The Sympathizer

You might be the first woman in the history of the world who’s ever felt that way, I said. All this time I kept my gaze fixed on hers, an enormously difficult task given the gravitational pull exerted by her cleavage. While I was critical of many things when it came to so-called Western civilization, cleavage was not one of them. 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. But whereas women could look at us as much as they wanted, and we would appreciate it, we were damned if we looked and hardly less damned if we didn’t. A woman with extraordinary cleavage would reasonably be insulted by a man whose eyes could resist the plunge, so, just to be polite, I cast a tasteful glance while reaching for another cigarette. In between those marvelous breasts bumped a gold crucifix on a gold chain, and for once I wished I were a true Christian so I could be nailed to that cross.

Care for another cigarette? I said, our gazes meeting once more as I offered her my pack. Neither of us acknowledged my expert appraisal of her cleavage. Instead, she silently accepted my offer, reached forth her delicate hand, plucked out a cigarette, inserted it between her candied lips, waited for it to be ignited from a flame in my hand, and then, gradually, smoked the cigarette until it dwindled to a handful of ashes, easily blown away. If a man survived the time taken to smoke the first cigarette, he had a fighting chance on the beachhead of a woman’s body. That I had survived a second cigarette boosted my confidence immeasurably. Thus, when the permed chanteuse whose chair I occupied returned, it was with confidence that I stood up and said to Lana, Let’s go to the bar. Principle five: statements, not questions, were less likely to lead to no. She shrugged and offered me her hand.

Over the next hour, in between the times when Lana scorched the earth and the hair on my forearms with a few more songs, I learned the following. She loved vodka martinis, of which I ordered her three. Each one was shaken with top-shelf liquor in whose clear solution floated a pair of plump green olives, the suggestive nipples of pimentos protruding from them. Her employer was an art gallery in tony Brentwood. She had had boyfriends, plural, and when a woman discussed past boyfriends, she was informing you that she was evaluating you in comparison with defective and effective partners past. Although I was too tactful to ask about politics or religion, I learned that she was socially and economically progressive. She believed in birth control, gun control, and rent control; she believed in the liberation of homosexuals and civil rights for all; she believed in Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Thich Nhat Hanh; she believed in nonviolence, world peace, and yoga; she believed in the revolutionary potential of disco and the United Nations of nightclubs; she believed in national self-determination for the Third World as well as liberal democracy and regulated capitalism, which was, she said, to believe that the invisible hand of the market should wear the kid glove of socialism. Her favorite singers were Billie Holiday, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Phuong, and Khanh Ly, and she believed Vietnamese people could also sing the blues. Of American cities, she believed New York was where she wanted to live if she could not live in Los Angeles. But of all the things I learned about her, the most important was this: whereas most Vietnamese women kept their opinions to themselves until they were married, whereon they never kept their opinions to themselves, she was not hesitant to say what she thought.

At the end of the hour I waved Bon over, desperate for another pair of ears to relieve the stress on mine. He, too, was punchy with cognac, its influence making him unusually voluble. Lana was not above socializing with a common man, and for the next hour they became partners on a walk down memory lane, reminiscing about Saigon and songs while I quietly quaffed my cognac, discreetly admiring Lana’s legs. Longer than the Bible and a hell of a lot more fun, they stretched forever, like an Indian yogi or an American highway shimmering through the Great Plains or the southwestern desert. Her legs demanded to be looked at and would not take no, non, nein, nyet, or even maybe for an answer. I was being held captive by the sight of them when I heard Lana say, And your wife and child? The tears trickling down Bon’s cheeks broke the spell she had cast on me, the sight rousing me from deafness. Somehow the conversation had taken a turn from Saigon and songs to the fall of Saigon, which was not surprising. Most of the songs the exiles listened to were soaked in melancholic, romantic loss, which could not help but remind them of the loss of their city. Every conversation among the exiles about Saigon eventually became a conversation about the fall of Saigon and the fate of those left behind. They’re dead, Bon now said. I was astonished, for Bon never talked about Linh and Duc with anyone but me, a function of the fact that Bon hardly talked to anyone. This was the problem with a walk down memory lane. It was almost always foggy, and one was likely to trip and fall. But perhaps this embarrassing collapse was worth it, for Lana, to my even greater astonishment, embraced him and pressed his stubborn, ugly head against her cheek. You poor man, Lana said. You poor, poor man. I was overwhelmed by a great, aching love for my best friend and this woman whose divine figure was the symbol of infinity turned upright onto its rounded bottom. I yearned to prove the hypothesis of my desire for her by empirically examining her naked curves with my eyes, her breasts with my hands, her skin with my tongue. I knew then, as she focused all her attention on the weeping Bon, who was so insensate with grief he seemed unaware of the enchanted valley exposed to his view, that I would possess her and that she would have me.





CHAPTER 15