The travel agent, I’m sure, had thought the same thing.
The green door to Heaven opened and a smiling woman with the hideous teeth of a Third World childhood waved me in. She was of retirement age, with a Filipina lilt to her accent. Hello, sir, she said in English. May I take your coat? May I untie your shoes? May I show you to the living room? May I get you a coffee? Tea? Wine? Whiskey?
Whiskey, I said with a catch in my throat, always touched by such an offer.
The obsequious housekeeper bowed and backed out of the waiting room. Metal shutters had been rolled down over the windows, leaving a chamber illuminated with cheap torchiere lamps and a television almost as big as the Boss’s. The sofas had the sheen of stain resistance, and if they were not stain resistant, they should have been.
Have a seat, my friend, the only occupant said. Sitting near the television was Heaven’s muscle, big and black, ankles crossed, cracking his knuckles and looking bored. The television was tuned to a talk show, and judging from the cover of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness on the screen, the topic was existentialism, as discussed by a comedian and a football player whom I recognized from previous television exposure, as well as two well-fed, eyeglass-wearing men. It took me a moment to recognize one of these professional intellectuals as the Maoist PhD, who, from his sober, scholarly look, appeared to never so much as think of his body at all below his throat or lungs, and only because he needed those parts in order to speak and smoke. I think, therefore I am was the sentiment he exuded, or perhaps it was I speak, therefore I am.
First time, huh?
Yes, I said, focusing on the white Band-Aid stamped on the muscle’s cheek. Then, fearing that I seemed inexperienced, I said, First time here.
The muscle brooded as he watched the television. On closer inspection, the Band-Aid wasn’t exactly white but rather beige. It only appeared white against the blackness of his cheek, which wasn’t really black but appeared more so against the Band-Aid.
Sartre, he’s okay, the muscle said. I prefer Fanon and Césaire.
Me, too, I said.
The muscle continued watching the debate about Sartre, but his mention of Fanon and Césaire sent me back to the last time that I had encountered them, at Occidental College, where I had spent six years studying for my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in American studies. My mentor Professor Hammer had taught Fanon and Césaire in his seminar on Third World literature. It was 1964, Algerian independence from France was two years old, and anticolonialism was sweeping through the Third World. Understanding the wretched of the earth was crucial, Professor Hammer said, citing the title of Fanon’s book of experiences in the Algerian war. They were rising, as “The Internationale” proclaimed. I took advantage of a commercial break during the talk show to say, I like Fanon and Césaire. Discourse on Colonialism. And when Fanon talks about violence. He speaks about Algeria. But he speaks of Vietnam, too.
I prefer Black Skin, White Masks.
I was embarrassed to admit that I had not read it, but the muscle merely shrugged.
I can lend it to you. And have you read Césaire’s A Tempest? No? You have much to discover. They teach you about life and death. Most people only want to talk about life.
Well, I like to talk about death, too, I said.
Then we’ll get along, he said. He was a self-proclaimed eschatologist, most interested in breaking down the meaning of eternal judgment and the afterlife, the very fate of humankind. This was heady stuff, and I was happy to see the housekeeper return with a tumbler of whiskey. Short of the remedy, the only thing keeping me in the warm land of the living was this antifreeze, which ensured my blood did not stop moving. Oh, whiskey! How much I needed you, and the memory of my mother, who endured so much and yet never turned to whiskey or any other addiction. Perhaps I inherited my weaknesses from my father, a bastard in the moral sense, if not the racial one.
Where are you from? the eschatological muscle said.
If a white person had asked me that question, I would have said, From my mother. But because we shared a widespread subequatorial condition called “colonization,” which only afflicted nonwhite people, I said, Vietnam. Although my father is French.
A fine gentleman, I’m sure, the eschatological muscle said, chuckling. Someone who probably visited a place like this.
He was a priest, I said. I wonder if he ever visited this type of place.
Not sure if we have seen such a man here. But it would not surprise me.
