The Sympathizer

We descended from the commandant’s quarters and walked past the guard barracks to the stretch of flatland separating the two hills. My isolation cell was located here, one of a dozen brick ovens where we basted in our own juices and where the prisoners tapped messages on the walls with tin cups. They had developed a simple code for communicating, and it was not long before they taught it to me. Part of what they conveyed to me was how they held me in high regard. Much of my heroic reputation came from Bon, who often greeted me through my neighbors. He and they believed I was singled out for extended isolation because of my ardent republicanism and my Special Branch credentials. They blamed the commissar for my fate, for he was really the one in charge of the camp, as everyone, including the commandant, knew. My neighbors had seen the commissar up close during his weekly political lectures, and the sight was truly horrific. Some cursed him, taking delight in his suffering. But the facelessness compelled respect among others, the mark of his dedication and sacrifice, even if for a cause that the prisoners despised. The guards, too, spoke of the faceless commissar with mixed tones of horror, fear, and respect, but never mockery. A commissar must never be mocked, even among one’s peers, for one never knew when one of those peers might report such antirevolutionary thinking.

I understood the need for my temporary detention and marginal conditions, for the revolution must be vigilant, but what I could not understand, and what I hoped the commissar would explain, was why the guards feared him, and, more generally, why revolutionaries feared one another. Aren’t we all comrades? I asked the commandant at an earlier session. Yes, he said, but not all comrades have the same level of ideological consciousness. Although I am not thrilled at having to seek the commissar’s approval on certain matters, I also admit that he knows Marxist-Leninist theory and Ho Chi Minh Thought much better than I ever will. I’m not a scholar, but he is. Men like him are guiding us toward a truly classless society. But we haven’t eradicated all elements of antirevolutionary thinking, and we must not forgive antirevolutionary faults. We must be vigilant, even of each other, but mostly of ourselves. What my time in the cave taught me is that the ultimate life-and-death struggle is with ourselves. Foreign invaders might kill my body, but only I could kill my spirit. This is the lesson you must absorb by heart, which is why we give you so much time to achieve it.

Ascending the hill toward the commissar’s quarters, it seemed to me that I had already spent too much time learning that lesson. We stopped at the stairs leading up to his balcony, where the baby-faced guard and three other guards awaited. The commissar’s in charge of you now, the commandant said, inspecting me from head to toe with a frown. I’ll be frank. He sees much more potential in you than I do. You are addicted to the social evils of alcohol, prostitution, and yellow music. You write in an unacceptable, counterrevolutionary manner. You are responsible for the deaths of the Bru comrade and the Watchman. You failed even in undermining this movie that misrepresents and insults us. If it were only up to me, I’d send you to the fields for your final cure. And if things do not work out with the commissar, I still can. Remember that.

I will, I said. And, knowing that I had not yet escaped his power, I also said, Thank you, Comrade Commandant, for all you have done for me. I know I’ve seemed reactionary to you because of my confession, but please believe me when I say that I have learned much under your tutelage and criticism. (This, after all, was the truth.)

My show of gratitude mollified the commandant. Let me give you some advice, he said. The prisoners tell me what they think I want to hear, but they don’t understand that what I want to hear is sincerity. Isn’t that what education is all about? Getting the student to sincerely say what the teacher wants to hear? Keep that in mind. With that, the commandant turned and began his descent down the hill, a man of admirably erect posture.

The commissar’s waiting, the baby-faced guard said. Let’s go.

I gathered what remained of myself. I was three-quarters of the man I used to be, according to the commandant’s scale, manufactured in the USA and appropriated from a southern hospital. The commandant was obsessed with his weight and enamored with the scale’s statistical precision. Through a rigorous longitudinal study of bowel movements, sampled from both guards and prisoners, including myself, the commandant had calculated that the camp’s collective bowels issued about six hundred kilos of waste per day. The prisoners collected and hand-carried this waste to the fields, where it served as fertilizer. Fecal precision was thus necessary for the scientific management of agricultural production. Even now, climbing the stairs ahead of the guards and knocking on the commissar’s door, I felt the factory of my innards fashioning the wood pigeon into a solid brick that would be used tomorrow to help build the revolution.