by Giles Blunt
“There are no lawyers,” he replied. “There are no laws. Now, what is your name?”
“My name is Maria Sanchez. Look at my birth certificate.”
“Your birth certificate is a fake.”
“No, it is not. I want to know why I have been brought here.”
“You have been brought here as a suspected terrorist.”
“For taking food to the church basement.”
“Food for whom?”
“For children orphaned by the war.”
“The children of terrorists, you mean. Sympathy for them is sympathy for terrorism.”
“They are children, and they will starve unless we feed them.”
“What is your name?”
“Maria Sanchez.”
Captain Pena got up and stood beside her. He unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, and pressed it against her cheek. The woman jerked her head aside.
“Tell us your name right now.”
“Maria Sanchez. My name is Maria Sanchez.”
There was a bed along one wall, a narrow cot with only the metal springs showing. A mattress was brought in. The woman was stripped and secured by wrists and ankles to the bed frame. Captain Pena lowered his trousers and lay down on top of her. She screamed obscenities at the ceiling and tried to bite him.
Yunques yanked her head back by the hair.
The Captain had trouble entering her. The woman screamed and screamed, and Victor tried to look anywhere but at the bed, at the pale buttocks heaving up and down. A series of grunts signalled the end and then the Captain climbed off.
The woman was crying now, cursing him through the tears.
“I hope you are taking the pill,” he said matter-of-factly. “There are three more men here.”
The woman’s abdomen heaved. She let out a scream that tore into Victor like a machete.
“Tell us your name.”
The woman could not have answered even if she had wanted to. She was beyond the reach of the Captain’s words. He yelled at her several more times to reveal her name, but she only kept screaming.
Tito climbed on top of her.
She turned her head to the wall.
“Tell us your name and this will stop.”
“You are scum. I will tell you nothing.”
Yunques was next. It seemed to go on forever, the squeak of the springs and the cries she tried to suppress.
“What is your name?”
“Maria Sanchez. Please stop. Please don’t do this anymore.”
“It’s very easy. Tell us your name and it will stop.”
“I’ve told you my name. Maria Sanchez.”
The Captain snapped his fingers at Victor. In their excitement, the others had forgotten he was there. Now they looked at him, and Victor knew there was no escape. To hesitate would be death: he would be taken out and shot, or they would drown him in that tank full of piss and shit-at best, he would be delivered to Casarossa and shot by firing squad. He unbuckled his trousers and lay on top of the woman.
Her skin was scorching. She smelt like a wet dog. Victor’s penis was a tiny, fearful thing in his hand. He pretended to enter her. He humped up and down a few times. Then he groaned and climbed off.
If she revealed his fakery, he was dead.
But she did not. She cried behind her blindfold, and the small breasts quivered with each sob.
They raped her repeatedly over the next three days, Victor faking it each time, until they tired of her. By then she was becoming too swollen for them to enter.
“This is just the softening-up process,” Captain Pena told Victor in his office. “We don’t really expect them to talk during these preliminaries. It’s just to break their spirit. If she was a man, we’d make him eat shit. Then, when we begin the real pressure, they will know who they are dealing with.”
“But it’s illegal, isn’t it? I mean, it’s rape, isn’t it?”
“You saw what happened to Labredo. You think she would prefer the Labredo methods?”
“No. I’m just worried, you know, about the law.”
“‘In the defence of one’s country, there is no such thing as a crime.’ You know who said that?”
“The President?”
“Napoleon said that. The greatest warrior, the most enlightened ruler, who ever lived.” His uncle lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke luxuriously. “Look, I don’t get any kick out of screwing this bitch. It’s just a technique, like any other. You afraid she’s going to tell someone?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“She will tell no one. If she has a husband, he will disown her. If she does not have a husband and this gets out, she will never get one. I think you’re making a fundamental confusion,” his uncle said more softly.
“What is that, sir?”
“You are confusing what happens in here with our lives outside. Obviously, none of us is the kind of person who would do these things in the normal course of existence. It doesn’t reflect on who you are as a person. War is a separate reality.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you have any questions, Victor, ask me now. I am your uncle and I want you to understand.”
“I do have one question, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you so sure this woman is with the rebels?”
The Captain shrugged and exhaled a stream of smoke. “I’m not.”
SIX
The woman put up a struggle when they came for her each morning. She would curl up against the wall, she would kick out wildly, unseeing, but her attempts to evade them were hopeless. Lopez would simply punch her in the stomach, and then they would carry her, doubled over, along the hall to interrogation.
“So stupid,” Lopez remarked. “You’d think she’d get the idea first time.”
On the fourth day, the routine changed. Sergeant Tito came instead of Lopez. “Congratulations, bitch,” he said. “The General’s here to see you. You get to take a shower.” She backed away from them as she always did. Tito seized her by the arm. “We can’t have you going in there like this. You smell like shit.”
The shower was in the soldiers’ bathroom, just off the kitchen. They led her past the other cells, the woman moving in a hunched, head-down way that was new in her. Even so, she had the temerity to question them. “Which general is it? What is his name?”
