The Committed

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

  I was wrong about you, said Sonny in an emotional voice.

  Not so fast! protested the crapulent major. He’s not dead yet.

  The trick, of course, was knowing when to do something and when to do nothing. Or rather, to put it more accurately, since what one should do was in many cases quite clear, the trick was actually doing something or doing nothing. Doing nothing would cost you your life, but then again, what was your life actually worth?

  The Boss paused before the Mona Lisa. Any last words?

  Let me think, the Mona Lisa said. Oh, yeah. Fuck you.

  The Boss snorted, raised the hammer above his head, and you turned your head away, unlike Le Cao Boi and the Ronin and Grumpy and Shorty, all gleeful with anticipation, and this was why you were the only one to see the door kicked open with a bang! and a man in a black balaclava storm through, dressed all in black, an AK-47 in his hands, the sight of which made you dive to the floor in a cowardly reflex that was second nature to you—bang! bang! bang!—and from this shameless position with your cheek against the ground you saw a second man in a black balaclava, also dressed all in black, follow the first, an identical AK-47 in his hands—bang! bang! bang!—and you clapped your hands over your ears to protect them from the staccato of automatic rifle fire that you knew all too well from years of war, the unmistakable jackhammer of an AK-47 that was loud anywhere but was deafening in the close confines of the interrogation room that had become an echo chamber bouncing back and forth the yells of astonishment and the screams of dying men:

  What

  the

  fuck?!

  Jesus

  fucking

  Christ!

  Goddammit

  to Hell!

  Holy

  shit!

  Those, unfortunately, were the not-very-articulate last words of Grumpy and Shorty, their cleavers useless against the onslaught of 7.62mm bullets fired at the maximum rate of 600 rounds per minute or 10 rounds per second, as you learned during your apprenticeship with Claude. Bang! Bang! Bang! The first gunman fired in short, precise bursts, the second one in long, undisciplined spasms, which meant that the second one had to pause in the middle of the slaughter and reload with a new thirty-round magazine, while the first one still had enough rounds left to walk up to the Ronin, sprawled on his back and bleeding from wounds to his abdomen, his hand clawing for the gun in his waistband, and fire a bullet into the Ronin’s forehead, an act that the gunman carried out with dispassion while his companion was still trying to insert the new magazine with trembling hands, which he finally accomplished as the calm and cool gunman swiveled and took the last few paces to the Mona Lisa and the Boss, both sitting against the wall, the Mona Lisa in a state of shock, judging from the expression on his face, and the Boss looking—for the first and only time you had seen him—terrified, agonized at the riddle of how someone like him could be riddled, dark blood seeping through his overalls as the second gunman, the amateur, squeezed a long burst into the spine of Le Cao Boi, who was crawling pointlessly toward a corner after having been shot in the legs and hip, and who died at the outstretched feet of the Boss, who had dropped his hammer by his side, and who was holding his guts with both hands to keep them from falling out, and who was screaming in such pain that you almost wept, and whose screams abruptly stopped when the calm and cool gunman shot him in the mouth and blew his memories against the wall.

  Then all was silent in the echo chamber except for the panting of the Mona Lisa and the blood in your head, whose waves you could hear because one of your ears was pressed against the cement floor, and when the gunmen turned from the carnage in your direction, you closed your eyes and played dead. Their booted feet thudded on the cement closer and closer, and one of them said, No, let me do it, and then something hard and hot pressed against your temple and you flinched and opened your eyes.

  Ha! said the amateur gunman, his barrel aimed at your face. I knew you were still alive. He pulled off his balaclava and it was Rolling Stones. Hey there, you crazy bastard. Remember me?

  How could you forget?

  The calm and cool gunman pulled off his balaclava, too, and you saw the resemblance right away, the visual rhyme with the Mona Lisa in the elbow-like cheekbones, the enigmatic gaze, the black eyebrows as thick as cocoons, the teen idol lips.

  Saïd, you said.

  The cocoons twitched. So you’ve heard about me, he said. I’ve heard about you, too.

