NUON CHEA, THE former second in command of the Khmer Rouge, was arrested Wednesday and charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and all we can say is: About damn time! After all, it’s been more than 30 years since the KR, in a fatally inept attempt to forge a Democratic Kampuchea, made all Cambodians wear black pajamas (among other indignities).

Since the 1998 death of Pol Pot, Chea, now 82, has been living peacefully in his home in Pailin. The northwestern province is a virtual retirement community for former KR cadres, all of them stalked by odd Western journalists who care enough about 1.7 million deaths (give or take) to ask Brother Number Two et al. what it was like to organize the murders—and to live with yourself afterwards.

Chea, however, has never expressed more than cryptic stabs at remorse. The New York Times called this 1998 gem a “peculiar half-apology”: “Actually, we are very sorry not only for the lives of the people of Cambodia, but even for the lives of all animals that suffered because of the war.” (The Cambodian Lemur Caucus was unavailable for comment.)

Now, if Cambodia can finally get its act together, this and other phrases may well be thrown back at the cane-wielding, Gucci-sunglasses-wearing old man in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Nuon Chea knows—and he’ll tell you!

Herewith, a sampling of some of Chea’s choicer morsels of self-delusion and denial.

More Brahma, Less Shiva

Duch, the former head of the notorious S-21 prison in Phnom Penh, has said that Chea called him in one day to say, “Don’t bother to interrogate them, just kill them.”

Nuon Chea’s response? “No, I did not. I am not so cruel as to kill my people because soldiers are children of farmers, poor farmers. I am not cruel. I don’t want to kill people in the army. So I never gave such an answer because I have the heart of a creator not a destroyer.”

The Peacemaker

Discussing, somewhat philosophically, the struggles of nations as represented in a completed puzzle that hangs on his home wall, depicting a tiger grappling with a dragon: “We should not create disputes. We should turn big disputes into small disputes. We should turn small disputes into no disputes. We should learn to solve disputes the good way.”

That’s a Relief!

How would Nuon Chea spend his remaining years behind bars? “I will read books in prison, learn another language and exercise. I will do all of this so that I can make myself strong. I told my wife not to visit me in jail and if I die, not to make a ceremony but keep the money for my children’s education. When I die it will all be finished.”

A Final Fable

True, Chea was sometimes known as “The Silent Brother” for his shadowy personality and reluctance to speak publicly. But a Chicago Tribune scribe found him in a boisterous mood last February and recorded Chea’s favorite fable: “A wolf accuses a lamb of insulting him, eating in his pasture and fouling a nearby brook. The lamb refutes each charge, yet in the end the wolf eats him anyway.”

Nuon Chea then “roared with laughter.”

“You see?” Chea said. “What powerful people say will always be right, and what small people say will always be wrong.”

Deny, Deny, Deny

Periodically, journalists have approached Chea to grab a “Former Khmer Rouge Leader Denies…” headline. Chea was always willing to oblige, like last July, to the AP, “while [Chea’s] wife served homemade iced fruit juice”:

“I will go to the court and don’t care if people believe me not. It happened 30 years ago and it’s very difficult to remember. Some of them [tribunal members] never experienced that. They weren’t there. How could they know what was going on?”

Brotherly Love

Chea is wordly enough, despite living in a remote, wooden home on stilts, to chime in on the death of a kindred spirit: “Saddam Hussein had a spirit of national love.”

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut…

“How’s your retirement going?” James Pringle, of the International Herald Tribune, asked Chea on the 29th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh.

“I am sometimes happy, and sometimes sad,” Chea said.

Was he feeling remorse, Pringle asked, for the Killing Fields?

“When there is no rain, and my plants die, I feel sad,” Nuon Chea said. “And I feel sad when my children’s businesses don’t prosper.”

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Matthew Fishbane is a New York–based freelance writer whose work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor and Salon.com. He lived in Phnom Penh for three years.