CHAPTER 21

You are glad that you have Le Cao Boi’s authentic aviator sunglasses, because the whiteness is blinding. Heaven’s all white, and in all of its whiteness, Heaven, or the afterlife, or eternity, or purgatory, or limbo, or the bardo, or wherever the hell it is you find yourself, now that you are as dead as the French empire, looks strangely like Paradise. Everyone’s dressed in white, except for the Maoist psychoanalyst, who wears brown tweed and green corduroy. It was actually not the voice of God you heard, just the baritone of the Maoist PhD, who has laid down this last sheet you have written and said:

Now, perhaps, we are ready to begin?

Begin? Begin? How about we stop? The problem with having holes in your head is that everything leaks out! The very chic, very tanned doctor can fix a great many things, but he cannot find the right plugs for these leaks. That is the job of the Maoist psychoanalyst, with his PhD, which is the required expertise, or so your aunt says, and you agree, since your problem, in the end, is not medical, physical, or even metaphysical, but philosophical. Here the Maoist PhD is an expert, quoting, for example, Sartre, who said that “the hole is the symbol of a mode of being . . . a nothingness . . . the empty image of myself. I have only to crawl into it in order to make myself exist.” And that is what you have done, crawling into yourself as you have written this confession, aided by the Maoist PhD, who visits every two weeks to talk to you and review what you have written over these many days, or weeks, or months, or years, or decades, or centuries, in Paradise. You meet in your room, which you share with a kind old gentleman, his hair white from his head to his genitalia. One evening you peeked up his nostrils while he slept and the cotton ball tufts inside were white as well. After a career in the colonies, he is of moderate wealth, like you, and of surprising abilities, also like you. Not long after he moved in, as the very chic, very tanned doctor gave him a checkup, the kind old gentleman started speaking to him in a foreign language, and the doctor responded in kind.

What language is that? you asked.

Arabic, the kind old gentleman said.

How did you learn Arabic?

Algeria.

You looked at the kind old gentleman’s feet, but they were not black. They were quite white. You looked at the doctor and said, Are you Algerian?

I am French, he said stiffly, but my parents come from Tunisia.

Oh, you said. I just thought you were very tanned.

You are a great believer in nothing, the Maoist PhD says, looking at his notes.

I believe there is no way to avoid the void.

You have gone from being a Marxist and a communist to being a nihilist.

No! Non! Nyet! Nein! Negative! you shout. The kind old gentleman laughs from his bed. Never! Have you understood nothing? I am through with your Western philosophies and beliefs and ideas and systems! Your Catholicism! Your colonialism! Your capitalism! Your Marxism! Your communism! Your nihilism, too! I am not a nihilist, for I believe in something—I believe nothing is sacred! Life is full of meaning! And I am full of principles!

Interesting, says the Maoist, sliding his yellow pad into his satchel. I have been to CHINA, you know. All this talk about nothingness and the void is quite ORIENTAL.

Fuck you, you whisper, and out loud you say, Have you read Julia Kristeva?

Of course I’ve read Kristeva.

You pick up Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection, which you swear could have been written about you when it describes “unnamable otherness.” How did Kristeva understand so well the mind of a spy, a man with two faces, who is, of necessity, even before having holes drilled in his head, empty, full only of what she calls “the void”? How did Kristeva index you the way that she has, and is she correct when she says that “it is only after his death, eventually, that the writer of abjection will escape his condition”? Because you certainly are abject, but perhaps you are a writer, at least of your own confession, and here she gives you a nail of hope on which to cling, or to be pinned: “writing, which allows one to recover, is equal to a resurrection.” You read all these passages to the Maoist PhD, and since he has such difficulty understanding nothing, you conclude with this declaration: “I am comfortable only in the presence of the nothing-at-all, the void.”

So you see, Le Chinois? It’s not only Orientals who are fascinated by nothing!

Well, she does come from Bulgaria, which is practically the Orient, the Maoist psychoanalyst says with a smile. In any case, we are close but not done yet. Or rather, you are not done yet.

