Chapter 11

In the end, the day Hung became line leader was announced too.

Not right after that devil’s negotiation in old Quy’s room. Not after one week like Hung had thought either. It took more than a month, when everything seemed to have passed, when Mai had stopped asking why Hung kept coming home late drunk, when the rental room of the husband and wife began to have the cold smell of a home where no one wanted to tell anyone the truth anymore.

That morning, the floor manager stood in front of the line, a paper in his hand, his hoarse voice reading the decision. Dozens of workers’ eyes lifted. The sewing machines stopped for a moment. The sound of scissors, fabric, foot pedals all went quiet for a few short seconds.

“Starting today, Brother Hung will be in charge as line leader for this area. All matters report directly through Brother Hung.”

Hung stood beside him, his face stern, but the corner of his mouth kept lifting and he could not hide it.

That chair was not big to outsiders. It was not director. Not factory owner. Not the person who signed salaries. But to the workers in the factory, line leader was a shadow long enough to cover or press down on other people’s heads. Dividing shifts, assigning work, recording mistakes, reporting productivity, saying good or bad things to management - those things did not kill anyone right away, but they could make a person live tired day by day.

Hung knew that.

And he liked it.

From that day on, his face tilted up clearly. The two hands that before often clasped in front of his belly, half humble and half begging, now moved behind his ass. He walked along the row of sewing machines, belly pushed out a little, chin lifted a little, his steps slowing as if he were afraid that if he walked too fast people would not have time to see his new position.

The women workers who used to look at Hung like some thrown-away thing now opened their mouths sweetly.

“Brother Hung, am I doing this right?”

“Brother Hung, can you look at this sample for me?”

“Brother Hung looks so impressive today.”

The old male coworkers changed their tone too. Before, they called him plain: “Hey Hung,” “that Hung,” “you look at this.” Now it was:

“Big Brother Hung.”

“Chief Hung.”

“Brother Hung, someday show us the way up too.”

Hung heard it and his guts swelled.

By lunch, even his aluminum tray was different. He had just sat down when someone pushed over a piece of chicken.

“Eat it, brother. I can’t finish.”

Another woman smiled and picked up some stir-fried vegetables into his tray.

“A line leader has to eat a lot so he has strength to yell at us.”

One guy even shoved him a tangerine, saying his hometown had sent up too many and he could not finish them. Workers were not rich. Gifts only circled around a piece of meat, fruit, a cup of coffee, a cigarette. But to Hung, each small thing was like a certificate saying he had stepped over a line. From the person ordered around, into the person who could order others back.

Sometimes a few women deliberately walked closer than necessary. When bending down to get something, when squeezing through the narrow path between two rows of tables, their bodies brushed lightly against Hung’s hand, against his elbow. Some even turned back and smiled, a careless smile that was not careless at all.

At first Hung still startled. Then he got used to it. Then he liked it.

That liking smoldered like coal under ash. It was not only about women. It was the feeling that he had value. The feeling that one look from him could make people change their tone. One frown could make someone hurry to fix a seam. One casual sentence could make a woman worker lose sleep because she feared being moved to another shift.

Even Thao was different.

The young woman worker who had once looked at Hung with cold, contemptuous eyes, who knew too many ugly things in old Quy’s room, now also had to lower her head when she passed Hung.

“Brother Hung.”

Only two words.

But Hung heard it as if someone had poured hot liquor down his throat.

He looked at Thao, saw the back of her neck pale under the factory lights, saw her two hands gripping the stack of fabric. He knew she was not convinced. He knew behind that lowered head there was still contempt. But so what? The one lowering her head was still her. The one standing and watching was still him.

One week passed, and Hung was like someone who had just tasted opium.

Power, even small power, had its own smell. It was not fragrant. It was musty, strong, and clung in the throat for a long time. People who had never had it thought they only needed a little to live less humiliated. But once they had it, they did not want to let go anymore.

Hung began to hate the old Hung.

Hated the man who used to stand tucked beside the management office door, smiling in a begging way. Hated the man who used to lower his head and listen to curses. Hated the man who used to go home, look at his wife, and not know where to get money to pay debt. Hated even the nights when he found himself so low he had to drink before he could sleep.

