“It doesn’t make any sense they let us see this,” said Carole.
“Why not?” asked Calvino.
“Are you crazy, Vinee?”
“Of course I’m insane. That’s how I know how the guards think.”
“Which is?”
“That every prison in the whole world is like T-3. Year Zero people don’t see anything wrong with this picture. It’s normal. It’s the way power works. It’s an improvement from shooting them in the back of the head. They think this is an improvement,” said Calvino.
“Improvement on what?” she asked as they walked back to the door.
“The novel way evil likes showing the many kinds of wounds we inflict on each other,” said Calvino, following her out of the cell and breathing the dead tropical air in the corridor. He filled his lungs as if he had surfaced from a long dive. Slowly he released his breath. Shaw and the Cambodian officer had walked on ahead. Calvino had wanted to look back into the cell. It was a terrible pull. That desire for one more glimpse of the men, and when he stared through the bars he saw something he hadn’t seen inside. Men stripped bare. Without souls and hope they sat waiting for an end like cattle in the back of a ten-wheel truck on the way to a slaughterhouse. Along the path where humanity, compassion, kindness were destroyed, evil filled the void, turning the other into a creature to be defiled, detained, tortured, murdered, and raped.
In that moment, he had a revelation—this was what had moved Dr. Veronica to believe that in the face of such evil the ends justify the means. That appeals to moral codes in the face of anti-codes of immorality were useless. The only way to defeat them was to meet them on their own terms and their own grounds. He also understood that it was through this feeling that evil was always able to win, so long as fever for revenge was stronger than the desire for justice. Nothing these men could have done would have justified holding them in such conditions for a single hour. And nothing anyone printed about them would make any difference.
The men inside the cellblock of T-3 had been melted down as if human beings were a raw material—flesh, bones, blood, eyes, guts and bladders—a potter’s clay to reshape a new being—not animal and not human. And like all raw material these peasants were being stored for a disposal, which no one had figured out. With such beings there was confusion over finding a destiny suitable for them, beyond acting as cut outs for the ruling classes. Some things, like a rare diamond necklace, never lost their magic, were never confused. Diamonds, unlike the men in T-3, had an absolute, universal purpose, value, and worth. This combination unlocked a powerful presence. Around the neck of a woman who was on the arm of a man, the glitter of light transported the owner to a platform high above the law, to reside in the place reserved for the gods.
The power to hurl human beings into places like T-3, to strip them of their souls and to never account for consequences. And such great power once lost in the wilderness had to be tracked down, and those responsible eliminated. Poison, drowning, and gutting. Horror’s trilogy of awful death had already struck. There was no escape from the forces reclaiming lost power. Ask Hatch. Ask Patten. Tell it to Fat Stuart—they were among the bodies which had touched it, lusted for it, and never escaped the gravity of evil long enough to enjoy the power they had grasped for a moment.
SIXTEEN
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
DISTANT VOICES FILTERED through thick walls had the ear-achy sound of children in a faraway room, crying in pain. They continued walking down the narrow prison corridor—a tunnel of gray walls—then came to a stop as the guard halted and removed a ring of keys.
“You hear that?” Carole whispered to Calvino.
“I hear them.”
“What are they saying?” she asked Shaw. “When will it end?” said Shaw.
“The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” said Calvino. Tap ordered the guard to unlock the observation hatch of a cell, pointing at a corroded iron door. Delegation of authority was the essence of power. The guard obeyed. Beyond the door was a blank space which was pitch black; it was as if the cell had been empty since the French pullout in ’53. Calvino stared at the door; the old moss-green paint had leached through, creating a series of long cracks, which looked like the fissures on a leper’s leg stump. Tap grunted, his lips spreading back exposing a black crooked line along his gums. His sharp teeth made him look like a predator signaling to his kill that it was time to give up the ghost. The space behind the iron door emitted no light—the cell was in total blackness, and the prisoner could only look out through two vertical bars and one horizontal bar. The guard called out Nuth’s name.
“Nuth, you come. People want to see your ugly face.” Calvino couldn’t take his eyes off the bars on the door.
Had Scott really taken Nuth’s sister to bed and had the brother tried unsuccessfully to exact revenge, landing himself in such a cell? It didn’t seem possible to believe the man caged inside had any connection with Scott.
The Khmer officer laughed and joked about how poor he was, as a prelude to hitting up Shaw for more cigarettes. Shaw offered him the pack. It wasn’t that he was a corrupt government official but that his wife and children didn’t have enough to eat. It may have been true. Tap took the entire pack as if they were his by right, pulled out a cigarette, and stuck it between the bars like someone trying to lure a caged animal in a zoo. He slipped the pack in his shirt pocket. He didn’t explain how the cigarettes were going to help the hunger of his wife and children.
A hacking cough came from deep within the cell. A faint stirring followed as the cough was muffled against a pillow or a hand. Thick in the air was the stale pollution of sickness and death. A moment later a prisoner’s face appeared and looked through the bars. The shadows of the bars cut black ribbons across mouth and eyes. He stared with the resigned eyes of a man facing a firing squad. His mouth was tight, quivering at the edges with some emotion registering terror and hopelessness. His body looked buffeted by disease, malnutrition, and lack of sleep. His jaw bucked up and down like a puppet’s. He stared straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of the guard and found Calvino’s eyes instead.
