Breaking Lorca

by Giles Blunt

  “But the Sanchez woman-she’s been taking it for three days now. Surely if she had anything to give up, she would have done so by now.”

  His uncle shrugged. “Some guys, you can pull their teeth out one by one and they won’t tell you a thing. Pull their hair out? Nothing. You break their fingers? Silence. Then one day, for a little variety, you force them to swallow a few turds. Suddenly they sing like a sparrow. Just a little shit! It’s not even painful! Suddenly you can’t shut them up.” The Captain shook his head in wonder. “I am constantly amazed by human nature.”

  Captain Pena’s house turned out to be a modest two-storey adobe, much smaller than its neighbours, hidden behind the highest walls on the crest of a hill. They were greeted at the side door by Victor’s aunt, a slim woman in her mid-forties, slightly bent at the shoulders, as if weighed down with some old sorrow. Whatever grief this might have been, she had long ago learned to keep hidden behind a wide, reassuring smile.

  “You are out of the infantry now, at least,” she said to Victor when they were settled in the living room with tea and biscuits. She made no mention of his having recently been condemned to death. “I’m so glad for you. It’s terrible what our soldiers have to endure out there.” She gestured vaguely, as if “out there” encompassed every place on the far side of her lace curtains, as if once you got beyond the gleaming floors, and the smells of lemon oil and lavender, only chaos could be expected to reign.

  “Yes,” Victor said. “Lucky for me the Captain saw fit to rescue me.”

  “Couldn’t have a blot on the Pena name, could we, my dear?” The Captain put an arm around his wife and pulled her close. “Old Iron Pants here wouldn’t stand for it.” He winked at Victor.

  “Don’t you call me that,” said his wife with a weary laugh. “Iron Pants, really. Did you ever hear such a thing?”

  “It’s true. This little woman has more macho than our entire squad, I’m not kidding you. I have to watch what I do.”

  “Eduardo is always telling me that he’s not as stern as everyone says he is,” Mrs. Pena said. “But frankly, I have my doubts.”

  “He does run a tight outfit,” Victor said with a smile. “Very disciplined.”

  “Really? He’s quite a softie at home. Do you remember from when you visited us as a boy? Once he comes through that door-poof! — no discipline at all.”

  As if to demonstrate the point, Captain Pena’s twin daughters, seven years old, came in with their nanny. At first, in the presence of a stranger, they were subdued and quiet. They were introduced and made solemn curtsies and smiled, showing matching gaps where their front teeth had been. But soon they began to climb, laughing, all over their father. He sat back in his easy chair and let them romp all over his lap. They hung from his arms, climbed around his neck, their little flowered dresses riding up, exposing the perfect young limbs, the tiny underpants with pictures of Disney characters on them.

  The Captain laughed too, and covered his little girls with kisses. He took first one and then the other into his arms, fixed his mouth to their neck, and blew hard, making a loud, obscene noise that delighted them. They squealed and cackled and begged for more. Victor stared in amazement at their beautiful skin, their innocent, open faces. Their cries were miniature parodies of the Sanchez woman’s shrieks.

  Why had his uncle brought him here? Officers were not supposed to fraternize with enlisted men. Perhaps he intended it as a carrot to dangle in front of him. The lace curtains, the polished wood, the flowered chintz-you too can have all this, if you lead a respectable life in the army. A loving wife and pretty children, these too could be yours in return for loyal service.

  His aunt called them to dinner. They sat around an antique oak table, and the Captain made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. The little girls copied him and bowed their heads, showing the perfectly symmetrical parts in their shining hair. “Oh Lord, for this food and for all thy mercies, may we be truly thankful.”

  All thy mercies. Just that morning, the Sanchez woman had screamed through a long session with the General. Over and over, she had begged them to stop. Over and over, Victor was ordered to turn the dial.

  “Mother of God,” she had said during the questioning. “You were raised Catholic, were you not? Where is your Christian charity?”

  Tito had jeered. The others had laughed nervously.

