The Master of Confessions (39 page)

Lawyers are sometimes called upon to sacrifice themselves. Roux uses all his rhetorical talent one last time in an effort to save Duch's skin, even though Duch has devoted himself to other saints. With so many adversaries in the courtroom, including in the seat next to him, Roux has the luxury of being able to choose among them. And once again he manages, by some subtle rhetoric, to take his ineffable teammate's arguments and to make them seem to fit naturally with his own. The man knows his stuff. But the prosecutor won't be fooled, and he sticks to his agenda:

The clock is ticking and Roux must try to beat it. He attempts a death blow:

But it isn't clear enough for Judge Nil Nonn, either. And he wants an answer. Duch finds himself ordered to speak. After having blatantly snubbed the office of the prosecution since the beginning of the week, he now finds himself looking directly at them. He gesticulates a lot, his movements quick and sharp. His Revolutionary French is a little rusty—“democratic centralism” becomes “centralized democracy”—but he holds firm. He reminds the court that he has been cooperating with the law for the past ten years without fail. He emphasizes that he has agreed to acknowledge and discuss the crimes committed at M-13 even though they fall outside the tribunal's jurisdiction, and that he also agreed to talk about events that happened after 1979, even though the tribunal isn't mandated to cover that period, either. He repeats that he has accepted a broad and general responsibility as a member of the Communist Party for the totality of the crimes committed under Pol Pot's regime, and that he made an apology for those also, even though his case and his crime before this court are limited to what happened at S-21. Finally, he repeats his Cambodian lawyer's argument: he wasn't one of the regime's top leaders, and this tribunal was created to judge them and them alone. “I have been detained since May 8, 1999. It has been ten years, six months, and eighteen days already. Therefore I ask the court to release me.”

The judges deliberate quickly among themselves. Then Nil Nonn asks Duch to stand once again. “The question is: are you asking the chamber to acquit you of all charges, or are you asking the tribunal to reduce your sentence based on your cooperation with the court and the time you have already served?”

Duch has his back against the wall. But he doesn't want to make a run for it, at least not alone. He says that his analytical skills are too limited, that he would like to be released but that he prefers to entrust himself to his lawyer. Specifically, his Cambodian lawyer.

Kar Savuth repeats his argument about the top Khmer Rouge leaders. Judge Lavergne puts his head in his hands. The lawyer tries one last trick: he simply doesn't answer the question.

Enough is enough. Someone is going to have to talk. Judge Cartwright takes the reins. “Counsel Kar Savuth, do I infer from your last comments that the accused is seeking an acquittal?”

Now it's Kar Savuth who is backed into a corner. Usually when he's caught in such situations, he beats a wily retreat. The entire courtroom is waiting with bated breath for his answer, on which the trial will end. “That's what I said. To release means to acquit.”

Kar Savuth doesn't retreat. For the second time in two days, François Roux has been backstabbed by the man who has been his brother-in-arms for two years. But Cambodia has never been a merciful place.

FRANÇOIS ROUX OFTEN LIKES
to say that to defend someone is to suffer alongside them. His client may have disavowed him, but Duch hasn't asked for his resignation or asked him to do anything professionally unethical. Being Duch's lawyer might not be a vile job, but it can be an incredibly lonely one. François Roux decides to stay in his seat while awaiting the verdict. To him, that's the best way to stay true to his oath to protect the defendant's rights—even if it is at his own expense.

The psychology of a prisoner is not the same as that of a criminal. A prisoner has different impulses and subscribes to different survival strategies than a criminal. Many people think that Duch's about-face is a sign of the old Khmer Rouge cadre rising from the ashes. But the about-face could just as easily be the consequence of the state of mind in which any prisoner facing a long sentence might find himself. Most prisoners are like Icarus: the mirage of freedom taunts them like a blinding sun. Duch's choice reveals to us a lot about him even as it confounds us. Some see it as the quintessence of either the master manipulator or the coward. Others speculate about some underhanded political negotiation, with Kar Savuth acting as a go-between. And others still see it as an illustration of the former revolutionary's inability to live by an ethic of responsibility, despite his aspiration and prior agreement to do so. Those who like certainty can have it. Those who tolerate doubt can keep tolerating it. Duch comes from a background in which survival trumps everything else, and he is showing us that it is the only thing that he strives for.

Wisely, the judges decide not to attach too much importance to it.

A month before the verdict is handed down, Duch sends a letter to the court's administrators, letting them know that he is dismissing François Roux. He never did like meeting face-to-face those he was betraying.

