CHAPTER 17

After the sun finally rose, its light revealed that the Eastern and Western Hemispheres of my divided brains remained joined in my head. The big game hunter had not actually loaded his gun, which hadn’t prevented him from giggling and squeezing the trigger a few times. What fun! The Boss laughed a great deal when he showed me this scene in his observation post, located in the locked garret where he had remained ensconced the entire night. The garret was crowded with monitors and videotape machines, connected by braids of wires that disappeared into the walls and were connected to cameras hidden throughout the fabulous apartment.

Where did you get all this? I asked.

My friend, the old Indochina hand, the Ronin said. A real pal ever since ’54, when I handed him the Laos-to-Saigon opium route.

While I stood in the doorway, the Ronin had flopped onto the only other free seat besides the pair occupied by the Boss and his luscious secretary, who looked, as always, bored, not to mention hot, in the figurative sense. Like the sun, she bothered everyone except herself with her hotness.

Where’s the coffee? the Boss said, without looking away from the monitors.

The luscious secretary unfolded her legs in slow motion. Beauty and youth are transitory—it’s what’s inside that matters—it’s character that truly counts and defines a person—but those smooth, gleaming legs and everything they led to blew up my platitudes and caused the little bubble of my remaining testosterone to rise in the thermometer of my body until it reached the bulb of my head and my eyes swelled in their sockets. The Ronin and I watched her leave, and the Ronin sighed and said, Even after this night, I’m still ready for some of that. No offense, Boss.

The Boss merely grunted and continued fast-forwarding through the videotape. Take a look at this, he said finally, hitting play.

The scene reeled forth in black and white, the black-robed priest sitting on an armchair with one of the white slave girls. Brilliant! the Ronin said. He was high enough to skydive, propelled to that altitude by repeatedly refilling his tank with the remedy. She’s confessing! I love this guy. Don’t you love this guy? Tell me you love this guy.

What are you going to do with these tapes? I said. It was a semi-rhetorical question, because the answer was obvious, but I wanted the details.

The Boss, after sneering at my seeming lack of comprehension, said, What these guys paid to be here makes us a nice small profit, but what they will pay—eventually—to keep these tapes from leaking is where the real money is.

Ah, capitalism! the Ronin said, just as the luscious secretary returned with the coffee. As it dripped ever so slowly, the Ronin stripped the luscious secretary with his eyes. The greatest coffee in the world! he proclaimed. This is one way we Vietnamese have bettered the French.

It was remarkable how much easier it was for the Ronin to become Vietnamese than for me to become French. But I did not say this out loud. No one wanted to hear from me anyway, because everybody was watching the priest.

He’s disgusting, the luscious secretary said. Why did you invite a priest? He’s not going to have any money.

Just because he’s a priest doesn’t mean he doesn’t have money, I said.

The luscious secretary looked at me the way the young glance at the old, the way the rich regard the poor, the way incredibly attractive females dismiss males no longer competitive in the sexual hunt. She killed me with that look, a mix of pity diluted by amusement and spiked with contempt, and while the best thing for me to do would have been just to die, my lips kept moving.

He could come from a wealthy family, but probably more useful is his store of secrets, I said, my well-trained fingers immediately finding the pulse of a plot. Can you imagine what a priest hears in his confessional, especially if he ministers to the elites?

The Crazy Bastard’s right, the Boss said. This guy hears the confessions of the wealthy and powerful. I want to hear the confessions of the wealthy and powerful. And since I’m sure he doesn’t want anyone seeing this, he’s going to tell me what those confessions are.

On the monitor, the priest was committing a most unholy act with his rosary beads. I had never prayed the rosary, and never again would I see a rosary in the same way after witnessing the priest diabolically desecrate the beads.

I can’t look, said the luscious secretary, turning her eyes away.

That’s only because you’re Catholic, the Ronin said with a leer.

It’s because I’m a woman.

Shut up, the Boss said. He ejected the tape and passed it to the luscious secretary, who labeled it PRIEST WITH WHITE SLAVE GIRL. The new videotape that the Boss put in featured BFD with Madeleine.

This guy’s nonstop, said the Ronin.

Very impressive, the Boss agreed. I have some respect for him after watching him tonight.

Yeah, but his thing looks like . . . like . . . a mushroom, said the luscious secretary.

No one said a word, for what cannot be spoken of must be passed over in silence.

What is that? I asked, squinting.

Foie gras, said the Ronin.

Oh my God, the luscious secretary groaned. I’m going to vomit. What a creep.