Now he had a chair.

Had people calling him brother.

Had people waiting for him to nod.

Had people afraid of him.

And that fear made Hung feel alive.

One afternoon, when Hung was walking along the line with his hands clasped behind his ass like a new habit, old Quy appeared at the head of the row.

The old man wore a shirt tucked into his pants, belly bulging, face oily. His smile was still the same, half friendly and half dirty. When the workers saw him, they lowered their heads to greet him. The air around there naturally dropped one level.

Quy came close to Hung and patted his shoulder.

The pat was not hard. But Hung felt the line leader chair under his feet shake.

“How is it, kid? Is the new chair soft?”

Hung smiled quickly.

“Yes, thanks to you lifting me up, Brother Quy.”

“Yeah. I said I would do it, and I did. You becoming line leader counts as me keeping my promise.”

Old Quy leaned a little closer. His voice lowered, light as talking about the weather.

“And what about Mai?”

Hung stopped.

Only for one beat, but enough for the back of his neck to go cold.

“Yes ... I know. I’ll tell her. Then I’ll pick a day and message you.”

Old Quy looked at Hung. His small cloudy eyes had the look of someone used to watching other people peel off their own skin.

“I’ll wait.”

After saying that, he patted Hung’s shoulder again and left. The smell of cheap cologne and cigarettes still lingered behind him.

Hung stood still for a few seconds.

The sewing machines started again. The needles stabbed down into fabric steadily. The sound of people calling to one another, scissors cutting thread, industrial fans spinning loudly overhead. Everything returned to normal, only Hung’s heart had been hooked up by one piece.

He had forgotten.

Or more exactly, he had tried to forget.

For the past week, Hung had lived in the new chair, in the sound of “Brother Hung,” in meals where people picked up meat for him, in the feeling that he was no longer a failed man. He had forgotten that chair did not come naturally. It had a price. And that price was sitting in the rental room, cooking rice, washing clothes, quietly wearing away day by day.

Mai.

For almost a month now, Hung had treated Mai like nothing.

Not because he did not know. But because he knew too clearly that she was the most humiliating part of this rotten trade. Each time he looked at Mai, Hung remembered the fifty million, remembered old Quy, remembered the way he had nodded before that filthy proposal. He could not bear that truth, so he turned it into Mai’s fault.

Everything she did was wrong.

If she cooked rice, he complained it was salty.

If the soup was bland, he slammed down the chopsticks.

If the room was not swept, he cursed her as lazy.

If the room was clean already, he said she had too much free time so she only knew how to clean and could not earn a single dong.

One day Mai sat mending an old shirt, and Hung passed by and tossed out a sentence:

“Putting on a show. Sitting there all day like a queen. Can’t earn money, but you’re good at wasting it.”

Mai lowered her head.

She no longer argued.

Before, Mai still knew how to get angry. Still knew how to answer a few sentences, still knew how to look at Hung with eyes that were both hurt and sharp. After the things at the factory, at the DJ cafe, after the slap with Old Tu, after quitting work and lying at home like a defective item returned to the shop, Mai became smaller day by day.

She was afraid of the sound of Hung’s vehicle outside the door.

Afraid of the key going into the lock.

Afraid of the smell of liquor on him.

Afraid even of the times Hung was silent, because she did not know whether after that silence would be a curse or a fist on the table.

That afternoon, Hung came home earlier than usual.

Mai was cooking. The rental room was stifling hot, the old fan turning sluggishly, the smell of braised fish mixed with fish sauce rising up. Hearing the door open, Mai startled and turned around.

Hung stepped in, his face dark.

“Is there food or not?”

“I’m cooking. Wait a little.”

“Wait, wait, wait. All day you only know how to make people wait.”

Mai was silent.

Hung threw his bag onto the bed and pulled out a chair, dropping down heavily. He looked around the cramped room, looked at the blanket folded crookedly, looked at the pile of children’s clothes left on the chair, looked at Mai in her old faded clothes. Suddenly he felt angry. Angry because all these things reminded him he was still here, still had not fully escaped upward, still had the smell of poverty clinging around him.

