The Sympathizer

Is that bad? he said. He put the beer down and picked up the .38. As some men were born to handle a paintbrush or a pen, he was born to wield a gun. It looked natural in his hand, a tool of which a man could be proud, like a wrench. A man needs a purpose, he said, contemplating the gun. Before I met Linh, I had purpose. I wanted revenge for my father. Then I fell in love, and Linh became more important than my father or revenge. I hadn’t cried since he died, but after my marriage I cried at his grave because I had betrayed him where it mattered the most, in my heart. I didn’t get over that until Duc was born. At first he was just this strange, ugly little thing. I wondered what was wrong with me, why I didn’t love my own son. But slowly he grew and grew, and one night I noticed how his fingers and toes, his hands and feet, were perfectly made, miniature versions of mine. For the first time in my life I knew what it was to be struck by wonder. Even falling in love was not like that feeling, and I knew that this was how my father must have looked at me. He had created me, and I had created Duc. It was nature, the universe, God, flowing through us. That was when I fell in love with my son, when I understood how insignificant I was, and how marvelous he was, and how one day he’d feel the exact same thing. And it was then I knew I hadn’t betrayed my father. I cried again, holding my boy, because I’d finally become a man. What I’m saying, why I’m telling you all this, is that my life once had meaning. It had a purpose. Now it has none. I was a son and a husband and a father and a soldier, and now I’m none of that. I’m not a man, and when a man isn’t a man he’s nobody. And the only way not to be nobody is to do something. So I can either kill myself or kill someone else. Get it?

I not only got it, I was astonished. It was the longest speech I had ever heard from him, his sorrow and rage and despair not only cracking open his heart but loosening his vocal cords. Those words even succeeded in making him less ugly than he objectively was, if not handsome, emotion softening the harsh features of his face. He was the only man I had ever met who seemed moved, deeply, not only by love but also by the prospect of killing. While he was an expert by necessity, I was a novice by choice, despite having had my opportunities. In our country, killing a man—or a woman, or a child—was as easy as turning a page of the morning paper. One only needed an excuse and an instrument, and too many on all sides possessed both. What I did not have was the desire or the various uniforms of justification a man dons as camouflage—the need to defend God, country, honor, ideology, or comrades—even if, in the last instance, all he really is protecting is that most tender part of himself, the hidden, wrinkled purse carried by every man. These off-the-rack excuses fit some people well, but not me.

I wanted to persuade the General that the crapulent major was no spy, but it would hardly do to disinfect him of the idea with which I had infected him in the first place. More than this, I knew I had to prove to the General that I could correct my ostensible mistake, and that I could be a man of action. Not doing something was not an option, as the General’s demeanor made clear to me at our next meeting the following week. He deserves it, the General said, disagreeably obsessed with the indelible stain of guilt he saw stamped on the major’s forehead, that tiny handprint of the major’s doomed mortality left there by me. But take your time. I’m in no rush. Operations should be performed patiently and painstakingly. He affirmed this in a storeroom that channeled the dispassionate atmosphere of a war room, the walls newly decorated with maps showing our sinuous, narrow-waisted homeland in all its splendor or its parts, each suffocating behind plastic sheeting, red markers dangling on strings next to them. Better to do it well and slowly than quickly and poorly, he said. Yes, sir, I said. What I had in mind was—

No need to bore me with details. Just let me know when it’s done.

So the major’s demise was written. Nothing was left me but to create a believable story where his death was neither my fault nor the General’s. I did not have to think very hard before the most obvious story came to me. What we had here was your usual American tragedy, only this time starring a hapless refugee.