And you? I tried to shake off the sadness of my origins that had settled on me with the inevitability and persistence of dust, but even that little bit of shaking made my head protest. Where are you from?
Here, but my parents are from Senegal. He grinned. My father, he went to your country as a soldier. A lovely place, he said. Beautiful women. Beautiful children.
He fought for the French?
Yes. I don’t know too much. My father, he didn’t like to talk. But I know one thing. He grinned again and leaned over to open the drawer of a table on which stood a lamp with its tasseled lampshade askew. Here you go, compliments of the house.
A silver package arced toward me, reminding me of the chocolate bars that American soldiers hurled from their armored personnel carriers at ragamuffins. Three little squares landed on my palm, but instead of being chocolate, they were condoms.
His job was to guard the rubber plantations. Funny, huh? To think that when you put those on, maybe the rubber came from your country. They will remind you of home!
Very funny, I said, already knowing I would never forget the thought now seeded in the soft soil of my vulnerable mind, that perhaps how most of the world had contact with our spunky little country—besides knowing of the war that was now our brand—was through a device used to limit the world’s population and male pleasure.
The curtain of beads rattled again, parting to reveal the mistress of the house, a woman whose stark, expressionist makeup accentuated both her attractiveness and her avariciousness. A black silk jumpsuit clung to her curves, and stacks of jade bracelets rattled on her wrists. She walked with an acrobat’s confidence on twin heels that added a half foot to her height, so her chin was level with my nose when I stood up.
She glanced at the condoms and said, Three? A little optimistic, aren’t you?
A gentleman should always be ready, I said. And I am a realist, not an optimist.
The mistress smiled coldly and said, I’ll show you to our guest room.
Ciao ciao, said the eschatological muscle, flexing his biceps in farewell.
We descended to the guest room, a small dwelling in the cellar dominated by a bed big enough for two. Pushed into a corner were a chair and a desk, as if a visitor to this erotic establishment might spend time writing. But the guest room was also, apparently, a hideout, so perhaps some visitors did need a place to reflect.
Madeleine will be with you soon, the mistress said. You’ll like her. Everybody likes Madeleine. She knows the eight ways to please a man in bed. The first meeting is complimentary, courtesy of the Boss. After that, you get a twenty percent discount.
Usually the prospect of a beautiful woman or a discount excited me, but when the door closed behind her, I felt . . . nothing. What was wrong with me? Three or four ways were more than enough for me, much less eight! I blamed my anhedonia on that screw being loose, and my body being in pain, and feeling, for the first time in my life, old. I could not even pull myself together to haggle, a skill that was practically genetic, bred into me by centuries of our people’s survival in the face of war, famine, poverty, and the precariousness of life without the welfare state.
I was trying to distract myself from my memory, my conscience, and my guilt, which I—along with a majority of the human species—excel at doing, when someone knocked on the door. Madeleine.
Oh, my poor boo-boo, she said. Her French was slow and breathy,
perfectly paced for me and my mood. What happened to you?
Oh, the performance was about to start! At last, something inside of me fluttered with excitement. I was about to be both the spectator and the performer in the unofficial culture show that a great number of our men and some of our women were familiar with.
Don’t worry, she murmured. Madeleine is the right medicine for you.
Madeleine was not, by conventional definitions, the most beautiful of women. Those gorgeous creatures should be seen only from afar, for they can be quite expensive as well as extraordinarily sensitive. Madeleine, in contrast, invited proximity. Unlike most in her profession, she had not doused herself with so much cheap perfume that one might require a gas mask to handle her. Her features were cute and her body cuddly, with a slightly rounded tummy and even rounder breasts, hips, and eyes. She was as buxom as one of those goddesses carved into an Angkor Wat temple, and indeed Cambodia was her origin, as I eventually discovered. But instead of statuesque hardness, she radiated softness, warmness, tenderness, and, most of all, desire—for me! I was reduced to an infant who only wanted to be wanted, which Madeleine, as a professional, understood.
