Darkness of Mind: A Trilogy on the Art of Opera, and Murder

By Hugo van Bever

A Sweet Double Murder

Out of the blue, a retired professor commits a double murder in his apartment, killing two men. In a monologue, at the police station, he explains why he did it, reflecting on wars, holocausts, religion, power, money, lust, love, and on the intellectual limitations of the human race

When Death Does Not Part
After ten years at a psychiatric institute, Thomas, a fifty-year-old teacher, returns to Florence in search of the truth. Retracing the steps he took with his young lover Irena, he learns who she really was. As similarities to Verdis opera Rigoletto haunt the pages, Thomas confesses what happened between them in a desperate attempt to purify his soul, find peace of mind, and love. Unable to accept the truth and its horrifying implications Thomas is doomed to relive his past.

On My Fathers Bike
I wanted to become the first creator of perfect and painless love. It was my fathers fault. Indirectly he forced me, because I loved him too much. Indeed, my father. Can you believe it? I wanted to optimize love by transforming into what you love. Imagine the advantages! Wouldnt it be delightful to adopt the patience of the snake, the speed of the panther, the devilish persistence of the scorpion, or the beauty of the orchid? And imagine absorbing the beauty of a lover? Nuts beauty? For he surely was beautiful. Youd reach ultimate perfection. Ultimate love! But how do you do it? How do you turn yourself into what you love? Being a scientist, and brilliant, I had hit upon a scientific method that would allow me to achieve such a transformation. Call it reverse metabolism. These are the words of Andre Junior, a professor who is certain that his mission in life is to prove that reverse metabolism is possible. So certain, in fact, he is willing to kill for it, even eat for it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 17, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481781695

Hugo van Bever

Born in Wetteren, Belgium (1953), Hugo Van Bever lives in Singapore, where he teaches at the National University Singapore (NUS) in the Department of Pediatrics. Teaching and clinical research are his vocation, but literature and writing are his passion. Hugo Van Bever has been writing poetry and fiction since childhood, and it was with the gentle nudge of friends that he finally began publishing in 2010. His debut novel A Sweet Double Murder was followed by When Death Does Not Part in 2011, and On My Father’s Bike in 2012. The three novels create a trilogy, Darkness Of Mind, which explores the deepest and darkest corners of the human mind and soul.

Book preview

© 2013 by Hugo Van Bever. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse   01/14/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8167-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8168-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-8169-5 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

PRELUDE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

PROLOGUE

PART: 1

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

PART 2:

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

EPILOGUE

1   HELLO AGAIN

2   DEATH OF LAMBS IN VENICE

3   ABDULLAH

4   BEGGING FOR CANCER

5   ROSSINI

6   IN MIA MAN

7   GABRIELLA’S FRANCO

8   NUT’S APOTHEOSIS

9   SOPHIA’S KITCHEN

10   A HORNY PIGEON!

11   HERBAL HEART

12   A SMOKING LONER

13   DANCING WITH LITTLE ORGANS

14   THE FINAL SCENE OF MADAME BUTTERFLY

"TO ALL WHO INSPIRED ME, ALL WHO LOVE,

ALL WHO SUFFER…"

SKU-000610619_TEXT.pdf

It is now the beginning of the 21st century: more than 2000 years after Jesus Christ attempted to change the world, more than 50 years after Hitler’s madness and more than 20 years after Pol Pot’s absolute stupidity. Nothing has changed. Mankind will never learn. Constantly history is repeating itself in Iran, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Rwanda, and Afghanistan… When will it stop? Will humans ever behave? Some realize, and for them it has become too much.

PRELUDE

Exactly one hour (I looked at my watch when they knocked on the door) after I called them, I was escorted outside surrounded by young Chinese policemen treating me distinguishably, reminding me of the efficiency of the Singapore police. It was an hour in which I saw my life passing by in an old Visconti movie sprinkled with Tarantino fragments, sitting on my couch in between the two bodies, each dressed in a bathrobe, red and white, holding the bloody knife in my hand, imaging two types of the most disgusting blood running down the blade, licking it as if it were French bouillabaisses. It was also an hour in which the weeping face of the Imam of the Blue Mosque of Surabaya regularly showed up.

