by Неизвестный
“The ignorant white fools are trying to put pressure on the new government to outlaw the stuff, of course,” said the captain. He was animated now, almost as if he were acting out a part in a play. “But the fact is this city’s overflowing with people who need the stuff, who rely on it. This new government won’t give them what they want. They’re too worried about what the white man would say. So that’s where we come in. Think of what we’re doing as a sort of public service.”
I surveyed the faces of the people working on the shop floor. Hoa? Xema? I walked up to one of them and stared straight into her face from point-blank range. Still nothing. I just couldn’t tell.
“The woman you’re looking at? She’s Hoa. A valued member of our staff. Part of our family,” the captain told me. I looked at her again, trying to sniff out even a hint of a clue that would give away whether she was Xema or Hoa: her pupils, nose, her forehead, the thickness of her lips. I stared and I stared. Perhaps she felt uncomfortable, I’m not sure, but suddenly she turned to me without warning and answered a question I hadn’t even asked.
“I’m glad I found this place,” she said with a smile, her hands continuing to work away all the while. “I earn a decent wage and can feed my family well on it. Mr. Entoleh there is a fine gentleman, he looks after all his workers good and proper. This one time, my boy was sick in bed with a fever, and when Mr. Entoleh heard about it he went out of his way to bring the boy some medicine. He came himself, personally! Right over to my house, even though I’m a Hoa!”
“Well, we’re all in this together, after all,” said the captain. “It’s the least I could do for one of my best workers.” He spoke calmly and with an apparently unshakeable confidence.
Mr. Entoleh. I realized that I had never known the captain’s real name up until now. During the war we only ever called officers by their rank.
The man who had ordered our company of children about during the war, telling us to kill this person and burn that village down to the ground, that man was now making a different sort of killing altogether by selling Khatsticks on a grand scale. Not that this was the part that bothered me. Khatsticks may have been illegal or whatever, but there were plenty of people who needed them and wanted them, and anyway, shit on the white man’s law and his government lackeys. No, what bothered me was the other thing. The fact that, for me, the war was still not over yet.
“But, but … there are Hoa here!” I couldn’t stop myself from blurting this out.
Captain Entoleh made a big show of shaking his head theatrically. “The war’s over, kid. In order to do business we all need to get along. Try talking to one of the Hoa guys sometime. You’ll find that they get it. The fact is, there’s no real difference between them and us.”
No real difference between them and us.
The words stabbed me deep. I remembered words this man had shouted at us before our assault on Minga Village, before countless raids on Hoa villages. They’re different from us. They’re not human. So kill, kill, kill them all. Then he’d give us a swift slap on the butt to send us into the thick of it.
“But we were fighting the Hoa for ages! You were the one who taught me about all the terrible things the Hoa did before I was born, Captain!”
Entoleh shook his head as if he were indulging a petulant child. “I did what I had to do to get you to fight.”
“Are you saying you lied to us, Captain?”
Entoleh frowned. “No. They weren’t lies. What you were taught was real history. History from the SDA perspective. In order to fight, you need history. People need to know why they are fighting, what they are fighting for.”
“So you made up some bullshit history just so you could get us to fight your fucking war!” I was shouting now. This man in front of me, all the adults, had poisoned my mind, getting me to do their dirty work for them by spinning me their lies. The Hoa started it. Hoa don’t feel pain, that’s why they’re so cruel themselves. My friends and I bought it hook, line, and sinker: my friends who fell all around me in battle.
“As I said. They weren’t lies.” The man who had once been my captain raised his voice and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips as if he were now dealing with some wearisome episode. “What you have to understand is that no one had any conception of a history between us before the war actually started. Not us Xema, not the Hoa. Until the war began, no one cared less what sort of history their tribe may or may not have been shouldering. It’s only when we constructed a concept of history that the Xema started to hate the Hoa. And vice versa. History is just a backdrop to pin your wars on, nothing more, nothing less. Wars don’t start because of history, but you do need history to start a war. You need a pretext to fight, to find a way, however tenuous, to differentiate yourselves from the other side. And not just history either. The same goes for countries. Even tribal distinctions such as Xema and Hoa, all artificial constructs. You can even take this to its logical conclusion—even distinctions between ‘you’ and ‘I’ exist only to make war possible. Think about it. In order to kill each other, the ‘each’ needs to be distinct from the ‘other.’ Wars don’t start because ‘you’ and ‘I’ hate each other, oh no, that’s the wrong way round. Better to say the very concept of ‘I’ exists purely in order to fuel war.”
“You think your fancy fucking speeches somehow make everything all right?” I screamed at him to try and cut through his bullshit. The factory workers, who had up until a minute ago been absorbed in trying to make their quotas, all stopped still. Their eyes surreptitiously flicked toward us. “They don’t. They don’t, and you know it, Captain. All you’re really saying is that you made up some crap so you could get us to kill each other.”
I pressed my point. I was now completely playing the part of the stubborn child refusing to listen to what he was being told. I didn’t understand a single thing this man was saying to me. “I” and “you” only exist so we can go to war with each other? That was crazy … I’d never fought with Mom, not really. Only a little with Sis. Sure, I argued with Pop all the time, but that sure as hell couldn’t be called war.
