by Giles Blunt
“Don’t say that. I think you are beautiful.”
She gave a short, bitter laugh.
Victor sat beside her on the bed. “You are very beautiful. It’s the truth.” He held her hand, stroking her forearm. He felt the ridged scar on her wrist.
“Don’t look,” she said. “It’s ugly.”
He held his hand over the old wound as if he could soothe it. He traced the jagged scar with his thumb.
“It was handcuffs. They were so proud of these handcuffs. Like children with a new toy.”
He remembered the blood coursing down her body, the scarlet pool on the floor.
She stood up. “Ignacio, would you close your eyes, please? I’m going to get undressed. I don’t want you to see me.”
Victor turned over on his side and faced the wall. He took slow, deep breaths, trying to calm himself. She thinks she loves me, he thought. Lorca thinks she loves me, because she believes I suffered. That would be in her character. After all, it had been the suffering of another, and not her own, that had finally broken her at the little school. He pressed up against the wall so she could slip under the covers.
“Does it have to be so bright in here?” she asked. She had pulled the covers up, almost completely hiding her face.
Victor switched off the light and got undressed. Street light poured through the window, bathing the room in a cool metallic glow. Lorca turned on her side, facing the wall, when he got under the covers. He put a hand on her shoulder, feeling the small muscles tense.
After a time he exerted a gentle pressure, pulling on her shoulder. “Lie back.” The command was gently expressed, but it was still a command, and it seemed to hang in the room like a garish sign.
Lorca hesitated, then lay back against the pillow, clutching the covers up to her chin.
“Let go.” His voice was nearly a whisper. He stroked her forehead with one hand as he spoke. “I want to see your body, Lorca. I want to see your beautiful body.”
Lorca was rigid, shaking.
“Please,” he said softly. He lay a hand over the bony fingers. A pale circular mark glistened where the electrode had burned her. He touched the mark lightly with a fingertip and felt Lorca stiffen beneath him. He pressed his lips lightly to her fingers.
He tugged gently at the covers.
“Ignacio. I am so ugly.”
Wordlessly, he stroked her fingers until her grip on the covers relaxed. He pulled the cover slowly away, revealing her breasts and the livid marks where the electrodes had been attached. “Oh, Lorca,” he said softly. “I am so sorry.” He bent forward and pressed his lips to a semicircular mark. “So sorry.”
Lorca groaned like a patient coming out of anaesthetic.
Victor laid his head on her chest and stroked her belly. Her skin smelt of soap, warm fabric, and faintly of laundry detergent. Desire flowed into him, but the hard white circles on her stomach, ridged like lunar craters, checked it. He remembered her screaming, begging them to stop. He remembered the white numerals on the dial.
“I am so sorry,” he said again, lightly touching a mark near the ridge of her hip bone. Her flesh shuddered under his hand.
“There’s no reason for you to be sorry,” she said. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I wish that I could take back the pain. I wish I could take it back into my hands. My lips.” He began kissing each white mark, moving down her ribs. The current of desire flowed into him, stronger this time.
“No, please.” Lorca took his head in both her hands and held him back. “Please, Ignacio. I cannot.”
He lay still.
“I am sorry,” she said. “I was wrong to come here. To expect-”
“Shh. It’s okay. We don’t have to.”
“Everything is so ugly to me now. They did things to me, Ignacio. They put things in me.”
She turned away from him again, and Victor stroked her shoulders and gently rubbed her upper back. His hands made wide, inexpert circles over her scapular bones. She gave a little moan of relief, and he was encouraged to continue. This was what the human body was designed for, he thought, to bring comfort to another human body. A stroke here, a caress there-it was so easy for the human hand to give pleasure, so effortless and natural. It began to seem possible that he could make up for what he had done to her. If he gave her physical pleasure every time he saw her, over a period of months, say, or even years, might he not make up for the pain he had caused her? He squeezed the narrow cords of Lorca’s shoulder muscles, rubbing with his thumbs. Suddenly she gave out a loud, strangled cry.
