The Sympathizer (5 page)

Fingering that slip of paper, I recalled the cinematic scenario I had prepared, the one where I refused to board Claude’s plane while the General pleaded hopelessly with me to leave with him. I want to stay, I said. It’s almost over. Behind clasped hands, Man sighed. Is it almost over?
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done.
Your general isn’t the only one planning to keep on fighting. Old soldiers don’t fade away. The war’s been going on too long for them to simply stop. We need someone to keep an eye on them and make sure they’re not going to get into too much trouble. What happens if I don’t go? I asked. Man raised his eyes to the bruised, greenish Christ with his European features, suspended on a crucifix high above the altar, the lie of a loincloth draped around his groin when in all likelihood he died naked. The grin on Man’s face revealed startlingly white teeth. You’ll do more good there than you will here, this dentist’s son said. And if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for Bon. He won’t go if he thinks we’re staying. But in any case, you want to go. Admit it!

Dare I admit it? Dare I confess? America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of supercarriers and the Super Bowl! America, a country not content simply to give itself a name on its bloody birth, but one that insisted for the first time in history on a mysterious acronym, USA, a trifecta of letters outdone later only by the quartet of the USSR. Although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the federal bank of its narcissism, was not only superconfident but also truly superpowerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam?

All right, I admit it! I said. I confess.

He chuckled and said, Consider yourself lucky. I’ve never left our wonderful homeland.

Lucky, am I? At least you feel at home here.

Home is overrated, he said.

Easy for him to say when his father and mother got along reasonably well, while his siblings looked the other way when it came to his revolutionary sympathies. This was common enough when many a family was divided against itself, some fighting for the north and some for the south, some fighting for communism and some for nationalism. Still, no matter how divided, all saw themselves as patriots fighting for a country to which they belonged. When I reminded him that I did not belong here, he said, You don’t belong in America, either. Perhaps, I said. But I wasn’t born there. I was born here.

Outside the basilica, we said good-bye, our real farewell, not the one staged later for Bon. I’m leaving you my records and my books, I said. I know you’ve always wanted them. Thanks, he said, squeezing my hand hard. And good luck. When do I get to come home? I asked. Giving me a look of great sympathy, he said, My friend, I’m a subversive, not a seer. The timetable for your return will depend on what your General plans. And as the General drove by the basilica, I could not say what his plans were besides escaping the country. I only assumed that he had more in mind than the futile words emblazoned on the banners flanking the boulevard leading to the presidential palace, which a dissident pilot had strafed earlier in the month.
NO LAND TO THE COMMUNISTS! NO COMMUNISTS IN THE SOUTH! NO COALITION GOVERNMENT! NO NEGOTIATION!
I could see an impassive guardsman standing impaled at attention under his roofed post, but before we reached the palace the General finally, mercifully set a course for the airport by turning right on Pasteur. Somewhere far away, a heavy machine gun fired in uneven, staccato bursts. When a dull mortar grunted, Duc whimpered in his mother’s arms. Hush, darling, she said. We’re only going on a trip. Bon stroked his son’s wispy hair and said, Will we ever see these streets again? I said, We have to believe we’ll see them again, don’t we?

