In Plain Sight
By Tanya Allan
Copyright2011 Tanya Allan
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This work is fictitious, and any similarities to any persons, alive or dead, are purely coincidental. Mention is made of persons in public life only for the purposes of realism and for that reason alone. Certain licence is taken in respect of medical procedures, terms and conditions, and the author does not claim to be the fount of all knowledge.
The author accepts the right of the individual to hold his/her (or whatever) own political, religious and social views, and there is no intention to deliberately offend anyone.
Prologue.
NOW
"Prisoner in the cell, stand!"
The words were English, but the speaker wasn't.
I opened my eyes. Not that I'd slept, for since when can a condemned man actually sleep in the last few hours before he's due to die?
I’d closed my eyes in the vain hope that I might just fall asleep and not wake up again.
I'm not certain what criteria one needs to claim to be insane, but my mind had been going through so much that my sense of reality was definitely out of kilter. It was as if I couldn't feel emotions any more, apart from a very deep despair.
Turning my head towards the door, I could see the three warders and the governor standing outside. The light in the cell was minimal, but my eyes had adjusted to the permanent semi-darkness. I was cold and damp, so would have sold my soul for a nice cup of hot chocolate. A great weariness and sense of despair washed over me, and I wondered whether I could actually get up.
"Stand up!" shouted the fat, noisy one again - the one I'd nicknamed Hardy. The thin one, Laurel, stood at the back, watching me with his evil little eyes. Of the two, he was the one that I actually feared most. The fat one was a bully, free with his baton and fists, but of no imagination or finesse. Laurel, on the other hand, was supremely sadistic in a different way. He used crude psychology to lull one into a false sense of security and then remove what little hope one had accumulated.
I stood up, because the likelihood of being beaten was very high and, to be honest, I was too tired to withstand yet another beating. At least when dead, I would be free of all this shit!
As I expected, once I was standing facing the wall, the door opened and they roughly manacled my hands in front of me, chaining them to manacles on my feet. They spoke rapidly in Vietnamese, but suddenly I was alone with the governor, Quang Lam. I wish I'd taken the opportunity to learn the language before coming here. At least I’d managed to improve my knowledge a little whilst in prison.
I also learned a lot about the land and culture, which included the Vietnamese system of names. I found that being British was a novelty amongst the prisoners, so the Vietnamese inmates, on those few occasions I was permitted to mix, would spend time finding out about me and my culture. Thus I was able to pick up some of the language and culture in return.
One such man, Nguyen Hung Anh, had been a doctor, or truly, I suppose he still was, but he was inside for running an illegal abortion clinic. That hadn't been the problem, but one of his patients had been the fifteen year-old daughter of a local politician, and she'd died after a silly mistake by the good doctor.
He always felt socially above the other prisoners, so occasionally we'd meet to play chess or just talk about life in general.
“The Vietnamese name is written and spoken by Vietnamese people in the following manner: Last name, middle name, and then first name.” Using a stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper, he showed me his own name as an example: Nguyen Hung Anh. First name: Anh. Middle name: Hung. Last name: Nguyen.
“Females are often given first names that denote beauty while males are given first names that denote strength. Some people have a first name consisting of two words.”
He then wrote: Nguyen thi Minh Hoa; Tran thi Hoang-Anh
“Nguyen Thi Minh Hoa can be called by a short first name or a complete first name. Her short first name is Hoa, while her complete first name is Minh Hoa.”
“What about middle names?” I asked.
“A Vietnamese person’s gender can sometimes be determined by the middle name. For example, we use van as middle name for males, and thi as a middle name for females. But the van and thi are not capitalised.”
He went on to inform me that traditionally, Vietnamese women did not assume the man’s last name upon marriage. This was no longer the case with the younger generations, particularly those amongst those who were now living in the United States and other Western societies. “In referring to a doctor, lawyer, professor, or other professional in the community, Vietnamese people will often state the person’s title followed by his first name,” he said, writing: Dr. Phung, a professor.
“Phung is the professor’s first name, not his last name. You should ask for a man's family name if you want his true last name,” he said.
Shaking my head, I registered the information and then changed the subject. To be honest, it was more information than I needed and superfluous to what I thought was important for me to know. Particularly now, as my time on this earth was now severely limited, so of all the things I wanted to know, this wasn't amongst the top one thousand.
Wearing a crisp, white suit, Governor Quang sat on my bed, lighting a long, thin cigarette. Knowing the vaguely acidic smell of these things only too well by now, I wanted to tell him it was a nasty habit, but if I did, he might stop and I had to admit to not being adverse to the idea of him getting cancer. Quang disliked me, but I wasn't offended, for the feeling was entirely mutual, and well he knew it. He disliked me for many reasons, but mainly it was because he hadn't been able to break me. He and his lackeys had used all manner of devices in the attempt. The sleep deprivation had almost worked, but they then ended it early due to Quang's impatience, to start me on pain once more.
Pain is a funny thing. I’d read stories about agents in the Second World War who were tortured to give up vital information. I suppose we’d always thought it was the dastardly Hun who’d been the torturers, but I’m sure the glorious Allies had managed to do just as well.
Like the vast majority of us, I don’t like pain, so had you told me that someone was going to torture me, I would have laughed and replied that they wouldn’t have to do much before I’d tell them everything they wanted to know, and probably a lot they didn’t need as well.
That was before they actually did it. To be fair, they weren’t quite as nasty as the Nazis or Japs in the books I’d read, but they knew what they were doing. I was never systematically tortured in a frenzied attack by one leather-clad bully.