The Secret of Santa Vittoria

by Robert Crichton

  “They don’t look like devils,” someone said.

  “Devils come in all disguises,” Pietrosanto told him.

  They unloaded their equipment from the back of the small truck, and even von Prum helped them with it. It was pleasant outside in the early morning and the captain suggested that perhaps they would prefer to do their interrogations outside.

  “No, it will be better inside,” one said. “The sun will be up and it will get hot.”

  “It’s hard work, you know,” the second said. “Hot and tiring.”

  “You try pulling teeth all morning long.”

  “When the people don’t want them pulled.”

  They smiled at one another. It was an old line of their own; they had many of them.

  It was impossible for even Bombolini not to admire the neatness and precision of their work. In a very short time they had cleared out the truck and set up their equipment. The last piece was a wooden table, a narrow, thin plank of wood not much wider than an ironing board, which folded into sections, very much like a portable operating table. From the sides of the table hung three black leather straps, very wide and strong and three large, strong metal buckles.

  At one side of this table was a battery-operated portable generator to which they began attaching coils of wire with little metal clips that had rows of teeth like ferrets. On the other side was a smaller table on which rested pincers and pliers, hooks, rubber hoses, a large funnel, surgical scissors, metal clamps, an iron grappling hook, a gouge, a hammer with a long thin head and claws like the horns of a ram, handcuffs, a blowtorch.

  “You’re young but you know your business, you interrogators,” Captain von Prum said.

  “We like to think of ourselves as a truth squad,” the youngest of them said. “Going about the land uncovering truth.”

  Again they smiled at one another. There was nothing solemn about them.

  “Now hand me the gloves, Hans,” the younger one said. They had already put on black rubber aprons over their black uniforms, and now Hans handed the younger, who was named Otto, black rubber gloves. “Sometimes it gets a bit messy, you see,” Otto said. “You haven’t even seen this before?” he asked von Prum. The captain shook his head.

  “After a while you get used to it,” Otto said.

  “After a while you get to like it,” Hans said.

  “I have a special treat for you, Captain Bombolini,” von Prum said. “I am going to allow you to watch it all. All of it.”

  Otto looked up at them. “Uh, uh, uh,” he said. “That’s not very nice, Captain. Sometimes it’s harder to look, you know.”

  “Sometimes the one who is looking does all the talking,” Hans said.

  “You don’t look very happy,” Otto said to Bombolini. They both spoke very good Italian. “We’ll put on a good show for you, don’t fear.”

  Bombolini went to the window and looked out into the piazza. It was still empty. For a moment he was happy for that, but by then there should have been some sign of Pietrosanto in the far edge of the piazza or coming down the hill from High Town. He tried to keep looking into the piazza, but against his will his eyes kept going back to the table of instruments, the hard cold metal of them, the sharpness and hardness of the things, the hooks and hammers, the silver pliers—he knew, for toes and teeth and fingernails—the fat rubber hoses, the torch. Captain von Prum was looking at them as well, and his tongue kept wetting his lips, which would have surprised him had he known it.

  “Do you actually use these?” he said. It seemed to be a stupid question to Bombolini, but he was wrong.

  “No, not often,” Hans said. “We have used them, but this does the job, you see.” He pointed to the generator to which a magneto had now been attached. A wire ran from the magneto to the handle of a metal hammer to which the wire was clipped.

  “Are you ready to test?” Hans asked. Otto nodded. The older soldier nudged the brass arm of the magneto, and there was a sputtering sound, and sparks began to shoot from the head of the hammer, and the hammer itself actually began to leap on the wooden table.

  “They do the same,” Hans said to von Prum. “The people. They leap.”

  “And scream, I’m afraid,” Otto said. “That takes a bit of getting used to.”

  “They hit high C sometimes,” Hans said, “but you won’t like the lyrics they sing.”

  So they smiled at one another again. Otto pointed to the instrument table.

  “All the while it’s going on they never stop looking at these,” he said. “The pain is unbearable, of course, but they look at these, like these pliers, for example, and think we are saving the worst for last.”

  “And so they talk.”

  “They can’t wait to talk. They demand to talk. They cry out to talk. They beg to talk.”

  “And sometimes we let them.”

  Von Prum noticed that he was wetting his lips with his tongue, and he stopped.

  “How long,” he said. “For how long?”

  The two soldiers studied one another.

  “A minute sometimes. Five sometimes. Three or four minutes on an average, wouldn’t you say, Hans?”

  “Three or four, yes. We ask them later sometimes, the people we have treated, and they think they have been on the table for hours.”

  “Time is strange,” Otto said. “Pain stretches time.”

  “Time is strange. We do something to it. Sometimes when we’re through we’re surprised to look up and find it’s still day. I’m ready. Are you ready?” He looked at Otto and then at Captain von Prum.

  “There’s a final question,” the captain said. “How do you know when they’re telling the truth?”

  “Because they always do. But we make it a matter of numbers,” Hans said. “When we really put the juice to them, when we cook them good, you know.”

  “When we set fire to their hair, you know.”

