hat did I expect? I had been missing for seven months and had never once phoned, the extent of my communication a few scribbled postcards. As for Ms. Mori, she was dedicated to neither monogamy nor man, much less to any one man in particular. She declared her allegiances through the most prominent furnishings in her living room, bookshelves bowed as the backs of coolies with the weight of Simone de Beauvoir, Anaïs Nin, Angela Davis, and other women who had wrestled with the Woman Question. Western men from Adam to Freud had also asked that question, although they had phrased it as “What does woman want?” At least they had considered the subject. It occurred to me only then that we Vietnamese men never even bothered to ask what woman wanted. I had not even a germ of an idea about what Ms. Mori wanted. Perhaps I would have had a dim sense if I had read some of these books, but all I knew of them were the summaries found on their dust jackets. My intuition told me Sonny had actually read some of them in their entirety, and taking a seat next to him I could feel an anaphylactic reaction to his presence prickling on my skin, an eruption of hostility inflamed by his genial smile.

What do you have there? Sonny said, nodding at the paper bag on my lap. Ms. Mori had gone to fetch another wineglass. A pair already sat on the coffee table, along with an open bottle of red wine, a corkscrew with the wine-bloodied cork still skewered on it, and a photo album. Cigarettes, I said, taking out the carton. And vodka.

I had no choice but to offer Sonny the vodka, which he showed to Ms. Mori when she returned from the kitchen. You shouldn’t have, she said brightly, putting it next to the bottle of wine. The beautiful, transparent Stolichnaya maintained a stoic Russian demeanor as we regarded it in silence. Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it. I had planned to read that bottle’s message with Ms. Mori, as was obvious to her and Sonny, and we might have all simply sat there soaking in the frigid waters of embarrassment if it had not been for Ms. Mori’s grace. It’s very thoughtful of you, she said. Especially as we’ve almost run out of cigarettes. I’ll have one, if you don’t mind.

So, Sonny said, how was your trip to the Philippines?

I want to hear all about it, Ms. Mori said, pouring me a glass of wine and refilling theirs. I’ve always wanted to go ever since my uncle talked about his time there in the war. I cracked open the carton and offered her a cigarette, took one myself, and began my well-rehearsed tale. The cat yawned in regal contempt, climbed back onto Sonny’s lap, stretched out, sneered at me, then fell asleep from boredom. I had the distinct impression that Sonny and Ms. Mori were only marginally more interested as they listened to me, smoked my cigarettes, and asked some polite questions. Dispirited, I did not even have the heart to tell them about my near-death experience, and my story tapered off without a climax. My gaze fell on the photo album, which was open to a page of black-and-white photos depicting middle-class scenes from a few decades earlier: a father and a mother at home in their lace-covered armchairs, their sons and daughters playing the piano, crocheting, gathered around a dining table for a meal, wearing the fashion and hairstyle of the thirties. Who are they? I said. My family, said Ms. Mori. Your family? The answer stupefied me. Of course I knew that Ms. Mori had a family, but she rarely talked about them, and certainly had never shown me photographs of them. All I knew was that they lived far north of here, in one of the dusty, hot San Joaquin valley towns. That’s Betsy and that’s Eleanor, Sonny said, leaning over to point at the relevant faces. Here’s George and Abe. Poor Abe.

I looked at Ms. Mori, sipping her wine. He died in the war?

No, she said. He refused to go to war. So he got sent to prison instead. He’s still bitter about it. Not that he shouldn’t be. God knows I’d probably be bitter if I were him. I’d just like for him to be happier than he is. The war’s thirty years past and it still lives with him, even though he didn’t go and fight.

He fought, Sonny said. He just fought at home. Who can blame him? The government puts his family in a camp and then asks him to go fight for the country? I’d be mad as hell, too.

A mist of smoke now separated the three of us. The faint eddies of our thoughts took fleeting, evanescent material shape, and for a brief moment a ghostly version of myself hovered over Sonny’s head. Where’s Abe now? I said.

