Now that we are the powerful, we don’t need the French or the Americans to fuck us over. We can fuck ourselves just fine.
The glare above my body was blinding. I was no longer certain whether I could see everything or nothing, and under the heat of the lights my palm was slick with perspiration. My grip on the pistol was slippery, but the commissar’s hands held the barrel in place.
THE COMMISSAR
If anyone besides you knew that I had spoken the unspeakable, I would be reeducated. But it is not reeducation that I fear. It is the education I have that terrifies me. How can a teacher live teaching something he does not believe in? How do I live seeing you like this? I cannot. Now pull the trigger.
I think I said that I would rather shoot myself first, but I could not hear myself, and when I tried to pull the gun away from his head and turn it toward my own, I did not have the strength. Those relentless eyes stared down at me, now dry as bones, and from somewhere deep inside of him came a rumble. Then the rumble burst forth, and he was laughing. What was so funny? This black comedy? No, that was too heavy. This illuminated room allowed for only a light comedy, a white comedy where one could die from laughter, not that he laughed that long. He stopped laughing when he let go of my hand, my arm dropping to my side and the pistol clattering on the cement floor. Behind the commissar, Sonny and the crapulent major stared with longing at the Tokarev. Either one would have been happy to pick it up and shoot me if he could, but they no longer possessed their bodies. As for the commissar and I, we had bodies but could not shoot, and perhaps that made the commissar laugh. The void that had been his face still loomed above me, his hilarity having passed with such rapidity I was not sure I had heard correctly. I thought I saw sadness in that void, but I could not be certain. Only the eyes and teeth expressed any emotion, and he no longer cried or smiled.
THE COMMISSAR
I apologize. That was selfish and weak of me. If I died, you would die, and then Bon. The commandant can’t wait to drag him before the firing squad. At least now you can save yourself and our friend, if not me. That I can live with.
MYSELF
Please, can we talk of this after I sleep?
THE COMMISSAR
First answer my question.
MYSELF
But why?
The commissar holstered his pistol. Then he tied my free hand down once more and stood up. He gazed down on me from a great height, and perhaps it was because of the foreshortened angle, but I saw in his absence of a face something else besides horror . . . a faint shadow cast by madness, although perhaps it was merely an ocular effect created by the glare behind his head.
THE COMMISSAR
My friend, the commandant may let you go because you wanted your father dead, but I will let you go only when you can answer my question. Just remember, my brother, that I do this for your own good.
He raised his hand to me in farewell, and on his palm blazed the red mark of our oath. With that, he left. Those are the most dangerous words you can hear, Sonny said, sitting down on the vacated chair. The crapulent major joined him, pushing him aside for room. “For your own good” can only mean something bad, he said. As if on cue, the speakers mounted high in the corners clicked and hummed, the ones I had only noticed when the commissar played for me my own stranger’s voice. The question of what would be done to me was answered when somebody began screaming, and while Sonny and the crapulent major could clap their hands over their ears I could not. But even with ears protected, Sonny and the crapulent major could not endure this screaming for more than a minute, this shrieking of a baby in torment, and in the blink of an eye they, too, vanished.
Somewhere a baby was screaming, its suffering shared with me, who needed no more. I saw myself squeeze my eyes shut, as if that could also squeeze my ears shut. It was impossible to think with the screaming in this examination room, and for the first time in a very long time I wanted something more than sleep. I wanted silence. Oh, please—I heard myself crying this aloud—stop! Then another click, and the screaming ceased. A tape! I was listening to a tape. No baby was being tortured in some nearby chamber, its howls piped into mine. It was just a recording, and for a few more moments I only had to worry about the unceasing light and heat and the rubber band snap of the electric wire against my little toe. But then I heard the click again, and my body clenched in anticipation. Somebody began screaming once more. Somebody was screaming so loudly that I not only lost track of myself, I lost track of time. Time no longer ran straight as a railroad; time no longer rotated on a dial; time no longer crawled under my back; time was infinitely looping, a cassette tape repeating without end; time howled in my ear, screaming with laughter at the idea that we could control it with wristwaches, alarm clocks, revolutions, history. We were, all of us, running out of time, except for the malevolent baby. The baby who was screaming had all the time in the world, and the irony was that the baby did not even know it.
