The Sympathizer

  We set off on our march under a sliver of moon, cheered by the optimism that one sometimes had at the beginning of strenuous exercise, a kind of helium that filled our lungs and carried us along. Then, after an hour, we trudged, or at least I trudged, my helium depleted and replaced with the first hints of fatigue, soaking into the body as the slow drip of water soaks into a towel. A few hours into our march we arrived at a pool of water, where the grizzled captain called for a rest. Sitting on the edge of the moonlit pool and resting my sore thighs, I could just make out the phosphorescent, disembodied hands on my wristwatch pointing to one in the morning. My hands felt as detached as the watch’s hands, for what they wanted was to hold and caress one of the cigarettes in my breast pocket, the urge electrifying my nervous system. Seemingly unaffected by any similar yearning, Bon sat down next to me and silently ate a rice ball. A fetid smell of mud and decaying vegetation emanated from the pool, and on its surface bobbed a dead bird the size of a finch, floating in a corona of molting feathers. Bomb crater, Bon muttered. The bomb crater was an American footprint, a sign that we had entered Laos. We came upon more of these craters as we journeyed east, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters, and we had to pick our way carefully past the julienned remnants of unrooted cajeputs flung this way and that. Once we came close to a village, and on the banks of the craters nearby we saw nets on poles, ready to be dipped into these pools that the farmers had stocked with fish.

  Near dawn the grizzled captain halted our trek, at a spot the Lao farmer said was isolated and rarely visited by the inhabitants of this borderland. Our resting place was on the peak of a hill, and under the indifferent cajeputs we spread our ponchos and covered ourselves with hooded capes of netting into which we had woven palm fronds. I lay down with my head on my rucksack, which, besides my rations, contained Asian Communism and the Oriental Mode of Destruction, tucked away in my rucksack’s false bottom in case I ever needed it again. Two or three of us stayed awake for shifts of three hours, and it was my misfortune to be assigned to one of the middle shifts. It seemed that I had barely managed to fall asleep with the brim of my hat on my face when the hefty machine gunner shook my shoulder and exhaled his horrendous bacterial breath all over my face, informing me that it was my turn for sentry duty. The sun was high in the sky and my throat was parched. I could see the Mekong in the far distance through my binoculars, a brown belt dividing the earth’s green torso. I could see question marks and exclamation points of woodsmoke issuing from farmhouses and brick factories. I could see bare-shinned farmers wading after their water buffalos, fetlock deep in the muddy water of rice paddies. I could see countryside roads and paths trafficked by vehicles that, from a distance, moved with the tortured slowness of arthritic turtles. I could see the crumbling sandstone ruins of an ancient temple, erected long ago by some fallen race, overseen by the crowned head of some forgotten tyrant, blank eyes blinded by the waste of his empire. I could see the entire lay of the land, naked body exposed in sunlight and resembling not at all the mysterious creature of night, and suddenly a tremendous longing seized me with such force that the land itself lost focus and trembled, and I realized with equal parts amazement and dread that for all the essentials we had brought with us, none of us had brought a drop of liquor.

  The second night did not proceed much as the first. It was not clear to me whether I walked that night or whether I simply hung on to a beast bucking and heaving under me. A tide of bile rose and fell in my throat, my ears swelled from my head, and I shivered as if it were wintertime. When I looked up I caught a glimpse of the stars through the branches, swirling snowflakes trapped within the glass of a snow globe. Sonny and the crapulent major laughed faintly as they watched me from outside that snow globe and shook it with their giant hands. The only solid thing anchoring me to the material world was the rifle in my hands, for my feet could not feel the ground. I gripped the AK-47 as I had Lana’s arms the night after I had left Sonny’s place. She had not looked surprised on opening the door, for she had always known I was coming back. I had not told the General what Lana and I had done but I should have. There was one thing he could never do and I had done it, for having just killed a man nothing was forbidden from me, not even what belonged to or issued from him. Even the scent of the forest was her scent, and when I shrugged off my rucksack and sat down between Bon and the affectless lieutenant in the midst of a bamboo grove, the dampness of the earth reminded me of her. Above us innumerable fireflies lit the branches, and I had the sense that the snouts and eyes of the forest were fixed upon us. Some animals could see in the dark, but it was only humans who deliberately sought out every possible route into the darkness of our own interiors. As a species, we have never encountered a cave, a door, or an entrance of any kind that we did not want to enter. We are never satisfied with only one way in. We will always try every possibility, even the blackest and most forbidding passages, or so I was reminded in my night with Lana. I got to pee, said the affectless lieutenant, standing up again. He disappeared into the gloom of the forest, while above him the fireflies turned off and on in unison. You know why I like you? she had asked in the aftermath. You’re everything my mother would hate. I was not offended. I had been force-fed so much hate that a little more hardly mattered to my fattened liver. If my enemies ever cut out my liver and ate it, as the Cambodians were rumored to do, they would smack their lips in delight, for nothing was more delicious than the foie gras of hatred, once one had acquired the taste for it. I heard the crack of a branch in the direction taken by the lieutenant. Are you okay? Bon said. I nodded, concentrating on the fireflies, their collective signal outlining the shapes of the bamboo trees in a wilderness Christmas. The underbrush rustled and the dim shape of the lieutenant emerged from the bamboo.