Not done yet? Look how much I’ve written! What more do you want from me?

Besides removing those sunglasses from your face? Nothing.

Very funny, you say, not taking off your sunglasses.

The Maoist psychoanalyst says farewell, see you in two weeks, and departs. He is helping you for free, a great favor, because all the Boss’s money has gone to pay for your extended stay in Paradise, where your aunt has committed you, with your approval, because what are you if not deeply committed, even if it is to nothing? Your residence is the Memory Ward, a euphemism, since some of those committed here are not quite right in the head, or so you have been told, because you feel quite right in the head, no matter what other people think. Your problem is that your head won’t stop leaking. It’s all Bon’s fault, but the good thing about all this blood is that it provides an unlimited supply of ink for volume two of your confessions. As if volume one hadn’t been enough! You would have been quite happy if your misbegotten life had provided enough material for only one volume, but here you are with so much to confess! And in case you have forgotten, your aunt has brought you volume one, which she has kindly translated into French because, she says, there is something of value in it and so that the Maoist PhD can read it. You read out loud from this translation every day to the kind old gentleman, who nods appreciatively at your pronunciation, so good that the staff and patients of Paradise regularly say, L’INDOCHINOIS speaks excellent French! Progress, indeed, you mutter to yourself, for at least they know not to call you LE CHINOIS! Regardless of whether you are LE CHINOIS or L’INDOCHINOIS, the fact of the matter is you are dead, even if you are still walking around, for Bon, after all, has fired a bullet into your head! What happens now?

You join us, your chorus of ghosts say. You pretend to ignore them and return to the problem of the yellow pad in front of you. The Maoist psychoanalyst has brought you many yellow pads, and your aunt types up all of what you have written and rewritten, and the handsome and humorless lawyer adds copious comments to the margins. Her comments, like Stalin’s, are written in blue, while your original manuscript is written in blood. Or perhaps it’s just ink. Ink or blood? What’s the difference?

Oh, there’s a big difference, says your ghost chorus. Trust us.

The only decoration on your side of the room is a picture you have taped to the wall above your bed, clipped from a newspaper article that your aunt and the handsome and humorless lawyer brought you during one of their visits. The occasion is a march against racism and for equality, dominated by those protesting against the maltreatment of Arabs and Africans, but this black-and-white picture shows a band of young people of Vietnamese descent, which you know because the sign above their heads says VIETNAMESE IN FRANCE. Below it, the sign says IDENTITY IN INTEGRATION. Oh, how these young people give you hope! More than a crucifix or a communist flag. You recognized some members of the Union among them, including some of your clients. As Ho Chi Minh understood sixty years ago, the oppressed must stand in solidarity with one another. But what of the French with Vietnamese ancestry, many of whom feel they are not oppressed? One answer is that there is no better way to demonstrate one’s Frenchness than by demonstrating, especially on the side of the oppressed. The other, related answer is that people do not have to be oppressed to march against oppression, in solidarity, against all kinds of racism, including the racism that benefits them as French people who are not Arab, or African, or black, or Muslim, or immigrant. But as remarkable as this display of solidarity is, what strikes you the most are the three young men wearing masks. White masks. Masks almost exactly like the

one worn by Man, who has left his mark in Paris among these inspired youth. What mark have you left? In the hopes of achieving this identity and integration demanded by these youth, you have, with the encouragement of the Maoist PhD, the handsome and humorless lawyer, and your aunt, made many marks in writing this confession. Is that enough? Can it ever be enough? Piece it all together, your aunt says. Put it in your own words. Maybe then you can make sense of everything that happened.

What she really means is maybe you can make sense of yourself, a dead man whom others seem to think is still alive. So, in the mornings, you write. In the afternoons, you push the wheelchair of the kind old gentleman around the grounds of Paradise and tell him what you have written for the day. Oh my, he might say. Oh dear.