“I’m not authorized to tell you his name,” Tito said. “Maybe he’ll tell you, if you ask politely.”
“But he is in charge of the jails, this general? He interviews all the prisoners?”
“Yes, most of the prisoners get to have a chat with the General. I guarantee, he will be interested in your views.”
“Do I get to speak to him alone?”
“We will be there the whole time. Why? You’re not planning to tell him anything nasty about us, are you?”
“I will tell him the truth.”
Tito jerked her shoulders so that she banged her forehead against the doorway. “Sorry,” he said.
They took her into the bathroom and removed the thong that bound her thumbs together. Tito started the water.
“Can I take my blindfold off?”
“Not if you want to live. We’ll be right here, watching you. Take your time. Get nice and clean. We don’t want the General thinking we mistreat you.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Tito sat at the kitchen table and drank a coffee, muttering over the sports section. Victor remained standing with his back to the bathroom doorway. When he finished his coffee, Tito got up and removed the woman’s clothing from the floor where she had left it folded.
The water stopped running. “Is there a towel, please?”
“No towel,” Tito snapped. “You don’t need no towel.”
She stood with her arms folded in front of her. She looked even skinnier in the shower, ribs showing beneath the tiny breasts. Even with the blindfold obscuring her expression, Victor saw she was trying to assess the situation. She squatted down an
d felt the floor where her clothes had been. The ugly voice dropped down a note. “May I have my clothes, please?”
“No point,” Tito said. “The general will just have you take them off again. He will be checking you for marks of mistreatment. Cuffs.” She turned around and Tito looped the thong around her thumbs and pulled it tight.
When they led her out into the hall, Yunques whistled.
“Shh,” Tito hissed. “The General’s here!”
“Oh, shit. Sorry, sergeant.”
Captain Pena was waiting for them in the interrogation room, sitting at the little table like a customs official. There was a pad and a jar of pencils in front of the chair beside him. He motioned to Victor to sit there, then turned his attention to the woman. “We will be taking down a transcript of everything that is said here today. Please be seated and tell the General your name.”
Tito led the woman to the chair and set her squarely in front of it. Naked and dripping water, she sat down. Victor noticed on the desk a piece of equipment he had not seen before, a black box the size of a tabletop radio with a pointed dial in the middle. Two black leads coiled out from it, and above the dial were two words in white script, General Electric.
“Will you tell the General your real name, the Captain said. “Don’t give us the Maria Sanchez line again.”
“Maria Sanchez happens to be my real name. I can’t help it if it’s a common name. General, are you here?” Blindly, she turned her head toward Victor. “General, these men have raped me every day since I’ve been here. For three days now. Every morning they rape me.”
Tito shouted, “She’s lying, General! Don’t believe her!”
“Every morning they come for me, they hit me. They hit me and then drag me here and rape me. Please, won’t you have a doctor examine me? He will see I have been raped.” She choked on the words, struggling to get her breath.
This woman hides her fear better than I, Victor had thought more than once. But nothing is more expressive than the naked human body. Although the room was hot, the woman’s small muscles shook as if exposed to icy winds. And with every breath, a deep quiver travelled through her in a wave.
“She’s lying,” Tito said again. “We are not animals here.”
“Shh,” Captain Pena said. “Quiet, sergeant. Let the prisoner speak.”
“General-” She choked back tears to address Victor once more. “I swear to you I have done nothing wrong. I have broken no laws. I am not with the rebels. I don’t know any rebels. I am not even political. I don’t deserve to be treated like this. Nobody deserves to be treated like this.”
Victor concentrated on writing her words down. It gave him an excuse to avoid her blind stare.
Lopez was about to say something. Captain Pena cut him off with a motion of his hand. There was a long pause, the only sound that of the woman’s sobbing. Clear mucus dripped from her nose and she tried to sniff it back. “May I dry myself, please?”
“You may not. The General wants you nice and wet. Are you going to tell him your real name now?”
“Maria Sanchez. It’s the only name I have.”
“All right, Miss Sanchez. Have it your way. Shake hands with General Electric.” The Captain gestured at Victor. “You do it. Sergeant, show him how.”
The woman’s hands were tied to the arms of the chair. Tito showed him the tube of conductive jelly, the electrodes with their little alligator clamps and duct tape. Then the sergeant grabbed the index finger of her left hand. “For fingers, just use the electrode. You tape it.”
“Don’t do it for him,” said the Captain. “Let him do it. He has to learn.”
The woman started to kick, and Lopez tied her feet to the chair legs.
Victor spread conductive jelly on the woman’s bony finger. It was messy, his hands were shaking so badly. “Don’t do this,” the woman said. “Please do not do this.”
“Shut up, whore.” Tito slapped her hard across the head. “Do the other hand. Same finger.”
When it was done, the Captain told Victor to sit down again. “All right, soldier. Watch where I put this dial. There is an art to it.” He turned the dial to the number two.
The woman made a sound like nothing Victor had ever heard-a prolonged, unearthly howl.
