Bon, had seen me cry many times in the refugee camp. While some of the others had suffered from malaria, I had been shaken by unexpected bouts of blubbering, a fever from which I still had not fully recovered.
When my tongue had recovered from contact with the voluptuous copper body of the cognac, I sniffed and said that I had never taken him for the type to appreciate coffee brewed from the beans defecated by a civet. He gave his best imitation of a smile, picked up a letter opener, slit open one of the packages, and shook out a gleaming brown bean onto his palm, where it glistened under the desk lamp.
I don’t drink coffee, he said. Tea, yeah, but coffee’s too strong.
We looked at the poor bean, the tip of the letter opener pressed against its belly. The Boss rolled the bean with his fingers until it ended up between his thumb and index, and then scraped it gently with the blade. The brown flaked off, revealing whiteness underneath.
It’s just vegetable dye, he said. Won’t hurt you, even when you snort it.
He opened the second bag, shook out another bean, and scratched off a portion of the coloring again to reveal the whiteness beneath.
Got to check the product, he said. Can’t always trust the henchmen. Matter of fact, rule of thumb: Never trust the henchmen.
He opened a drawer and casually took out a hammer, as if hammers were always to be found in drawers, and gently tapped the bean until it crumbled into a fine powder. He dabbed a finger in the white powder, tinged with the brown coloring, and licked it. The brief glimpse of his pink tongue made my big toe twitch.
Sniffing’s the best test. But I got people for that. Or you could do it. Want a try?
We shook our heads. He offered another facsimile of a smile and said, Good boys. This is a great remedy, but you don’t want to need the cure.
Then he slit open the third bag, shook out another bean, laid it on the desk, and tapped it with the hammer—once, twice, a third time. The bean did not crumble. He frowned and tapped it again a little harder. Then he smashed the bean with a blow that made the desk lamp jump in surprise, and when he lifted the head of the hammer from the table, we saw not fine white powder but a circle of debris, brown to the core.
Shit, Bon muttered.
No, coffee, the Boss said, gently laying the hammer down. He reclined in his chair, the corners of his lips crinkling just a little, an amused auditor discovering a cheat’s fatal error. Time must have frozen because I could see that the hands on the clock had not moved at all since we had come into the Boss’s office. Hey, guys, he said. I think we’ve got a problem.
And by “we,” he of course meant “you,” or “us.”
No one knew what the Boss’s name was, or if he did, no one dared utter it aloud. His passport had a name, but no one knew if it was real, and only the authorities had seen it. Presumably his father and mother knew his name, but he was an orphan, and perhaps they had not even given him a name before leaving him at the orphanage. An orphan was akin to a bastard, and this made me feel a certain amount of sympathy for the Boss, who had run away from his orphanage at twelve, no longer willing to tolerate the Catholic instruction, the repetitive diet of porridge with a few flakes of dried pork, the abuse from other orphans for being Chinese, the unending rejection of never being adopted. His experience among children meant that he had no desire to have children. The Boss had no need for a legacy outside of the one he made for himself, the only kind worth possessing. He focused on the two men before him—one of whom was me—and decided they were not a threat to his legacy, not dumb enough to risk their profitable relationship with him for half a kilogram of this remedy of the finest kind.
Tell you what. Come back tomorrow with the other kopi luwak. No big deal, right?
In chorus, they said yes. People who knew him always said yes, if that was what he wanted, or no, if that was what he wanted. As for people who did not know him, it was his task to let them know who he was and how they should respond. These two knew him and understood that if he could not trust them with half a kilo he could not trust them with anything. He drew a smile on his face and said, Honest mistake, I’m sure. Sorry to put you through the trouble. You say your aunt likes hashish? I’ll give her some. On me. Free of charge.
Then he wrote two addresses down for Bon on a piece of paper and said, Drop off your stuff, then get to the restaurant. You don’t want to be late for your first job.
They finished their cognac, shook his hand, and left him alone with the bottle of Rémy Martin, the packet of cigarettes, a dirty ashtray, three empty snifters, the coffee beans, and the hammer. He brushed off the white powder and brown coffee smeared on the hammer’s head and, holding it in his hand, admired its weight, balance, and elegance. He had bought it in a hardware store soon after arriving in Paris, along with a box of nails. Wherever he went, one of the first things he liked to buy, if he didn’t already have it, was a hammer. A hammer was a simple tool, but it was the only thing he had ever needed, besides his mind, to change the world.
CHAPTER 2
Although I feared the Boss for good reason, I feared Bon a little bit less. This was a mistake, in retrospect, given that Bon has shot me in the head. I had known Bon for more than two decades, ever since we had met at the lycée. He had seen too much violence and death, and dealt them as well, to be afraid even of someone like the Boss. For most of his life, in a way that was completely unhealthy for everyone but him, Bon had been concerned with what it meant to die. If that was one aim of philosophy, then Bon was a fine philosopher. He had dwelt on death ever since the childhood moment when a Viet Cong cadre aimed the accusatory finger of a revolver at the back of his father’s head, puncturing the fragile shell, revealing what no son should ever see, and awakening a homicidal urge in Bon, one that knew no restraint until his time in reeducation. It was there that Death woke him every morning, holding the broken shard of a mirror close enough for him to see the fog of his breath clouding his image.
In the years before reeducation, hunting and killing had not bothered Bon in the least. After reeducation, he took more care with the offer of employment the Boss gave him in the refugee camp. Having witnessed Bon’s handiwork in saving his life, the Boss had said, I could use a man like you to do things like that.
I don’t hurt innocent people, Bon said.
They studied the man crumpled at their feet, unconscious or perhaps expired, the elements of his face rearranged by Bon in a cubist manner. The Boss shrugged and agreed, since the price of entry into the Boss’s profession entailed a loss of innocence. But the Boss hesitated about Bon’s other stipulation, that he provide a job for me as well.
I don’t employ people like this crazy bastard, he said at last. He could see that I had a screw loose, the trusty screw that had, for years, held together my two minds. Sometimes I did not even notice that I had two minds, since that was my natural condition, even if it was unnatural. Now the threads of the screw were stripped, having been placed under a great degree of stress from my years of being a spy, a sleeper, and a spook. As long as the screw had remained tightly screwed, my two minds had worked together reasonably well. Now I was no longer screwed—humanity’s universal condition—but was instead unscrewed.
It’s either both of us, Bon said, or neither of us.
That’s the problem with loyalty. The Boss sighed. It’s great until it’s a pain in the ass.
Outside the Boss’s import-export store, we were faced with a dilemma. The Boss wanted us to get to work right away. The Boss also wanted the return of his kopi luwak, which my aunt possessed and might open at any moment.
