The Master of Confessions Read Online Free

controlled by the enigmatic Khmer Rouge. The fledgling revolutionary movement was quick to make use of his artistic talents, and he soon found himself painting portraits of Marx and Lenin, mimeographs of which were distributed to Khmer Rouge combat units so that their fighters could recognize the founding fathers of Communism. Four years later, on April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Phnom Penh. Bou Meng cheered the victory, but his cheers turned to dismay when the movement forced the capital’s entire population to evacuate. The following year, his superiors were arrested, and Bou Meng started losing confidence in this revolution that rewarded its soldiers so poorly.
    â€œI wore the black shirt, but my spirit wasn’t in it,” he tells the court.
    In the land of the Khmer Rouge, when a commander was arrested, his men soon followed. It was known as a “line.” A few months after the fall of his commander, Bou Meng and his wife were transferred to what he dubs a “hot reeducation” cooperative: in effect, a forced labor camp run with ruthless discipline. Like hundreds of thousands of his countrymen, Bou Meng became a prisoner. He dug canals and built dykes until he was on the verge of collapse. Then he had the good fortune to be transferred first to carpentry, then to the vegetable garden. He grew cabbages and eggplants for the collective. In May of 1977 (or maybe it was June, he doesn’t remember exactly) he was slaving away in a vegetable patch when a group of black-shirted men jumped out of a jeep like a murder of crows. They told Bou Meng and his wife to pack their things; they were going to become teachers at the School of Fine Arts. Bou Meng was thrilled—he was a painter, not a gardener. He and his wife cheerfully got into the vehicle. The vehicle drove away from the camp, then stopped. They were ordered to get out, to sit down, and to put their hands behind their backs. They were tied up and blindfolded. Bou Meng’s wife began to cry. He sank to the depths of despair.
    In the courtroom, Bou Meng pauses in his story. He brings a hand to his forehead, as though the ghosts of the past are pounding too hard, as though he’s about to lose consciousness. Duch is in the dock, sitting upright and perfectly still.
    Unlike Bou Meng, Vann Nath—also a painter—didn’t serve in the army. He was just nineteen when the Khmer Rouge won the war. But on December 30, 1977, like Bou Meng, he was arrested by men in black by order of the Angkar—“The Organization,” in Khmer—the secretive, all-knowing, and all-powerful body that controlled everything in the new “Democratic Kampuchea.”
    Vann Nath is just sixty-three when he takes the witness stand, but he looks feeble and tired. He’s a tall man and he wears a billowing, pale yellow shirt. He greets the judges, the prosecutors, and the defense. Duch doesn’t move. The painter’s hair is cut very short and has gone gray. His eyebrows, slightly disheveled at their outer edges but still black near his nose, are the predominant feature of his face, the roundness of which is emphasized by his full cheeks that have only just begun to sag with age. His deep voice contrasts with the presiding judge’s high-pitched one. Vann Nath speaks with his eyes almost closed and glued to the ground. He continually massages his stomach. Even though he has told it countless times over the past thirty years, emotion overcomes Vann Nath almost as soon as he begins to tell his story. Like Bou Meng, he raises his hand to his forehead, grabs a handkerchief, and pulls himself together before continuing.
    Vann Nath spent his first night of detention bound in leg irons in a pagoda-turned-prison. Then he was taken away on a motorcycle. Upon reaching his destination, he was interrogated for the first time. “You’re a traitor,” they told him. How many secret meetings had he held? “You’d better