Q. How do you feel?
The commissar had returned, looming over the patient in his white lab coat, surgical mask, and stainless steel goggles, his hands in white rubber gloves, holding a notepad and a pen.
Q. I said, how are you feeling?
A. I can’t feel my body.
Q. But can you feel your mind?
A. My mind feels everything.
Q. Now do you remember?
A. What?
Q. Do you remember what you have forgotten?
And it occurred to the patient that he did remember what he had forgotten, and that if he could just articulate it, the wire would be removed from the tip of his nose, the taste of a battery in his mouth would go away, the lights would be turned off, and he could, at last, sleep. He wept, his tears falling into the vast waters of his forgetting, and that slight saline change to the liquid constitution of his amnesia provoked the obsidian past to rise. An obelisk slowly emerged from his ocean of disremembering, the resurrection of what he did not even know was dead since it had been buried at sea. Engraved on the obelisk were hieroglyphs—cryptic images of three mice, a series of rectangles, undulating curves, a scattering of kanji . . . and a movie projector, for what had been forgotten, he now remembered, had occurred in the room they called the movie theater.
Q. Who called it the movie theater?
A. The policemen.
Q. Why is it called the movie theater?
A. When foreigners visit, the room is a movie theater.
Q. And when foreigners are not visiting?
A. . . .
Q. And when foreigners are not visiting?
A. Interrogations are done there.
Q. How are interrogations done?
A. There are so many ways.
Q. What is one example?
One example! There were so many to choose from. The telephone call, of course, and the plane ride, and the water drum, and the ingenious, scarless method involving pins, paper, and an electric fan, and the massage, and the lizards, and the spot burns, and the eel. None of them were written in the book. Even Claude did not know their origins, only that they had been practiced long before his entry into the guild. (This is going on for far too long, said the crapulent major. He’s had enough. No, said Sonny. He’s really sweating now. We’re starting to get somewhere!)
Q. Who was in the movie theater?
A. The three policemen. The major. Claude.
Q. Who else was in the movie theater?
A. Me.
Q. Who else was in the movie theater?
A. . . .
Q. Who else—
A. The communist agent.
Q. What happened to her?
How could he have forgotten the agent with the papier-mâché evidence in her mouth? His own name was written on the list of policemen she had been trying to swallow when she was caught. Watching her in the movie theater, he was certain that she was unaware of his true identity, though he was the one who had passed the list to Man. But the agent, being Man’s courier, knew who Man was. She lay in the center of the capacious room, naked on a table covered with a black rubber sheet, hands and feet roped to the table’s four legs. The movie theater was lit only by overhead fluorescent lighting, its blackout curtains puckered shut. Pushed haphazardly against the walls were gray metal folding chairs, while in the back of the room stood a Sony movie projector. On the opposite wall the movie screen served as the backdrop, from where Claude watched by the projector, of the agent’s interrogation. The crapulent major was in charge, but having abdicated his role to the three policemen in the movie theater, he sat watching from a folding chair, his face unhappy and sweating.
Q. Where were you?
A. With Claude.
Q. What did you do?
A. I watched.
Q. What did you see?
Later, sometime in the bright future, the commissar would play the patient a tape recording of his answer, though he had no memory of the tape recorder’s presence. Many people who heard their voices on tape thought that they did not sound like themselves, which they found disturbing, and he was no exception. He heard this stranger’s voice say, I saw everything. Claude told me that this was nasty business, but that I had to see it. I said, Is this really necessary? Claude said, Talk to the major. He’s in charge. I’m just the adviser. So I went to the major, who said, There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing! The General wants to know how she got the names and he wants to know now. But this is wrong, I said. Don’t you see? This doesn’t need to be done. The major sat there and said nothing, and Claude, standing by the movie projector, was also silent. Just give me some time alone with her, I said to the three policemen. Although the Americans called our policemen white mice because of their white dress uniforms and hats, none of these three were mouselike. They were average specimens of national manhood, slim and gaunt with deeply tanned skin from riding in jeeps and on motorcycles. Instead of head-to-toe dress whites, they wore field uniforms of white shirts and light blue pants, their light blue caps doffed. Just give me a couple of hours with her, I said. The youngest policeman snorted. He just wants first dibs. I turned red with fury and shame, and the oldest policeman said, The American’s not worrying about this. Neither should you. Here, have a Coke. In the corner was a Frigidaire full of soda, and the oldest policeman, who already had an open bottle in his hand, pressed it into mine before ushering me to the chair next to the major. I sat down and the fingers of my hand, holding the ice-cold bottle, began to go numb.
