Love Songs from a Shallow Grave

12

Sometimes, torture can be just the threat of torture, the promise of misery. The imagination can scroll through a menu of horrors more awful than anything a half-witted interrogator might come up with. There are those so petrified by what their own minds have envisaged that they're shouting their confessions even before the torturer comes for them. It's only just occurred to me what a weapon my own mind can be against me. My own gun pointed at my own temple. I am light-headed and weak already, certainly not thinking clearly. I can see, but cannot feel the bruises nor taste the blood but I know my right wrist is broken.

They took me to a room and removed my blindfold. The smiley man and the heavy monk were there. There was a pervading stench of bitter blood and disinfectant. They chained me to an armchair without a cushion, sat me on the bare springs that cut into the backs of my thighs. It's comical to think about it but those damned springs could nip like angry crabs. The torturers ignored me. They left me sitting and went about their business. Their business was a young girl, no older than fifteen. What kind of subversive could she have been? When they'd finished with her she was as good as dead. I had my eyes closed for the whole ordeal but my ears told me everything.

Then it was quiet and the heavy monk pulled up a school seat and sat on it. He looked ridiculous, like an elephant in a baby's chair. He was wearing black pyjamas that fitted him now. The charade was over. He flipped down the wooden writing arm that rested on his fat thigh.

"This," he said, "is your life. After you hear, you will indicate that you understand what it say and you will sign. You will sign today, or you will sign after the bones in your foot are broke one after one. Or you will sign the next day after we take out your eye. But some time you will sign. Better for us all to sign now."

My only thought then was that if this man were truly to put on saffron robes, they would sizzle against his skin and catch fire. I grew up with monks. I know there's more to being a monk than cutting off your hair and eyebrows. There's deportment, manners, and a way of speaking that come from truly understanding the dharma. They're not learned but acquired and the heavy monk had none of these traits. But I'd tested him anyway, just to be certain. I told him a story about the seven monks who chanted in front of my mother's funeral pyre. He saw nothing wrong with the tale even though I pushed him on it. Any true monk would know that four monks have to chant in front of the pyre..I hadn't bothered with any other tests.

"My name is Siri Paiboun," the fake monk read aloud. "I am an agent for the Vietnamese Liberation Army. I am Lao but I went to school in Hanoi where I was trained in espionage by the Vietnamese secret service. My cover is that I am a Lao medical doctor on a state mission. My objective for coming to Democratic Kamphuchea in May 1978 was to collect data for my comrades in Hanoi and to commit acts of sabotage against my enemies, the Khmer. I am ashamed of my actions and accept the punishment of death."

The heavy monk twirled the paper around on the writing arm and put one more blunt pencil on top of it. The poor man must have really been under pressure from somewhere to get my signature before he ripped off my head. But I was getting bored with all those pencils.

"We find some interesting reading material in your hotel room," he said. "This is enough evidence of your treachery. So we borrow your documents. Your travel paper do not have your signature. If it do, we can sign your name our self. We want only your signature, now. Simple. Not to eat the pencil or the paper. If you do this again I will cut off your nose here and now. You understand?"

I nodded.

"If I open the cuff, you will sign?"

I nodded again and remained passive as the man reached over and slipped the hex key into the manacle slot. I was tired; physically tired and tired of all this. Tired of suffering and tired of the performance of these ignorant men…and tired of living. Yes, I was finally tired of the effort of staying alive. But I had one last burst of energy to share. I'd been a wrestler and boxer at university, the lightest weight class but I pack a good right. I just needed a clear target. Once my hand was free, I reached for the pencil but my unsteady fingers sent it tumbling to the floor. The heavy monk glared at me.

"Sorry," I said. When the man leaned down to pick it up I sent a mighty haymaker into that chubby cheek of his. Oh, it was a delight. There was a crack and a streak of pain shot down my arm. But I felt the cheekbone snap beneath my knuckle and the heavy monk fell across the floor like a collapsing stack of firewood. The man was stunned at first, not knowing where he was, then he looked up and focused on me. There was hatred in him. It shrouded him like a cloud of soot. He staggered to his feet and rammed into me, sending wild punches to my face and body. I had just the one arm free to fend off the blows and put in some more of my own. But I had no strength. If the smiley man hadn't pulled the heavy monk off, there was little doubt I would have been beaten to death. The boy guards carried what was left of my resolve back to the classroom and dumped me here by the blackboard.

And here I lay, too tender to move. I doubt the little guard creatures understood why my blood-bloated lips were smiling. It was because I had just seen the light. At last I understood. I'd been waiting for the phibob, baffled as to why they hadn't come for me. But it's obvious, isn't it? What worse could they do to me? Even if they gave me their best shot, they couldn't top any of this. You know it all, don't you, my spirits? Yes, that's right. Nod those heads. You know it all. I've had time to regret that I am still alive. But I want to go with a flourish. One last heroic act I'll be joining you, I know I shall, but not just yet.