Are you offended? you asked him once, since you know the French are easily offended.

He looked at you with his genetically recessive blue eyes, smiled, and said, Yes, rather.

You smiled back and said, Well, monsieur, to you and any other Frenchperson who might be offended in reading my fun, playful, jocular depictions of French culture and civilization, all I can say is, Fuck you. What else can the colonized say after having been fucked by the colonizer? I guess I should also say thank you. Does that make you happy?

Yes, rather.

Very well then:

Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! No, really, fuck you.

You at last ran out of fucks, your voice hoarse. You could have gone on like this forever otherwise, regardless of the way that the staff and the patients kept looking at you as you perambulated with the kind old gentleman around the grounds of Paradise, as if you were crazy. Poor them. So utterly average! They have only one mind and one face each. YOU—and let’s not forget yourself—are a man of two minds, a man of two faces, a man with two holes in his head, a superman with twice as many fucks to give as any ordinary man! So fuck you, La France, for fucking me, and thank you, La France, for civilizing me! C’est la vie! Same old shit.

You are not truly worried about offending the kind old gentleman. He is one of the few people—perhaps the only one—who does not seem bothered by the perpetual presence of your sunglasses. You were so seduced by his kind old eyes and genuine curiosity about you that you had told him all about yourself. The question that triggered it all was when he asked, Where are you from? Normally this question would incense you, but the kind old gentleman’s kind old eyes made you pause, hesitate, and then attempt to be sincere, as if you really did give a fuck. You told the kind old gentleman where you were from, and when he gave an understanding murmur, you told him about your poor, beautiful mother, and when he murmured again, you began to unspool the entire thread of your life to him, minus the various acts of immorality, obscenity, and fatality with which you have been involved. You spoke for an hour, prodded along by the understanding murmurs and warm blue eyes of the kind old gentleman, who radiated empathy for you and curiosity about you. For the first time, you felt truly understood, truly listened to, and by a total stranger! You could not stop yourself. Your entire life reeled forth in paraphrase, in summary, sometimes elliptically, you being in such a rush and there being so much to say, bits and pieces of your autobiography as haiku and epigraph and fragment, and all the while the kind old gentleman murmured and sometimes said, Ah, bon? And finally, at the end of an hour, you were done and you looked at the kind old gentleman expectantly, waiting for him to respond, and the kind old gentleman smiled beatifically, like Jesus Christ, or the Buddha, or Santa Claus, or Stalin, or Mao, or Ho Chi Minh, and said, with gentleness and warmth, curiosity and empathy, compassion and goodwill:

Where did you say you were from again?

So you perambulate around Paradise, the odd yet perfect couple, you who cannot stop remembering, he who cannot stop forgetting. You can tell the kind old gentleman anything, knowing he will listen with utter concentration and forget with absolute precision. You fill in the blanks of your original paraphrase of your life, over and over, with all the immorality, obscenity, and fatality included, all your deeds and misdeeds, including your daughter, Ada. She is both one of your deeds and misdeeds, so you have gotten her off to a good start in life, born from your seed, which makes her one-quarter French, three-quarters Vietnamese, and 100 percent bastard, since she, too, was born out of wedlock. You wonder if you will ever meet her, the prospect filling you with dread, since you would be the kind of father of whom a daughter can write only the most scathing memoir. And, with these two volumes of your confession, you have given her plenty of evidence.

Evidence, says the lawyer on her next visit. She is interested in you, given her specialty in representing the unforgivable. Of your three readers, she is the most challenging. Your aunt the editor reads for style and story, character and theme, while the Maoist psychoanalyst pores over your anal and erotic fixations. Admittedly you do say “shit” and “fuck” a lot, but that’s because those are two of the most basic human activities!

And what about your Oedipal complex? he once asked.

Oedipal complex? Please! Did your immortals teach you that at the École Normale Supérieure, you Normalien? Normal . . . alien . . . heh heh heh.

