I heard Louis describe his childhood neighbourhood to Emma-Jade:
“The nail you see there, it’s been in that tree for at least forty years. The barber who set himself up on this bit of sidewalk hung his mirror there.”
“Down this dark alley, there was a hundred-year-old or possibly immortal lady who brought her scale every morning and offered to read the weight of passersby. As well as the weight on their backs.”
“My mother Tâm lived in this apartment.”
“When I was young, I loved to listen to the music they played in this bar.”
“That Pan Am sign has never been removed. I’m negotiating to buy it. It would be a memory of Pamela, who taught me to read, my first words in English.”
“I stole tins of condensed milk from this kiosk to feed you. The owner was still alive and working when I returned twenty years later to pay for them. She remembered me. What’s more, she knew.”
I see Emma-Jade and Louis lying on the ground, their heads under the pink granite bench that had been their common home, the place where Emma-Jade had landed after the rickshaw driver had taken her away with him. That day, the explosion in the open-air bar facing the park had wounded many and killed one, a rickshaw driver who had gone to return a briefcase left behind by a soldier client.