Culture

Monsieur Linh is the only person who knows his name, because everybody who used to know it is dead. He arrives by ship from an unnamed country in Indo-China to France, clutching a small suitcase of meagre possessions, and his new-born granddaughter, Sang diû, who weighs less than the suitcase. His wife died when his son was a baby, and his son and daughter-in-law were killed by a mine as they worked. Their swaddled child lay next to her doll, whose head was blown off in the explosion. Nothing matters to him now but his little girl. He escaped so that she could escape too. He eats because she needs him to eat. He chews up food and feeds it to her, and it dribbles down the side of her mouth.

Monsieur Linh is scared by the new city. The cars and the crowds of indifferent people rushing around the streets frighten him. At a refugee detention centre, he is teased and ignored by children and adults. Women from his country laugh at how he looks after his baby. He can’t stand the cold. The case-workers convince him to go for walks for the sake of his health. On his first walk, a woman with an unpleasant face bumps into him then yells at him, and he can’t make her understand that he is sorry. A park with cages full of animals and a merry-go-round lurks creepily in the background.

But Monsieur Linh makes friends with the recently widowed Monsieur Bark. He is desperately lonely, and spends a lot of time sitting on a park bench. The men can’t understand each other, but bond over chain smoking (don’t read this book if you are giving up) and sympathetic patience. They go to the harbour and Monsieur Linh tells his friend about his village, his family, and a story about a mad woman who scolded the sea, saying “There you are, you see, I’ve found you at last, I told you I would, it’s pointless trying to hide now!” He laughs. The Frenchman tells his friend about his youth as a soldier in Monsieur Linh’s country. He set fire to houses and watched screaming children run. The flimsy houses burned like paper. He cries and cries while Monsieur Linh pats his shoulder, not understanding a word. The baby girl sits quietly between them. The soldier and survivor find comfort for their guilt, loneliness and grief through the kind gestures of friendship, where an understanding of each other’s words may not have been helpful in exorcising the unspeakable horrors they have both lived through.

Dream sequences create a world which seems more real than the grey, indifferent city surrounding the characters. At first village life is romanticised. Monsieur Linh imagines his village, where he and Monsieur Bark can understand one another perfectly, and live happily together eating food with Monsieur Linh’s happy family. He describes the colours, smells, and sounds with childish happiness. But just when the book is in danger of getting too sentimental and sappy, social workers intervene and move Monsieur Linh and his child to another place, so that he can’t find his friend. His treatment is a reminder of the assumptions it is easy to make about the elderly, the poor and the homeless, and the cruelty that can come out of good intentions. But Monsieur Linh’s determination to be back with his French friend brings about a reunion and a surprising, satisfying plot twist.

The initially irritating, patronising depiction of a naïve foreigner bewildered in a western city turns out to be that of a man in possession of a “disturbing and innocent simplicity”. Atrocities are described in simple prose with a deceptive sweetness which hides a harrowing secret. But this is predominantly a story about love, and the need to care for others giving desperate people the ability to keep living.