Native Speaker

by Chang-Rae Lee

  It is twilight again, and Lelia sits on the bed as I dress. My nightly departure. When we get to this point in the evening I suddenly forget the happy, earlier hours. I’m too live. I think I can see danger everywhere, the way it used to be around here. After Mitt died, it was like we were wading knee-deep in kerosene. Suddenly your speech is a match. A wrong word from either of us and whoom! Now, Lelia rises and helps me with my tie, tucking it beneath the back of my collar. She smooths the material with her fingertips. Her lips are pursed, though not tight, and they can work well enough to say be careful and lightly kiss my ear. From the bed she picks up my jacket and walks with me across the length of the apartment, to the front door. She holds the coat out for me and I take it. She says love you and I say love you back. No fuss or romance. We’ve long tired of goodbyes.

  * * *

  Soon I see Jack again, this time at a diner around the corner from Hoagland’s flat. He is sick with the last of the season’s flu, running a low-grade fever, body aches. He says he’s having crap attacks. No one is taking care of him. We sit in a booth near the washroom. When the waiter comes he orders a gyro platter and a side of pepperoncini and coffee. I just want tea.

  “You look very chipper, Parky. What, have you eaten already?”

  “With Lelia,” I answer. “You look like shit.”

  “I feel like shit. Why not? This is a good time for it. I hate this transitional weather. Is that what Dennis calls it?”

  “You’re delirious. Go home.”

  “No,” he says, holding a glass of ice water to his head. “I am here already. I am hungry, finally. You will not eat with me? I am buying the food tonight.”

  “No.”

  “Ah, the chipper young man says no. You are looking very chipper,” he says, now drinking the whole glass in one pull. He calls the waiter in Greek and his glass is refilled. He drinks it all and calls the waiter again, who grumbles something to Jack and just leaves the pitcher.

  “What did he say?” I ask.

  “That he was not my whore tonight. He also suggested I was a faggot. Also likely a cheapskate.”

  “He hardly said three syllables.”

  “Greek is a very special language,” Jack answers. “You understand these are rough translations.”

  The waiter comes around with our coffee and tea. He acts as if nothing has happened and goes away.

  “I love the service in this city,” Jack says, his forehead sweating now. He wipes his face with a napkin. “Very special all around. I must tell you, my friend, that you are being appreciated again. The talk is good.”

  “This must mean Dennis.”

  “Yes,” he says, smelling his coffee. “I love seeing you, Parky, but in truth you are right. I should be at home, in bed. But Dennis, he is so urgent with things. He is like a human bladder. One can always go if one wants, yes? The question is timing, appropriateness, convenience . . .”

  “Jack, go home.”

  “Dennis would have my head,” he says, coughing a little. “I promised I would meet with you. It is fine. I knew that when I refused any more of his fieldwork, this would be my job until retirement.”

  “Tailing unreliables.”

  “Parky. Listen to me. Everything is fine. Dennis is satisfied again with the registers,” he says, his voice hoarse. “I read your stuff myself. Professional material. Very excellent. I made Dennis admit it. And your analysis of the bombing, at least, was inventive. You understand he cannot use it in his final reports. He says it is not written after our style. Nothing like our style. But he is not angry about it.”

  I tell Jack that finesse is not a concept that agrees with him. He nods in admission. In that day’s register, I’d written that in the absence of actual events, it was likely that Glimmer & Company itself was involved in the manufacturing of happenings, creating intrigue and complication for the sake of extending funded research. Certainly, I knew that Hoagland would strike out that part of the day’s entry, but it didn’t matter because I had meant it only for him; it was true insofar as it was possible, which is enough for anyone in our line. More than anything, I was sending a personal note to Dennis, to say that whatever I was giving him should be considered, for his purposes, to be suspect, mistold prose. Perhaps you can’t trust Henry Park, I wanted him to think, you can’t abide anymore what he now sees and says.

  Jack tells me, “There could be more material in Dennis’ view, but I am telling him you are doing your best.”

  “He’ll get two more weeks,” I say. “That’s the schedule. Then it’s over.”

  “Dennis thinks you will come back.”

  “Dennis is wrong.”

  “This is the hope, of course,” Jack answers. “But then I have never known him to be. He is mad, Parky, a brilliant liar and a cheat and a fool, but he has also never been wrong. I have known him for many years. He always wins the game, if only because he knows how large and wide it truly is. People like us can see just a small part of things. This is inescapable. We are just good immigrant boys, so maybe we don’t care. What you and I want is a little bit of the good life. If we work hard, and do not question the rules too much, we can get a piece of what they have.”

  “What is that, Jack?”

  “Are you kidding?” he cries. “Just look at yourself. Look at your beautiful American wife. Look at the many things you have, how you can go anyplace you want and speak your mind.”

  “But I don’t,” I say. “I’ve forgotten how, if I ever knew. Then, when someone like Kwang attempts anything larger, there’s instant suspicion. Someone must step up and pay to send in us hyenas. We’ll sniff him out. We eat our own, you know.”

