The Sympathizer (28 page)

I poured myself a cup of tea. Is Bon a part of this team?

Of course. I hate to lose such a good worker, but he’s the best we have for this kind of work. What do you think?

I was thinking that the only route overland from Thailand involved trekking through Laos or Cambodia, avoiding established roads and choosing the treacherous terrain of disease-ridden jungles, forests, and mountains where the only inhabitants would be brooding monkeys, man-eating tigers, and hostile, frightened locals unlikely to give aid. These badlands were the perfect setting for a movie, and a horrible one for a mission that was almost certainly do or die. I would not have to tell Bon this. My crazy friend had volunteered not despite the fact that his chances of returning were slim, but because of them. I looked at my hand, at the red scar engraved there. I was suddenly aware of the outline of my body, of the sensation of the chair underneath my thighs, of the fragility of the force holding together my body and my life. It would not take much to destroy that force, which most of us took for granted until the moment when we could not. What I think, I said, not allowing myself to deliberate any further, is that if Bon is going I should go, too.

The General clapped his hands together in delight and turned to Madame. What did I tell you? I knew he would volunteer. Captain, I never had any doubt. But you know as well as I that you’ll do better staying here and working with me on the planning and logistics, not to mention the fund-raising and the diplomacy. I’ve told the Congressman the community is gathering funds to send an aid team to help the refugees in Thailand. That is, in a sense, what we’re doing, but we’ll need to continue persuading our supporters of that cause.

Or at least give them a reason to pretend to believe that is our cause, I said.

The General nodded with satisfaction. Exactly right! I know you’re disappointed, but it’s for the best. You’ll be more useful here than there, and Bon can take care of himself. Now look, it’s nearly noon. I think it’s the right time for a beer, don’t you?

Visible over Madame’s shoulder was a clock, hanging on the wall between a flag and a poster. The poster was for a new brand of beer, featuring three bikini-clad young women sprouting breasts the size and shape of children’s balloons; the flag was of the defeated Republic of Vietnam, three bold red horizontal stripes on a vivid field of yellow. This was the flag, as the General had noted more than once to me, of the free Vietnamese people. I had seen the flag countless times before, and posters like that one often, but I had never seen this type of clock, carved from hardwood into the shape of our homeland. For this clock that was a country, and this country that was a clock, the minute and hour hands pivoted in the south, the numbers of the dial a halo around Saigon. Some craftsman in exile had understood that this was exactly the timepiece his refugee countrymen desired. We were displaced persons, but it was time more than space that defined us. While the distance to return to our lost country was far but finite, the number of years it would take to close that distance was potentially infinite. Thus, for displaced people, the first question was always about time: When can I return?

Speaking of punctuality, I said to Madame, your clock is set to the wrong time.

No, she said, rising to fetch the beer. It’s set to Saigon time.

Of course it was. How could I not have seen it? Saigon time was fourteen hours off, although if one judged time by this clock, it was we who were fourteen hours off. Refugee, exile, immigrant—whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.

After lunch, I debriefed the General and Madame on my Philippine adventures, which simultaneously lightened their gloominess and heightened their sense of resentment. Resentment was an antidote to gloominess, as it was for sadness, melancholy, despair, etc. One way to forget a certain kind of pain was to feel another kind of pain, as when the doctor examining you for mandatory military service (an exam that you never fail, unless you are afflicted by wealth) slaps you on one butt cheek while injecting you in the other cheek. The one thing I did not tell the General and Madame—besides myself nearly meeting the fate of one of those roasted ducks hung from its anus in the neighboring Chinese eatery’s window—was that I had been paid compensation for my near butchering. The morning after the extras had come bearing gifts, I had received two other visitors, Violet and a tall, thin white man in a powder-blue suit, his paisley tie as fat as Elvis Presley and his shirt the rich yellow color of urine after a meal of asparagus. How do you feel? she asked. All white, I whispered, although I could speak perfectly fine. She looked at me suspiciously and said, We’re all concerned about you. He wanted you to know he would have come himself but President Marcos is visiting the set today.

