The Committed. Viet Thanh Nguyen

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СКАЧАТЬ saw no sign of rubber gloves, not that the interior of such gloves would have been sanitary. The only tools for the excavation of the clogged orifice were a plunger with a short handle and a woefully small rubber cup, as well as a soiled toothbrush of a toilet scrub. If either the plunger or the scrub could speak, they would undoubtedly scream eternally, as I was already doing internally.

      I emerged from the toilet some twenty minutes later, trembling and trying not to think of the fine droplets of water that had sprayed all over my clothes and possibly even misted my arms and face. I had seen worse in the refugee camp, but this was supposed to be the City of Light!

      All done? Le Cao Boi said. I keep telling Grumpy not to eat the food here. Fair warning. Okay, let’s go. There’s a debt to be collected.

      Our destination was in the Marais, popular with Jews and faggots, according to Le Cao Boi, although our target was neither. What he was, Le Cao Boi said, was a client who liked to beat the girls, which could be acceptable, depending on the payment. What was not acceptable was that he had accrued a debt for which he was now in arrears.

      Never go into debt for a woman, said Le Cao Boi, pausing outside the door to a travel agency to let a Japanese tourist wander by, a zoom lens the length of his forearm attached to a camera around his neck. Inside, a young couple sat before the travel agent, whose only crime appeared to be combining a knit tie with a short-sleeved plaid shirt. His eyes twitched in fear at the sight of two and a half Asian men who did not appear to be respectable bourgeoisie seeking respite from the low-grade demands of 1980s French capitalism. Bon sat down in the chair next to the young couple and stared at the client. Le Cao Boi explained that we would wait, they should take their time, the Spanish coast was beautiful this time of year. The next few minutes passed awkwardly, at least for the travel agent, with Le Cao Boi meandering around the office, whistling “Stairway to Heaven” as he ran his finger along the posters of beaches and palm trees on the walls, the brochures on the counter, and the backs of the chairs on which the young couple sat.

      Bon remained next to them, staring only at the travel agent but keeping the couple in his peripheral vision. They glanced at each other as the travel agent began stuttering, fingers trembling over the binder of travel packages. I watched them all while I stood silently with my back to the wall by the door, and when the young couple smiled nervously and promised to return, I opened the door for them. The travel agent waved his hands at Le Cao Boi and alternated between explaining and begging, but Le Cao Boi ignored him and said to Bon, He’s a thief who beats girls. We couldn’t give you a better job to begin with, could we?

      No, you couldn’t have. Bon stood up. This will be easy. At least for me.

      As I watched the travel agent tremble and moan as he curled up on the spotless floor—Bon being careful not to extract blood—I understood with a sudden twist of shame that I shared something in common with this man, besides our plaintive desire to live. I also shared his manhood, his lust, his febrile brain that could not pass ten minutes without a sexual fantasy crossing its field of vision. Men were all the same, or at least 90 to 95 percent of them. Bon, perhaps, might be an exception, so pure of heart that even in the oceanic depths of his mind and soul he did not fantasize about the opposite sex. But most men will. And I—I was like most men.

      I wept a little for the travel agent, but more for me and myself and my mother, who had to watch me in dismay from above. Le Cao Boi sniffed in disgust, not over the battered travel agent but over my tears. Pull yourself together, man, he said outside the door of the agency.

      Bon, embarrassed, said, Get that kopi luwak, and we parted ways. While they returned to Delights of Asia, I made my way to my aunt’s, wiping away my tears, seeing Bon twisting the travel agent’s manhood until the pitiful fellow nearly blacked out and cried for his mama, which made me think of my mother. I had never lived with a woman other than my mother, and I had no idea what to do with a woman who was not my mother and who I was not pursuing. I opened the door to my aunt’s apartment softly and found her at her desk, tucked into an alcove of the hallway. She was editing a manuscript while smoking, or perhaps smoking was the real activity and editing the distraction.

      How was your day? She waved her cigarette at me and offered me one.

      Nothing remarkable, I said, wondering if the kopi luwak was still intact. Just met my boss and did some work for him.

      Freshen up and tell me about it. She pointed toward the bathroom, halfway down the hall. Some guests will be arriving soon and I have told them all about you, my accomplished nephew.

      As I would discover over the coming months, my aunt’s apartment hosted a veritable salon for writers, editors, and critics, a crowd of intellectuals so leftist that I was always surprised to see that almost all of them ate with their right hands. My aunt’s career in editing, along with a penchant for socializing and a talent for the subtle stroking of masculine ego—though subtlety was rarely required—had led to an extensive network of friends, mostly male, who traded in words and ideas. At least two or three times a week, a visitor would come by, bearing a bottle of wine or a box of colorful macarons. My aunt consumed wine and macarons heedlessly and without any evident impact on her slim waistline. This talent was due to the fact that she barely ate real food, at least in my presence, filling herself instead with smoke, the aforementioned words and ideas, and those light, sweet macarons.

      Can I make you some of the kopi luwak? I called from the kitchen, out of view from my aunt’s nook. To my relief, the gift was untouched. When my aunt said yes, it was then a simple matter to switch the packages and return to the living room with a glass coffee press full of the dark brew. My aunt joined me, and I reported on my day’s activities while we smoked Gauloises and sipped the civet coffee.

      I can’t say I taste the difference, she said. Not that it’s not delicious. In fact, it’s quite potent.

      It’s psychological. Knowing where it comes from affects the taste.

      Just like knowing where this Boss and Le Cao Boi come from, she said. I imagine them as dark and potent, like this coffee. The gangster and the romantic. The violent and the lyrical. Doesn’t that define our homeland’s culture?

      Isn’t France our homeland? My father, when he was teaching me in school, would make us repeat after him: la Gaule is the land of our ancestors.

      Your father was a colonizer and a pedophile, which go hand in hand. Colonization is pedophilia. The paternal country rapes and molests its unfortunate pupils, all in the holy and hypocritical name of the civilizing mission!

      When you talk about me like that, I feel like a symbol.

      Get used to it, my dear. We French love nothing more than symbols.

      That was the nature of our conversation, the discourse refreshing after the reeducation camp’s brute propaganda and the nuts-and-bolts pseudo-realism of the somewhat rusted American Dream. Americans loathed symbols, except for patriotic, sentimental ones like guns, flags, Mom, and apple pie, all of which the average American proclaimed he would defend to the death. One had to love such a practical, pragmatic people, impatient with interpretation, eager just to get the facts, ma’am. If one tried to interpret a movie’s deeper significance with Americans, they would reflexively claim that it was just a story. To the French, nothing was ever just a story. As for facts, the French thought them rather boring.

      Facts, my aunt said, are just the beginning, not the end.

      Speaking of facts, I thought you were a seamstress.

      And I thought you were a patriotic captain who became a refugee. You were given your cover and I was given mine.

      By Man? СКАЧАТЬ