“You stay home all day and the room still looks like a rat nest?”

Mai bit her lip.

“I just finished washing clothes. I haven’t had time to fold them.”

“Haven’t had time? Everything with you is haven’t had time. You went to work and got fired. You worked at the bar and couldn’t do that either. You couldn’t borrow money. Now you’re home living off me and still haven’t had time.”

Mai stood silently beside the stove.

The spoon in her hand lightly hit the pot, making a very small sound.

Hung looked at her, then remembered old Quy. Remembered the sentence, “I’ll wait.” He took a breath, trying to make his voice lighter, but his lightness was still like a dull knife dragged over skin.

“Tomorrow night get ready to go with me.”

Mai turned back.

“Go where?”

“To meet Brother Quy. To thank him for me becoming line leader.”

Mai’s face went white.

She stood still for a while, as if she had not fully understood that sentence. Then her eyes darkened.

“I’m not going.”

Hung frowned.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t want to meet that old man again.”

Hung stood up.

“It’s only a meal. He helped me get promoted. As husband and wife, we have to know how to behave.”

Mai let out a small laugh. A thin, dry laugh, like paper being crumpled in a hand.

“Know how to behave?”

Hung looked at her.

Mai set the spoon down. Her two hands were shaking, but her voice was clearer.

“You know what kind of man he is too. Right in the factory, he already dared to mess with me. You know, don’t you? You know all of it, don’t you? If we go to his house, you think he’s only inviting us for rice?”

Hung turned his face away.

“Don’t think dirty things.”

“Am I thinking dirty things, or are you pretending to be stupid?”

That sentence made Hung’s face redden.

Mai went on, as if all the things pressed down for many days finally began to bleed out.

“I feel sick when I meet that old man. Looking at his face makes me sick. If you want to thank him, you go. Don’t drag me along.”

“I said it’s just going to eat!”

“I’m not going.”

“Mai!”

“I’m not going!”

The room went dead silent.

Oil in the pan popped. A truck sounded far away in the yard. Someone downstairs laughed loudly, then it cut off. Hung stood in front of Mai, his jaw twitching. He looked at the wife before him, the woman who had once been poor with him, endured humiliation with him, slept with him in a room hot as an iron box. But at that moment, in his eyes, there was no wife anymore.

Only an obstacle.

An unpaid debt.

A key that could make the line leader chair under his ass wobble.

“You think you’re still worth that much?” Hung ground out. “Someone gives you a chance and you still act high?”

Mai looked at him. Her eyes reddened.

“I’m not acting high. I just don’t want to be pushed to that place again.”

Hung slapped her.

The slap rang dry in the narrow room.

Mai staggered, her hand gripping the edge of the table. One side of her cheek burned. She did not cry right away. She only looked at Hung, a stunned look as if for the first time she understood how far the man before her had really gone.

Hung froze too.

But only for one second.

Then he turned away and grabbed his jacket.

“Stay there and think carefully. Don’t make me lose face.”

After saying that, Hung went out.

The door slammed shut.

Mai stood alone in the smell of burned braised fish.

She raised her hand and touched her cheek. The slapped place heated in pulses. Outside in the yard, the lights of Old Tu’s company had turned on. Trucks went in and out. People called to one another under the warehouse. Other people’s lives still ran, other people’s money still flowed, and Mai stood in the small rental room, feeling like a stain no one wanted to wipe away.

That night Hung did not come home early.

Mai sat waiting beside the cold tray of rice. The neighbors’ two children ran over to play, then ran back. The television from the next room echoed through. She sat for a very long time, until the pot of braised fish went cold and fishy, the fat congealing on the surface of the sauce into a thin layer.

She did not cry.

There are days when tears are tired too.

The next morning, Hung went to the factory with eyes red from liquor but still tried to keep his line leader posture. He passed the rows of workers, some greeting him, some smiling. Hung nodded, his hands clasped behind his ass again, but his heart was uneasy.