Deep Space Nine's Four
Suffering in Exile
"All during the years of my exile, I imagined what it would be like to come home."
--Garak in What You Leave Behind
The Four's chronic dissatisfaction with whatever he has in the present is often coupled with a belief that there was a past time when he had perfect love and acceptance. But then, the Four recalls, he was rejected and abandoned -- often by a parental figure -- and he has lived in exile from paradise ever since.
For Elim Garak, that longed-for time in the past was when he was the protegé of Enabran Tain, head of the Cardassian Empire's feared Obsidian Order. Garak was a powerful agent in the Order, but for reasons we never conclusively learn, Tain cast him out and Garak was exiled from Cardassia. Garak took up residence on the space station Deep Space Nine and worked as a tailor, a life that he describes as "pathetic. To think this is what my life has been reduced to -- this sterile shell, this prison."
It is several seasons until we learn the full emotional impact of Garak's situation: He is the unackowledged son of Tain, the cold-hearted man responsible the his exile. Tain's wish for his son: "I want him to live a long, miserable life. I want him to grow old on that station surrounded by people who hate him, knowing that he'll never come home again."
Garak not only longs for that time when he had Tain's approval, but also for Cardassia itself. He extols the virtue of its literature and culture (the Four-ish need for aesthetic outlet is found not only in this love for Cardassian literature, but also in his work as a tailor).
Life on the station, however, Garak calls "torture." The Four's distinctive speech pattern is one of lamentation -- a dramatic recounting of the difficulties and suffering of his life. Garak has this down pat. In the opening scene of The Wire, for instance, he strolls along the promenade with Dr. Julian Bashir, regaling him with a string of laments: first complaining about a late supplier, then the line at the restaurant -- but when Julian suggests Quark's as an alternative, Garak rejects it as too "noisy, crowded and vulgar" -- then about Julian's lack of appreciation for Cardassian literature.
Throughout the Four's laments, there can be a subtle quality of boasting: His suffering is what makes him unique, the Four believes. Garak heightens his image of specialness by parcelling out bits of information about his past, creating an aura of drama and mystery. He proclaims that he's just a simple tailor, while reveling in the attention (and actively seeking it out from Julian) that proves he's not. Garak manages to both deflect inquiry about himself (partly about of utilitarian self-interest) and preen over the unspoken implications.
Yet with this uniqueness comes the Four's sense of defect: that there is some essential part of him that makes him unworthy of love. Garak's self-loathing is often evident. A noteworthy example was his relationship with Ziyal, a young woman who was infatuated with him, but he spurned her admiration. "My dear, you're young," he told her once. "So I realize that you're a poor judge of character."
Garak tends toward the self-preservation subtype of Four: one who courts danger and risk in order to stir up and heighten emotions. The Obsidian Order no doubt provided such risky situations all the time. In his mundane tailor's life on Deep Space Nine, Garak still tried, whether by butting in on Julian's holosuite spy games, or getting involved in the latest intrigue on the station.
His spells of claustrophobia are even a reflection of this, a way to court emotional danger. And when Ezri attempts to counsel him on this problem, his response is to take typically Four-ish offense that she would claim to be able to understand his feelings. He took a similar attitude while trying to reject Julian's help in The Wire: "You think because we have lunch together once a week, you know me?"
When the show ended, so did Garak's exile. He finally was able to return to Cardassia, but it had become a very different place, ravaged by war, its society and culture that Garak loved so well in ruins. After Tain's housekeeper, Mila, is killed -- the one person who truly seemed to love Garak, he said, "All during the years of my exile, I imagined what it would be like to come home. I even thought of living in this house again, with Mila. And she's dead. And this house is about to be reduced to a pile of rubble. My Cardassia's gone."
It's comforting to think that Garak may have continued as he did in actor Andrew Robinson's book, A Stitch In Time. In addition to fleshing out his character's past, Robinson imagined that Garak overcame his grief to work to build a new Cardassian society. This is the Four going to the high side of One: Instead of mourning the past, he takes constructive action to make a better future.
-- Teresa Malcolm