  “The Mother of God does not care about terrorists.”

  “Is that what the priests taught you in school? That God loves only soldiers?”

  “He doesn’t give a shit about whores like you,” Tito said, and spit on her.

  “What about Mary Magdalene? And the woman he saved from stoning? But no, you are all free of sin, aren’t you. What would Our Lord say to you about inflicting pain like this?”

  Victor saw a worried look creep into Lopez’s face.

  She kept on at them, her voice ragged and raw from all the screams. “Did you not do the stations of the cross when you were children? Did you not think about the sufferings of Our Lord? Or are you on the side of those who tormented him?”

  “Maybe that’s enough for today,” Lopez muttered.

  “You going to listen to this whore?” the Captain had yelled at him. “You want to show her mercy? Fine. We’ll stop the machine for today.” He snapped his fingers at Yunques. “Go fetch our little friend. On the double.” He leaned over the woman. “You want mercy? I’ll show you the kind of mercy we reserve for terrorists. Today, you get to go to the zoo.”

  Yunques came back with a rat in a small cage. The woman’s legs were forced apart, and at an order from the Captain, Lopez shoved the animal into her.

  “How do you like that?” Captain Pena had shouted over her screams. “You happy now? Any more religious instruction you want to impart?”

  And now the same man bent his balding head over his dinner, giving thanks to the Lord. Now, surrounded by the comfortable smells of grilled steak and onions, the sound of classical music streaming from hidden speakers, the piping voices of his little girls, Victor imagined himself saying to Mrs. Pena, “You know your husband is a rapist? A torturer?”

  He would not be believed, of course. The Captain, pouring milk for his daughters with the same hand that fixed electrodes to the Sanchez woman’s nipples, seemed aware of no contradictions. He fixed his twins’ barrettes with the same hand that had twisted the dial.

  “I’m so glad you could come, Victor,” his aunt said to him with her heartbreaking smile. “In wartime, it’s even more important to stay in touch with relatives, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes,” Victor said, and smiled in return. “And such wonderful food.”

  The Captain had reached out and touched his wife’s arm without looking at her. A gesture of complete confidence and affection.

  This is why he has brought me here, Victor said to himself. This is what he wants me to see. My uncle wants to reassure me that it is possible to perform the work of the little school and yet be a good husband, a kind father, a delightful host in a house filled with love.

  EIGHT

  After lunch the following day, Victor led the Sanchez woman to the interrogation room. She no longer put up any struggle, trailing meekly along behind him. He wondered if this was the first sign of defeat. Then again, perhaps it was just a tactic, perhaps she was simply conserving her energy, the better to withstand the General.

  Victor sat her down on the chair. When he turned around, he was surprised to see a white-haired gentleman in a white jacket standing beside the table where his uncle was seated.

  His uncle nodded at the gentleman, and he lifted a black bag from the floor. It was the doctor. Victor had not recognized him, because the last time he had seen him, the doctor’s hair had been black, slicked back. Now it was quite white, and he had shaved off his moustache. Perhaps these changes of appearance were to convince himself that he was a different man each time, that he had no history of working at the little school.

  The woman took off her
clothes when ordered. The doctor opened his leather bag and wrapped a blood-pressure cuff around her small bicep.

  “You are a doctor?” she said in disbelief as she felt the cuff. “What can a doctor be doing in this place?”

  “Relax, please. I am just here to examine you.” He pumped up the cuff and looked at the meter. “Your blood pressure is slightly high. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Doctor, I request that you do a thorough examination. You will find that I have been repeatedly raped.”

  “Just relax, please.” He adjusted her slightly forward and placed his stethoscope on her back. “Take a deep breath?” He moved the stethoscope slightly. “And another? That’s it. Very good.”

  She obeyed him like a child, lifting her chin slightly when he placed the metal disc on her chest. His eyes focused somewhere beyond the wall of the interrogation room, as if her heartbeat were a radio signal from a distant town.