  “They tell you. They always tell you, but we aren’t allowed to take just one man’s word. Even when we know what the patient has said is true, we have to do a second and a third. Sometimes we do five. Just to look good.”

  “Although one would be enough.”

  “Oh, yes. One is enough,” Otto said. “But it makes them feel happier.” By “them” he must have meant the officers who order the interrogations.

  “We’ll do five,” Captain von Prum said. He turned to Bombolini. “Did you hear that?”

  “If one will do…” the mayor began.

  “Five,” von Prum said. “I want five.” His voice was hard and cold.

  “Do you want him?” Hans asked the captain, nodding at the mayor.

  “No, I like him where he is.”

  Hans tested the leather straps. He pulled them hard and they snapped; they were strong and they held. He tried the blowtorch, and the hot blue flame licked out. There was a branding iron, which Bombolini had not seen before, and Otto held it in the flame of the torch.

  “No, we don’t use it,” Hans told von Prum. “That would produce evidence. But people hate the brand.”

  “They hate the idea of burning. Of the brand sinking in.”

  “Especially on the soles of the feet.”

  “But this,” Otto said, patting the magneto, “this hurts more. Still they’re more afraid of the hot iron.”

  “Some day when they’ve all had more experience,” Hans said, “they’ll come to respect Sparky more.” It was their name for the magneto. “They’ll beg us for the branding iron.”

  “But we’ll just give them Sparky.” They smiled at one another again. “Where are they, sir?” Otto said. “We’re ready for them.”

  Bombolini found that he was trembling and that he felt sick, not as if he were about to vomit, but sick in the entire self, in the heart and the soul and the brain. There was no one in the piazza but Germans.

  “All right,” von Prum said. “We’ll give fate a minute or two, and then we’ll have to go and get someone.”

  They waited after that in silence broken
only by the metallic sound of Otto moving the instruments in a kind of nervous irritation.

  “I always get just a little excited before we start,” he said. “You never know what you’re going to get.”

  “And how they’re going to react.”

  “Just don’t send us any heroes,” Otto called to Bombolini. “It’s boring, you know, these heroes.”

  “They come in with their jaws sealed together like this,” Otto said. He was on his feet and he imitated the face and the posture of the hero. “They set their eyes like this and they spit at you with them.”

  “Then we put the clamps on them and give them a little juice and all at once they want to talk,” Hans said.

  “They want to lick you with their eyes.”

  “It’s very sad and boring, actually.”

  “It’s very disgusting, really.”

  “I will send you such cowards,” Bombolini suddenly said, surprising even himself, “men who will tell you such lies, who will beg you and try to please you in so many ways, you won’t know what is true and what is false.”

  “The more they talk the more truth they reveal, even when they’re lying,” Otto said.

  Traub came up from the piazza on to the terrace and called in through the door.

  “Here comes one,” he said. “We’ve got one coming across the piazza now.”

  They went to the door of the Palace of the People and they looked out at what fate had delivered to them. He had come down the steep hill from High Town and paused for a moment at the edge of the piazza. When he saw the Germans he made no effort to avoid them, but instead went directly toward them.

  “A martyr. It’s one of the martyr types,” Hans said.

  They watched the man say something to Corporal Heinsick and then he began to bring the man across the piazza to where they were.

  “You lied to us,” one of the Germans said to Bombolini. “You sent us a hero.”

  At the stairs up to the terrace Heinsick stopped and then pushed the prisoner up the stairs.

  “He says he’s glad to see us,” Heinsick said. “I told him we were glad to see him.”

  It was Giuliano Copa, the former mayor of Santa Vittoria. When he saw Captain von Prum he made a Fascist salute. “Long live the Duce. Long live Hitler,” he said. “What took you so long?”

  “Oh, God. This kind,” Hans said. “The loyal, true Fascist.” He turned to the others. “He was really for us all along, you see. Now he will tell you.”

  They laughed at Copa. His eyes grew large with suspicion and with fear. Bombolini made an effort to stay in the shadows of the room. When he saw the interrogation tools Copa began to shout.

  “I am a loyal Fascist,” Copa shouted. “I am a member in good standing of the party. There has been a mistake—”

  “Quiet,” Hans suddenly shouted at him. It was easy to understand then how Hans had been entrusted with the kind of work he did. “There is always a mistake,” he said to the rest. “Take off your clothes,” he shouted at Copa.

  “I don’t understand,” Copa said.

  He was brave. He was still in command of his voice, and his body gave no outward sign of fear.

  “You don’t understand the words ‘Take off your clothes’?” Otto said. “Does this mean anything to you?” He seized the top of Copa’s shirt and in one sudden motion ripped it from his body.

  When Copa was naked they placed him on the narrow wooden table and they strapped him to it with the leather straps.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Copa asked.

  “If I were to answer that,” Otto said, in a quiet, gentle voice, “you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “And then you’d lose the chance of finding out for yourself,” Hans said. They smiled.

  “You take their clothes off,” Otto was explaining, “because it makes them feel defenseless. If you put a naked soldier in the front he won’t fight, but if you dress him he will fight until he dies. It’s all been tried. It’s all been tested.”

