He was at least being polite. She had to cling to straws like this, hopes that all his bluster was just … bluster. She dismounted, and he nodded towards the house. She went up the few steps to the shallow verandah, crossed it, boots clumping dully on the wood, and went into the cool of an office, where a sergeant and a corporal came to attention at the sight of their superior.
‘I do not wish to be disturbed, until I send for you,’ Lumbrera said.
‘Of course, Colonel,’ said the sergeant, allowing his gaze to drift to Christina.
‘Through there, senorita,’ Lumbrera said.
The door was closed. Christina waited for a moment, but obviously he was not going to open it for her. She pushed her hands forward, turned the handle, and stepped into living quarters. Beyond, a door was open, and she could see a bed. She gave a little shiver. But she could not believe he would just march her in there and … she did not even know the word. She heard the door close behind her, and found herself trying to control her breathing. Lumbrera hung his hat on the peg by the door, went to the table, and poured two glasses of wine. ‘It is hot, eh?’ he asked.
Christina licked her lips. ‘I would prefer a glass of water,’ she said.
‘We shall see,’ he remarked. He drank one of the glasses, then came and stood before her. ‘You do not wish the wine,’ he said.
‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Thank you.’
He gazed at her, then extended his right hand, and unfastened the top button of her blouse. She found she was holding her breath. Then he undid the second button.
‘Is this how you interrogate people?’ she asked; she simply had to say something.
He grinned. ‘Some people.’ Then he extended his left hand, and emptied the wine into the opened blouse. She gasped with the unexpectedness of it, and the discomfort of it, as the liquid drained down between her breasts, and soaked the material above and below it. ‘Now your blouse is all wet,’ Lumbrera said. He turned away from her, took off his jacket, and hung it on the hook beside his cap. From its pocket he took a key, and returned to her, holding her wrists to release the hand cuffs, taking them off. She remained standing absolutely still, knowing that he was waiting for some reaction, some acknowledgement of her fear, perhaps. ‘If you do not take off your blouse,’ he said, ‘you will catch cold.’
‘I will not take off my blouse,’ she said. She saw his hand moving, and braced herself for another unexpected assault, but he merely took the hat from her head, and hung it beside his own. ‘I wish you to take off your blouse, senorita,’ he said.
‘I will not undress for you, Colonel,’ she replied, evenly.
‘Ha ha.’ He sat down on the settee. ‘You think you can defy me? The first thing you must learn, senorita, is that in here you must obey me absolutely. The longer you take to learn that, the more you will suffer.’
‘Am I not going to suffer, anyway?’ she demanded.
‘As I said before, who can tell? You may not suffer at all. You may even enjoy what is going to happen to you. Now, I wish you to undress. I wish you to strip yourself. I have for long dreamed of one day being able to look at your body, Senorita Diaz. Now that day has arrived. And I will achieve my dream. If you will not undress yourself, I will call some of my men in here and they will do it for you. That way your clothes will be torn, and you yourself will be bruised. And then, too, they will look at you. Would it not be sensible to keep our conversation private?’
She stared at him, her heart seeming to slow. What he was demanding was unbelievable, unimaginable … but inescapable. And her objective had to be to keep him, or anyone else, from touching her, for as long as possible. If he just wanted to look … she unbuttoned the wet blouse, shrugged it from her shoulders, and hung it on the back of a chair.
‘Now the boots,’ he said.
She sat down, on one of the chairs by the table, hair drooping past her shoulders, and unlaced her boots, then took them off.
‘The skirt,’ he commanded.
Christina stood up, unfastened the waistband of her skirt, let it drop past her hips.
‘The petticoat.’
Until now his commands had actually made little difference to her modesty. But now that was to end. She gave a little shudder as she slid the straps from her shoulders, and the petticoat too edged its way to the floor. She never wore a corset when going riding, nor did she wear stockings in the Cuban heat. Beneath the petticoat were only her drawers. She wanted to cross her arms over her exposed breasts, but realised that would be too futile and undignified, and let them hang at her sides.