  Jack shakes his head. “You are difficult, boy. Okay. So listen to me anyway. Listen to me on the matter of these two weeks, Parky. There is still some concern.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Listen, Jack. This is my mind finally speaking.”

  “Come on,” he says. He clears his throat. “The question is, what is Parky going to do now. You are a grown man. You must want control back, yes? This began as your task and it should be yours to the end.”

  I don’t answer.

  “You can have the knowledge of ending cleanly,” he says. He coughs, hacking away from the table. “I had the chance once. Now I will retire with too many memories.”

  I am not certain of the virtue of what he says, but I don’t disagree. For some time now I have been operating under the thesis that Jack is under extreme pressures of his own—whether because of me or not doesn’t seem to matter—and that he is working without regard to my best interests. No illusions for us. I don’t blame him, for I would do the same. I am fond of Jack, and to the end I will strictly believe that he has much feeling for me. It does not matter what he does to me, or I to him, for what other friends can we hope to have? With strange souls like us, who must have opposite hearts from you, treachery is more sweetly served by our dearest than by arch-strangers we never see.

  His dinner comes. He folds the shaved meat and peppers into the pita and takes huge bites of the roll. He slurps at his coffee.

  “Dennis requests one thing,” he says, still chewing his food. “Hear me out before you say anything. I will do my job tonight for Dennis if it kills me. He wants the remaining registers, of course. Do this please. But this thing that you are working on. This money club. This is important.”

  “I’ve made my report on it. He already knows what it is and what it isn’t.” I had written that Kwang took no profits and made no interest, that he just redistributed funds at the end of every week, like any ggeh.

  “Yes, I know, Parky. Now Dennis would like an additional item. You have offered some useful facts and analysis but he requires material. You say you regularly make printouts of the list of club members for Kwang. Good. Now make one for us. You will do this?”

  I think of the list of Kwang’s peo
ple. His best and most loving. In some way I see it as the expression of the past seven years of his life, who he has been at the camp meetings and rallies, at the picnics and races and high school wrestling matches. I almost hear their voices as I open the envelopes, the stiff new bills that rush in to us in even greater tides now that he is publicly troubled, sounding out in marginal English their love for him, their devotion.

  “Why does he want it?” I ask Jack.

  “I do not ask such things,” he answers, already nearly finished with his meal. “I am happier with limited knowledge.”

  “Propose something,” I ask, to push him into saying anything, which can always reveal. “For your friend.”

  Jack wipes his mouth and sighs. “Okay, friend. Last week, two men were waiting for the elevator on our floor when I got out. I did not recognize them. I asked Candace who they were. She said they were Dennis’ friends, from Arizona.”

  “Dennis has no friends.”

  “Right,” Jack replies. “So I assumed they were clients. But I tell you, Parky, I can smell that type right away.”

  “What?”

  “Cheap cologne and cheap shoes,” Jack says. “I noticed one of them was filling out an expense book. Of course I didn’t ask Dennis. But it was clear. Baptiste thought so, too. You can ask him. Federales.”

  “Government people?” I say.

  “You add it up,” Jack says. “Now, if they were visiting Dennis because of Kwang, which I am not saying, then why? You say he is legitimate, except there is a minor fact of thousands of dollars coming in through the basement of his house every week.”

  “I described every stage for you. I saw everything. It’s clean.”

  “Of course you did,” Jack says, waving his finger at me. “But look at this. This could be of keen interest to the revenue service. You say you redistribute almost all of the money. But maybe you don’t know. He has lost a lot of money in some businesses, yes, since becoming a councilman? A small fortune. Maybe he thinks the people owe him something back. Maybe you are running just one of his money clubs, of which there are a dozen, or two dozen.”

  “You and Dennis have all the angles.”

  He laughs at me. “Dennis and I cannot fool you. Whatever you wish to believe about what happened at Kwang’s office is your right. So remember this. I am the one who has been an arsonist and murderer, Parky, not Dennis. Dennis is not a man in that way. He is not a doing creature. He will falsely take credit whenever he can, big talker he is, but that is all. Now, I am seeing what you write of Kwang, the way you present him with something extra. It is evident that you cannot help yourself. Something takes you over. You must see how this is a ripe condition. So could it be that the honorable John Kwang is deceiving you, Parky, and not just the other way? Is it possible that through all of your genuine respect and admiration, he is using you?”

  Jack spreads his hands on the table, his favored stance rhetorical. Of course I can’t reply. He snorts and goes back to the rest of his plate of pepperoncini, taking them neatly like candies, one by one. When he’s done he calls for more coffee and tea.

  “I did not come to make trouble for you, Parky,” Jack tells me, taking my hand. “You can think I am right or I am crazy. Either way it will not hurt us, I hope. We are brothers, yes, Greek and Korean? Like it or not, Parky, ours is a family. Pete, Grace, the Jimmys. Me and you. I know it is a sad excuse for one, but what else do we have?”

  “It’s an orphanage, Jack,” I say. “And there’s a Fagin.”

  He shakes his head. “Whatever you say. I am not schooled. What I know is that America is not so open. People like you and me can only do what is necessary. We are not the ones who have the choices. Maybe we feel outside of things, and are smart enough, and we also know our own. So what is better, Parky, for who we are?”

