He was the leader of cell C-7 of terrorist unit Z-99. Based in the secret zone of Binh Duong Province, Z-99 was collectively responsible for hundreds of grenade attacks, minings, bombings, mortarings, and assassinations that had killed a few thousand and terrorized Saigon. Z-99’s trademark was the dual bomb attack, the second designed to kill the rescuers who came to help the victims of the first. Our prisoner’s specialty was the adaptation of wristwatches as triggering devices for these improvised bombs. The second and hour hands were removed from a watch, a battery wire was inserted through a hole in the crystal, and the minute hand was set to the desired delay time. When the ticking minute hand touched the wire, the bomb detonated. Bombs were built from landmines, stolen from US supplies, or bought on the black market. Other bombs were assembled from TNT that was smuggled into the city in small quantities—hidden in hollowed-out pineapples and baguettes and the like, even in women’s bras, which led to endless jokes among the Special Branch. We knew Z-99 had a watchmaker, and before we had known exactly who he was we called him the Watchman, which was how I thought of him.
The Watchman regarded me with amusement the first time I entered his room, a week after we began his treatment. It was not the reaction I expected. Hey, good lookin’, he said in English. I sat on his chair and he on his bed, a tiny, shivering man with a full head of coarse hair, shockingly black in the white room. I appreciate the English lesson, he said, grinning at me. Keep playing that music! I love it! Of course he didn’t. There was a glint in his eye, the briefest hint of unwellness, although that might have come from being a graduate of philosophy from the University of Saigon and the eldest son of a respectable Catholic family who had disowned him for his revolutionary activities. Watchmaking of the legitimate kind—for that was indeed his profession before he became a terrorist—was simply to pay the bills, as he told me during our initial conversation. This was small talk, get-to-know-you kind of stuff, but lurking underneath the flirtation was our mutual awareness of our roles as prisoner and interrogator. My awareness was compounded by knowing that Claude was watching us on the video monitor. I was thankful for the air-conditioning. Otherwise I would have been sweating, trying to figure out how to be both enemy and friend to the Watchman.
I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it’s stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are all guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.
I was impressed with his understanding of American culture and psychology, but I could not show it. Instead, I said, So you would rather be presumed guilty?
If you haven’t understood that your masters already believe me to be guilty and will treat me as such, then you’re not as smart as you think you are. But that is hardly a surprise. You’re a bastard, and like all hybrids you are defective.
In retrospect, I do not believe he meant to insult me. Like most philosophers, he simply lacked social skills. In his graceless way, he was merely stating what he and many others thought to be scientific fact. And yet, in that white room, I admit that I saw red. I could have dragged out this interrogation for years if I wanted to, asking him relentless questions that led nowhere as I tried, seemingly, to find his weakness, secretly keeping him safe. But instead all I wanted at that moment was to prove to him that I was, indeed, as smart as I thought I was, which meant smarter than him. Between the two of us, only one could be the master. The other had to be the slave.
How did I prove this to him? One night in my quarters, after my rage had cooled and hardened, it struck me that I, the bastard, understood him, the philosopher, with perfect clarity. A person’s strength was always his weakness, and vice versa. The weakness was there to be seen if one could see it. In the Watchman’s case, he was the revolutionary willing to walk away from the most important thing to a Vietnamese and a Catholic, his family, for whom the only acceptable sacrifice was for God. His strength was in his sacrifice, and that had to be destroyed. I sat down immediately at my desk and wrote the Watchman’s confession for him. He read my scenario the next morning in disbelief, then read it again before glaring at me. You’re saying that I’m saying I’m a faggot? Homosexual, I corrected. You’re going to spread filth about me? he said. Lies? I have never been a faggot. I have never dreamed of being a faggot. This—this is dirty. His voice rose and his face flushed. To have me say I joined the revolution because I loved a man? To say this was why I ran away from my family? That my faggotry explains my love for philosophy? That being a faggot is the reason for my wish to destroy society? That I betrayed the revolution so I could save the man I loved, who you have captured? No one will believe this!
Then no one will care when we publish it in the newspapers along with your lover’s confession and intimate photographs of the two of you.
You will never get me in such a photograph.
The CIA has remarkable talents with hypnosis and drugs. He fell silent. I continued: When the newspapers cover this, you realize it’s not only your revolutionary comrades who will condemn you. The road back to your family will be closed forever, too. They might accept a reformed revolutionary, or even a victorious one, but they will never accept a homosexual no matter what happens to our country. You’ll be a man who sacrificed everything for nothing. You will not even be a memory to your comrades or your family. At least if you talk to me this confession won’t be published. Your reputation will stay intact until the day the war is over. I stood up. Think about it. He said nothing and did nothing except stare at his confession. I paused at the door. Still think I’m a bastard?
No, he said tonelessly. You’re just an asshole.
