Sympathizer

  The Movie was just a sequel to our war and a prequel to the next one that America was destined to wage. Killing the extras was either a reenactment of what had happened to us natives or a dress rehearsal for the next such episode, with the Movie the local anesthetic applied to the American mind, preparing it for any minor irritation before or after such a deed. Ultimately, the technology used to actually obliterate natives came from the military-industrial complex of which Hollywood was a part, doing its dutiful role in the artificial obliteration of natives. I realized this, eventually, on the day the final spectacle was supposed to be shot, when, at the last minute, the Auteur decided to improvise with the plentiful quantities of leftover gasoline and explosives. The day before, unbeknownst to me, the special effects wizards had received the Auteur’s instructions: rig the cemetery for destruction. This cemetery had been spared in the original script when King Cong attacked the hamlet, but now the Auteur wanted one more scene illustrating the true depravity of both sides. In this scene, a squad of suicidal guerrillas defiladed amid the tombs, whereon Shamus would call down a white phosphorous strike on the sacred realm of the hamlet’s ancestors, obliterating living and dead with 155 mm shells. I learned of this new scene the morning of its shooting, when the Arc Light strike was originally scheduled. Nope, said Harry. The special effects guys finished prepping the cemetery last night.

  I love that cemetery. It’s the greatest thing you built.

  You got thirty minutes to take a picture before boom-boom time.

  It was only a fake cemetery with its fake tomb for my mother, but the eradication of this creation, in its wantonness and its whimsy, hurt me with unexpected severity. I had to pay my last respects to my mother and the cemetery, but I was alone in such sentiments. The cemetery was abandoned, the crew still having breakfast. Among the tombs now ran a maze of shallow trenches gleaming with gasoline, while bundled to the backs of the headstones were sticks of dynamite and phosphorous. Clusters of smoke bombs were staked to the ground, hidden from camera view by headstones and the knee-high grass that tickled my bare ankles and shins. With my camera slung around my neck I passed by the names of the dead that Harry had written on the tombstones, copied from the Los Angeles phonebook and attached to people presumably still alive. Among these names of the living in this little plaza of the passed, my mother’s name was the only one that genuinely belonged. It was at her headstone I knelt down to say good-bye. The desecration by weather over the past seven months had eroded much of her face in the photographic reproduction, while the red paint with which her name was written had faded to the hue of dried blood on a sidewalk. Melancholy slipped her dry, papery hand into mine as she always did when I thought about my mother, whose life was so short, whose opportunities were so few, whose sacrifices were so great, and who was due to suffer one last indignity for the sake of entertainment.

  Mama, I said, my forehead on her headstone. Mama, I miss you so much.

  I heard the disembodied voice of the crapulent major, chuckling. Was it just my imagination, or did all the ambient noise of nature cease? In the preternatural calm of my séance with my mother, I thought I might have been successful in communing with her soul, but just when my mother might have whispered something to me, a giant clap of noise ripped the hearing from my ears. At the same time a slap in the face lifted me from my knees and hurled me through a blister of light, knocking me out of focus, one self flying while another self watched. Later, it would be claimed that it was all an accident, the result of a faulty blasting cap that triggered the first explosion, although by then I had decided that it was no accident at all. Only one man could have been responsible for what happened on the set, the man who was so meticulous about every detail that he planned the weekly menu, the Auteur. But at the time of the conflagration, my calm self believed God Himself had struck my blasphemous soul. Through these eyes of my calm self I saw my hysterical, screaming self spread his arms and flail them about like a flightless bird. A great sheet of flame shot up before him, while a wave of heat swept over him with such intensity both he and I lost any sense of feeling. An immense python of helplessness wrapped its smothering grip around us, squeezing us back together into one self with such force I nearly blacked out until my back hit the earth. The meat of my body was now salted, broiled, and tenderized, the world around me afire and stinking of the gasoline sweat emanating from the woolly beasts of black smoke lunging and lurching toward me with ever-mutating faces. Another giant clap tore away the silence clogging my ears as I stumbled to my feet. Meteoritic chunks of earth and rock whizzed by, and I flung one arm over my head and pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth. There was a narrow path through the fire and smoke, and with my eyes blinded by tears and stinging with soot, I ran, yet again, for my life. The shock wave of another explosion slapped my back, an entire tombstone sailed overhead, a smoke grenade tumbled across the path, and a gray cloud blindfolded me. I found my way by avoiding the heat, coughing and wheezing until I reached open air. Still blind, I kept running, hands waving, gasping in oxygen, feeling the sensation a coward always wants to feel and never wants to feel, that he was alive. It was a feeling possible only after surviving a round of Russian roulette with the gambler who never loses, Death. As I was about to thank the God I did not believe in, because yes, ultimately, I was a coward, a blare of trumpets deafened me. In the silence, the earth vanished—the glue of gravity dissolved—and I was propelled skyward, the wreckage of the cemetery blazing before me, receding as I was blown backward, the world passing by in a blurred haze that faded into mute darkness.