He who did not need to be named was, of course, the Auteur. I merely nodded, sagely and sadly, and said, I understand, though the mere mention of him infuriated me. This is the best hospital in Manila, the man in the suit said, flashing a searchlight of a smile onto my face. We all want the best possible care for you. How are you feeling? To tell you the truth, I said, proceeding to lie, I feel terrible. What a shame, he said. Let me introduce myself. He produced a pristine white business card with edges so sharp I feared a paper cut. I am a representative for the film studio. We want you to know we are paying all the bills for your hospital care.

What happened?

You don’t remember? Violet asked.

An explosion. A lot of explosions.

It was an accident. I have the report here, said the representative, lifting a liver-colored briefcase high enough for me to see its gleaming gold buckles. Such efficiency! I skimmed the report. Its details were not as significant as what its existence proved, that fast work of this type, as in our homeland, was only possible by an application of grease to the palms.

Am I lucky to be alive?

Extremely lucky, he said. You have your life, your well-being, and a check in my briefcase for the sum of five thousand dollars. According to the medical reports I’ve seen, you suffered smoke inhalation, some scrapes and bruises, a few mild burns, a bump on your head, and a concussion. Nothing broken, nothing ruptured, nothing permanent. But the studio wants to ensure that all your needs are met. The representative opened the briefcase and produced a stapled document of white papers and a long slip of green paper, the check. Of course, you will have to sign a receipt, as well as this document releasing the studio from any future obligations.

Was five thousand dollars the worth of my miserable life? Admittedly it was a considerable amount, more than I had ever seen at any one time. That was what they were counting on, but even in my dazed state, I knew better than to settle for the first offer. Thank you for this generous pledge, I said. It is decent of the studio to worry on my behalf, to be so concerned with me. But as you may know, or maybe you do not, I am my extended family’s principal support. Five thousand dollars is wonderful if I thought only of myself, but an Asian—here I paused and allowed a faraway look to come into my eyes, the better to give them time to imagine the vast genealogical banyan tree extending above me, overshadowing me with the oppressive weight of generations come to root on the top of my head—an Asian cannot think just about himself.

So I’ve heard, said the representative. The family is everything. Like us Italians.

Yes, you Italians! The Asian must think of his mother, his father. His siblings, his grandparents. His cousins, his village. If word got out of my good luck . . . it would be endless. The favors. The requests for fifty dollars here, a hundred dollars there. Hands tugging at me from all directions. I could not decline. So you see the situation I find myself in. It would be better to take none of the money. I would spare myself these emotional hardships. Or the alternative. To have enough money to take care of all those favors as well as myself.

The representative waited for me to continue, but I waited for him to reply. At last he gave in and said, Not being aware of the complications of Asian families, I am also not aware of the appropriate sum that might satisfy all your familial obligations, which I understand are important to your culture, and which I respect greatly.

I waited for him to continue, but he waited for me to reply. I cannot be certain, I said. But although without certainty, I believe twenty thousand dollars would suffice. To satisfy any needs of my relatives. Anticipated and unanticipated.

Twenty thousand dollars? The representative’s eyebrows performed a graceful yoga pose, arching their backs in disturbingly steep concern. Oh, if you only knew the actuarial charts as I know them! For twenty thousand dollars you must lose at least a finger or, preferably, a larger appendage. If we are speaking of less visible matters, a vital organ or one of your five senses will do.

But in fact, ever since I had awoken from the explosion, something had been nagging at me that I could not name, an itch that was not physical. Now I knew what it was—I had forgotten something, but what that something was, I did not know. Of the three types of forgetting, this was the worst. To know what one had forgotten was common, as was the case with dates of history, mathematical formulas, and people’s names. To forget without knowing one has forgotten must be even more common, or maybe less, but it is merciful: in this case one cannot realize what is lost. But to know that one has forgotten something without knowing what that something was made me shudder. I
have
lost something, I said, pain getting the better of me and making itself audible in my voice. I’ve lost a piece of my mind.

