I pressed my ear to the wall to extract sounds I could understand, but could hear nothing. Was it really a woman’s scream I had heard? I walked to the door and tried opening it, but it was locked and would not budge.
I lay again on the floor, hoping to hear a sound, a human sound, another scream that would at least show I was not alone in this building, whose breadth and height I had no knowledge of, least of all its location. I did not even know which way was east.
In the dark, I could make out the outlines of the door, the corners of the room. I closed my eyes, prayed for sleep to come, but it would not; I imagined shapes, rays of light, glowing gems of blue, fleeting and iridescent, and in between, grim, grim thoughts about what awaited me. I floated off into sleep—fitful and short.
I woke up with a sliver of sun on my face, the sound of voices beyond my door, but I could not make out the sounds. I pounded on the door and shouted, “Sir, please, if you can hear me. I am thirsty. Paki,† please let me have some water.” I waited for a reply, and when there was none, I said, this time in a shout, that I needed water.
My throat was parched and, strangely, though I had not eaten for a day now, I did not feel weak or hungry. Still no reply. It had begun to get warm so I took off my pants and shirt, folded them neatly and laid them on the floor. I lay down again and waited. I must not lose my strength, I must preserve what I could of it.
Toward afternoon the door was flung open. There was a new man—his crew cut still fresh so that the scalp was still pale. The two others were obviously enlisted men. It was the man with the crew cut, White Sidewall, who told me to put my clothes on, which I did immediately. I asked for water but they ignored me. When I had dressed, they slapped handcuffs on my wrists.
The room where I was confined adjoined another—a hall into which other doors opened. There was nothing in the hall except five iron beds that had not been made. At one end was a table with food and to it they pointed.
Although I was handcuffed, I did not have difficulty with the pan de sal, the cup of lukewarm coffee, and, when I finally got my drink, never before had water tasted so good.
I would be nice to them; without my handcuffs, I could fight—it would be a risk. I could kill one probably before they would be able to kill me, but I was not going to die now. I was not ready to do so.
I tried to make out the things on their beds, comic books, their guns; in a corner was an armalite and loaded magazines. They were all in civilian clothes; only their shoes showed they were military.
My interrogation started shortly after breakfast; the room adjoining the hall was bare of furniture except for a wooden chair and a long varnished table between my interrogators and me. The windows were high and they were open to let in the air, the distant sound of traffic, the whining of an air-conditioning unit.
White Sidewall could be a lieutenant or a captain. His questioning was relaxed. “You had a good breakfast, and you will continue to be fed well. I hope that you will appreciate what we are trying to do. There are snakes all over the land—very poisonous snakes—and we must seek them out and destroy them or they will kill us. It is, really, as simple as that. Now, tell us about the interesting things you saw in China when you went there last year.”
The question really rocked me; he was either joking or had the wrong Samson.
“I have never been to China, sir. The closest I have been to China is Ongpin.”
They scrutinized their pads, scribbled on them, then White Sidewall continued, “What campus organizations do you belong to?”
I thought it best to be honest. After all, it was public knowledge. “The Brotherhood, sir.”
Smiles on their faces. White Sidewall was doing the questioning. “What is your position in The Brotherhood?”
“I am a member of the Directorate.”
“As a member, what do you do?”
“I attend meetings,” I said. “The Directorate lays down policy and prepares a program for the whole year.”
“Did you participate in the demonstrations?”
“Yes, but not all of them.”
“Were you in the demonstration at the American embassy the other day?”
I was sure there had been no demonstration at the American embassy, and while I wracked my head for an answer, a blow sent me reeling to the floor. My ear was seared by pain. I tried to rise, to get back to the chair, but now, the weakness that had eluded me came. My knees were wobbly and I could hardly stand.
“I need prompt replies,” White Sidewall said, smiling. I turned to my left; there was a man in a black T-shirt and denim pants standing there—big and so well built he could have been a professional wrestler. I glanced at his powerful hands. He was no karatista; his knuckles had not hardened.
I knew then that I would be tortured. I started to think of ways by which I would be able to meet it, react to every blow, every turn of the screw as if the end had come—that would perhaps make them less violent. I decided the Brotherhood was not worth dying for; I would tell them everything I knew. After all, I was not involved in any conspiracy.
The questioning continued evenly. White Sidewall was taking his time, even joking with his companions while I sat there, listening to their ribald jokes. “I suppose you are not a virgin, Mr. Samson?”
I shook my head.
Laughter from all three. “Well,” White Sidewall again, “our Berdugo”—he thrust a chin at Tarzan behind me—“has a preference for virgins, male or female.” Again, peals of laughter.
They did not wear watches, so I did not know what time it was. Outside it was light, but in the room, with but one window open, it was quite dim. Someone brought in their lunches on tin trays, and they ate slowly, enjoying their fried chicken and their noodle soup. Not even out of politeness did they say, let us eat. When they were through, they smoked, lifted their feet onto the table and comported themselves as if I were not there.