First, she said, we will get you clean all over. And I mean all over.
I nodded mutely.
That means you have to get out of those clothes, honey baby.
Oh, yes, I thought.
Why, hello, big boy. Poor you. So neglected. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.
Oh, please, yes!
Come to the shower, sweet darling. Let Mama scrub down every one of your nooks and crannies. Do you like it hot?
Uh-huh, I finally managed to say.
Careful now . . . wouldn’t want to burn you, would we? Oh, no. Does this feel good? It does, doesn’t it? I can tell by the look in your eye, my widdle cabbage. No one’s loved you in a long time, have they? And you are someone who deserves a widdle wove, aren’t you? I can’t believe someone did that to your face. And your hand. Are you in pain? Oh, poor widdle baby. You won’t be for much longer. Not if Mama Madeleine has anything to say about it. Let’s make sure we get the soap in there . . . right there . . . Oh, yes, I’ll be going there, don’t you worry, my chicken. You smell wonderful, good enough to eat, if I can say so. This way, hold my hand. It’s a small bed, but it’s big enough for what Mama wants to do to you. Sit down. Right there, my doudou. Now unwrap me, big boy.
Madeleine took my trembling hands and placed them on the sash keeping her mini-kimono closed. The last naked woman I had seen was Lana, three years ago. An eternity, given how the average man experiences a sexual fantasy every three minutes, or so I speculate, based on over two decades of personal experience. I tugged, the sash came undone, and what I saw almost made me pass out.
Ready, baby?
Madeleine did not wait for my consent, because I am certain that in her experience there was no such thing as a male who would not say, Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I closed my eyes to try to prevent myself from seeing what I had just seen, while she proceeded to display a perverse biologist’s encyclopedic knowledge of the male body, an effort that completely mapped all my erogenous zones, a probing hydraulic campaign that would have found water in a desert, a heroic labor of erotic integrity that established Madeleine as a worthy descendant of Mary Magdalene, a mistress of every technique and trick known since Eve first coaxed a snake to talk and then offered Adam the forbidden fruit, all of which left me gasping. And yet—
Huh, Madeleine said.
What? I whispered, eyes closed.
Hmm, she said, louder.
What? I opened my eyes.
Nothing’s happening.
We both stared accusingly at the criminal committing this unspeakable crime, her finger propping up the guilty member. Nothing had never happened to me before! But—but—but— I sobbed, and Madeleine put her finger to my lips and said, Shhhh, big boy. Just close your eyes and relax. This happens all the time. I laid back, and as Madeleine valiantly continued, I thought desperately of everything, from the Madonna to Marilyn Monroe, from come-hither centerfolds to the lascivious squid with whom I had lost my virginity, but nothing continued to happen. This strongest of medicine was not curing my illness, not even after she had worked through all eight ways of pleasing a man in bed.
At last Madeleine drew back, still smiling, this time out of pity as she closed the drapes of her mini-kimono. Anything I said would sound like a lie or an excuse, so I said nothing as I fumbled for my underwear while Madeleine suddenly became a different person, probably herself. As I clutched the loincloth of the bedsheet around my waist, she strapped back on her high-heeled shoes and then reapplied her lipstick. Inside every prostitute is an accountant, and this one said, Unfortunately, that was your free one.
Inside every client is a daydreamer, an optimist at best and a fool at worst. This one could only sputter, But—but—
It’s okay. It happens to everyone.
So does death, I wanted to say. This was not premature ejaculation. This was premature emasculation! I was not scheduled for such deflation and humiliation for at least another thirty or forty years, by which time I should already be prematurely dead, indifferent to sex, or comatose from a decades-long affair with whiskey and cigarettes. But I had too much dignity to beg for a second chance and instead admitted to defeat with a mixture of humility and defiance: It’s a war wound. I’ll do better next time.
Yes, you will, she said with the tremendous conviction of a kindergarten teacher.
