My soul.
He turned in a circle to work out the painful cramps in his calves, then found a cyclo and driver to take him south down the city streets and boulevards. He recognized many of the buildings, the monuments, the roads — yet something had drastically changed in his absence. What was it?
In the markets, vendors busied themselves over colorful displays of fruits and vegetables and the silver bullet shape of fresh fish. Monks shuffled past in bright saffron robes. Children with outstretched hands implored him to toss them spare change. So many people bustling about in the warm morning air. So many people.
That was it. The people. They moved about freely now, and there were so many of them. Not like the days of the Khmer Rouge, when the city had been emptied of nearly everyone, its citizens forced to the outlying hills and labor camps. They’d been promised peace, but were given nothing but violence and death.
Now the city thrived. But the urging of the dead kept Samnang moving. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep as the wheels of the cyclo whirred over fresh blacktop.
Was that the only reason he came? To put a continuing dream to rest? To give peace to just one of many souls that begged for justice? Surely, there were other reasons.
He awoke when the cyclo driver braked to a squeaky stop.
There it was. The prison.
Now it was a museum. The Tuol Sleng museum. A testament to the atrocities of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. Back then it was referred to simply as Security Prison 21.
S-21.
Samnang tipped the cyclo driver and stood alone outside the gate, reading the old red sign.
The words chilled him.
Was I such a monster?
Samnang kept his sunglasses on and his Mets cap pulled low. Would anyone recognize him after all these years? Most of the ones who’d feared him were killed long ago, and besides — his hair was mostly gone now, the rest of it wisps of bone white. His skin was creased with age, and there were scars on his neck and face where dozens of black, cancerous moles had been removed.
He nodded at the guard standing casually at the museum’s entrance and stepped into the compound. For one dizzying moment he felt as if he’d never left, as if his years in Bangkok were nothing but a sweet, vivid dream.
Phantom smells of sweat, blood, and feces invaded his nostrils.
My uniform. Where’s my uniform?
He’d be punished without his uniform.
And Duch — he sensed him in the walls. Felt that he’d step around a corner at any moment with his donkey teeth, guards on either side. One nod and the guards would descend upon Samnang with hard black batons.
The sound of children playing on the grounds of the compound snapped him back to reality.
Before this was a prison, it was a school. Funny how things have come full circle. Children again play on the open field.
How many have I watched die here?
Do these children know the ground they now play on is saturated with the blood of human slaughter?
Samnang swept back thin strands of hair and tucked them back up into his cap. He walked into one of the buildings.
Prison cells that had once been classrooms.
You will write your confession now.
Samnang gasped as he peered into one of the cells. Black and white photographs covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Mugshots that Samnang himself had taken.
There were hundreds of them. Thousands. Every room that he passed was full of them. Photographs of the prisoners who lived and died here. Doomed faces, blank eyes, unsmiling mouths. They continued to look at Samnang as they did all those years ago.
This one died easily. And here — she hung herself with her trousers. And this one — and here — taken out to Choeung Ek. The killing fields. And this boy here begged for his mother.
So many of them crowding around him. How could he remember them all?
Over 17,000 prisoners.
Only seven survived.
He felt once again for the paper folded neatly in his pocket. He searched for Pran’s face among the photographs on the walls.
So many. So many. The light from their eyes lost as they stare at the camera, their wills smashed. It’s as if they are already dead.
Why this obsession with documentation? Duch was meticulous about keeping records. His red-inked notations peppered many of the confessions. It was as if the Khmer Rouge wanted to leave behind proof of their cruelty.
Another room full of pictures.
More familiar faces.
Samnang remembered how dazed they were, their blindfolds freshly removed, beatings freshly stopped, his own diatribes halted as he asked them to look at the camera lens. Duch would tell them to smile. He’d laugh at his own joke, his tongue waving behind ghost white teeth.
But the prisoners never smiled.
How long ago had it been? Twenty-five years?
His index finger twitched at the phantom memory of taking Pran’s photograph—
—placid face, darkly tanned, his prisoner number — 10572 — stitched on his tattered shirt.
Pran squinted. Poor eyesight. Owl-like circles of light skin where the frames of glasses once sat.
Glasses were a sign of an educated man.
The welts and scars on his hands were fresh, probably inflicted by Pran himself to make him appear like a simple farmer from the hills. A farmer, a peasant, a friend of Angka would have no need of glasses, no need for smooth, soft hands. And Angka had no need for educated men.
Angka — the Central Party of the Khmer Rouge.
They wanted the farmers, men from the hills, whose minds were free of education, whose minds were blank slates that could easily be filled.
“You will write your confession now, Pran.”
Iron manacles, big enough for oxen, restrained Pran’s legs. His hands were tied behind him with wire, and a heavy chain connected them to the manacles. “Who is Angka?”
Samnang flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Angka is your new family.” He squatted in front of Pran, lifted his head up by the hair so that he could look into his eyes. “Angka is your mother and father. Angka is all you need.” He let go of Pran’s hair and brought his right fist quickly forward, connecting with Pran’s nose in one dizzying instant. Samnang felt the small bones break, felt a fresh burst of blood on his knuckles. He stepped back and flung it off his fingers.
Pran breathed heavily through his mouth as he looked up at Samnang, eyes squinting, jaw quivering with pain.
“Angka doesn’t have time for your games,” Samnang said. “You will give your confession now.”
Another man sat in a chair in the corner, poised over a pad of paper, ready to capture Pran’s words and regurgitate them in ink.
“Why should I trust you?” Pran strained to get the words out. “How do I know what I tell you is what gets written?”
“You think too much.” Samnang lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew a cloud of bluish smoke in Pran’s face. “Now,” he said. He brought the glowing end of the cigarette close to Pran’s left eye.
Pran’s eyelid fluttered. Tiny pink bubbles formed on his lips as he panted. “Please. Okay. My confession. Here is my confession. You write it down like I say, yes? Then I confess.”