Japan. Not that he’s any happier there than he was here. After the war ended and he was freed, he thought he’d go back to his people, the way that he’d been told to all his life by white people, even though he was born here. So he went and found out that the people in Japan didn’t think he was one of them, either. To them he’s one of us, and to us he’s one of them. Neither one thing nor another.

Maybe our Department Chair can help him, I said.

God, I hope you’re joking, said Ms. Mori. Of course I was joking, but as an unwilling partner in this complicated ménage à trois I was off my rhythm. I steadied myself by finishing my wine. When I looked at the wine bottle, I saw that it was empty. Would you like some of the vodka? Ms. Mori said. Her gaze was loaded with pity, which was ever only served lukewarm. Longing flooded the basement of my heart, and all I could do was nod mutely. She went to the kitchen and retrieved clean tumblers for the vodka while Sonny and I sat in awkward silence. The vodka, when served, was as pungent and wonderful as I had imagined it would be, the paint thinner I needed to strip down the stained, flaking walls of my interior.

Maybe we’ll go to Japan someday, Sonny said. I’d like to meet Abe.

I’d like you to meet him, too, said Ms. Mori. He’s a fighter just like you are.

Vodka was good for honesty, especially on ice, as mine was. Vodka on ice was so transparent, so clear, so powerful, it inspired its drinkers to be the same. I swallowed the rest of mine, preparing myself for the bruises sure to come. There’s something I’ve always wondered since our college days, Sonny. You always talked then about how much you believed in the people and the revolution so much. You should have heard him, Ms. Mori. He gave very good speeches.

I would have liked to hear them, Ms. Mori said. Very much.

But if you had heard them, you would have asked yourself why he didn’t go back and fight for the revolution he believed in. Or why he doesn’t go back now and be a part of the people and the revolution tomorrow? Even your brother Abe went to prison and went to Japan for what he believed in.

And look where that’s got him, said Ms. Mori.

I’d just like an answer to my question, Sonny. Are you still here because you’re in love with Ms. Mori? Or are you still here because you’re afraid?

He winced. I had hit him where it hurt, in the solar plexus of his conscience, where everyone who was an idealist was vulnerable. Disarming an idealist was easy. One only needed to ask why the idealist was not on the front line of the particular battle he had chosen. The question was one of commitment, and I knew, even if he did not, that I was one of the committed. He looked at his bare feet, ashamed, but for some reason this had no effect on Ms. Mori. She only glanced at him with understanding, but when she turned her full gaze to me it remained marked by pity and something else—regret. It was time to stop and make a graceful exit, but the vodka that could not drain fast enough through the plugged-up sinkhole in the basement of my heart compelled me to swim on. You always talked with so much admiration of the people, I said. If you want to be with the people so much, go home.

His home is here, Ms. Mori said. I had never wanted her more than she was now, smoking a cigarette and fighting back. He stayed here because the people are here, too. There’s work to be done with them and for them. Can’t you see that? Isn’t this your home now, too?

Sonny laid his hand on her arm and said, Sofia. There was a lump in my throat but I could not swallow, watching her put her hand on his. Don’t defend me. He’s right. I was right? I had never heard him say this before. I should have been joyful, but it was more and more evident that there was little I could say that would persuade Ms. Mori to turn her heart, or her mind, away from Sonny. He swallowed the rest of his vodka and said, I’ve lived in this country for fourteen years now. In a few more years, I’ll have spent as much time here as I have in our homeland. That was never my intention. I came here, like you, just to study. I remember so clearly saying farewell to my parents at the airport and promising them that I would come back and help our country. I’d have an American degree, the best education the world could offer. I’d use that knowledge and help our people liberate themselves from the Americans. Or so I hoped.

He held out his glass to Ms. Mori, and she poured him a double. After taking a sip, he continued, looking somewhere between Ms. Mori and myself. What I learned, against my will, is that it’s impossible to live among a foreign people and not become changed by them. He swirled his vodka and knocked it back in one punishing swallow. Sometimes I feel a little foreign to myself as a result, he said. I admit that I am afraid. I admit my cowardice, my hypocrisy, my weakness, and my shame. I admit that you are a better man than me. I don’t agree with your politics—I despise them—but you went home when you had the choice and you fought the fight that you believed in. You stood up for the people as you see them. For that, I respect you.

