WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Chen

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◈ Incarnation of the Malevolent Star ◈

Chapter 55: Part 1 - Whispers of the Dark Brother (55)

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#55.

One of the good things about waterboarding, in Moweli's view, was that it did not look like much.

All it involved was covering someone's face with a cloth and pouring water over it.

Most Koreans knew, at least roughly, how agonizing a form of torture it was.

They lived in an environment with good access to information, and their modern history gave them some context for it, so most people knew about it on a superficial level.

The Congolese were different. Most did not know.

They did not have easy access to information through the internet as Koreans did.

In a country where it was fortunate if someone could even write the alphabet, where would they have the chance to learn what waterboarding was, how it was done, or how much it hurt?

Only those who had experienced it themselves were exceptions.

(Among Americans, who sometimes shocked the world with their excessive ignorance, something called the Waterboarding Challenge briefly became popular.

People were brave because they did not know.

America, the world's foremost moral nation as recognized by Jewish lobbyists, had long been the best in the world at waterboarding too, and yet this was what happened.)

That was exactly why Moweli's waterboarding could become a sacrament of the independence movement.

It could serve as the first step in restoring the self-determination of residents whose minds had been corrupted, and as a holy rite of purification.

To the residents he meant to enlighten, it would look as if the person they had depended on in their hearts had abandoned them after yielding to something as trivial as a little water play.

Sometimes, though, the residents mistook it for Moweli using sorcery.

「What is that? He's only pouring water on him, but that person is suffering so much! It's a terrifying spell I've never seen in my life!」

That reaction was not bad either.

A sorcerer was someone to be revered.

A national leader who would pacify the troubled times of this vast land needed godlike authority.

Moweli smiled at the frightened children.

'It'll work even better when the target is children!

The deeper the sense of betrayal by a foreigner they felt in childhood, the better nourishment it would become for raising fine independence soldiers.

It would not matter even if they learned someday what waterboarding really felt like. People were animals ruled more by emotion than reason.

An impression and resentment carved deeply into them over a long time would not be shaken much by facts learned later.

By then, any personal affection they felt for the pastor would have long since withered away...'

Moweli conducted the sacrament himself.

As always, he expected the satisfaction that came from enlightening the people of his homeland.

'Come on, Kim. How long will you endure?'

Moweli slowly poured the water.

The wet cloth clung to the pastor's face, and his body, tied firmly to the chair, jerked as if in a seizure.

It was not a reaction a person could control through willpower.

#

The CIA's field-agent training program included torture-resistance training in case of emergencies.

Though it was called training, it was no different from actual torture.

The only difference was that trainees knew they could stop it at any time by their own choice, so it was less stressful than real torture.

Even in that less stressful training, CIA agents lasted an average of only fourteen seconds under waterboarding.

Christopher Hitchens, a wretched islander and world-renowned intellectual, had been a scientific skeptic.

In keeping with his skepticism, he doubted whether waterboarding really counted as torture.

「How is that supposed to be torture? People are being dramatic. I'll try it myself!」

Then he lasted sixteen seconds.

That was an astonishing display of grit, enduring a full two seconds longer than the average specially trained CIA agent.

One could say the wretched original genes of an island Anglo-Saxon had shown greater strength than those vulgar colonials.

Like an MMA fighter tapping out after being caught in a submission hold, he gave the emergency stop signal. Once he was released from the torture apparatus, he panted heavily and admitted the pain and terror of waterboarding.

There was also one real man who mocked those feeble little men: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an al-Qaeda member.

A fanatical warrior of Allah and the glorious architect of the September 11 attacks, he made the weak little men of the CIA marvel by lasting a full two minutes.

「You cannot break me! Allah is great!」

The Americans paid tribute to his grit by giving him 183 consecutive waterboarding sessions.

Whether Allah's warrior, who set a worldwide record, had been pleased by this fact was unknown.

It was a shame the Guinness Book did not have a waterboarding category.

#

The moment water was poured over the cloth blocking his vision, the pastor's ability to think vanished completely in less than five seconds. Animal sounds came from his throat, muffled by the wet cloth.

"Uuh! Uuuuh!"

Clatter, clatter, clunk, clatter!

The chair arms, loose at their joints, rattled madly. Blood had already begun to seep from the pastor's wrists where the rough rope bound them.