Violet and the representative exchanged glances. I’m afraid I don’t understand, he said.

A portion of my memory, I said, completely erased, from the explosion until now.

Unfortunately, you may find that hard to prove.

How to prove to someone else that one has forgotten something, or that one has known something and now no longer knows it? Nevertheless, I persisted with the representative. Even in my bedridden state, the old instincts remained. Like rolling one’s own cigarettes, or rolling one’s
R
’s, lying was a skill and a habit not easily forgotten. This was true also for the representative, whose kindred tricky spirit I recognized. In negotiations, as in interrogations, a lie was not only acceptable but also expected. All sorts of situations exist where one tells lies in order to reach an acceptable truth, and our conversation continued thus until we agreed on the mutually acceptable sum of ten thousand dollars, which, if being only half what I asked for, was twice their original offer. After the representative wrote a new check, I signed the documents and we traded farewell pleasantries that were worth as little as the trading cards of unknown baseball players. At the door, Violet paused with her hand on the knob, looked over her shoulder at me—was there ever a more romantic pose, even with a woman such as her?—and said, You know we couldn’t have done this movie without you.

To believe her was to believe in a femme fatale, in an elected official, in little green men from outer space, in the benevolence of the police, in holy men like my father, who not only had holes in his socks but also had a hole somewhere in his soul. But I wanted to believe, and what did it hurt to believe in her little white lie? Nothing. I was left with the beat of a trashy discotheque in my head and a green check that proved I was somebody, worth more dead than alive. All it cost me, unless they had lied, was a lump on my head and a portion of my memory, something of which I already had too much. Even so, why did I suspect that an operation had been performed on me while I was under the influence, leaving me with numbness more disturbing than pain? Why did I feel some phantom limb of memory, an absence on which I kept trying to rest my weight?

Returning to California with these questions unanswered, I cashed my check and left half in my heretofore barren bank account. The day I visited the General and Madame, the other half was in an envelope in my pocket. Later that afternoon I drove to Monterey Park, where, amid that city’s suburbs, soft and bland as tofu, I had an appointment with the crapulent major’s widow. I confess that my plan was to give her the money in my pocket, money that I admit could have been used for more revolutionary purposes. But what is more revolutionary than helping one’s enemy and his kin? What is more radical than forgiveness? Of course he was not the one asking for forgiveness; I was, for what I had done to him. There was no sign of what I had done to him in the carport, nor did the apartment building’s microclimate shimmer with the atmospheric disturbance of his ghost. Although I did not believe in God, I believed in ghosts. I knew this to be true because while I did not fear God, I feared ghosts. God would never appear to me whereas the crapulent major’s ghost had, and when his door opened, I held my breath, fearing that it might be his hand on the doorknob. But it was only his widow who was there to greet me, a poor woman whom bereavement had thickened rather than starved.

Captain! It’s so good to see you! She invited me to sit on her floral sofa, covered in transparent plastic that squeaked whenever I shifted my weight. Already waiting for me on the coffee table were a pot of Chinese tea and a plate of French ladyfingers. Have a ladyfinger, she urged, pressing the treats on me. I knew the brand, the exact company that manufactured the
petit écolier
biscuits of my childhood. No one could make a guilty pleasure like the French. Ladyfingers had been my mother’s favorite, given to her by my father as a lure, although she used the word “gift” when she mentioned it to me in my teenage years. I had enough consciousness to realize what a priest bearing ladyfingers to a child meant, for my mother was nothing but a child at thirteen when my father came wooing. In some cultures today or in the past, thirteen was good enough for mattress, marriage, and motherhood, or perhaps just two out of three on some occasions, but not in contemporary France or our homeland. Not that I did not understand my father, who at the time he fathered me was a few years older than I was now with a ladyfinger melting in my mouth. A girl at thirteen—I admit to having thoughts on occasion about particularly mature American girls, some of whom at thirteen were more developed than college girls in our homeland. But these were thoughts, not deeds. We would all be in Hell if convicted of our thoughts.