Part 1, Chapter 1 : Arrest

Ta flamme importune, on la couvre,
On la fait éteindre aux valets. (Victor Hugo)

[They have their lackeys snuff out your troublesome flame.][15]

Judge Tran Van Ty questioned me about my complaint of torture. “Why would they have mistreated you if you were telling the truth?” he said. One of the witnesses, a young French cop who had taken part in beating me up, interrupted: “We never mistreated him.” I felt caught in a snare as I signed the papers the Annamite clerk had scribbled down at the judge’s dictation. This net, a thousand invisible knots carefully woven of words, of seemingly inconsequential sentences, of innocent-looking phrases, had you tightly bound and tied. The more you struggled, the tighter you were strangled in the meshes of their legal web. Signatures were appended “without other objection” at the bottom of these obscure documents, and the case was closed. Then the judge told the policemen to keep us squatting in the hall and had us given pastries and hot coffee bought in town by the court attendant.

Handcuffed two by two and escorted by the same Sûerté cops, we left the court by the side door opposite the Central Prison. This short crossing to the prison on the other side of the street and away from the Sûerté’s torture chambers seemed to us like the antechamber to release.

Above the entrance to the Kham Lon (Great Prison) compound, surrounded by hideous gray walls bristling with glass shards, was a Gorgon’s head with furrowed eyebrows jutting out over two black holes, a grimacing mouth and snakes framing its face. The heavy steel door opened with a muffled rumble just enough to shove us in, then banged shut behind us. Bars everywhere. The cops took off our handcuffs and the Annamite warders in their khaki uniforms searched us under the watchful eye of the Corsican Head Guard. His pot belly wobbled under the white uniform, sleeves adorned with enormous silver braids. In exchange for our civilian clothes, we were handed rush mats and clean prison uniforms. Common-law prisoners, I later learned, were given used mats and uniforms that sometimes harbored itch-mite scabies and crabs in the seams. I received a shirt of rough dark-blue cotton with wide sleeves stopping at my elbows and a front split halfway down, barely covering my navel, and some knee-length trousers.[16] I probably looked like one of those monkeys that animal handlers put on show in village squares. I was given a four-by-five-centimeter wood plaque (dinhbai) bearing my four-digit prison number and the initials MAP (maison d’arrêt politique: prison for political detainees). I attached the dinhbai to a buttonhole by passing a piece of string through the hole on its top edge.

We passed the death-sentence cell. Next to the spyhole on the black iron door we could see the identity, offenses and date of sentencing of someone named Nay, an invisible man lying on a mat behind the door, his feet held in justice’s shackles while he awaited his legal murder. A narrow staircase took us to the second floor. To the right were the cells with relatively comfortable beds reserved for French prisoners (kham tay); to the left, Cells 7, 6 and 5, all opening onto a narrow courtyard girded by a wall half a man’s height and topped by a steel fence.

The guard put us in Cell 7. About twenty men, some naked to the waist, others in blue uniforms, gathered around us fraternally in the gloomy light. Once the iron door was shut, they helped us put our mats away. Old and new prisoners mingled, greeting each other like old friends with something approaching joy, but without asking any questions about identity or activities.

There were about twenty-five of us, with just enough room to move around without bumping into each other. We slept wrapped in our mats right on the concrete floor, packed in rows like sardines. The walls were painted black up to a man’s height. In one corner was a pitcher of water, in the other a latrine hole. The back wall separating us from the outside was topped by thick steel sheets with airholes the size of a finger; these holes, too high to be reached even by one prisoner standing on another’s shoulders, were our only source of daylight and air. By giving someone a leg-up, we could observe, through the narrow slit above the door, the comings and goings of new prisoners and Sûerté police.

Our fellow prisoners were peasants from Duc Hoa, arrested on May 6, 1936, by the Annamite Deputy Administrator, who had had them beaten into “talking” before handing them over to the Sûerté Political Police. Nguyen Van Sang, a hearty, well-built fellow, told us about his interrogation at the Rue Catinat police station. How, under electroshock torture, he tried in vain to keep from falling to the floor. He mimed a comical version of the scene: on one bent leg with the other leg stretched forward, the big toe as though wired up to a generator, one arm stretched in front of him, the fist closed and thumb sticking out, likewise wired up to the instrument of torture.

