Viet Nguyen - The Sympathizer

Left alone, Sonny and I traded brief synopses of our recent lives. He had decided to stay after graduation, knowing if he returned he would likely receive a complimentary airplane ticket to the tranquil beaches and exclusive, invitation-only prisons of Poulo Condore, built by the French with characteristic gusto. Before we refugees had arrived last year, Sonny had been reporting for an Orange County newspaper, making his home in a town I had never visited, Westminster, or, as our countrymen pronounced it, Wet-min-ter . Moved by our refugee plight, he started up the first newspaper in our native tongue, an effort to tie us together with the news that binds. But more later, my friend, he said, grasping me by the shoulder. I have another appointment. Shall we meet for coffee? It does my heart good to see you again. Bemused, I agreed, giving him my number before he departed through the thinning crowd. I looked for the crapulent major but he had disappeared. Except for him, most of our fellow exiles had been shrunken by their experience, either absolutely through the aforementioned maladies of migration, or relatively, surrounded by Americans so tall they neither looked through nor looked down on these newcomers. They simply looked over them. For Sonny, it was the opposite. He could not be ignored, but for different reasons from those in the past, in our college days. I could not remember him being as gentle or generous then, when he pounded on tables and ranted the way the Vietnamese foreign students in Paris in the twenties and thirties must have done, the original crop of communists to lead our revolution. I, too, differed in behavior now, although how so was subject to the vagaries of my memory. The historical record had been expunged, for while I kept journals as a student, I had burned them all before returning, fearing to bring with me any incriminating traces of what I really thought.

I breakfasted with the crapulent major a week later. It was an earthy, quotidian scene, the kind Walt Whitman would have loved to write about, a sketch of the new America featuring hot rice porridge and fried crullers at a Monterey Park noodle shop crammed full of unrepentantly unassimilated Chinese and a few other assorted Asians. Grease glazed the orange Formica tabletop, while chrysanthemum tea stood ready to be poured from a tin pot into chipped teacups the color and texture of the enamel on human teeth. I supped in a measured fashion while the major gorged with the undisciplined enthusiasm of a man enamored with food, mouth open and talking simultaneously, the occasional fleck of spit or rice landing on my cheek, my eyelash, or my own bowl, eating with such relish I could not help but love and pity the man in his innocence.

This, an informant? Hard to believe, but then he might be such a sly character as to be the perfect plant. The more logical conclusion was that the General had bolstered the Vietnamese tendency for conspiracy with the American trait of paranoia, admittedly with my help. Never had the crapulent major exhibited any particular skill at deceit, covert maneuvering, or politicking. Back in Saigon, his function in the Special Branch had been to analyze Chinese-language communication and to keep track of the subterranean subterfuges of Cholon, where the National Liberation Front had constructed an underground network for political agitation, terrorist organizing, and black market smuggling. More important, he was my source for the best Chinese food in Cholon, from majestic palaces with spectacular wedding banquets, to rattling carts roaming the unpaved streets, to elusive ladies who carried their bouncing wares on a yoke across their shoulders and set up shop on the sidewalks. Likewise in California, he had promised me the best rice porridge in Greater Los Angeles, and it was over a silky smooth white pottage that I commiserated with the crapulent major. He was now a gas station attendant in Monterey Park, paid in cash so he could qualify for welfare benefits. His wife, sewing in a sweatshop, was already reduced to nearsightedness from staring so intently at the puzzle of cheap stitching. My God, she can talk, he moaned, hunched over his empty bowl with the reproachful countenance of an unfed dog, eyeing my uneaten cruller. She blames me for everything. Why didn’t we stay at home? What are we doing here where we’re poorer than before? Why did we have kids we can’t afford to feed? I forgot to tell you, Captain, my wife got pregnant in camp. Twins! Can you believe it?