  He knelt down to look more closely at you, and though he was here to kill you, you could not help but think, This is one good-looking son of a bitch.

  You took my place, took what wasn’t yours, Saïd went on, his finger tapping your forehead exactly where the Boss had pressed the hammer. Now you will pay the price.

  Rolling Stones raised the AK-47 to his shoulder, and you turned from Saïd’s calm eyes to the barrel of the gun aimed between your own eyes. Mao said that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, but you could not imagine anything growing from this kind of barrel. All you could see was the power of horror in the barrel’s black hole, its center of gravity being a 7.62mm slug with no name on it but yours, and you told yourself to keep your mouth shut and not to provoke Rolling Stones or Saïd, who did not seem, like the Boss, to be hung up on prolonging the agony of his victims. So many people had tried to fire a bullet into your head and you just wanted to make this quick. You had already killed yourself once, and this bullet would be the exclamation point on the last sentence of your life, a demise either truly unfortunate or very desirable, depending on one’s point of view, and since you were a man of two minds, you were both horrified and ready to celebrate.

  Any last requests? said Rolling Stones, and you experienced a moment of déjà vu.

  Could I have a bit of the remedy, please, Ahmed?

  Your use of his real name irked Rolling Stones with its little reminder of your shared, heartwarming (in)humanity, and he said, I’m just going to kill you, and your eyes locked on to his trigger finger, which had just started to move, when Saïd said, You asked him a question and he gave you an answer. Now be a man of your word.

  Oh, for fuck’s sake! Rolling Stones lowered his gun. All right, asshole. Where do I find some of this remedy?

  You took a guess and said, The pockets of the dwarfs, which turned out to be right. As Rolling Stones returned with small packets of the remedy, one part of you thought about how nice it might be to die, while the other part of you that still clung stubbornly to life said to Saïd, Perhaps you’d like to know where you can find more of the remedy?

  Saïd was kneeling by his brother and helping him pull his pants back on. He looked at you and said, You think that’s going to save your life?

  You anesthetized yourself quickly, inhaling first one dose of the remedy and then another. While the remedy’s magic lay in giving its users a heightened sense of euphoria and megalomania, mixed with the numbing of various parts of the body and mind and a paradoxical increase of erogenous sensitivity, it made no claims to increasing intelligence. Thus, feeling a little better but no smarter, you were perplexed by the puzzle of the question given to you by Saïd, a problem the Mona Lisa solved for you.

  Don’t kill him, the Mona Lisa said.

  What? Rolling Stones cried.

  What? you thought, although you were intelligent enough not to say this out loud.

  I’ve been looking forward to killing this niakoué! Rolling Stones said, and you finally, finally got what he was saying. You burst out laughing once again and Rolling Stones said, Now what, you crazy bastard?

  Nhà quê! You’re trying to say nhà quê!

  That’s what I said.

  It means “peasant.” “Hick.” “Stupid.” I suppose it’s justice that you French took an insult we used against country people and turned it against us.

  I don’t give a fuck how you say it in your language, Rolling St
ones hissed. Niakoué! Niakoué! Niakoué!

  He saved my life, the Mona Lisa said.

  He didn’t save your life, said Saïd. We saved your life.

  It’s true, they were going to kill me. But this crazy bastard refused to kill me, and they were going to kill him right after me. The Mona Lisa finished buttoning his shirt and slowly stood up with the help of Saïd. He spared me, and I’m asking you to spare him.

  Fuck no, Rolling Stones said, aiming his AK-47 at me once more.

  Stop, Saïd said, and Rolling Stones, cursing, lowered his gun again. Saïd regarded me with those calm and collected eyes, his mind processing what his brother had told him. Then he said, My brother’s word is good enough for me.

  Saïd! Rolling Stones said.

  Ahmed, stop thinking like the little gangster that you are. Saïd loomed over you now, and from your perspective on the floor, he appeared gigantic. Become a man of your word. You kill when necessary and you show mercy when necessary, but you always do what you say, so that no one will doubt who you are and what you stand for.

  Sure, great, fantastic, Rolling Stones said. Let me start after I kill him.