The Captain shouted over her. “Don’t give them any more than thirty seconds the first time. We want them still able to talk.” He turned the dial back to zero and the woman slumped in her chair.
She’s dead, Victor thought. But after a moment she started to breathe, inhaling with a sound like tearing fabric.
“You do it this time.” The Captain slid the black box toward Victor. “Turn it a little higher. Around three.” Victor turned the dial, and the Captain shouted again over the woman’s howls: “Second time, you give them a little more. And a little longer. Forty-five seconds to a minute.”
Victor turned the dial back to zero and the woman fell to one side-so heavily that both she and the chair tipped over.
Tito and Lopez set the prisoner upright again. “Goddamn,” Tito said, “she’s really out.” He patted her cheeks-a strangely gentle thing to do, under the circumstances.
The Captain ordered Lopez to bring water. Lopez returned a moment later with two large bottles of Perrier water, as if he were making a joke. He shook one of the bottles and held his thumb over the opening, spraying the woman from head to foot.
“Makes it worse,” the Captain explained. “The minerals are more conductive.”
Lopez shook the bottle again and sprayed her until it was empty. When she was fully conscious again, the Captain turned on the machine. Every muscle in her body stood out like a rope, and once more she made that terrible sound.
“Third time, you really let them have it. Turn it up to four, maybe even five if they are strong enough. Give them maybe two minutes.”
This time it took ten minutes to revive her. “Next session I will give her less and we will have the doctor on hand. It’s always hard to judge first time with a prisoner. But I think today she will tell us her name.”
I would have told them everything in the first minute, Victor thought.
“Take down whatever she says-it’s important to keep a record.”
Captain Pena stood over the woman. For the hundredth time, he asked her her name. But she was only capable of groaning now. “Mother of God, Mother of God ….”
“It’s entirely up to you how long it takes. We have all the time in the world, here.”
The woman said something unintelligible.
“What’s that? What did you say?”
“Decree,” she managed. “Decree 107. Ten days only. Ten days, you have to let me go. It’s the law.”
The Captain looked at Tito, and the two of them laughed. After a moment’s hesitation Lopez and Yunques joined in. Victor smiled as if he saw the joke too.
The Captain raised his hand for silence. “You really imagine we’re just going to let you go? ‘Oh, thank you very much, Ms. Sanchez, sorry to bother you’? Sorry, bitch. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You have only ten days. Ten days is the law.” Somehow she had found her voice again.
“What is your name?”
“I will never tell you my name.”
The Captain and Tito exchanged a glance. They’d both heard it. At last the woman had admitted she still had a name to reveal. Victor saw her mouth open after she had spoken, as if to suck the words back in again. It was her first mistake, and she knew she’d made it.
SEVEN
“I know exactly what it feels like,” his uncle said.
They were driving up the winding street to his house in the Santa Ana area. It was a good neighbourhood; one could tell by the height of the walls surrounding each property. Some were as high as sixteen feet, composed of different layers of brick and stone, like geological strata. All were topped with razor wire.
His uncle had moved here only recently, after his convenient “death,” and Victor couldn’t imagine how he c
ould afford it. The area was far too exclusive for most military men. In fact, Victor remembered an occasion as a child walking through this neighbourhood just out of curiosity, staring in wonder at the houses set like jewels at the end of their long driveways. There were no walls then, just the long drives and the palm trees and the houses that looked like palaces out of fairy stories. He could not believe that the little children playing in the yards were of the same flesh and blood as he, they looked so clean and pretty.
Then a Guardia patrol stopped him and told him to get the hell out-he did not belong there. He didn’t even resent them for it, because he knew they were right.
“Yes,” his uncle was saying, “I am personally familiar with the General’s handshake.”
“I’m astounded,” Victor said. “You were actually tortured?”
“Of course I was not tortured. What we do at the little school is not torture. It’s high-pressure interrogation. Torture is what they did to the martyrs-skinning them alive, cooking them, that kind of thing.”
Victor did not see how this differed from the sufferings of Pedro Labredo. “Who interrogated you?”
“Some Guardia asshole. This was two governments ago. Before your time. They thought I was part of a coup conspiracy. I wasn’t, unfortunately-I’d be a lot richer now if I had been. Anyway, this Guardia guy, he introduced me to the General, and let me tell you, it hurt like hell. You know what it feels like, Victor? It feels as if your flesh is splitting open. It feels as if your flesh is splitting open to the bone. You remember that little earthquake we had a few years back? That crack that opened up all along Ilopango Street?”
“I remember.”
“That’s how it feels. Like your flesh is splitting open. You stare at yourself afterwards-you look at your arms and legs, you feel your belly-and you’re amazed that your flesh is still together over your bones. You can’t believe you haven’t split in pieces. There’s no way you can keep silent. It rips the screams right out of your throat.”
“God, Uncle. How did you stand it?”
“I couldn’t stand it. I wanted only to die. If I had had anything to tell them, I would have told them: names, dates, locations, you name it. I would have given up my mother to stop that pain.”