The questioning, it seemed, was over. They were sleepy after the meal, so they took me back to the room. I was sure now that the building was some kind of office that had not been furnished, that we were far from houses. I lay on the floor and shut my eyes, tried to reconstruct the questions, their implications. It was obvious that they had trailed me, they knew where I often went, and they had knowledge of the organization. It was useless lying. But the direction of their questioning puzzled me. What were they really after? Were they afraid that the Brotherhood was powerful enough to start a revolution? That was Toto’s fondest wish, the pinnacle of his aspirations, but it was sheer fantasy.
And the scream. Were they holding others and were they going to soften me up first before they turned on the screws? How long would it take? It was my second night. I had a very late breakfast, but there was no water, no food in the room.
My head ached where Tarzan had hit me, though there was no swelling. The blow was not intended to render me unconscious, only to instruct me in the futility of not cooperating with them. And that was what I wanted to do, if only I knew the answers to their questions!
In the beginning I had thought that hunger could be avoided or at least escaped if I went to sleep. But I couldn’t do it; it was not just the mosquitoes. I did not know what to expect next, what new pain was to be inflicted on me. Perhaps this was part of the torture itself, and realizing that, I tried to think of those things I enjoyed most. Yet dark thoughts kept intruding, I remembered Betsy, my dear Betsy, her face, imagined the smell of her hair, her Tabu, the feel of her skin, her cheeks. She was in my mind when I finally fell asleep.
It was early morning when I was roused. The door was open, and Tarzan was there, looking as menacing as always.
“You will clean the toilet,” he said. “So take your clothes off.”
He undid my handcuffs and, for a moment I was tempted to strike at him, but there would be others outside, and they would not hesitate to use their guns.
I carried my pail with my own excrement of the day before, and went with him to the toilet at the far e
nd of the hall. Other plastic pails were there, waiting to be emptied into the bowl.
As I bent over, emptying my pail into the bowl, something warm splashed on my head and all over me. I turned, then felt nausea; I was covered with feces, my face, my back. Tarzan had emptied one of the pails over me, and he now looked at his obscene handiwork, his eyes aglow with malice.
He laughed, and now, White Sidewall and the others came and looked at me. I was too shocked to react, and my first impulse was to rush out of the toilet and embrace them, rub the feces on their bodies, but that would only anger them and make them more severe. I knew that this was premeditated, to humiliate me, to humble me.
Tarzan threw me a mop and told me to start cleaning my mess. “You young radicals,” he muttered, “you are full of shit.”
I emptied the pails into the bowl, showered once, twice, thrice until there was not a trace of smell on me; I washed my jockey shorts, too, and was about to put it on, still wet, but Tarzan, who was watching all the while through the open door, said I should get out naked.
They marched me back to the room where they had interrogated me the day before. I did not try to cover my nakedness with the still wet shorts that I carried; I was weak from the work, from what had happened, and I could not endure pain.
It was the same bare cubicle, but this time a big wooden chair stood close to the wall. The windows above were shuttered, and the room was humid and warm, smelling of paint and cigarette smoke.
On the floor was a piece of machinery with handles and electric wires extending from it. They motioned for me to sit in the chair, and it was then that Tarzan became all efficiency; with canvas straps, he fastened my arms and chest to the back of the chair, spread my legs and tied them to the legs of the chair. I looked at White Sidewall, at the other two, but they seemed uninterested while Tarzan did his job.
White Sidewall examined the straps. Satisfied that they were secure, he spoke to me. “You know, Mr. Samson, we did not like your answers yesterday; you were not telling the truth. Now we have to be more careful.”
“Sir,” I said, looking at Tarzan, who was checking the contraption and its wires. “Will you be specific? What question did I not answer truthfully?”
White Sidewall ignored my question. “Now, please give us the correct answers. We know that a shipment of guns has landed on the Pacific coast, close to the town of Baler. These guns are for you. Can you tell us where these guns are now and who is in charge of distributing them?”
I did not know of any arms shipment, or how one would be distributed. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I said.
White Sidewall nodded toward Tarzan, who returned to me with the wires; at their ends were tongs, and he attached them to my scrotum. They pinched a little. I realized then that the machine was some generator or transformer, such as what they used in the signal corps of the army. Tarzan squatted before the box his hands on the knobs.
“All right then, who is in charge of recruitment in the Northern Quezon sector?”
My legs were weightless and my throat ached. “Sir,” I said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I will tell you all about the Directorate. I did that yesterday, the members, who they are, where they live—anything that I know, I will tell you. But people in Quezon Province … I don’t know anyone.”
White Sidewall nodded at Tarzan again, and slowly the man started turning a knob. It came like a sharp claw tearing at my genitals, and the pain was so severe I gasped for breath, grasped the arms of the chair. Tarzan turned the knob off. His face was wreathed with smiles. Now he stood up and took the tongs off my scrotum, then he started fingering my penis. His fingers smoothed the head caressingly, all the while his dark, pimpled face was upturned to me, grinning. I looked at the sharply burning eyes and immediately realized that he was a homosexual. He returned to his seat before the infernal machine.
