Chang-Rae Lee - Native Speaker

I can see this only now, reinvent it in this present time, for in some moments then, I don’t know how long, exactly, I forgot the entirety of what I was doing. I lost — or better, misplaced — the very reason why I was there, in that papered room, sharing food with him. I could look at him and see little save his movements, expressions, the mundane sounds of his eating. The unburnished, happy surface of a man. Unmysterious. There was nothing to report, certainly, nothing worth commentary. But Hoagland would have wanted me to continue pushing him, to extend the evening’s narrative to its logical and fitting end. I know where and how a story should go, for I have been educated and trained at the greatest expense; though even a novice could see that John Kwang was in a vulnerable position, the way Wen had been for Pete. It’s as simple as picking a ten-dollar bill off the street. Act like it’s yours. Now propel him toward the finish.

A good spy is but the secret writer of all moments imminent.

There was a light tap at the door. The paper-and-wood screen slid open and the hostess in the formal dress stepped inside the room. Master Kwang , she said softly in Korean. Then she ushered in Sherrie Chin-Watt.

“I should have known you’d have company,” Sherrie said to him matter-of-factly, not yet looking at me. She curled each foot back to remove her shoes.

Kwang said, “Where’s Eddy?”

“I told him to go home. I said he could take your car.”

“Why didn’t you tell him to come and eat?”

“Because quite frankly I’m sick of him,” she answered. “He’s always around. Besides, you treat him too well as it is.”

“Too bad,” Kwang replied, carefully turning the bulgogi on the grill. “We shouldn’t send the boy home unfed. Hey, you sit down and eat.”

Sherrie was a tall woman, certainly tall for a Chinese woman, and to her credit there was no sign of that adolescent high-back slouch in her stance. That night she wore a dark gabardine suit and a silk blouse, the top two or three buttons undone. She touched there, in the space, the skin soft-looking, faintly hued. Her hair falling lush and straight, riding just above her shoulders.

She gave the hostess her raincoat but kept her briefcase. She sat down across from me, next to Kwang.

“It’s not all volunteer work with us,” she said to me. “We pay the Asian way around here.”

I just nodded. She looked oddly at me, as if surprised by my reticence. Normally I would have launched into conversation, swiftly conducted her, as it were, into the piece I should have been orchestrating, but instead I only wanted her to drink something, and I began to pour her a cup of soju . But she immediately winced, shaking me off, saying, “Oh, no, no. I despise that stuff. It tastes like rotten vodka. Just some water for now.”

I kept myself quiet. I let the two of them talk about the coming week, plans in the schedule, minor things I already knew. Just facts, times. It would have been easier if Eduardo had come up to be a natural buffer for me, a screen, and perhaps also to provide the pretext by which I might depart. I know my compulsion was flawed. It was the perfect situation, the two of them together, in so congenial a setting. And with Kwang in the careless state he was. We could have talked all night. But I was sensing that Sherrie now wanted me to leave them alone. And I myself wanted very much to leave. I had enjoyed the time with John Kwang, but there was something about Sherrie that had from the start greatly unsettled me, even during our first interview. If I must do justice to my own apprehension then I will say it was the nature of her familiarity that drew me to a halt. She regarded me as if she were seeing me for the thousandth time but was still unconvinced. That somehow she knew better.

I gradually wound myself out of their conversation. They didn’t appear to notice. Though I often stumble, I can be a most careful speaker when I wish. Ask Lelia. She knows my method. My sentences will dwindle, darn, steadily unravel themselves. Up and collapse. But all the while the ready manner of my face and hands and body will say, “Yes, I am here, enjoying your company, so let us go on, please.” I can be positively Edwardian. Lelia would always call me something else. Thank God, for her sake. She deserved to hurl whatever was available, to keep us moving, to speak in counterpoint to the deadening strings of my pyrrhic feet.

I was preparing for Sherrie to try to corner me. To what end I could not have imagined. But she didn’t. After a while she didn’t breathe a word my way. I sat across from them, slowly eating. I noticed they were sitting very close to one another. Sherrie wanted to talk about the disposition of certain funds , but John kept joking with her, stalling her with odd cracks and silliness. She glanced coldly at me and he told her, “Good man.” She gave him a hard look. He asked what she wanted to drink, maybe she’d like some plum wine. She finally agreed. Then in a small voice she said the situation was getting serious now . He groaned a little. He said he would cover whatever was needed.

“That’s not the point.”

“It’ll have to do.”

“It won’t do, John.”

“Make it.”

She seemed exasperated. I felt the moment was right to run a finesse play and leave them so they could have a full-blown talk about it, if just for the time I was off in the bathroom. Let them “release,” Jack would say, directly from your action. And leaving right then would also serve to quell any suspicions, at least at the level we were working. I figured, too — and rightly — that I’d soon learn all the significant details. John would bestow on me the whole of what I needed.

But then he touched her. Just barely. Just the flat of his hand low on her back, slipped beneath her blazer. It looked natural at first, tender and friendly, but his hand stayed there. He wasn’t trying to lurk, steal. His face softened, as if he were trying to make up for his curtness. And though it wasn’t much, she gave away absolutely nothing. You can tell with some: she would have been the same if he’d held a lighted match to her. She just kept talking about the office, personnel and scheduling, holding up the beat. I thought of how much Hoagland would have liked to get his hands on her, for a dozen reasons. And while she continued, I thought John was working her there, inching lower, inside the band of her skirt, where maybe the blouse was riding up.

I averted my gaze just as Sherrie looked over at me.

I decided then to leave them for the evening. I told John that my wife would be worrying and that the dinner was very good. He said we would come back again sometime. He didn’t try to dissuade me, though I knew I could have easily stayed longer. Perhaps they would have relented. Shown me what I knew.

In hindsight, one could view my actions as solid textbook. Inelegantly executed, perhaps, but effective. I wasn’t employing a technique so much as my own instant live burial. It’s the prerogative of moles, after all, which only certain American lifetimes can teach. I am the obedient, soft-spoken son. What other talent can Hoagland so prize? I will duly retreat to the position of the good volunteer, the invisible underling. I have always known that moment of disappearance, and the even uglier truth is that I have long treasured it. That always honorable-seeming absence. It appears I can go anywhere I wish. Is this my assimilation, so many years in the making? Is this the long-sought sweetness?

I have tried to heed Jack. I go faithfully to the flat to write out my reports. For the first days since the beginning I can write three or four pages on my subject and then another page of breezy analysis in less than an hour. I am supposed to do it this way, precisely but fast, checking off the day hour by hour the way a bright-eyed kid might reel off what he just got for Christmas. If I pore over the events too long, Hoagland always reminded me, I might get the proportions wrong, lend an act or word a note of too much significance and weight.