  “Did you hear what I said, Doctor? I said I’ve been raped by these men. Over and over again they have raped me. And they put things inside me.”

  “We’ll shove a pitchfork in your guts if you don’t shut up.” Tito smacked her hard across the back of the head.

  “Please,” the doctor said. “I am trying to examine this woman.”

  “I have been deprived of sleep. I have been deprived of water. I have been fed poisoned food.”

  The doctor took her wrist and held it lightly to take her pulse. He stared at his watch and the woman fell into a silence. Despite the blindfold, Victor could see that she was weeping, undone by the touch of a hand that was not brutal.

  The doctor stood up and nodded at Captain Pena. He dropped his stethoscope into his leather bag, snapped it shut, and started for the door. The Captain touched his arm. “Not just yet, Doctor. I want to know how she holds up to the General.”

  “I don’t like to do that. I told you, it is against my oath.”

  “Sit down, please.”

  The doctor sat down beside the Captain and stared at the floor.

  “Soldier.” The Captain pointed at Victor. “You work the dial.” When Victor hesitated, his uncle screamed at him. “Do as I say. Do it now.”

  Victor sat down before the little black box while Tito attached the electrodes, one to a nipple, one between her legs. “Little bitch,” he said. “Now you will feel something worth talking about.”

  “Why?” she asked in a small voice. “Why do you want to hurt me so much?”

  “Because you’re a terrorist slut and we hate your guts, that’s why.”

  The Captain nodded at Victor. Victor stared at the white numerals. He turned the dial to one and a half.

  “Turn it up,” his uncle yelled over her screams.

  Victor turned it to two, then switched it off.

  “I didn’t say to stop, you fool. Put it back on.”

  The woman’s screams sank like pencils into Victor’s ears.

  Afterwards, she sagged in the chair.

  Once more the doctor took out his stethoscope and listened to her heart, felt her pulse. The white hair gave him a kindly look-like a doctor in an ad for children’s cough syrup. “Her heart is strong,” he informed the Captain. “You may continue.”

  “A little higher this time, soldier.”

  Victor turned the dial to two and a half and kept it there for a minute. His guts turned to liquid at the sounds she made. Like your flesh is splitting open, the Captain had said. This woman has done nothing to me, and I am splitting her flesh wide open.

  The ritual of the stethoscope was repeated. The signal to begin was repeated.

  Victor kept his eyes on the white arc of numerals, the pointed dial. He remembered where he had seen such an instrument before. It was in a shop window-the transformer of a toy train set that circled over and over again around the window.

  The doctor took the woman’s pulse once more before he snapped his black bag shut for the last time and left. Captain Pena went with him, leaving Tito in charge.

  “Fucking asshole doctor,” Lopez said. “Changing his appearance every time he comes. What’s he think they invented blindfolds for?”

  “Stop yapping,” Tito said. “We got a new toy today.” He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket and dangled them in the light like a necklace. These were not the simple loops of thong they were used to; these were shiny steel handcuffs.

  Lopez whistled. He took the cuffs from Tito and looked them over. “Smith amp; Wesson. Nothing but the best for little Miss Sanchez.”

  “We’ll hang the bitch up there.” Tito pointed to a heating pipe that ran along the ceiling near the blacked-out windows. They had to stand her on a table, which was not easy since she could barely stand at all. They unclasped one of the handcuffs and slipped it over the pipe, then closed the cuff once more around her wrist. Then they took the table away and she was hanging from both wrists.

  “Now let me show you how an expert does it,” Tito said. He shoved Victor aside and sat self-importantly at the controls, as if he were about to pilot a jet. “Write down everything she says. Everything I say and everything she says.”

  Victor opened the pad and took a pencil from the jar. It needed sharpening, but he didn’t sharpen it because he remembered what Labredo had suffered at the point of a pencil. Yunques attached the electrodes to her feet.

  Tito had apparently decided the way to get an answer out of the woman was not with long shocks but with lots of short, hard bursts. Every time he turned the dial, her feet jerked in a froglike spasm, causing her to swing from the overhead pipe.

