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, he chose me to deliver it. I had not pulled the trigger as the crapulent major smiled at me in his driveway—that was Bon—but I was the one responsible for his death.
As for the second man I killed, Sonny, I had known him when we were both foreign students in Southern California in the 1960s, when he was a left-wing activist and I was a communist pretending to be a member of the right wing. Sonny had wisely stayed in California and become a journalist, a perilous occupation in our own country. But our country caught up to him when we refugees came to America, including the General, who suspected Sonny of being a communist agent. Once more the General made me his delivery boy, and if I, his über-competent, super-anticommunist aide, refused, I would have been rightly suspect in his paranoid imagination. I had shot Sonny at close range, and he and the crapulent major had haunted me intermittently ever since, their voices emerging clearly every now and again from the static-ridden channel of my unconscious.
Talents? My laugh sounded weird even to my own ears. What talents?
My aunt looked disconcerted, her sang no longer so froid. You can write, she said. I’m almost done reading your confession, just thirty or forty pages left to go.
I just gave it to you last night.
I’m an editor. I read fast and I don’t sleep much.
What do you think so far?
I think you love your mother. I think you have a problem with women. I think you were treated a bit harshly by Man, who may have had no choice, and yet I think you were too seduced by American culture. You lived a dangerous life as a double agent and a spy, and you were, as you say, a man of two faces and two minds. I wonder what face I am looking at now. And whether you can be trusted.
I could say that you should trust me, but I don’t even trust myself.
Now that is an honest answer. So, you who can sympathize with anyone, what do you think I should do in regards to you? I have welcomed you into my home because you were my revolutionary comrade. But you are not my comrade anymore, are you?
You read about what the revolution did to me!
I read what you said the revolution did to you. But do you not think that perhaps the revolution had reason to be suspicious of you? That you were, or are, in fact too Americanized? Even here in France we are in danger of being Americanized. The American Way of Life! Eat too much, work too much, buy too much, read too little, think even less, and die in poverty and insecurity. No, thank you. Don’t you see that’s how the Americans take over the world? Not just through their army and their CIA and their World Bank, but through this infectious disease called the American Dream? You were infected and you barely even realized it! You were an addict, and Man had to cure you. Unfortunately the cure for addiction is always painful.
I was dumbfounded. She had
