It is funny you bring up the Soviets, the General said. As you have written, Dr. Hedd, Stalin and the peoples of the Soviet Union are closer in character to Oriental than Occidental. Your argument that the Cold War is a clash of civilizations, not just a clash of countries or even ideologies, is absolutely correct. The Cold War is really a conflict of Orient and Occident, and the Soviets are really Asiatics who have never learned Western ways, unlike us. Of course it was actually I, in preparation for this meeting, or audition, who had summarized for the General these claims in Hedd’s book. Now I observed Dr. Hedd closely for his reaction to my prescription, but his expression did not change. Still, I was confident that the General’s comments had affected him. No author was immune from having his own ideas and words quoted back to him favorably. Authors were, at heart, no matter how much they blustered or how suavely they carried themselves, insecure creatures with sensitive egos, as delicate in the constitution as movie stars, only much poorer and less glamorous. One only needed to dig deep enough to find that white, fleshy tuber of their secret self, and the sharpest tools with which to do so were always their own words. I added my own contribution to this effort and said, It is undisputed that we should confront the Soviets, Dr. Hedd. But the reason to fight them is related to the reason you advocated for fighting their servants in our country, and why we continue to fight them now.
What reason is that? said the ever Socratic Dr. Hedd.
I’ll tell you the reason, said the Congressman. And not in my words, but in the words of John Quincy Adams when he spoke of our great country. “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be . . . She”—America—“is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.”
Dr. Hedd smiled again and said, Very good, sir. Even an Englishman cannot argue with John Quincy Adams.
What I still don’t get is how we lost, the assistant district attorney said, beckoning to the headwaiter for another cocktail. In my opinion, said the personal injury lawyer, and hopefully you gentlemen will understand, we lost because we were too cautious. We feared harming our reputation, but if we had simply accepted that any damage to it wouldn’t last, we could have exerted overwhelming force and showed your people which side deserved to win.
Perhaps Stalin and Mao had the right response, the General said. After a few million have died, what’s a few million more? Didn’t you write something to that effect, Dr. Hedd?
You have read my book more closely than I expected, General. You are a man who has undoubtedly seen the worst of war, as have I, so you will forgive me if I speak the unpalatable truth about why the Americans lost Vietnam. Dr. Hedd pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose until his eyes finally peered through the lenses. Your American generals fought in World War II and knew the value of your Japanese strategies, but they didn’t have a free hand to run the war. Instead of waging a war of obliteration, the only kind of war the Oriental understands and respects—nota bene Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki—they had to, or chose to, fight a war of attrition. The Oriental interprets that, quite rightly, as weakness. Am I wrong, General?
If the Orient has one inexhaustible resource, said the General, it is people.
That is right, and I will tell you something else, General. It saddens me to come to this conclusion, but I have seen the evidence for myself, not only in books and archives, but in the battlefields of Burma. It must be said. Life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient. And as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it—Dr. Hedd paused—life is not important. Perhaps it is insensitive to say, but the Oriental does not put the same high price on life as the Westerner.
I wrote to my Parisian aunt that a moment of silence fell on the table as we absorbed this idea and as the waiters returned with our cocktails. The Congressman stirred his drink and said, What do you think, General? The General sipped from his cognac and soda, smiled, and said, Of course Dr. Hedd is right, Congressman. The truth is so often uncomfortable. What do you think, Captain?
All the men turned their attention to me, my brimming martini glass halfway to my lips. I reluctantly eased it down. After three of these libations and two glasses of red wine, I felt full of insight, the air of truth having expanded my mind and needing to be let out. Well, I said, I beg to differ from Dr. Hedd. Life actually is valuable to the Oriental. The General frowned and I paused. No one else’s expression changed, but I could feel the static electricity of tension accumulating. So you’re saying that Dr. Hedd is wrong, said the Congressman, as affable as Dr. Mengele must have been in the right company. Oh, no, I hastened to say. I was sweating, my undershirt damp. But you see, gentlemen, while life is only valuable to us—I paused again, and my audience inclined toward me by a millimeter or two—life is invaluable to the Westerner.
The attention of the men turned to Dr. Hedd, who raised his cocktail to me and said, I could not have phrased it better myself, young man. With that, the conversation finally exhausted itself, leaving us to nuzzle our cocktails with the affection one reserved for puppies. I made eye contact with the General and he nodded approvingly. Now, our hosts satisfied with our parley, I could ask a question of my own. Perhaps this is naive, I said, but we thought we were coming to a country club.
Our hosts roared with laughter as if I had told a most excellent joke. Even Dr. Hedd seemed to be in on it, chuckling over his Manhattan. The General and I grinned, waiting for the explanation. The Congressman glanced at the headwaiter, who nodded, and said, Gentlemen, now’s a good a time as any to introduce you to the country club. Don’t forget your cocktails. Led by the headwaiter, we filed out of the dining room with cocktails in hand. Down the hallway was another door. Opening it, the headwaiter said, The gentlemen are here. Inside was the room I had been expecting, with wood-paneled walls on which was mounted the head of a buck, its rack of antlers sporting sufficient points for all of us to hang our jackets on. The air was smoky and the lighting was dim, the better to flatter the comely young women in slinky dresses arranged on the leather sofas.
