The Sympathizer (48 page)

You see that I hide nothing from you, the commissar said, leaning back. I have read your marginal notes, taken account of your underlined passages. Everything being done to you comes from this book. In other words, yours is an open-book exam. There are no surprises.

Sleep . . .

No. I am observing you to see if this serum is working. A gift from the KGB, although we both know what the great powers expect for their gifts. They have tested their techniques, their weapons, and their ideas on our small country. We have been the subjects of that experiment they call, with a straight face, the Cold War. What a joke, given how hot the war has been for us! Funny but not so funny, for you and I are together the butt of this joke. (I thought
we
were the butt of the joke, said Sonny. Hush, said the crapulent major. I want to hear this. It’s going to be rich!) As always, the commissar continued, we have appropriated their techniques and technology. These lightbulbs? Manufactured in the USA, and the generator that powers them as well, although the gasoline is a Soviet import.

Please, turn off the lights, the patient said, sweating from the heat generated by the grid of bulbs. Hearing no response, he repeated himself, and when he still heard nothing, he realized that the commissar had left. He closed his eyes, and for a moment he thought he was asleep, until the electricity bit his toe. I’ve been subjected to these techniques myself at the Farm, Claude had told the class. They work even if you know what is being done to you. He was referring to the techniques in the mimeographed
KUBARK
manual now in the commissar’s hands, the required reading for the interrogation course. The patient, before he was a patient and when he was only a pupil, had read this book several times. He had memorized its plot, characters, and devices, and he understood the importance of isolation, sensory deprivation, joint interrogators, and penetration agents. He had mastered the Ivan Is a Dope technique, the Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing technique, the Alice in Wonderland technique, the All-Seeing Eye technique, the Nobody Loves You technique. In short, he knew this book inside and out, including its stress on an unpredictable routine. Thus it was no surprise when the baby-faced guard came in and reattached the wire to one of his fingers. While the baby-faced guard was rewrapping his foot, the patient mumbled something even he did not understand, to which the baby-faced guard said nothing at all. This baby-faced guard was the one who had shown the patient his tattoo,
BORN IN THE NORTH TO DIE IN THE SOUTH
, scripted in blue ink on his biceps. As he was in the last division to march on Saigon, however, the war was over by the time he arrived to liberate the city. But his tattoo might still be prophetic. He had nearly died already from the syphilis given to him by a prisoner’s visiting wife, who had paid her bribe with the only resource she had. Please, turn off the lights, the patient said. But the baby-faced guard was no longer tending to him. It was a teenage guard, delivering his food. Hadn’t he just eaten? He wasn’t hungry, but the teenage guard forced the rice gruel down his throat with a metal spoon. The schedule of his basic necessities must be disrupted, his feeding schedule irregular and unpredictable, exactly according to the book. Like a doctor studying a fatal disease that suddenly afflicts him, he knew everything that had happened and would happen to him, and yet it made no difference. He attempted to tell this to the teenage guard, who told him to shut up before kicking him in the ribs and leaving. The electric wire bit him again, only this time it was not clipped to his finger but to his ear. He shook his head but the wire would not release its jaws, nagging at him to stay awake. His mind was raw and chapped, as his mother’s nipples must have been after he fed on them. My hungry baby, she called him. Just a few hours old, you couldn’t even open your eyes and yet you knew exactly where to find my milk. And once you latched on, you wouldn’t let go! You demanded it every hour on the hour. That first soupçon of his mother’s milk must have been perfection, but he could not remember what it tasted like. All he knew was what it did
not
taste like: fear, the sharp, metallic tinge of a nine-volt battery rubbed on his tongue.

Q. How do you feel?

The commissar had returned, looming over the patient in his white lab coat, surgical mask, and stainless steel goggles, his hands in white rubber gloves, holding a notepad and a pen.

Q. I said, how are you feeling?

A. I can’t feel my body.

Q. But can you feel your mind?

A. My mind feels everything.

Q. Now do you remember?

A. What?

Q. Do you remember what you have forgotten?

And it occurred to the patient that he did remember what he had forgotten, and that if he could just articulate it, the wire would be removed from the tip of his nose, the taste of a battery in his mouth would go away, the lights would be turned off, and he could, at last, sleep. He wept, his tears falling into the vast waters of his forgetting, and that slight saline change to the liquid constitution of his amnesia provoked the obsidian past to rise. An obelisk slowly emerged from his ocean of disremembering, the resurrection of what he did not even know was dead since it had been buried at sea. Engraved on the obelisk were hieroglyphs—cryptic images of three mice, a series of rectangles, undulating curves, a scattering of kanji . . . and a movie projector, for what had been forgotten, he now remembered, had occurred in the room they called the movie theater.

Q. Who called it the movie theater?

A. The policemen.

Q. Why is it called the movie theater?

A. When foreigners visit, the room is a movie theater.

Q. And when foreigners are not visiting?

A. . . .

Q. And when foreigners are not visiting?

A. Interrogations are done there.

Q. How are interrogations done?

A. There are so many ways.

Q. What is one example?

One example! There were so many to choose from. The telephone call, of course, and the plane ride, and the water drum, and the ingenious, scarless method involving pins, paper, and an electric fan, and the massage, and the lizards, and the spot burns, and the eel. None of them were written in the book. Even Claude did not know their origins, only that they had been practiced long before his entry into the guild. (This is going on for far too long, said the crapulent major. He’s had enough. No, said Sonny. He’s really sweating now. We’re starting to get somewhere!)