Please, sirs! cried the agent. I’m innocent! I swear! That explains why you got a list with all those policemen’s names on it? said the youngest. You just found that lying around somewhere and then got so hungry you had to try to eat it? No, no, sobbed the agent. She needed a good story to cover herself but for some reason she could not come up with it, not that any story could divert the policemen. All right, said the middle-aged one, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. He was already erect, his eleventh finger protruding from his boxers. The agent moaned and turned her eyes away to the other side of the table, only to find the youngest policeman standing there. Having already dropped his pants, he was pumping himself furiously with one hand. Sitting behind him, all I saw were the sunken cheeks of his naked buttocks, as well as the horror in the agent’s eyes. She saw that this was not an interrogation but a sentence, written by the policemen with the instruments in their hands. The oldest, who must have been a father, was fondling the stubby length of the ugliest part of most adult male bodies. This was fully evident to me now that the youngest policeman had turned in profile, bringing himself closer to the agent’s face. Come on, take a look, he said. He likes you! The three engorged members differed in length, one pointing up, another down, the third bent to the side. Please don’t do this! the agent cried, eyes shut and head shaking. I beg you! The oldest policeman laughed. Look at that flat nose and dark skin. She’s got some Cambodian in her, or maybe Cham. They’re hot-blooded.
Let’s start easy, the middle-aged policeman said, climbing up awkwardly onto the table between her legs. What’s your name? She said nothing, but when he repeated the question, something primitive awoke in her, and when she opened her eyes to look at the policeman, she said, My surname is Viet and my given name is Nam. For a moment, the three policemen were speechless. Then they burst into laughter. This bitch is asking for it, said the youngest. The middle-aged one, still laughing, ponderously lowered himself onto the agent as she screamed and screamed. Watching the policeman grunting and pounding, and the other two shuffling around the table with their pants around their ankles, ugly knees exposed, it seemed to me that they were, after all, mice, gathered around a block of cheese. My countrymen never understood the concept of a queue, no one wanting to be at the end of a line, and as these three mice jostled one another and obstructed my view, all I could see were their sweaty nether
regions and the agent’s thrashing legs. She was no longer screaming because she no longer could, the youngest policeman having silenced her. Hurry up, he said. What’s taking so long? I’ll take as long as I please, said the middle-aged one. You’re enjoying yourself with her anyway, aren’t you? (Stop talking about this! cried the crapulent major, clapping his hands over his eyes. I can’t look!) But we were helpless except to watch as the middle-aged policeman at last convulsed with a tremendous spasm. Pleasure of this degree should always be kept private, unless everyone was participating, as in a carnival or an orgy. Here, the pleasure was hideous to those who only looked. My turn, said the youngest, detaching himself from the agent, who was able to scream once more until the oldest took the youngest policeman’s place, silencing her. What a mess, said the youngest, hiking up his shirt. He took his position on the table, undeterred by the mess, and even as the middle-aged policeman zipped up his pants over the frizzy toupee crowning his deflated self, the youngest began repeating his predecessor’s motions, reaching, in a few minutes, the same obscene conclusion. Then it was the oldest policeman’s turn, and when he climbed onto the table, he left me an unimpeded view of the agent’s face. Although she was now free to scream, she no longer did, or no longer could. She was staring directly at me, but with the screws of pain tightened on her jaws and eyes, those screws that turned ever more, I had the feeling she did not see me at all.
After the oldest was finished, the room was quiet except for the agent’s sobbing and the hiss of the cigarettes being smoked by the other policemen. The oldest, catching me looking at him as he tucked his shirt in, shrugged. Somebody else would do it. So why not us? The youngest said, Don’t waste your time talking to him. He couldn’t get it up to give her the treatment anyway. Look, he hasn’t even touched his soda. It was true, I had forgotten the bottle in my hand. It was no longer even cold. If you’re not going to drink it, the middle-aged one said, give it to me. I did not move and the exasperated policeman walked three paces to me and seized the bottle. He took a sip and made a face. I hate warm soda. He said this with malevolence and offered me back the bottle, but I could only look blankly at it, my mind as numb as my fingers had been. Wait a minute, said the oldest. No need to make the man drink warm soda when this one here needs a good washing. He patted the agent’s knee, and at that touch, and at those words, she came back to life, rearing her head and glaring at us all with a hatred so intense that every man in the room should have turned to cinders and smoke. But nothing happened. We remained flesh and blood, and so did she as the middle-aged policeman laughed, putting his thumb over the bottle’s mouth and shaking it vigorously. Good idea, he said. But it’s going to be sticky!