His bulging, convulsing muscles and throbbing veins filled those watching with fear.

For the person enduring it, waterboarding was drowning with every part of the process thoroughly controlled.

And that process included its final destination, death.

Death delayed without end meant the pain of death prolonged without end.

In that pain, it was natural for someone drowning to become incapable of thought.

No one grabbed at a straw after thinking it through.

"Ugh! Ugh! Uuugh!"

The pastor's body, convinced it was drowning, retched in an attempt to expel water. It was a reflex response from the spinal cord.

Yet no water was actually coming back up through his throat, so his body only repeated meaningless dry heaves.

Moweli listened to the drowning man's cries and the rattling chair arms as though they were music. Only after thirty seconds did he stop pouring.

Then he removed the cloth covering the pastor's face.

"Khk! Cough, haaah!"

Able to breathe again, the pastor sucked in air violently.

In that brief time, several small blood vessels had burst in the whites of his eyes.

His body had thought it was about to drown, causing his heart rate and blood pressure to surge wildly along with the violent retching.

Moweli waited for the light of reason to return to the pastor's eyes before asking, "What did you think, Kim? That was thirty seconds. Could you bear it?"

"Thirty... seconds?"

"Yes. Thirty seconds. Exactly thirty seconds. Look at the size of this bottle. You could hold it in one hand. Even if I poured slowly, how much longer could it possibly last? This isn't some legendary bottomless bottle. Even if I poured every drop, it wouldn't last a full minute."

The pastor's eyes shook violently.

Moweli tilted the bottle back and forth before the pastor's eyes. The sound of the water sloshing was enough to tell that less than half remained.

Moweli chuckled and whispered, "I understand. I know how you feel, because I went through it too. The French did it to me.

"I was in university then. It was quite an experience. Those mercenaries were remarkable in many ways, kidnapping and torturing an ordinary college student in the middle of another country's capital."

"......"

"You're thinking this right now, aren't you? 'That can't be true! Thirty seconds? It felt like at least several minutes passed! Is he lying to me? I only get one child after enduring this for an entire hour? It's cruel! Too cruel...!'"

"......"

"Kim. Why not stop now? Why are you taking this suffering on yourself? I know, if no one else does. Even if you say you want to stop right now, it would never make you a coward...

"You only need to say one thing. That you'll leave. That you want to go home."

The pastor, who had been gasping for air, squeezed his eyes shut.

Moweli leaned in and waited a little longer for an answer. Soon, he shrugged with an expression of regret.

"Hm. Fine. That's your answer. It's a splendid answer in its own way. Then we'll continue the test."

The rules of the test were simple.

He would pour water for thirty seconds, then allow three or four full breaths.

If breathing was difficult, he would wait longer. If the pastor wanted to stop, that was when he could say so.

If he said nothing, the same thing would repeat until he did.

"One comforting thing is that these breaks count toward the time too. What do you think? Generous, isn't it?"

Black Fire Moweli was certain this test would end in his victory.

#

His certainty gradually crumbled as time passed.

Moweli looked down at Pastor Kim, who was panting, and frowned.

'It's been thirty minutes. How is this honorary white bastard still enduring?'

Long ago, when Moweli had been a university student passionately devoted to the anti-Western student movement, French mercenaries had kidnapped him.

The Frenchmen, who smelled different from the Congolese, tortured Moweli, the future independence army commander, for three days and nights.

That did not mean Moweli had endured torture for three days and nights.

As a university student, Moweli had yielded to the pain before he could endure even an hour.

"I'll tell you. Khk. The environmental impact documents stolen from Perenco... The person who has them is..."

The activist group with hard-line Lumumbism leanings to which Moweli belonged had drawn up a list of Western corporations that needed to be expelled in order to restore the Democratic Republic of the Congo's resource sovereignty.

The list included Perenco, an oil company that did not give a damn about environmental protection, and Bolloré, a company that had nearly monopolized port logistics in West Africa and operated countless rubber plantations in the Congo unethically.

Both were companies from France, that old and proud moral nation.

(The rising moral hegemon China secretly envied France and wanted to take its regional position for that reason.

France had already succeeded at its own Belt and Road Initiative.

