At the Right Time

For thirty-two years, I have interrogated human beings, and not a single one has ever managed to make me say something I didn't want to say. My subordinates call me Tembok—The Wall. Not a nickname I chose—I would never choose a moniker so insolently unpoetic—but it stuck, because that is exactly what I am. You can scream, cry, slam the desk, or lie with the cunning of a devil, and I will just sit quietly staring at you until you tire out, until you crack, until the truth seeps out of you on its own like water seeping through a wall that finally surrenders to the rain.

I never crack. That is my entire job. Other people are paid to build things; I am paid not to collapse.

So I will not explain to you—because I have no explanation—why on a Tuesday afternoon in interrogation room number three, in front of a two-bit motorcycle thief named Sukrim who was crying and calling out for his mother, I started crying too.

Not just shedding a tear. Crying. Sobbing, with snot, with shaking shoulders, with all the humiliation that accompanies it. In front of Sukrim. Who finally stopped crying over himself and, with confusion and a bit of horror, slid a packet of tissues across the table and said, "T-take it easy, Sir." Then, because he was a thief and a thief's brain is never truly on vacation: "If you're dealing with a lot of problems, Sir, that motorbike from yesterday wasn't actually me who—"

"Shut up, Sukrim."

"Yes, Sir."

That is how I ended up in this room, facing this woman, who became my toughest adversary in a thirty-two-year career—tougher than drug lords, tougher than murderers, tougher than everyone I have ever stared down into a confession.

Her name is Mrs. Laras. A psychologist. They mandated me to see her eight times before I was allowed back on duty, because an interrogator who cries harder than his suspect is, as my superior put it with extraordinary diplomacy, "an asset in need of recalibration." I am fifty-eight years old. I have already been calibrated. What they meant, if they were being honest, was: The Wall is cracked, call a handyman to take a look.

I went in with one strategy. This is an interrogation. And I will not be the one interrogated.

So I sat in her chair. The psychologist's chair, facing the patient's chair. I leaned back, and when she walked in, I pointed to the opposite chair with my chin. "Please, have a seat."

Mrs. Laras looked at the situation for a moment—me in her chair, her empty chair opposite—then, without the slightest expression, she sat in the patient's chair. Crossed her legs. Folded her arms. Waited.

Good, I thought. She's playing my game.

"So," I said, with a voice that once made a two-meter-tall thug wet himself in an iron chair, "tell me about yourself."

"Me first," she said. "You cried in front of Sukrim when he called for his mother. What happened to your mother?"

A three-second silence.

Three seconds that, in the entire history of my interrogations, were the first three seconds where I felt the floor shift. I had just seized the interrogator's chair, commanding the room perfectly—and this woman, from the patient's chair, from a losing position, had just stabbed me right under the ribs while letting me feel like I was winning.

I cleared my throat. "My mother is healthy. She still cooks rendang."

"Good." She nodded. "That means we still have seven and a half sessions to figure out why you changed the subject so fast, and why a man whose mother still cooks rendang cried when a thief called for his."

That was the moment I knew this would be a war. And it was also the moment, though I wouldn't admit it even at gunpoint, I felt something I hadn't felt in any room for a long time: intrigued.

Second session, I brought my best weapon. Silence.

Silence is an art. Laypeople think interrogations are about questions; they aren't. Interrogation is about the silence you arrange in such a way that the opponent can't stand it and fills it themselves. I once won a nine-hour silence. I once made a man confess to murder just to end the quiet I created.

So I walked in, sat down—in the patient's chair this time; I didn't mind surrendering a little territory to win the war—and I stayed silent. I stared at a single point on Mrs. Laras's forehead. I didn't move. I didn't blink more than necessary. I became The Wall.

Mrs. Laras stared back at me for about ten seconds. Then she nodded, as if I had just said something perfectly reasonable, opened her desk drawer, pulled out half-finished knitting—a scarf, an incredibly ugly moss green, a color that makes you think of a dead pond—and started knitting.

Click. Click. Click.

One hour. She knitted for a full hour while I sat in my majestic, combat silence, a silence that had brought down major criminals, and this woman treated it like a relaxing afternoon break. Occasionally she hummed. At the forty-minute mark, she offered me tea. I didn't answer; answering meant losing. She poured it anyway, placed it in front of me, and I watched the tea steam, then cool, then form a thin film on the surface, and I didn't touch it, and that—I convinced myself—was a victory.

At the fifty-fifth minute, she said, without looking up from her knitting: "You're good at being quiet, Sir. Truly. But I get paid by the hour, not by the word. So you're torturing your own wallet, not me." Click. "And the tea is free. It's a shame, really."

I went home that day with a feeling I hadn't felt since the Academy: utterly defeated by a civilian armed with two knitting needles and a teapot.