I could not believe it. I had gotten him to confess to his failures and to surrender. I had won an argument with Sonny, something I had never done in our college days. So why was Ms. Mori clinging to his hand and murmuring something soothing? It’s all right, she said. I know exactly how you feel. It’s all right? I needed another drink. Look at me, Sonny, Ms. Mori went on. What am I? A secretary for a white man who thinks he’s complimenting me when he calls me Miss Butterfly. Do I protest and tell him to go to hell? No. I smile and say nothing and continue typing. I’m no better than you, Sonny. They stared into each other’s eyes as if I did not exist. I refilled all of our glasses but it was only me who took a slug. The part that was me said, I love you, Ms. Mori. No one heard that. What they heard was the part I was playing say, It’s never too late to fight, is it, Ms. Mori?

Their spell was broken. Sonny turned his gaze back to me. He had performed some kind of intellectual judo and turned my blow against myself. But he exhibited none of the triumph he would have in our college days. No, it’s never too late to fight, he said, sober despite the wine and vodka. You are quite right about that, my friend. Yeah, Ms. Mori said. In the way she slowly exhaled that syllable, in the way she focused on Sonny with a hungry intensity never shown toward me, in the way she chose that word over yes, I knew it was all over between us. I had won the argument, but somehow, as in our college days, he had won the audience.

The General also thought it was never too late to fight, as I reported in the next letter to my Parisian aunt. He had found an isolated stretch of terrain to carry out the training and maneuvers for his nascent army, in the sun-exposed hills far east of Los Angeles, near a remote Indian reservation. Some two hundred men had driven themselves across the freeways and past the suburbs and exurbs to this stretch of scrubby land where, in the past, the mob might have buried a few of its victims. Our gathering was not as strange a thing as it might have appeared. A xenophobe would see a company of foreigners in camouflage uniforms, carrying out military drills and calisthenics, and might imagine us to be the lead element of some nefarious Asian invasion of the American homeland, a Yellow Peril in the Golden State, a diabolical dream of Ming the Merciless sprung to life. Far from it. The General’s men, by preparing themselves to invade our now communist homeland, were in fact turning themselves into new Americans. After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.

Ten score of the best, the General had called these men in his restaurant, where he had sketched out for me the organization of his compact army on a napkin. I later pocketed that napkin and sent it to my Parisian aunt, the sketch depicting a headquarters platoon, three rifle platoons, and a heavy weapoons platoon, even though there were as yet no heavy weapons. No problem, said the General. Southeast Asia is awash in heavy weaponry. We’ll get them there. Here the goal is to build discipline, harden bodies, prepare minds, get these volunteers to think of themselves as an army again, get them to imagine the future. He wrote down the names of the platoon commanders and the officers of his staff, explaining to me their histories: this one formerly the executive officer from such-and-such division, this one formerly a battalion commander of such-and-such regiment, and so on. These details I transmitted to my Parisian aunt as well, this time in arduous code. I also paraphrased what the General told me, that these were all experienced men, down to the lowliest private. They’ve all seen action back home, he said. All volunteers. I didn’t put out a general call. I organized my officers first, had them contact men they trust who would be the noncommissioned officers, then had the NCOs find the enlisted men. It’s taken over a year to collect this nucleus. Now we’re ready for the next phase. Physical training, drilling, maneuvers, turning them into a fighting unit. Are you with me, Captain?

Always, sir. This was how I found myself in uniform again, although my task for the day was to be documentarian rather than foot soldier. The two hundred or so men sat Indian style on the earth, legs crossed, while the General stood before them and I stood behind them, camera in hand. Like his men, the General was uniformed in battle camouflage, purchased at an army surplus store and tailored by the Madame to fit. In his uniform, the General was no longer the morose proprietor of a liquor store and a restaurant, a petty bourgeois who counted his hopes as he did the change in his register. His uniform, his red beret, his polished field boots, the stars on his collar, and the Airborne patch on his sleeve had restored to him the nobility he had once possessed in our homeland. As for my uniform, it was a suit of armor cut from cloth. Though a bullet or knife would have sliced through the uniform with ease, I felt less vulnerable than in my everyday civilian clothes. If I was not bulletproof, I was at least charmed, as all the men were.