Carole started shooting with her camera.
“This face is something else, Calvino,” she said. “Don’t stop.”
“I don’t intend to.”
Shaw kept the officer and guard busy talking about gardening. The Irishman was actually talking about something as common as a flower garden, and it was working.
“They’ve fucked him up,” said Carole.
“Yeah, he looks pretty bad,” said Calvino.
But Calvino found no pity in his vacant eyes, the white parts looked like they had been brushed with glo-paint yellow. Calvino saw something more beyond the call for help; this was the next stage, the final trip between two train stops in life. Here was where the terminal of desperation was constructed and the tracks stopped—the prisoner accepted a fate where he had been totally abandoned by his family, his friends; anyone who had ever stepped into his life was beyond reaching him here. He was lost; it was as if his life was already gone, played out. Did Americans who knew about life from TV have any idea about this kind of real world—the world of the beast cut loose, roaming with the privilege to destroy at will? What notion did they have of the true nature of evil and danger?
They had never seen a Nuth in the flesh, close up—they might have seen a Hollywood extra playing someone like him in a movie of the week. His face danced with the kind of pain you never found on the best actor. He wasn’t hitting his marks as some asshole twenty-five-year Hollywood director leaned forward in his chair. This wasn’t having a bad day; this was having no hope. For sure it wasn’t a movie. In his face was a book. A horror storybook filled with those who had stormed through his life. The Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, the French, UNTAC—all those who had come to use and control his destiny. Nuth didn’t know what day it was. He had forgotten the month. He didn’t know what crime he had been charged with. That was no surprise. A lot of the prison
ers had never been charged with a crime. When Calvino talked to him, Nuth looked back blankly at this stranger who was asking him about his sister. The one who worked in the market and kept a notebook of how to say thank you in every language UNTAC had sent to Cambodia. He blinked, trying to remember, until the tears streamed down his cheeks and splashed on the bars.
Nuth’s face was one that repeated itself all over Cambodia. If there had been history books with pictures, they would have been filled with faces like his. In every street, market, village, and school, Calvino had seen this same look. A kind of question mark behind the eyes as if to ask: Why had so many brought us pain and suffering? Calvino didn’t have the answer. Blame the French. Blame the Khmer Rouge, or the Vietnamese. Blame UNTAC. Blame the nature of man. Curse God. Mindlessness moved from generation to generation, rolling through time, through the centuries, and over the natives. Nuth’s mouth opened in a silent cry. They waited for some sound. But his throat couldn’t make any noise other than a faint huffing like an animal caught in a firestorm. Carole never missed a frame of his suffering. The camera captured every angle. No one came forward to stop her from shooting Nuth’s face through the barred door.
Shaw had whispered that the French were to blame. It was easier, simpler and without complication, something Tap, the officer in charge, would immediately accept. The officer’s reaction wasn’t what Shaw thought it would be. Tap shrugged, sucked on the cigarette, blue smoke curling out of his nostrils. What mattered who was in charge? Guards came and went, exchanged places with the prisoners, and prisoners became guards. How could anyone make sense of that? How could anyone assign responsibility?
Calvino had delivered what he had promised. He had led Carole into the lair of the beast. She fingered the hugely expensive strand of pearls the way Thais played with their amulets in the face of danger. It had happened so fast that she had had no time to adjust from the easy security of UNTAC headquarters to working on the inside of the damp, dark cellblock of T-3 Prison. Click, click. No words, only the mechanical sound of a camera flashing in the darkness. Thanks to Shaw, Calvino had been able to get her access to where no other foreign correspondent had gone—and she used her Nikon to bear witness. Images of men with their souls deleted. She found them breathing, yes they were alive, but the spirit had been broken deep inside them. She knew that place. The one where we know ourselves, our hiding ground where we squirrel away hope, love, and dreams. Well, it was shattered like a fine piece of crystal hurled against a concrete wall. She felt herself going numb as she saw a void occupied without any notion of purpose, sense, and meaning.
“These people want to talk to you,” said the officer. He lit another of Shaw’s cigarettes.
Carole couldn’t stop shooting once she had pulled Nuth into her camera lens. Tears streamed down her face, splashing at her feet. She caught an angle of light and played with it, adjusting it, as she moved, so that every point of pain in that face registered on film. The window in the barred door drew her until her forehead touched the cool steel. Her knuckles brushed against the iron door. She could feel his breath on her face. The window was so small that it cut off the top of his head. A fly crawled across his exposed collarbone. He had no strength left to brush it away.
“The man who put you here. What was his name?” asked Calvino, moving in beside Carole, putting an arm around her waist.
This made the guard laugh, and nudge Shaw.
There was no answer, and frustration filled the silence as Carole took more photographs.
“Who can help get you out of here?” asked Calvino. He was glad that Shaw was keeping the guard back. He didn’t want anyone to overhear the conversation.
