The Sympathizer

When the General wandered off to find Madame and the children, I said, What’s going on here? It’s a mess. Claude sighed. Situation normal, all fucked up. Everybody’s trying to get their relatives and cooks and girlfriends out of here. Just consider yourself lucky. I know, I said. See you in the States? He clapped me on the shoulder with affection. Just like when the communists took over in ’54, he said. Who would have thought we’d be here again? But I got you out of the north then, and I’m getting you out of the south now. You’ll be all right.

After Claude left, I returned to the evacuees. A marine on the bullhorn mumbled at them to form into lines, but queuing was unnatural for our countrymen. Our proper mode in situations where demand was high and supply low was to elbow, jostle, crowd, and hustle, and, if all that failed, to bribe, flatter, exaggerate, and lie. I was uncertain whether these traits were genetic, deeply cultural, or simply a rapid evolutionary development. We had been forced to adapt to ten years of living in a bubble economy pumped up purely by American imports; three decades of on-again, off-again war, including the sawing in half of the country in ’54 by foreign magicians and the brief Japanese interregnum of World War II; and the previous century of avuncular French molestation. The marines, however, cared not a whit for such excuses, and their intimidating presence eventually coerced the refugees into lines. When the marines checked us for weapons, we officers dutifully, sadly turned over our guns. Mine was just a snub-nosed .38 revolver, good for covert activities, Russian roulette, and suicide, whereas Bon wielded the manly .45 Colt semiautomatic. The gun was designed to knock down Moro warriors in the Philippines with a single shot, I said to Duc. I had learned this from Claude; it was the kind of arcana he knew.

Papers! said the embassy bureaucrat at the desk after the weapons check, a young man with nineteenth-century sideburns, decked out in a beige safari suit and rose-tinted glasses. Each of the family heads had the laissez-passer documents from the Ministry of the Interior I had bought at a hefty discount, as well as the presidential parole delivered by Claude, stamped by the relevant embassy clerk. The parole assured us, even as we stood obediently in line, of the important thing: that we had cut to the head of the immigration queue in front of the huddled, hopeful millions from all over the world yearning to breathe free. We carried that small solace with us to the staging ground of the tennis courts, where earlier evacuees already occupied all the bleacher seats. We joined the tardier souls attempting a numb slumber on the green concrete of the courts. Red blackout lamps cast an eerie glow over the crowds, among which was a scattering of Americans. All of them appeared to be husbands of Vietnamese women, given how a Vietnamese family besieged each of them, or how a Vietnamese woman had practically handcuffed herself to his arm. I settled down with Bon, Linh, and Duc on an unoccupied plot. On one side was a covey of call girls, vacuum-packed into micro-miniskirts and fishnet stockings. On the other was an American, his wife, and their children, a boy and a girl of perhaps five and six. The husband sprawled on his back with his beefy forearm over his eyes, the only parts of his face visible the two furry limbs of his walrus mustache, his pink lips, and his slightly crooked teeth. His wife sat with her children’s heads in her lap, stroking their brown hair. How long have you been here? Linh asked, cradling a drowsy Duc in her arms. The whole day, the woman said. It’s been awful, so hot. There’s nothing to eat or drink. They keep calling out the numbers of planes but not ours. Linh made sympathetic noises while Bon and I settled down to the waiting part of hurry up and wait, the tedious custom of militaries the world over.