Yes, memory was sticky. I must have stepped on some of that soda, even though afterward the policemen had splashed buckets of water on the agent and the table, then mopped the tile floor. (I ordered them to do that, said the crapulent major. They weren’t happy about cleaning up after themselves, I can tell you that.) As for the agent, left on the table still naked, she no longer screamed or even sobbed but was dead silent, eyes closed once more, head flung back, back arched. After the policemen had flushed themselves from her, they left the drained bottle inside, buried to the throat of its neck. I can see right into her, said the middle-aged policeman, bending down to peer through the bottom of the bottle with gynecological interest. Let me see, said the youngest, shouldering him aside. I don’t see a thing, he complained. It’s a joke, you idiot! shouted the oldest. A joke! Yes, a very bad joke, a slapstick travesty that one understands in any language, as Claude did. While the policemen played doctor with their makeshift speculum, he came up to me and said, Just so you know? I didn’t teach them how to do that. The bottle, I mean. They came up with it all on their own.
They were good students, just like me. They learned their lesson well, and so have I, so if you would please just turn off the lights, if you would please just turn off the telephone, if you would just stop calling me, if you would remember that the two of us were once and perhaps still are the best of friends, if you could see that I have nothing left to confess, if history’s ship had taken a different tack, if I had become an accountant, if I had fallen in love with the right woman, if I had been a more virtuous lover, if my mother had been less of a mother, if my father had gone to save souls in Algeria instead of here, if the commandant did not need to make me over, if my own people did not suspect me, if they saw me as one of them, if we forgot our resentment, if we forgot revenge, if we acknowledged that we are all puppets in someone else’s play, if we had not fought a war against each other, if some of us had not called ourselves nationalists or communists or capitalists or realists, if our bonzes had not incinerated themselves, if the Americans hadn’t come to save us from ourselves, if we had not bought what they sold, if the Soviets had never called us comrades, if Mao had not sought to do the same, if the Japanese hadn’t taught us the superiority of the yellow race, if the French had never sought to civilize us, if Ho Chi Minh had not been dialectical and Karl Marx not analytical, if the invisible hand of the market did not hold us by the scruffs of our necks, if the British had defeated the rebels of the new world, if the natives had simply said, Hell no, on first seeing the white man, if our emperors and mandarins had not clashed among themselves, if the Chinese had never ruled us for a thousand years, if they had used gunpowder for more than fireworks, if the Buddha had never lived, if the Bible had never been written and Jesus Christ never sacrificed, if Adam and Eve still frolicked in the Garden of Eden, if the dragon lord and the fairy queen had not given birth to us, if the two of them had not parted ways, if fifty of their children had not followed their fairy mother to the mountains, if fifty more had not followed their dragon father to the sea, if legend’s phoenix had truly soared from its own ashes rather than simply crashed and burned in our countryside, if there were no Light and no Word, if Heaven and earth had never parted, if history had never happened, neither as farce nor as tragedy, if the serpent of language had not bitten me, if I had never been born, if my mother was never cleft, if you needed no more revisions, and if I saw no more of these visions, please, could you please just let me sleep?
CHAPTER 22
Of course you cannot sleep. Revolutionaries are insomniacs, too afraid of history’s nightmare to sleep, too troubled by the world’s ills to be less than awake, or so the commandant said. He spoke as I lay on my mattress, a specimen on a slide under a microscope, and with a shutter’s smooth snick, I realized that the doctor’s experiment had succeeded. I was divided, tormented body below, placid consciousness floating high above, beyond the illuminated ceiling, buffeted from my agony through an invisible gyroscopic mechanism. Seen from this altitude, the vivisection being done to me was actually very interesting, leaving my wobbly body’s yolk shimmering beneath my viscous white mind. Thus simultaneously subjugated and elevated, I was beyond the comprehension of even Sonny and the crapulent major, who remained on the plane of my chronic sleeplessness, peering over the shoulders of the doctor, the commandant, and the commissar as they stood around me, no longer in lab coats, scrubs, and stainless steel goggles but in yellow uniforms with red tabs of rank, pistols holstered on their hips. While those below were human and ghost, I was the supernatural Holy Spirit, clairvoyant and clairaudient. In this detached way, I saw the commandant kneel down and reach his hand toward my subhuman self, index finger slowly extending until it pressed lightly on my open eyeball, a touch at which my poor body flinched.