by Giles Blunt
She couldn’t stand, so they filled the tub in the soldiers’ bathroom. He and Yunques lowered her into the water, and she fell back against the tiles.
“Wake up,” Yunques snapped. “Wash yourself.” But the woman only moaned in response. He turned to Victor. “You deal with her. I’m going for a smoke.”
Pink streaks threaded into the water from the woman’s body. Victor soaped up a cloth and put it in her hand, but she only let the hand fall into the water. He lifted her left foot from the water and began to wash it. There was a burn mark on her big toe where the electrode had been attached, and he found another burn when he rinsed the blood from her chest.
Gradually, the woman began to revive and was able to wash herself. Her skin glistened under the water, and Victor felt a sexual stirring. He turned away.
He sat on the toilet while she rubbed the bar of soap all over her hair and rinsed it off, leaning back gingerly so as not to soak her blindfold. He allowed himself a glance at her breasts, the prominent ribs. Such a vulnerable thing, the human body-particularly a woman’s; it was a great wrong to torment it. She was not so different from him self, this woman; she was not a campesino. He imagined her as a child, growing up in a small middle-class home like his own. Perhaps she was teased by an older brother, annoyed by a younger sister. Parents had loved her, looked after her, comforted her when she was sick. Not so different from himself. Clearly, she was educated. He imagined her carrying books, arguing with the nuns at school.
And look at the school she was in now, with the likes of Tito and himself for her teachers. And lessons no human being should have to learn.
Victor handed the woman a towel, and when she had dried herself, he bandaged her wrist and gave her back her clothes.
He and Yunques brought her down the hall to the Captain’s office. Mr. Wheat was seated near the window, so that the sunlight flashed on his blond hair and made his teeth gleam. He looked utterly out of place in the little school, and Victor found himself staring at him almost as if he were a beautiful woman.
“Where did you pick her up?” Wheat asked the Captain.
“Near the cathedral. She was carrying food supplies.”
“Food for children,” she said in her cracked, ugly voice. “Apparently this counts as a crime in our country.”
“Shut up,” the Captain said quietly. “Nobody’s talking to you.”
“She’s connected with the rebels?” Wheat asked.
“Most definitely. We are just waiting for her to admit it.”
“And her name is Sanchez.”
“So she claims. We don’t yet know her real name. We just brought her in last night.”
“That is a lie,” the woman said. “I have been here at least five days. They are torturing me.” She held up the bandaged wrist.
“Resisting arrest,” the Captain said. “She put up quite a struggle. It took three men to subdue her.”
Victor was surprised by the lie. The Captain too seemed to feel the need to impress this shining American.
“I did not resist arrest,” the woman said. “I was distributing food for children. Everything else this man says is a lie.”
Less than half an hour ago she had been screaming in agony; she must know such boldness could only bring more of the same. Sometimes bravery seemed to Victor a species of stupidity-but of course it would be convenient for a coward to view it that way.
Mr. Wheat flicked his hair, wafting a little lime-scented aftershave in Victor’s direction. “Miss Sanchez, if that’s your name-I represent the United States of America. Believe me, we’re doing everything we can to ease things up down here for you people.”
“Really? Maybe you could untie my hands, then.”
Wheat raised his eyebrows at Captain Pena, who shook his head.
“The fact is,” Wheat continued, “I only want to know one thing from you.”
“I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know anything.”
“Be quiet and listen. For some time now it has been apparent to us that the FMLN leadership has advance knowledge of embassy statements and embassy functions. They know who is visiting, where and for how long-sometimes within twenty-four hours of our own knowledge.”
“What you expect me to do about this, I can’t imagine.”
“I want to know the source of this leak.”
“Why ask me, if you believe nothing I say? You really think I was resisting arrest? There’s a little room down the hall. If you go there now, you will see my blood all over the floor.”
“I’m not interested in any little room. If you simply answer questions truthfully, things will go better for you.”
“I was taking food to the cathedral. Food for children orphaned by war. Why don’t you talk to them? I’m sure they’d like to thank you in person for everything you’ve done.”
“Listen. Who do you think pays the bills around here? With all due respect to the Captain, we pay the bills around here, and what we say goes. The sooner you under stand that, the sooner you’ll be out of here. But you have to co-operate.”
“I’ll co-operate. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“You say you were bringing food to the church for orphans of the war?”
“Yes.”
“Who asked you to help out?”
“No one. There are signs all over the church asking for volunteers.”
“What specifically made you want to help out?”
“The fact that they are orphans. Is the United States against feeding children?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Who invited you to be part of this humanitarian effort?”
“I told you. No one. I volunteered. All I do is collect a few cans of food and bring them to the church basement.”
Wheat looked at the Captain, shaking his head at her obstinacy. Then he turned back to the woman. “Who asked you to volunteer?”
