What language is that? you asked.
Arabic, the kind old gentleman said.
How did you learn Arabic?
Algeria.
You looked at the kind old gentleman’s feet, but they were not black. They were quite white. You looked at the doctor and said, Are you Algerian?
I am French, he said stiffly, but my parents come from Tunisia.
Oh, you said. I just thought you were very tanned.
You are a great believer in nothing, the Maoist PhD says, looking at his notes.
I believe there is no way to avoid the void.
You have gone from being a Marxist and a communist to being a nihilist.
No! Non! Nyet! Nein! Negative! you shout. The kind old gentleman laughs from his bed. Never! Have you understood nothing? I am through with your Western philosophies and beliefs and ideas and systems! Your Catholicism! Your colonialism! Your capitalism! Your Marxism! Your communism! Your nihilism, too! I am not a nihilist, for I believe in something—I believe nothing is sacred! Life is full of meaning! And I am full of principles!
Interesting, says the Maoist, sliding his yellow pad into his satchel. I have been to CHINA, you know. All this talk about nothingness and the void is quite ORIENTAL.
Fuck you, you whisper, and out loud you say, Have you read Julia Kristeva?
Of course I’ve read Kristeva.
You pick up Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection, which you swear could have been written about you when it describes “unnamable otherness.” How did Kristeva understand so well the mind of a spy, a man with two faces, who is, of necessity, even before having holes drilled in his head, empty, full only of what she calls “the void”? How did Kristeva index you the way that she has, and is she correct when she says that “it is only after his death, eventually, that the writer of abjection will escape his condition”? Because you certainly are abject, but perhaps you are a writer, at least of your own confession, and here she gives you a nail of hope on which to cling, or to be pinned: “writing, which allows one to recover, is equal to a resurrection.” You read all these passages to the Maoist PhD, and since he has such difficulty understanding nothing, you conclude with this declaration: “I am comfortable only in the presence of the nothing-at-all, the void.”
So you see, Le Chinois? It’s not only Orientals who are fascinated by nothing!
Well, she does come from Bulgaria, which is practically the Orient, the Maoist psychoanalyst says with a smile. In any case, we are close but not done yet. Or rather, you are not done yet.
Not done yet? Look how much I’ve written! What more do you want from me?
Besides removing those sunglasses from your face? Nothing.
Very funny, you say, not taking off your sunglasses.
The Maoist psychoanalyst says farewell, see you in two weeks, and departs. He is helping you for free, a great favor, because all the Boss’s money has gone to pay for your extended stay in Paradise, where your aunt has committed you, with your approval, because what are you if not deeply committed, even if it is to nothing? Your residence is the Memory Ward, a euphemism, since some of those committed here are not quite right in the head, or so you have been told, because you feel quite right in the head, no matter what other people think. Your problem is that your head won’t stop leaking. It’s all Bon’s fault, but the good thing about all this blood is that it provides an unlimited supply of ink for volume two of your confessions. As if volume one hadn’t been enough! You would have been quite happy if your misbegotten life had provided enough material for only one volume, but here you are with so much to confess! And in case you have forgotten, your aunt has brought you volume one, which she has kindly translated into French because, she says, there is something of value in it and so that the Maoist PhD can read it. You read out loud from this translation every day to the kind old gentleman, who nods appreciatively at your pronunciation, so good that the staff and patients of Paradise regularly say, L’INDOCHINOIS speaks excellent French! Progress, indeed, you mutter to yourself, for at least they know not to call you LE CHINOIS! Regardless of whether you are LE CHINOIS or L’INDOCHINOIS, the fact of the matter is you are dead, even if you are still walking around, for Bon, after all, has fired a bullet into your head! What happens now?
You join us, your chorus of ghosts say. You pretend to ignore them and return to the problem of the yellow pad in front of you. The Maoist psychoanalyst has brought you many yellow pads, and your aunt types up all of what you have written and rewritten, and the handsome and humorless lawyer adds copious comments to the margins. Her comments, like Stalin’s, are written in blue, while your original manuscript is written in blood. Or perhaps it’s just ink. Ink or blood? What’s the difference?
Oh, there’s a big difference, says your ghost chorus. Trust us.
