The Committed. Viet Thanh Nguyen
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sad, BFD said, very deliberately and very loudly, his lips moving in exaggerated slow motion. You, too. A boat person. Like them. Verrry saaad. They have nothing. We have everything. We must help them. We must help you.
He aimed his finger at me as if his words were not quite enough. I forced myself to smile and swallowed my resentment, which tasted like blood—that is to say, not as bad as you might imagine, given how so many people apparently enjoy dining on rare, juicy meat. The heat of his pity was so strong that it did not make me feel warm. Instead, I boiled, the steam hissing from my ears as I kept my mouth closed after the few conciliatory words I could manage. How could I say that the so-called boat people had already helped themselves by getting on their boats in the first place? How could I say that I refused to be called a “boat person,” a term so overpowering that even the Anglophobic French had simply borrowed and worn it on a regular basis, like un jean and le week-end?
I was not a boat person unless the English Pilgrims who fled religious persecution to come to America on the Mayflower were also boat people. Those refugees just happened to be fortunate that the soon-to-be-hapless natives did not have a camera to record them as the foul-smelling, half-starved, unshaven, and lice-ridden lot that they were. In contrast, our misery was forever recorded in L’Humanité, where we were seen as anything but human. No, the boat people were not human, they did not get the benefit of some romantic painter casting them in oils, standing boldly on the prow of their sinking ships, facing the monstrous elements with the nobility of Greek heroes, enshrined in the Louvre to be admired by tourists and studied by art historians. No, boat people were victims, objects of pity fixed forever in newspaper photographs. Part of me, my mama’s baby, wanted that pity. But the part of me that was a grown man neither wanted nor deserved pity, neither wanted to be called a victim nor deserved to be seen as such, not after all my deeds and misdeeds. If the price of being human was to be recognized through being pitiful, then to hell with humanity! I was a rotten bastard—recognize that!
But instead all I said was: Thank you. Yes, please help them.
BFD stood up to leave, satisfied that he had not only put me and my people in our pitiful place but that he had also gotten me to thank him for his condescension. It occurred to me that if my French was awkward and my Vietnamese was incomprehensible to him, my English was fluent, and nothing would make a Frenchman feel more inferior, and hence angry, than to hear English. Within a corner of every French soul slouched an American, coughing quietly now and again to remind the Frenchman of their shared history, beginning with how the French helped the pitiful upstart Americans in their revolution against the English, only to find themselves needing the aid of these same Americans twice in the World Wars. Then, finally, “Indochina,” whatever that word meant, since we were neither Indian nor Chinese. It was this fantastic Indochina that the exhausted French handed off to the now very loud Americans. How it must hurt to be reminded of the decline of one’s own empire by being confronted with the rise of a new one! Oh, yes, English in this case was an insult and a challenge, especially from one such as me, who was not even American but “Indochinese.”
So, in perfect American English, I said, Did I hear you say hashish? Because I happen to have some, and of a very fine grade.
BFD hesitated, surprised by this yellow parrot. The sleek socialist could have dismissed me in French, but the temptation to prove that he, too, could speak English was too much for him. Well, yes, in fact, I was saying to your aunt that our . . . purveyor . . . has gone missing.
Six months ago, without a word, my aunt added. Her fluent English, like BFD’s, was inflected with a charming French accent, but it was nevertheless not as good as mine, for I could say that most American of things—hee-haw!—which most of the French could not say, except with a great degree of concentration as they tried not to drop their h’s. I suppose that can only mean bad news for the salesman, my aunt went on.
Unless he found religion, I said.
Doubtful, said my aunt. Saïd only cares about money. Speaking of which—if I could be so crass—
No, no, no, I said, knowing intuitively that someone like BFD, a politician, would not buy the goods, at least from me. I held up the sliver of aluminum between my fingers that the Boss had meant for me to pass on to my aunt. This—the glow of my aunt’s lamp struck the aluminum so that it gleamed like distant lightning—this is a gift.
CHAPTER 3
Oh, what a migraine! And it was due not just to these holes in my head but to the long-lingering hangover from that morning and its ill-considered decision. Oh my God—or my Karl Marx, or my Ho Chi Minh—what had I done? As the General had once told me: Nothing is so expensive as what is given for free. How true, given that I had given him my loyalty freely, and yet I was also spying on him (not to mention seducing Lana). I was his aide-de-camp, Saigon was about to fall, and although he was an American ally, he was speaking of the dangers of American assistance, which Americans gave freely, even though their help always cost a great deal. In our southern Vietnamese case, we had fought the war against communism that the Americans wanted, only to see them abandon most of us in our time of greatest need. So who was paying for this gift, and how much? Was this the beginning of my downfall, when I had barely begun to rise from the downtrodden position that I occupied as a three-time refugee? My intention was to hook BFD for future sales, even if those sales must be conducted through my aunt. He has a reputation to protect, she had said after closing the door behind him. He’s the mayor of the 13th arrondissement.
Even better. I could taste the salty flavor of revenge, which was what I wanted, even if it would leave me thirsty and with bad breath. But in seeking my revenge on the socialist, was I actually becoming that most horrid of criminals? No, not a drug dealer, which was a matter of bad taste. I mean was I becoming a capitalist, which was a matter of bad morals, especially as the capitalist, unlike the drug dealer, would never recognize his bad morality, or at least admit to it. A drug dealer was just a petty criminal who targeted individuals, and while he may or may not be ashamed of it, he usually recognized the illegality of his trade. But a capitalist was a legalized criminal who targeted thousands, if not millions, and felt no shame for his plunder. Perhaps only someone like the Maoist PhD would understand, and indeed he understood so well that he called my aunt later that afternoon and asked for some of the goods, having been informed by BFD of their quality. Unlike BFD, he apparently was not worried about his reputation. If anything, being a known hashish smoker probably enhanced the Maoist PhD’s reputation.
It appears that your product is excellent, she said, hanging up the phone with a hint of reproach in her voice. I wouldn’t have minded a sample of it myself.
I’ll see what I can do, I said, a plan leaping into the waiting arms of my mind, which had not held such a thing for so long. As for my aunt, she had her own plans for me.
I have a friend who teaches French to immigrants, she went on. You need to polish your French. You’re half French, and you should know the language of your father as well as you do English. And you can’t work at that restaurant forever. Or shouldn’t, anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with working in a restaurant. But you have greater talents.
I thought of my career as a spy, my plans and my manipulations, my ideals and my delusions, my decisions and my blunders. My life as a revolutionary and a spy had been designed to answer one question, one inherited from that vanguard of revolution, Lenin, the one that drove me since my lycée years: WHAT IS TO BE DONE? In my case, I had killed two men, and they were innocent, or mostly innocent, and I was guilty, or mostly guilty. I had killed both of them at the behest of the General, who had committed the error of trusting me enough to make me an officer in the Special Branch, our task to root out communists and dissidents. The General had never suspected me of being a spy, not during our years in Saigon or the years afterward, when I fled with him and his family as refugees to Los Angeles. When Man had ordered me to go with the General to America, he was right: the General and his men would continue to fight the war from there, trying to take our homeland back and defeat the revolution. If best actor awards were given to spies, I deserved one, for I had been suave enough to convince the General that the real spy was my colleague in the secret police, the crapulent major. And when the General decided that the crapulent major should be given a one-way ticket to the afterlife,