The Sympathizer

Bon and the narrator spend two weeks getting used to the weather and their new comrades—three bearded, long-haired marine lieutenants, the same ones they ran into in an alley in Saigon. The narrator remembers the affectless lieutenant on whom he had once drawn a pistol. They go out on a reconnaissance mission led by a kidnapped Lao farmer and a Hmong scout who serves as his translator. Instead of helmets and bulletproof vests, they’re given a laminated, wallet-sized picture of the Virgin Mary to wear over their hearts. Before departing, they spend days “discussing tactics, preparing rations, and studying the map” of their route through southern Laos. They also listen to Radio Free Vietnam, which airs the admiral’s speeches, along with James Taylor and Donna Summer songs. When the narrator says goodbye to Claude, his mentor reminds him to keep his head down and to leave the fighting to the pros.

A few hours into their march, the soldiers arrive at a pool of water, where their grizzled captain calls for a rest. The pool, which has a dead bird floating on its surface, is a bomb crater caused by the Americans. It’s a sign that they’ve entered Laos. They rest on the peak of a hill. They spread their ponchos and cover themselves with “hooded capes of netting into which [they wove] palm fronds.” The narrator has barely fallen asleep when the machine gunner tells him that it’s his turn for sentry duty.

The second night is no different from the first. The narrator looks up at the stars through the branches. He feels like he’s inside of a snow globe being shaken and watched by Sonny and the crapulent major. The narrator wishes that he told the General that he had already had sex with Lana, just to prove that nothing was forbidden to him, not even what belonged to or came from the General. The affectless lieutenant gets up to pee. Bon asks if the narrator is okay and he nods. The lieutenant returns. As he begins to speak, there’s a flash of light and a deafening sound that shakes the earth and loosens the soil.

Someone turns on a flashlight and they see that the affectless lieutenant’s leg is missing. Another person puts a hand over his mouth to muffle his screams. After some thrashing, he becomes still and dies. Though he’s dead, the narrator can still hear him screaming. The grizzled captain tells them that they have to move so that they’re far away by morning. The captain slings the lieutenant’s body over his shoulder and the narrator carries his leg, which is only slightly heavier than his AK-47.

The soldiers end their forward march after two hours. They lower the affectless lieutenant’s body into a grave. As the narrator kneels by the grave, he sees Sonny’s ghost squatting beside him and the crapulent major’s head sticking out of the grave. By late evening, after a short march, they reach the banks of the Mekong River. It would take four trips to transport all of them across. When it’s Bon and the narrator’s turn to cross, the narrator can feel the ghosts of Sonny and the crapulent major following them into the raft.

One of the marines takes one step off of the raft when a rocket-propelled grenade strikes him. The marine goes flying into the shallow water, where he lies, not quite dead and screaming. Bon pulls the narrator down. He commands the narrator to shoot. The narrator lifts the gun and squeezes the trigger. After several shots, his shoulder hurts from the gun kicking him. When he pauses to load another magazine, he feels an ache in his ears, too. All of a sudden, their enemies stop shooting and it’s just the narrator and Bon blasting into darkness. The radio telephone operator (RTO), who was shooting beside them, is slumped over, dead. Someone with a northern Vietnamese accent calls out, telling them to give up. The narrator looks at Bon, who has tears in his eyes. Bon says that, if it wasn’t for the narrator, he’d die here. The mission is over. The narrator has saved Bon’s life, but only from death.