I met Ho Huu Tuong again. I had glimpsed him in the courtyard at the Sûerté. He had been arrested a week after Lu Sanh Hanh and me in the halls of the courthouse as he was handling some matters with lawyers for our defense. Ironically, it was only there, in that tightly closed and locked prison cell, that we were finally able to come together in a group and talk freely with each other. Outside, with the constant fear of being followed, we only met in twos or at most threes, in places we hoped were unknown to the police. Another advantage of prison was that we didn’t have to worry about our daily rice. I was to experience the same exhilaration twenty years later in the sanatorium in the Pyrenees where I spent a year free from the grind of the factory. So, for the time being, there we were, a dozen companions-in-struggle with the opportunity to finally really get to know each other.

To begin with, we were filled with joy by what Ho Huu Tuong had to tell us: Two days after our arrest, during the night of June 12–13, 1936, the League[17] comrades who had escaped the dragnet handed out our leaflets in the city announcing that “Hundreds of thousands of workers in France have gone on strike and occupied their factories. Let’s rise up in every factory, in every province and every village. We should elect worker and peasant delegates and form action committees everywhere....” Some of the leaflets were pasted on the newsroom wall of the Dépêche d’Indochine [Indochina Dispatch], and the newspaper published the entire text in Annamite in its June 13 number.

The widespread movement of strikes and factory occupations in France[18] filled us with enthusiasm and convinced us to spread the spark, with the hope of igniting the rebellious forces simmering under the surface among the workers and peasants of Indochina. Believing that the revolution had begun in France, we felt that the time had come for us colonized people to propagate it in our own countries.

Every morning the door opened around 6:30 and we went out into the courtyard. Under the watchful eye of the Annamite warder, two Cambodian common-law prisoners clambered up the steep stairs until they reached our floor, carrying water in a wooden barrel hung on a pole across their shoulders. They filled our water jug and swept the floor. Around eight o’clock the Head Guard would appear, a veritable caricature of colonial authority in his spruce white uniform, black sunglasses half-hiding his face, and cap jammed tight on his head. He was accompanied by a French guard clad in khaki with a big gun at his belt, and by a barefoot “jail-boy” dressed in unbleached cotton, notebook and pencil in hand. We lined up on either side of the courtyard. The Head Guard advanced slowly down the lines without looking at anyone — at least we couldn’t tell where he was looking from behind his mask. Next he entered our empty cell, peering into each corner. Then, at the same slow pace, the procession left the courtyard.

At around ten o’clock common-law prisoners, followed closely by the guards assigned to prevent any communication with us “politicals,” brought us our meager meal: a tub of unhusked rice and a smaller tub of fish and boiled vegetables. Everyone was issued a tin mug and a pair of bamboo chopsticks. Squatting on the ground in the courtyard around the tubs, under the hot sun, we gulped down our rations. At the end of the meal we had to return to our quarters and the courtyard was washed down by the common-law prisoners. We lined up inside, the old warder came to count us, and then the heavy iron door was closed. In the afternoon at around four o’clock we were subjected to the same counting and the iron door shut again.

With our peasant friends we discussed how to organize our communal life. Sitting on the floor in a circle, we decided on a few rules and on the election of a cell delegate — preferably someone who could speak French. Since no one volunteered for the job, I was chosen “unanimously” by my comrades. I was a little nervous about exactly what was expected of me and how I would go about defending everyone, alone against the warders. Do what must be done, come what may.

That afternoon, when our cell door opened, I was delegated to get us an additional jug of water. The old Annamite guard, polite and diplomatic but embarrassed by our demand, took me to the Head Guard.

The blazing sun flooded the grassy courtyard. Around all sides, a veranda bordered by yellow columns screened the doors to the disciplinary cells. In the middle of the yard stood the ocher-colored watchtower. Crossing the courtyard, we headed toward Agostini, the Head Guard. All my comrades, clinging to the courtyard fence, followed us with their eyes to see what would happen.

It was unusual for a prisoner to be taken to see the Head Guard. Agostini, astounded, found it intolerable. Red with rage, he yelled, “Who allowed you to come here?”

“It was ...”