Why had I done that? In my white room, I had nothing but time on my hands to ponder this event I had whitewashed from my mind, the event to which I am confessing now. The Watchman had infuriated me, pushing me into irrational action with his pseudoscientific judgment. But he would not have been able to do so if I had simply executed my role as the mole. Instead, I confess I took pleasure in doing what I was supposed to do and not supposed to do, interrogate him until he broke, as Claude had requested. He replayed the scene for me later in the surveillance room, where I watched myself watching the Watchman as he stared at his confession, knowing he was out of time, a character in a movie, as it were, that Claude had produced and I had directed. The Watchman could not represent himself; I had represented him.
Brilliant work, Claude said. You really fucked this guy.
I was a good student. I knew what my teacher wanted and, more than that, I enjoyed his praise at the expense of the bad student. For wasn’t that what the Watchman was? He had learned what the Americans taught, but he had rejected those teachings outright. I was more sympathetic to the thinking of Americans, and I confess that I could not help but see myself in their place as I broke the Watchman. He threatened them, and thus, to some extent, me. But the satisfaction I had at his expense did not last long. In the end, he would show everyone what it was that a bad student could accomplish. He would outsmart me by proving that it was possible to sabotage the means of production that you did not own, to destroy the representation that owned you. His final move happened one mor
ning a week after I had shown him his confession, when I got a call at the officers’ quarters from the guard in the surveillance room. By the time I reached the National Interrogation Center, Claude was also there. The Watchman was curled up on his white bed, facing the white wall, clad in his white shorts and T-shirt. When we rolled him over, his face was purple and his eyes bulged. Deep in his open mouth, at the back of his throat, a white lump. I just went to the bathroom, the guard blubbered. He was eating breakfast. What was he going to do in two minutes? What the Watchman had done was choke himself to death. He had been on good behavior for the past week, and we had rewarded him with what he wanted for breakfast. I like hard-boiled eggs, he said. So he had peeled and eaten the first two before swallowing the third one whole, shell and all. Hey, good lookin’ . . .
Turn off that goddamn music, Claude said to the guard.
Time had stopped for the Watchman. What I did not realize until I woke up in my own white room was that time had stopped for me, too. I could see that other white room with utter clarity from my own, my eye peering through a camera in the corner, watching Claude and myself standing over the Watchman. It’s not your fault, said Claude. Even I didn’t think about this. He patted my shoulder reassuringly but I said nothing, the smell of sulfur driving everything out of my mind except for the thought that I was not a bastard, I was not a bastard, I was not, I was not, I was not, unless, somehow, I was.
Chapter 12
By the time I emerged from the hospital, my services were no longer needed, and I was not invited back to the set for the mopping-up operation that took place after the shooting was completed. Instead, I found that an airplane ticket had been reserved for my instant departure from the Philippines, and I spent the entire trip brooding over the problem of representation. Not to own the means of production can lead to premature death, but not to own the means of representation is also a kind of death. For if we are represented by others, might they not, one day, hose our deaths off memory’s laminated floor? Still smarting from my wounds even now, I cannot help but wonder, writing this confession, whether I own my own representation or whether you, my confessor, do.
The sight of Bon waiting for me at the Los Angeles airport made me feel a little better. He looked exactly the same, and when I opened our apartment door I was relieved to see that while it had not improved, neither had it worsened. The Frigidaire remained our decrepit diorama’s main attraction, thoughtfully stocked by Bon with enough beer to cure me of my jet lag, though not enough to cure me of the unexpected sadness massaged into my pores. I was still awake when he went to sleep, leaving me with the latest letter from my Parisian aunt. Before I retired, I dutifully composed my report to her. The Hamlet was complete, I wrote. But, more important, the Movement had established a revenue source.
A restaurant? I had said when Bon broke the news over our first round of beer.
That’s what I said. Madame’s actually a good cook.
Hers was the last decent Vietnamese food I had eaten, reason enough for me to call the General the next day and congratulate him on Madame’s new enterprise. As expected, he urged me to come for a welcome back meal at the restaurant, which I found on Chinatown’s Broadway, bracketed by a tea shop and an herbalist. Once we had surrounded the Chinese in Cholon, the General said from behind his cash register. Now we’re surrounded by them. He sighed, his hands resting on the keys of the register, ready to bash out a harsh tune on that makeshift piano. Remember when I came here with nothing? Of course I remember, I said, even though the General had not actually come here with nothing. Madame had sewn a considerable number of gold ounces into the lining of her clothes and her children’s, and the General had strapped a money belt full of dollars around his waist. But amnesia was as American as apple pie, and it was much preferred by Americans over both humble pie and the fraught foods of foreign intruders. Like us, Americans were suspicious of unfamiliar food, which they identified with the strangers who brought them. We instinctively knew that in order for Americans to find refugees like us acceptable, they first had to find our food digestible (not to mention affordable and pronounceable). Because it was no easy thing to overcome this digestive skepticism or make a profit from it, a dimension of courage existed in General and Madame’s enterprise, as I told him.
