CHAPTER 20

The lights dimmed, the audience cheered, and the curtains opened with the spotlight focused on the one woman onstage, Lana, whose skintight red leather catsuit revealed a body that bore no trace of having been invaded and occupied by a child. The microphone in her hand was a joystick with which she steered the audience, who was carried away by her voice. You recognized the song immediately—“For Your Eyes Only,” from the James Bond movie of the same name, which had been shown for the benefit of the entire refugee camp one evening on Pulau Galang. For refugees who had barely escaped with their lives, a James Bond movie was the escapism they needed. But for you immigrants, refugees, and exiles of Paris, or for your French-born children, the song had a special meaning: Fantasia was for your eyes only. You were not just objects being looked at, you were the subjects looking, your collective gaze concentrated on Lana, whose body embodied everything Vietnamese as she translated the admittedly banal lyrics into your common language. Banal or not, the lyrics spoke a truth about love, both the initial match strike between lovers and the flickering, fluctuating flame of love your people had for each other, complicated and difficult, as all real love was. In this flame you saw not only your beauty but your ugliness, and Lana saw you, all of you, even you in your middling seat, and when she shouted, Good evening, Paris! all of you roared in appreciation, and when she cried, Hello, my dear people! you cheered, whistled, clapped, and stomped your feet, submitting to Fantasia’s greatest fantasy, which was that you had never fought a war against each other, one which you even now were continuing to fight, since the bitterest of wars were civil wars. For a moment, you forgot reality, which was that the people who most hated Vietnamese people were other Vietnamese people. A tragedy, sure, but set it aside, since tonight was for Fantasia, as the next singer sauntering onto the stage reminded you.

It’s Elvis! Loan squealed, clapping her hands.

The wave of hair resembled Elvis Presley’s pompadour, but this was not that Elvis. This figure in black leather pants and a purple velvet smoking jacket with a paisley pocket square and lavender-tinted glasses was your Elvis, named after the King of Rock, a stroke of genius that made all of you wonder why you had not thought of it. And why not take the King’s name? You never allowed anything successful to pass without immediately copying it, whether that was songs, or books, or restaurants, or tyrants, or exploitative and murderous systems of domination, theft, and embezzlement, otherwise known as colonialism, which sounded better when dubbed la mission civilisatrice. Everything sounded better in French, including rape, murder, and pillage! Regardless of the thievery or the homage, this Elvis possessed a hell of a voice, on par with Lana’s, his only fault being that he was a man and not much to look at, but about that nothing can be done. You lean back and their sexy version of his classic “Love You” rolls over you as they cha-cha across the stage. How wise those lyrics are—love you because I hate sadness, love you because I’m sick of people, love you because I’m tired of life. Love you. Love you. Love you. You wish the world was always like a music concert. Mass political or religious gatherings were a crapshoot as to whether attendees left intent on helping strangers or murdering them, but when was the last time music fans had massacred other people at a show’s end?

Fantasia only gets better as it rolls along, with the lights gradually revealing the musicians at the back of the stage. A dozen extremely fit dancers accompany a parade of singers, male and female, who showcase the two most common and delectable emotions in your popular culture, namely love and sadness, with their subtle variations of loss, absence, melancholy, regret, and yearning. The show so overwhelms you that you have actually forgotten about the faceless man when Bon grabs your arm and whispers, He’s leaving. He is silhouetted against the lights of the stage as he makes his way through his row. Now’s our chance, Bon whispers as the faceless man walks up the aisle, and you curse Man’s timing. You and everyone else are utterly entranced by the newest performer onstage, the bewitching and perplexing Alexa, a blond white Québécoise who sings in perfect Vietnamese. You want to stay and figure out how a white woman has pulled off this magic trick, but Bon whispers something to Loan, then pushes you until you rise and the two of you stumble over the feet of the others in your row.

Outside the theater, you catch a glimpse of the back of the faceless man as he turns a corner in the lobby, passing by an astonished Angry, smoking a cigarette.

He’s going to the bathroom, Bon says, striding by you, hand under his jacket, touching his gun.

You can feel Bon’s backup in the small of your back as you follow, and the joy and happiness of your few minutes with Fantasia turn into smoke, leaving only a dread lump of coal in your gut.

Who the hell was that? says Angry. What are you guys doing?

Tell you later, says Bon.

