Chapter 20

Old Tu had been gone almost a week.

Sometimes he called Mai. His voice on the phone was mixed with many background noises: elevator sounds, children’s voices, the sound of a television in some apartment very far from the rental block. He said Van was fine. Said his grandson was cute. Said the home was decent. Said he wanted to stay a few more days.

Mai only said, “Yes.”

Did not ask much.

She could hear in Old Tu’s voice a careful kind of happiness, like someone who had picked up an old thing he thought he had lost, but after wiping off the dust found it no longer looked the way it did in memory. He did not say that. Mai did not ask either. There are things people should let the person inside them walk through to the end by himself.

After hanging up, Mai told Minh’s household.

Ngoc listened and only nodded.

“If he’s fine, that’s good.”

Minh said nothing. He was sitting in the corner of the yard, head lowered, looking at his phone, no one knew what he was reading in there. Since he had begun studying again, Minh often kept a private distance for himself. That distance looked very reasonable from the outside: a man who had once had an accident, once lost his direction, now wanting to study again, wanting to rebuild his life. No one had the right to suspect a person trying to stand up.

But Mai sometimes still saw Ngoc’s gaze stop on Minh’s back longer than it needed to.

In this house, everyone had learned how not to ask too much.

Mai and Old Tu were the same.

To say they were close was not right. To say they were distant was not right either. Between them there was a cord very hard to name, both binding and making people ashamed. Hung, Old Tu’s son, Mai’s husband in name, was in prison. And between Mai and Old Tu there had been a night that could not be placed under ordinary light. So closeness became abnormal. Coldness became kindness.

The two of them knew by themselves to keep distance.

No one said it.

But both understood.

Late that afternoon, Mai brought a stack of files and papers for Hoang to look over.

The rain had just stopped, and the company yard was still wet. Puddles on the cement reflected a lead-colored sky. The warehouse behind stood silent. Crates of soft drinks were stacked on each other, the labels bright to the point of looking fake. In the air was the smell of damp paper, cardboard boxes, old metal, and the faint sweet smell of fruit syrup.

Hoang was talking to Hang in the room where he stayed.

The door was half closed. Mai stood outside and knocked lightly.

“Come in,” Hoang said.

Mai stepped in.

The room surprised her a little.

It did not look like the living place of someone holding in his hands a whole machine that produced money. No leather sofa, no liquor cabinet, no expensive watch or decorations proving the owner had succeeded. The room was rather low, the walls a little damp, the corner of the ceiling had a faint mold stain. A single bed against the wall. An old wooden table. A small refrigerator gone yellow. A few sets of clothes hanging neatly on hooks. A pair of old shoes placed neatly at the foot of the bed.

Minimal.

Neat.

But not luxurious.

Even, if one did not know who Hoang was, one might think this was the room of a warehouse worker staying there for the time being.

The clothes Hoang wore were ordinary too. Plain shirt, dark pants, shoes not new. The vehicle he drove was old, cheap, the engine sounding a little hoarse when it started. Nothing on Hoang showed off money.

And yet Mai still remembered very clearly: Hoang had once done very good business. Had once reported to Old Manh profit numbers of several tens of billions a year in a calm voice, like people reporting that today was sunny. Those numbers passed through his mouth so lightly that the listener forgot how many nights, how many people, how many things that could not be written in a ledger stood behind them.

A person who earned that much money, yet lived like someone destitute.

That made Mai feel cold.

Hang was holding a notebook, standing before Hoang’s desk. Seeing Mai come in, she nodded slightly.

Mai placed the stack of papers on the table.

“There are a few files I want you to look over.”

Hoang glanced at them.

“Leave them there.”

Mai did not leave right away.

She stood still, both hands hanging along her skirt. A moment later, she said:

“Can I talk to you for a bit?”

Hoang looked up.

His eyes passed over Mai, then turned to Hang.

Hang understood very quickly. She closed the notebook.

“Then I’ll go outside first.”

Hoang nodded.

Hang went out and shut the door.

The room suddenly quieted down.