Bon draped his arm over my shoulders and we squeezed together in the stairwell, hanging our heads out the door and holding hands as the glum apartments rolled by, lights and eyes peeking from behind curtains and shutters. Noses to the wind, we inhaled a farrago of scents: charcoal and jasmine, rotting fruit and eucalyptus, gasoline and ammonia, a swirling belch from the city’s poorly irrigated gut. As we approached the airport, the shadowy cross of an airplane roared overhead, all lights extinguished. At the gates, prickly rolls of barbed wire sagged with middle-aged disappointment. Behind the wire waited a squad of sullen military policemen and their young lieutenant, rifles in hand and truncheons swinging from belts. My chest thumped as the lieutenant approached the General’s Citroën, leaned down by the driver’s window to exchange a few words, then glanced in my direction where I stood leaning out the door of the bus. I had tracked him down on the louche major’s information, to the canal-side slum he lived in with his wife, three children, parents, and in-laws, all of whom were dependent on a salary that was not enough to feed half of them. This was the typical lot of the young officer, but my task on the afternoon I visited last week was to discover what kind of man had been molded from this poor clay. In his skivvies, sitting on the edge of the wooden bed he shared with his wife and children, the half-naked lieutenant had the cornered look of a political prisoner freshly dropped into a tiger cage, wary and a bit frightened but not yet physically broken. You want me to stab my country in the back, he said tonelessly, the unlit cigarette I had given him in his hand. You want to pay me to let cowards and traitors escape. You want me to encourage my men to do the same.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending otherwise, I said. I spoke mostly for the benefit of the jury—his wife, parents, and in-laws, who sat, squatted, or stood in the tight confines of the sweltering, tin-roofed shack. Hunger had lent them emaciated cheekbones, the kind I knew from my own mother, who had suffered so much for me. I admire you, Lieutenant, I said, and I did. You’re an honest man, and it’s hard to find honest men when men have families to feed. The least I can do to reward you is to offer you three thousand dollars. This was a month’s salary for his entire platoon. His wife did her duty and demanded ten. Eventually we agreed on five, half paid then, half due at the airport. As my bus rolled by, he snatched from my hand the envelope with the cash, and in his eyes I saw the same look the communist agent had given me when I had pulled that list of names from her mouth. Although he could have shot me or turned us back, he did what I gambled every honorable man forced to take a bribe would do. He let us all pass, holding up his end of the bargain as the last fig leaf of his dignity. I averted my eyes from his humiliation. If—let me indulge in the conditional for a moment—if the southern army comprised only men like him, it would have won. I confess that I admired him, even though he was my enemy. It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends. Wouldn’t you agree, Commandant?

It was nearly nine as we drove through the metropolis that was the airport complex, on well-paved streets past Quonset huts, gabled barracks, nondescript offices, and tubular warehouses, deep into a miniature city in Saigon yet outside of it. This semiautonomous territory was once one of the world’s busiest airports, a hub for all kinds of lethal and nonlethal sorties and missions, including those flown by Air America, the CIA’s airline. Our generals stashed their families here, while American generals crafted their stratagems in offices stocked with imported steel furniture. Our destination was the compound of the Defense Attaché Office. With typical cheekiness, the Americans had nicknamed it Dodge City, the town where six-shooters ruled and where saloon girls danced the cancan, as was much the case here in Saigon. But while sheriffs kept the peace in the real Dodge City, American marines guarded this evacuation center. I had not seen so many since ’73, when they were a ragged, defeated lot departing from this airfield. But these young marines had never seen combat and had been in this country only a few weeks. Bright-eyed and clean-shaven, with not a hint of a needle track in the crooks of their arms or a whiff of marijuana in their pressed, jungle-free fatigues, they watched impassively as our passengers disembarked into a parking lot already crowded with hundreds of other nervous evacuees. I joined the General and Claude by the Citroën, where the General was handing over his keys. I’ll return them in the States, sir, Claude said. No, leave them in the ignition, the General said. I would not want anyone to damage the car while they steal it, since it will be stolen anyway. Enjoy her while you can, Claude.

When the General wandered off to find Madame and the children, I said, What’s going on here? It’s a mess. Claude sighed. Situation normal, all fucked up. Everybody’s trying to get their relatives and cooks and girlfriends out of here. Just consider yourself lucky. I know, I said. See you in the States? He clapped me on the shoulder with affection. Just like when the communists took over in ’54, he said. Who would have thought we’d be here again? But I got you out of the north then, and I’m getting you out of the south now. You’ll be all right.

After Claude left, I returned to the evacuees. A marine on the bullhorn mumbled at them to form into lines, but queuing was unnatural for our countrymen. Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if all that failed, to bribe, flatter, exaggerate, and lie. I was uncertain whether these traits were genetic, deeply cultural, or simply a rapid evolutionary development. We had been forced to adapt to ten years of living in a bubble economy pumped up purely by American imports; three decades of on-again, off-again war, including the sawing in half of the country in ’54 by foreign magicians and the brief Japanese interregnum of World War II; and the previous century of avuncular French molestation. The marines, however, cared not a whit for such excuses, and their intimidating presence eventually coerced the refugees into lines. When the marines checked us for weapons, we officers dutifully, sadly turned over our guns. Mine was just a snub-nosed .38 revolver, good for covert activities, Russian roulette, and suicide, whereas Bon wielded the manly .45 Colt semiautomatic. The gun was designed to knock down Moro warriors in the Philippines with a single shot, I said to Duc. I had learned this from Claude; it was the kind of arcana he knew.