‘The drawers,’ Lumbrera said, leaning forward in anticipation.
Christina stooped, and slid the drawers down to her ankles.
‘There,’ Lumbrera said. ‘Now I know what I have to work with. Work on, eh? Ha ha. You are a beautiful woman, senorita. A little thin, perhaps. Not as much to look at as your American sister would have, eh? But who knows, with your help, maybe one day I will have her down here. Now come here and sit beside me.’
‘I … I would prefer to stand,’ Christina said.
‘Have you not learned to obey me? Do you want to be whipped? Shall I tell you how I whip people? Especially recalcitrant young girls. I spread-eagle them in the yard, before my men, and then each man in turn has a cut with the whip. They enjoy it so. Come here and sit beside me.’
Christina crossed the room and sat down, and he put his arm round her shoulders and began to caress her breasts. ‘Just now you and I will have luncheon,’ he said. ‘I will get you that glass of water you wanted, and we will eat, and then we will enjoy a siesta on that bed over there. You will like that, eh? But when we wake up, you are going to have to co-operate with me. I wish you to understand this.’
Christina stared in front of herself, trying not to feel his fingers, trying not to be aware of her nakedness, sitting next to such a man. With any man. But Lumbrera … he stroked her nipples erect, then slid down to sift her pubic hair. No one had ever touched her there. Her entire body was tingling with a mixture of anticipation, apprehension, and anxiety. ‘I have nothing to tell you,’ she panted.
‘Oh, but you have. I am sure you know all your brother’s plans, and those of Senor Lisle. Of course you do.’
‘No,’ she insisted. ‘I know only that they went off to fight. They expected to win, very quickly and easily. I do not know what they will do now. Please, senor … ’ she bit her lip; was she, after all, going to beg?
‘Ha ha,’ he said. ‘You do not like to be stroked. But you will grow to like it. To want it. Would you like to stroke me?’
‘No,’ she gasped.
‘You will wish to, in time. Your brother and Senor Lisle are fools. Yet do I intend to hang them, with, or without, your help. It is on another matter that I really wish your assistance.’
‘I know nothing,’ she repeated.
‘You will be able to save yourself a lot of embarrassment,’ he explained. ‘By co-operating. The one I truly wish to question is your American sister-in-law. She is the one I wish to bring down here. But … my superiors are afraid of antagonising the Americans. They must be certain, I must be certain, that she is guilty of a crime before I can arrest her. Well, the plan outlined to her this morning will accomplish that. Because, you see, senorita, if she “escapes” from Obrigar only she and I will know that it was with my assistance. Then when she brings Lisle and her husband to rescue you, she will be caught, red-handed, with the rebels, carrying out an assault upon a train. That will be proof enough to satisfy the most determined legalist in Santiago. Then I will have her here, and you will be able to go home.’
‘You are telling me this?’ Christina asked in amazement.
‘I am being perfectly frank with you, senorita. I am a frank and open man. You cannot harm me. Again, it will be your word against mine, and you are a known collaborationist with the rebels. Well, you have to be, as your father and brother fought with them. What do you think of that?’
‘I think you are a sex crazed monster,’ sh
e said. ‘You must be mad to suppose I would even consider such a thing. Anyway, Toni would never agree to help you.’
‘Oh, I think she would,’ Lumbrera argued, seriously. ‘I think, if, when I bring her down here to see you, you were to beg her to save you from further torture, further abuse, further humiliation, she might well agree to co-operate with me. I think she would have done so this morning, had you not so definitely refused to help me. That was silly of you.’
‘I shall always refuse to help you,’ Christina told him. ‘No matter what you do to me.’