The Boss chuckled. Aren’t we all? he said, stirring his coffee. Looks like we have what we need. This tape we’ll let age like fine wine. It’ll be worth much, much more if BFD is as talented in politics as he thinks he is.

Mayor of Paris one day? the Ronin said. A cabinet minister?

Molotov! the Boss said, raising his glass.

Molotov? asked the Ronin.

Isn’t that what the Jews say for congratulations?

Mazel tov, the luscious secretary said. You mean mazel tov.

The Boss shrugged. I like Molotov better.

I secured the videotapes in a suitcase and carried them to the trunk of the Boss’s car, waiting outside with Le Cao Boi behind the wheel. He drove with me in the passenger seat and the Ronin and the Boss in the back, and we headed toward the warehouse under a midmorning sun because, as the Boss said, I want to finish this fucking business before Fantasia tonight. Le Cao Boi popped in a cassette that the Ronin gave him, which was how I was introduced to the songs of Jacques Dutronc, who was much better than Johnny Hallyday, although some of his lines initially made me pause.

Sept cent millions de chinois

Et moi, et moi, et moi

What did the Chinese have to do with anything? Well, c’est la vie, as Dutronc sang at the end of each stanza, after counting Indonesians, blacks, and even Vietnamese. C’est la vie. So French! So charming! The only thing missing was a stanza to bastards, which was odd, given that Dutronc sang about Soviets and Martians and the imperfect and the starving, if I heard correctly. Surely there must be tens of millions of bastards the world over, an alien diaspora enormous enough to be its own motley nation. But did I even need a nation? I myself was nobody if not a nation, and if so, I needed no nation but my imagination.

The problem was that sometimes I had not used my imagination enough. The most shocking videotape of all made this clear, even though it depicted no carnal acts. It simply showed two of the girls alone, which would normally be hydrogen-bomb hot, except that these two were just . . . talking? I had turned up the volume to hear what the brunette and the redhead were saying, the first bit of dialogue on the videotapes not involving fornication, copulation, or just plain intercourse.

PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

That idiot dressed up as a sheikh—his

was shaped like a broken finger.

VIET CONG GUERRILLA

Oh God. He made me eat one of those ears

around his neck.

PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

Sick bastard!

VIET CONG GUERRILLA

What about the general? I couldn’t find his

past his belly.

PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

Well, I found it, darling. It looked

like raw hamburger.

When the guerrilla and freedom fighter burst into laughter, the Boss said, Disgusting. The luscious secretary smirked, but before she could say anything, the Boss said, Shut up.

VIET CONG GUERRILLA

Have some more of the remedy. It helps.

PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

So—good. Um, so good.

VIET CONG GUERRILLA

And at least it’s free.

PALESTINIAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

Well, give me some more!

VIET CONG GUERRILLA

Just count the money in your head. That’s

what I do.

Then Aladdin entered the frame and the Palestinian freedom fighter and the Viet Cong guerrilla turned their faces to him with glowing smiles. Their eyes automatically descended from his blackened face to his exposed manhood, which was naturally, utterly, and completely white.

Oh my God! whispered the luscious secretary. It’s shaped like an egg.

Somewhere between avenue Hoche and the warehouse, I fell asleep. The Ronin woke me by slapping me in the face—lightly—after the car was parked. You’re the youngest here and you can’t even stay awake, he said, leaning close and peering into my eyes. Just because you stayed up one night? All you did was walk around with the remedy and the hashish! I was banging girls all night long and that is not easy work, my weak-kneed friend. When I pointed out that I was only invited to serve as the Cholon drug dealer, the Ronin shrugged. That’s because you hadn’t earned the opportunity yet, my friend. We earn our opportunities. They’re not given to us!

Let’s go, the Boss said, standing outside my window, an overnight bag from the trunk in his hand. He wordlessly led the way to the warehouse, where the door was unlocked.

Goddammit, Le Cao Boi said.

We walked between the pallets of coffee to the back of the cold, echoing warehouse. In the office, Grumpy and Shorty sat in front of the television playing a video game, another marvel invented during my time in reeducation. The game made a series of pings and pongs as a ball bounced back and forth between two blocks that guarded opposite goals.

The Boss sighed and said, What the fuck are you idiots doing?

Grumpy and Shorty jumped to their feet, and Grumpy said, Sorry, Boss, but that guy’s asleep anyway.

The Boss motioned to the door at the back of the office and Grumpy unlocked it. Make us some coffee, the Boss snapped to Grumpy before we went through the storeroom and to the cell behind it with Shorty.