Gentlemen, said the Congressman, welcome to the country club.
I don’t get it, the General whispered.
I’ll tell you later, sir, I muttered. I finished my cocktail and handed the glass to the headwaiter as the Congressman beckoned to a pair of young ladies. General, Captain, let me introduce you. Our companions stood up. Elevated by high heels, they were taller than the General and myself by two or three inches. Mine was an enormous inflated blonde whose enameled white teeth were not quite as hard and shiny as her Nordic blue eyes. In one hand was a coupe of fizzy champagne, and in the other a long-stemmed cigarette holder with a half-smoked cigarette. She was a professional who had seen the likes of me a thousand times, which I could hardly complain about, given that I had seen the likes of her a fair number of times myself. Although I cranked my cheeks and lips into the facsimile of a smile, I could not muster inside myself the usual enthusiasm as the Congressman introduced us. Perhaps it was the way she casually flicked the head of ash from her cigarette onto the carpet, but instead of being magnetized by her iron beauty I was distracted by a striation below her jaw, the hemline between the unadorned skin of her neck and the white foundation coating her face. What’s your name again? she said, laughing for no good reason. I leaned forward to tell her and nearly fell into the well of her cleavage, my sudden vertigo induced by the chloroform of her thick perfume.
I like your accent, I said, pulling back. You must be from somewhere in the South.
Georgia, honey, she said, laughing again. You speak real good English for an Oriental.
I laughed, she laughed, and when I looked to the General and his redheaded companion, they, too, were laughing. Everyone in the room was laughing, and when the waiters arrived with more champagne, it was clear we were all going to have a most excellent time, including Dr. Hedd. After handing a glass to his buxom companion and ano
ther to me, he said, I hope you do not mind, young man, if I use your memorable turn of phrase in my next book. Our female companions looked at me without interest, waiting for my reply. Nothing could make me happier, I said, even though I was, for reasons unspeakable in this company, quite unhappy.
CHAPTER 16
The General delivered a surprise to me as we parked outside his unlit residence later that evening, a little past midnight. I’ve been thinking about your request to return to our homeland, he said from the backseat, eyes visible in my rearview mirror. I need you here, but I respect your courage. Unlike Bon and the others, however, you’ve never been battlefield tested. He described the grizzled captain and the affectless lieutenant as war heroes, men whom he would trust with his life in combat. But you’ll need to prove you can do what they can. You’ll need to do what must be done. Can you do that? Of course, sir. I hesitated, then asked the obvious question: But what is to be done? You know what needs to be done, said the General. I sat with my hands still on the steering wheel at ten o’clock and two o’clock, hoping I was wrong. I just want to make sure I do the right thing, sir, I said, looking at him in the rearview mirror. What exactly needs to be done?
The General rustled in the back, rummaging through his pockets. I brought out my lighter. Thanks, Captain. For a brief moment the flame lit the palimpsest of his face. Then the chiaroscuro died and his face was no longer legible. I never told you the story of how I came to spend two years in a communist prison camp, did I? Well, no need for graphic details. Suffice it to say the enemy had surrounded our men at Dien Bien Phu. Not just Frenchmen and Moroccans and Algerians and Germans, but ours, too, thousands of them. I volunteered to jump into Dien Bien Phu, though I knew I would also be doomed. But I could not let my fellow soldiers die while I did nothing. When Dien Bien Phu fell, I was captured along with everybody else. Even though I lost two years of my life in prison, I never regretted jumping. I became the man I am today by jumping and by surviving that camp. But no one asked me to volunteer. No one told me what needed to be done. No one discussed the consequences. All these things were understood. Do you understand, Captain?
Yes, sir, I said.
Very good, then. If what needs to be done is done, then you can return to our homeland. You are a very intelligent young man, Captain. I trust you with all the details. No need to consult me. I’ll arrange your ticket. You will get it when I receive news of what has been done. The General paused, door halfway open. Country club, huh? He chuckled. I’ll have to remember that. I watched him walk up the pathway to his darkened house, where Madame was likely reading in bed, staying awake for his return, as she had waited so often in the villa. She knew a general’s duties extended past midnight, but was she aware what some of these duties included? That we, too, had country clubs? Sometimes, after delivering him to the villa, I stood in my socked feet in the hallway and listened for any signs of distress from their room. I never heard any, but she was too smart not to know.