There were four policemen – there were also other men: detectives, photographers and journalists and nurses, so many men in my apartment. They were in their twenties, wore sweaty and smelly light blue shirts and shiny boots, had big muscles (convex deltoids, pectorals and biceps), nodded their heads several times, spoke with a soft voice – words, no sentences – and seemed altogether rather embarrassed with the situation. I tried to relax them with a smile, because that’s how I am: trying to help wherever I can. I even thought I heard them speaking to me softly, calling me ‘poor dear’, showing concern. Or was it meant waspishly? I didn’t care; I continued smiling and said that it was ok. They could do whatever they pleased. I didn’t care anymore. I was theirs, forever and always: theirs! Everything was gone now: my life, my opportunities, my feelings, and all my misery.

My God, I thought, I still have that boundless imagination.

At the door of my apartment, I turned around and looked back at the scene as if I was looking at a painting of Caravaggio. He, who also had the ability to kill. Saint Thomas’ doubt, with Christ’s wound many times in close-up, appeared as I was watching the two elegant bodies dressed in bathrobes, reminding me of how Caravaggio’s boys were described: Overripe, with peachy bits of rough trade, and with yearning mouths and hair like black ice cream. I felt tears rolling down my cheeks and for a moment time stood still: I knew I would never forget the painting I was gazing at; it would be forever tattooed into my brain. Kim and Danni, symbolizing useless power and lust, joined in death. They deserved it and somewhere inside me, I felt relieved. From now on they would leave me alone. No more worries, no regrets, and – more importantly – no more pain. I knew that soon the rats would come to take over the apartment: excitedly playing in the blood, jumping like never before. But I had to do it: mild und leise, releasing my pain, even without any prospect of ever experiencing love. I was in handcuffs – reminding me of the silver cuffs of endless love – although I had told them that they didn’t have to fear. ‘Routine,’ they whispered and smiled back – waspishly.

Such big darlings!

The corridors of the building were filled with people of different allure – my dear curious neighbors: the elderly, mothers with children hanging on their dirty skirts, and men of all ages, shapes and sizes. They were fat or skinny, yellow or brown, sleepy or alert. Some were demented, others were immature. They were smoking or chewing. I saw frightened children sticking close to their mothers, and I smiled at them, wanting to gently tap them on the head. I knew there was a chance that they would become terrorists or murderers later. They were children who had once suffered from asthma or meningitis until I cured them, no questions asked. I was doing my job as a doctor, helping them. Yes, I was helping them to become healthy again, making it possible that in the future they’d use their malicious minds to construct bombs.

Walking through the corridors, I saw four police cars with flashing blue lights on top in front of the building. I seemed to be a real threat to humanity. My God, what are they doing to me? Was I really Hannibal Lecter’s twin brother? And what a contrast this was to the recent past, when I was praised for my knowledge and my dedication, and invited to birthday parties and wedding celebrations of ex-patients and ex-students. Can one man change that much in just a few hours? In one day? The onlookers stepped back as I passed – they were creating my red carpet – and the children started screaming while their mothers held them tight. Did I suffer from some contagious disease? SARS is gone folks!

Look people, look, I am handcuffed!

I looked at their faces carefully, then, suddenly, I started looking for Danni – I always did. I knew it was silly, but I considered my impulse a symbol of my continuous search for him: a search for love and dignity. He was an angel ex nihilo now, but deep inside I still felt that one little sparkle, telling me that everything had been a nightmare and that I soon would wake up, feeling his warmth, touching him. There’s that boundless imagination again, that desire, I thought. Wake up next to him? Yes, smelling him under the sheets, hearing his breath: only me, and only for me and with him, in love, without lust.

Suddenly, I realized that it had all been fake and the thought of his lifestyle washed over me , nauseated me, made me vomit, inducing that immense hate, resembling a tornado on a quiet Sunday afternoon: unexpected and destructive. I hated him! I saw him in his cloudy Heaven, salivating while jerking off old men, long rows of old, fat men, impatiently waiting in never ending queues: he enjoying himself, and they enjoying his gorgeous body and his lover skills even more (which I refused to enjoy). Never did he care about me. Never did he sacrifice anything for me. I was just one of those old men he used for his own pleasure. Better: I was just one of those old men he tried to use, but I was strong and could resist him. I always could, despite that immense jealousy. I created so many distractions in my mind – work, music, books – which I treasured as a surrogate for physical contact. I stood firm. But how could he! How could all those others behave like this! How could the world!