“Okay, well, do you know what? Let’s go with that. You got me.” Entoleh spoke as if he were resigning himself to something, but then continued, “So, do me a favor, kid, and stop taking everything out on the Hoa, stop flipping out and attacking them every time you see them, stop getting angry at them or blaming them for everything. I’d much rather you blamed me. Just remember, we Xema speak the same language as they do; we eat the same food. We just look a little different, that’s all. Just keep telling yourself that everything we taught you was all lies, and you’ll see there’s no logical reason why you should hate them anymore. Much more important to move on and concentrate on surviving in this new world. Working side by side for a better future, if that’s what it takes.”
Should hate them? The man who used to be my captain was now spouting such shit that I was rooted to the spot in dumb amazement.
Did this man really think we hated the Hoa because we “should,” because we had some sort of logical reason to do so? What a fucktard. The reason I hated the Hoa, why I hated them all these years and would continue to hate them, was because there was nothing else I could do. They killed my family, Mom, Sis, Pop, and there was no other way I could live except to hate them. The question of what I “should” or “shouldn’t” do never came into the equation. If it were just a matter of deciding what I “should” do, why wouldn’t I have done it by now?
Most of all, though, the thing that was the funniest and the most fucked up was the fact that this man sounded exactly like the fat-bitch teacher back at the institute. This man who had ruthlessly and indiscriminately mown down women and children on the battlefield was now spouting exactly the same sort of platitudinous crap as she did. “Working side by side for a better future” my ass.
I considered the man in front of me. All it would take would be for me to reach out toward his holster and grab his gun, I was sure of it. That barrel that was covered i
n engravings, not that this made it any more practical, although it was cool …
All I needed to do was take the gun, pull it out, and shoot him. I could do it, I realized—but then it hit me that I had absolutely no desire to kill. Sure, I’d had a rush of blood to the head a minute ago, but now that was subsiding I realized what an insignificant speck of fly crap this man was in the grand scheme of things.
Besides, if I were to kill him, I’d be shot to shit by the guards patrolling the perimeter. He wasn’t worth it.
“I’m really sorry, Captain,” I said honestly, “but I don’t think I’m going to be able to stay here after all.”
I went back to living on the street.
I wandered the city aimlessly, taking care only to avoid any place that looked like it might be somebody’s patch. I briefly considered returning to the institute, but the idea of having to spend my days surrounded by people when I had no idea whether they were Hoa or Xema was just too unbearable.
After a few days like this I was back to my former physique. I could feel my ribs jutting through my skin. My joints ached and I felt weak all over. Well, I guess this is it, I’m going to waste away now, I thought to myself as I meandered toward the center of Heaven City.
Faces, faces, faces with their white eyes, looking at me. Were they Hoa? Xema? I still couldn’t tell, of course. Kids would stop their begging when I passed by, looking up at me, checking out who it was invading their patch.
If I were to start looking for food or alms around here I’d be surrounded and lynched in no time flat. I was starving, parched, and was withering under the cruel sun. The city gave me no shelter, no comfort, no sustenance. I was a cipher, a ghostly figure, probably. Not that I was the only such specter in this town.
Then I smacked into something.
“Hey, watch where you’re going, kid.” The speaker was carrying a gun and wore a flak jacket adorned with pockets. An American soldier.
I stumbled backward from the impact. I tried to catch my balance but my legs were too weak to support me. My knees crumpled like paper. I must have been a truly pathetic sight as I folded up and landed on my ass.
“Jesus Christ, kid. Look at the state of you. Are you okay?”
The American soldier helped me up. He really was something else in his camouflage gear, his flak jacket and his big gun. A model soldier. I wish I’d had all this back when I was fighting, I thought to myself for a moment. This was a different sort of cool from the carved gun that the captain had. The latest. The best. The soldier helped me up, but it still took me some time to find my footing again; that’s what happens when you’re so low on energy, I guess. Sorry, it’s just ’cause I haven’t eaten for days, I said, or rather I tried to say—I had no idea whether my parched vocal cords had been able to get the words out.
“Don’t sweat it, kid. Take this,” the American soldier said, and handed me a bar of chocolate. FIRST STRIKE, it said on the plastic wrapper. Cool. The American also gave me his canteen full of water to swig on. I gulped it down greedily. Just like I had at the captain’s hideout. Like a dog, like the dog I had become.
I noticed the evil stares I was getting from the kids who claimed this territory, but there wasn’t exactly anything they could do when faced with an American soldier.
“I need to get out of here,” I begged the soldier. I needed him to get me out of this place, or else the moment he left I’d be a sitting duck.
“Why’s that, kid?”
I’m not allowed to beg for scraps here, I explained, and then the rest of my story started pouring out almost of its own accord. I’d already told most of my story once before, to Captain Entoleh, so I knew how it went already. This time, I was able to tell it even more fluently.
The American seemed to understand. He escorted me out of the area.