‘I wonder about that,’ Lumbrera remarked. ‘I think you should think about that very seriously, while we eat, while we siesta. Because if you do not agree, I will show you one of my tricks. It is done with a candle, you see. I will have my men tie you to a certain board, which I designed myself, which will both spread your legs and then tilt your feet upwards to the right angle, and I will insert a candle into a certain part of your anatomy, and I will light the candle, and then I will sit back and read a book, eh, while the wax melts, slowly, and drips … I think the last girl I did that to even enjoyed it, until the wax reached her flesh. Then she begged me to take it out, but I let the candle bum right down to a stump, until, in fact, it had burned itself away altogether, inside her. By then she had fainted. So do you know what I did? I put a fresh candle in and lit it again.’
Christina thought she was about to choke. ‘You are a monster,’ she whispered.
‘I do what I must, to persuade people to help me,’ Lumbrera said simply. ‘Without marking their skins, so that there is no evidence, or at least, no evidence that any modest young lady would wish to show a court of law, that she has been harmed at all. Do you know, that silly girl still would not co-operate with me, even after I had lit four candles, two in front, and two behind. So do you know what I did then? I made her sleep a night in my men’s barracks. It is a strange thing, but the next morning, why, she was prepared to do anything I required of her. As will you.’
Christina threw off his arm and ran to the door, wrenching at the handle, forgetting her nakedness … but the door had been locked on the outside. She turned, back pressed against it, breasts heaving as she stared at him. ‘One day I shall kill you,’ she swore.
‘Now that too is strange,’ Lumbrera said. ‘They all say, one day I shall kill you. But none of them ever have, senorita. I do not believe you will be any different to any of the others. But I will tell you something.’ He got up and walked towards her. ‘I believe you will be more enjoyable than anyone I have ever had in here. I have never had a true lady in here. But there is something more important yet. I have never had a Diaz de Obrigar in here. And do you know, senorita … ’ he reached out and twined his fingers in her hair. ‘That is something I have wanted to experience, all of my life.’
*
Morning, afternoon, night. It was incredible that every day should contain such lengthy periods, when there was nothing to do, except survive. And worry. Toni got up at dawn, and supervised the gathering of what food was available. Fortunately, in the rich soil and often steamy heat of the summer, vegetables grew like weeds, and there was milk from the cows and eggs from the remaining chickens. Even so there was not that much food for over a hundred of people. Captain Torres had said they would not starve. Perhaps he would be proved right — just.
She worried most about the dogs, who had to do without their meat. But she dared not complain; Torres had suggested that the dogs should be put down anyway, and she had had to be at her most determined to prevent that.
She had had the house put back in order after Lumbrera’s men had finished ‘searching’ it, and she had the servants keep it as clean as a new pin, while she herself worked in the garden with the other women several hours of every day. She had to do this, or she would have gone mad, watching the cane become ever riper and then wither and die, an entire year’s crop gone to waste, and more than that; as there would be no ratoons from these dead plants, the plantation would have to be reseeded from scratch.
But there were other causes of incipient madness. There was the continued misery of the people for whom she had been made responsible, the sickness of the children, the anguish of their mothers, the awareness that for all of Torres’ undoubtedly determined discipline, the soldiers who garrisoned the camp were equally lonely, watching with hungry eyes the females with whom they mingled, but whom they had been forbidden to touch. Were Torres to be replaced by a more indulgent commander Toni could not imagine what might happen.
Then there was Dona Carlotta. Toni spent hours every day with her mother-in-law, but Carlotta simply refused to make any effort to get better, or even to put her thoughts in order. She had to be dressed and undressed, and spoon fed as if she were a baby. It was as if the death of the husband to whom she had devoted her life had proved too much for her apparently strong mind to bear. She ate little, no matter how hard Toni had the maids try, and thus daily grew thinner, and did not seem to recognise anybody. This was in one way a relief, as she had not yet noticed the absence of Christina, and often addressed Salvador as Rafael.
But there was the biggest cause for madness. Toni knew nothing of what had happened to either of the two men for whom she had opted to accept this living death. She believed they were still alive. She was sure that had Rafael or Jack been captured or killed Lumbrera would have returned in triumph to tell her. But then, they could have died of wounds or fever, in the hills, unknown to anybody.
