The Sympathizer

Admit it!

I saw myself admit it then. I heard myself acknowledge that I was not being punished or reeducated for the things I had done, but for the thing I had not done. I wept and cried without shame for the shame I felt. I was guilty of the crime of doing nothing. I was the man to whom things are done because he had done nothing! And not only did I weep and cry; I howled, a tornado of feeling causing the windows of my soul to shudder and clack. The sight and sound of my abjection was so disturbing that everyone averted his eyes from the sorry mess I had made of myself, except for the commandant, the commissar, and I.

THE COMMISSAR

Satisfied?

THE COMMANDANT

So he’s admitted to doing nothing. But what about the Bru comrade and the Watchman?

THE COMMISSAR

He couldn’t have done anything to save the Bru comrade and the Watchman. As for the agent, she lived.

THE COMMANDANT

She couldn’t even walk when we liberated her.

THE COMMISSAR

Perhaps she was broken in body, but not in spirit.

THE DOCTOR

What happened to those policemen?

THE COMMISSAR

I found them.

THE COMMANDANT

They paid the price. Shouldn’t he?

THE COMMISSAR

Yes, but he should also receive credit for the lives he took.

THE COMMANDANT

Sonny and the major? Their pitiful lives aren’t even equal to the agent’s injuries.

THE COMMISSAR

But is his father’s life equal?

My father? What was this? Even Sonny and the crapulent major, appalled at the harsh evaluation of their lives and deaths, paused in their agitation to listen.

THE COMMANDANT

What did he do to his father?

THE COMMISSAR

Ask him yourself.

THE COMMANDANT

You! Look at me! What did you do to your father?

MYSELF

I didn’t do anything to my father!

THE COMMANDANT and

THE COMMISSAR and

THE DOCTOR (in unison)

Admit it!

And looking down on my weeping, yolked self, I did not know whether I should laugh or cry in sympathy. Did I not remember what I had written to Man about my father? I wish he were dead.

MYSELF

But I didn’t mean it!

THE COMMISSAR

Be honest with yourself.

MYSELF

I didn’t mean for you to do it!

THE COMMISSAR

Of course you did! Who did you think you were writing to?

I was writing to the revolutionary who was on a powerful committee and who knew, even then, that he might one day be a commissar; I was writing to a political cadre already learning the plastic art of making over the souls and minds of men; I was writing to a friend who would do whatever I asked; I was writing to a writer who valued the force of a sentence and the weight of the word; I was writing to a brother who knew what I wanted more than I knew it myself.

THE COMMANDANT and

THE COMMISSAR and

THE DOCTOR (in unison)

What did you do?

MYSELF

I wanted him dead!

The commandant rubbed his chin and looked doubtfully at the doctor, who shrugged. The doctor only cracked open bodies and minds; he was not responsible for what was found.

THE DOCTOR

How did his father die?

THE COMMISSAR

A bullet in the head, listening to his assassin’s confession.

THE COMMANDANT

I wouldn’t put it past you to make up this story to save him.

THE COMMISSAR

Ask my agent. She arranged the father’s death.

The commandant gazed down at me. If I could be guilty of doing nothing, shouldn’t I also be deserving of wanting something? In this case, my father’s death. This father, in the commandant’s atheistic mind, was a colonizer, a dealer in the opiate of the masses, a spokesman for a God for whom millions of dark-skinned people had been sacrificed, supposedly for their own salvation, a burning cross lighting their hard road to Heaven. His death was not murder but a just sentence, which was all that I had ever wanted to write.

THE COMMANDANT

I’ll think about it.

The commandant turned and departed, the doctor obediently following, leaving Sonny and the crapulent major to watch as the commissar slowly settled into the chair with a grimace.

THE COMMISSAR

What a pair we are.

MYSELF

Turn off the lights. I can’t see.

THE COMMISSAR

What is more precious than independence and freedom?

MYSELF

Happiness?

THE COMMISSAR

What is more precious than independence and freedom?

MYSELF

Love?

THE COMMISSAR

What is more precious than independence and freedom?

MYSELF

I don’t know!

THE COMMISSAR

What is more precious than independence and freedom?

MYSELF