“No one. Why is that so hard to believe? If I make up a name to please you, they will just beat me when they find out it is false. If I give you the name of a real person who has nothing to do with me or the orphans or the rebels, that person will be arrested and tortured just like me. But you still won’t have whatever it is you want.”
“I want to know the source of the embassy leak.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“Do you know a woman named Teresita Sanchez?”
“Teresita Sanchez. No.”
“Teresita Sanchez-Vega.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure you want to stick with that story?”
“It’s not a story. It’s just the way it is.”
“She’s a typist at the embassy.”
“I’m glad. Jobs are precious these days.”
“I’m asking you if you know her.”
“And I’m telling you the truth. I do not know her.”
“Your name is Sanchez, her name is Sanchez. And you don’t know her?”
“It’s a common name. Surely you know this.”
“San Salvador is not that big a town.”
“It’s two million people!”
“You have the same last name.”
“I don’t know her. If I did, I would not deny it, because I have no dealings with this person, no connection whatsoever. I wish I could tell you yes, if that would get me out of here.”
“You said you would co-operate.”
“Believe me, I’m trying to. At this moment I want nothing more than to please you, to make you feel that I am trying to help you by telling the truth.”
“This is what you call co-operation?”
“Please. Just entertain for a moment the possibility that I am not lying. Ask yourself what I have to gain and what I have to lose.”
“You know exactly what you have to gain. So tell me the truth: do you know Teresita Sanchez-Vega?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
“This is not co-operation. I’m going to let you think about it some more. I’ll ask you again in ten
days.”
“I don’t think so. By then I will be dead.”
“Get her out of my sight,” Wheat said.
The Captain snapped his fingers, and Yunques led her away to the cells.
“She has a real attitude problem,” Wheat said when she was gone. “Real hard case, that one.”
“To tell you the truth,” the Captain said, “we don’t suspect this prisoner of any connection to the embassy. We only suspect her of taking food to the enemy.”
“But we had this Sanchez at the embassy. We were sure she was the leak.”
“And now you’re not sure?”
“Little Miss Sanchez was killed, see. But the leaks started up again.”
“You killed her?”
“I resent that, Captain. What kind of outfit do you think we run?”
“Forgive me. You thought she was a spy, she was killed, naturally I thought ….”
“She was raped and murdered on her way home one night. Terrible thing.”
“Terrible.”
“Of course, the fact that the leaks started up again after she died doesn’t necessarily put her in the clear.”
“No. There could be more than one leak.”
“I want you to hang on to this Sanchez prisoner. You understand, I’m under a lot of pressure to plug that leak.”
“I understand.”
“And if I can ever do anything for you one day, well, one hand washes the other, right, Captain?”
“Right. We will keep on her, Mr. Wheat. Don’t you worry.”
TEN
The American’s visit was so brief as to seem hallucinatory. One moment he was there, the next he was nothing but a memory of blond hair and a whiff of aftershave. When he was gone, the soldiers had their lunch, and then in the afternoon the woman was brought back to the interrogation room, where they left her alone, tied to the chair. Tito liked to make her wait like this, knowing the torture would come but not knowing when or what form it would take. After half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, they connected her up to the machine as if she were herself an electronic device without which the little school could not run.
Once again Victor took down a record of the interrogation while Tito worked the dial. All through the woman’s screams and the shouted questions, Victor felt a growing thickness in the back of his throat like an oncoming cold. And at the crown of his head there was a sore spot as if he had been tapped with a small, hard object there. Much of what he wrote was blurred with sweat.
Then Tito shocked the woman too hard and she fainted. When they could not revive her, Lopez and Victor carried her to her cell.
“Too bad the whore is not on our side,” Lopez muttered. “She is one tough bitch.”
Victor was glad to be on guard duty while his colleagues interrogated other prisoners. He could hear the mutter of gunfire from the nearby rifle range, and the odd sergeant’s shout from the garrison. He sat at the little table, his head in his hands, feeling himself sink into a fever as if toward the bottom of the sea. He hardly noticed when they came for Ignacio Perez, the man in the cell across from the woman’s. Perez was the only prisoner there who seemed to Victor as if he might actually be a guerrilla. He was not much older than Victor, short but powerfully built, and he resisted the soldiers like a wild dog, kicking and screaming at them.
Victor’s brow was hot as an iron in his hand. He barely heard the shouts and cries coming from what used to be the little school’s playground. They were playing Submarine with Perez. So far, Victor had not had to participate in that particular game, where one or two soldiers would toss the prisoner into the tank of water that had been fouled with every kind of filth the school could produce. The prisoner was then forced beneath the surface at the end of a restraining pole, and held there until he near drowned in the shit and piss. Who thought these games up, Victor had wondered when it had first been explained to him. But this day he hardly noticed Tito’s laughter or Perez’s terrified, choked cries.
Later, when Lopez came to relieve him, he sat down at the table with a weary sigh. He looked Victor up and down. “What’s wrong with you, Pena?”