Belgium, meanwhile, had no need to envy France.

The Fabri family, a Belgian business dynasty, partnered with Bolloré in joint ventures to run the rubber plantations.)

The activists who shared Moweli's cause attacked those companies in both open and hidden ways.

In the open, they held fierce protests of condemnation. In secret, they infiltrated company buildings and facilities, carried out physical sabotage, and stole confidential documents.

The surprising destination for the confidential documents was France.

Were there not conscientious people even in that wretched island nation of Britain?

There were also wondrous people in France, its peer among advanced moral nations, whose consciences still functioned.

Good people who brought lawsuits in their own country's courts and demanded disclosure of Perenco's internal documents, exposing the environmental destruction it carried out in the Third World and the ruin it brought to local livelihoods. People frustrated again and again by courts that protected their own nation's corporations.

Perenco's internal confidential documents were a gift meant to be delivered to them.

But the delivery never happened.

Because university student Moweli had yielded to pain before he could endure even an hour.

Only one hour.

It remained a shameful memory for Moweli for a long time.

Just as Moweli did for Pastor Kim now, the experts hired by the French corporations had allowed Moweli full breaths between sessions.

Each time, Moweli's eyes fell upon the desk clock sitting on the table before him.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock...

It was a round mechanical clock whose second hand sounded unusually loud.

Even after he put on a rebel officer's uniform, Moweli sometimes heard the ticking of that silver clock again in his dreams.

One hour.

One hour.

He had yielded before completing that hour, but the Frenchmen's torture only ended after a full three days.

There was a rational reason for it.

「Huh? I told you everything you wanted, so why are you still torturing me?」

Moweli wept and vomited as he asked why. The Frenchmen smiled gently and answered.

「Because there's no guarantee that what you told us is true.

So until my friends catch your friends, we must push you to the brink while we verify it. For safety, you see.

It's not as if we bear you any personal ill will.」

Answers obtained through torture always had problems with reliability.

Torture usually continued not because the person being interrogated refused to speak, but to verify whether answers obtained quickly were true.

Fortunately, the Frenchmen did not kill Moweli.

He was too well known for them to comfortably pass him off as missing.

Moweli had been an exceptionally brilliant university student, and a next-generation activist with as much passion and popular support as he had intelligence.

If someone like him disappeared, no small number of university student groups would rise up in fury.

「University students are a problem in every country.

Their hearts swell with the foolish pride that they are the most enlightened people of all. They put their half-formed minds to work and do childish things.」

As they released the dark-skinned university student, the kind Frenchmen offered him gentle advice.

「From now on, live responsibly. Don't involve yourself in things as impure and dangerous as student movements. Study hard and become a model civilized person.

That's the path to making this backward country into a wonderful country like France. You understand what I mean, right?」

After being released, Moweli believed his comrades would understand, at least to some extent, why he had yielded under torture.

He did not expect complete forgiveness, but he believed they would at least understand that it had been beyond his control.

...They did not.

#

One of the bad things about waterboarding, in Moweli's view, was that it did not look like much.

All it involved was covering someone's face with a cloth and pouring water over it.

Even a famous intellectual from that wretched island country had doubted whether it was really torture, only to experience it himself and realize, "Ah, this isn't doenjang. It's shit..."

Among young nationalist university activists, at an age when people tended to overflow with confidence and self-love and overestimate their own mental strength, only a few could properly understand the suffering Moweli had endured.

「Weak bastard! They started tracking us less than half a day after you were caught! If you'd lasted a little longer, this operation would have succeeded!」

「Stop acting pathetic, you traitor!」

That condemnation and lack of understanding had also been encouraged to a degree.

Like every organization made of people, Moweli's group had factions and struggles for leadership.

Moweli's ambitious rivals did not miss the chance to tear into him.

「Leave, traitor who abandoned his homeland! We no longer consider you a comrade!」

And so Moweli was abandoned by his comrades.

The police, who had most likely accepted bribes, did not conduct a proper investigation.

Professional waterboarding left no visible injuries, so the police only treated him as a liar.

All of it was his punishment for yielding after failing to endure even one hour of torture.

That was why, when independence army commander Moweli gave the baptism of water to white and honorary-white aid workers, he kept one hour as the standard in his heart.

