It was with confidence, then, that I chose this song to be played on an endless loop in the prisoner’s room except for the times when I was in it. Claude had assigned me to be the chief interrogator, the task of breaking the prisoner my graduation exam from his interrogation course. We kept the prisoner in the room for a week before I even saw him, nothing interrupting the constant light and music except the opening of a slot in his door three times a day, when his meal was shoved through: a bowl of rice, one hundred grams of boiled greens, fifty grams of boiled meat, twelve ounces of water. If he behaved well, we told him, we would give him the food of his choice. I watched him on the video feed as he ate his food, as he squatted over his hole, as he washed himself from his bucket, as he paced his room, as he lay on his bed with his forearm over his eyes, as he did push-ups and sit-ups, and as he plugged his ears with his fingers. When he did so, I turned up the volume, forced to do something with Claude standing by my side. When he took his fingers out of his ears and I lowered the volume, he looked up at one of the cameras and shouted in English, Fuck you, Americans! Claude chuckled. At least he’s talking. It’s the ones who don’t say anything you really have to worry about.
He was the leader of cell C-7 of terrorist unit Z-99. Based in the secret zone of Binh Duong Province, Z-99 was collectively responsible for hundreds of grenade attacks, minings, bombings, mortarings, and assassinations that had killed a few thousand and terrorized Saigon. Z-99’s trademark was the dual bomb attack, the second designed to kill the rescuers who came to help the victims of the first. Our prisoner’s specialty was the adaptation of wristwatches as triggering devices for these improvised bombs. The second and hour hands were removed from a watch, a battery wire was inserted through a hole in the crystal, and the minute hand was set to the desired delay time. When the ticking minute hand touched the wire, the bomb detonated. Bombs were built from landmines, stolen from US supplies, or bought on the black market. Other bombs were assembled from TNT that was smuggled into the city in small quantities — hidden in hollowed-out pineapples and baguettes and the like, even in women’s bras, which led to endless jokes among the Special Branch. We knew Z-99 had a watchmaker, and before we had known exactly who he was we called him the Watchman, which was how I thought of him.
The Watchman regarded me with amusement the first time I entered his room, a week after we began his treatment. It was not the reaction I expected. Hey, good lookin’, he said in English. I sat on his chair and he on his bed, a tiny, shivering man with a full head of coarse hair, shockingly black in the white room. I appreciate the English lesson, he said, grinning at me. Keep playing that music! I love it! Of course he didn’t. There was a glint in his eye, the briefest hint of unwellness, although that might have come from being a graduate of philosophy from the University of Saigon and the eldest son of a respectable Catholic family who had disowned him for his revolutionary activities. Watchmaking of the legitimate kind — for that was indeed his profession before he became a terrorist — was simply to pay the bills, as he told me during our initial conversation. This was small talk, get-to-know-you kind of stuff, but lurking underneath the flirtation was our mutual awareness of our roles as prisoner and interrogator. My awareness was compounded by knowing that Claude was watching us on the video monitor. I was thankful for the air-conditioning. Otherwise I would have been sweating, trying to figure out how to be both enemy and friend to the Watchman.
I laid out the charges against him of subversion, conspiracy, and murder, but emphasized that he was innocent until proven guilty, which made him laugh. Your American puppet masters like to say that, but it’s stupid, he said. History, humanity, religion, this war tells us exactly the reverse. We are all guilty until proven innocent, as even the Americans have shown. Why else do they believe everyone is really Viet Cong? Why else do they shoot first and ask questions later? Because to them all yellow people are guilty until proven innocent. Americans are a confused people because they can’t admit this contradiction. They believe in a universe of divine justice where the human race is guilty of sin, but they also believe in a secular justice where human beings are presumed innocent. You can’t have both. You know how Americans deal with it? They pretend they are eternally innocent no matter how many times they lose their innocence. The problem is that those who insist on their innocence believe anything they do is just. At least we who believe in our own guilt know what dark things we can do.
I was impressed with his understanding of American culture and psychology, but I could not show it. Instead, I said, So you would rather be presumed guilty?
If you haven’t understood that your masters already believe me to be guilty and will treat me as such, then you’re not as smart as you think you are. But that is hardly a surprise. You’re a bastard, and like all hybrids you are defective.
In retrospect, I do not believe he meant to insult me. Like most philosophers, he simply lacked social skills. In his graceless way, he was merely stating what he and many others thought to be scientific fact. And yet, in that white room, I admit that I saw red. I could have dragged out this interrogation for years if I wanted to, asking him relentless questions that led nowhere as I tried, seemingly, to find his weakness, secretly keeping him safe. But instead all I wanted at that moment was to prove to him that I was, indeed, as smart as I thought I was, which meant smarter than him. Between the two of us, only one could be the master. The other had to be the slave.
How did I prove this to him? One night in my quarters, after my rage had cooled and hardened, it struck me that I, the bastard, understood him, the philosopher, with perfect clarity. A person’s strength was always his weakness, and vice versa. The weakness was there to be seen if one could see it. In the Watchman’s case, he was the revolutionary willing to walk away from the most important thing to a Vietnamese and a Catholic, his family, for whom the only acceptable sacrifice was for God. His strength was in his sacrifice, and that had to be destroyed. I sat down immediately at my desk and wrote the Watchman’s confession for him. He read my scenario the next morning in disbelief, then read it again before glaring at me. You’re saying that I’m saying I’m a faggot? Homosexual, I corrected. You’re going to spread filth about me? he said. Lies? I have never been a faggot. I have never dreamed of being a faggot. This — this is dirty. His voice rose and his face flushed. To have me say I joined the revolution because I loved a man? To say this was why I ran away from my family? That my faggotry explains my love for philosophy? That being a faggot is the reason for my wish to destroy society? That I betrayed the revolution so I could save the man I loved, who you have captured? No one will believe this!
Then no one will care when we publish it in the newspapers along with your lover’s confession and intimate photographs of the two of you.
You will never get me in such a photograph.
The CIA has remarkable talents with hypnosis and drugs. He fell silent. I continued: When the newspapers cover this, you realize it’s not only your revolutionary comrades who will condemn you. The road back to your family will be closed forever, too. They might accept a reformed revolutionary, or even a victorious one, but they will never accept a homosexual no matter what happens to our country. You’ll be a man who sacrificed everything for nothing. You will not even be a memory to your comrades or your family. At least if you talk to me this confession won’t be published. Your reputation will stay intact until the day the war is over. I stood up. Think about it. He said nothing and did nothing except stare at his confession. I paused at the door. Still think I’m a bastard?