Heart overcast but voice bright, I congratulated him. He appreciated the offer of my untouched cruller. At least they’re American citizens, he said, chewing on his doughy treat. Spinach and Broccoli. Those are their American names. To tell you the truth, we hadn’t even thought about giving them American names until the nurse asked. I panicked. Of course they needed American names. The first thing that comes to mind is Spinach. I used to laugh at those cartoons where Popeye ate his spinach and became superpowerful all at once. No one will mess with a kid named Spinach. As for Broccoli, it just came logically. A lady on television said, Always eat your broccoli, and I remembered that. A healthy food, not like what I eat. Strong and healthy, that’s what these twins will be. They’ll need to be. This country isn’t for the weak or the fat. I need to go on a diet. No, I do! You’re too kind. I am quite aware I’m fat. The only good thing about being fat, besides the eating, is that everyone loves a fat man. Yes? Yes! People love to laugh at fat men and pity them, too. When I applied at that gas station, I was sweating even though I had walked just a couple of blocks. People look at a fat man sweating and they feel sorry for him, even if they feel a little contempt, too. Then I smiled and shook my belly and laughed as I told my story about how I needed a job, and the owner gave it to me on the spot. All he needed was a reason to hire me. Making people laugh and feel sorry always does the trick. See? You’re smiling right now and feeling sorry for me. Don’t feel too sorry, I have a good shift, in at ten in the morning and out by eight, seven days a week, and I can walk to work from home. I don’t do a thing except punch buttons on the cash register. It’s great. Come by and I’ll give you some free gallons. I insist! It’s the least I can do for you helping us escape. I never did properly thank you. Besides, this is a tough country. We Vietnamese have to stick together.

Oh, poor crapulent major! That night, at home, I watched Bon clean and oil the.38 Special on the coffee table, then load it with six copper bullets and lay it on a little throw pillow that came with our sofa, a tawdry, stained red velour cushion on which the pistol rested like a gift to deposed royalty. I’ll shoot him through the pillow, Bon said, cracking open a beer. Reduced noise. Great, I said. Richard Hedd was being interviewed on television about the situation in Cambodia, his English accent a stark contrast to the interviewer’s Bostonian one. After a minute of watching this, I said, What if he’s not a spy? We’ll be killing the wrong man. Then it would be murder. Bon sipped his beer. First, he said, the General knows stuff we don’t. Second, we’re not killing. This is an assassination. Your guys did this all the time. Third, this is war. Innocent people get killed. It’s only murder if you know they’re innocent. Even so, that’s a tragedy, not a crime.

You were happy when the General asked you to do this, weren’t you?

Is that bad? he said. He put the beer down and picked up the.38. As some men were born to handle a paintbrush or a pen, he was born to wield a gun. It looked natural in his hand, a tool of which a man could be proud, like a wrench. A man needs a purpose, he said, contemplating the gun. Before I met Linh, I had purpose. I wanted revenge for my father. Then I fell in love, and Linh became more important than my father or revenge. I hadn’t cried since he died, but after my marriage I cried at his grave because I had betrayed him where it mattered the most, in my heart. I didn’t get over that until Duc was born. At first he was just this strange, ugly little thing. I wondered what was wrong with me, why I didn’t love my own son. But slowly he grew and grew, and one night I noticed how his fingers and toes, his hands and feet, were perfectly made, miniature versions of mine. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be struck by wonder. Even falling in love was not like that feeling, and I knew that this was how my father must have looked at me. He had created me, and I had created Duc. It was nature, the universe, God, flowing through us. That was when I fell in love with my son, when I understood how insignificant I was, and how marvelous he was, and how one day he’d feel the exact same thing. And it was then I knew I hadn’t betrayed my father. I cried again, holding my boy, because I’d finally become a man. What I’m saying, why I’m telling you all this, is that my life once had meaning. It had a purpose. Now it has none. I was a son and a husband and a father and a soldier, and now I’m none of that. I’m not a man, and when a man isn’t a man he’s nobody. And the only way not to be nobody is to do something. So I can either kill myself or kill someone else. Get it?