I was shaking, but I was able to control myself. Breathe deeply, I told myself, and close your eyes and think of mountains and meadows. Yes, good, I thought of mountains with snow on top and meadows with yellow flowers, dancing in the wind to one of Mozart’s serenades, and children playing and singing, and babies, cute babies.

Good, very good: absolute control now, good job, keep walking, keep smiling. Enjoy your red carpet and your love cuffs, fine. Good. That last scene from Psycho, the scene in which Anthony Perkins becomes his mother, didn’t hit the fly and in which he shows some subtle movements of his lips – little worms under his skin – that’s the scene you are in now. You just play it: should not be that difficult, you watched it so many times. Did you know that one day it would come in handy? Did you? So clever.

Then, something unexpected: out of the crowd stepped a little old woman and came up to me. She was a textbook illustration of osteoporosis: crooked and skinny, slowly lifting her stiff knees for each painful step. Her skin was dark and wrinkled. She stood right in front of me and looked up, catching my eyes, staring at me as if she wanted me to drop dead instantly. It took mere seconds, stopping me and my escort of young policemen. Out of the blue, she spit in my face. She knew what had happened in my apartment. News spreads faster in my neighborhood than any disease. She was Cambodian, I’m sure, and I admired her courage. She knew that the body of one of her fellow countrymen was on my couch. However, I still had myself under optimal control, and refused to smile at her. She didn’t understand. I stared down at the ground, while her spit crawled down on my face towards my chin, but I kept staring down at the ground, where my mother’s face slowly appeared – clear and in color. Yet, I didn’t show any emotion, I didn’t care. The old Cambodian woman did what she had to do, as so many had done more than 20 years ago, during the Khmer Rouge’s regime: acting impulsively, not thinking, and not reflecting.

I was proud of myself, and looked at my policemen. ‘You see my darlings. I am a true example of perfect self-control,’ I whispered, but they didn’t hear me.

Just before I got in the police car, I turned around and looked up to my apartment on the 16th floor. I wanted to see it one more time: my last time. I looked at the window where it had happened. Where so much had happened during the past years: so much inside, so much inside of me, simmering. Especially while listening to Wagner’s music, crying during my own Wagner moments, my personal reprieve, in which I found comfort and salvation: stronger and ever growing.

But what happened? What happened that moment just when I prepared to step into that police car? Wasn’t that Wagner’s music coming from my apartment? From way up there on the 16th floor? Didn’t I hear the Trauermarsch from Götterdämmerung? I recognized it immediately: those loud kettledrums and sharp trumpets, with dark strings in the background, together creating a divine crescendo, introducing a triumph march. Who put on that CD? Was it my mother? Was this my triumphal procession, at last? Mom! Or was it imagination? Or did I imagine my imagination? No, I was right! I could hear it! It was my mother who had chosen the CD. She knew me so well.

Then suddenly the music stopped, and in a dark flash accompanied by a huge headache which I tried to stop by squeezing my forehead between my two cuffed hands, I saw that fat rat sitting on the desk of the teacher in sixth grade. I was the only one who could see it, from the first row. The teacher was staring at me, nodding his head, telling me that I made him feel desperate. It happened after a night in Uncle Walter’s bed. I pointed to the rat, and all the children started laughing. I screamed and kept pointing. The teacher took me to the school nurse, who made me lie down in a small bed for the rest of the day. I realized that I wasn’t like the other children. I was alone. I had my fat rat, nothing more. Later, she kept showing up, especially when I was sad or lonely, and she brought companions who made sharp noises, who kept running over the sheets of my bed, and who disappeared during the sunrise.

A policeman pushed me in the car gently – it felt like a little hug – keeping his hand against my head. He was very kind, and I was enjoying this tender moment very much. Softly and slowly I sat down in the back of the car: slow and soft in a way that love should be, and never ending. The policeman seemed worried, inducing in me a rare desire to treasure the moment (a rare moment – a highlight – in my life). After a short drive we arrived at the police station: a high glass building erected in the middle of a large lawn, a fountain in front: three colorful drakes spitting water over each other, in an amusing threesome. Our party – my policemen, detectives and I – stepped out of the cars and rushed into the building, resembling a rugby team during a tender scrum. Comfortably surrounded by my policemen, I walked through a revolving door, along cold corridors, into an elevator, down more corridors, and into a small room with chairs and one table. There was a small tape recorder on the table. The interrogation would start now. They were ready and I was ready, still picturing myself sitting in between the two bodies in bathrobes, on my old couch.

