The Committed by Viet Thanh Nguyen EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Language: English
- Genre: City Life Fiction
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
I may no longer be a spy or a sleeper, but I am most definitely a spook.
How can I not be, with two holes in my head from which leaks the black
ink in which I am writing these words. What a peculiar condition, being
dead yet penning these lines in my little room in Paradise. This must make
me a ghostwriter, and as such, it is a simple, if spooky, matter to dip my pen
into the ink flowing from my twin holes, one drilled by myself, the other by
Bon, my best friend and blood brother. Put your gun down, Bon. You can
only kill me once.
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Or maybe not. I am also still a man of two faces and two minds, one of
which might perhaps yet still be intact. With two minds, I am able to see
any issue from both sides, and while I once flattered myself that this was a
talent, now I understand it to be a curse. What was a man with two minds
except a mutant? Perhaps even a monster. Yes, I admit it! I am not just one
but two. Not just I but you. Not just me but we.
You ask me what we should be called, having been nameless for so long.
I hesitate to give you a straight answer, as that has never been my habit. I
am a man of bad habits, and every time I have been broken of one—never
having given up such a thing willingly—I have always gone back to it,
whimpering and dewy-eyed.
Take these words, for example. I am writing them, and writing is the
worst of habits. While most people squeeze what they can from their lives,
suffering for their paychecks, absorbing vitamin D as they enjoy the
sunshine, hunting for another member of the species with whom to
procreate or just to rut, and refusing to think about death, I pass my time
with pen and paper in my corner of Paradise, growing ever whiter and
thinner, frustration steaming from my head, the sweat of sorrow sticking to
me.
I could tell you the name I have in my passport, VO DANH. I assumed this
name in anticipation of coming here to Paris, or, as our French masters
taught us to call it, the City of Light. We, Bon and I, arrived in the airport at
night on a flight from Jakarta.
Stepping out of the airplane, we were gripped
by a sense of relief, for we had reached asylum, the fever dream of all
refugees, especially those rendered refugees not just once or twice but three
times: 1954, nine years after I was born; 1975, when I was young and
reasonably handsome; and 1979, just two years ago. Was the third time the
charm, as the Americans liked to say? Bon sighed before he pulled his
airline-provided sleeping mask over his eyes. Let’s just hope France is
better than America.
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