The Sympathizer

by Viet Thanh Nguyen

It was a month that meant everything to all the people in our small part of the world and nothing to most people in the rest of the world.

(Nothing, the General muttered, is ever so expensive as what is offered for free.)

Whatever people say about the General today, I can only testify that he was a sincere man who believed in everything he said, even if it was a lie, which makes him not so different from most.

It is always better to admire the best among our foes rather than the worst among our friends.

His pants bulging with an inflationary roll of dollars and his adolescent brain swollen with the yellow fever that afflicts so many Western men who come to an Asian country, this American GI discovered to his surprise and delight that in this green-breasted world he was no longer Clark Kent but Superman, at least in regards to women.

International Committee of Control and Supervision. Our country was overrun by acronyms, with the ICCS otherwise known as “I Can’t Control Shit,” its role to oversee the cease-fire between north and south after the American armed forces strategically relocated. It was a smashingly successful cease-fire, for in the last two years only 150,000 soldiers had died, in addition to the requisite number of civilians. Imagine how many would have died without a truce!

So it was that we soaped ourselves in sadness and we rinsed ourselves with hope, and for all that we believed almost every rumor we heard, almost all of us refused to believe that our nation was dead.

Don’t you want to learn Japanese? Don’t you want to visit Nippon? For a long time I felt bad. I wondered why I didn’t want to learn Japanese, why I didn’t already speak Japanese, why I would rather go to Paris or Istanbul or Barcelona rather than Tokyo. But then I thought, Who cares? Did anyone ask John F. Kennedy if he spoke Gaelic and visited Dublin or if he ate potatoes every night or if he collected paintings of leprechauns? So why are we supposed to not forget our culture? Isn’t my culture right here since I was born here?

I liked my scotch undiluted, like I liked my truth. Unfortunately, undiluted truth was as affordable as eighteen-year-old single malt scotch.

Have you ever noticed how a white man can learn a few words of some Asian language and we just eat it up? He could ask for a glass of water and we’d treat him like Einstein.

I pitied the French for their naïveté in believing they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit.

His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors, courtesy of the most efficient propaganda machine ever created (with all due respect to Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis, who never achieved global domination). Hollywood’s high priests understood innately the observation of Milton’s Satan, that it was better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven, better to be a villain, loser, or antihero than virtuous extra, so long as one commanded the bright lights of center stage.

he was cool as ice cream even in the tropical weather. That was why he was an Idol, fame his natural aura.

Her given name really was Asia, her parents foreseeing that any progeny of their unlikely union would surely be blessed with sufficient attributes to live up to the name of an entire ill-defined continent.

Every man on the set, myself included, was convinced that he possessed the magic wand that could convert her back to heterosexuality. If that was not achievable, then he would settle for convincing her that he was the kind of liberated man so open to female homosexuality he would not be offended, not at all, in watching her have sex with another woman.

Claude was our American adviser, and we expected state-of-the-art knowledge from him and all the other American advisers. We were not disappointed. Interrogation is about the mind first, the body second, he said. You don’t even have to leave a bruise or a mark on the body. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? But it’s true. We’ve spent millions to prove it in the lab. The principles are basic, but the application can be creative and tailored to the individual or to the imagination of the interrogator. Disorientation. Sensory deprivation. Self-punishment. These principles have been scientifically demonstrated by the best scientists in the world, American scientists. We have shown that the human mind, subject to the right conditions, will break down faster than the human body.

I admit to not being an aficionado of children, having been one and having found my cohort and myself generally despicable. Unlike many, I was not intent on reproducing myself, deliberately or accidentally, since one of myself was more than enough for me to handle.

Every full bottle of alcohol has a message in it, a surprise that one will not discover until one drinks it.

What am I dying for? he cried back. I’m dying because this world I’m living in isn’t worth dying for! If something is worth dying for, then you’ve got a reason to live.

If youth was not wasted, how could it be youth?

The Chinese might have invented gunpowder and the noodle, but the West had invented cleavage, with profound if underappreciated implications. A man gazing on semi-exposed breasts was not only engaging in simple lasciviousness, he was also meditating, even if unawares, on the visual embodiment of the verb “to cleave,” which meant both to cut apart and to put together. A woman’s cleavage perfectly illustrated this double and contradictory meaning, the breasts two separate entities with one identity. The double meaning was also present in how cleavage separated a woman from a man and yet drew him to her with the irresistible force of sliding down a slippery slope. Men had no equivalent, except, perhaps, for the only kind of male cleavage most women truly cared for, the opening and closing of a well-stuffed billfold.

Think of the people, insulated for so long from foreign ideas. Exposure could lead to a real catastrophe for minds that aren’t ready for them.