Papers! said the embassy bureaucrat at the desk after the weapons check, a young man with nineteenth-century sideburns, decked out in a beige safari suit and rose-tinted glasses. Each of the family heads had the laissez-passer documents from the Ministry of the Interior I had bought at a hefty discount, as well as the presidential parole delivered by Claude, stamped by the relevant embassy clerk. The parole assured us, even as we stood obediently in line, of the important thing: that we had cut to the head of the immigration queue in front of the huddled, hopeful millions from all over the world yearning to breathe free. We carried that small solace with us to the staging ground of the tennis courts, where earlier evacuees already occupied all the bleacher seats. We joined the tardier souls attempting a numb slumber on the green concrete of the courts. Red blackout lamps cast an eerie glow over the crowds, among which was a scattering of Americans. All of them appeared to be husbands of Vietnamese women, given how a Vietnamese family besieged each of them, or how a Vietnamese woman had practically handcuffed herself to his arm. I settled down with Bon, Linh, and Duc on an unoccupied plot. On one side was a covey of call girls, vacuum-packed into micro-miniskirts and fishnet stockings. On the other was an American, his wife, and their children, a boy and a girl of perhaps five and six. The husband sprawled on his back with his beefy forearm over his eyes, the only parts of his face visible the two furry limbs of his walrus mustache, his pink lips, and his slightly crooked teeth. His wife sat with her children’s heads in her lap, stroking their brown hair. How long have you been here? Linh asked, cradling a drowsy Duc in her arms. The whole day, the woman said. It’s been awful, so hot. There’s nothing to eat or drink. They keep calling out the numbers of planes but not ours. Linh made sympathetic noises while Bon and I settled down to the waiting part of hurry up and wait, the tedious custom of militaries the world over.

We lit cigarettes and turned our attention to the dark sky, every now and again illuminated by a parachute flare sputtering into spermatic existence, its bright head of light trailing a long, wiggling tail of smoke as it drifted downward. Ready for a confession? Bon said. He used words the way he used bullets, in short, controlled bursts. I knew today was coming. Just never said so aloud. That’s denial, right? I nodded and said, You’re only guilty of the same thing that everyone else in Saigon is. We all knew and we couldn’t do a thing about it, or so we thought, anyway. But anything can always happen. That’s what hope is all about. He shrugged, contemplating the end of his burning cigarette. Hope’s thin, he said. Despair’s thick. Like blood. He pointed to the scar in the palm of the hand holding the cigarette, carved to follow the lifeline’s arc. Remember?

I held up the palm of my right hand with its matching scar, the same one carried by Man. We saw this mark whenever we opened our hands for a bottle, a cigarette, a gun, or a woman. Like warriors of legend, we had sworn to die for one another, snared by the romance of schoolboy friendship, united by the eternal things we saw in each other: fidelity, honesty, conviction, the willingness to stand by friends and uphold beliefs. But what did we believe in at fourteen? Our friendship and our brotherhood, our country and our independence. We believed we could, if called upon, sacrifice ourselves for our blood brothers and our nation, but we did not know exactly how we would be called upon and what we would become. I could not predict that Bon would one day join the Phoenix Program to avenge his murdered father, his task to assassinate the people whom Man and I considered comrades. And good-hearted, sincere Bon did not know that Man and I would secretly come to believe that the only way to rescue our country was to become revolutionaries. All three of us followed our political beliefs, but only because of the reasons that led us to swear blood brotherhood in the first place. If ever circumstances forced us into a situation where death was the price of our brotherhood, I had no doubt that Man and I would pay. Our commitment was written on our hands, and under the wavering light cast by a distant magnesium flare, I held up my palm with its scar and traced the line with my finger. Your blood is mine and mine is yours, I said, which was the adolescent oath we had sworn to one another. You know what else? Bon said. Despair may be thick, but friendship’s thicker. After that, nothing more needed to be said, our camaraderie enough as we heeded the call of the Katyusha rockets, hissing in the distance like librarians demanding silence.