Breaking Lorca

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 and 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.