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On a sunny morning in November, I was in the middle of the monthly scrubbing of bedsheets, when a guard yelled, ''Come out! You must go for interrogation.'' Interrogation! At last it seemed I was to come face to face with my antagonist. My heart pounded as I followed the guard. The long-awaited opportunity to have my case examined dispassionately was here at last. I found myself confronting two pale-faced men, dressed in the baggy and faded blue cotton Maoist uniform. About two yards from the counter where they sat was a heavy wooden chair for the prisoner. The room was very dark, but the little light that came through the window was focused on the prisoner. The walls were dusty, the cement floor black with damp. ''Do you know what this place is?'' the chief interrogator asked. ''This is the place where counterrevolutionaries who have committed crimes against the ! People's Government are locked up and investigated.'' ''In that case, I should not have been brought here,'' I declared. ''There must have been some mistake.'' ''The People's Government does not make mistakes.'' ''You will have to provide some evidence to prove what you are saying.'' I said. I was deeply disappointed that the long-awaited interrogation was turning out to be just like the sessions I had had before my imprisonment. ''Of course we have the evidence,'' the interrogator bluffed. ''Produce it, then,'' I said, calling his bluff. ''Why waste time having an interrogation? Why not just produce the evidence and punish the culprit?'' ''It would be an easy matter to produce the evidence and punish you. But that is not the policy of our Great Leader. The purpose of this interrogation is to help you change your way of thinking, to give you an opportunity to earn lenient treatment by confessing frankly so that you can become a new person. We are patient. We can wait. A woman like you will not last five years in this place. Eventually you will be begging for a chance to confess. If you don't you will surely die.'' ''I would rather die than tell a lie.'' ''You are audacious. But you can't talk your way out of your difficulties. The only way out for you is to give a full confession.'' I had a cold, and my head was starting to throb. ''First of all, we want you to write your autobiography,'' he said. ''Write everything down. Do not try to hide anything. We will check what you write with the material we already have about you.'' A guard took me back to my cell. I was hungry, tired and very disappointed. By nightfall a strong wind was blowing. The window of the cell was so badly fitted that cold air came through in sharp gusts. By then, the web of my small spider friend was already torn. Instead of making a new web promptly as it always had done in the past, the spider descended from the ceiling on a long silken thread. When it reached the floor, it crawled very slowly and with difficulty. My small friend seemed rather weak. It stumbled and stopped every few steps. Could a spider get sick, or was it merely cold? I saw it looking for a sheltered place away from the wind. Finally, in a crevice, it made a tiny web, not as well done or beautiful as the ones before, but the layered threads were thicker, forming something rather like a cocoon. Soon after, the spider crawled across the floor and disappeared under the bed. That was the last I saw of it. Next day, I wrote my autobiography rather quickly on just five sheets of paper. When I was led to the interrogation room, the