Chapter 38: The
Day He Left Dong Cang
The day before he left Dong
Cang, Khai Minh went back to the bridge one last time. He arrived before dawn.
Old Tu was sitting beside a
small fire and lifted his head at the tap of the cane. Mo lay curled in a
blanket nearby.
“So you still remember the way
back.”
Old Tu tossed another scrap of
wood onto the flames as he said it.
Khai Minh lowered himself down
beside him.
“I’m leaving soon.”
“Where to?”
“Far away.”
“Coming back?”
“Don’t know yet.”
Old Tu took in the clean
clothes he was wearing, then glanced at the woman waiting some way off.
“The one from the other day?”
“Yes.”
“Can you trust her?”
The corner of Khai Minh’s mouth
lifted slightly.
“Don’t know.”
“Don’t know, and you’re going
anyway?”
“Staying isn’t living either.”
Old Tu asked nothing more. Khai
Minh drew a folded slip of paper from his pocket.
“I need to ask you for a
favor.”
“What favor?”
“There’s an address on this
paper. A cemetery, and the name of a man buried there.”
“And what do you want me to
do?”
“Buy a bouquet of flowers for
me. Lay it on his grave.”
“Who is he?”
Khai Minh said nothing at
first. The man who had once knelt in a hospital corridor, begging him to spare
his son. The man he had fired in a single fit of temper. The man who, at the
end, had stood in a basement doorway and spent his own life to buy one last
chance for Khai Minh and for his daughter.
“Someone I owe.”
Old Tu took the paper.
“Any message to pass along?”
Khai Minh’s fist clenched
tight.
After a while, he spoke.
“Tell him I still haven’t found
An Nhien and Dong.”
His voice sank lower.
“But as long as I’m breathing,
I won’t stop looking.”
Old Tu tucked the paper into an
inner pocket.
“All right.”
Mo stirred and woke. The moment
she saw Khai Minh, she scrambled out of her blanket.
“Blind Brother! You’re
leaving?”
She knuckled the sleep from her
eyes.
“Mm.”
“Then what’s your name? So I
can find you someday.”
He went still.
The name Lam Khai Minh was
about to cease to exist. The organization had only prepared a temporary alias
for the journey; his new identity wasn’t finished yet. It came to him,
suddenly, that he was standing between two lives: on one side, a name the world
had already stamped dead. On the other, a person who did not yet exist.
“When we meet again, I’ll tell
you.”
Mo’s face fell into a pout.
“You’re tricking me again.”
“Not this time.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Maybe a very long time.”
“Then take this with you.”
From her pocket she pulled a
thin cord braided out of colored thread. It was old, kinked and crooked in
places where the knots had gone wrong.
“I found the thread and braided
it myself. Tie it on your cane, and then nobody will ever take yours by
mistake.”
Khai Minh held out his hand. Mo
wound the cord around the head of the cane and pulled it tight.
“Don’t lose it, okay?”
“Mm.”
“And don’t die, either.”
Khai Minh’s hand came to rest
on the girl’s tangled hair.
Four years ago, he had believed
that dying might be the gentlest way out. But it was these people, people with
no homes, no money, and sometimes not even names left, who had taught him that
no matter where you were or what you did, staying alive was the thing that
mattered most.
“I’ll try.”
He got to his feet. Mo started
after him, but Old Tu held her back. Khai Minh didn’t look over his shoulder.
He couldn’t have seen them anyway.
The tap of the bamboo cane on
the packed earth grew fainter and fainter, until the early traffic out on the
road swallowed it whole.
That afternoon, a stranger laid
a bouquet of white flowers before the grave of Tran Huu Loc. There was no
sender’s name. Only a small slip of paper bearing a single line:
“I will find them. Her and her
brother.”
Khai Minh left Dong Cang that
same night.
Hoa gave him a set of new
clothes, cut his hair, and unwound the filthy cloth from around his wrist. His
mother’s watch was fastened neatly back onto skin webbed with scars.
They traveled in a cargo truck,
then switched vehicles once more before reaching the airport. Khai Minh was
taken through a private processing area, kept away from anywhere too crowded
for too long.
His exit papers carried a
temporary name he’d never heard before. He didn’t ask what it was.
For a man being hunted as an
escaped psychiatric patient and a murder suspect, any name was better than his
own.
At the aircraft door, Khai Minh
stopped.
Cold air from the cabin washed
over his face. The engines droned somewhere below, a faint tremor rising
through the soles of his feet.
“Scared?”
Hoa asked, then led him to his
seat. As the plane began to move, Khai Minh gripped the armrest hard. It wasn’t
the height. He simply couldn’t get used to the feeling of leaving Dong Cang
behind with no idea when, or whether, he could return.
His parents’ graves were in
that city. So was Vinh An Hospital, sitting in the hands of the people who had
killed to take it. And somewhere out there, perhaps, An Nhien and Dong were
still alive. Perhaps still waiting for him.
“Miss Hoa.”
“Hm?”
“Can you see Dong Cang out the
window?”
She turned to the glass. Below,
strings of lights were slowly shrinking. The river cut through the city like a stroke
of black ink, and the high-rises had collapsed into clusters of brightness
jostling under the night.
“Yes.”
“What does it look like?”
“Bright. Very bright.”
Khai Minh turned his face
toward the window. In front of his eyes there was only darkness, same as
always.
“Is that so.”
The plane lifted off the
ground. Khai Minh whispered, as if to the whole city at once.
“Wait for me.”
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