Third session, I changed tactics. If she wanted a story, I'd give her a story.

I fabricated a trauma. I am the best interrogator in this province; I know exactly the shape of the wounds psychologists look for, because I've dragged them out of other people thousands of times. So I crafted a masterpiece: a harsh childhood, a heavy-handed alcoholic father, a beloved dog dying after being hit by a truck right in front of

my eyes—complete with pauses in all the right places, a slightly choked voice at the climax, and a single tear I allowed to fall and immediately wiped away as if in shame. I even added the small detail that always seals the deal: I stopped midway, apologized, and said, "Sorry, I'm not used to talking about this." A professional touch. If she swallowed it, she'd write in her report that I was "processing," and I'd be free.

Mrs. Laras listened to the whole thing. Nodding. Taking notes. When I finished, she looked at her notes, looked at me, and asked in the friendliest tone in the world:

"What was the dog's name?"

"...Boni."

"Earlier you said Doni."

Silence. A silence different from my silence. This was the silence of someone caught red-handed, and I knew exactly what it felt like from the other side of the table, thousands of times, but never from this side.

"Sir." She put her pen down. And for the first time, there was something almost like tenderness in her voice, which only made it more unbearable. "I have spent twenty years listening to people lie about their feelings. You are good. Really. Top five I've ever met. But a person who genuinely has no wounds wouldn't bother fabricating one so perfectly just to escape this room. The empty ones, they just walk out. The one who constructs a dead dog with such detail, with two names because they were too busy inventing to remember—" she smiled faintly, "—that is a person guarding something real, guarded so tightly that they'd rather create a fake wound than expose the real one. You didn't make that up to lie to me, Sir. You made it up so you wouldn't have to touch the real thing. Even your lie is a shield."

I didn't answer. But beneath the table, my hands clenched until my knuckles turned white.

Because this woman, with her ugly knitting and free tea and deadpan delivery, had just done what no one had successfully done to The Wall in thirty-two years.

She found the crack. And she didn't press it. That was the terrifying part. I can fight someone who presses the crack. This one just pointed it out to me, then waited, as if the crack belonged to me and it was up to me what to do with it.

I fought back. Of course I did. I don't surrender that easily; I am The Wall.

I did what a cop does when backed into a corner. I investigated her. I ran Mrs. Laras's background through channels I shouldn't explain and which, legally, I shouldn't have used. I looked for a weak point, because that is how wars are won: find the opponent's crack, and press.

I found it, and for a moment I felt like I was back in control, and a few seconds later I felt like a bastard.

Her clinic was nearly bankrupt. Closing next month. And from a few things I read and a few colleagues I carefully questioned, the picture was quite clear: these were her final sessions. It wasn't just the clinic closing. She was quitting. Walking away from a profession she had practiced for twenty years. I—the annoying mandatory patient, The Wall who constructed a dead dog named Boni-slash-Doni—was one of the final cases in the career of a woman who had decided to stop believing in her own work.

I also found out why, or so I thought. A few years ago, one of her patients—a young kid, depressed, whom she treated for months—didn't make it. It wasn't her fault; colleagues said she did everything right. But I've been an interrogator long enough to know that "it wasn't your fault" is a sentence that never reaches the people who need it most. I kept that kid's name in my head and felt dirty for holding onto it.

I walked into the next session with all that ammunition in my pocket. I was ready to use it. Then something happened before I could fire a shot.

Mrs. Laras arrived late. Mrs. Laras was never late. And when she walked in, there was no knitting, no teapot, no steel demeanor. She looked tired in a way that couldn't be faked—a kind of exhaustion I know very well, because I meet it in the mirror every morning. She sat in the psychologist's chair, her own chair, for the first time since the first session, sighed, and spoke not with a psychologist's voice but with the voice of a human too exhausted to act.

"Mr. Karman. Let's just be honest. I'm tired." She laughed quietly, bitterly, a laugh I recognized because it was exactly like my own. "These are my final weeks. I'm quitting. Not because the clinic is bankrupt—that's just an easy excuse to tell people. I'm quitting because I no longer believe that talking heals anyone. Twenty years I've told people to open up, and half of them walk out of this room just as broken as when they walked in. And some—" she stopped, and I saw the name I was holding in my head flash in her eyes, and I was grateful I hadn't said it, "—some don't walk out at all. So if you want to keep playing 'walls,' go ahead. I throw my hands up. I don't have the energy to fight anymore."

And right there, reader, my entire strategy crumbled.

Because I have a defense for everything. Screaming, crying, coaxing, threatening, silence, lying. I have a wall for every attack known to man.

I do not have a single defense against someone who stops attacking.