The two of you turn the corner just in time to see the door to the men’s room close, and Bon asks if you are ready without looking at you. The question is rhetorical. He assumes you must be ready and he does not care if you are not, for he is now a heat-seeking missile. You and he cover the ground to the door in a few seconds, and as you do, he slips out his gun, racks the slide, and uses his left hand to push open the door while he raises the gun with his right. He moves so quickly that when he stops abruptly, you run into him and knock him aside, revealing the faceless man, back against the wall, facing the door, hands by his side, mask still on his face.

What took you so long? the faceless man says. I’ve been waiting for you.

Delights of Asia is shuttered, but nobody on rue de Belleville notices even though it is prime time on a Saturday night, for no loyal customers exist to be disappointed. You drove Bon and the faceless man here, the two of them in the back seat with Bon aiming his gun at the faceless man. He had offered no resistance in the men’s room or on the walk out of the theater past the still-smoking, still-perplexed Angry, who again said, Who the hell is this guy? You drove without musical accompaniment, the better to hear what the faceless man said, sentences that might earn you a bullet in the back of your head. But in the car, the faceless man did not reveal his name or who he really was. Nor did Bon ask, because Bon thought he knew who the faceless man was: the commissar, the political officer of the reeducation camp charged with administering your ideological laxative and purging you of all the remnants of colonization in your colon, followed by making you over as communists in the image of Marx, Lenin, and Ho Chi Minh (but not Mao, for your triumphant revolutionary regime, having kicked out the French and the Americans with a little help from the Chinese, was now free to hate the Chinese once again). Even among the camp guards and the camp commandant, the commissar was only known as the commissar. So this is what Bon called him, Commissar, hissing out the word, which appeared to bother the faceless man not at all.

Why the mask, Commissar? were the first words Bon said once you were in the Boss’s brute, the three of you having walked in silence from the theater. You watched the scene in the rearview mirror, Bon staring at the faceless man’s mask, the faceless man orienting his gaze so that he could see both Bon, next to him, and you, in the driver’s seat. The faceless man laughed, or made some sound approximating laughter, for whatever noises he made were slightly muffled by the mask and distorted by his scarred throat. You remembered from your interrogation sessions with the commissar in the camp that he no longer sounded like Man, which—along with his missing face—meant Bon did not recognize him.

Don’t you like me better with a mask?

I don’t like you at all, mask or no mask. Why are you here?

Paris is my reward for being a hero of the state, the faceless man said in his raspy voice. Funny, after having thrown out our colonizers, how we like to take vacations among them. I process visas in a back office, so no one has to see me. Very painless and easy, except for the boredom. But the real reason to be here are the excellent plastic surgeons. In this and other ways, the French have tried to be helpful in the postwar years.

Why would they do that?

Guilt? It’s easier for the French to feel guilty now, because they can point to the Americans and say they did much worse. Also, you don’t know how much the French enjoy hearing our diplomats celebrate defeating the Americans in perfect French! The faceless man laughed, and it was a horrible sound. Hearing us speak fluent French makes them believe we boys have finally become men.

And the plastic surgeons?

They offered to do it for free. The faceless man laughed again even though nothing was funny. The French enslaved us, but of course not all the French are responsible. The same colonizing class that exploited us exploit the French people too. At least these surgeons are human like us.

Human? You’re not human. You’re a monster. Let’s see your face then, or what’s left of it. All that time in the camp, I never got a real close look at you.

Oh, not yet. The faceless man laughed. He was apparently having the time of his life. The light is not good here. A monster needs excellent light.

The light is also not good in front of Delights of Asia, and this may account for what Bon does not notice as he approaches the shutters with a key. You enter, and the stage is now set. The actors are in place, the plot moves through the maze to its inevitable end, the script already written. And who is the scriptwriter but you? Still, as the person penning this scenario, you are only partly in control, for you are not the producer of what is clearly a black comedy, even if calling a comedy black is kind of, sort of, maybe, perhaps, residually racist, although if you suggested that to a Frenchman, or even to an American, and most probably to a Vietnamese, he would indignantly denounce you as racist for seeing something racial in an innocent use of the word “black.” Just a coincidence! Nothing to do with black markets, or blackface, or how the French, in a really wonderful turn of phrase, call ghostwriters nègres—niggers!—the sheer bravado of it taking your breath away when you heard it for the first time. But why take offense over a playful use of words, when it really was the case that ghostwriters were just slaves, minus the whipping, raping, lynching, lifetime servitude, and free labor? Still—what the hell?—if words are just words, then let’s call it a white comedy, shall we? It’s just a joke, take it easy, a bad joke, sure, but so was the Unholy Trinity of colonialism, slavery, and genocide, not to mention the Dynamic Duo of capitalism and communism, both of which white people invented and which were contagious, like smallpox and syphilis. White people have gotten over those bad jokes, haven’t they? In any case, all wordplay aside, this really is a white comedy, for the real producers are white, the colonizers and the capitalists who long ago financed this epic production of which your bit is not even on the main stage. Oh, no, to add insult to injury—because insult is always added to injury—you are off-off-off-off-off-Broadway, on a sideshow of a sideshow of a sideshow, molesting Molière’s horrified ghost, in an intimate theater of the absurd so cutting edge, so avant-garde, so far ahead of the masses that there are not even any spectators! Except for you three watching yourselves, the CAST:

