Only the middle-aged man next to me did not laugh or chuckle. His suit was neutral blue, and an inoffensive striped tie was leashed around his neck. He was a personal injury lawyer, a maestro of the class-action lawsuit. Picking at his Waldorf salad, he said, It’s funny you say saving face, Dr. Hedd. Things have changed, haven’t they? Twenty or thirty years ago, no American would have said “saving face” with a straight face.
There were many things Americans would not have said with a straight face twenty or thirty years ago that we say today, said Dr. Hedd. “Saving face” is a useful expression, and I say this as someone who fought the Japanese in Burma.
They were tough, said the Congressman, or so my father told me. There’s nothing wrong with respecting your enemies. In fact, it’s noble to respect them. Look at what they’ve done with some help from us. You can’t drive down the street today without seeing a Japanese car.
The Japanese invested big in my country, too, said the General. They sold motorbikes and tape recorders. I owned a Sanyo stereo myself.
And this was only a couple of decades after they occupied you, the Congressman said. Did you know that a million Vietnamese died of famine during the Japanese years? The comment was addressed to the other men in suits, who did not laugh or chuckle. No kidding, said the personal injury lawyer. “No kidding” was about the only thing one could say when a statistic such as this arrived after the salad and before the hanger steak and baked potato. For a moment everyone squinted at his plate or cocktail, earnest as a patient studying an eye chart. As for me, I was calculating how to repair the damage the Congressman had inadvertently inflicted. He had complicated our task of being pleasant dinner companions by mentioning famine, something that Americans had never known. The word could only conjure otherworldly landscapes of the skeletal dead, which was not the spectral image we wanted to present, for what one should never do was to require other people to imagine they were just like one of us. Spiritual teleportation unsettled most people, who, if they thought of others at all, preferred to think that others were just like them or could be just like them.
That tragedy was a long time ago, I said. To tell you the truth, most of our countrymen here are less focused on the past than they are on becoming Americans.
How are they doing that? Dr. Hedd asked, and as he stared over his lenses it seemed to me that I was being examined by four eyes, not two. They — we, that is — believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, I said, the answer I had given to many Americans. This drew approving nods from everyone at the table except for Dr. Hedd, who I had forgotten was an English immigrant. He kept his quadriscopic vision turned on me, those dual eyes and dual lenses unsettling. So, he said, are you happy? It was an intimate question, nearly as personal as asking about my salary, acceptable in our homeland but not here. What was worse, however, was that I could not think of a satisfactory answer. If I was unhappy, it would reflect badly on me, for Americans saw unhappiness as a moral failure and thought crime. But if I was happy, it would be in bad taste to say so, or a sign of hubris, as if I was boasting or gloating.
The waiters arrived at that moment with the solemnity of Egyptian servants ready to be buried alive with their pharaoh, platters with the main courses propped on their shoulders. If I thought that having slabs of meat before us would spare me Dr. Hedd’s attention, I was wrong. He repeated his question after the waiters had departed, and I said I was not unhappy. The fat balloon of my double negative hung in the air for a moment, ambiguous and vulnerable. Presumably, Dr. Hedd said, you are not unhappy because you are pursuing happiness and have not yet captured it. As we all supposedly are, correct, gentlemen? The men murmured an assent through mouthfuls of steak and red wine. Americans on the average do not trust intellectuals, but they are cowed by power and stunned by celebrity. Not only did Dr. Hedd have a measure of both, he also possessed an English accent, which affected Americans the way a dog whistle stimulated canines. I was immune to the accent, not having been colonized by the English, and I was determined to hold my own in this impromptu seminar.
What about you, Dr. Hedd? I asked. Are you happy?
The doctor was unfazed by my question, parsing his peas with his knife before deciding on a sliver of steak. As you evidently realized, he said, there is no good answer to that question.
Isn’t yes the good answer? said the assistant district attorney.
No, because happiness, American style, is a zero-sum game, sir. Dr. Hedd slowly turned his head in an arc as he spoke, making sure that he saw every man in the room. For someone to be happy, he must measure his happiness against someone else’s unhappiness, a process which most certainly works in reverse. If I said I was happy, someone else must be unhappy, most likely one of you. But if I said I was unhappy, that might make some of you happier, but it would also make you uneasy, as no one is supposed to be unhappy in America. I believe our clever young man has intuited that while only the pursuit of happiness is promised to all Americans, unhappiness is guaranteed for many.
Gloom descended on the table. The unspeakable had been spoken, which people like the General and myself could never have uttered in polite white company without rendering ourselves beyond the pale. Refugees such as ourselves could never dare question the Disneyland ideology followed by most Americans, that theirs was the happiest place on earth. But Dr. Hedd was beyond reproach, for he was an English immigrant. His very existence as such validated the legitimacy of the former colonies, while his heritage and accent triggered the latent Anglophilia and inferiority complex found in many Americans. Dr. Hedd was clearly aware of his privilege and was amused at the discomfort he was causing his American hosts. It was in this climate that the General intervened. I’m sure the good doctor is right, he said. But if happiness is not guaranteed, freedom is, and that, gentlemen, is more important.
Hear, hear, General, said the Congressman, raising his glass. Isn’t that what the immigrant has always understood? The rest of the guests also raised their glasses, even Dr. Hedd, smiling enigmatically at the General’s redirection of the conversation. Such a move was typical on the General’s part. He knew how to read a crowd, a crucial skill for raising money. As I had reported to Man through my Parisian aunt, he had already achieved a degree of fund-raising success, drawing from a handful of organizations to which he had been introduced by Claude, as well as his own contacts among Americans who had visited our country or done tours of duty there. These were well-connected men of pedigree, as were those who served on the boards of trustees for these organizations. The amount of money they gifted to the Fraternity was moderate by their standards, hardly anything to draw the attention of auditors or journalists. But once the Dollar Bill was dispatched abroad to Thailand, some extraordinary hocus-pocus called the exchange rate happened. The Dollar Bill might buy a ham sandwich in America, but in a Thai refugee camp the modest green Dollar Bill transformed into colorful Baht, ready to feed a fighting man for days. For a little more Baht, our fighting man could be clothed with the latest in olive drab. Thus, in the name of helping refugees, these donations met the basic necessities of food and garb for the secret army, consisting, after all, of refugees. As for guns and ammunition, they were supplied by the Thai security forces, who in turn received their pocket money from Uncle Sam, carried out with complete transparency and full congressional approval.