But I am getting ahead of myself, and in any case our dessert has arrived. He has brought only a single bowl; I sensed that you were not keen on having more than a taste, and the same is true of myself, as I am now quite full. What do you think, sir? Ah, that puckering of your lips is an inauspicious sign. Too sweet, you say? An interesting observation, given that I have always felt your country to be rather similar to mine in the intensity of its national desire for sweetness. But perhaps you are atypical; your travels have taken you far from the ubiquitous soda fountains and ice-cream bars of your motherland.
I too had traveled far that January, but the home of Neruda did not feel as removed from Lahore as it actually was; geographically, of course, it was perhaps as remote a place as could be found on the planet, but in spirit it seemed only an imaginary caravan ride away from my city, or a sail by night down the Ravi and Indus. I told the vice president that I was going out to inspect a distribution center and with this excuse made my way up into the hills, climbing higher and higher, until when I turned to look at the ocean I saw gulls soaring at the same altitude as myself. The neighborhood was a poor one, with colorful murals like graffiti on the walls and children racing by on wooden carts that appeared to be shipping crates to which wheels had been attached. The house itself was compact and beautiful, reminiscent of a boat jutting out over the bay; a garden cascaded below it, and behind the bar was a convex mirror, which Neruda had employed to convince his guests that they were drunk. I lingered on the terrace and watched the sun dip lower in the sky. In the distance, someone was playing the guitar; it was a delicate melody, a song with no words.
I thought of Erica. It occurred to me that my attempts to communicate with her might have failed in part because I did not know where I stood on so many issues of consequence; I lacked a stable core. I was not certain where I belonged — in New York, in Lahore, in both, in neither — and for this reason, when she reached out to me for help, I had nothing of substance to give her. Probably this was why I had been willing to try to take on the persona of Chris, because my own identity was so fragile. But in so doing — and by being unable to offer her an alternative to the chronic nostalgia inside her — I might have pushed Erica deeper into her own confusion. I resolved to write this to her in an email, as a sort of apology, perhaps, and as an invitation to resume the contact between us that she had all but severed, and I recall pressing send without rereading even once what I had written.
But days passed without any response, and I began to lose hope that one would come. I telephoned my parents and they told me that the situation in Pakistan continued to be precarious; it was rumored that India was acting with America’s connivance, both countries seeking through the threat of force to coerce our government into changing its policies. Moreover, our house’s main water connection had ruptured — the pipes were long overdue for replacement — and the pressure was now so low that it had become impossible to take a shower; they were making do with buckets and ladles instead. This caused me to reflect again on the absurdity of my situation, being two hemispheres — if such a thing is possible — from home at a time when my family was in need.
The only manner in which I could be of aid to them at that moment was to provide money, and this I did, wiring what little savings I possessed to my brother because my father refused to accept it. The act of calling my bank to arrange the transfer ought to have impressed upon me the importance of my job: after all, I had no other source of income to fall back on. But instead my indifference to my work continued unabated. There was no longer any possibility of deceiving the vice president; my lapses had become obvious, and his reprimands grew increasingly blunt. I wonder in retrospect why he did not reach out to Jim at that stage to have me replaced, but then again, this was not entirely surprising: the task of a vice president at our firm — the word vice in the title notwithstanding — was to be as close to autonomous as possible. A good vice president was one who got things done, no matter what, and to appeal for assistance prematurely would be to undermine one’s superior’s confidence in one’s abilities.
As for myself, I was clearly on the threshold of great change; only the final catalyst was now required, and in my case that catalyst took the form of lunch. Juan-Bautista’s invitation caught me off guard; he simply mentioned, as I was passing his office one day, that it would be a shame to have visited Valparaiso without having tasted sea bass cooked in salt, and as he intended to go to his favorite restaurant that afternoon, I really ought — if I were free — to accompany him. I said — out of politeness and curiosity, and also because I was eager to seize any pretext to avoid returning to the poisonous atmosphere of our team room — that it would be an honor, and the next thing I knew, I found myself making my way through the streets of the city with a man who desired more than any other to see our client’s acquisition fail to proceed.
Juan-Bautista wore a hat and carried a walking stick, and he ambled at a pace so slow that it would likely have been illegal for him to cross at an intersection in New York. When we were seated and he had ordered on our behalf, he said, “I have been observing you, and I think it is no exaggeration to say, young man, that you seem upset. May I ask you a rather personal question?” “Certainly,” I said. “Does it trouble you,” he inquired, “to make your living by disrupting the lives of others?” “We just value,” I replied. “We do not decide whether to buy or to sell, or indeed what happens to a company after we have valued it.” He nodded; he lit a cigarette and took a sip from his glass of wine. Then he asked, “Have you heard of the janissaries?” “No,” I said. “They were Christian boys,” he explained, “captured by the Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in a Muslim army, at that time the greatest army in the world. They were ferocious and utterly loyaclass="underline" they had fought to erase their own civilizations, so they had nothing else to turn to.”
He tipped the ash of his cigarette onto a plate. “How old were you when you went to America?” he asked. “I went for college,” I said. “I was eighteen.” “Ah, much older,” he said. “The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget.” He smiled and speculated no further on the subject. Our food arrived shortly thereafter and the sea bass may well have been as splendid as he had claimed; unfortunately, I can no longer recall its taste.
But your expression, sir, tells me that you think something is amiss. Did this conversation really happen, you ask? For that matter, did this so-called Juan-Bautista even exist? I assure you, sir: you can trust me. I am not in the habit of inventing untruths! And moreover, even if I were, there is no reason why this incident would be more likely to be false than any of the others I have related to you. Come, come, I believe we have passed through too much together to begin to raise questions of this nature at so late a stage.
In any case, Juan-Bautista’s words plunged me into a deep bout of introspection. I spent that night considering what I had become. There really could be no doubt: I was a modern-day janissary, a servant of the American empire at a time when it was invading a country with a kinship to mine and was perhaps even colluding to ensure that my own country faced the threat of war. Of course I was struggling! Of course I felt torn! I had thrown in my lot with the men of Underwood Samson, with the officers of the empire, when all along I was predisposed to feel compassion for those, like Juan-Bautista, whose lives the empire thought nothing of overturning for its own gain.