We found ourselves by his barracks, and we sat down next to them. I dived into some more candy and water. The soldier asked me who I was, and I gave him my real name. I’m Williams, he told me in return.
“CMI has done all sorts of stuff to my brain too,” he said. “Stuff that stops me from stressing out when I’m in combat, or after I return home. Some of the guys don’t like the idea of being interfered with this way, of course. As for me, well, I’m not crazy about it, but I guess I see why they do it. Probably a good thing on balance.”
My hand holding the candy bar stopped midair. So this guy also had doctors mess around with his mind, huh? How, exactly, I asked? There’s no way of telling what sort of “shot to the heart” somebody has had just by looking at them, of course. It’s not like losing a leg or an eye.
“Huh, well, let’s see. Before I go into battle I get this little jab that stops me from feeling pain. It works on my brain. Now, if this jab really stopped you from feeling pain at all, then if you took a bullet you might not even notice that you were wounded, right? You could end up bleeding to death over what should have just been a flesh wound.”
I nodded.
“So what happens is this,” Williams said. “When a bullet hits you, it registers in your mind that you’re hurting—how do I say this—it’s a bit like ‘knowing’ in the sense of knowing what’s happening in a book you’re reading, or a conversation you’re having. You follow, you know, you process it, you just don’t end up rolling around in agony. That’s the sort of thing we get injections for.”
“So you know that you’re in pain, you just don’t feel pain,” I said.
“Exactly, kid. You’re quick on the uptake. You put it far better than I do. It took me almost two months to get my head around it.” The American kept a straight face as he spoke. No hint of a smile. It seemed so weird he could talk about this with such clinical detachment, such a lack of emotion.
I thought about what Williams had just told me. If American magic was capable of such weird stuff, then it must have been easy for them to make it so my head couldn’t tell the difference between Xema and Hoa anymore. I could still tell the difference between individual faces. Who’s who? It was just that when I saw someone for the first time, I couldn’t tell whether they were Hoa or Xema—that was all. The most natural thing in the world to anyone born and raised in this country, and I couldn’t do it.
Was this what they meant by “indifference”?
This was crazy. Did they really think that by removing the target of my hatred, my hatred would just disappear? That the world would suddenly somehow become a peaceful place? Who came up with this scheme? Was it the new government? The Americans? Our teachers? Who could have honestly thought that this would solve anything?
“It’s the NGOs,” Williams said. “Who’re behind these mind-changing programs, I mean. It’s a popular school of thought in Europe and America at the moment. The idea that all the world needs is for people to stop treating different races differently and then we’d have a perfect world where harmony and equality prevail. And once people believe in an idea strongly enough, they’ll do anything to try and make their ideology become reality.”
“Are there wars between different tribes going on back in your country, sir?” I asked.
“No, no, nothing quite as drastic as that. There are plenty of people who’ll point out that there is still a sort of low-level discrimination that hasn’t yet completely disappeared, though. And it’s usually those people who put themselves forward for the mind-altering surgery. So that they can make a dramatic statement to the world. To tell us all they are not prejudiced—and to wear the fact like a badge of honor. And it works. It helps these people get ahead in life, get a promotion at work. In some companies, at least. These people get stuck in their grassroots volunteering on Sundays, they sort their trash and their recycling religiously, they attend their monthly counseling sessions faithfully, they participate enthusiastically in consumer focus groups and the social progress debates of the day, all while keeping a meticulous log of their social virtue so they can brandish their good citizenship credentials at a moment’s notice.
“Hardly surprising
that it’s these people who are the most enthusiastic about the idea of fiddling about with people’s brains to make it so they can’t distinguish between different races anymore. It’s almost become a prerequisite to being a ‘good person,’ someone society can trust. And I guess that some bright spark at some NGO somewhere had the idea that this sort of social engineering could be taken and transplanted into some other country where different tribes were killing each other. Figured it would somehow bring about peace.”
I could hardly follow half the things he was saying, but one thing did stand out: this man’s home country was, all things considered, a pretty peaceful place compared to ours. It had to be, for people to have the time to worry about whether they should or shouldn’t go in for an operation that would make them utterly unable to distinguish between races.
Try that in the war here so that you couldn’t tell the difference between Xema and Hoa. You’d be dead before you had time to blink.
“Yeah, my country is hardly the theater of war that your country’s been these past years,” Williams said, almost as if he were apologizing for the fact. “Sorry to put it so bluntly.”
“So what gives you the right to come over here and impose your values on us?” I asked him. “This is a war zone here. Not being able to tell the difference between races can get a person killed.”
“The war’s over though, isn’t it?” the American replied, a trace of doubt lingering in his voice. “We ended it, didn’t we?”
I wanted to shout at him—not just to say it was the Dutch and not you arrogant Americans who ended the war, but to scream that for me the war wasn’t yet over—but I knew it would be pointless. We were just doing what the president of this white man’s country was telling us to do, after all. Forget your hatred. Forgive the crimes of those who murdered your family. And this is what we were being forced to do in reality: not a single Hoa had been tried for his crimes, and they were all going about their business in Heaven City as if nothing had ever happened.