BLOOD BROTHER #1 (Man, a.k.a. the commissar, a.k.a. the faceless man)

BLOOD BROTHER #2 (you, a.k.a. the captain, a.k.a. Vo Danh)

BLOOD BROTHER #3 (Bon, who has no other name)

What happy days, these! Your theatrical debut in a piece of performance theater, where all the restaurant’s a stage. Everything is improvisational, everything is unpredictable, except the most predictable thing of all, the end that must be achieved, the mask that must be taken off, the gun that must be fired. But before this white comedy can proceed to its last act, we have

THE PENULTIMATE

(that means next-to-last)

ACT

The door opens with a crash. Enter SMELLY and ANGRY, cleavers in hand.

SMELLY What the fuck’s going on?

ANGRY You fuckers have been acting weird.

SMELLY (points to the faceless man) Who the fuck is this?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 That is a great philosophical question.

SMELLY Shut the fuck up, you crazy bastard.

ANGRY Where’s the Boss? Where’s Le Cao Boi? Why is the restaurant closed?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Why are you here? You’re supposed to be at the theater.

SMELLY You don’t get to ask questions. You didn’t even pull duty at the orgy.

ANGRY You think you’re too good for that? Fuck you.

SMELLY So who the fuck is this? And why’s he wearing that mask?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Take off your mask.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Gladly, brother. I have been waiting a long time to take this off.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 I’m not your brother.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 removes his mask.

SMELLY Ugh. I mean—Jesus, come on, that—

ANGRY What the fuck happened to your face?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 (chuckles) You should have seen it before the surgeries.

SMELLY You need new surgeons.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I’ve already had a half dozen operations. But when you start with nothing, when your entire face has been burned off by napalm, rebuilding it takes a while. God made this world in seven days, but even the most talented, highly trained, highly paid human beings require quite a bit more time to create something so simple as a face. I’m only halfway there.

ANGRY Answer the goddamn question: Who the fuck are you?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 That is a great philosophical question. You must remember that the birth of a being that must proceed from nothingness, absolute beginning, is an event historically absurd.

SMELLY WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 You don’t recognize me?

ANGRY Why would we recognize you?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I was asking Bon. But you should recognize me, too.

SMELLY We don’t even know you, you weird fuck.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Have you looked in the mirror recently?

ANGRY Fuck you—

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Really looked?

SMELLY I don’t even give a fuck anymore if you answer the question.

ANGRY Wait until the Boss gets a look at you.

SMELLY Where’s the Boss, you crazy bastard?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 shoots SMELLY in the side of the head.

ANGRY What the—

BLOOD BROTHER #3 shoots ANGRY between the eyes.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 Holy shit!

SMELLY and ANGRY are supine on the floor.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 They weren’t the best people.

SMELLY and ANGRY appear to be dead.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

SMELLY and ANGRY are definitely dead.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 Why . . .

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Why? Those crazy fucks would cut you up while you were still alive and laugh while they did it. It was either kill them now or kill them later, and if it was later, it would be a lot messier.