Q. Who was in the movie theater?

A. The three policemen. The major. Claude.

Q. Who else was in the movie theater?

A. Me.

Q. Who else was in the movie theater?

A. . . .

Q. Who else—

A. The communist agent.

Q. What happened to her?

How could he have forgotten the agent with the papier-mâché evidence in her mouth? His own name was written on the list of policemen she had been trying to swallow when she was caught. Watching her in the movie theater, he was certain that she was unaware of his true identity, though he was the one who had passed the list to Man. But the agent, being Man’s courier, knew who Man was. She lay in the center of the capacious room, naked on a table covered with a black rubber sheet, hands and feet roped to the table’s four legs. The movie theater was lit only by overhead fluorescent lighting, its blackout curtains puckered shut. Pushed haphazardly against the walls were gray metal folding chairs, while in the back of the room stood a Sony movie projector. On the opposite wall the movie screen served as the backdrop, from where Claude watched by the projector, of the agent’s interrogation. The crapulent major was in charge, but having abdicated his role to the three policemen in the movie theater, he sat watching from a folding chair, his face unhappy and sweating.

Q. Where were you?

A. With Claude.

Q. What did you do?

A. I watched.

Q. What did you see?

Later, sometime in the bright future, the commissar would play the patient a tape recording of his answer, though he had no memory of the tape recorder’s presence. Many people who heard their voices on tape thought that they did not sound like themselves, which they found disturbing, and he was no exception. He heard this stranger’s voice say, I saw everything. Claude told me that this was nasty business, but that I had to see it. I said, Is this really necessary? Claude said, Talk to the major. He’s in charge. I’m just the adviser. So I went to the major, who said, There’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing! The General wants to know how she got the names and he wants to know now. But this is wrong, I said. Don’t you see? This doesn’t need to be done. The major sat there and said nothing, and Claude, standing by the movie projector, was also silent. Just give me some time alone with her, I said to the three policemen. Although the Americans called our policemen white mice because of their white dress uniforms and hats, none of these three were mouselike. They were average specimens of national manhood, slim and gaunt with deeply tanned skin from riding in jeeps and on motorcycles. Instead of head-to-toe dress whites, they wore field uniforms of white shirts and light blue pants, their light blue caps doffed. Just give me a couple of hours with her, I said. The youngest policeman snorted. He just wants first dibs. I turned red with fury and shame, and the oldest policeman said, The American’s not worrying about this. Neither should you. Here, have a Coke. In the corner was a Frigidaire full of soda, and the oldest policeman, who already had an open bottle in his hand, pressed it into mine before ushering me to the chair next to the major. I sat down and the fingers of my hand, holding the ice-cold bottle, began to go numb.

Please, sirs! cried the agent. I’m innocent! I swear! That explains why you got a list with all those policemen’s names on it? said the youngest. You just found that lying around somewhere and then got so hungry you had to try to eat it? No, no, sobbed the agent. She needed a good story to cover herself but for some reason she could not come up with it, not that any story could divert the policemen. All right, said the middle-aged one, unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. He was already erect, his eleventh finger protruding from his boxers. The agent moaned and turned her eyes away to the other side of the table, only to find the youngest policeman standing there. Having already dropped his pants, he was pumping himself furiously with one hand. Sitting behind him, all I saw were the sunken cheeks of his naked buttocks, as well as the horror in the agent’s eyes. She saw that this was not an interrogation but a sentence, written by the policemen with the instruments in their hands. The oldest, who must have been a father, was fondling the stubby length of the ugliest part of most adult male bodies. This was fully evident to me now that the youngest policeman had turned in profile, bringing himself closer to the agent’s face. Come on, take a look, he said. He likes you! The three engorged members differed in length, one pointing up, another down, the third bent to the side. Please don’t do this! the agent cried, eyes shut and head shaking. I beg you! The oldest policeman laughed. Look at that flat nose and dark skin. She’s got some Cambodian in her, or maybe Cham. They’re hot-blooded.

Let’s start easy, the middle-aged policeman said, climbing up awkwardly onto the table between her legs. What’s your name? She said nothing, but when he repeated the question, something primitive awoke in her, and when she opened her eyes to look at the policeman, she said, My surname is Viet and my given name is Nam. For a moment, the three policemen were speechless. Then they burst into laughter. This bitch is asking for it, said the youngest. The middle-aged one, still laughing, ponderously lowered himself onto the agent as she screamed and screamed. Watching the policeman grunting and pounding, and the other two shuffling around the table with their pants around their ankles, ugly knees exposed, it seemed to me that they were, after all, mice, gathered around a block of cheese. My countrymen never understood the concept of a queue, no one wanting to be at the end of a line, and as these three mice jostled one another and obstructed my view, all I could see were their sweaty nether regions and the agent’s thrashing legs. She was no longer screaming becaus she no longer could, the youngest policeman having silenced her. Hurry up, he said. What’s taking so long? I’ll take as long as I please, said the middle-aged one. You’re enjoying yourself with her anyway, aren’t you? (Stop talking about this! cried the crapulent major, clapping his hands over his eyes. I can’t look!) But we were helpless except to watch as the middle-aged policeman at last convulsed with a tremendous spasm. Pleasure of this degree should always be kept private, unless everyone was participating, as in a carnival or an orgy. Here, the pleasure was hideous to those who only looked. My turn, said the youngest, detaching himself from the agent, who was able to scream once more until the oldest took the youngest policeman’s place, silencing her. What a mess, said the youngest, hiking up his shirt. He took his position on the table, undeterred by the mess, and even as the middle-aged policeman zipped up his pants over the frizzy toupee crowning his deflated self, the youngest began repeating his predecessor’s motions, reaching, in a few minutes, the same obscene conclusion. Then it was the oldest policeman’s turn, and when he climbed onto the table, he left me an unimpeded view of the agent’s face. Although she was now free to scream, she no longer did, or no longer could. She was staring directly at me, but with the screws of pain tightened on her jaws and eyes, those screws that turned ever more, I had the feeling she did not see me at all.