You cannot interrogate someone who has already surrendered. My weapons are all designed to pierce defenses; in front of someone who drops all of theirs, my weapons became a pile of useless scrap iron. I sat there with my pockets full of bullets about her clinic and the name of the kid who didn't make it, and I couldn't fire a single one, because you don't shoot someone who is kneeling—not in surrender, but because their legs genuinely can no longer stand.

So I did the thing I least expected to do in any room, to anyone.

I lowered my wall first.

"His name was Joni," I said.

Mrs. Laras looked up. Something in her face changed, but she didn't reach for her pen. That was what allowed me to continue—she didn't reach for her pen.

"My first partner. Thirty years ago. A snot-nosed kid, fresh out of the academy, annoying as hell, his jokes were all terrible—genuinely terrible, Ma'am, the kind that make you embarrassed to have laughed. He liked to save the last piece of gorengan (fried snack) for me even though he bought them. Every time. I told him not to, I told him to just eat it, and every time he said, 'I'm already full, Sir,' while drooling over it. The worst lie I've ever heard. And I'm an interrogator, I know all kinds of lies." I stopped. "That was the first lie I never tore apart. I just let it be. I ate the gorengan(fried snack)."

"And then?"

"And then he died. Our fourth month on duty. Not a heroic shootout, nothing worthy of being written on a monument. Just a stupid chase, a motorbike, a truck turning without looking. Done. Twenty-three years old. Died before he could become anything, before he could come up with a funny joke, before he could stop saving the gorengan."

"And you cried for him," Mrs. Laras said, softly.

"No." I stared at the cold tea between us. "That's the problem."

And finally, thirty years late, I told her about it—I didn't explain it, I didn't justify it, I just placed it on the table like evidence. The day Joni died, I had a job to do. Informing his family. Handling the reports. Standing tall at the funeral because Joni's mother was hugging me and crying and someone had to be the one who didn't collapse too. So I postponed it. I told myself: later. Later, I will grieve. At the right time. After everything is settled. When I have a moment.

I didn't explain to Mrs. Laras what happened after that, because I didn't need to; she's a psychologist, she knows. If you postpone one thing long enough, the postponement stops being a delay and becomes an architecture. I never reached the "right time." There was always the next case, the next suspect, the next reason to be a wall for just one more day. And a wall that stands for thirty years no longer feels like a choice. It feels like bone.

"Then last month," I said, and this was where I began to lose my grip on my voice, "they gave me a new partner. A snot-nosed kid. Fresh out of the academy. Annoying. Terrible jokes." I laughed, a short laugh that came out wrong, closer to something else. "His name is Bagas. On his first day he told three jokes and two fell flat and the other one, I don't even know, I still don't get it. And last week we worked overtime, bought gorengan, and he—"

I stopped.

"He saved the last one," Mrs. Laras said.

"For me. Without being asked. And when I told him to just eat it, he said—" my throat closed, and I, The Wall, fifty-eight years old, had to stop and wait before I could finish, "—he said, 'I'm already full, Sir.' While drooling over it. The same lie. The exact same terrible lie. Thirty years, Ma'am. Thirty years the wall stood, and what tore it down wasn't a bullet, wasn't a case, wasn't anything big. Just one leftover gorengan and one terrible lie from a kid I barely even knew."

"And you cried."

"In interrogation room number three." My voice finally broke, in that patient's chair, and I let it. "Thirty years I held back tears for a dead kid, and when it finally came out, it chose the single most humiliating, undignified, entirely wrong moment in the history of the republic's entire police force—" I laughed again, a wet, dreadful, relieved laugh, "—in front of a motorcycle thief named Sukrim, who thought I was crazy, and offered me a tissue, and told me to take it easy. A thief. Consoling me. With office tissues bought with state money."

And Mrs. Laras—the psychologist who had thrown her hands up, who had stopped believing, who had packed twenty years into cardboard boxes—Mrs. Laras laughed. A genuine laugh, until her eyes were wet, the laugh of someone who had just heard the saddest and funniest thing all at once, which in this world are often the exact same thing.

"Sukrim," she said, shaking her head. "Office tissues."

"State money," I said.

And we both laughed, two old people in a small room that would close next month, laughing at a thief and a box of tissues, until the laughter slowly turned into something else, a thing with no name, a thing standing right on the border between the most comical and the most unbearable things in life, and we let it, because in the end, that is the only place where people like us can rest.

We sat in silence for a long time afterward. But not my combat silence. A different silence—one that demanded nothing, that wasn't waiting to see who would crack first.

Then, because I am an interrogator and thirty-two years of habit do not die in a minute, I saw the crack in her face. The kind I usually look for. And without really deciding to, I said softly:

"That kid who didn't make it. The one you treated for years."