SMELLY and ANGRY are still dead.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 No one gives a shit.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Probably true. Aren’t you afraid someone’s going to call the police?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Walls are thick. Shutters are closed. Only two shots. I’ll take my chances.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 You’re as focused as ever.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Ever? What do you know about ever?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Oh, Bon. Do you still not recognize me?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 You’re the commissar.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I’m more than the commissar. And less.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 I don’t care. You’re here to die and I’m here to kill you.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 Everything happens for a reason.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Jesus, can you shut up? Where’s your gun?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 I don’t give a fuck.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Well, I do, you poor bastard. You may not want to kill this son of a bitch, although I don’t know why, given what he did to you, but I am going to kill him and I’m going to enjoy every second of it.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Bon.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 You’re not getting out of this.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I don’t want to get out of this. All I ask is that you recognize me first. Don’t you understand? I wanted you to find me. Why do you think I came to Paris? The Soviets have excellent plastic surgeons, too.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 I’m not surprised.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I visited Moscow. Do you know Lenin’s corpse is on exhibit? Amazing how the taxidermists preserved him. Kind of like plastic surgery. And these experts came and did the same to Ho Chi Minh. He looks like he’s sleeping. The people travel from far and wide to see him in his mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh’s corpse is now the most beautiful work of art in our country.

Something is leaking from SMELLY and ANGRY.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 What do you mean, you wanted us to find you?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 I knew our brother here would not return to the United States, having killed a man there and having helped you kill another. France was the next likely place. There are many of us here. And, of course, France is the land of his father. Where else would he go? And if he went here, where else but Paris? Then it was simply a matter of making my presence known. A man with a mask instead of a face can hardly walk around without getting noticed.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 But why find us?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 We have unfinished business. It’s just not the business you think.

Dark stains from SMELLY and ANGRY are slowly spreading across the floor.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 Who the fuck do you think you are?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Who are you talking to, you crazy bastard?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 Myself. But also to our brother here.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 He’s not our brother!

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Shall I tell him or shall you?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Tell me what?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 I’m sorry, Bon. I’m so sorry. Really, very sorry.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Sorry about what?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 As am I.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Sorry about what?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 I believed I was doing the right thing.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 What are you trying to tell me?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Are you sure you don’t recognize me?

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Stop playing your mind games.

SMELLY and ANGRY stare blankly at the ceiling, contemplating the meaning of life, or death, or whatever this is.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Do you recognize this?

He holds up his left hand. A long red scar cuts across the palm.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 (hesitates) So what?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 It’s the same scar as on your hand.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 (to BLOOD BROTHER #2) Did you tell him about our oath?

BLOOD BROTHER #2 He already knew about the oath.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 How?

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Because I’m your brother, Bon. I’m Man.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 Anybody can cut themselves. You got the story about our oath from the crazy bastard here. He would have told you anything when you tortured him.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 I didn’t have to tell him. He knows, because he’s Man.

BLOOD BROTHER #3 What did he do to you? What did you say to him? Tell me the truth.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 Yes, tell him the truth.

BLOOD BROTHER #2 You go first.

BLOOD BROTHER #1 He won’t believe it from me. Maybe he will believe it from you.

Lights dim, except for spotlights on the three of you. SMELLY and ANGRY rise from the floor and recede into the shadows to join the chorus of your ghosts, who rub their hands and nudge one another in anticipation.

THE LAST ACT

Bon and Man stare at you, waiting for you to speak. You do not know what to say, you say, except that when people do not know what to say, they oftentimes do know what to say but just do not want to say it. The first thing you do, however, is remove Bon’s backup gun from behind your back and hand it to him. What are you giving me this for? he says, although he takes the gun, the first sign that he knows something is very wrong.

I want you to know I wouldn’t use it on you, you say. Or Man.

He’s not Man. Why do you—just stop it. He brainwashed you back in the camp, didn’t he?

This all started long before the camp, Bon. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I don’t know where to begin. Except that you have to believe him. The faceless man is the commissar. And the commissar is our blood brother, Man. He didn’t die defending Saigon. He was hit by a napalm strike that burned his face off, but he survived.

Bon looks back and forth between the two of you. I don’t—I—

Just listen. Man and I—we’re—we are—we were—we have been—

What? Bon says, and for the first time the muzzle of his gun shifts from Man to you.

Communists. I was already a communist when I went to America to study, when I joined the Special Branch and worked for the General. But I am no longer a communist. Maybe Man still is one.

I don’t understand, Bon says, his muzzle moving back to Man.

You have to understand, Man says. We are your blood brothers.

No, you’re not, not if this is true—

And why wouldn’t it be true? Man says. We are the ones telling you.

You evil son of a bitch! Bon shouts. What did he do to you in that camp?

A great deal, you say. But we had already started long before. Even at the lycée, when we swore our oaths to each other. We were blood brothers, but we were already different. It wasn’t much later that Man began talking to me about the terrible things the French did to us—

I know the terrible things the French have done to us, Bon says.