A naked Mona Lisa lay in a far corner, curled up with his back to us. Shorty headed toward the Mona Lisa, but the Boss waved for him to stop before unzipping the overnight bag. He pulled out a pair of blue mechanic’s overalls and took off his jacket and pants, which he gave to Shorty to fold. Then he slipped on the overalls, zipped them up, and bent down to the bag one more time. When he stood, I saw what he had in his hand—his beloved hammer.

Now this shit’s going to get real, Le Cao Boi said with satisfaction.

Get me a chair, the Boss said to Shorty. Then wake him up.

Shorty had no success in waking the Mona Lisa up with yelling or nudges of his foot, so he resorted to a bucket of water and ice while the Boss watched with his hammer in his lap and the Ronin whistled Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” The ice water landed and the Mona Lisa jerked upright, spluttering, just as Grumpy came in with a folding table and a tray with the same arrangement that the luscious secretary had carried, except with four glasses and four filters. Placing the folding table next to the Boss, Grumpy put the tray on top and joined Shorty in flanking the Mona Lisa, huddled against the wall, head bowed, arms clutched around knees drawn up to his chest. The Boss tapped the tray with his hammer and the glasses rattled. You have until the coffee finishes dripping, the Boss said. Then you tell us where to find your friends. If you don’t, you die. Simple. Understand?

The Mona Lisa did nothing but shiver.

The Boss glanced at the dwarfs, and Grumpy attempted to kick the Mona Lisa in the ribs but struck his elbow instead when the Mona Lisa shifted his arm to defend himself. Do you understand? the Boss said.

The Mona Lisa groaned, clutched his elbow, and nodded.

The Boss glanced at the dwarfs again, and Shorty, from the Mona Lisa’s other side, expertly landed his boot in the Mona Lisa’s ribs, thus demonstrating his perfection of that most basic skill of both gangsters and chief executive officers: kicking a man when he’s down. The Boss didn’t hear you! Shorty shouted.

The Mona Lisa winced, panted, and at last said, Yes, I understand.

We had now moved to what Claude called the “ultimatum stage.” Unintelligent people, Claude had told his students, the kind who watch television and think it’s real life, believe that if you give a subject the do-or-die test, the subject will do whatever you want or tell you what you want to know, because the subject will not want to die. So let me tell you, from real-world experience, having applied this do-or-die test to many Viet Cong, that a lot of those fuckers will choose to die, and before they die, if they give you any information, it’s most likely bad information. So the only reason to really do the do-or-die test is if you want to kill or inflict a great deal of pain. Capisce?

Since none of us Vietnamese students knew Italian or had seen the relevant American gangster films where the tough guy says “Capisce?”—not that we could wrap our Vietnamese lips around “capisce”—we could not say that we understood. Only after my years of experience in the Special Branch could I say, based on empirical experience, that I understood. Watching the scene before me now, I could also say that the Boss neither understood nor cared. He was going to kill the Mona Lisa one way or the other, and the only question was whether the Mona Lisa intuited that. The room lapsed into silence as the coffee dripped at the rate of one drop a second, a silence that the Ronin could bear only a half minute before ordering Grumpy to fetch a radio. Grumpy came back with one of the gigantic stereos that I saw being shipped out of the Boss’s import-export store to my homeland, fated to be sold on the black market. Before Grumpy could turn on the stereo, my ghosts started humming and then singing from somewhere behind me:

Vingt-deux millions de bâtards

Et moi, et moi, et moi

Twenty-two million was just a guess on their part. How many bastards walked the world? As for France, if race did not exist, bastards could not also exist, could they? I was perplexed by the conundrum of my existence, by my uneasy citizenship in a diaspora of unknowns. But were I and the millions of bastards like me known unknowns? Or unknown unknowns?

Ah, that’s more like it! said the Ronin, tuning the station on the stereo. I can dance to this.

He started to cha-cha, my people’s favorite dance. I, too, could cha-cha to almost anything, at least anything faster than a rosary and slower than the twist. But my feet did not feel like moving. The Boss also did not dance. Neither did the Mona Lisa, nor the dwarfs, nor any of my ghosts, who had edged up from behind me to flank me and invade my personal space. Fascinated, we all watched the Ronin blissfully smiling as he did the cha-cha gracefully with an invisible partner until the Boss said, Enough dancing. The coffee had finished dripping. He rose, hammer in hand, while the Mona Lisa braced his back against the wall.