Till noon the next day they kept interrogating me: asking me all kinds of questions, repeating the same questions over and over again, insinuating, repeating the questions again, and trying to unleash the answers that they wanted to hear. They sat, they walked, they leaned on the table, they whispered, they shouted. They just kept going, in circles and around, back and forward, driving me nuts – which probably was the point of the whole endeavor. Obviously they were used to this kind of job – and good at it. They gave me coffee, sandwiches, even cigarettes, which I didn’t touch. I only took cold water: lots of cold water, while they couldn’t stop, as if I was their new toy from under a Christmas tree. Sure, they were polite, but most of all they were very skillful and technical: following algorithms and standardized flow charts on how to obtain in a systematic way all the information they needed. Me, I tried to answer correctly and gave no interpretations. In the beginning they were the ones talking, but as the night wore on, my tongue loosened, and I talked more and more, while they became my audience. Yes, I gave no interpretations as interpretations focus too much on details, which change every time the story is told, starting their own life, drifting away from the truth.

Take the Koran, for example. During the Prophet’s lifetime there was no written record of his words and deeds; they were transmitted only orally, the facts blurring as each generation passed on the story, flourishing like wild orchids under a tropical sun, growing a jungle of lies. The Muslim scholars called it traditions, and from the beginning they were aware of the fact that hundreds of thousands of fake traditions had been cited. They even invented a science to cope with this. That’s why they distinguished a hadith (an action that is attributed to the Prophet) from an isnad (a supportive story). The supposed authenticity of the Prophet’s Word is largely based on the isnad. Can you believe this? Millions now rely on it, or better, rely on what is left of the original story. They will never realize it. How naive! But, at least, one can show understanding, even sympathy, for this: for their naivety and their continuous brainwashing, leaving but helpless creatures nursed on lies. The Christians – Opus Dei being the icing on the cake – are even worse and their way of life has nothing to do with what Jesus stood for. They drive big cars and live in huge villas. In their pure arrogance they claim to be concerned and are involved in charity. However, they don’t realize that it is not important how much you donate, but what you keep on your bank account. The Vatican and all its followers have lost touch with the true meaning of Jesus’ word. Christianity has become business as usual and nobody cares. Sure, similar criticisms are valid for Hinduism (blaming the poor and cripples for their previous bad life is a clever checkmate, which can’t be argued) and Buddhism (the boys of Patpong who become monks for one week can never cover up a life of prostitution, crime and lies). Do we really need Bibles or Korans or whatever to tell us what’s good and bad? Aren’t we the best beast on earth? Or are we just the end of a long line of hypocrisy?

Why do I even care? I should focus on my own problems. I was angry, yes, and I wanted to stop thinking about all the nonsense. That’s why I only gave them clear-cut facts: cold, according to the senses, to the point, as if I was citing numbers from a telephone book, although I am aware that the truth doesn’t exist, and is merely a mirror of those interpretations: many truths, many lies, endless, allowing every living soul to treasure his own truth. For me, it had been enough. Nothing mattered anymore: no more stories, no more fantasy.

Where to begin? With my genes? My family tree? Is there a beginning? I knew that all my stories would never be written down. Never, as they started long before I was born. I am the end of the line and my stories are without beginning and without ending, only the middle, links of a cosmic bracelet, living in my boundless imagination. The millions of books that have been written – scientific books, intimate books and religious books – just want to mold the soul. Not my soul, as in my head my stories started before any beginning, before any matter, when only subtle energy was real or ongoing. That was before life, before any notion of God, before we needed proof. It was when He and His prophets were still among the monkey-like creatures, who only knew how to kill and how to reproduce. It was in a time when the God of Fear didn’t have any reason to exist. He came later: as a pure necessity, to control the human race: us.

Moreover, I knew that there would never be an end to stories – to my future – only beginnings as pieces of the chain called evolution. Obsessive and incomprehensible, resembling life itself, even after my death penalty. While Danni told me that he wanted me (he mentioned it several times, usually when he was drunk, during dawn, he, the Muslim), he was already enjoying Bali’s white beaches with those beautiful bodies of Australian queens, an seemingly endless choice of gorgeous skins and sweet men’s odors, lying in the sand, coming out of the sea, posing while walking to the shower, and, at night, under cool silk sheets.