Courageous? I find it degrading. Did you ever foresee the day when I would own a restaurant? The General gestured at the small confines of what had previously been a chop suey house, brown measles of grease still speckling the walls. No, sir, I said. Well, neither did I. It could at least have been a nice restaurant, instead of this. He spoke with such pathetic resignation I felt a renewed sympathy for him. Nothing had been done to renovate the restaurant, the linoleum floor battered, the yellow paint dull, the overhead lighting flat and harsh. The waiters were, he pointed out, veterans. That one’s Special Forces, and that one’s Airborne. In trucker caps and ill-fitting dress shirts that must have been rummaged from a thrift store, or bestowed on them by a strapping sponsor, the waiters did not look like killers. They looked like the anonymous men with bad haircuts who delivered Chinese takeout, the men who waited nervously in hospital emergency rooms without insurance, who fled the scenes of car accidents because they did not have licenses or registration. They wobbled as much as the table that the General led me to, its base uneven. Madame herself brought me a bowl of the pho special and joined us, both watching me eat one of the best examples I had ever indulged in of our national soup. It’s still delicious, I said after the first sip and bite. Madame remained unmoved, as glum as her husband. You should be proud of such . . . such soup.
We should be proud of selling soup? Madame said. Or owning a hole-in-the-wall? That’s what one of our customers called this place. We don’t even own it, said the General. We lease it. Their moroseness was matched by their appearance. Madame’s hair was pinned back in a librarian’s stale bun, when before it had almost always been worn in a glamorous bouffant or beehive that recalled the go-go days of the early sixties. She, like the General, wore off-the-rack clothing consisting of a mannish polo shirt, shapeless khakis, and the American footwear of choice, sneakers. They wore, in short, what almost every other middle-aged American couple I had encountered at the supermarket, the post office, or the gas station wore. The sartorial impression was to make them, like many American adults, look like overgrown children, the effect enhanced when these adults were spotted, as they often were, sucking on extra-large sodas. These petit bourgeois restaurateurs were not the aristocratic patriots I had lived with for five years and for whom I felt not only some fear but also a degree of affection. Their sadness was my sadness, too, so I turned the conversation toward a topic I knew might lift their spirits.
So, I said, what’s this about the restaurant funding the revolution?
A wonderful idea, isn’t it? said the General, brightening. Seeing Madame’s eyes turn to the ceiling, I suspected that it was, in fact, her idea. Hole-in-the-wall or not, this is the first such restaurant in this city, he said. Perhaps even in this country. As you can see, our countrymen are starving for a taste of home. Although it was only eleven thirty in the morning, every table and booth was occupied by people eating soup with chopsticks in one hand and spoon in the other. The restaurant was redolent with the fragrance of home and resonant with its sounds, the chatter of our native tongue competing with heartfelt slurping. This is a nonprofit enterprise, so to speak, said the General. All profits go to the Movement.
When I asked who knew about this, Madame said, Everyone and no one. It’s a secret, but an open secret. People come here and their soup is spiced with the idea they’re helping the revolution. As for the revolution, the General said, everything is almost in place, even the uniforms. Madame is in charge of those, as well as the women’s auxiliary and the making of flags. What a spectacle she can create! You missed the Tet celebration she organized in Orange County. You should have seen it! I have photos to show you. How the people cried and cheered
when they saw our men in camouflage and uniform, carrying our flag. We’ve assembled the first companies of volunteers, all veterans. They train every weekend. From this group, we’re going to cull the best for the next step. He leaned over the table to whisper the rest. We’re sending a reconnaissance team to Thailand. They’ll link up with our forward field base and reconnoiter a path overland to Vietnam. Claude says the time is nearly right.
I poured myself a cup of tea. Is Bon a part of this team?
Of course. I hate to lose such a good worker, but he’s the best we have for this kind of work. What do you think?
I was thinking that the only route overland from Thailand involved trekking through Laos or Cambodia, avoiding established roads and choosing the treacherous terrain of disease-ridden jungles, forests, and mountains where the only inhabitants would be brooding monkeys, man-eating tigers, and hostile, frightened locals unlikely to give aid. These badlands were the perfect setting for a movie, and a horrible one for a mission that was almost certainly do or die. I would not have to tell Bon this. My crazy friend had volunteered not despite the fact that his chances of returning were slim, but because of them. I looked at my hand, at the red scar engraved there. I was suddenly aware of the outline of my body, of the sensation of the chair underneath my thighs, of the fragility of the force holding together my body and my life. It would not take much to destroy that force, which most of us took for granted until the moment when we could not. What I think, I said, not allowing myself to deliberate any further, is that if Bon is going I should go, too.