The Disappeared by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143172819
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)
Published: 2009-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

33

Only seven prisoners came out alive.

We sat in the sun in the courtyard to rest, trying to feel this day again. I touched your hand and you let me.

It was such a pretty day. Bicycle peddlers sold nuts and ice cream outside the walls. Bells rang for a Buddhist wedding. Two taxi drivers were play-wrestling by the gates; the others stood around them, joking and laughing. One lifted the other upside down and he split his pants wide open. They all turned to see if anyone was watching and when I covered my smile with my hand, they ran away. We listened to them collapsing with laughter behind the walls.

Vann Nath was one of the seven who survived. He was selected to paint pictures and shape busts of Pol Pot. If a bust broke and he had to start again, he buried the pieces of the broken one carefully, to show no disrespect. When he painted Pol Pot’s skin, he dabbed the brush delicately, to show no disrespect. After it was over he began to paint the tortures, the pictures of Tuol Sleng.

I think of Tuol Sleng and I hear Bach’s passion and I hear the thumping rhythms of Todesfuge and the chanting of a horrified chorus in Antigone. I hear a voice cry out in anguish, If this is a man? Human cruelty turned into a note of music, the rhythm of a sentence. Men have invented a word for this. They call it sublime.

Do not hate me for saying such a thing, borng samlanh. Do not think me perverse. I watched your frantic eyes under your eyelids when you slept, watched the rage and resignation at war under your skin. Borng samlanh, let me look in your place for a while. Do not hate me for naming the Sublime at Tuol Sleng. Do not hate me for wanting to chisel your name, Serey, into the rhythm of my words.

Beside you on the bench in the sunshine that day at Tuol Sleng I said, We must speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

You said, I feel nothing.

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