“We are experts, Mr. Samson, in extracting information,” White Sidewall assured me. “So please don’t make it difficult for us and for yourself. You have seen how considerate we can be. You had a good breakfast yesterday, and we will return you to the Barrio, I promise you, with not a wound on your body, or with any sign that would mean we did not do our job with delicadeza. That is the word, right? So why don’t you help us and we will do everything for you in return?”
“I will, I will,” I cried. “I will tell you everything I know.”
“So then,” White Sidewall said, “tell us about your arms depots in Manila. Who maintains them. Surely, you know this.”
I wracked my head. Was there any time that this was talked about? Had Professor Hortenso ever at any moment slipped into saying that there were such depots? I closed my eyes and tried to think; there was nothing that I knew, there was nothing I could say. I shook my head.
It did not come slowly; it was a sudden deluge of pain, so sharp and vicious and so searing, I screamed as I had never screamed before, beyond the capacity of my lungs, beyond the capacity of my body. The animal voice I heard was not mine; it belonged to some poor, tormented devil whose hour had come. It was a pain of indescribable intensity, the blackest of black, which spread faster than lightning from my loins to my entire being.
Then it stopped, and, gasping, sweating and weak, I begged my tormentors not to do it again, in the name of God, of human decency, that I did not know anything, that I would tell them anything they wanted to know if I knew it, but please, not again, not again.
“All right then,” White Sidewall said, a smile lacing his lean, iron face. “Tell us slowly, very clearly, who are those in Manila who are in the shadow directorate—those who are not known to the public. You know, Mr. Samson, that you are a member of a conspiracy to overthrow by force a democratically elected government. You know that your National Directorate is just a front, that underneath is another organization. You might be a member of it.”
Again, I thought hard, our meetings, our discussions, my talks with Professor Hortenso, even with Puneta. No matter how hard I tried, I could not tell him anything about a shadow directorate.
“Sir, I don’t know. Please, I don’t know.”
That is the last I remember, for the pain came in a horrible explosion and I blacked out.
When I regained consciousness, it was already dark, and I was back in the room, cold and naked. I groped for my clothes; they were nowhere. Weak and with no one outside knowing where I was, I decided that I would never be subjected to that kind of torture again, that at the first opportunity, I would attack and try to escape—die perhaps, but I would try. I remembered the scream I heard the first night and realized that there was no mercy here; if they could do what they did to me to a woman who could not fight, they would be capable of doing worse than they had already done. I was not going to find out what that would be.
I tried to reconstruct the ride. It had taken about half an hour in afternoon traffic. We must be somewhere in Caloocan, or No-valiches; the van had not taken too many turns and the ride had been smooth most of the way. Now, there was no sound of traffic, not even of habitation, of people, and in the stillness of the night I shuddered with the dread that already possessed me. There was nothing to identify them, and if I lived through this torture, I am sure that there would be no wound on my body. If I died they would most probably dispose of my body here.
I was hungry, but no longer did I crave food or water. They did not matter anymore, and I wondered if those who fasted really missed food or suffered the pangs of hunger.
I decided that if I were to get out of this, I would write about it, tell all not just to the Brotherhood, or in the school paper, but to the editors of the national papers who had been sympathetic to us. But who would believe me? What evidence would I bring? To whom would I point?
I should have gone to sleep, to conserve whatever strength I had left, but I could not, for thoughts of revenge, of escape crowded my mind. As in the first night, it was a long, long time before I dropped off into a listless sleep.
Wh
en I woke the room was already bright, and by the door was the usual plastic cup of stale coffee, some soggy pan de sal, a piece of fried meat, a plastic pitcher filled with water, and a small hand towel.
I ate everything and then went to sleep again. I was roused in the afternoon. Tarzan was at the door, and the very sight of him chilled me. I had grown to hate him with all my heart, and if I ever saw him again I would most certainly kill him. But this time, he came with another plastic tray of food, and there was even a bottle of ice-cold Coca-Cola on the tray. My first impulse was to knock him down with a flying kick, but I knew that the place and the time were not opportune.
He placed the tray on the floor without a word then slammed the door. By the early evening I was filled with misgivings, and I began to wonder what was behind the new and kindly treatment. Were they softening me up for another session with the electric generator? Was this a psychological trick that would leave me wide open and ready to admit everything and anything? I had read about mind-conditioning in the Korean war, in the Communist countries, and I realized how easy it was to bend the mind. Yes, I would admit anything, the worst crimes they could ascribe to me, if only to be free from the devil machine. I realized I was not made of steel, I was not going to be a hero for the Brotherhood.
It all came back, too, what Ka Lucio had said: the Huks who were captured by the Japanese, the Constabulary, or civilian guards did not talk. He had told Toto and myself of the water cure, how slivers of bamboo were driven into their hands and, still, not a word from them. Was it the same with us? I doubted it. Why weren’t we made of stronger stuff? Had we been weaned too late? Did we lead such soft, pampered lives? Or did we not believe in what we said, in the purpose for which we had banded together?
A long night, faces aglow with love, scenes of my childhood—the brown irrigation ditches brightened with the purple of water lilies, dew-washed mornings. What was I doing in this abysmal place? What evil force pitched me here?
The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) Page 55