The Emperor of Gladness

by Ocean Vuong

good ears.” She tugged on one ear. “Like rubber,

himself.” She then twirls, in a full circle, and steps aside. A few seconds later the lights dim and a film plays on a TV mounted on the wall. The film is about ten minutes long and talks mostly about this old man’s life, the narration marked by dates, not of his military accomplishments but of the regular things he did every day: the path he took each morning to get to the Virginia Military Institute, where he taught, the gardening books he enjoyed, quotes from his letters to former cadets, foods he liked to eat, how his first wife, Elinor, died during childbirth, the baby stillborn, and his early

once looked like Big Bird had devolved into an underworld Ronald McDonald. The van shook