Chapter 32: The People With No Names
A hand closed on his left wrist, and he snapped awake.
He seized it instantly.
“Who’s there?”
“Let go!”
The man wrenched back hard. Khai Minh realized he was
trying to work the watch off his wrist.
He gripped tighter.
“Give it back.”
“What’s a blind man need a watch for anyway?”
A foot drove straight into his stomach.
Khai Minh went down, his chest screaming, but his hand
stayed locked around the thief’s wrist.
“Let go!”
“No.”
He gritted his teeth and hauled, trying to drag the man
down with him. Once, he could have read an attack by sound alone. But his body
hadn’t recovered. After the fevers and nearly a month flat on his back, there
was almost nothing left in him.
A fist crashed into his face.
Blood burst at the corner of his mouth.
The second blow hammered into his ribs and broke his grip.
The thief tore the watch free.
Khai Minh lunged on pure instinct and wrapped both arms
around the man’s leg.
“You can’t take it.”
“Crazy bastard!”
Kick after kick landed on his shoulders and back.
Khai Minh curled up, one arm shielding his head, the other
hand clamped over the watch. It was the only thing he had left.
“Get off him!”
A wooden staff cracked against the ground. The thief spat
a curse, shoved Khai Minh off, and bolted out from under the bridge.
Khai Minh lay curled on the dirt, his breath coming in
rags, his mouth full of the tang of blood. Pain rolled from his chest around to
his back; every breath dragged like a blade.
A bony hand took his shoulder.
“Can you sit up?”
Khai Minh knocked it away at once.
“Don’t touch me.”
The old man took no offense.
“Still got the strength to snap at people. You’re not
dying yet, then.”
Khai Minh pushed himself upright. The first thing he did
was check the watch.
The leather strap had been dragged askew, but it hadn’t
torn.
The old man settled down nearby. From the voice and the
breathing, Khai Minh judged him to be getting on in years.
“Wear anything worth money around here, and sooner or
later somebody takes it.”
“I’m not selling it.”
“Nobody told you to sell it. But if you want to keep it,
hide it.”
The old man ripped a strip of cloth from a worn-out shirt
beside him and tossed it over.
“Wrap it up. Don’t let anyone see it.”
Khai Minh felt around for the cloth and wound it slowly
about his wrist.
“Thank you.”
The old man didn’t answer. A moment later came the rustle
of a paper bag.
Half a loaf of bread was set into Khai Minh’s hand.
“Eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
His stomach clenched on the last word, betraying him.
The old man gave a dry, rasping laugh.
“Not hungry, with your belly growling like that?”
Khai Minh still didn’t lift the bread to his mouth.
“Keep it for yourself.”
“That’s the last half. I already ate mine.”
“Then all the more reason not to give it to me.”
“Tomorrow I’ll just go begging again.”
Khai Minh fell silent.
The old man seemed to understand exactly what was choking
him.
“Feels shameful, does it?”
“I don’t beg.”
“Then what do you plan to live on?”
“I’ll find a way.”
“You’re blind, you’ve got no papers, and you can barely
stand. Is your way to starve until you’re dead?”
Khai Minh’s fingers crushed into the half loaf.
“I don’t need anyone’s pity.”
“Nobody down here has pity to spare.”
The old man’s voice stayed level.
“Today I have bread, so I share it. Tomorrow I have none,
and you go without too. If you want to hang on to that life of yours, first
learn to put something in your mouth, and swallow that useless pride of yours
down with it.”
Khai Minh said nothing more.
The bread had gone cold, the crust tough and leathery,
nothing inside it at all. But at the first bite, he had to turn his face away,
because his throat had suddenly closed.
Once, it was food he would never have touched. Now it was
the only thing keeping him alive.
In the days that followed, Khai Minh still refused to sit
and beg with the others.
He asked around for work: hauling, washing dishes, minding
stalls. But no one wanted to hire a blind man with no history. In some places,
a single cough was enough to get him chased off for fear he carried disease.
The money Old Hai had given him ran out fast.
Hunger twisted his stomach. At night the cold wind set his
lungs off again. He coughed until he couldn’t lie down, burning one minute and
freezing the next, his chest heavy as lead.
On the third day with nothing in his belly, he no longer
had the strength to stand.
The old beggar set an aluminum bowl down in front of him.
“Take it.”
Khai Minh didn’t move.
“If you want to live, take it.”
His hand curled slowly closed.
In the end, Khai Minh reached out and took it. The bowl weighed
almost nothing, but sitting in his hand, it was heavier than anything he had
ever held.
He sat motionless on that street corner all morning.
Feet hurried past. Someone dropped in a coin; someone else
only looked, and walked on. Every clink of metal into the bowl set his hand a
little more rigid.
But he didn’t fling the bowl away. Because he needed to
live.
Only alive could he take back everything that had been
stolen from him.
That evening, Khai Minh returned to the bridge with a few
small coins. He leaned back against a concrete pillar and pulled the cloth on
his wrist tighter, tucking the watch out of sight.
A small pair of footsteps stopped in front of him.
“Blind Brother.”
Khai Minh lifted his head a little.
A child was standing very close. Two small hands held out
a bowl, still steaming.
“Do you want some porridge?”
The bowl was pushed toward him.
The smell of rice cooked down soft drifted through the
cold air under the bridge. Khai Minh sat frozen for a few seconds. Then,
slowly, he brought up both hands to receive it.
The heat of the bowl rose against his face. He was hungry
enough that his stomach was cramping, but he didn’t eat right away.
“Where did this porridge come from?”
“The lady who sells food out by the alley gave it to me.”
The child’s voice was clear as water, and very young.
“She gave me two bowls. I already ate mine.”
Khai Minh ran his hand around the rim of the bowl and
found the spoon.
“What’s your name?”
“Mo.”
“Who do you live here with?”
“Nobody.”
The answer came out light as air. Khai Minh went still.
In this place, it seemed no one wanted to tell where they
had come from. The old man who had saved him never said why he lived under a
bridge. The woman who slept by the concrete pillar hugged a filthy cloth bag to
her chest every night, and no one knew what was inside it. No one here went by
a real name. They went by labels: “the old man,” “the cripple,” “the madwoman.”
No one asked his real name either. To them he was “the
blind guy,” or, in this little girl’s politer version, “Blind Brother.”
“Eat it, Brother.”
Mo urged him.
“It’s not as good once it’s cold.”
Khai Minh lifted a spoonful to his mouth. The porridge was
thin, without a scrap of meat, but the warmth sliding down his throat eased the
ache in his chest.
“Thank you.”
The girl giggled.
“Blind Brother says thank you?”
Khai Minh’s hand stopped.
“Who taught you to call people that?”
“Everyone calls you that.”
“I have a proper name.”
“What is it?”
Khai Minh said nothing.
After a moment, he went back to eating.
“Never mind. Blind Brother is fine.”
Mo didn’t push. She squatted down in front of him, chin
propped in her hands, and waited until he had finished the whole bowl before
snatching it up and running off.
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