He cut me short.

Forcing myself not to react, I waited, standing still against the wall facing his desk. He took a huge dusty book down from the shelf and slapped it furiously onto his desk.

“Here are the prison rules! I will apply them! I’ll have you all disemboweled by the guards!” and he pointed a threatening forefinger at the Colonial Infantry’s quarters.

I remained silent, not moving an inch. The maniac calmed down.

“What do they want?” he asked the old warder.

“Another jug of water, that’s all.”

“We’ll see about that.”

He walked toward our quarters, and we followed.

We got our extra jug of water. After that, every morning when the Head Guard and his escort came around, I listed our needs, such as aspirin or writing paper, which the jail-boy wrote down in his notebook.

---

The Central Prison, covering a whole block, dominated the city center. The entrance was at 69 Rue Lagrandière. It was located opposite the Hall of “Justice,” while to the left it was only separated from the Cochinchina Governor’s Palace by Rue Mac-Mahon. It blocked off Rue d’Espagne, a busy commercial street. The right side of the prison was separated from the Criminal Records Office laboratory by Rue Philippini, which ran parallel to Mac-Mahon. Finally, the boundaries around this singular world were marked by massive gray walls twice the height of a man, ridged with glass shards. In watchtowers on each of the three free corners, a French Colonial Infantry soldier armed with a rifle stood guard day and night. At night, every quarter hour we would hear the cry, “Sentry, watch one! Sentry, watch two!” From inside the prison, those of us on the upper floors could see the tops of the tamarind trees in the surrounding streets, whose falling leaves told us another year had passed. We calculated our remaining term of imprisonment in “tamarind seasons.”

After undergoing torture at the Sûerté headquarters, our young comrade Van Van Ky began coughing up blood and losing weight before our eyes, which made us very worried. When he started hemorrhaging, he was taken to the Cho Quan hospital. Three days later he was brought back in worse condition than before. In the hospital he first received injections, but because he struggled when they shaved his head, the doctor had him put in a straitjacket for twenty-four hours. Then they handcuffed his hands behind his back, shackled his legs, and sent him back to prison without any further medical care. Taking care of him by turns, we tried to ease his pain using traditional methods of healing by rubbing and massage. From then on, we decided we would look after each other ourselves, and we taught each other how.

One morning in early July, at ten o’clock, an Annamite warder came for Ho Huu Tuong, Lu Sanh Hanh and me. As we descended the iron stairs, we wondered whether we were being taken to a session at the Sûerté headquarters. Two plainclothes policemen were waiting for us in front of the Head Guard’s office. Had other comrades fallen into their hands, and were we being taken for a confrontation? We were handcuffed and led across the street to the courthouse to see Judge Tran Van Ty.

Because our lawyers had lodged complaints about the torture and bad treatment we had allegedly received while held at the Sûerté headquarters, Tran Van Ty said he was going to have the Sûerté searched to find the torture instruments mentioned in our statements (truck generator, rattan canes, gags, etc.). “Now it’s the Sûerté’s turn to be searched,” he snarled, smiling sardonically.

Then he picked up the telephone and notified Sûerté Political Chief Perroche of the search. At that point we understood that we had been assigned the role of naïve puppets in a shabby farce! Escorted by plainclothes cops, we set out for Rue Catinat in a covered truck, preceded by Tran Van Ty and his interpreter.

My heart shrank as we mounted the stairs to the torture chamber on the top floor of that gruesome building, with which we were all too familiar. As Tran Van Ty and Perroche entered the room, they motioned for us to stay outside. Suddenly I felt someone hit me hard but discreetly in my lower back: I turned to find Gélot, our torturer. I didn’t cry out. Was I afraid of retaliation? The sinister Tran Van Ty beckoned us into the room and, with a sly smile, asked us to point out the offending instruments. The cramped room was bare and unfurnished except for an old chair and a small table. The only thing left behind was the switch on the table that Gélot used to summon Chin Ngoc, the Annamite torture specialist, and in the corner to the left, the small washbasin where the interrogators washed their hands after the torture sessions. There was no trace of the huge generator. My head swirled with visions of the atrocities I had suffered; it made my flesh creep.

We could breathe again only when we had returned to the Central Prison.