“I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
The bony shoulders gave a heave beneath his hands, and there was another loud cry. Then a violent quivering, and she pressed her face into his pillow as the flood of tears, so long suppressed, broke free. Her knees drew up as if in convulsion, and she cried as hard as an infant, in huge coughs and bottomless gasps. It was an orgasm far more powerful than the kind he had anticipated, and it went on for so long that it began even to frighten him.
The tears stopped for a moment.
Victor’s hand had been resting on her shoulder the whole time. He moved it slightly, giving her bicep the gentlest squeeze. “Are you all right?”
This unleashed another spasm of crying, then a respite, then a last brief aftershock, and Lorca lay exhausted on her back as if she were a castaway, thrown up onto this bed after weeks at sea.
Victor put his clothes on and made tea. There was no Kleenex, so he went down the hall and came back with a roll of toilet paper, which he handed to Lorca. The tears, he could see, had done her good. The hard set of her features had softened, and there was more colour in her cheeks than he had ever seen.
He waited until she had taken a few sips of tea before speaking. “You must have needed to do that,” he said. “Feel better?”
She nodded. When finally she spoke, it was about something totally unrelated. “The other day ….” she began. She stopped as if she had forgotten what she was going to say.
“Yes? The other day?”
“The other day. At the church. When you spoke-when you told us what happened to you-it really affected me, Ignacio.”
“I’m sorry. I should not have gone on the way I did. It was very childish of me. That woman upset me with her accusations.”
“Yes, of course she did. Of course. But it hit me hard. It hit me very hard, to hear what they did to you in that place. Even for me-it was hard to believe that anyone could hurt a man as gentle and kind as you. That they could beat you, and do those things to you.”
“No, no,” he said hopelessly. “It wasn’t so bad for me. I was just upset. I was nervous. That woman-”
“It made me so angry-I cannot tell you how angry it made me. I am going to testify, Ignacio. I am going to Washington and I am going to testify at those hearings.”
“Do you think that’s smart? How can you be sure it is safe?”
“Maybe it is not safe. But I cannot live like a rabbit, shaking in fear my whole life.” She turned on her side and smiled at him, flashing the broken tooth. “You see? Seeing you, Ignacio-seeing how brave you are, how cheerful in spite of the pain you have suffered-this has taught me not to be afraid.”
“No, Lorca. You are wrong about me.”
“I am not. Now, will you turn around so I can get dressed?”
It was nearly three o’clock in the morning, but he could not persuade her to stay. She wanted to take the subway home, but he would not hear of it, and pressed a twenty-dollar bill into her hand. He waited with her in the cold, damp wind that blew up Broadway until they managed to flag a cab.
“Please think more about these hearings,” he said, holding the door for her. “You are safe now. I want you to stay safe.”
She smiled up at him, and then he was watching the tail lights of the taxi merge into the other lights of Broadway.
Later, he sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, clutching the pillow Lorca had soaked with her tears. She was not a woman to be tal
ked out of anything; it was pointless to try. “It’s the only way I have left to fight those people,” she had said. “I am going to Washington. I am going to the hearings. And there I will tell them all about our little school.”
TWENTY-FIVE
The bizarre landscape of New Jersey was behind them. Victor had never travelled on an eight-lane highway before, and he found the intricate turmoil of expressways, parkways, tunnels and bridges frightening-especially at seventy miles per hour. But the vast networks of pipes and vats, the chemical smells and the whoosh and roar of eighteen-wheelers, were over now, and the road that unfurled before them was the most beautiful Victor had ever seen.
Wyatt had borrowed a car for this trip-a cramped, rusted vehicle with a bad rattle in the engine and a powder of cigarette ash and what looked like cat litter covering every surface. Lorca sat in the back, and Victor, feeling it would be rude to leave Wyatt alone up front like a bus driver, sat in the passenger seat besside him.
