The Sympathizer

Their spell was broken. Sonny turned his gaze back to me. He had performed some kind of intellectual judo and turned my blow against myself. But he exhibited none of the triumph he would have in our college days. No, it’s never too late to fight, he said, sober despite the wine and vodka. You are quite right about that, my friend. Yeah, Ms. Mori said. In the way she slowly exhaled that syllable, in the way she focused on Sonny with a hungry intensity never shown toward me, in the way she chose that word over yes, I knew it was all over between us. I had won the argument, but somehow, as in our college days, he had won the audience.

The General also thought it was never too late to fight, as I reported in the next letter to my Parisian aunt. He had found an isolated stretch of terrain to carry out the training and maneuvers for his nascent army, in the sun-exposed hills far east of Los Angeles, near a remote Indian reservation. Some two hundred men had driven themselves across the freeways and past the suburbs and exurbs to this stretch of scrubby land where, in the past, the mob might have buried a few of its victims. Our gathering was not as strange a thing as it might have appeared. A xenophobe would see a company of foreigners in camouflage uniforms, carrying out military drills and calisthenics, and might imagine us to be the lead element of some nefarious Asian invasion of the American homeland, a Yellow Peril in the Golden State, a diabolical dream of Ming the Merciless sprung to life. Far from it. The General’s men, by preparing themselves to invade our now communist homeland, were in fact turning themselves into new Americans. After all, nothing was more American than wielding a gun and committing oneself to die for freedom and independence, unless it was wielding that gun to take away someone else’s freedom and independence.

Ten score of the best, the General had called these men in his restaurant, where he had sketched out for me the organization of his compact army on a napkin. I later pocketed that napkin and sent it to my Parisian aunt, the sketch depicting a headquarters platoon, three rifle platoons, and a heavy weapoons platoon, even though there were as yet no heavy weapons. No problem, said the General. Southeast Asia is awash in heavy weaponry. We’ll get them there. Here the goal is to build discipline, harden bodies, prepare minds, get these volunteers to think of themselves as an army again, get them to imagine the future. He wrote down the names of the platoon commanders and the officers of his staff, explaining to me their histories: this one formerly the executive officer from such-and-such division, this one formerly a battalion commander of such-and-such regiment, and so on. These details I transmitted to my Parisian aunt as well, this time in arduous code. I also paraphrased what the General told me, that these were all experienced men, down to the lowliest private. They’ve all seen action back home, he said. All volunteers. I didn’t put out a general call. I organized my officers first, had them contact men they trust who would be the noncommissioned officers, then had the NCOs find the enlisted men. It’s taken over a year to collect this nucleus. Now we’re ready for the next phase. Physical training, drilling, maneuvers, turning them into a fighting unit. Are you with me, Captain?