He coughed, frowned, made a note in his yellow pad, and said, And what about your reading of the Eiffel Tower as a—what do you call it—a “gigantic dick”?

First of all, that was what the Boss called it, and second of all, it is a gigantic dick! I didn’t create the absurdity in this world! I just see it!

Evidence, says the handsome and humorless lawyer, flipping through your pages. She sits in a chair in your room, while you sit in the wheelchair of the kind old gentleman, who observes the both of you from the throne of pillows on his bed.

There’s a lot of it, you say.

But you’re still missing one crucial piece of evidence.

Aren’t you supposed to be defending me?

In order to defend a client, I have to know what a client has actually done.

Or not done.

Exactly. In your case, we know what you have not done. Less about what you have done.

I have admitted to doing quite a lot!

To be clearer: the consequences of what you have done.

You look around your room for comfort, but since you entered Paradise you have not seen any sign of the remedy, or hashish, or any form of the most life-sustaining liquid after water, which is to say holy water, which is to say liquor. The problem is that the angels of Paradise, as well as the very chic, very tanned doctor, have forbidden almost every form of what they call “intoxicants.” As a result, you are the healthiest you have ever been, and you hate it. The one vice granted to you is cigarettes, this being France after all, and for this benevolence your lungs are deeply, deeply grateful. You stub out your cigarette in the disgustingly overstuffed ashtray and light another one, a Gauloise.

Let’s return to the scene, the handsome and humorless lawyer says.

I’d rather not.

You can’t forgive the unforgivable unless you confront it.

Forgive? Who is there to forgive me?

Only yourself.

Ha! Now that is truly absurd. But even if I could forgive myself, who am I to ask for forgiveness? And even more important, counselor, how does one forgive the unforgivable? It’s not that such forgiveness is impossible. It’s simply that it’s insane!

Let’s return to the scene.

No—

The restaurant. Delights of Asia.

No one wants to return there. The food is shit. Inedible! And that, coming from me, says a lot. My people can eat almost anything. I mean, we ate Chinese shit for a thousand years! And we still suffer indigestion from it!

The handsome and humorless lawyer exhales smoke and adjusts her tie clip. Don’t you know that life is a piece of shit? You have to eat it in small pieces.

Oh, brilliant! Positively philosophical! And exactly how the Chinese eat shit!

It’s actually a French saying, the kind old gentleman says.

Well, now that makes sense, you say.

My dear old mother used to say that to me all the time.

Let’s return to the scene, the lawyer says.

No—

There’s nothing to be afraid of.

That’s God talking! Not me!

Come on. You know as well as I do that there’s no God. Now, the three of you are in the restaurant, standing before the cash register. Smelly and Angry are dead. Both Man and you have confessed your shared secret to Bon. Bon has his gun in his hand and your gun as well. You tell Bon to “do it.” Now what did you mean by that?

What do you think I meant?

For the record, please clarify. And also tell us what you meant when you said, “It’s time to do what has to be done.”

Isn’t it obvious?

Not to me. I wasn’t there to see this scene. I wasn’t even there to see the aftermath. And this is not exactly a situation where I can come to the police and say that I am representing you, since no one knows you were involved. Or rather, they do, but they have the wrong name. Joseph N’Guyen, the last man seen with one of the victims, Bon, as reported by his bereaved fiancée and confirmed by Lana.

Leave it up to the French to fuck with my name, even if it is a fake name. Or half-fake name. N’Guyen! N’Guyen! The French police can’t even take the trouble to spell Nguyen correctly, even though it is the name of kings!

Perhaps that’s why the press simply prefer to call you L’INDOCHINOIS.

Bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit!

Then tell us what happened.

Yes, tell us what happened, the kind old gentleman says.

What did you want Bon to do?