I photographed them from several different angles, these men who had been humbled by what they had been turned into here in exile. In their working outfits as busboys, waiters, gardeners, field hands, fishermen, manual laborers, custodians, or simply the un- and underemployed, these shabby examples of the lumpen blended into the background wherever they happened to be, always seen as a mass, never noticed as individuals. But now, in uniform and with their raggedy haircuts hidden by field caps and berets, they were impossible to miss. Their renewed manhood was manifest in the way their backs were stiff and straight, rather than slouched in the refugee slump, and in the way they marched proudly across the earth, rather than shuffling as they usually did in cheap shoes with worn-down soles. They were men again, and that was how the General addressed them. Men, he called out. Men! The people need us. Even from where I was, I heard him clearly, though he seemed to exert no effort in projecting his voice. They need hope and leaders, the General said. You are those leaders. You will show the people what can happen if they have the courage to rise up, to take arms, and to sacrifice themselves. I watched the men to see if they would flinch at the idea of sacrificing themselves, but they did not. This was the occult power of the uniform, of the mass, that men who would never dream of sacrificing themselves in the course of their everyday lives waiting on tables would agree to do so while waiting under a hot sun. Men, the General said. Men! The people cry out for freedom! The communists promise freedom and independence, but deliver only poverty and enslavement. They have betrayed the Vietnamese people, and revolutions don’t betray the people. Even here we remain with the people, and we will return to liberate the people who have been denied the freedom given to us. Revolutions are for the people, from the people, by the people. That is our revolution!

Nothing was so true, and yet nothing was so mysterious, for the questions of who the people were and what they might want remained unanswered. The lack of an answer mattered not; indeed, the lack of an answer was part of the power in the idea of the people that brought the men to their feet and the tears to their eyes as they shouted, Down with communism! Like salmon that instinctively knew when to swim upstream, we all knew who the people were and who were not the people. Anyone who had to be told who the people were probably was not part of the people, or so I soon wrote to my Parisian aunt. I also sent her photos of the cheering men in uniform, along with others showing them exercising and engaging in maneuvers the rest of that weekend. Perhaps these men looked silly or foolish, doing push-ups while the grizzled captain yelled at them, or crouching behind trees aiming vintage rifles under the command of the affectless lieutenant, or conducting a mock patrol with Bon amid the brush where Indians once hunted. But don’t be fooled, I warned Man in my coded notes. Revolutions begin this way, with men willing to fight no matter what the odds, volunteering to give up everything because they had nothing. This was an apt description of the grizzled captain, the former guerrilla hunter who was now a short-order cook, and the affectless lieutenant, sole survivor of an ambushed company who made his living as a deliveryman. Like Bon, they were certifiably insane men who had volunteered for the reconnaissance mission to Thailand. They had decided that death was just as good as life, which was fine for them but was worrisome for me if I was to go along with them.

What about your wives and kids? I said. The four of us sat under an oak tree, sleeves rolled up past our elbows, eating a midday meal of army surplus C rations, which looked almost exactly the same entering the human body as they did exiting it. The grizzled captain rattled his spoon in his can and said, We got separated during the whole mess at Da Nang. They didn’t make it out. Last I heard the VC sent them to clear swampland for the crime of being related to me. Guess I can either wait for them to get out or I can go get them myself. He had the habit of speaking with his teeth clenched, gnawing at his words like bones. As for the affectless lieutenant, his emotional strings had been cut. He had the semblance of a human being, but while his body moved, his face and voice moved not at all. Thus, when he said, They’re dead, the toneless announcement was more forbidding than if he had wailed or cursed. I was afraid to ask him what had happened. Instead I said, You guys don’t plan on coming back, do you? The affectless lieutenant rotated the turret of his head a few degrees and aimed his eyes at me. Come back to what? The grizzled captain chuckled. Don’t be shocked, kid. I’ve ordered more than a few men to certain death. Now maybe it’s my turn. Not that I want to sound all emotional. Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m looking forward to it. War may be hell, but you know what? Hell’s better than this shithole. With that, the affectless lieutenant and the grizzled captain departed to take a piss.