But as she did not know, just as she did not know what they were actually doing or what was happening to them, it was still possible to have hope. She could have no hope for Christina. Christina too was undoubtedly still alive, as Lumbrera would have known when she died. But Lumbrera had not returned to the plantation in all the month that had elapsed since he had arrested her sister-in-law. There was the most distressing fact of all. He was too busy, with his beautiful, helpless captive to return to taunt her or to threaten her. She had thought she could protect the girl, just by standing in front of her. How easily had she been thrust aside. While even to consider what might have been done to her, what might still be being done to her, was to reduce her to despair.
And there was no end in sight. Summer was arriving, hot and wet and steamy, and the cane was dead, and the' soldiers remained behind their barbed wire fencing and stared at the hills, and presumably the rebels sat in the hills and stared at Obrigar. Obviously they still considered they were carrying on some kind of a war up there, but they never came down to the plantation. And yet surely they knew that Christina had been arrested. Or were they as cut off from information as she?
She had, in the beginning, tried to obtain news from Torres, tried to beg him to do something about Christina, tried to have him accept the letters which she wrote, over and over again, to Walkshott and to her parents and to General Blanco, protesting against the horrible mistreatment she was sure the girl was enduring, protesting against her own incarceration, the hardships that were being inflicted on her people, begging for help … but the letters never left the plantation, just as Torres had no information to give her, on any subject. He was unfailingly polite, and kept his word in forbidding any of his men ever to enter the house or the garden, but his business had been to seal off Obrigar from the outside world, and this he had done, and was doing. Thus if she had no knowledge of anything that was happening beyond the barbed wire, so those beyond the barbed wire had no knowledge of what was happening to her. So perhaps Jack and Rafael did not know about Christina’s arrest. In which case they were the lucky ones.
She sighed, and waited for Manuela to finish brushing her hair, then walked slowly to the head of the stairs. She felt like an old woman instead of a twenty-year-old bride of fifteen months — she had celebrated her first wedding anniversary by herself, sipping one of Don Arnaldo’s bottles of champagne, and dreaming, until the dreams had dissolved in tears.
Salvador stood on the gallery, having just taken a tray in to Dona Carlotta. For the fir
st time in weeks there was animation in Salvador’s face. ‘Senora,’ he said. ‘Come and see.’ Frowning, Toni accompanied him on to the upstairs verandah, which faced south, and was high enough to give an uninterrupted view beyond the hills to the sea. Out there, surprisingly close in, there was a warship. A huge, white-hulled vessel. Even at this distance, Toni could make out the two funnels and the four great guns, resting in their barbettes. But not the flag. ‘Is she Spanish?’ she asked.
‘I do not think so, senora,’ Salvador said. ‘I have never seen a Spanish warship like that.’ In fact, the only Spanish warships ever seen around Cuba were the small gunboats which acted as a coastguard.
Could the ship be American? Toni felt so excited she took a glass of wine with her meagre lunch. Just to know the ship was there made the day seem brighter. It meant that her people were aware of what was going on, and were doing something about it. Surely. That night she slept more soundly than she had in weeks, could hardly wait to awake and see that the battleship was still there. And two days later she saw Joe riding up the drive.
*
Her heart nearly stopped beating. Yet there was no mistaking his size, or his manner, or his uniform. He was halted at the gate, of course, but apparently had some kind of pass, for after a moment Captain Torres was sent for, and a few minutes after that the two men approached the house together. Toni stood on the front verandah and watched them, unable to move, as the weakness of pure relief flooded through her system. Joe was here, and all would be well.
He dismounted, came up the steps, and took her in his arms. ‘Toni,’ he said. ‘Oh, Toni.’
She clung to him, felt his strength go round her. It was too long since she had felt strength.
He released her, looked out at the cane fields, then at Torres. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he remarked.
The captain shrugged. ‘It is war, senor.’
‘War, you call it. I would like to be alone with my sister.’
Torres considered. ‘I can allow you half an hour,’ he said, and rode off.
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