Chapter 31: A City With No Room for Him
From that day on, the radio still played every morning.
Khai Minh listened in silence to the news out of Dong Cang, but no bulletin
ever mentioned a body being found.
Which meant Mr. Minh Quan could not be sure he was dead.
Which meant they were still looking.
It was nearly a month before Khai Minh could stand on his
own.
His body was still weak. A few steps and his chest
stabbed, his breathing turned heavy. Without a cane, he had to grope along the
wooden walls, memorizing the distances to get in and out.
Whenever he staggered, Old Hai simply stood nearby and
said:
“If you want to go anywhere, first learn to stand steady.”
Khai Minh never asked how the man knew he wanted to leave.
Perhaps a man who sat listening to news of Dong Cang every
single day could hide nothing of his heart, no matter how hard he tried.
He knew he hadn’t fully recovered. He knew even better
that he could not stay in this fishing village forever.
There were things in Dong Cang he had not finished.
He didn’t know where An Nhien and Dong were. He didn’t
know whether Hoa had escaped the hunt. And all the while, Mr. Minh Quan was
scrubbing away the traces day by day, turning him into a dead man in everyone’s
eyes.
That afternoon, when Old Hai came back from the day’s
fishing, Khai Minh called out to him.
“Mr. Hai.”
“What is it?”
Khai Minh stood by the door, one hand resting over the
watch at his wrist.
“I need to ask you a favor.”
Old Hai waited for him to go on.
“Take me back to Dong Cang.”
“Are you strong enough for that?”
“Not quite.”
“And you still want to go?”
Khai Minh turned his face toward the river. He knew that
somewhere beyond it lay the road back to the city that had erased his name.
“There’s something I have to go back and do.”
Old Hai didn’t ask what it was.
After a moment, he said:
“Tomorrow I’ll put you on the early bus.”
The ride from the fishing village to Dong Cang took nearly
half a day.
Old Hai walked Khai Minh onto the bus at first light,
bought his ticket, and told the conductor to let him off at the last stop.
Before leaving, he pressed some money into the young man’s hand along with a
length of bamboo, and gave his final instructions.
“Won’t be as good as your old cane, but at least it’ll
help you feel out the road.”
Khai Minh tried to hand the money back.
“I’ve troubled you enough already.”
Old Hai folded his fingers shut over the bills.
“Keep it. Stay alive. However you want to repay me
someday, that’s up to you.”
Khai Minh said nothing more. He only bowed his head, low,
gripping the bamboo cane. Through the whole ride he sat listening to the
engine’s steady drone, feeling the drafts shift each time the bus stopped for
passengers.
The closer they came to Dong Cang, the more chaotic the
sound grew.
Horns jammed against street vendors’ cries and the ad
jingles blaring from roadside shops.
The city was as loud and crowded as ever. As if, in all
the time he had been gone, nothing at all had happened.
When the bus reached the last stop, Khai Minh felt his way
down the steps.
He stood in the rush of the crowd, hand tight on the
bamboo cane, with nowhere to go.
The Lam family villa was no longer a place he could return
to.
Vinh An Hospital, even less so.
The cheap guesthouses near the station all demanded ID. He
had no papers, no phone. All he carried were the few bills Old Hai had given
him and the watch his mother had left behind.
Dong Cang was so vast, and yet there wasn’t a single door
in it he could walk through without fearing he’d be recognized.
He didn’t dare ask directions to the places he knew, much
less let anyone learn he was making for the city center. Every police siren,
every set of footsteps that lingered too long beside him, snapped his body
tight.
By nightfall, Khai Minh was spent.
The dull ache in his chest came seeping back. He coughed
and coughed, his head swimming, the soles of his feet raw from walking. He sat
down to rest at the edge of the sidewalk, and within minutes someone from a
nearby shop was driving him off.
“Don’t sit blocking my door. If you want to beg, go do it
somewhere else.”
Khai Minh pushed himself up on the cane.
Beg. The word left something bitter sitting in his chest.
Not so long ago, he had been the heir to Vinh An Hospital.
In his family’s villa, he had only to speak, and the staff would bring food and
drink straight to his hands.
Now, not even a corner of the sidewalk belonged to him.
He kept walking until he heard traffic rumbling somewhere
overhead. Under the bridge, there were people living.
Voices reached him, tangled with the smell of mildew,
trash, and gutter water hanging in the air.
Khai Minh stood outside for a long time.
In the end, his legs simply gave out. He felt his way
along the wall of the bridge, found an empty patch of ground, and sat down.
No one asked who he was. The people there seemed long used
to the city shoving one more person under this bridge every day.
That first night under the bridge, Khai Minh barely slept.
The ground was cold and hard. Wind funneled through the
gap, cutting straight through his thin shirt until he couldn’t stop shivering.
He kept the bamboo cane pressed against his side, his left hand closed over his
wrist. And then, unbidden, he thought of his mother. That’s right. He’d had
parents once. A home once. His mother had fastened this watch onto his wrist
with her own hands and told him to keep it safe. And in a single night it had
all dissolved; when he woke, there was no one left beside him. He had lost his
father and his mother, lost the only aunt he had. And now heaven saw fit to
strip away the last things he owned. Property, dignity, trust. All of it gone,
leaving a blind vagrant huddled in this dark, filthy corner of the world.
Khai Minh closed his eyes, and the tears spilled over. He
clamped a hand across his mouth so the sound wouldn’t break loose, but inside
his chest, his heart wrung itself tight.
Toward dawn, he slipped under without knowing when.
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