“Is he why you became a diplomat?”

Henry laughed. “Oh, Viola, I was selected and told I would be a diplomat and that, like Zhou Enlai, my job would be to think of my people. You know, nearly a quarter million Chinese died in what you call the Korean War.”

“I can’t imagine so many people,” Viola said.

He closed his eyes. “Zhou’s main concern was keeping the Americans away. A permanent partition of the Vietnamese peninsula suited China.” Henry paused and then opened his eyes and looked at the pigeons. “The freedom of my people suited me.”

Viola slapped a small puddle with her shoe.

Henry looked at her foot and then at her face. “We have a saying: The general sees with only one eye, the diplomat with both. War may be the domain of soldiers, but resolutions are always the purview of diplomats.” Henry smiled. “Uncle Ho discovered even hope must be negotiated. But Vietnam was his home and he would not abandon it after he had returned from so many years in exile.”

Viola made tiny ripples in the small puddle with the toe of her shoe. “Ben’s father was an American photojournalist and now he’s buried on Campobello Island. He was a combat photographer and died on a helicopter shot down near Danang. He was twenty-nine when he died and Ben was just a baby. Ben puts flowers on his father’s grave every Sunday afternoon even when it’s snowing. He’ll never know his dad, but he tries at the grave. He really believes by staying on Campobello Island he can somehow be close to him and have the life his father threw away. Ben won’t leave the island, not even for me.” Viola squeezed her eyes shut to keep the tears in but they dripped down her cheeks anyway.

Henry took her hand. “I understand your Ben. In China we pray to our ancestors. The old ways are slow to pass. My father was sad when I went to Beijing. He said to complete the circle of life one must bury one’s father. I laughed at him, Viola, but I laughed less as I grew older. It is our history with the people we love which binds us together. Being close to the graves of the dead has life in it even if you cannot see this.” He took out a tissue and dabbed her eyes and cheeks, and kept holding her hand.

She moved closer to him and he put his arm around her. “Ben puts silk flowers on the grave in the winter, not real ones because they’d freeze. I wasn’t very diplomatic when I said I wouldn’t marry him, how I left the island so fast.” She could feel the warmth of his leg next to hers. They both laughed and Viola felt warm then. She rested her head on Henry’s shoulder and his voice was very quiet as he leaned toward her and whispered with his lips on her ear, “Regret is never worth the price, Viola. We pay for the rest of our lives.” They sat together without speaking for another fifteen minutes. When they walked to the subway a large flock of pigeons at the other end of the park lifted up into the grey sky.