Outside, the sound of the warehouse, the forklift, people talking far away were still there, but behind the door, everything became blurred, like sound under water.

Hoang stood up.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“No need.”

Hoang looked at Mai for a few seconds, then went to the old refrigerator in the corner. He opened the door. Inside was almost empty, only a few small beer cans and a bottle of water. Hoang took one beer, cracked it open. The sound of the tab was dry and short.

Mai looked at the beer can in his hand.

Was it that when a man had too many hidden things, to be able to say them, he needed a little alcohol?

Or did they only need something placed between themselves and the truth. A trail of smoke. A glass of wine. A cold beer can. An ordinary gesture to cover up the fact that they were about to open a door that should not be opened.

Hoang drank a mouthful.

“What do you want to ask?”

Mai sat across from him.

“What do you earn money for?”

Hoang raised his eyes a little.

Mai went on:

“I feel like you yourself don’t seem to need money.”

Hoang did not answer.

He held the beer can, leaning his back against the edge of the table. His face was calm, but that calm did not make people feel at ease. It was like deep water. No ripples did not mean there were no bodies underneath.

Mai said:

“You dress ordinarily. Stay in a room like this. Drive an old car. You don’t spend. You don’t enjoy yourself. You don’t look like someone earning money to live comfortably.”

Hoang laughed very lightly.

“Then according to you, how should a person who earns money live?”

“I don’t know.”

“Must wear designer clothes, drive an expensive car, live in a high-rise?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But that’s what you’re thinking.”

Mai was silent a little.

“No. I’m thinking you don’t look like someone who needs money.”

Hoang lifted the beer can to his lips and drank another mouthful. His throat moved very slightly.

Then he said:

“I need a lot of money.”

Mai looked at him.

“You don’t know,” Hoang said.

“Then tell me.”

Hoang smiled, but this time the smile was paler.

“There are things that, when said out loud, don’t make the listener understand more. They only make them afraid.”

“I know you’re trading in smuggled goods, banned goods.”

The room went quiet.

A drop of water from somewhere on the ceiling fell to the tile floor, making a very small tap.

Mai continued, her voice slow but clear:

“Even if there are high officials backing you, even if the files are clean, even if the warehouse is empty when needed, even if everyone calls this company a model company ... but one day, if someone flips the board, will Mr. Tu become your shield?”

Hoang did not speak.

Mai looked at him.

“His name is on it. He’s old. He trusts you. If something happens, he will die in your place, right?”

Hoang was still silent.

He did not say yes.

Nor did he say no.

That silence made Mai see the answer more clearly than any confession.

She tightened her hand slightly.

“You’re not denying it.”

Hoang looked at the beer can in his hand.

After a while, he said:

“I can’t die.”

Mai froze.

That sentence did not sound like a defense. Nor like a threat. It sounded like some truth that had eaten into Hoang’s bones for a very long time. A very simple sentence, but behind it was a dark field, where there were things Mai had never seen.

“Why?” she asked.

Hoang did not answer.

“Then why don’t you stop? You’ve earned enough money already. All this time, you could have let everything end cleanly. Mr. Tu’s family still lives. You still live. This company can close. You can open another one. You can go somewhere else. Isn’t that better?”

Hoang set the beer can down on the table.

The sound of the can touching the wood was very soft.

He looked at Mai.

He stepped closer to her.

Mai still sat still.

The distance between the two of them narrowed very slowly. Slow enough that Mai could hear the leftover rain dripping lightly from the tin roof into the gutter outside. Hear the old fan in the corner turning with a clack-clack sound. Hear her own breathing.

Hoang stood before her.

He bent down and looked deep into Mai’s eyes.

That gaze was not gentle. Nor was it fierce. It was like the gaze of a person asking: do you really want to know?

Then Hoang lifted his hand and touched her cheek.

Mai did not knock it away.

That touch was not crude. There was no desire in it. It was not like the hand of a man wanting to possess. It was like a way to confirm that both of them were standing in the same room, the same layer of air, the same unnamed truth.

Hoang’s skin was rough.

Mai felt that very clearly.