My first girl friend, Lotte, murdered me a long time ago, in Germany. I planned to do the same with Uncle Walter, but I couldn’t and on the day I ran away, telling him that I never wanted to see him anymore, he walked to the park, caught a cripple pigeon and bit its head off. Blood was covering his lips – lips that used to kiss me – and chin, and feathers were sticking all over his face and between his brown-colored, old teeth.

My detectives were real professionals, and now I was prepared to tell them everything, which was a result of their skillful interrogation techniques. But I didn’t show them that I respected them (despite the fact that I even felt a strange kind of love welling up). I just wanted to tell them everything and ASAP: everything about the hoslim, which is the word that was born in me, when I first met Danni.

How he, the hoslim, or homosexual Muslim, induced that one touch, that final and ultimate push of the mind that made me do it. It was the one last drop – a hoslim-drop – that filled the cup till it was running over. I had had enough. I had to do it. Over years the cup had been filled with all kinds of water, starting in my preschool years, then through my puberty, as a student, as a doctor, as a professor: it was German water, and Muslim water, or holocaust water – from Auschwitz to Darfur, whatever, ending with a mix of hoslim water and Cambodian water, coming together in my brain, dancing an intimate tango, resulting in an unstoppable necrosis of the cells that are responsible for the regulation of emotions, leading to that one complete surrender.

Yes, I wanted to tell them everything. I hated myself and I hated all the secrets and lies. That’s all there was: hatred, when I was awake and during my sleep. I should have done it long time ago, when it was still controllable. Now it was too late. Actually, it started being too late early in my life, before the joys of childhood. I was a preschooler when my hatred became my personal fatwa.

Yes, I wanted to tell them everything: a story free of lies, despite religion and despite promises. A story in simple words, without ever using a thesaurus. Simple and straightforward, allowing them to understand its context and keeping them awake all night. No descriptions, no esoteric babble that induces sleep. No way: a chronologic story leading to a double murder. There were all those empty promises. Nobody ever kept their promises to me. Nobody: not my bald-shaved mother, not my father (the bastard) or Uncle Walter or Lotte or Valentine. They were all selfish creatures, didn’t give a damn about me. In the end, Danni and Kim came to me in Singapore, at a time when all I wanted was peace of mind. It was on them that I permitted my hell to break loose.

CHAPTER 1

"Rest assured dear gentlemen that you don’t have to inform me about my future or the penalty that awaits me. I know what to expect, even not in case of complete cooperation. After all, I have been living in Singapore for more than ten years and I know its strict laws, and how unrelenting the justice system will be. Here, you only evaluate the outcome of an act, not its history. Therefore, relax and listen to my story. I accept any and all consequences of what I did. By the way, I confessed already, on the phone, when I said that I just killed two men. Didn’t I? What more could I do? Telling you my story and giving you a reason for what I did? Am I right? That is what you are expecting now: a logical explanation for what happened. Fine, so I will. Rest assured, I will, and I will accept the inevitable penalty, which, by the way, does not seem like a penalty to me; it is a relief of some kind, or shall I call it: deliverance? Death isn’t penalty for me. Not anymore. I am ready to leave this life. And what’s more, I am looking forward to it, as so many do: death is deliverance to the poor and the brainwashed. As for that, you can compare me with the latter: the brainwashed Muslims. We are alike in that, but just in that! We are looking forward to our next life, where happiness and freedom will dominate, and, not to forget, pleasures of the flesh: legal lust, in a manner of speaking.

What do you say? Can you repeat that? Motive?

Yes, I see, you want to know my motive. I figured as much; you want to know why I did it. I understand, but didn’t they already say why I did it in the morning edition of the newspaper, in that one special edition? Front page news? At last, something happened in Singapore – a country always so controlled, lacking any and all creativity. It must have been an exceptional day for journalists here, those who normally spend their days desperately looking for something to write about, anything. I gave them a relief from boredom – deliverance for them as well.

But you want to hear the story from the beginning. Well, let me tell you, then: there is no beginning, only follow up, or call it: consequences. Ends are beginnings of new stories. But I am keen to tell you, again and again: the story of how I met him, or the story of my childhood. In Uncle Walter’s bed or in a tent in Munich, or the story of what happened on that last day in my apartment: about Kim’s and Danni’s death, about the sweet double murder.