  Ahmed, show some commitment.

  I am committed! I’m committed to killing this bastard!

  You must learn to believe in something greater than yourself and your little schemes, Saïd said, staring down at you. Just because he’s a thief and a drug dealer and a criminal like you—like I was at one time—doesn’t mean you must behave like him. He’s not a man, Ahmed, and neither are you. And do you know why?

  I’m not a man? Rolling Stones said. Fuck you, Saïd!

  You have to understand that Ahmed comes from a long line of sailors, although some called them pirates, Saïd said to you. He’s still got the pirate blood in him from Annaba, but it’s diluted now. Easy to understand, given how his parents fled the War of Independence to come here. Mine, too. But the FLN had it right. We shouldn’t be killing ourselves with crimes and drugs and violence. We should be djounoud, liberating ourselves with violence.

  I don’t want to hear another lecture, Rolling Stones said.

  You wouldn’t have to hear a lecture if you did the reading like I told you, Saïd said. If you had, you would know Fanon said that “violence detoxifies.”

  It “frees the colonized from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction,” you said. Saïd locked eyes with you in a moment of mutual recognition and you both said, Violence “makes him fearless and restores his self-respect.”

  You see why I kind of maybe like this guy? the Mona Lisa said to Saïd.

  Reading Fanon is still just reading, Saïd said. Better than nothing. But you have to do something. And you need the right kind of violence, the kind that makes you a man, not the kind that makes you a thief. Ahmed, do you know why you and this thief who stole from me are not men?

  Rolling Stones sighed. Because we’re not committed?

  Exactly, Saïd said.

  His gaze on you was a variation of the luscious secretary’s, a stinging blend of pity, contempt, and understanding. You wanted to protest and say that while you may not be much of a man (anymore), you have been deeply, deeply committed, and look where it’s gotten you. But you muted yourself so you could live again to talk another day, which was the right response.

  You can go, Saïd said. Now.

  Motherfucker, Rolling Stones muttered.

  You lurched to your feet before Saïd changed his mind or Rolling Stones accidentally shot you. Questions loomed—how did Saïd hear about his brother, and how had he gotten to Paris so fast? And how had he tracked down the Mona Lisa? But prolonging your time in front of Saïd and Rolling Stones meant risking your life to satisfy your curiosity, and these were not the kind of questions to die for. Instead you bowed and clasped your hands together in a vaguely Oriental form of submission, which might have been more Indian than Vietnamese, but who cared? You were all Orientals here.

  Thank you both for your generosity, you said, and threw in a few more abject expressions of groveling gratitude, for you were nothing if not a master of abjection. Then you added, Just as a way of saying thank you, let me suggest that you look a little deeper into all those crates of coffee in the warehouse, at which Saïd raised a thick eyebrow. Then you said, You’ve already done a great deal for me, but could I ask you for just one more small thing? Maybe two?

  As your ex-boss the General once observed, Those who do you favors are inclined to do you more in the right circumstances, which was why the General relentlessly curried favor with those above him by asking for favors, while steadfastly refusing to grant favors in almost all cases to those below him. Saïd had already granted you, in his royal way, the courtesy of not killing you, and now, sensing the magnitude of his own nobility, he might do you one more good turn. And indeed, instead of killing you or having you killed, Saïd sighed and said, What do you want?

  What you wanted were Le Cao Boi’s authentic aviator sunglasses, which he was wearing when he died, since he always wore them, and which he no longer needed. They were, you said, a memento to commemorate Le Cao Boi, your best friend, or so you told Saïd, a sentiment that you figured a man of honor like him would understand. The aviators fit perfectly and did their job of helping you drive through the sunlit streets of Paris for the first time. Doing so while anesthetized by the remedy was akin to steering a pinball through a pinball machine, or so you thought, or so you remembered thinking by the time you inserted the key into the lock of the Boss’s apartment. This key was what you really wanted, although you told Saïd you needed the Boss’s car to get yourself home. You were betting on Saïd having his own transportation, although it might not be as fashionable as the Boss’s Bavarian phenomenon. Rolling Stones was quite aware of this as he protested the favor, but you had already set up an implicit trade with Saïd concerning the treasure trove of which he was now the master. On the way out of the warehouse you passed the stacks of crates full of snow-white remedy masked as intestinally processed black coffee, and you hoped you were done with this trade, but you suspected you were not as you passed the rope-bound body of Biggie near the exit, eyes open, mouth gagged, and throat slit, a clue to how Saïd and Rolling Stones found the warehouse. During the orgy, Biggie had left to tend Delights of Asia by himself, and Saïd and Rolling Stones must have found him there.