Thick calluses, hard and coarse, ran across his palm and fingertips. Not like the hand of someone who only sat at a desk, and not like the hand of someone who did business in comfort. It was worse than Old Tu’s farmer hand. That hand seemed to have once scraped over stone, gripped steel wire, dragged something in the dark, or clung too long to the edge of an abyss so as not to fall.

A hand that did not belong to Hoang’s clean face.

A monster’s hand.

Mai looked at him.

Hoang said very softly:

“Can you feel it?”

Mai did not answer.

But he knew she could feel it.

There are truths that do not pass through the ears. They pass through the skin. Through one touch. Through the calluses in a palm. Through the way a person stands before you without being able to ask forgiveness, and without hoping to be understood.

Hoang lowered his hand.

“If you want to hear the answer,” he said, “go change, put on something simple, a shirt, dress pants, then come with me.”

.

.

.

Mai sat in the seat beside the driver’s seat.

Hoang’s car was older than she had thought. When it started, the engine shook a few times, making a rattling sound like the throat of a man who had smoked for many years. The dashboard was scratched. The window on Mai’s side rolled up a little slowly. Inside the car there was the smell of old leather, dust, gasoline, and a little cigarette smell that had soaked into the seats long before.

Hoang did not say where they were going.

Mai did not ask either.

She thought, there are trips where, once one has stepped into the car, the question “where are we going” becomes meaningless. Because the real destination perhaps does not lie where the car stops, but in the thing people are forced to see after they get out.

The old radio in the car was playing the VOV traffic program. The signal was a little noisy. The female host’s voice rose after a few small bursts of static, soft and emotional, as if speaking from a room very far away, where people were still calm enough to send songs to one another.

“And next is a song sent to a friend who has not been seen in a long time...”

The host’s voice drifted in the night.

After that was an old song.

Mai did not remember the song’s name. Only that it had a slow, sad melody, about parting or returning or something like that. Old songs were always strange that way. They made people think they were remembering a specific thing, but actually they were only remembering the feeling of a time before they knew who they would become.

Hoang drove very quietly.

His two hands rested on the steering wheel, firm and calm. Streetlights crossed his face in streaks of light and dark. At times that face looked very young. At times it aged in a way hard to understand.

Mai turned to look at him.

She looked at the way Hoang drove the old car. Looked at his bony wrists, his callused knuckles, the old scratch on the back of his hand. Looked at the way he sat slightly bent forward, like someone used to walking in darkness and always having to watch the road ahead carefully.

This person is so strange, Mai thought.

Too hard to understand.

And too sad.

Hoang’s sadness was not the kind of sadness people could comfort with a few sentences. It was like a deep cellar, sealed under the ground. Above it there could be houses, trees, people passing, laughter. But down there it was still dark. Still cold. Still had something hidden away, not allowed to die, and not allowed to fully live either.

The car passed big roads, then turned into smaller roads. The city lights thinned. The road surface grew worse. The houses on both sides lowered, old walls, sheet-metal roofs, electric wires tangled together. Hoang drove through a few turns, then turned into a dirt alley.

The wheels rolled over the uneven ground.

At the end of the alley was a small yard.

Hoang turned off the engine.

The engine stopped, making the space around them suddenly widen. Mai heard crickets, children shouting somewhere, sandals running over the yard, a woman calling loudly to someone from inside the house.

Before her was a strange compound.

One part was old, walls faded, low tin roof. Another part was being built new, bricks still red, cement still rough, scaffolding standing beside it. The yard had been smoothed flat, cleaner than the alley outside. There were a few trees planted along the path. One corner of the yard had a slide, swings, several small plastic chairs. Yellow lights hung under the eaves. The light was not strong, but enough to make this place seem warm.

As soon as Hoang got out of the car, several children ran over from somewhere.

“Uncle Hoang!”

“Uncle Hoang is back!”

“Uncle Hoang, Uncle Hoang!”

A little boy hugged Hoang’s leg. Another child clung to his hand. Two smaller ones ran straight to Mai, looking at her with round eyes.