Please—I heard myself again—stop! I’ll do anything you want! How was it that the most vulnerable creature in the world could also be the most powerful? Did I scream like this at my mother? If so, forgive me, Mama! If I screamed, it was not because of you. I am one but I am also two, made from an egg and a sperm, and if I screamed, it must be because of those blue genes gleaned from my father. I saw it now, that moment of my origin, the Chinese acrobat of time bent impossibly back on itself so that I could see the invasion of my mother’s womb by my father’s dumb, masculine horde, a howling gang of helmeted, hell-bent nomads intent on piercing the great wall of my mother’s egg. From this invasion, the nothing that I was became the somebody that I am. Somebody was screaming and it was not the baby. My cell divided, and divided, and divided again, until I was a million cells and more, until I was multitudes and multitudes, my own country, my own nation, the emperor and dictator of the masses of myself, commanding my mother’s undivided attention. Somebody was screaming and it was the agent. I was packed tight into my mother’s aquarium, knowing nothing of independence and freedom, witness by all my senses except the sense of sight to the uncanniest experience of all, being inside another human being. I was a doll within a doll, hypnotized by a metronome ticking with perfect regularity, my mother’s strong and steady heartbeat. Somebody was screaming and it was my mother. Her voice was the first sound I heard when I emerged headfirst, thrust into a humid room as warm as the womb, seized by the gnarled hands of an unimpressed doula who would tell me, years later, how she had used her sharpened thumbnail to slice the tight frenulum holding down my tongue, the better for me to suckle and to talk. This was also the woman who told me, with glee, of how my mother pushed so hard she expelled not only me but also the waste from her bowels, washing me onto the shores of a strange new world in a maternal effluence of blood and excrement. Somebody was screaming and I did not know who it was. My leash was cut and my naked, smeared purple self was turned toward a throbbing light, revealing to me a world of shadows and dim shapes speaking my mother tongue, a foreign language. Somebody was screaming and I knew who it was. It was me, screaming the one word that had dangled before me since the question was first asked—nothing—the answer that I could neither see nor hear until now—nothing!—the answer I screamed again and again and again—nothing!—because I was, at last, enlightened.
Chapter 23
With that one word, I completed my reeducation. All that remains to be told is how I glued myself back together, and how I found myself where I am now, preparing for a watery departure from my country. Like everything else of consequence in my life, neither task was easy. Leaving, in particular, is not something that I want to do but is something I must do. What in life is left for me, or any of the other graduates of reeducation? No place exists for us in this revolutionary society, even for those who think of ourselves as revolutionaries. We cannot be represented here, and this knowledge hurts more than anything done to me in my examination. Pain ends but knowledge does not, at least until the
mind rots away—and when would that ever happen for me, the man with two minds?
The end of pain, at least, began when I spoke that one word. In retrospect the answer was obvious. So why did it take me so long to understand? Why did I have to be educated and reeducated for so many years, and at such great expense to both the American taxpayer and Vietnamese society, not to mention considerable damage to myself, in order to see, at last, the word that was there at the very beginning? The answer was so absurd that now, months later and in the temporary safety of the navigator’s house, I laugh even as I reread this scene of my enlightenment, which itself devolved—or is it evolved?—from screams to laughter. Of course I was still screaming when the commissar came to turn off the light and sound. I was still screaming when he unbound me and embraced me, cradling my head against his breast until my screams subsided. There, there, he said in the dark examination room, silent at last except for my sobbing. Now you know what I know, don’t you? Yes, I said, sobbing still. I get it. I get it!