  Hey, he said. I—

  A flash of light and sound blinded and deafened me. Earth and gravel pelted me and I flinched. My ears rang and somebody was screaming as I huddled on the ground, arms over my head. Somebody was screaming and it was not me. Somebody was cursing and it was not me. I shook off the earth that had fallen onto my face and overhead the trees had gone dark. The fireflies had stopped blinking and somebody was screaming. It was the affectless lieutenant, writhing in the ferns. The philosophical medic bumped against me as he sprinted to reach the lieutenant. Looming out of the darkness, the grizzled captain said, Take up your defensive positions, goddammit. Beside me, Bon turned his back to the mess, racked his slide—­click-clack—and aimed his weapon into the darkness. I heard the click-clack all around me of weapons being primed for firing, and I did the same. Someone turned on a flashlight and even with my back turned to the scene I could see its luminescence. Leg’s gone, said the philosophical medic. The lieutenant kept on screaming. Hold the light while I tie him off. Everybody in the valley’s hearing this, said the dark marine. Is he going to make it? said the grizzled captain. He might make it if we get him to a hospital, said the medic. Hold him down. We have to shut him up, said the dark marine. It must have been a mine, said the grizzled captain. It’s not an attack. Either you do it or I do it, said the dark marine. Someone put his hand on the lieutenant’s mouth, muffling his screams. Looking over my shoulder, I saw the dark marine’s flashlight illuminating the philosophical medic as he pointlessly tied the tourniquet on the lieutenant’s stump, the molar of a bone protruding where the leg had been blown off above the knee. The grizzled captain had one hand clapped over the lieutenant’s mouth, his other hand squeezing shut the nostrils. The lieutenant heaved, clutching at the sleeves of the philosophical medic and the grizzled captain, and the dark marine switched off the flashlight. Gradually the thrashing and strangled noises ceased, and at last he was still, dead. But if he was really gone, why could I still hear him screaming?

  We have to move, said the dark marine. No one’s coming now but they will when it’s light. The grizzled captain said nothing. Did you hear me? The grizzled captain said yes. Then do something, said the dark marine. We’ve got to be as
far away from here as possible before morning. The grizzled captain said to bury him. When the dark marine said that was going to take too long, the grizzled captain gave the order to carry the body with us. We divvied up the lieutenant’s ammunition and gave his rucksack to the Lao farmer, with the dark marine carrying the lieutenant’s M16. The hefty machine gunner handed his M60 to the darker marine and picked up the lieutenant’s body. We were about to set off when the gunner said, Where’s his leg? The dark marine turned on his flashlight. There the leg lay, served on a bed of shredded ferns, meat tattered and strips of black cloth still clinging to it, mangled white bone jutting through a jagged rip in the flesh. Where’s the foot? said the dark marine. I think it was just blown away, said the philosophical medic. Bits of pink flesh and skin and tissue hung on the ferns, already crawling with ants. The dark marine grabbed the leg, and when he looked up I was the first one he saw. It’s all yours, he said, thrusting the leg at me. I thought about refusing it, but someone else would have to carry it. Remember, you’re not half of anything, you’re twice of everything. If someone else had to do this, I could, too. It was only a hunk of meat and bone, its flesh sticky with blood and gritty with embedded dirt. When I took it and brushed off the ants, I found it to be a little heavier than my AK-47, the leg having been detached from a smallish man. The grizzled captain ordered us to march and I followed the hefty gunner, the lieutenant’s body slung over his shoulder. The lieutenant’s shirt had ridden up his back, and the exposed plank of flesh was blue in the moonlight.

  I carried his leg with one hand, my other hand on the strap of the AK-47 hanging from my shoulder, and the burden of carrying a man’s leg seemed far heavier than carrying a man’s body. I carried his leg as far away from me as possible, its weight growing more and more, like the Bible my father made me hold in front of the classroom as punishment for some transgression, my arm outstretched with the book on the scale of my hand. I carried that memory still, along with the memory of my father in his coffin, corpse as white as the affectless lieutenant’s protruding bone. The chanting of the congregation in the church hummed in my ears. I had learned of my father’s death when his deacon called me at police headquarters. How did you get this phone number? I said. It was in the father’s papers on his desk. I looked at the document on my own desk, a classified investigation about an unremarkable event last year, 1968, when an American platoon had pacified a mostly abandoned village near Quang Ngai. After executing the water buffalos, pigs, and dogs, and after gang-raping four girls, the soldiers had gathered them as well as fifteen elders, women, and children in the village square, where they fired on them until they were dead, according to a regretful private’s testimony. The platoon leader’s report certified that his men had killed nineteen Viet Cong, although they had recovered no weapons besides some spades, some hoes, a crossbow, and a musket. I don’t have time, I said. It would be important for you to go, said the deacon. Why would it be important? I said. After a long pause, the deacon said, You were important to him and he was important to you. It was then I knew, without any need for words, that the deacon was aware of who my father was.