“It makes sense,” Victor said. “They make the roads to Washington the best possible. You have to give people a sense of importance when they drive to their capital.”
Wyatt glanced over at him. “I don’t get you.”
“We have travelled at least fifty miles, and there has not been a single hole. No patches, no dirt sections. All your highways cannot be so perfect.”
Wyatt had been uncharacteristically subdued ever since they had met at the church. He just shrugged. “Most of the interstates are pretty good.”
“Not like this, I am sure.” The surface was so smooth, the curves and inclines engineered to such perfection, they seemed to waft the car along on a cushion of air.
“Look,” Bob said, in a different tone of voice now. “What I said at the church about Graciella and the others making other travel arrangements? It’s not true. The fact is, they backed out.”
Lorca sat forward in the back seat. “Graciella is not going to testify?”
“No. None of the others is going to testify. There will be a few people coming from Los Angeles. Some from Minneapolis. But they’ll be testifying about village raids, and about the disappeared. We don’t have anyone else talking about clandestine jails. So, Lorca, your testimony is more important than ever.”
“I am the only one from our group?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I misled you.”
“You lied to us,” Victor said sharply.
“I’m sorry,” Wyatt said-quietly, for him. “I was afraid Lorca would change her mind too.”
“She has a right to change her mind. Maybe she should change her mind.”
Lorca was still leaning forward, gripping the backs of their seats. “No, I will not change. I will testify.”
“Good girl,” Wyatt said, and gave the steering wheel a light slap with his palm.
Victor cursed under his breath and looked away.
Half an hour later, Wyatt pointed at the passing landscape. The hills were bigger and deeper green, with patches of yellow and blue flowers. “This is Delaware we’re in now. One of the smaller states.”
They travelled another thirty miles or so in silence.
Then Victor felt Lorca’s hand on his shoulder, the warmth of her fingers through his shirt. He turned in the seat, and she raised her eyebrows in a quizzical expression. “What?” he asked.
But she shook her head and said, “Nothing. Nothing at all.” And sat back to watch the green parade of hills, the dark clouds gathering above them.
“This is Maryland,” Wyatt announced a while later. “Richest state in the union. Great for sailing-not that I’ve ever been sailing. Hope that rain holds off till we get off the highway.”
Victor fixed his eyes on the interstate’s vanishing point that shifted with each hill, each curve. “Perhaps I will write something out, Bob. Something for the hearing.”
“Write what? Instead of testifying, you mean?”
“I could tell them what I did at the little school.”
“If you want to testify, Ignacio, just testify. A piece of paper isn’t going to do it.”
“Why not? It is the same as the things I would say.”
“It’s not, I’m afraid. The committee allows written testimony, but it’s not as effective. They can’t question a piece of paper. They can’t test its credibility.”
“But suppose there was another witness. Another person who saw all of the things I wrote down. Who could say, ‘Yes, this happened. Yes, that happened.’ Who could swear that every word I wrote was true.”
“They could corroborate it, you mean. That would help. That might work.”
“What do you mean?” Lorca said from the back seat. “There was another prisoner with you? Someone who will give evidence before the committee?”
“There was someone there. Someone who can testify to the truth of what I write. I don’t want to say any more right now.”
“But there’s only the two of us, Bob said. Who else do you know?”
“It’s not a soldier, is it?” Wyatt asked hopefully.
“No. Not a soldier.”
“Man, that’s what we really need. A Guardia deserter. Someone who knows all about these jails from the other side. That would blow this thing wide open.”
There was some confusion at the hotel, which was a Quality Inn high up on Connecticut Avenue. Only one room had been booked for the three of them, and it took Wyatt twenty minutes to straighten things out. Victor and he ended up sharing a room on the third floor; Lorca got a corner room at the end of the hall.
Although the room was very plain, all of the furnishings looked new. “Have you seen the bathroom?” Victor asked Wyatt with excitement. “Take a look at it.”