D
UCH SAYS THAT AS A TEENAGER HE WAS DRAWN TO STOICISM.
Traditionally, Cambodian children are taught very young not to complain. To complain is to reveal one's weaknesses, says one of the psychiatrists acting as an expert witness. In this cultural context, Stoicism, which urges its adherents to control and repress their emotions, finds fertile ground. Staying silent shows that you aren't a coward and that you don't give up.

For generations, every French school student has studied that poetic pearl, Alfred de Vigny's “Death of the Wolf.” French colonial schoolteachers diligently imported the famous nineteenth-century poem into Cambodia. Its lines made an impression on a young Kaing Guek Eav. He says that when he was head of the M-13 camp, he used to recite to himself the poem's closing verses:

Duch says the poem helped strengthen his resolve to carry out the cold and heavy task which the Party saw fit to give him. What can be more disturbing than a torturer reciting a great and noble poem?

“Sometimes,” says Duch, “we must do a job we don't like.”

Roux sets the stage well that day. After Duch recites his four lines of verse in French, the lawyer allows a heavy silence to fill the room. Then, amplifying it, he sits down without a word.

For the non-Stoic, the feeling it produces is spectacular. For the victims, it is excruciating. For the brother of Chum Narith and Chum Sinareth, that his brothers' executioner should invoke a poem or indulge in any other spiritual refinement is unacceptable: “After the defendant was finished, his lawyer let two or three minutes of silence pass,” he angrily tells the court.

Everyone wanted to hold the poem close, like some precious fabric found by heirs among a late relative's belongings. People fought over the death of the wolf.

“Do you realize that you have retained the most dangerous, the most lethal elements of the poem that leave no room for man?” says an affronted lawyer for the victims.

“I AM NINETY-ONE YEARS
and six months old.”

People in the twilight of their lives share with those at the dawn of theirs the habit of measuring their age exactly. For both groups, months matter. The very young and the very old keenly feel the value of every season. Each month is a palpable measure of how little they have lived or what little life remains to them. When the old man cheerfully and precisely gives his age to the court, a loud murmur spreads through the public gallery. He is the trial's final witness. People are asking themselves what he's doing there. What can this former French Resistance fighter, who was deported to Nazi concentration camps and who later became a diplomat and a fervent and unfailingly courteous defender of multiple humanist causes, possibly have to say in this place and on this matter?

It's an irrelevant question that doesn't occur to the Cambodians gathered in the public gallery. They respect their elders here. Simply being old is enough to generate respect. This venerable old man is testifying from Paris. The satellite link is mediocre at best, but his voice is sparkling and melodious. Those who have experienced mankind's folly as well as his genius can become either misanthropes withdrawn from the world, go dance with the real wolves, or aspire to acquire the wisdom of worthier souls. At ninety-one years and six months, Stéphane Hessel
^*
has entered that curious kingdom from where so few of his peers can speak their minds. He seems able to express and understand everything with objective clarity. The patriarch is firm yet careful never to hurt anyone. He gets straight to the point without omitting anyone, particularly the weak and downtrodden. He knows that, despite our desire for easy conclusions, the world isn't black-and-white, governed by good and evil, or divided between torturers and victims. And he manages, without seeming to, to encourage others to think things through a little more deeply.

“Can this trial reach a conclusion that isn't unilateral?” he asks with a subtle and cryptic use of rhetorical questions and negations that cancel each other out. Hessel speaks a rich and lucid language rarely heard these days, one that rejects the excessive and superfluous. The exact opposite, in other words, to the language spoken by certain lawyers. His clear, wide eyes and generous smile lend his kindness a quality that the foolhardy might mistake for naiveté. But Hessel is as immune to vanity as he is to the self-serving appeals of policymakers. He limits himself to making few statements and making them cautiously. But those he does make carry the moral weight of a man who, in the words of another poet and Resistance member, René Char, passes in front of the “snake-men” without crushing them.

Stéphane Hessel repeated poems to himself while being tortured by the Gestapo; Duch recited them to himself while torturing others. Roux knows that the venerable survivor can recite many verses from memory, and that poetry helped him to survive the death camps. He also knows that Hessel included Alfred de Vigny's poem in an anthology he published. The time has come for us to ask him how we, snake-men, should understand the poem.

The lawyer begins to read: “Alas! I thought, in spite of that great name of Men . . .”

Just then, we hear the satellite-borne voice of the old poetry-lover resonate from the far side of the world:

“These are the verses recited by the man who would become a torturer and executioner,” says Roux. “What is this poem about Stoicism trying to tell us?”

“Naturally, I am always moved by a beautiful poem, but a poem merely reflects the position that the poet thinks men of honor ought to adopt toward even the most cruel vagaries of life,” says Hessel.