  * * *

  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 Man
ila 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.

  I was there when the workmen built the room and painted it. The idea for the all-white room was Claude’s, as was the use of air conditioners to keep the room at eighteen degrees Celsius, cool even by Western standards and freezing for the prisoner. This is an experiment, Claude said, to see whether a prisoner will soften up under certain conditions. These conditions included overhead fluorescents that were never turned off. They provided his only light, the timelessness matching the spacelessness induced by the overwhelming whiteness. White-painted speakers were the final touch, mounted on the wall and ready to broadcast at every minute of the day. What should we play? Claude asked. It has to be something he can’t stand.

  He looked at me expectantly, ready to grade me. There was little I could do for the prisoner, try as I might. Claude would eventually find the music he could not stand, and if I did not help him my reputation as a good student would lose a little of its luster. The prisoner’s only real hope of escaping from his situation lay not with me, but with the liberation of the entire south. So I said, Country music. The average Vietnamese cannot bear it. That southern twang, that peculiar rhythm, those strange stories—the music drives us a little crazy.

  Perfect, Claude said. So what song’s it going to be?

  After a little research, I procured a record from the jukebox of one of the Saigon bars popular with white soldiers. “Hey, Good Lookin’” was by the famous Hank Williams, the country music icon whose nasal voice personified the utter whiteness of the music, at least to our ears. Even someone as exposed to American culture as I shivered a little on hearing this record, somewhat scratchy from having been played so many times. Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed while stringing up their black victims. Country music was not necessarily lynching music, but no other music could be imagined as lynching’s accompaniment. Beethoven’s Ninth was the opus for Nazis, concentration camp commanders, and possibly President Truman as he contemplated atomizing Hiroshima, classical music the refined score for the high-minded extermination of brutish hordes. Country music was set to the more humble beat of the red-blooded, bloodthirsty American heartland. It was for fear of being beaten to this beat that black soldiers avoided the Saigon bars where their white comrades kept the jukeboxes humming with Hank Williams and his kind, sonic signposts that said, in essence, No Niggers.

  It was with confidence, then, that I chose this song to be played on an endless loop in the prisoner’s room except for the times when I was in it. Claude had assigned me to be the chief interrogator, the task of breaking the prisoner my graduation exam from his interrogation course. We kept the prisoner in the room for a week before I even saw him, nothing interrupting the constant light and music e
xcept the opening of a slot in his door three times a day, when his meal was shoved through: a bowl of rice, one hundred grams of boiled greens, fifty grams of boiled meat, twelve ounces of water. If he behaved well, we told him, we would give him the food of his choice. I watched him on the video feed as he ate his food, as he squatted over his hole, as he washed himself from his bucket, as he paced his room, as he lay on his bed with his forearm over his eyes, as he did push-ups and sit-ups, and as he plugged his ears with his fingers. When he did so, I turned up the volume, forced to do something with Claude standing by my side. When he took his fingers out of his ears and I lowered the volume, he looked up at one of the cameras and shouted in English, Fuck you, Americans! Claude chuckled. At least he’s talking. It’s the ones who don’t say anything you really have to worry about.