  Between the sounds of her screams and the shouted questions, Victor’s pencil rasped on the paper. What he took down was repetitive.

  What is your name?

  No. Please.

  Tell us your name.

  No. Please. I beg you.

  Tell us your name.

  Please, stop. I beg you, I beg you, I beg you.

  What is your name?

  Victor took it upon himself to remove Tito’s expletives from the questions. And nothing he wrote conveyed the woman’s screams, her choking, her tears. The agony of Miss Sanchez would not be part of the official record, he realized, because he did not know how to spell the sound of a scream.

  What is your name?

  Mother of God. Mother of God. I can’t take any more.

  Tell us your name.

  Dear God, help me. Help me.

  Tell us your name.

  Maria Sanchez. Stop, please. Have mercy. I beg you.

  Tell us your real name.

  I am nothing. Nobody. I have no name. Dear God, dear God, dear God.

  And so the transcript continued, for ten pages.

  After each jolt, between each question and each answer, she swung back and forth from the pipe like a side of beef. The jolts Tito administered were so short that there was no hope of her losing consciousness, but each shock kicked the breath out of her. Eventually a vein opened in her wrist. Blood ran in dark scarlet ribbons down her left arm, formed red squiggles over her rib cage and down her legs, until it fell in big constant drops from her left foot.

  The woman was probably not even aware that she was bleeding, but Victor could see that the gore frightened Tito-he had no orders to kill her, or even to mark her.

  The sergeant ordered her taken down, and she collapsed in the blood at her feet. He kicked her, not hard. “You piece of shit. You’ve messed up my nice clean floor. I want you to clean it up, or I’ll string you up again.”

  She could neither talk nor move. She was adjusted so that she was leaning against the wall, and water was brought for her to drink. A cold cloth was placed on her forehead.

  “Clean that floor, you bitch. We’re making you our cleaning lady, got it? Take the cuffs off before she totally destroys them.”

  The cuffs, no longer shiny, were undone.

  Tito grabbed her hand and slapped it into the crimson puddle. “You feel that? That’s your mess, and you’re going to clean it up right now.�
��

  “Give me a rag,” she moaned. “Something to wipe it up.”

  “A rag? Who said anything about a rag? You don’t get no rag.” The sergeant’s boot was on the back of her neck. He pushed her forward, forcing her face down to the floor in the Muslim attitude of prayer. Her face was an inch from the blood. “You don’t get no rag, bitch. You got to use your imagination.”

  Under the humming fluorescent lights, as the small pointed tongue lapped at the floor, the woman’s face was reflected in the dark red blood, the blindfold a black rectangle across her eyes, like a censor’s mark.

  NINE

  That day was a day of visitors. First the doctor and then, after they had forced the Sanchez woman to lick up her blood, Victor was summoned to the Captain’s office to meet with an American who was introduced as Mr. Wheat.

  Mr. Wheat, Victor thought, must be of Irish descent. He reminded him of a Jesuit who had taught him history in the ninth grade. He had the same straw-coloured hair that flopped boyishly over one eyebrow. He had the same serviceable-looking glasses, nothing fashionable about them. He looked like a man who read a lot, a man who liked books.

  Despite this intellectual appearance, Mr. Wheat carried with him an invisible cloud of toothpaste and aftershave. He had a ready smile, flawless teeth and a strong hand with which he squeezed Victor’s in greeting. Victor wished he could impress this man somehow, and knew sadly that he could not.

  “Mr. Wheat is with the American embassy.”

  “I’m very honoured to meet you, sir.”

  “Glad to know you, soldier. The Captain tells me you have someone I ought to meet.”

  “The so-called Sanchez woman,” the Captain said. “Bring her in so Mr. Wheat can speak to her himself. Clean her up first.”

  Victor got Yunques to help him drag the woman up the hall past the Captain’s closed door. He wondered what would happen to that flawless smile if Mr. Wheat could have seen them. The woman’s heels left bloody streaks along the floor.