I didn’t need to write in my letter to Paris that these men were not fools, at least not yet. The minutemen were not fools in believing they could defeat the British Redcoats, any more than the first armed propaganda platoon of our revolution was foolish as it drilled with a motley assembly of primitive weapons. From that militia eventually arose an army of a million men. Who was to say the same fate did not await this company? Dear Aunt, I wrote in visible ink, These men are not to be underestimated. Napoleon said men will die for bits of ribbon pinned to their chests, but the General understands that even more men will die for a man who remembered their names, as he does theirs. When he inspects them, he walks among them, eats with them, calls them by their names and asks about wives, children, girlfriends, hometowns. All anyone ever wants is to be recognized and remembered. Neither is possible without the other. This desire drives these busboys, waiters, janitors, gardeners, mechanics, night guards, and welfare beneficiaries to save enough money to buy themselves uniforms, boots, and guns, to want to be men again. They want their country back, dear Aunt, but they also yearn for recognition and remembrance from that country that no longer exists, from wives and children, from future descendants, from the men they used to be. If they fail, call them fools. But if they do not fail, they are heroes and visionaries, whether alive or dead. Perhaps I shall return with them to our country, regardless of what the General has to say.

Even as I was planning for the possibility of returning, I also did my best to dissuade Bon of doing the same. We were smoking a final cigarette under the oak tree, our last gesture before embarking on a ten-mile hike. We watched as the men commanded by the grizzled captain and the affectless lieutenant rose and stretched, scratching at various parts of their lumpy bodies. Those guys have death wishes, I said. Don’t you get it? They’ve got no intention of coming back. They know it’s a suicide mission.

Life’s a suicide mission.

That’s very philosophical of you, I said. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re crazy.

He laughed with genuine humor, such a rare occasion ever since Saigon I was taken aback. For only the second time since I had known him, he embarked on a speech that was, for him, an epic. What’s crazy is living when there’s no reason to live, he said. What am I living for? A life in our apartment? That’s not a home. It’s a jail cell without bars. All of us—we’re all in jail cells without bars. We’re not men anymore. Not after the Americans fucked us twice and made our wives and kids watch. First the Americans said we’ll save your yellow skins. Just do what we say. Fight our way, take our money, give us your women, then you’ll be free. Things didn’t work out that way, did they? Then, after fucking us, they rescued us. They just didn’t tell us they’d cut off our balls and cut out our tongues along the way. But you know what? If we were real men, we wouldn’t have let them do that.

Usually Bon used words like a sniper, but this was a spray of machine-gun fire that silenced me for several moments. Then I said, You don’t give these guys enough credit for what they did, for what they faced. Though they were my enemies, I understood their soldiers’ hearts, beating with the belief that they had fought bravely. You’re being too hard on them.

He laughed again, this time without humor. I’m hard on myself. Don’t call me a man or a soldier, either. Call the guys who stayed behind men and soldiers. The men in my company. Man. All dead or in prison, but at least they know they’re men. They’re so dangerous it takes other men with guns to keep them locked up. Here, no one’s frightened of us. The only people we scare are our wives and kids. And ourselves. I know these guys. I sell them liquor. I hear their stories. They come home from work, yell at their wives and kids, beat them once in a while just to show that they’re men. Only they’re not. A man protects his wife and children. A man isn’t afraid to die for them, his country, his buddies. He doesn’t live to see them all die before him. But that’s what I’ve done.

You retreated, that’s all, I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. I had never seen him speak about his pain so bluntly before. I wanted to comfort him and it hurt me that he would not let me. You had to save your family. That doesn’t make you less of a man or a soldier. You are a soldier, so think like one. Is it better to go on this suicide mission and not come back, or is it better to go with the next wave that’s actually got a chance?

