American Romantic by Ward Just Page B

unmarried. The captain revealed nothing of himself but Harry suspected by his slurred accent that he was most likely a country boy. They talked through the afternoon and early evening without measurable result. There was something coiled about the captain, a muscle-bound suspicion so complete as to suggest obsession. He was ever watchful, switching to French as the afternoon wore on, a flat monotone, occasionally lapsing into his own language without offering translation. His voice carried great assurance, ex cathedra pronouncements as definitive and unassailable as a recitation from an especially reliable dictionary. Harry listened for any hint of irony or uncertainty and did not find it. Talking to the captain was like talking to a statue—on those few occasions when he was invited to speak. Harry had the idea that the captain regarded him as a particularly obtuse student.
    All would be satisfactory in his country when the Americans departed and until that time—nothing. Departure was the precondition for peace. Nothing else mattered. Everything else was by the way. The puppet administration was not serious. They were lackeys of the American empire and would collapse soon enough when left to their own miserable follies, ignorance, and corruption. They were in any case unable to defend themselves. They do not understand that their army belongs to us and would assert itself at the proper time. The war was already lost and the Americans knew it and yet refused to take the necessary step. A simple step, really. Quite logical. This is a strange mission you have undertaken, Monsieur Sanders. On whose authority are you here? Harry replied that he was here on instructions from the American ambassador to listen to what the captain had to say. To hear the views from the other side. He had hoped they might have an exchange of views, find points of agreement, some mutual understanding that might help bring light to the darkness. There were already many dead. There will be many more. Perhaps—and here Harry smiled and stated in well-rehearsed Vietnamese—we could have a moment of self-criticism.
    A part of your own dialectic, I believe, Harry said.
    Where did you get such an idea?
    Your chairman has mentioned it many times.
    The captain shrugged, a show of annoyance.
    I know a man who thought such a dialectic would be helpful in his marriage.
    I do not understand, the captain said.
    It wasn’t, Harry said. Helpful.
    The captain had been chain-smoking all this time and now he lit another Old Gold and looked off to the west. Dusk was coming on, the air lifting and cooling a degree or two. They sat for a moment without speaking. Harry wondered how the captain’s mind worked, if there was anything in it besides ideology. He gave the impression of filtering everything through the ideology and then leaving it to age like fine whiskey, growing deeper and richer, more profound, a whiskey without impurities. Certainly that was what he wanted for his country, a regime without impurities. If only to please himself, Harry decided to take the conversation in another direction, sports, films, music. But the captain had no interest in sports and had not seen a film in years. He tried to remember the last one he saw.
The Four Hundred Blows
he said suddenly. A French film, worthless, depicting a state of ennui. A tedious affair, the camera moving in and out of metro stations.
The Four Hundred Blows
was self-absorbed, another example of French personalism. It was not instructive. It was not logical. The captain said he had no time for films. He had no interest in films that were incorrect and there was no place for them in the Party. He looked directly at Harry and said, I want a simple thing. A people’s government. A government therefore without corruption.
    The ambassador had instructed him to listen, listen damn hard. Harry had done as instructed without recourse to pen and notebook, which in any case had been taken from