  The Boss’s apartment was silent and clean. If you were not in a rush, you would take your time, pour yourself five inches of some of the Boss’s expensive scotch or cognac, put your feet up, and admire the distant Eiffel Tower, huge in reality but only an inch or so long from here, but it was past noon and you had to be at Opium for Fantasia’s preshow party in a few hours, so you began looking for where the Boss kept his valuables. You dug through his kitchen cabinets, under his sofa cushions, in his closet, behind his television and stereo equipment, and were about to head toward his bedroom when a soft feminine voice said,

  WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?

  which was another profoundly philosophical question you had occasionally asked yourself, although not at this moment. You began to turn around, and the voice that you recognized as belonging to the luscious secretary said, Raise your hands and move slow or I’ll shoot. By the time you finished your slow pirouette, you were braced for the Luger-like pistol that was quite large in her tiny, steady hand. She was wearing a see-through nightgown and her long, lustrous black hair was tousled and in need of combing, which only made her more luscious.

  The Boss will kill you, she said.

  You were wearing the sunglasses, but you still felt it would be better to use every muscle in your body to keep your eyes fixed on hers, which made it hard for you to swallow the fear and desire that flooded your mouth. You managed to say, The Boss is dead.

  The luscious secretary stared at you for five seconds—you counted—and said, You’d never have the balls to kill the Boss.


  True. You explained to her as calmly as you could what had happened. A film passed over her eyes—not grief, not relief, but something else—uncertainty? She expressed neither shock nor surprise but instead said, How do I know you’re not lying?

  Do you think I could have gotten this key if the Boss were alive?

  Take off those sunglasses, she said, keeping her gun pointed at you.

  You had lost track of the number of times a gun had been aimed at you. You were also not quite certain how many times their triggers had been pulled, and how many of your lives had been blown away, for you to reach this point where the touch of air on your skin made you shiver with something bordering on the state of pleasure, which was always next to the state of pain.

  So what are you doing here? she said.

  The pinball you rode carried you forward with a plan you did not have until this moment, not knowing the luscious secretary would be here, which you should have known if you were thinking properly. I’m sure the Boss keeps cash here, you said, looking at the clock, above the television, that was carved in the shape of your country. The General had the same nostalgic clock in his Los Angeles restaurant, its open secret revealing how, for refugees, time only moved in circles. But the Boss’s clock revealed another open secret, how, for refugees, time sometimes stopped completely.

  I assume he keeps the money in a safe, you said. And I know the combination. But I don’t know where the safe is. I’m guessing you might.

  You actually did not know if there was a safe and you did not know the combination, but your first hunch was proven correct when she said, How do you know the combination?

  Show me the safe first, you said.

  I get half of what’s inside.

  Put the gun down first.

  I know you think I’m stupid, but I’m not.

  I don’t think—

  I see the way you look at me.

  The way she looked at you indicated that she thought you were the stupid one, and admitting to yourself that you had never thought about the luscious secretary’s intelligence, you continued straining every muscle in your body to keep your eyes locked on hers, despite the temptations in your peripheral vision. You’re right, you said, swallowing that familiar mix of guilt and shame for which you had long ago developed a taste. They went so well together, like gin and tonic, like civilization and colonization, like resistance and collaboration, like Hitler and Goebbels, like Nixon and Kissinger, like Vietnam and Algeria, like France and the United States, that there should be a cocktail, or at least a minor Russian novel, or maybe just a teenage dance craze, called the Guilt and the Shame. I’m sorry. Truly sorry.