Sure, I agree that we all can learn from motives. I would like to call it research: pure necessity in creating a positive evolution of all aspects of humanity, and avoiding self-destruction. Monsters or serial killers – a group to which, incidentally, I don’t belong, as two murders committed at the same time are not a series, let me make this clear – are an ideal field of study, and instead of putting them all in jail or sending them to the electric chair, or killing them by lethal injection, they should be studied in detail, to learn about their motives and their brain functions. Only through extensive study can we avoid repeating ourselves.

You know what I would have done with Jeffrey Dahmer? Yes, with Jeffrey Dahmer. What do you say? You don’t know him? I see. I thought legal professionals knew every serial killer, their moves, their profiles, and their motives. Jeffrey Dahmer was one of those notorious serial killers; he murdered seventeen young men, after sexually abusing them. He ate part of their dicks and muscles, and kept their heads and other body parts in his fridge: totally nuts. You know what I would have done? I would have studied him: brain biopsies, provocation tests, sampling mediators directly from his brain, studied serotonin and dopamine levels in his hypothalamus, used micro-electrodes put directly in his brain during sexual activities, and examined his genome. I would have imitated that one scene of Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange in which the boy is forced to watch porn, while his eyes are kept open with little metal clips, preventing him to blink. In the meantime I would have sampled his cerebrospinal fluid for mediators. Translational research, they call it and that is what I would have done with him. I would have gathered all possible information, according to modern techniques of research: everything on a molecular level. No, I wouldn’t have put him in jail, feeding him, supplying him with a television set and a new laptop. No, I wouldn’t have let him get killed by another prisoner. Do you realize the loss of scientific data, and the waste of money and time, just by putting him in prison and letting him be killed?

Well?

Do you realize that it is only through research that we can extend our knowledge on murderers and serial killers? Research is the answer, not that stupid death penalty! Only research will eventually enable us to eradicate serial killers. Research will make mass screening early in life possible, perhaps right after birth, and that gives us a real shot at prevention. Yes, if I had been in charge, I would have a large database of all serial killers by now, and I would have published my results in high-ranked scientific journals, such as The Lancet or Nature; I would have conducted early intervention studies, and collected and compared data on prevention and treatment. That would please the world, make it better. Death penalty is stupid and doesn’t improve the world, doesn’t change a thing. But you people don’t have that innovative way of thinking: you people, politicians included, only want to be popular and feel respected. You all want to feel good in your ugly bodies! You people only want power and money. You only want to impress and please the crowd. You people only think of your own mandate, not of the future of the human race.

But don’t we all want to please the crowd?

Never mind, you asked me to tell you about my motive. I don’t care, and I hope it will make you wiser. I am keen to contribute to research, although I am sure that the future will be the same nonetheless: a slow degeneration of the human race, complete self-destruction due to that huge desire to be popular, for it’s that very desire that stands in the way of truly innovative ideas. Or are we doomed to degenerate due to our conviction that there will be a Heaven? Don’t we all know that this is nothing but a fairy tale fed to us by religion? I call it selfishness: a way to create power. By the way, whose future am I talking about? Not mine, because I know what will happen to me. Be sure, I know. This is Singapore: no exceptions here, only optimal control through executions.

Alright! Let’s say that what I did yesterday was the result of that one hoslim-drop. His name was Danni, and it was he who made my cup of control run over. A cup that had been filled since my preschool years: constantly been filled, year after year, day by day, till I became addicted – call it an addiction to hate – and unable to restore myself more and more. Call it conflict: a growing and non-reversible lifetime conflict.

Did you know what his first words were when he opened his eyes in that elevator? Did I already tell you this? No? He said: "Tuol Sleng? Tuol Sleng?" Two times he said it, not as a statement, mind you. He was asking, as if he was wondering whether he was there. That is what he said, no he stammered, and he looked confused and scared. He looked me in the eyes and I could see his fear, lying in front of me in that elevator. Did he think that I was his executioner and that I was going to beat him to death? It seemed like it.

Yes, those were his first words: Tuol Sleng, twice.

I can see on your reaction, gentlemen, that some of you don’t have an idea what I am talking about. Especially the young ones look very ignorant, shrugging their shoulders, but some of you know what I am talking about.

I knew it immediately: Tuol Sleng Prison or S-21, as the Khmer Rouge called it, is one of the largest prisons of the Khmer Rouge in the centre of Phnom Penh. A few months ago I had been there, visiting. Was that a coincidence? Or divine providence? Only He can tell if it was part of my mission. But does He exist? Or is He only a Cosmic Power, as Einstein describes Him in his books on religion: something we can’t understand but still try to label?