“Nothing. Except I just ….” Victor had to lean on the back of the chair to steady himself. His words were slurring like those of a drunk. “I think maybe I’m getting a cold or something.”
“You’re shivering like a-”
Victor didn’t hear what Lopez said next, because a gauzy curtain closed between them. He felt a smile spreading like butter across his face, and then his legs folded beneath him.
For the next three days he lay in bed, clenched in a fever, except for the times when he dragged himself to the barracks toilet. At his lowest point he perched on the toilet while at the same time leaning over a bucket, discharging violently from both ends.
In bed, dreams and memories intermingled. He dreamed of his uncle’s appearing to him like an angel of deliverance at the military prison. He dreamed of Mr. Wheat walking among the bodies of El Playon amid a scent not of death but of aftershave. Spirits rose like steam from the bodies, calling Victor to join them-death wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so bad once you got used to it. It was better than being afraid all the time. In the dis tance, a woman called a name he couldn’t quite make out.
The doctor visited him. Later, Victor wasn’t sure if it had been real, because the doctor had grown a small moustache and his hair was black again. But it must have been real, because there was a bottle of medicine on a small wooden box that was his bedside table. It tasted like licorice and made the dreams even more vivid.
That night he climbed out of bed, the fever gone, and tiptoed through completely deserted classrooms that glowed pale as marble in the moonlight. After slitting the throat of the night guard, a boy of fifteen, he opened the last door and lay in bed with the Sanchez woman. What they did together was indistinct, but he had a wonderful sensation of warmth and comfort, as if he were curled in a den of warm animals.
When the Captain and the others burst in on them, Victor pulled out his service revolver and fired before they could even draw their pistols. Bodies tumbled at his feet. He pulled the Sanchez woman along the corridor, fighting hand to hand with the soldiers who now leapt out at him from all sides. It was amazing what strength and cunning he had. Bullets swarmed in the air, but he ran through them with supernatural courage. It should have been a terrifying dream, but it was not; the sense of victory was too thrilling.
But the thrill dissolved when he awoke and remembered he was a coward. A coward who, far from saving the Sanchez woman, had done his part to split open her flesh.
He lay in bed trying to persuade himself that he was not evil. He was not doing it by choice. He was here under threat of death. If he tried to help her escape, they would both be shot; that was not good. If he tried to escape himself, he would be shot, and that was not good. Besides, if he disappeared, they would only replace him with someone much worse. Nevertheless, he resolved to escape if the chance-a realistic chance-should ever present itself.
Victor suffered three days of fever before he was pronounced fit to return to duty. He went back to work feeling thin and ethereal, no match for the harshness of his fellow soldiers.
“Hey, Pena junior,” said Yunques. “How was your vacation?”
“Not much fun, thanks.”
“You’re lucky the Captain’s your uncle, Pena.” Tito made a throat-slitting gesture. “Me and the boys here get the feeling you’re a slacker. A malingerer.”
“That isn’t true. I was sick. Lopez, you saw.”
Lopez shrugged and looked out the window. “So you fainted. So you have a weak stomach.”
“Tell me, Pena,” said Tito. “What do you have in mind for a career after you leave the army?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.”
“Because, to tell you the truth, I get a very negative feeling from you. You don’t participate here like you should.”
“And if you don’t participate in one way,” Y
unques put in, “you will certainly participate in another.”
“Pena and the doctor, I think they are two of a kind. I think we should tie them together and throw them in the tank.” Tito kicked his chair. “Funny how you manage to be out sick just when things get interesting.”
“What do you mean?”
“It reminds me of your battle experience, no? You manage to be unconscious just when things take a turn for the worse? Oh, yes, don’t look so shocked. I happen to have a friend in the Casarossa unit. He’s told me all about you, my friend, and frankly, you are going to have to convince me of your sincerity. If you’re just here because your uncle saved your ass, that makes you a security threat.”
“I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
“Look. We’re not fools here, just because we don’t read faggot books in English. We know that when this war is over, people will come asking questions about special units like ours. What are you going to tell them, eh? ‘I was helpless’? ‘They made me do it’? ‘I never hurt anybody’?”
“I won’t tell anybody anything. I assume everything we do here is strictly confidential.”
“What we do here is not confidential. It doesn’t even exist. As far as I’m concerned, you are not yet part of this team. You never do anything to anybody.”
“That’s not true. I worked the General on Sanchez.”
“The Captain made you do it. First opportunity you get, you’re going to blab to everybody what went on here.”
“That’s not true either. I’m on your side. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that.”
He and Lopez had guardroom duty that afternoon. Lopez was always more friendly to him when the others weren’t around.
“What did Tito mean about my leaving just when things got interesting? Did she talk, the Sanchez woman?”
“No, she didn’t. She seems determined to die, this bitch. It’s unaccountable.” Lopez could come out with words like that once in a while. Talk like a complete thug and then suddenly he would use a word that sounded like the tattered remains of an education.
“She had more meetings with the General?”