The Ronin stopped dancing, smirked, and said to the Mona Lisa, You and your Algerian friends have the right idea. But we Corsicans have been doing this since before you were born. Opium is a better cash crop than rubber, I’ll tell you that. What a wonderful time we had back then in Indochina! May we see the likes of it again, the time when the French government had the good sense to encourage opium. My God, we couldn’t have financed the government without selling opium to the natives! Now that was an effective business model. Vertical integration and horizontal monopolization meant we had total market control. Imagine how much better France would be now if the government was still in the opium business. Our socialist president would have all the money he needs for his fancy welfare programs. Let’s see how long that lasts without enough money to go around. But is anybody going to listen to me? They should! I’m a patriot! Lady Opium was white. But this remedy is so white it’s snow white. Have you enjoyed the remedy?

The Mona Lisa nodded.

Then you know what I mean, my friend.

You ready? the Boss said, looking at me rather than the Ronin.

I’m always ready, I said, although I had no idea what he was talking about.

He offered me the hammer, although “offered” was a euphemism, for this was not a gift I could decline. The shaft was smooth wood, no splinters, as long as my forearm, its iron head slightly scarred and scratched, just like mine. Its weight was balanced, unlike me. The hammer extended my body, my arm, my hand, and, ultimately, my mind, at least one of them. I remembered what Professor Hammer once told me about his name and the epigram universally attributed to Bertolt Brecht but really coined by the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky or maybe by Leon Trotsky, or so Professor Hammer said: “Art is not a mirror held up to the world but a hammer with which to shape it.” Oh! I had practically orgasmed at hearing this for the first time! Slogans were my turn-on and my political convictions were my most erogenous zone. My name is my destiny, Professor Hammer had said then, raising his glass of sherry to me as I sat in his office for my weekly tutorial with sherry accompaniment, poured from a bottle kept in the professor’s desk drawer, taken out only for his favorite students, who were always men. I could still taste the far-too-sweet sherry as I clutched the Boss’s hammer. Could the professor have imagined that one day I would hold this in my hand and that it would not be a metaphor or a simile but an actual thing with which to hammer an actual head, smash an actual skull, bludgeon an actual brain? I held the hammer with horror, although the horror did not concern the hammer. The hammer was just a tool. I was the weapon and I horrified myself. Everyone was looking at me: the Boss, the Ronin, Grumpy and Shorty, Sonny, the crapulent major, Beatles, Ugly and Uglier, and most especially the Mona Lisa.

Your interrogation didn’t work, the Boss said. Enough with the words. They didn’t do anything. Now it’s time to do something. But make it last. That’s very important. Pay attention to the details. Me, for example, I like to work up from the toes. How do you want to do it?

YOU—that is, ME—were once again being examined with the hardest question of all, supposedly posed by Lenin, although really it was the novelist Nikolay Chernyshevsky: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

a) Break the Mona Lisa’s kneecaps

b) Fracture the Mona Lisa’s ribs

c) Destroy the Mona Lisa’s nose

d) Pulverize the Mona Lisa’s hands

Mayakovsky, Chernyshevsky, Lenin . . . what was wrong with these Russians? Was it Siberia? The steppe? The cheap and plentiful vodka, visually synonymous with water? Or was it that the Russians were essentially Oriental, as Sir Richard Hedd claimed? Did the sum of these things make the Russians prone to brutal behavior, unrealistic expectations, and very thick novels? And, at least by reputation, deadly roulette? The Boss stirred his coffee into a nice caramel blend over ice and, having taken his seat again, sipped it with a slight smile.

Well, the Boss said, crossing his ankles and relaxing. What are you waiting for?

The ghosts grinned, snapped their fingers, and sang:

Trente-trois millions de bâtards

Et moi, et moi, et moi

YOU—that is, ME—looked at the Mona Lisa, and even though he grimaced in pain and misery, you could tell he would still rather die from the defiant way he looked back at you. For a moment, you thought about begging God for help, though God would say nothing. No, the only one who had ever guided you unswervingly had been your mother, who always accepted you and who would accept you even if she knew you were a communist or a spy or whatever you were now. You are not half of anything, you are twice of everything!

The hammer was heavy, even heavier than the bloated foie gras of your guilty conscience, force-fed with all the crimes you had committed. WHAT IS TO BE DONE? Grumpy and Shorty regarded you skeptically, fingering the cleavers holstered under their arms. The Ronin resumed dancing to the next song on the radio. The Boss studied you as if you were a very bad movie and he was a cineast. You dog-paddled in the waters of your rising panic, seeing no way out of this room or this situation, and since the only thing you could buy was time, you said, Do you have a last request?