I was invited to give a talk on childhood mortality in Phnom Penh, for The Cambodian Society of Pediatrics. Retired professors do that: they travel around and give invited talks, in attendance of their death, killing time. During my career I performed a number of studies on childhood mortality, and they wanted to hear my results. You know, Cambodia’s universities are getting better: they want to learn about and use western standards, for renovation purposes: they are free, compare, and want to catch up. My reputation was still good, I guess. Anyway, I was invited, gave my talks, and in the afternoons I was wandering through the city of Phnom Penh, my travel guide in my hands. That’s how, one late Saturday afternoon, I showed up in Tuol Sleng, in the heart of the city, now a popular museum, mainly for American tourists most of them fat and rich, as that seems to go hand in hand. But even before my visit I knew of its existence as I had read several books on it, on the Khmer Rouge and on Pol Pot, attracted by holocausts, attracted by the madness of my fellow human beings, since my youth. I became sick in Tuol Sleng: sick from all those signs of cruelty. Unthinkable! Two million murdered: men, women, children, even infants. All those memories came back and I had to run out, vomiting and with an unbearable headache.

Memories of my mother would wash over me, flood through me!

I was so sensitive because of what happened to me as a child, and because my excellent memory would not let me forget. Even smells from my early childhood are as intense as ever before – the dog, and the farm yard; and touches, and caresses, I can still feel them on my skin. Yes, I am able to sense the past, and I always will be, because it hit me so deeply, and pushed me so hard that perhaps right from the start it was clear that this is where it would all end. In this room, talking to you about my mission. Yes, I am somebody with a mission, only one mission. Now that’s done, I am no longer a danger to society or any individual; not even to myself. I insist that you write this down.

Indeed, I was unable to finish my visit to Tuol Sleng, and I had to run away. All these photographs on the walls of the faces of those who were slaughtered, all these torture instruments, the iron leg shackles, the beds, the cells… I ran into a bar and drank wine – a lot of it – till after midnight. With the wine I was pouring, memories of my youth came back. I stayed in that bar, me, alone, drinking to become drunk. At last, the young waiter who had acted as if he was listening to my stories, but was really totally uninterested, pushed me in a taxi, and, drunk as a bull, I got to my hotel room, and fell down on the bed. I can still remember the scene. I slept till Sunday afternoon and had a hangover like never before.

It was the memory of my mother, again and again, that kept torturing me: like a fast growing tumor, which was freshly incubated with growth factors from Tuol Sleng.

I was only three years old when it started. The events that took place on that one day I will never forget. Never! Not many people can remember things from when they are three. I can. Because what happened that day was shocking, deeply shocking. My mother… she was… they… they, they dragged her out of the house by her hair… dragged her by her hair to the middle of our farm yard… and they threw her on the ground and started kicking her, in her face, on her chest, back, legs, arms… This was the image of my preschool years: my mother who was humiliated in front of me, while I was watching the spectacle through the kitchen window, terrified. Most of the people out there were women. Women were kicking and spitting on my mother. Then they put her on a chair and started cutting her hair, crudely cutting it, shouting ‘whore, whore’. They kept cutting her hair till she was completely bald. Then they laughed and danced around her, still kicking, spitting and shouting. She never took her eyes off of me. She kept staring at me, during the whole ordeal, and I saw silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her, either, off her tears, off her sad face, and started silently crying too. I was paralyzed, and so were my grandparents, who were sitting at the kitchen table and did not move. They just didn’t move; they let it all happen, as if they agreed with how these people were treating their only daughter. Did they? They were sitting with bent heads, as if they were ashamed of her. I never saw them again after that day. Didn’t want to either.

My mother was sitting on a chair in the middle our farm yard, staring at me, while shouting women were cutting her hair. Can you imagine that scene? Can you imagine what that did to me, a three-year-old child? Me, who was still breastfed, at that time. It happened right in front of the dung-hill, while our chained dog kept barking. The dog barking, my mother staring at me and the women shouting and cutting her hair. It was May 1945, the end of World War Two. Not a happy end for me, or her.

The dog didn’t want to stop barking, and even now, in the silence of the night, I still can hear that bark, and when I do, I wake up, drenched in cold sweat.

I could not