What was it that I got? The joke. Nothing was the punch line, and if part of me was rather hurt at being punched—by nothing, no less!—the other part of me thought it was hilarious. That was why, as I shook and shuddered in that dark examination room, my wailing and sobbing turned to howls of laughter. I laughed so hard that eventually the baby-faced guard and the commandant came to investigate the cause of the commotion. What’s so funny? the commandant demanded. Nothing! I cried. I was, at last, broken. I had, at last, spoken. Don’t you get it? I cried. The answer is nothing! Nothing, nothing, nothing!
Only the commissar understood what I meant. The commandant, flustered by my bizarre behavior, said, Look what you’ve done to him. He’s out of his mind. He was not so much concerned with me as he was about the camp’s health, for a madman who kept on saying nothing would be bad for morale. I was mad that it had taken me so long to understand nothing, even though my failure, in hindsight, was inevitable. A good student cannot understand nothing; only the class clown, the misunderstood idiot, the devious fool, and the perpetual joker can do that. Still, such a realization could not spare me from the pain of overlooking the obvious, the pain that drove me to push the commissar away, to beat my fists against my forehead.
Stop that! said the commandant. He turned to the baby-faced guard. Stop him!
The baby-faced guard struggled with me as I beat not only my fists against my forehead, but my head against the wall. Finally, the commissar and the commandant themselves had to help him tie me down again. Only the commissar understood that I had to beat myself. I was so stupid! How could I forget that every truth meant at least two things, that slogans were empty suits draped on the corpse of an idea? The suits depended on how one wore them, and this suit was now worn out. I was mad but not insane, although I was not going to disabuse the commandant. He saw only one meaning in nothing—the negative, the absence, as in there’s nothing there. The positive meaning eluded him, the paradoxical fact that nothing is, indeed, something. Our commandant was a man who didn’t get the joke, and people who do not get the joke are dangerous people indeed. They are the ones who say nothing with great piousness, who ask everyone else to die for nothing, who revere nothing. Such a man could not tolerate someone who laughed at nothing. Satisfied? he asked the commissar, both of them looking down on me, sobbing, weeping, and laughing all at the same time. Now we have to call in the doctor again.
Call him in, then, said the commissar. The hard part’s done.
The doctor moved me back to my old isolation cell, although now the chamber was unlocked and I was not shackled. I was free to go as I pleased but was reluctant to do so, sometimes needing the baby-faced guard to coax me out of the corners. Even on those rare occasions when I emerged voluntarily, it was never into sunlight, but only the night, a conjunctivitis having rendered my eyes sensitive to the solarized world. The doctor prescribed an improved diet, sunlight, and exercise, but all I wanted was to sleep, and when I was not sleeping, I was somnambulent and silent, except for when the commandant came. Is he still not saying anything? the commandant asked whenever he dropped by, to which I said, Nothing, nothing, nothing, a grinning simpleton huddled in the corner. Poor fellow, said the doctor. He is a little, how shall we say, discombobulated after his experiences.
Well, do something about it! cried the commandant.
I’ll do my best, but it’s all in his mind, the doctor said, pointing at my bruised forehead. The doctor was only half right. It was certainly all in my mind, but which one? Eventually, however, the doctor did hit on the treatment that put me on the slow road to recovery, its end the reunification of me with myself. Perhaps, he said one day, sitting on a chair next to me as I huddled in the corner, arms folded and head resting on them, a familiar activity might help you. I peered at him with one eye. Before your examination began, your days were occupied by writing your confession. Your state of mind is such that I don’t think you can write anything now, but perhaps just going through the motions may help. I peered at him with both eyes. From his briefcase, he extracted a thick stack of paper. Does this look familiar? Cautiously, I unfolded my arms and took the stack. I looked at the first page, then the second, and the third, slowly thumbing my way through the numbered sheaf of 295 pages. What do you think that is? said the doctor. My confession, I muttered. Exactly, dear fellow! Very good! Now what I want you to do is to copy this confession. Out came another stack of paper from his briefcase, as well as a handful of pens. Word for word. Can you do that for me?