Nuth blinked. For several seconds he said nothing, moving away from the small window. For a while it seemed that he wouldn’t come back. What could the guards do to him that they hadn’t already done? Not much. He was like a strip mine after the ore had been hauled away. A life-sized crater with nothing more to give up of value. Nuth knew that and so did his captor, who smoked, flicking the ashes and passing some idle small talk with Shaw. The chitchat of the racetrack before the betting ended. Calvino had a flash of Fat Stuart and a hot tip on a horse named Saddam. When Nuth finally reappeared his face had a different expression. A strange smile as if someone had told him a joke. He carried the punchline in his eyes.
“You have a powerful friend. What’s his name?” asked Calvino, whispering through the bars.
Calvino’s law of patronage—Never ask someone standing naked in a prison cell to accuse or blame their patron—they will answer with silence—ask them for their ace in the hole, that one person who can deliver them from harm’s way.
“Kim,” said Nuth. One word. It was the only word Nuth had said since he had appeared.
One of those names which could have been man or woman, Western or Eastern, Calvino thought to himself.
“Is Kim a Cambodian? Is he Khmer?”
“Everyone say Kim has power,” said Nuth.
“What country? Is he UNTAC . . .” asked Calvino. The prisoner cut him off. “He is French.”
“What’s his name?” asked Calvino. He wished that Pratt had been there to hear what Nuth had said.
Nuth showed his teeth.
Calvino tried again with the first French name that came into head. “Fat Stuart?”
The face froze, and then he shook his head. “No. He is called Mr. Philippe.”
Inside a French-built colonial prison the only person was a Frenchman who was dead. From the start they had been looking for a man they had already met. A man who was now dead. Pratt had been right from the beginning in wondering if L’Blanc was part of a French connection. Over dinner Pratt had told Calvino, “You can take the colonial out of the colony, but the colony can never recover from the colonial occupation, and the colonial can never recover from being an occupier. Their bond of history never allows for a complete divorce.”
“You know Dr. Veronica? She was his friend?”
Nuth had faded back from the bars and into the darkness of his cell.
The officer on Shaw’s left started to shift from one foot to the other, breaking away from the conversation with a nervous look. He had picked up the word French, and talk about the French must have dislodged some old memory of fear. This wasn’t what he expected and the whiskey and cigarettes allowed questioning to go only so far—and he bristled, going from toe to heel.
“We go now,” said Tap, smiling and taking Shaw by the arm but Shaw was anchored to the concrete and not about to leave until he had finished on the terms he wanted.
“You got what you wanted?” asked Shaw.
“Yeah, we got about all we’re gonna get,” said Calvino.
He looked over at Carole, who shrugged. It was time to go.
“Christ, Vinee, I’ve never done better work,” she said as they walked out of the corridor and back into the sunlight.
“You think anyone will care?”
“You kidding? These photographs will make Time, Newsweek, and everyone will be talking about them.”
That was it. Talk was what people did with the Nuths of the world. They were dinner- conversation pieces. Each new horror crowding out the last, comfortable men and women passing the wine and disposing of the dreams and truth like a bottle of wine to be drunk, enjoyed before going on to the brandy. That was the middle-class contract—talk as a way of living, untouched, unaffected, and unmoved by the how and why of a planet populated with T-3 prisons. Calvino didn’t know what to say, and that brought into force Calvino’s law—When you have nothing to say don’t try to talk anyway because the content will be meaningless.
“Hey, I’m glad for you.”
“Don’t say it that way,” she said, fingering her pearl necklace.
“What way’s that?”
“You know, like mean. Some heavy irony trip. Like I didn’t see what was going on and you did.”
Calvino walked beside her through the prison gardens. A couple of toddlers—kids o
f the women prisoners—naked from the waist down, streaked in front of them, laughing as if the world were a carefree playground.
“Don’t matter,” said Calvino. “Can’t matter.”
“I hope I never get that hard inside, Calvino.”
He smiled. “Sweetheart, what matters is you believe you’re a softy.”
“Want to try again tonight?” This was more of a taunt than an offer and he waited until she finished shooting a couple of TB patients curled up on the grass.
“Well?” she asked, not letting the question die in silence.
“I’ve got a one-legged whore staying in my room,” he said.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that one.” They walked a couple more steps in silence.
“I heard you ask that prisoner about Dr. Veronica. And I think I know why.”
This disturbed Calvino and he stopped. “You know why?” he asked.
“That you two have something going on.”
“Who told you that?”
Carole smiled. “Confidential sources.”
“Break the confidence and cut the bullshit.”
“She told me.”
“Dr. Veronica told you?”
“That she thought she was falling in love with an American named Vincent Calvino. Of course, I told her she was crazy. But she already knew that. You know, Vinee, most of my friends have never had a marriage that lasted four years. Less time than it takes to get a college education. So pardon me if I’m a little cynical about love.”
“What else did she say?”
“That it was hopeless. Loving a man, doing right in her job, just the entire nine yards of living on the edge.”
“That sounds more like you than Dr. Veronica.”
“We’re not so different. Or is that the first time you’ve ever heard a woman admit she’s like another woman?”
Shaw had dropped back a step, overhearing the last part of Carole’s reply.
Zero Hour in Phnom Pehn Page 29