The Sympathizer

Brilliant work, Claude said. You really fucked this guy.

I was a good student. I knew what my teacher wanted and, more than that, I enjoyed his praise at the expense of the bad student. For wasn’t that what the Watchman was? He had learned what the Americans taught, but he had rejected those teachings outright. I was more sympathetic to the thinking of Americans, and I confess that I could not help but see myself in their place as I broke the Watchman. He threatened them, and thus, to some extent, me. But the satisfaction I had at his expense did not last long. In the end, he would show everyone what it was that a bad student could accomplish. He would outsmart me by proving that it was possible to sabotage the means of production that you did not own, to destroy the representation that owned you. His final move happened one morning a week after I had shown him his confession, when I got a call at the officers’ quarters from the guard in the surveillance room. By the time I reached the National Interrogation Center, Claude was also there. The Watchman was curled up on his white bed, facing the white wall, clad in his white shorts and T-shirt. When we rolled him over, his face was purple and his eyes bulged. Deep in his open mouth, at the back of his throat, a white lump. I just went to the bathroom, the guard blubbered. He was eating breakfast. What was he going to do in two minutes? What the Watchman had done was choke himself to death. He had been on good behavior for the past week, and we had rewarded him with what he wanted for breakfast. I like hard-boiled eggs, he said. So he had peeled and eaten the first two before swallowing the third one whole, shell and all. Hey, good lookin’ . . .

Turn off that goddamn music, Claude said to the guard.

Time had stopped for the Watchman. What I did not realize until I woke up in my own white room was that time had stopped for me, too. I could see that other white room with utter clarity from my own, my eye peering through a camera in the corner, watching Claude and myself standing over the Watchman. It’s not your fault, said Claude. Even I didn’t think about this. He patted my shoulder reassuringly but I said nothing, the smell of sulfur driving everything out of my mind except for the thought that I was not a bastard, I was not a bastard, I was not, I was not, I was not, unless, somehow, I was.





CHAPTER 12



By the time I emerged from the hospital, my services were no longer needed, and I was not invited back to the set for the mopping-up operation that took place after the shooting was completed. Instead, I found that an airplane ticket had been reserved for my instant departure from the Philippines, and I spent the entire trip brooding over the problem of representation. Not to own the means of production can lead to premature death, but not to own the means of representation is also a kind of death. For if we are represented by others, might they not, one day, hose our deaths off memory’s laminated floor? Still smarting from my wounds even now, I cannot help but wonder, writing this confession, whether I own my own representation or whether you, my confessor, do.

The sight of Bon waiting for me at the Los Angeles airport made me feel a little better. He looked exactly the same, and when I opened our apartment door I was relieved to see that while it had not improved, neither had it worsened. The Frigidaire remained our decrepit diorama’s main attraction, thoughtfully stocked by Bon with enough beer to cure me of my jet lag, though not enough to cure me of the unexpected sadness massaged into my pores. I was still awake when he went to sleep, leaving me with the latest letter from my Parisian aunt. Before I retired, I dutifully composed my report to her. The Hamlet was complete, I wrote. But, more important, the Movement had established a revenue source.

A restaurant? I had said when Bon broke the news over our first round of beer.