  “Nothing better,” I tell him.

  “Right,” he says. “So you will please give us the list. Soon, yes? Dennis will probably like to send someone down for pickup.”

  “I’m not sure what I can give you,” I answer.

  “Well, you figure it out,” he says, with some finality. He takes out some bills to pay for dinner. He calls the waiter, who slowly walks over. Jack points up at him with his finger and says something, his tone suddenly sharp, raspy, and vicious. The waiter carefully takes the money and goes away without speaking.

  We rise to leave. He folds up his wallet with his big hands.

  “He spit in my coffee,” Jack says, watching the man walk every step to the register. “I told him I loved it. Now he will always wonder when this crazy Greek will come back for him.”

  When you are someone like me, you will be many people all at once. You are a father, a dictator, a servant, the most agile actor this land has ever known. And all throughout you must be the favorite chaste love of the people.

  John Kwang tells me this. He tells me this at night when I work in the basement of the house. He tells me this when we walk the lovely empty 4 A.M. streets of Flushing, and in the all-night Korean restaurants full of taxi drivers and dry cleaners, where we share plates of grilled short ribs and heated crocks of spicy intestine stew and lager imported from Seoul. He tells me these tips of survival as if preparing me for his rank, his position, his singular place in the city that he is letting slip from his grasp.

  He is no longer moving in his customary way. He looks old and weary, like he’s standing still. He decides to make a brief appearance for the media in the foyer of the ruined offices (against the repeated warnings of Janice, who hates the shot—all that shadowy wreckage and defeat), and with the barrage of questions and arc lights and auto winders he actually falters. Perhaps for the first time in his public life he mumbles, his voice cracks, and even an accent sneaks through. He doesn’t seem to be occupying the office, the position. He gazes listlessly at the cameras and responds like a man stopped on the street, dutifully answering each part of each question, answering the follow-ups, searching through the mess of his emotions for reasons this could happen.

  Total amateur hour, Janice grumbles to me. The only good thing, she says later, is that he finally steps down from the microphones before the volleys of questions about that morning’s still unconfirmed news, which is that Eduardo Fermin was renting his own apartment in Manhattan. Otherwise, she adds, it might have been official, a complete meltdown. But they shout after him anyway as he makes his way out: how did a volunteer and night student afford $1,000 a month? How come even his parents didn’t know? Who was he, and what was he doing, to have this other life?

  In the next staff meeting, Janice gives us the official last word, come directly from John. He knows nothing about it. By my longtime habit and practice I put myself in Kwang’s place, and I know it must be something with the ggeh, his paying of Eduardo, the apartment being a generous gift, what he thought his protégé deserved. I would have offered good Eduardo the same. There is, however, another notion, another idea steadily working itself through my thoughts: that perhaps Eduardo was taking money from John Kwang, stealing from him and his people, the very ones we are working for all day and all night.

  I check what I can. I go back over Eduardo’s records of the ggeh, the daily cash flows, every line of the ledgers. I check the rest of our political contributions. Nothing seems to be off, and what I’m beginning to realize is that Eduardo Fermin kept magnificent records and files. All this confounds me even more. I know that if there is complication in every assignment, a shift or turn that can newly show events in either shadow or light, this is the way our world has always been written. You must sail an expectedly treacherous course.

  And yet for me, the mystery of a happening has no magic anymore, no natural draw. It is the graver thing I must seek, the dire constant, which I thought at first was simply John Kwang. It is him, too, for certain, but it’s also the condition Jack has suggested. Revelations are not to be found in the far bend of the river, dark
ly hidden in the trees. There are no ready savages there, and never were. We make angels and devils of our own want and regard, improvising from ourselves along the way.

  Though I cannot see that my business has directly brought Kwang to his trouble, I know that Hoagland is now busy recompiling my daily work, preparing it for his secret reader, who will do with it what he wishes. In my weaker moments, I imagine the client as a vastly wealthy voyeur, a decrepit, shut-away xenophobe who keeps a national vigilance on eminent agitators and ethnics. Of course he’s more a collector than anything else, loving the pursuit too much, easily bored. But then I allow myself to see, and I flush with regret. I picture another client, the kind more numerous. I dread him, for he lives in the very mouth of the world; he knows its sweet and its stink, how to read any talk, and he will sift through my troubled affection for John Kwang with the soberest eyes.

  Out in the world, John Kwang is falling. His name is diving in the polls; not just in one poll but across the board, the news-organization polls, the radio call-in polls, the 900-number talk show polls which you can call into and vote on what he should do. We know he still has plenty of supporters, but they’re mostly silent, and the scope of the questions keeps growing. Reporters call everyone on the staff, phone us at the office, suggesting unceasingly how it must involve money, it must involve money.

  You click them off as fast as you can. There’s only a skeleton crew working, even during the day, when the hourly barrage of calls comes in. Requests and repeated requests, reporters at the basement door posing as utility men, utility women, they’re at the point where they simply want to get inside the walls. Suddenly this has become enough for them, the new low standard, just to see where he’s hiding, get the feel of the cell, the bunker.