Her face froze. "You investigated me."

"I am The Wall. It's what I do." I held her gaze. "I walked into this session intending to use that to attack you. To win. That was my initial plan today. I was going to say something cruel about him so you would falter, and I could walk out of this room without digging up Joni."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because you surrendered first," I said. "And it turns out, I can't shoot someone who has laid down their weapon. That is the only line I have never crossed in thirty-two years, and I only found out it existed today."

She didn't say anything.

"You're quitting," I said, "because you think talking doesn't heal anyone. Because there was one kid you didn't save, and you carry him in your eyes to this day—I saw it, earlier, when you almost mentioned him. You think these twenty years are a failure because there was one you couldn't send home." I paused. "But you're wrong, Ma'am. And you know you're wrong, because just now, in this room, you made a fifty-eight-year-old wall cry over a kid who's been dead for thirty years. You didn't cure me—grief doesn't cure, I'm old enough to know that. But you made me stop carrying it alone. That is not meaningless. That is almost everything."

That gaze of steel finally crumbled. Her eyes were wet, and she laughed and cried all at once, in the manner of someone who had just been saved by the person who came to be saved.

"Damn you, Wall," she said, wiping her eyes roughly with the back of her hand. "I'm the psychologist here."

"And I'm the interrogator," I said. "So believe me when I tell you: you're lying about wanting to quit. I know a lie. That's the worst one I've heard since the gorengan."

She didn't quit. That was information I only got later.

The clinic still closed—money is money, and no amount of wisdom pays the rent. But she moved, opened up again, smaller, in a cramped shophouse near a market that smelled of salted fish all day. I know because—and this is the part that still makes me feel ridiculous when I remember it—I became her patient for two full years after my eight mandatory sessions ran out. Voluntarily. The Wall, voluntarily coming every two weeks to a shophouse smelling of salted fish, bringing gorengan, and saving the last piece for her. Every time. And every time she would say, "I'm already full, Sir," while drooling over it, and every time I did not tear that lie apart. I just let it be. I ate the gorengan.

Bagas never knew a thing about this. The kid only knew that his scary senior was suddenly not so scary, and sometimes, if he saved the last gorengan, his senior would stare at him too long with a weird expression before saying, "Just eat it, Gas." He assumed I was just old and sentimental about food. Let him. There are things you don't need to pass down with words; you just pass them down by not telling him to stop saving the gorengan.

On the day I retired, a few years later, there was a small party at the precinct. A lot of cops, a lot of speeches, a lot of young people who didn't know why the old man in the corner was nicknamed The Wall and didn't dare ask. Bagas—no longer a snot-nosed kid, he had his own snot-nosed partner now—gave a terrible speech, and I laughed in the wrong places, and he didn't know why.

And in the corner of the room stood one person who wasn't a cop, with an ugly moss-green scarf she had finally finished knitting for whoever knows who, wrapped around her own neck.

Before I went home, Mrs. Laras handed me something. The feelings journal she used to make me fill out in those early weeks—the one I filled out like surveillance reports just to annoy her. 0800: subject feels nothing. 0830: still feels nothing. 0900: subject suspects psychologist is winning. 0930: subject denies said suspicion. Attachments: none.

"The last page," she said. "I've waited for you to fill it out since the first session. Nine years, Sir. I'm patient."

So at my retirement party, in the corner of the room, under cheap balloons and a banner that misspelled my name, an old man once nicknamed The Wall opened the final page and wrote, for the first time, something true about his feelings. Not long. The Wall would never be long-winded.

Joni. I ate your last gorengan thirty years ago and never said thank you, and I didn't cry for you because I was busy being strong for your mother, and it turns out I never stopped being busy. I'm sorry I'm late. But someone told me, and she's a psychologist so she probably knows: there is no such thing as being late. There is only the time when you are finally able to bear it.

I closed the book. I didn't cry—I had already cried, back then, at a time that turned out, despite being in front of a thief, despite being thirty years late, despite being the most humiliating moment in the history of this republic's police force, to be the only time that was ever truly right. Not because it arrived at a good moment. But because, for the first time since Joni died, when those tears finally came, there was someone in the room who didn't tell me to stop.

Sukrim, if you're curious, still went to prison. He really did steal that motorbike. But I wrote a note on his file that I don't normally write for anyone: Suspect was cooperative. Showed empathy to the officer. The judge was probably confused reading it.

I wasn't. I know exactly what he did for me, in room number three, with state-funded tissues. He comforted a wall that was crumbling, and he didn't tell me to stop, and for a two-bit thief, that was probably the only noble thing he ever did in his entire life—and he did it for the man who was locking him up. At a time that, as it turns out, was also right.