The Sympathizer

Let’s start easy, the middle-aged policeman said, climbing up awkwardly onto the table between her legs. What’s your name? She said nothing, but when he repeated the question, something primitive awoke in her, and when she opened her eyes to look at the policeman, she said, My surname is Viet and my given name is Nam. For a moment, the three policemen were speechless. Then they burst into laughter. This bitch is asking for it, said the youngest. The middle-aged one, still laughing, ponderously lowered himself onto the agent as she screamed and screamed. Watching the policeman grunting and pounding, and the other two shuffling around the table with their pants around their ankles, ugly knees exposed, it seemed to me that they were, after all, mice, gathered around a block of cheese. My countrymen never understood the concept of a queue, no one wanting to be at the end of a line, and as these three mice jostled one another and obstructed my view, all I could see were their sweaty nether regions and the agent’s thrashing legs. She was no longer screaming becaus she no longer could, the youngest policeman having silenced her. Hurry up, he said. What’s taking so long? I’ll take as long as I please, said the middle-aged one. You’re enjoying yourself with her anyway, aren’t you? (Stop talking about this! cried the crapulent major, clapping his hands over his eyes. I can’t look!) But we were helpless except to watch as the middle-aged policeman at last convulsed with a tremendous spasm. Pleasure of this degree should always be kept private, unless everyone was participating, as in a carnival or an orgy. Here, the pleasure was hideous to those who only looked. My turn, said the youngest, detaching himself from the agent, who was able to scream once more until the oldest took the youngest policeman’s place, silencing her. What a mess, said the youngest, hiking up his shirt. He took his position on the table, undeterred by the mess, and even as the middle-aged policeman zipped up his pants over the frizzy toupee crowning his deflated self, the youngest began repeating his predecessor’s motions, reaching, in a few minutes, the same obscene conclusion. Then it was the oldest policeman’s turn, and when he climbed onto the table, he left me an unimpeded view of the agent’s face. Although she was now free to scream, she no longer did, or no longer could. She was staring directly at me, but with the screws of pain tightened on her jaws and eyes, those screws that turned ever more, I had the feeling she did not see me at all.

After the oldest was finished, the room was quiet except for the agent’s sobbing and the hiss of the cigarettes being smoked by the other policemen. The oldest, catching me looking at him as he tucked his shirt in, shrugged. Somebody else would do it. So why not us? The youngest said, Don’t waste your time talking to him. He couldn’t get it up to give her the treatment anyway. Look, he hasn’t even touched his soda. It was true, I had forgotten the bottle in my hand. It was no longer even cold. If you’re not going to drink it, the middle-aged one said, give it to me. I did not move and the exasperated policeman walked three paces to me and seized the bottle. He took a sip and made a face. I hate warm soda. He said this with malevolence and offered me back the bottle, but I could only look blankly at it, my mind as numb as my fingers had been. Wait a minute, said the oldest. No need to make the man drink warm soda when this one here needs a good washing. He patted the agent’s knee, and at that touch, and at those words, she came back to life, rearing her head and glaring at us all with a hatred so intense that every man in the room should have turned to cinders and smoke. But nothing happened. We remained flesh and blood, and so did she as the middle-aged policeman laughed, putting his thumb over the bottle’s mouth and shaking it vigorously. Good idea, he said. But it’s going to be sticky!