  “You have it down to a science then,” von Prum said.

  “Oh, yes, it’s a science.”

  “Do you hear that?” von Prum said to Bombolini. “This is a science. It’s the difference between you and us.” Copa was praying aloud then.

  They moved the magneto closer to the table, and when Otto tested it for the last time the little clips that would be attached to Copa jumped about like little frightened toads.

  “You never let the client feel human, do you understand,” Hans said. “You always look at them as if they were roaches, and when they talk to you you never understand them. In this way they feel all alone.”

  “Like turds. Most men feel like turds deep down, you know. Like something disgusting that was dropped into the world,” Otto said. “Those aren’t my words. The psychologists, you understand.”

  “Did you hear that?” von Prum said. “The psychologists. It’s all been figured out.”

  Otto was leaning over Copa then.

  “We don’t want to do this to your body. It will be more terrible than you know. At the moment it begins you will want to die. You will beg us to let you die. Sometimes they do die. He looked up at Captain von Prum. “The heart explodes in the chest. The brain is shattered; shocked to pieces, you understand.”

  “You are getting an education, Captain,” Hans said.

  “We don’t want you to die, and you don’t want to die.”

  To Bombolini’s horror he saw that Copa was nodding yes, yes to the German.

  “Sometimes they tell us the truth before we ever touch them,” Hans said to von Prum.

  “And you allow them to get up?”

  “No.” Hans seemed disappointed in his student. “We burn them. We put them on Sparky. How else would we know?”

  “Now,” Otto was saying. He began attaching the wires to different parts of Copa’s body. He would press the clamps so the teeth were bared, and then he would allow it to close around the flesh of a toe or an ear lobe or the nipple of his breast, like a wicked little animal.

  “We only want you to feel this pain so that you want to tell us the truth.”

  “Yes, I want to tell you the truth. Now,” Copa said. “I’ll tell you what you need to know.”

  “Now, you see, we’ll see if he is telling the truth,” Otto said. He looked up at the captain again with an embarrassed smile. “What was it we wanted to know.”

  “About the wine. Where is the rest of the wine?”

  He asked and Copa said that he didn’t understand the question and that he didn’t know what they were asking him.

  “Now?” Hans said. “Now,” Otto said.

  He made a movement with his finger on the magneto, a very slight movement with the brass handle, and at that same moment Copa came flying up from the wooden table against the leather straps as if the straps must cut him apart and during this same instant he opened his mouth and after what seemed a long passing of time, a little lifetime of time, he released from the depths of himself a scream so terrible in its fear and agony and horror and worst of all, disbelief, that both von Prum and Bombolini found themselves shouting aloud in some kind of cry of recognition of the human animal.

  THERE ARE people here, since this is a history, who want a description of every action that took place in that room that morning, so none of it will ever be forgotten, an accounting of every burn and every scream, a listing of every tooth destroyed and nail ripped out, but it isn’t needed or even desired, because as Bombolini told us later, he who saw all of it, when the assault on the flesh reaches the point where death approaches, all of it becomes the same.

  Toward the end, it is deadening to everyone involved and, as the Germans say, in some ways even boring (if that sounds possible), because all the torture, no matter how administered, becomes the same and all the torturers are the same and all the tortured become the same man—so many shrieks, so many sobs, so many wishes to die, so much blood, so much urine, so much excrement, so much courage and so much c
owardice—and finally it even took an effort for Bombolini to remember which of the men he had grown old with was lying strapped there to the wooden plank.

  When they were through with Giuliano Copa (because there was no way to revive him) it was the turn of Mazzola, another of The Band. A few minutes before, Pietro Pietrosanto and Vittorini had released Mazzola from the cellar in High Town, and he went down, as he thought, to meet with Copa in the Piazza of the People. In the name of justice he should not have been allowed to see Copa’s body lying against the wall before it was his turn to be put on the table, because it should be each man’s right not to know the extent of what will happen to him until it happens. It is enough to say that so hysterical did Mazzola become—and Mazzola was no coward—that when they put the metal clamps down inside his throat and he had bitten off the end of his tongue when the electricity was applied to him, Mazzola had actually said “Thank you” to the soldiers. It was during this time that Bombolini found that he was crying for the people who had been his enemies.

  He had tried to tell himself that what was happening to these men was only what they deserved, that in one sense true justice was being carried out and that they had brought upon themselves what they were receiving and that it was right and that it was the will of God or else God would not allow it to take place. But even as he convinced himself, he knew that what he was saying was a lie, because he knew that what was happening to Copa and Mazzola should never happen to any man and there was no reason in the world that could justify it.

  For much of it Captain von Prum managed to stay apart from the suffering in the room. What was being done was not being done by himself. But before they turned to the old baker Francucci they went back to Copa once more, because Copa had regained consciousness.

  “This is the time to get them,” Hans said. “If there is anything to get. I only do this because you insist the wine is here.”

  “The wine is here,” the captain said. But he found himself wishing that they would go on to someone else who would break more easily rather than return to the wreckage of the man Copa.