The only decoration on your side of the room is a picture you have taped to the wall above your bed, clipped from a newspaper article that your aunt and the handsome and humorless lawyer brought you during one of their visits. The occasion is a march against racism and for equality, dominated by those protesting against the maltreatment of Arabs and Africans, but this black-and-white picture shows a band of young people of Vietnamese descent, which you know because the sign above their heads says VIETNAMESE IN FRANCE. Below it, the sign says IDENTITY IN INTEGRATION. Oh, how these young people give you hope! More than a crucifix or a communist flag. You recognized some members of the Union among them, including some of your clients. As Ho Chi Minh understood sixty years ago, the oppressed must stand in solidarity with one another. But what of the French with Vietnamese ancestry, many of whom feel they are not oppressed? One answer is that there is no better way to demonstrate one’s Frenchness than by demonstrating, especially on the side of the oppressed. The other, related answer is that people do not have to be oppressed to march against oppression, in solidarity, against all kinds of racism, including the racism that benefits them as French people who are not Arab, or African, or black, or Muslim, or immigrant. But as remarkable as this display of solidarity is, what strikes you the most are the three young men wearing masks. White masks. Masks almost exactly like the
one worn by Man, who has left his mark in Paris among these inspired youth. What mark have you left? In the hopes of achieving this identity and integration demanded by these youth, you have, with the encouragement of the Maoist PhD, the handsome and humorless lawyer, and your aunt, made many marks in writing this confession. Is that enough? Can it ever be enough? Piece it all together, your aunt says. Put it in your own words. Maybe then you can make sense of everything that happened.
What she really means is maybe you can make sense of yourself, a dead man whom others seem to think is still alive. So, in the mornings, you write. In the afternoons, you push the wheelchair of the kind old gentleman around the grounds of Paradise and tell him what you have written for the day. Oh my, he might say. Oh dear.
Are you offended? you asked him once, since you know the French are easily offended.
He looked at you with his genetically recessive blue eyes, smiled, and said, Yes, rather.
You smiled back and said, Well, monsieur, to you and any other Frenchperson who might be offended in reading my fun, playful, jocular depictions of French culture and civilization, all I can say is, Fuck you. What else can the colonized say after having been fucked by the colonizer? I guess I should also say thank you. Does that make you happy?
Yes, rather.
Very well then:
Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you!
Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! Fuck you! Thank you! No, really, fuck you.
You at last ran out of fucks, your voice hoarse. You could have gone on like this forever otherwise, regardless of the way that the staff and the patients kept looking at you as you perambulated with the kind old gentleman around the grounds of Paradise, as if you were crazy. Poor them. So utterly average! They have only one mind and one face each. YOU—and let’s not forget yourself—are a man of two minds, a man of two faces, a man with two holes in his head, a superman with twice as many fucks to give as any ordinary man! So fuck you, La France, for fucking me, and thank you, La France, for civilizing me! C’est la vie! Same old shit.
You are not truly worried about offending the kind old gentleman. He is one of the few people—perhaps the only one—who does not seem bothered by the perpetual presence of your sunglasses. You were so seduced by his kind old eyes and genuine curiosity about you that you had told him all about yourself. The question that triggered it all was when he asked, Where are you from? Normally this question would incense you, but the kind old gentleman’s kind old eyes made you pause, hesitate, and then attempt to be sincere, as if you really did give a fuck. You told the kind old gentleman where you were from, and when he gave an understanding murmur, you told him about your poor, beautiful mother, and when he murmured again, you began to unspool the entire thread of your life to him, minus the various acts of immorality, obscenity, and fatality with which you have been involved. You spoke for an hour, prodded along by the understanding murmurs and warm blue eyes of the kind old gentleman, who radiated empathy for you and curiosity about you. For the first time, you felt truly understood, truly listened to, and by a total stranger! You could not stop yourself. Your entire life reeled forth in paraphrase, in summary, sometimes elliptically, you being in such a rush and there being so much to say, bits and pieces of your autobiography as haiku and epigraph and fragment, and all the while the kind old gentleman murmured and sometimes said, Ah, bon? And finally, at the end of an hour, you were done and you looked at the kind old gentleman expectantly, waiting for him to respond, and the kind old gentleman smiled beatifically, like Jesus Christ, or the Buddha, or Santa Claus, or Stalin, or Mao, or Ho Chi Minh, and said, with gentleness and warmth, curiosity and empathy, compassion and goodwill:
Where did you say you were from again?
So you perambulate around Paradise, the odd yet perfect couple, you who cannot stop remembering, he who cannot stop forgetting. You can tell the kind old gentleman anything, knowing he will listen with utter concentration and forget with absolute precision. You fill in the blanks of your original paraphrase of your life, over and over, with all the immorality, obscenity, and fatality included, all your deeds and misdeeds, including your daughter, Ada. She is both one of your deeds and misdeeds, so you have gotten her off to a good start in life, born from your seed, which makes her one-quarter French, three-quarters Vietnamese, and 100 percent bastard, since she, too, was born out of wedlock. You wonder if you will ever meet her, the prospect filling you with dread, since you would be the kind of father of whom a daughter can write only the most scathing memoir. And, with these two volumes of your confession, you have given her plenty of evidence.
