Through a Bodyguard of Lies

BY DR. AGONSON

In the Deep Space Nine episode The Wire, Garak tells three lies on the same theme, each a supposed explanation of his exile. A master in the art of tall-tales and fibs, every story is true in some way—that way being left mostly as a mystery to the nerds like me who keep rewatching the show.

We do see, however, that each time Garak breaks into a new narrative, he is trying to manipulate Dr. Bashir. The first he tells when Bashir is stopping him from committing suicide. In it, he makes two claims: He deserves death and he is unrepentant (among his murders, a subordinate named Elim). Bashir, troubled, stands. When Garak sees that Bashir will still save him, he submits to the doctor’s help.

The next lie comes in the pains of withdrawal. As Garak sobers up, coming face to face with the reality he’d been running from for the last two years, he is overwhelmed by disgust. So, he tells Bashir a new story, a slight alteration of the original. In this one, though, instead of murder, it is his mercy which undoes him (a disgusted Elim who witnesses). If he tried to paint himself in the worst possible light in the first story, and proud of it, the sequel admits some little spot of humanity in him, a stain he has long been disgusted by and has never been able to wipe out, a smear he cannot help seeing represented in Bashir. Here are three faces to Garak. The bubbly, drugged persona Dr. Bashir is familiar with and which Garak associates as human, the ideal man of ruthless steel Garak wishes he was, and the pitiful wearer of both masks who can no longer hold onto either identity. The story is more of a threat than anything. He is telling Dr. Bashir that he is going to fight him, that he won’t let Bashir turn him into a human being.

Later, on the verge of death, they consider giving Garak more of the pleasure stimulant to stabilize his condition long enough to make some medicine to help him. Garak refuses. He will no longer wear that false face and flee into unreality, and he has a new story to tell. He admits that he and Elim, ere now always a footnote in his histories, were “closer than brothers.” Yet, when someone was going to be left holding the bag, Garak tried to betray his dearest friend only to find that Elim had framed him first. And why, Bashir wants to know, does Garak tell him all this? It may be the only honest thing Garak ever says, but he wants forgiveness. He finally accepts that little stain of humanity that Bashir has been trying to breathe life back into. (See the visual metaphor of Jadzia’s plant dying because it’s not in its home soil.)

So, Garak has finally taken off his mask, except that he’s still lying. There is no Garak and Elim, only Elim Garak, as Elim is Garak’s first name. This we are told by the living embodiment of Garak’s ideal, Enabran Tain. Yet, I think, we might have all the clues now to piece everything together. I’ve long had a feeling that the conversation between Bashir and Tain is something of an allegory’s key.

I doubt the authors of the show ever set down in stone what really happened, yet I think there is an answer. I think Elim was betrayed by Tain when some action taken by Garak on behalf of Enabran put both their lives on the line. Elim knew he had to betray Tain or lose everything, but because Enabran was Garak’s father, he couldn’t. He knew he was betraying Tain by this act of humanity, but the child desperate for the love of his father was in a dilemma. Betray Enabran his father by throwing him under the bus or betray Tain his father by failing to be the heartless monster that Tain had trained him to be. Like in the second story, Garak’s eventual compassion seemed to himself rooted in his baser instincts; food, shelter, comfort, all the things a father provides. I think Garak hesitated and Tain took advantage.

In the end, both men are found in a type of exile, Garak to Deep Space Nine, and Enabran to reluctant retirement on some colony.

The episode opens on a literary conversation regarding a book described as, “The finest Cardassian novel ever written.” The Eternal Sacrifice is everything Garak idolizes, his ideal behavior, a story of a family’s complete devotion to the state over a thousand years. Repetitive and boring, Bashir says in a more polite way than I’ve transcribed. Garak responds with uncharacteristic snideness, one of the warnings Bashir picks up on that something is wrong with his friend. The doctor tries to argue that “there is more to life than duty to the state.” A piece of humanity Garak dismisses as humane, turning it into an accusation of “Federation” indoctrination.

I think that bit, “more than,” is really important here. Garak’s deflection is really more suited to his own viewpoint. He’s the one who is ideologically incapable of seeing outside his indoctrination. Bashir can value self-sacrifice to the nation, but it’s not his principle; he can see more than that. For as wonderful a liar as Garak is, honest Bashir still beats him at empathy. Bashir sees the truth in the story, but he also sees how that worldview steamrolls over the characters who are trapped in an endless cycle. Bashir sees the person Garak is, the very thing Elim, naked outside his position in the government, exposed in his banishment from society, has been running from.

In the coda, we return to normal, with Garak and Bashir back to bantering about books. Garak is less defensive now, and is willing to share with Bashir more Cardassian literature, a book called “The Crimson Shadow.” Set in the future, when the Cardassians and Klingons are at war—and wait a minute, that is the future that happens in the show. Bashir’s question of “Who wins?” becomes marvelously telling in the light of the episode Statistical Probabilities, but that digression will have to wait for some other time.

I remember reading once one of the Socratic dialogues where Socrates wonders who knows truth better, the liar or the one who hates lies. He finds, if I recall correctly, that he himself is of two minds. Here, in this silly little sci-fi I loved as a child, the question comes up again:

Who better knows the truth, Garak or Bashir? Bashir is ignorant of what happened. Knowing this, he seeks the truth. He doesn’t really get it, but he stands firm against the machinations of his weaseling friend and thereby, in some sense, proves his position: There is more to life than duty to the state.

Garak knows. That is—correction, that was—his job. An intelligence officer, second only to one. Within the body of state, his position is, in some regard, the state’s own sense of self, the awareness of who the state is and who it isn’t, only, instead of being just a passive observer, he is also something of an antibody rooting out and killing all which is not the state. It works great until, in some unspecified overzealousness, he is the thing rooted out. Now he knows a lot, but outside the state, he doesn’t know who he is.

Throughout the story, it is Bashir who knows who he is and who Garak is: “I’m a doctor. You’re my patient. That’s all I need to know.” To Garak, this is only the Federation talking, a rival body to the Cardassian Empire, and so he tries to disappear behind the first of his three stories. “Wrong again. You need to know who you’re trying to save,” Garak begins his deflection only to find the healer is still patiently waiting there at the end of his little tale, ready to save the person, not the state, not the ideals, not the crimes, and that act of love, of being willing to know Garak qua Garak, finally begins to break down Garak’s defenses.