You can still see the barrel of Bon’s gun aimed at you. There is no light at the end of its short tunnel, just a bullet with your name on it, because Bon actually knows all your names, from your birth name to your baptismal name, Joseph. This is the name you used with Loan, pairing it with a surname not your own, Nguyen—Nguyen! Nguyen! Nguyen! The name of literally millions of people, you French bastards! Get it right!—to make you Joseph Nguyen. Your cover would have fallen apart if Lana, once contacted by the French police, had told the truth and said what your real name was. But your cover held up because Lana, for whatever reason, had covered for you. Could it be—love? You shudder at such a blasphemy as someone loving you, just as you shudder at being named after the most famous cuckold in Christian history. Your baptismal name is apt, for God, if He exists, has fucked you over many times. This final rendezvous with your blood brothers is only further proof of His unholy delight as you hear Bon ask, in his strangled voice, Do it?

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

Yes, we know, says the lawyer. You wrote it in your confession.

You adjust your sunglasses and look above her at the picture of the trio pinned to the wall. Isn’t it funny?

I don’t see what’s so funny about it.

Of course you don’t. I mean, isn’t it funny how they’re wearing white masks?

I was there for that march. Those are yellow masks.

Yellow—You burst out laughing. Yellow masks! Who can tell, in a black-and-white photograph, whether something or somebody is yellow? Or rather, in a black-and-white photograph, yellow can only appear to be white. I want one of those yellow masks, you say. Man only left me with his white mask. I’ll make you a deal. You bring me a mask, I’ll take off these sunglasses.

The lawyer looks at the mask hung above your bed. I can arrange for a yellow mask, she says. But you keep dodging my question. Just like you dodged the bullet.

Dodged the bullet? Have you seen the holes in my head?

There are no holes in your head.

I can put my fingers right on them. See?

What did Bon do after you told him that something must be done?

Do you know my greatest talent?

To see any issue from both sides?

Yes! You are a close reader! Even there, in Delights of Asia, with my best friend and blood brother aiming his gun at me, I could see the issue from both sides, even though any normal person would see the issue from only the side of self-preservation. Any normal person would have begged for his life, pleading with Bon to remember our childhood, our blood brotherhood, our oath, sacrificing all dignity and self-consciousness, as if life were the most important thing of all. But life is not the most important thing. Principles are. Bon knew that very well, as do I. We are both men of unswerving principles! And so, when I told him to do it, I knew what I was telling him to do. To follow through. Now, to answer your question, I must do what I do best, which is to look right into his head and see from his point of view, which means to see me through his eyes, since he was looking at me as well as at Man. Man was watching the entire time in case you need an eyewitness, although I don’t know why you would, given that I am perfectly capable of saying to myself, J’accuse! Accused, accursed, I stand before you, my handsome and humorless lawyer, as I stood before Bon, who saw me exactly as I was. What was I? Not his bête noire! There was nothing black about me! No, I was his bête blanche, a communist, a traitor! How he looked upon me with such horror! My appearance appalling, my true face hideous, I was no longer his friend—I was a monster!

Now came his greatest test, the one that happens for all of us, when our thesis and antithesis collide. Our actions then reveal us for who we truly are. On the one hand, his oath to me, his blood brother. On the other hand, his oath to killing his enemies. And there I stood before him, both in one, blood brother and mortal enemy. How would he resolve this contradiction between love and hate, friendship and betrayal? I believed the answer was simple. I believed there was only one solution. How I misjudged! How I did not understand Bon! How I actually couldn’t see the world through his eyes until now! Now I can feel the weight of the gun in his hand as well as the weight of his decision. I will kill him, he thought. I have to kill him, the son of a bitch, the motherfucker, the bastard! He’s a communist! A traitor! I have killed so many, this one will be easy. He’s standing five feet away and I cannot miss, especially given how big his head is, how high that forehead to which so many of our teachers pointed as a sign of his intelligence. I was always the stupid one. Smart enough to get a scholarship, but in Saigon I learned that the smartest village boy was still a bumpkin compared with a city boy. I left the academics and wordplay to them. I couldn’t beat them when it came to books. Where I beat them was on the fields, with my body. I outran, outfought, outshot them. Leave it to the smart guys like him to beat the communists with words and ideas. I’ll stick to killing communists.