But you believed that the Americans were there to rescue us. You were already ready to fight with them, against the communists. But Man told me the truth—the Americans weren’t there to help us. They were there to have us help them fight the communists, when the communists were actually trying to liberate us—

So he started brainwashing you even back then—

Not brainwashing—

So now you admit it, Man says. You recognize me after all, don’t you?

I don’t recognize a damn thing! Bon shouts. Even if you were—even if you might have been—you’re insane now. Maybe you always were, and I never saw it. Maybe your insanity rubbed off on this poor bastard, who really is a crazy bastard if he believed in your—

I’m not here to argue politics, Bon, you say. I’m just trying to—

You’re a fucking communist! And a liar!

Yes, all true—

You’re a fucking traitor!

That is not true. We’re no more traitors than you are a traitor. The communists call you a traitor, but you are a patriot. So are we. You did what you believed was right for the country, just as we did what we believed was right—

Then you’re idiots.

That may be true.

Oh my God, Bon says, and you realize he is crying. Oh my God.

Bon—

Is nothing sacred to you?

At first you think it is a rhetorical question, because the answer can only be that of course some things are sacred to you. Your beliefs. Your friendships. Your mother. Or, conversely, defiantly, the answer is that, no, nothing is sacred! Everything can be transgressed! And then there is the third answer, which you finally understood only when the Boss demanded something and you refused, and so . . .

Yes, you say. Nothing is sacred.

You’re such a bastard, Bon says, and he is not only crying, he is sobbing, which you have not seen him do since his wife and child died. A real bastard. You know that? Not because your mother was Vietnamese and your father was French. You’ve used that as a crutch your whole life. No. You’re a bastard because you’re a traitor.

I don’t accept that, Bon. You did what you thought was right—

I’m not talking about politics, you stupid bastard! I’m talking about how you and he—Man—if he’s still Man—how you betrayed me. And not only betrayed me. You betrayed us. Everything we stood for—our friendship—our loyalty—our oath—

I kept my oath, Bon! I went with you to Thailand and Laos. I went with you to the reeducation camp. I did my best to keep you alive. I was willing to die for you and I’m still willing to die for you. I’m your blood brother.

No! Bon shouts. Neither of you are my brothers!

He holds up his left hand, the scar a livid red line dividing the palm. An adolescent oath you all swore. A teenage commitment to a life of loyalty and friendship. Idealism branded into the skin. A bond that would never, you said, be broken.

If I could, Bon says, I’d cut my hand off.

No need, Bon, Man says. The solution is so much simpler.

Solution?

Why do you hesitate, Bon? Why not do what you have always done?

What have I always done?

Kill communists.

The muzzle of Bon’s gun drifts between the two of you. His breathing is ragged, his expression confused. He is slowly coming face-to-face with both the truth as well as the only solution to the plot devised by the two of you, which you began laying out so many years ago in your secret cell at the lycée, in those days when revolution was romantic, death was unreal, and contradiction was only the gap between the departing train of liberty, equality, and fraternity and the platform of the colony on which you stood, stranded. But age always reveals one’s own contradictions, as Bon has pointed out. Your contradiction is that you are a bastard because of how people perceive your face, but you are also a bastard because of what you have done. That is deep, so deep you cannot see the bottom, and now it is time to face that void.

Do it, Bon, you say.

Do it? Bon says, his voice strangled.

It’s time to do what has to be done.

The three of you are teenagers again, blood slick on your palms, palms stinging from the cut of the blade. An orchestra of cicadas drones in the grove, and the moon is a yellow crescent, or, as you once called it as a child, a banana. All for one and one for all! Until death do us part! Then, vows finished, you each shake hands with the others, mingling your blood. The sharp pain in your hand is a sign that you are alive, and loved, and that you love these two boys, who will be your lifelong friends and blood brothers, the family you choose. You know that Bon remembers that moment as well, as does Man, the three of you at last reunited and triangulated as Bon aims at Man, then at you, back and forth, his eyes wide, face and knuckles blanched. The compass of his barrel finally settles on you, aiming squarely between your eyes. Your ghost chorus is so excited it sings in anticipation, a doo-wop band crooning, Do it.

Don’t feel bad, Bon, you say. Do it. It has to be done. Do it.

And when Bon pulls the trigger, you can’t quite believe he actually did it, the flash of lightning that blinds you being the crack in the door as Heaven opens and closes for a split second, the bullet piercing your brain before the bang reaches your ears, and somehow you can hear the voice of God one more time, breaking His silence to say, There’s nothing to be afraid of.