Whenever he saw foreigners fail to last even ten minutes, their masks stripped away as they begged and pleaded to be spared, he felt the thorn of shame lodged deep in his heart slowly melt away.

'Yes. It was a length of time no human being could endure.'

Pride filled the space shame had left behind.

'I wasn't weak. I wasn't inferior! I was a person superior to ordinary people...!'

Objectively speaking, it was not entirely wrong.

The fact that an ordinary university student had endured waterboarding for nearly an hour was extraordinary in itself.

At the very least, the feeble little men of the CIA would have acknowledged university student Moweli's grit.

Yet now, in this place, his pride was being threatened.

By one Otherworld Hero who had come from the distant Far East.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock...

As Moweli looked at his wristwatch, he heard the ticking of a desk clock that did not exist here.

In his unease, Black Fire Moweli ground his teeth without realizing it.

#

The longer the torture went on, the more Pastor Kim's consciousness entered a strange trance.

As though warm light were rippling in on waves, the Otherworld Hero's mind sank to the bottom of a calm and silent lake.

Even while that happened, his body continued to struggle fiercely against the pain through reflexes beyond the control of his consciousness.

His mind drifted further and further away from his body. From a higher realm beyond reality, Pastor Kim felt a holy presence looking down upon him.

'Lord. Is it You? Are You shining Your light upon me? Are You giving Your servant strength to overcome this trial?'

Scientifically, it could be explained as a hallucination caused by increased carbon dioxide in the blood and oxygen deprivation.

The pain of waterboarding was not limited to the pain of suffocation.

Abnormally high levels of carbon dioxide in the blood changed cerebral blood flow, disrupted the brain's acid-base balance, and even affected neurotransmitter secretion.

Oxygen deprivation also caused cognitive, behavioral, and sensory impairment.

On top of that came an explosive surge of stress hormones.

They were conditions in which hallucinations would not be strange at all, amid delirium that caused consciousness to flicker in and out.

Even so, the hallucination Pastor Kim experienced was very unusual.

Each time Moweli allowed him to breathe, his consciousness briefly returned to reality. Yet the hallucinations before and after those moments continued without breaking apart.

‘Lord, save me from this pain!’

Pastor Kim prayed within the hallucination.

‘See my suffering, and know the soul that is in tribulation!’

He prayed, and prayed again.

'So that I may protect Your innocent children, who are pure and without fault.'

It was a small miracle created by human faith.

It was the consistency of a hallucination born from steadfast faith and a powerful will.

Time continued to pass through his unending prayers.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock...

#

At last, one hour had passed.

"......"

Moweli looked down at the panting pastor with a hard expression.

Water dribbled from the lowered kettle and fell onto the wet ground.

"Khk, cough, kh..."

Every time the pastor coughed for breath, a sharp wheezing sound came from his throat.

Moweli, who had studied waterboarding in depth, knew what the symptom was.

'Laryngospasm!'

When the muscles of the vocal cords contracted on their own and blocked the airway, a person ended up like the pastor.

Unless it was severe, breathing gradually recovered if the person was left alone.

The pain and confusion felt during the process were also part of waterboarding's effect. A body convulsing beyond one's will gave the tortured person immense fear and panic.

Still, Moweli lifted the pastor's chin to help keep his airway open.

It would not make the symptoms disappear at once, but it would speed up recovery.

"Hah, hah, hah..."

Moweli watched Pastor Kim's eyes intently as the pastor breathed raggedly.

He expected to see the light of fear and surrender return to this honorary white's eyes.

But it was not there.

It had begun disappearing around thirty minutes ago, and now showed no sign of returning at all.

It was not a mere illusion.

Every time he allowed the pastor to breathe, Moweli had asked whether he wanted to stop. The answer had always been the same.

"I will... continue."

There was no sign that the pastor who gave that answer feared the pain.

Even while not fully conscious, he answered the same way. Moweli could not understand it at all.

It would have been normal for him to sob like a child, say he did not want this, and beg for it to stop.

Yet this was where they had arrived after all that.

Moweli drew the pastor's attention.

"Monsieur Kim. Can you understand what I'm saying?"

The pastor slowly nodded, his movements drained of all strength.

"Yes..."

"Congratulations. You've finally completed your first hour."