Wyatt dropped some socks into a drawer and went to look. “What about it?”
“It’s so clean! I’ve never seen such a clean place.”
“Hotels are like that, Ignacio.”
“And they have put soap and shampoo out for us. Isn’t that nice?”
“Real thoughtful. I better check in with security. Told them we’d be here by noon, and it’s nearly three now.” Wyatt was already dialing the phone.
Victor went down the hall and knocked on Lorca’s door.
“Ignacio, look at this place!” Lorca’s corner room was three times the size of the other. “Have you ever seen a bed this big? It’s like something for a giant. Two giants.”
“Truly. That is a big bed.”
Lorca had pulled the covers back, so that the crisp white sheets resembled an acre of snow. She knelt on the white expanse and trailed her fingers over the material as if it were a tapestry.
“Bob and I have two normal beds. Very good quality, though.”
“Come and try it.” She patted the bed, and he sat beside her. The bedspread, he saw, had been draped over a large mirrored vanity. Noticing his glance, she said, “I hate mirrors. I don’t like to see myself.” She lay back, propped against four pillows.
Victor lay on his side. He was about to touch her when she pointed at the windows. “I have a balcony too. Do you have a balcony?”
“Yes. A small one.”
Lorca jumped up and pulled back the balcony door; a damp gust blew in, carrying sounds of traffic and the smell of imminent rain. Victor joined her outside. The hotel faced another hotel across the street-much bigger and grander than the one they were in. “Very nice,” he said. “Bob says the White House is on the other side of those hills. The White House, can you imagine?”
“The White House,” she said softly. “It sounds so pretty.”
“Bob says we can take a tour. They let people visit.”
“The map says there is a zoo just up the street, too. I think I would rather go to the zoo.”
To the east, storm clouds had massed into a dark wall. The wind tugged at Lorca’s hair, flicking strands across Victor’s face. He stood behind her, placing his hands on either side, gripping the guardrail. “Now you’re trapped,” he said, but she didn’t move.
“Are you really
going to write about what happened to you at the little school?”
“Yes. Tonight, I will write it all down.”
“Why don’t you just testify, Ignacio? That is much simpler, no?”
“Perhaps I will testify. I have to work myself up to it. Writing things down may help.” The first heavy raindrops hit the balcony. By this time tomorrow, Victor thought, she will hate me. This was the way it should be; it had been stupidity to expect anything else. “I love you,” he said in Spanish. “Te amo.”
Lorca stiffened slightly, saying nothing. She raised an arm and pointed to a black bird that hovered in the air, hanging motionless on an updraft. Victor kissed her hair, so gently she did not feel it.
She said something he did not hear.
“What was that? What did you say?”
“Si muero,” she repeated. If I die.
“Don’t worry, sweet one. You are not going to die.”
“Si muero,” she said again. “Dejad el balcon abierto.” If I die, leave the balcony open.
“You are not going to die. Not while I am here. I promise.” This might even be true, he realized with a kind of wonder. He would rather die than see her harmed again. Was this where bravery had its roots, then, in love?
“It is a poem, Ignacio. A poem by the real Lorca-Feder ico Garcia. ‘Si muero, dejad el balcon abierto’!”
Goosebumps had formed all up her arms.
“You are cold,” Victor said. “We should go inside.”
TWENTY-SIX
That night, the storm finally broke, flinging bucketfuls of rain at the windows. Victor sat at the tiny desk in his hotel room, struggling to put his thoughts on paper. He badly wanted to be with Lorca, but he wanted to write everything out before his natural cowardice took control of him once more.
For an hour, nearly two, he floundered. He wrote things down and crossed them out, wrote them differently, crossed them out again. How did you tell the world that you had helped to break a young boy’s leg? How did you testify in the clear light of day that you had been in the car that drove that boy to his death? What was the proper way to say, I fastened the electrodes to her breasts? Even the least of his actions seemed an enormity when written out: I mopped up the teeth, the blood, the hair.