Viet Nguyen - The Sympathizer

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That haze. . that haze was my life flashing before my eyes, only it unreeled so fast I could not see much of it. What I could see was myself, but what was strange was that my life unreeled in reverse, as in those film sequences where someone who has fallen out of a building and gone splat on the sidewalk suddenly leaps up into the air and flies back through the window. So it was with me, running madly backward against an impressionistic background of blotches of color. I gradually shrank in size until I was a teenager, then a child, and then, at last, a baby, crawling, until inevitably I was sucked naked and screaming through that portal every man’s mother possesses, into a black hole where all light vanished. As that last glimmer faded, it occurred to me that the light at the end of the tunnel seen by people who have died and come back to life was not Heaven. Wasn’t it much more plausible that what they saw was not what lay ahead of them but what lay behind? This was the universal memory of the first tunnel we all pass through, the light at its end penetrating our fetal darkness, disturbing our closed eyelids, beckoning us toward the chute that will deliver us to our inevitable appointment with death. I opened my mouth to scream and then I opened my eyes. .

I was in a bed shielded by a white curtain, pressed beneath a white sheet. Beyond the curtain came ethereal voices; the ice cube clink of metal; the somersaulting of wheels on linoleum; the maddening squeak of rubber soles; the pitiful beeping of lonely electronic machines. I was dressed in a flimsy crepe gown, but despite the lightness of this and the sheet, a soporific heaviness pressed down on me, scratchy as an army blanket, oppressive as unwanted love. A man in a white coat stood at the foot of my bed, reading a chart on a clipboard with the intensity of a dyslexic. He had the wild, neglected hair of a graduate student in astrophysics; his protuberant belly spilled over the dam of his belt; and he was mumbling into a tape recorder. Patient admitted yesterday suffering from first-degree burns, smoke inhalation, bruises, concussion. He is— At this point he noticed me staring at him. Ah, hello, good morning, said he. Can you hear me, young man? Nod your head. Very good. Can you say something? No? Nothing’s wrong with your vocal cords or your tongue. Still in shock, I’d say. Remember your name? I nodded. Good! Know where you are? I shook my head. A hospital in Manila. The best money can buy. In this hospital, all the doctors not only have MDs. We also have PhDs. That means we are all Philippine Doctors. The MD stands for Manila Doctors. Ha, just joking, my sallow young friend. Of course the MD stands for a medical doctorate and the PhD stands for a philosophy doctorate, which means I can analyze both what I can see and what I cannot see. Everything physical about you is in relatively good shape, given your recent scare. Some damage, yes, but not bad considering you should be dead or seriously maimed. A broken arm or leg, at least. In short, you are remarkably lucky. That being said, I suspect you have a headache of Zsa Zsa Gabor’s va-va-va-voom proportions. I recommend anything but psychoanalysis. What I would recommend is a nurse, but we’ve exported all the pretty ones to America. Any questions? I struggled to speak but nothing came out, so I only shook my head. Rest, then. Remember that the best medical treatment is a sense of relativism. No matter how badly you might feel, take comfort in knowing there’s someone who feels much worse.

With that, he slipped through the curtain and I was alone. Above me the ceiling was white. My sheets, white. My hospital gown, white. I must be fine if everything was all white but I was not. I hated white rooms, and now I was alone in one with nothing to distract me. I could live without television, but not without books. Not even a magazine or a fellow patient alleviated the solitude, and as the seconds, minutes, and hours dribbled away like saliva from a mental patient’s mouth, a deep unease descended on me, the claustrophobic sense that the past was beginning to emerge from these blank walls. I was saved from any such visitations by the arrival later that afternoon of the four extras who played the Viet Cong torturers. Freshly shaven and in jeans and T-shirts, they did not look like torturers or villains but harmless refugees, slightly befuddled and out of place. They bore, of all things, a cellophane-wrapped fruit basket and a bottle of Johnnie Walker. How you doing, chief? the shortest extra said. You look like hell.

All right, I croaked. Nothing serious. You shouldn’t have.

The gifts aren’t from us, the tall sergeant said. The director sent them.

That’s nice of him.

The tall sergeant and Shorty exchanged a glance. If you say so, Shorty said.

What’s that mean?

The tall sergeant sighed. I didn’t want to get into it this early, Captain. Look, have a drink first. The least you can do is drink the man’s booze.

I wouldn’t mind some, said Shorty.

Pour everyone a drink, I said. What do you mean the least I can do?

The tall sergeant insisted I have my drink first, and that warm, sweet glow of affordable blended scotch really did help, as comforting as a homely wife who understands her man’s every need. The word is that what happened yesterday was an accident, he said. But it’s a hell of a coincidence, isn’t it? You get in a fight with the director — yeah, everybody’s heard about it — and then you of all people get blown up. I don’t have any proof. It’s just a hell of a coincidence.

I was silent as he poured me another. I looked at Shorty. What do you think?

I wouldn’t put anything past the Americans. They weren’t afraid of taking out our president, were they? What’s to make you think they wouldn’t go after you?

I laughed, even though inside me the little dog of my soul was sitting at attention, nose and ears turned to the wind. You guys are paranoid, I said.

Every paranoid person is right at least once, said the tall sergeant. When he dies.

Believe it or don’t, said Shorty. But look, the reason we all came here wasn’t just to talk about this. We all wanted to say thanks, Captain, for all the work you did during this whole shoot. You did a swell job, taking care of us, getting us extra pay, talking back to the director.

So let’s drink that bastard’s liquor in your honor, Captain, said the tall sergeant.

My eyes welled up with tears as they raised their glasses to me, a fellow Vietnamese who was, despite everything, like them. My need for validation and inclusion surprised me, but the trauma of the explosion must have weakened me. Man had already warned me that for the kind of subterranean work we did, there would be no medals or promotions or parades. Having resigned myself to those conditions, the praise of these refugees was unexpected. I comforted myself with the memory of their words after they left, as well as with Johnnie Walker, forgoing my glass and drinking straight from the bottle. But after the bottle was empty sometime that night, I was finally left with nothing but myself and my thoughts, devious cabdrivers that took me where I did not want to go. Now that my room was dark, all I could see was the only other all-white room I had been in, at the National Interrogation Center back in Saigon, working my first assignment under Claude’s supervision. In that instance I was not the patient. The patient, whom I should properly call the prisoner, had a face I could remember very clearly, so often had I studied him via the the cameras mounted in the corners of his room. Every inch of it had been painted white, including his bed frame, his desk, his chair, and his bucket, the only other occupants. Even the trays and the plates with his food and the cup for his water and his bar of soap were white, and he was only allowed to wear a white T-shirt and white boxer shorts. Besides the door, the only other opening was for sewage, a little dark hole in the corner.