The Sympathizer

Come in, said the commissar. That voice . . .

His quarters consisted entirely of one big, rectangular room as austere as the commandant’s, with bamboo walls, bamboo floors, bamboo furniture, and bamboo rafters holding up a thatched roof. I had entered the sitting area, furnished with some low-slung bamboo chairs, a bamboo coffee table, and an altar on which sat Ho Chi Minh’s gold-painted bust. Above his head hung a red banner imprinted with those golden words NOTHING IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN INDEPENDENCE AND FREEDOM. In the middle of the room was a long table stacked with books and papers, surrounded by chairs. Leaning against one of the chairs was a guitar with familiar curvaceous hips, and at one end of the long table was a record player that looked like the one I had left behind at the General’s villa . . . At the far end of the room was a platform bed, draped in a cloud of mosquito netting behind which a shadow stirred. The bamboo floor was cool under my bare feet, and the breeze whispering through the open windows caused the netting to tremble. A hand parted the netting, its skin burned red, and he emerged from the bed’s recesses, a visage of fearful asymmetry. I looked away. Come now, the commissar said. Am I really so horrible that you do not recognize me, my friend? I looked back to see lips scorched away to reveal perfect teeth, eyes bulging from withered sockets, nostrils reduced to holes without a nose, the hairless, earless skull one massive keloid scar, leaving the head to resemble one of those dried, decapitated trophies swung on a string by an ebullient headhunter. He coughed, and a marble rattled in his throat.

Didn’t I tell you, Man said, not to return?





CHAPTER 20



He was the commissar? Before I could say a word, or make any sound at all, the guards seized me, gagged me, and blindfolded me. You? I wanted to scream, to shout into the darkness, but I could do no more than grunt and moan as they dragged me outside and down the hill, the blindfold scratchy, my arms pinioned, to a destination less than a hundred paces away. Open the door, the baby-faced guard said. Hinges creaked, and I was pushed from the open air into a confined, echoing space. Arms up, the baby-faced guard said. I raised my arms. Someone unbuttoned my shirt and stripped it from me. Hands untied the string holding up my pants and they dropped around my ankles. Look at that, another guard said, whistling with admiration. The bastard’s big. Not as big as me, a third guard said. Let’s see it, then, the fourth guard said. You’ll see it when I fuck your mother with it.