The Sympathizer Read Online Free PDF Page B

right out of the gates down Thi Xuan, left on Le Van Quyet, right on Hong Thap Tu in the direction of the embassies, left on Pasteur, another left on Nguyen Dinh Chieu, right on Cong Ly, then straight to the airport. But instead of taking a left on Le Van Quyet, the General turned right. He’s going in the wrong direction, my driver said. He had fingers stained yellow with nicotine and dangerously sharp toenails. Just follow, I said. I stood in the entry well, doors swung open to let in the cool night air. On the first bench behind me were Bon and Linh, Duc leaning forward on his mother’s lap to peer over my shoulder. The streets were empty; according to the radio, a twenty-four-hour curfew had been declared because of the strike on the airport. Nearly as vacant were the sidewalks, haunted only by the occasional set of uniforms shed by deserters. In some cases, the gear was in such a neat little heap, with helmet on top of blouse and boots beneath trousers, that a ray gun appeared to have vaporized the owner. In a city where nothing went to waste, no one touched these uniforms.
    My bus carried at least a few soldiers in civilian disguise, although the rest of the General’s in-laws and cousins were mostly women and children. These passengers murmured among themselves, complaining of this or that, which I ignored. Even if they found themselves in Heaven, our countrymen would find occasion to remark that it was not as warm as Hell. Why’s he taking this route? the driver said. The curfew! We’re all going to get shot, or at least arrested. Bon sighed and shook his head. He’s the General, he said, as if that explained everything, which it did. Nevertheless, the driver continued to complain as we passed the central market and turned onto Le Loi, not ceasing until the General finally stopped at Lam Son Square. Before us was the Grecian facade of the National Assembly, formerly the city’s opera house. From here our politicians managed the shabby comic operetta of our country, an off-key travesty starring plump divas in white suits and mustachioed prima donnas in custom-tailored military uniforms. Leaning out and looking up, I saw the glowing windows of the Caravelle Hotel’s rooftop bar, where I had often escorted the General for aperitifs and interviews with journalists. The balconies provided an unparalleled view of Saigon and its environs, and from them a faint laughter drifted. It must have been the foreign newsmen, ready to take the city’s temperature in its death rattle, as well as the attachés of nonaligned nations, watching the Long Binh ammunition dump glow over the horizon while tracers sputtered in the night.
    An urge seized me to fire a round in the direction of the laughter, just to enliven their evening. When the General got out of the car, I thought he was following the same impulse, but he turned in the other direction, away from the National Assembly and toward the hideous monument on Le Loi’s grassy median. I regretted keeping my Kodak in my rucksack rather than my pocket, for I would have liked a photograph of the General saluting the two massive marines charging forward, the hero in the rear taking a rather close interest in his comrade’s posterior. As Bon saluted the memorial, along with the other men on the bus, all I could ponder was whether these marines were protecting the people who strolled beneath their gaze on a sunny day, or, just as likely, were attacking the National Assembly at which their machine guns aimed. But as one of the men on the bus sobbed, and as I, too, saluted, it struck me that the meaning was not so ambiguous. Our air force had bombed the presidential palace, our army had shot and stabbed to death our first president and his brother, and our bickering generals had fomented more coups d’état than I could count. After the tenth putsch, I accepted the absurd state of our state with a mix of despair and anger, along with a dash of humor, a cocktail under whose influence