As for what I knew, it was this: my Parisian aunt had replied and the invisible words that gradually became visible were succinct. Don’t come back, Man had written. We need you in America, not here. These are your orders. I burned the letter in a wastebasket, as I had burned all the letters, which was until that moment only a way of getting rid of evidence. But in that moment, I confess that burning the letter was also sending it to Hell, or perhaps making an offering to a deity, not God, who could keep Bon and me safe. I did not tell Bon about the letter, of course, but I did tell him of the General’s offer and sought his counsel. He was characteristically blunt. You’re an idiot, he said. But I can’t stop you from going. As for Sonny, nothing to feel bad about. The man’s got a big mouth. This consolation was offered the only way he knew how, at a billiards hall where he bought me several drinks and several rounds of pool. Something about the fraternal atmosphere of a billiards hall reassured the soul. The isolated pool of light over a table of green felt was an indoor hydroponic zone where what grew was the prickly plant of masculine emotion, too sensitive for sunlight and fresh air. After a café, but before a nightclub or home, a billiards hall was where one was most likely to encounter the southern Vietnamese man. Here he discovered that in billiards, as in lovemaking, accurate and true aim was increasingly difficult in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. Thus, as the night progressed, our games gradually grew longer and longer. To Bon’s credit, however, the offer he made me was given in our first game, well before the nub of the night wore away to nothing and we numbly left the pool hall in the first minutes of dawn, exiting onto a lonely street whose only sign of life was a flour-dusted baker toiling in a doughnut shop’s window. I’ll do it, Bon said, watching me rack the balls. Tell the General you did it, but I’ll get him for you.
His offer did not surprise me at all. Even as I thanked him, I knew I could not accept it. I was venturing into a wilderness many had explored before me, crossing the threshold separating those who had killed from those who had not. The General was correct that only a man who had received this rite could be allowed to return home. What I needed was a sacrament but none existed for this matter. Why not? Who were we fooling with the belief that God, if He existed, would not want us to acknowledge the sacredness of killing? Let us return to another important question of my father’s catechism:
Q. What is man?
A. Man is a creature composed of a body and soul,
and made to the image and likeness of God.
Q. Is this likeness in the body or in the soul?
A. This likeness is chiefly in the soul.
I need not look in the mirror or at the faces of my fellow men to find a likeness to God. I need only look at their selves and inside my own to realize we would not be killers if God Himself was not one, too.
But of course I am talking about not only killing but its subset murder. Bon shrugged at my hesitation and leaned over the table, cue stick resting on his splayed hand. You’re always wanting to learn things, he said. Well, there’s no greater knowledge than in killing a man. He put some english on the cue ball, and when it struck its target it rolled backward gently, aligning itself for the next shot. What about love and creation? I said. Getting married, having children? You, of all people, should believe in that kind of knowledge. He rested his hip on the table’s edge, both hands clutching the pool cue propped on his shoulder. You’re testing me, right? Okay. We have all kinds of ways to talk about life and creation. But when guys like me go and kill, everyone’s happy we do it and no one wants to talk about it. It would be better if every Sunday before the priest talks a warrior gets up and tells people who he’s killed on their behalf. Listening is the least they could do. He shrugged. That’s not ever happening. So here’s some practical advice. People like to play dead. You know how to tell if someone’s really dead? Press your finger on his eyeball. If he’s alive, he’ll move. If he’s dead, he won’t.
I could see myself shooting Sonny, having seen such an act so many times in the movies. But I could not see my finger wiggling the slippery fish ball of his eye. Why not just shoot him twice? I said. Because, smart guy, it makes noise. It goes bang. And who said anything about shooting him even once? Sometimes we killed VC with things other than guns. If it makes you feel any better, this isn’t murder. It’s not even killing. It’s assassination. Ask your man Claude if you haven’t already. He’d show up and say, Here’s the shopping list. Go and bag some. So we’d go into the villages at night with the shopping list. VC terrorist, VC sympathizer, VC collaborator, maybe VC, probable VC, this one’s got a VC in her belly. This one’s thinking of being a VC. This one everybody thinks is VC. This one’s father or mother is VC, therefore is VC in training. We ran out of time before we got them all. We should have wiped them out when we had the chance. Don’t make the same mistake. Take out this VC before he gets too big, before he turns others into VC. That’s all it is. Nothing to feel sorry about. Nothing to cry about.
If it
were all so simple. The problem with killing all the Viet Cong was that there would always be more, teeming in the walls of our minds, breathing heavily under the floorboards of our souls, orgiastically reproducing out of our sight. The other problem was that Sonny was not VC, for a subversive would not, by definition, have a big mouth. But maybe I was wrong. An agent provocateur was a subversive, and his task was to shoot his mouth off, agitating others in the spin cycle of radicalization. In that case, however, the agent provocateur here would not be a communist, spurring the anticommunists to organize against him. He would be an anticommunist, encouraging like-minded people to go too far, dizzy with ideological fervor, rancid with resentment. By that definition, the most likely agent provocateur was the General. Or the Madame. Why not? Man assured me we had people in the highest ranks. You’ll be surprised who gets the medals after the liberation, he said. Would I now? The joke would be on me if the General and Madame were sympathizers, too. A joke we could all laugh at when we were commemorated as Heroes of the People.