Dzung stepped out, finding himself at the entrance to yet another bleak, yellow-plaster building built by the French nearly a century before. He followed Manh up a short flight of worn, rounded steps and then inside. The air was clammy, heavy with moldy Asian odors, similar to the stairways in the Interior Ministry building itself. Manh brought him down a long, dimly lit corridor and then into a side room. The room was stark and empty, its walls painted blue. A picture of Ho Chi Minh hung on one wall, above a wooden bench. Except for the bench, the only furniture in the room was a small table in the center and two small wooden chairs that seemed to have been built for schoolchildren. A floor-length mirror was on another wall. Next to the mirror was an internal door that led, no doubt, into another room.

Manh closed the outer door behind them and nudged Dzung until they were standing before the mirror.

“I want you to see what you look like,” said Manh. “Have you seen yourself before, Dzung?”

“Not in a long time,” Dzung answered. “Only my face in a small mirror. Sometimes my reflection on a hotel window. And Cong Ly took a picture of me last year for Tet. I saw that.”

“A picture is tiny,” said Manh. “Take a look at yourself.”

Dzung moved slowly to the mirror and stood before it for a long time. His hair shot raggedly out from underneath his worn baseball cap. His thin arms dangled from his stretched and faded T-shirt. His fingernails were cracked and dirty. His legs looked like pencils at the bottom of his rolled trousers. His sandaled feet were wide, callused, and dirty, their toenails blackened. He moved closer, examining the gaps between his stained teeth and the lines that creased his face and neck. He did not like what he saw, but he was not surprised.

“Why do you want me to look at myself?”

“Because I am going to change you,” said Manh. “Come with me.”

For two hours Manh led Dzung from room to room inside the ancient, mysterious building. In one room a barber waited for him and skillfully cut his hair. In another room a technician brushed and expertly cleaned his teeth, while another clipped and manicured his nails. He was then brought to a shower room, where he dropped his old clothes and scrubbed himself for a long time, taking his first hot shower in more than twenty-five years.