  We ended our forced march after two hours, the same amount of time devoted to my father’s funeral Mass. A creek gurgled in the arroyo where we stopped and where I scratched my face against a vine of bougainvillea. I set down the leg as the marines began digging a shallow grave. My hand was gummy with blood and I knelt by the creek to wash it in the cold water. By the time the marines finished, my hand was dry and a faint stroke of pink light was on the horizon. The grizzled captain unrolled the affectless lieutenant’s cape of palm leaves and the hefty machine gunner laid his body on it. I only realized then that I would have to bloody my hand again. I picked up the leg and put it in its place. In the pink light I saw his open eyes and slack mouth, and I could still hear him screaming. The grizzled captain closed the eyes and mouth and wrapped his body in the cape, but when he and the hefty machine gunner lifted the body, the leg slipped out of the cape. I was already wiping my sticky hand on my pants but there was nothing to do but pick up the leg once more. After his body was lowered into the grave, I leaned in and tucked his leg under the cape, below his knee. Glistening worms were already wriggling out of the earth as I helped scoop dirt back into the grave. It was just deep enough to cover our tracks for a day or two, until the animals dug up the corpse and ate it. What I want to know, said Sonny, squatting by me as I knelt by the grave, is whether the lieutenant will hang around here with one leg or two, or whether he’ll have worms crawling out of his eyes or not. Truly, said the crapulent major, head sticking out of the grave as he talked to me, it’s a mystery what shape a ghost will take. Why am I all here except for this hole in my head and not a disgusting mess of bones and meat? Tell me that, won’t you, Captain? You know everything about everything, don’t you? I would have answered if I could, but it was hard to do so when I felt that I, too, had a hole in my head.

  The day passed with us undiscovered, and by late in the evening, after a short march, we reached the banks of the Mekong, gleaming under the moonlight. Somewhere on the other side you were waiting for me, Commandant, as well as the faceless man who is the commissar. While I was still innocent of this knowledge, it was impossible not to sense something foreboding as we plucked off the leeches adhering to us with the stubbornness of bad memories. We had been carrying them without knowing, until the Lao farmer pulled an animated black finger from his ankle. I could not help but wish, prying away a little monster sucking my leg, that it was Lana thus attached to me. The skinny RTO radioed the base camp, and while the grizzled captain reported to the admiral, the marines again showed they were good for something by constructing a raft of bamboo trunks strapped together with lianas. Four men could row themselves across the river with makeshift paddles fashioned of bamboo, with the first team trailing a rope carried by the darker marine. That rope, tied to a tree on either side of the river, would guide the darker marine on his return with the raft. It would take four trips to transport all of us, and the first group set off before midnight: the darker marine, the Hmong scout, the hefty machine gunner, and the dark marine. The rest of us were scattered on the exposed bank, huddled under our capes of leaves, backs to the river and weapons aimed at the vast forest crouched on its haunches.

  A half hour later the darker marine returned with the raft. Three more went with him, the Lao farmer, the darkest marine, and the philosophical medic, who, at the affectless lieutenant’s grave, had said as a kind of benediction, All of us who are living are dying. The only ones not dying are the dead. What the hell does that mean? said the dark marine. I knew what it meant. My mother was not dying because she was dead. My father was also not dying because he was dead. But I was on this embankment, dying, because I was not yet dead. What are we, then? asked Sonny and the crapulent major. Dying or dead? I shivered, and gazing into the darkness of the forest, staring down the length of my weapon, I saw the shapes of other ghosts among the haunted trees. Human ghosts and beast ghosts, plant ghosts and insect ghosts, the spirits of dead tigers and bats and cycads and hobgoblins, vegetable world and animal world heaving with claims to the afterlife as well. The entire forest shimmered with the antics of death, the comedian, and life, the straight man, a duo that would never break up. To live was to be haunted by the inevitability of one’s own decay, and to be dead was to be haunted by the memory of living.

  Hey, hissed the grizzled captain, it’s your turn. Another half hour must have passed. The raft was scraping onto the bank again, pulled along the rope by the darker marine. Bon and I rose along with Sonny and the crapulent major, ready to follow me across the river. I remember the river’s white noise, the soreness of my knees, and the weight of my weapon in my arms. I remember the injustice of how my mother never came to visit me after her death no matter how many times I cried out for her, unlike Sonny and the crapulent major, whom I would carry with me forever. I remember how none of us looked human on the riverbank, shrouded by
our capes of leaves, our faces painted black, clutching weapons extracted from the mineral world. I remember the grizzled captain saying, Take the paddle, as he thrust it at me, right before a whip snapped by my ear and the grizzled captain’s head cracked open, spilling its yolk. A fleck of something wet and soft landed on my cheek and a thunderous racket rose on both sides of the river. Muzzle flashes rippled on the far side and the boom of grenades rent the air. The darker marine had taken one step off the raft when a rocket-propelled grenade whooshed by me and struck the raft, shattering it in a hail of fire and sparks and throwing him into the shallow water lapping against the riverbank, where he lay not quite dead, screaming.