He spat and ground out his cigarette against the heel of his boot, then buried it under a mound of dirt. That’s what most of these guys are saying. They’re losers and losers always have excuses. They dress up, talk tough, play soldier. But how many are really going back home to fight? The General asked for volunteers. He got three. The rest of them hide behind their wives and kids, the same wives and kids they beat because they can’t stand hiding behind them. Give a coward a second chance, he’ll just run again. So it is with most of these guys. They’re bluffing.

You cynical bastard, I cried. What are you dying for then?

What am I dying for? he cried back. I’m dying because this world I’m living in isn’t worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live.

And to this, I had nothing to say. It was true, even for this small detachment of heroes or perhaps fools. Whatever they were, they now had something to live for if not die for. They had eagerly shed the funereal clothes of their mediocre civilian lives, understanding the allure of tailored tiger stripe fatigues with dashing scarves of yellow, white, or red around their necks, a military splendor akin to the costumes of superheroes. But, like superheroes, they would not want to keep themselves a secret for long. How could you be a superhero if no one knew you existed?

Rumors had already spread about them. Even before the desert assembly, during that night when Sonny had admitted his failure and yet still won, he had asked me about these mysterious men. The wheels of our conversation had stopped spinning, the black cat was gloating over my defeat, and in the vodka-infused silence Sonny raised the reports of a secret army preparing for a secret invasion. I replied that I had not heard of any such thing, to which he said, Don’t play the innocent. You’re the General’s man.

If I were his man, I said, more reason not to tell a communist.

Who said I’m a communist?

I pretended to be surprised. You’re not a communist?

If I were, would I tell you?

That was the subversive’s dilemma. Rather than flaunt ourselves in the sexually dubious costumes of superheroes, we hid beneath cloaks of invisibility, here just as in Saigon. There, when I attended clandestine meetings with other subversives, conducted in the fusty cellars of safe houses, sitting on crates of black market hand grenades manufactured in the USA, I donned a clammy cotton hood that revealed only my eyes. Lit by candlelight or oil lamp, we knew one another only by the peculiarity of our aliases, by the shape of our bodies, by the sound of our voices, by the whites of our eyes. Now, watching Ms. Mori recline under Sonny’s arm, I was sure my ever-absorbent eyes were no longer white but bloodshot from the wine, vodka, and tobacco. Our lungs had achieved smoky equilibrium with the stale air, while on the coffee table the ashtray silently suffered its usual indignity, mouth crammed full of butts and bitter ash. I dropped what remained of my cigarette into the well of the wine bottle, where it drowned in the remaining liquid with a faint, reproachful hiss. The war’s over, Ms. Mori said. Don’t they know that? I wanted to say something profound as I stood up to say good night. I wanted to impress Ms. Mori with the intellect she could never have again. Wars never die, I said. They just go to sleep.

Is that true for old soldiers, too? she asked, not looking impressed. Of course it’s true, Sonny said. If they didn’t go to sleep, how else would they dream? I almost answered before I realized it was a rhetorical question.

Ms. Mori offered me her cheek to kiss and Sonny offered me his hand to shake. He showed me the door and I slid home through the cool sheets of night and into my own bed, Bon asleep and hovering above me in his rack. I closed my eyes and, after a spell of darkness, floated on my mattress across a black river to the foreign country that needed no passport to visit. Of its many gnomic features and shady denizens I now recall only one, my mind wiped clean except for this fatal fingerprint, an ancient kapok tree that was my final resting place and on whose arthritic bark I laid my cheek. I was almost asleep within my sleep when I gradually understood that the knot of gnarled wood on which my ear rested was actually an ear itself, curled and stiff, the wax of its auditory history encrusted in the green moss of its twisted canal. Half of the kapok tree towered above me, half was invisible below me in the rooted earth, and when I looked up I saw not just one ear but many ears swelling from the bark of its thick trunk, hundreds of ears listening and having listened to things I could not hear, the sight of those ears so horrible it hurled me back into the black river. I woke drenched and gasping, clutching the sides of my head. Only after I kicked off the damp sheets and looked under the pillow could I lie down again, trembling. My heart still beat with the force of a savage drummer, but at least my bed was not littered with amputated ears.