"......"

"Now you may choose one child to remain by your side.

"Then, if you repeat what you've done another fifty-four times, you'll be able to keep all the remaining children beside you.

"Well begun is half done, Bien commencé est à moitié fait. You may as well say you're already halfway there. Yes?"

Despite Moweli's forced mockery, the pastor only steadied his breathing with a calm expression.

Moweli watched him and tightened his grip around the water bottle.

The empty mouth of the bottle trembled as if it were convulsing.

At the beginning, he had demanded that the pastor endure the time for every child, but that had only been a condition meant to give him despair.

It had been a psychological device meant to make the tortured person unable to hold out for long by making the end seem impossibly far away.

University student Moweli had personally known how dreadful that despair was.

When would this pain end?

Was there even an end?

Would the end come only after I died? Could I find peace only through death...?

So Moweli had never planned to continue the torture for several days.

Just as he himself had done in the past, he had assumed it would all end before an hour passed.

He had firmly believed no foreigner who came from the outside world could measure up to who he had been.

He was an independence army commander. He carried the mission of building an independence army and liberating his homeland.

He was not someone who had time to waste days idling in a village like this...

"Kim."

"Yes."

"Will you continue?"

"Yes."

The pastor's answer came without hesitation, despite his exhaustion. It quietly shook Moweli.

It was the moment when a university student from the past, one who had failed to endure an hour and yielded to fear of pain that would not end, realized his defeat before a human nobility beyond comprehension.

Tied to a tilted chair, the pastor had recovered a steady rhythm of breathing. He looked up at Moweli and said, "I won't choose a child now. Whoever I choose, the other children will be hurt...

"I won't give up on any child... I'll keep my promise to them... All I have to do is endure until the end..."

"......"

"Lieutenant Colonel... I have a request. If I run out of strength and die in the middle of this, could you count it as me enduring to the end...?"

"......"

"Please just leave the children in this village... If there's no word from me for over a week, my sons will come looking for me...

"They'll take the remaining children and care for them well..."

The nearby soldiers and the residents who had been dragged out all heard those agonizing words.

The children heard them too.

Moweli asked the Korean Hero, "Kim. How can you do this?"

"...What do you mean?"

"How can you say that you'll endure more of that terrible pain? You're the first person who's ever said that."

The Hero blinked a few times before answering.

"Because God watches over me. He is giving me strength."

Moweli let out a hollow laugh.

"Many have cried out for their god's help before me. Many have prayed to their god for the strength to endure pain.

"But none of them was like you."

"...Is that so?"

"Yes. They all came to this land to help people in need, each in their own way. There is no reason the white man's god would favor you alone.

"So you endured by your strength alone. You endured, and now mistake it for help from your god.

"You have a spirit that transcends material things."

"That is-"

"Quiet."

Moweli raised one hand and cut off the pastor's words.

At that moment, Moweli had two paths left.

The first was to continue the torture out of stubbornness, hoping that the astonishing fool before him would eventually break.

The second was to accept the defeat of university student Moweli Karuru and acknowledge the foreigner before him.

"......"

Moweli's wounded pride screamed that he should choose the first.

Though he felt his sense of defeat deepen, he could not help following that cry.

Moweli's defense mechanism desperately produced an excuse.

The spirit that transcends material things, which he himself had emphasized so much, was right here. Would it not be all right to test its sincerity a little longer?

Yes. Just a little... A little more.

Perhaps the gap between the pastor before him and university student Moweli Karuru was not actually that great.

With that thought, Moweli covered the pastor's face with the wet cloth, his expression hard.

#

The mechanical waterboarding continued until the following day.

The pastor endured as Moweli skipped meals and stayed awake through the night to keep torturing him.

Throughout that long period, a length of time no person could endure and should never have to endure, independence army leader Moweli Karuru only felt more miserable.

He felt as if he were continually humiliating the university student Moweli Karuru who lived inside him.

"Ha."

With that brief sigh, Moweli put an end to a long delusion and casually tossed away the empty bottle in his hand.

A full twenty-four hours had passed.

"We'll stop. There's no point."

Looking more haggard than he had the day before, Moweli accepted his defeat.

Only then did the silver clock ticking inside his mind finally fall silent.

Footnotes:

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