A last request? said Le Cao Boi.

Well, it’s not a bad idea, said the Ronin, depending on what he asks.

The Boss sipped his coffee. Make it quick.

The Mona Lisa made it quick. Give me some more of the remedy.

Please, said the Boss.

Please give me some of the remedy.

A perfect last request! said the Ronin. Because this is going to hurt.

It’s really going to hurt, said Le Cao Boi.

You know what I do sometimes? said Shorty. He reached into his brown leather jacket’s inner pocket for a Sony Walkman, headphones attached. Slip these babies on, crank up the volume. It helps. Hearing a guy scream for hours and hours can affect you.

That reminds me, said Grumpy. He also reached into the inner pocket of his black leather jacket, but in his case removed goggles and a surgical mask. For the blood splatter.

Ugh, yeah, I remember once I even got a bit of brain—

Shut up, said the Boss. Give him the remedy.

You offered the Mona Lisa the remedy. A lot of it. Almost all you had left in your pockets because somehow you were still carrying several packets. You were the magician who kept throwing something away only to discover that it kept reappearing in your pockets, the remedy a white rabbit with a magic of its own. The Mona Lisa inhaled the remedy while the Ronin and Le Cao Boi chuckled, Grumpy and Shorty chortled, the Boss sipped his coffee, and you yourself took the opportunity to snort a white line you withheld from the Mona Lisa. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

You know what this reminds me of? said the Ronin. The monk who burned himself to death in Saigon.

We’re not going to burn him to death, said the Boss.

It’s an idea, isn’t it? Wouldn’t that teach the Algerians a lesson? But that’s not what I’m talking about. People all over the world cried over that brave, noble monk. He went out with a real splash, so to speak, even if he did have himself splashed with imported gasoline. The left-wing media did their job, put him all over the news, turned him into a legend. You saw the pictures, didn’t you, my friend? The human torch!

The Mona Lisa nodded, eyes half hooded.

Everyone saw the pictures, the Ronin went on. How dramatic! Especially on television. But of course the left-wing media didn’t actually report on the truth. You know what really happened? The commies drugged that poor monk. The reason he was so calm while burning to death was that he was a zombie.

Bullshit! the Mona Lisa said, eyes now wide open. He was a hero!

He was a patsy in a communist plot.

All right, said the Boss, looking at his watch. He wore it with its face on the inside of his wrist, which was probably how Death wore his watch, too. Let’s get this over with.

Not that you have to make it quick, said the Ronin.

But the remedy hasn’t kicked in yet, you said.

I’m getting the feeling you don’t want to do this, said the Boss.

The dwarfs stopped giggling. Your ghosts hummed, shuffled their feet, sang:

Quarante millions de bâtards

Et moi, et moi, et moi

And suddenly you knew the answer to the question WHAT IS TO BE DONE? The answer had stared you in the face this entire time, always there while you refused to understand it, possibly for your entire life, and at the very least ever since Claude lectured you about the ultimatum stage, the do-or-die test, which, you realized, was what the Boss was administering to you. Like many good answers, this answer was, in retrospect, completely obvious, like the round wheel or the number zero, both of which must have caused people to slap their foreheads and say, Why didn’t I think of that? In your case you overlooked the answer, dismissed or ignored it because it was too terrifying, too straightforward, too simple in what it demanded of you. Now the answer was so deafening it was as if God Himself had finally broken His silence and spoke from the mountaintops and the clouds:

GOD

What is to be done?

ALSO GOD

Nothing!

You started to laugh. You finally got it! You had waited so long for God to speak, and when He did, He said, Nothing! Oh my God, God, You’re such a funny guy! The original man with two minds! The greatest stand-up comedian of all time! All the world was a comedy club, and you were the idiot in the front row who kept getting picked on to be the butt of God’s ribbing. Nothing! You shook with sound but no fury, a belly laugh from the same pit where your soul was entombed. Nothing! Ha! Everyone was staring at you now. Was it because you were electrified, every single hair on your body standing and saluting, even the filigrees in your nostrils? Oh my God, God, please, stop! Enough! What a riot! What a scream! And even after slapping yourself on both sides of your face, and with your cheeks stinging, you could hear yourself continuing to laugh hysterically, although it might also be possible that you were just laughing historically.

The joke, after all, was timeless.