The Comedy is Finished

every silence, “robs the Korean people of self-determination. It is the historical reality that the capitalist aggressor must always widen the area of—”

“Jesus Christ! Listen to yourself! Do you even know what those words mean?”

“Yes, sir, I do. I’ll tell you what they mean, sir, every—”

“You will not,” Koo said, getting to his feet. “You already told me too much. And now I’ll tell you something, boy. You aren’t even a person anymore. I don’t know what you were before they captured you, but all you are now is some sort of stupid machine, you just jabber these words and they don’t make any sense.” Koo had worked himself up, he was almost visualizing himself as America personified, facing down Communism personified in this pitiful boy, as James Cagney used to personify America facing down the Gestapo in World War Two movies; but that was too ridiculous, too melodramatic for the true situation, and Koo’s reaction to his own excess was immediate embarrassment, and a turning down of the rhetoric. “I hope you come out of it all right,” he said, grudgingly. “I hope you get back to your right mind.”

“I’m not crazy, Mr. Davis. I just know more than I used to, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well—” But Koo shrugged and shook his head, seeing it was hopeless. No rescue was possible, no human contact was possible; there was nothing to do but leave. “Good luck to you,” he said, curt and impersonal.

“Thank you, Mr. Davis.” Some pale green flame burned within the boy, gave him his sustenance, provided him with the solemnity for what he said next: “But I won’t need luck. I have Truth, and History, on my side.” The capital letters were clearly sounded, brave flourishes in his gray speech.

“Oh, yeah?” Koo’s jokes were rarely sour, but this one was: “Well, one of them’s picking your pocket,” he said, which was an exit line, on which he left, and later over dinner with Colonel Boomer he agreed that he too couldn’t understand a boy like that. “How does it happen?” The officers around the table shook their heads.

By morning, with the familiar but still exhausting routine of the next move and the farewell and the chopper flight and the next hello, Private Bramlett slipped out of Koo’s memory all but completely, and he hasn’t actually thought about the boy from that day till this. Now Koo wonders what did finally happen. Did he go to jail? Did he smarten up, did he recover from his brainwashing? Where is he now, Private Bramlett, a man nearing fifty by this time; does he still believe the things he said to Koo all those years ago?

And does Koo still believe the things he said to Bramlett?

And is there a connection between Bramlett and this fellow Larry, droning away about his African tribes and his Power Elites? Does Bramlett, alone and weak and hopeless and incomprehensible, nevertheless lead to all the Larrys of the Vietnam anti-war movement, in their infuriating thousands?

There’s another pause in Larry’s monologue, the kind of pause in which Koo has been able to offer nothing more encouraging than a smile or a nod—hopeless conversational gaps—but this time he fills the silence with one word: “Korea.”

And Larry brightens like a proud mother when the baby says Mama. “That’s right! Korea’s a perfect example. You do begin to see it, don’t you?”

“I think I do,” Koo says. “Tell me, uh... Do you know somebody named Bramlett?”

Larry is confused. “Bramlett?”

“He’d be—I guess he’d be forty-five by now, something like that.”

“Who is he?”

“A boy I met in Korea. Defector.” Then Koo frowns, trying to think. “Is that what we called them then? Brainwashed. They went to the Other Side.”

“They were martyrs, Koo,” Larry tells him, with that po-faced earnestness of his. “They were martyrs to History and Truth.”

“Jesus.” The old punch lines are losing their zing. Koo feels a sudden nervousness, like a man stepping incautiously, suspecting too late that beneath these dead leaves quicksand waits. “Maybe you’re brainwashing me,” he said. “Get me weak, get me sick...”

“Koo, we didn’t get you sick,” Larry objects reasonably. “And I’m not lying to you. Everything I’ve told you is facts, you can verify them yourself, look them up, you’ll see—”

“Mark,” Koo says.

Larry bewilders often. “What?”

“I want Mark, I’ll talk to Mark.”

“You mean—you mean Mark?”

“Now he’s giving me doubletakes,” Koo mutters. “I’ll talk to Mark,” he repeats, with emphasis. “Nobody else. Not you, nobody, just Mark. The king of beasts himself.”

“Koo, I don’t understand. Why on earth would you—?”

But Koo has turned his face away, has clenched his jaw, is staring mulishly at the opposite wall. He has said he will talk to nobody but Mark, and he will talk to nobody but Mark. Period.

The silence stretches between them, Koo determined, Larry dumbfounded, until finally Larry says, tentatively, “Koo, Mark isn’t—Mark isn’t pleasant.”

You’re telling me. But Koo remains silent, unmoving.

“Also,” Larry says, then stops, then starts again: “Also, Mark isn’t...well, he isn’t very strong on the dialectics. I mean, if you have questions, it’s more likely I could answer them. At least, I could try. Mark is more...pragmatic.”

Nevertheless, if there’s any kind of sense in all this, Koo is convinced that Mark is the one with the answers. Larry clearly doesn’t even know what the questions are. Koo will not budge.

And at last Larry gives up, getting to his feet, shrugging in wimpish resignation, saying, “But if that’s what you want—I just don’t think he’ll be very useful, Koo, but all right. And I tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you.”

Koo turns his head, watches Larry’s good-guy face, waits.

“You talk to Mark,” Larry says. “Then you talk to me again. But instead of me telling you things, you ask questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them. All right?”

“Sure,” Koo says. Because it doesn’t matter what happens afterward, not if first he can talk to Mark.

“I’ll go get him.” But Larry still hesitates, frowning, and says, “What was that name you asked me about?”

“Bramlett.”

“And he was a Korean War defector.”

“Right.”

“Bramlett. What made you think of him?”

Koo struggles to a more comfortable position in the bed. His arms and legs feel like too-thick bread dough. “He was sick, too,” he says.

16

It was years since Peter had slept a normal eight-hour night. The tensions of his life never permitted him more than three or four hours’ sleep at a time, so that he usually had to supplement his night’s rest with one or two naps during the day; short uncomfortable naps in which he remained very close to the surface of consciousness, still aware of the world around him, and fully dressed except for his shoes.

Now, at the first noise from the living room, he flung aside the blanket, bounded off the bed, stepped quickly into his shoes and hurried down the hall to find Larry sprawled on the living room floor while Mark, fists clenched, loomed over him, and Joyce was just running in, screaming, from the deck. Larry too was screaming, hoarsely, both hands clutching the side of his neck; as Peter entered the room, Mark deliberately kicked Larry in the stomach, and Larry’s screams dissolved into agonized gurgling as he doubled over around the pain.

But Mark wasn’t finished. He was reaching for Larry’s head, apparently planning to drag him up by the hair, when Joyce got to him and grabbed at his arm, yelling don’t-don’t-don’t! Unthinking, Peter crossed the room and slapped Mark hard across the face.

Mark, as though insulted, stared at Peter over Joyce’s bobbing head. “Don’t you do that,” he said.

Peter glared back, trying not to show his uncertainty: “Are you calm now?”