A war wound was not a lie. I had the worst kind of injury, a mental one, which was exacerbated by having two minds. The past that was contained in one mind was now leaking into the present of my other mind, so that what had made me almost pass out when Madeleine first disrobed was not her spectacular nudity but the sight of the communist agent’s face. She was taking her ghostly vengeance on me, and she was not even dead. Wait until she actually was! I could nevertheless see her face vividly, from chapped lips to bruised cheekbone to unkempt, unwashed, serpentine hair, the fully focused sight of her face floating on Madeleine’s body cutting off my blood flow.
That face had been seeping into my consciousness ever since my interrogation sessions with Man in the reeducation camp, where he had begun unscrewing me. I had done my best to forget her until then, for her fate had been my greatest failure and my greatest shame, unless you count my own existence, which I had premised on answering the most important question of the twentieth century: WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
What is to be done about slavery?
What is to be done about colonialism?
What is to be done about occupation?
What is to be done about racial inequality?
What is to be done about class exploitation?
What is to be done about the decline of Western civilization?
What is to be done about the woman question and the male ego?
WHAT IS TO BE DONE ABOUT WHAT NEEDS DOING?
So many things to do! But I had known what to do with great conviction ever since I became a revolutionary, and I knew what must be done when the three policemen of the southern regime began their interrogation of the communist agent. She was my ally, except that I was undercover as a spy, working alongside Claude of the CIA, who had trained many of our secret and not-so-secret policemen, like these three. Before leaving the interrogation, he had merely said, I didn’t teach them to do that. He left me as the only witness, besides my comrade of the Special Branch, the crapulent major—
Don’t drag me into this, cried the ghost of the crapulent major.
—who sat beside me and also did nothing as we watched the three policemen do what men have undoubtedly been doing to women since Adam blamed Eve for listening to the serpent. It had not occurred to me until now, blind man that I was and surely still am, that the serpent was Adam’s own uncontrollable penis, which the writer of the Book of
Genesis had detached from Adam and flung into the grass. From there it could rear its head and talk Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, as if Adam had nothing to do with it. And how does one eat forbidden fruit? By asking permission? Or by taking it, which, for all we know, Adam might have done and then blamed Eve? If prostitution was the world’s oldest profession, then rape was the world’s original crime.
Instead of doing nothing, what I should have done was to stop the policemen, even at the cost of my cover and my life. I should have made the sacrifice the communist agent had made by refusing to talk or to confess. But instead of making a sacrifice, I made the one thing that only human beings can make: an excuse. Whoever said the road to Hell was paved with good intentions had gotten it all wrong. If you looked more closely, you could see that the road to Hell was paved with excuses.
On the last of my seven days in Heaven, when the pain in my hand and my head no longer required the remedy but just aspirin, and the puffiness of my bruised face had subsided to the point where I could bear looking at myself, and my periodic bouts of weeping had tapered off, the Ronin appeared. I envied him. He was never bothered by guilt, although his politics—not to mention his morality—were questionable. His breath was as clean as his conscience, and he had a mint in his mouth, a glint in his eye, and a gleam to his teeth when we met in the waiting room. So you’re him, he said in Vietnamese. The man himself, the one and only Crazy Bastard. The Boss told me you’d be here. I’m the Ronin.
That’s what he called himself, as did everyone else. The next surprise was that he spoke in grammatically correct southern Vietnamese, mixed with a heavy, charming French accent. The third surprise was that he was the best-looking man I had seen for a long time, and he knew it. His suit was formfitting, his body was trim, his fingernails were manicured, his pocket square was a rakish puff, his blue silk tie was the width of my forearm, and his teeth were American teeth, or movie star teeth, which he exposed with the frequency and salacious enjoyment of a flasher. He had barely begun telling me about the business arrangement between him and the Boss when Crème Brûlée—nicknamed as such because of the color of her skin—parted the beaded curtains and cried out, Ah! My favorite Corsican!
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