolate.
    “But if it’s the best phin the city, why don’t more people know about it?” Maggie asked, leaning back against the stainless steel counter.
    “I don’t think it’s a secret, just something shared with a small number of people. My husband’s driver takes his breakfast from him.”
    Rikia phoned her husband later in the day. She came back to Maggie with the name of a new hotel under construction on the east shore of West Lake. “He says to bring your bowl before seven. And be prepared to run if the police turn up.”
    And so Maggie had brought her bowl this morning and introduced herself to Old Man Hng. And seeing that faint look of recognition on his face as he said her father’s name? A seismic moment that revealed a seam between worlds.
    Hng leans all his weight into his cart to push it the last hundred metres down the dirt track to the shantytown. He parks his cart behind his shack and hauls his pots down to the bank of the pond, resting them in the mud while he goes to fetch the papaya milk he uses to wash his apron.
    As he puts his key into the padlock, he sees a package jutting outfrom under the corrugated tin eaves. Bình must have come by, that was good of him—here are his glasses, the wonky arm straightened, the cracked lens replaced.
    There is little that can be done about the eye with a cataract, but with glasses, the sight of his right eye is measurably improved. Hng can once again see the Cyrillic letters stamped on the canvas from which, years ago, he sewed himself a straw-filled mattress. If he leans into the scrap-metal wall of his shack, he can make out some of the headlines of the old newspapers he stuffed into the cracks to keep out the winter draft. But he has given up