Even before I came to the lycée, I’d already killed my first communist. He was the rat who betrayed my father to the communist infiltrators as the head of the village. The communists made my father kneel in the middle of the village, made my mother and me and all my brothers and sisters watch from the front row. We wept and cried, saying, Ba, Ba, Ba, over and over, begging the communists not to harm our father, all while Ba did not cry or scream or beg at all. He knew he was going to die, and he gave us the greatest gift he could. He showed us we must face everything with strength and dignity, even our own end. He showed us that principles matter more than life. His last words to me were, Con oi! Obey your mother and take care of her, con oi! Don’t make her life hard, which he said while they tied his hands behind his back and denounced him. They told him to confess and he said, Confess to whom? You’re not my priest. So they hung a sign around his neck that said PUPPET. And when they fired a bullet into his head, he fell, his strings cut. I screamed so loud I can hear it now, twenty-eight years later:

BA OI!!!

BA OI!!!

BA OI!!!

But no matter how hard I screamed, no matter how much I shook him or hugged him, he would not get up. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. His mouth was open, but he said nothing. His blood was on my face, my shirt, my hands. His brains were spilling out of his head and I can feel them even now, soft and slippery in my hands. Ba oi, Ba oi, Ba oi . . . I would never scream that way again until Linh and Duc died.

God! Why have You done this to me?

God! Why have You taken away those whom I loved with every part of myself?

God! Why have You made it so hard for me to believe in You?

God! Why have You turned my blood brother into the devil?

God! What do You want me to do that I haven’t already done for You?

I try to understand, God. You tested my father, and he passed. He now sits at Your feet in Heaven, looking down on me, with Linh and Duc at his side. I try to understand, God, and perhaps what I understand is that I may never join my father, my wife, and my son in Heaven. I have killed so many communists, and while they all deserved to die, and while my priests have absolved me, I understand that perhaps You may not, which is why You insist on punishing me eternally. But why punish me, God, when I love You, when You have given me this talent to kill so many of these godless communists who hate You? God, I sacrificed them for You!

I remember very well that first communist I killed. I planned for killing that rat from the moment my father died. That was why I saved the rope used to bind my father’s hands. I was only ten. I had to wait and prepare myself. I ran until I was the fastest in the village. I worked the fields until I was the strongest among the boys, and I wrestled until no boy could beat me. And I wasn’t going to be some common soldier, because common soldiers couldn’t kill that many communists. So I studied hard to get out of the village and become an officer someday and command men and kill many, many communists. And the night before I left for Saigon and the lycée, I waited in hiding for the rat, whom I had been watching for four years. I knew his routine, his path from house to outhouse, and late one evening when he passed by, I sprang out of the thicket, wrapped the rope that bound my father around the rat’s neck, and dragged him into the thicket. He didn’t scream. Just gurgled, then died, and I dragged his body to the river and tied him to a sack of rocks with that rope and threw him in. And I regret nothing.

Can You forgive me for that, God?

And for what I must now do?

Why do I hesitate?

The barrel is aimed squarely between his eyes. I cannot miss. I have never missed at this range. But why am I more afraid than him? The crazy bastard looks happy, like he wants it. I can see every detail of his face, and I recognize every detail, unlike with Man, whose half-human face I cannot recognize at all. I will kill him, too, as soon as I—

But I can see every detail . . .

And I can see beneath the details . . .

I see not only his face now but the face he once wore, when we were fourteen, just boys. And on that young boy’s face, I see the future, although what I cannot see is his fate, and mine. What I see instead are hope, idealism, love, brotherhood, sincerity, and pain as he slices his palm and swears his oath. To us. I can still feel the stickiness and the slipperiness of his blood on my stinging palm, mingling with my blood as we grasp each other’s hands and become one. Oh, God! My God . . . forgive me.

Those were the days when we were young, and innocent, and pure.