Evidence, says the lawyer on her next visit. She is interested in you, given her specialty in representing the unforgivable. Of your three readers, she is the most challenging. Your aunt the editor reads for style and story, character and theme, while the Maoist psychoanalyst pores over your anal and erotic fixations. Admittedly you do say “shit” and “fuck” a lot, but that’s because those are two of the most basic human activities!
And what about your Oedipal complex? he once asked.
Oedipal complex? Please! Did your immortals teach you that at the École Normale Supérieure, you Normalien? Normal . . . alien . . . heh heh heh.
He coughed, frowned, made a note in his yellow pad, and said, And what about your reading of the Eiffel Tower as a—what do you call it—a “gigantic dick”?
First of all, that was what the Boss called it, and second of all, it is a gigantic dick! I didn’t create the absurdity in this world! I just see it!
Evidence, says the handsome and humorless lawyer, flipping through your pages. She sits in a chair in your room, while you sit in the wheelchair of the kind old gentleman, who observes the both of you from the throne of pillows on his bed.
There’s a lot of it, you say.
But you’re still missing one crucial piece of evidence.
Aren’t you supposed to be defending me?
In order to defend a client, I have to know what a client has actually done.
Or not done.
Exactly. In your case, we know what you have not done. Less about what you have done.
I have admitted to doing quite a lot!
To be clearer: the consequences of what you have done.
You look around your room for comfort, but since you entered Paradise you have not seen any sign of the remedy, or hashish, or any form of the most life-sustaining liquid after water, which is to say holy water, which is to say liquor. The problem is that the angels of Paradise, as well as the very chic, very tanned doctor, have forbidden almost every form of what they call “intoxicants.” As a result, you are the healthiest you have ever been, and you hate it. The one vice granted to you is cigarettes, this being France after all, and for this benevolence your lungs are deeply, deeply grateful. You stub out your cigarette in the disgustingly overstuffed ashtray and light another one, a Gauloise.
Let’s return to the scene, the handsome and humorless lawyer says.
I’d rather not.
You can’t forgive the unforgivable unless you confront it.
Forgive? Who is there to forgive me?
Only yourself.
Ha! Now that is truly absurd. But even if I could forgive myself, who am I to ask for forgiveness? And even more important, counselor, how does one forgive the unforgivable? It’s not that such forgiveness is impossible. It’s simply that it’s insane!
Let’s return to the scene.
No—
The restaurant. Delights of Asia.
No one wants to return there. The food is shit. Inedible! And that, coming from me, says a lot. My people can eat almost anything. I mean, we ate Chinese shit for a thousand years! And we still suffer indigestion from it!
The handsome and humorless lawyer exhales smoke and adjusts her tie clip. Don’t you know that life is a piece of shit? You
have to eat it in small pieces.
Oh, brilliant! Positively philosophical! And exactly how the Chinese eat shit!
It’s actually a French saying, the kind old gentleman says.
Well, now that makes sense, you say.
My dear old mother used to say that to me all the time.
Let’s return to the scene, the lawyer says.
No—
There’s nothing to be afraid of.
That’s God talking! Not me!
Come on. You know as well as I do that there’s no God. Now, the three of you are in the restaurant, standing before the cash register. Smelly and Angry are dead. Both Man and you have confessed your shared secret to Bon. Bon has his gun in his hand and your gun as well. You tell Bon to “do it.” Now what did you mean by that?
What do you think I meant?
For the record, please clarify. And also tell us what you meant when you said, “It’s time to do what has to be done.”
Isn’t it obvious?
Not to me. I wasn’t there to see this scene. I wasn’t even there to see the aftermath. And this is not exactly a situation where I can come to the police and say that I am representing you, since no one knows you were involved. Or rather, they do, but they have the wrong name. Joseph N’Guyen, the last man seen with one of the victims, Bon, as reported by his bereaved fiancée and confirmed by Lana.
Leave it up to the French to fuck with my name, even if it is a fake name. Or half-fake name. N’Guyen! N’Guyen! The French police can’t even take the trouble to spell Nguyen correctly, even though it is the name of kings!
Perhaps that’s why the press simply prefer to call you L’INDOCHINOIS.
The Committed Page 34