I nodded slowly. He left me alone with my two stacks of paper, and for a very long time—it must have been hours—I stared at the first blank page, pen in trembling hand. And then I began, my tongue between my lips. At first I could copy only a few words an hour, then a page an hour, and then a few pages an hour. My drool dotted the pages as I saw my entire life unfold over the months it took to copy the confession. Gradually, as my bruised forehead healed, and as I absorbed my own words, I developed a growing sympathy for the man in these pages, the intelligence operative of doubtful intelligence. Was he a fool or too smart for his own good? Had he chosen the right side or the wrong side of history? And were not these the questions we should all ask ourselves? Or was it only me and myself who should be so concerned?
By the time I finished copying my confession, enough of my senses had returned for me to understand that the answers were not to be found in those pages. When the doctor next came to examine me, I asked for a favor. What is it, dear fellow? More paper, Doctor. More paper! I explained that I wanted to write the story of those events that had happened after my confession, in the interminable time of my examination. So he brought me more paper, and I wrote new pages about what had been done to me in the examination room. I felt very sorry for the man with two minds, as would be expected. He had not realized that such a man best belonged in a low-budget movie, a Hollywood film or perhaps a Japanese one about a military-grade science experiment gone terribly awry. How dare a man with two minds think he could represent himself much less anyone else, including his own recalcitrant people? They would never, in the end, be representable at all, regardless of what their representatives claimed. But as the pages mounted, I felt something else that surprised me: sympathy for the man who did those things to me. Would he, my friend, not also be tortured by the things he had done to me? I was certain he would be by the time I finished writing, by the time I concluded with me screaming that one awful word into the bright, shining light. All that remained after the certainty was to ask the doctor to let me see the commissar once more.
That is a very good idea, the doctor said, patting the pages of my manuscript and nodding with satisfaction. You are nearly done, my boy. You are nearly done.
I had not seen the commissar since the examination’s conclusion. He had left me alone to begin my recovery, and I can only think that it was because he, too, was conflicted over what he had done to me, even though what was done to me had to be done, for I ha
d to come to the answer myself. No one could tell me the solution to his riddle, not even him. All he could do was speed up my reeducation through the regrettable method of pain. Having used such a method, he was reluctant to see me again, reasonably expecting my hatred. Meeting him in his quarters for our next and last meeting, I could see that he was uneasy, offering me tea, tapping his fingers on his knees, studying the new pages I had written. What do a torturer and the tortured say to each other after their climax has passed? I did not know, but as I sat watching him from my bamboo chair, still bisected into myself and another, I detected a similar division in him, in the horrible void where a face had been. He was the commissar but he was also Man; he was my interrogator but also my only confidant; he was the fiend who had tortured me but also my friend. Some might say I was seeing things, but the true optical illusion was in seeing others and oneself as undivided and whole, as if being in focus was more real than being out of focus. We thought our reflection in the mirror was who we truly were, when how we saw ourselves and how others saw us was often not the same. Likewise, we often deceived overselves when we thought we saw ourselves most clearly. And how did I know that I was not deluding myself as I heard my friend speak? I do not. I could only try to understand whether he was fooling me as he skipped the pleasantries of inquiring about my dubious health, physical and mental, and announced that Bon and I were leaving both camp and country. I had assumed that I would die here, and the finality of what he was saying startled me. Leave? I said. How?
A truck is waiting for you and Bon at the gates. When I heard you were ready to see me, I wanted to waste no more time. You are going to Saigon. Bon has a cousin there, who I am sure he will contact. This man has already tried twice to flee from this country and been caught both times. This third time, with you and Bon, he will succeed.
His plan left me in a daze. How do you know that? I said at last.