… my mother: She was a poor person, I was her poor child, and no one asks poor people if they want war. Nor had anyone asked these poor people if they wanted to die of thirst and exposure on the coastal sea, or if they wanted to be robbed and raped by their own soldiers.
Engang imellem dukker der litteratur op der skiller sig markant ud, romaner der hæver sig langt over gennemsnittet og i kraftfuld prosa fortæller deres læsere om en verden, man ikke ellers ville have mødt. The Sympathizer er en sådan roman skrevet af vietnamesiske – Pulitzer Price vinder – Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Vores jeg-fortæller er spion for Nordvietnam. Han tjener i den sydvietnamesiske hær, men bliver tvunget til at flygte til USA med sin general i slutningen af Vietnamkrigen. Han bor i et samfund af sydvietnamesiske flygtninge i det sydlige Californien og fortsætter i hemmelighed med at spionere og rapportere tilbage til den kommunistiske vietnamesiske regering.
Med præcision og skarp ironi formidler han tingenes tilstand:
Our country was overrun by acronyms, with the ICCS otherwise known as ‘I Can’t Control Shit’, its role to oversee the cease-fire between north and south after the American armed forces strategically relocated. It was a smashingly successful cease-fire, for in the last two years only 150,000 soldiers had died, in addition to the requisite number of civilians. Imagine how many would have died without a truce.
Sammen med hovedpersonen er vennen Bon der mistede sin hustru og søn i krigens sidste dage. Bon er på sin vis også en stærk karakter og en hård nyser:
Bon was sure to go Japanese and fight to the end
Og vel ankommet til Californien må de begge lægge livsstilen om. Vores hovedperson begynder på universitetet, mens Bon modtager socialhjælp:
Bon was eligible for welfare, which he received with only a marginal degree of shame and a considerable sense of entitlement. Having served his country a pittance, fighting an American-determined war, he sensibly concluded that welfare was a better reward than a medal. Hed had no choice but to accept his lot, for no one had a need for a man who could jump out of airplanes, hump thirty miles with eighty pounds of kit, nail a bull’s-eye with pistol and rifle, and absorb more punishment than one of these masked and oiled professional wrestlers on television.
Tendenser i samfundet bliver trukket frem og understreget, måske fordi kontrasterne bliver tydelige i fortællerens øjne. Han har kommunistiske overbevisninger, men er også tiltrukket af den amerikanske kultur og er ikke blind for både muligheder og forhindringer:
Not even families with a daughter of mixed ancestry welcomed me, for the daughter was herself usually frantic to squeeze into the elevator of social mobility through marriage to someone of a pure pedigree.
Samtidigt spidder fortælleren ethvert tilløb til hykleri:
… in Orange County, an hour away by car. It was the birthplace of the war criminal Richard Nixon, as well as the home of John Wayne, a place so ferociously patriotic I thought Agent Orange might have been manufactured there or at least named in its honor.
Siden rejser fortælleren tilbage til Vietnam, og hele romanen er hans beretning om forløbet fra Vietnamkrigen og frem, nedskrevet fra en fængselscelle.
The Sympathizer
Viet Thanh Nguyen
371 sider
Grove Press, New York
Udgivet 2015
Birte Strandby
