Authors: Giles Blunt
THIRTEEN
O
N HER TENTH DAY
at the little school, the woman broke. By now she was not recognizable as the defiant creature they had dragged into captivity. I have done this to her, Victor thought as he led her into the interrogation room. I have helped in this destruction.
“Today is your lucky day,” Captain Peña said when Victor sat her down. Ten days ago she might have responded with bitterness, but now she only hung her head. Dark, matted hair straggled over her face.
“What’s the matter, whore?” Tito yanked her head back. “You sleepy? Listen to the Captain!”
“As I say, young lady, today is your lucky day. No one is going to hurt you today. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
The woman said nothing. Victor tried to will her to answer. Please reply, he thought. It will go better if you reply.
“I said we’re not going to hurt you today. Doesn’t that make you happy?” the Captain repeated.
“Answer, whore.” Tito pulled on her hair so that her throat was exposed.
“It makes me happy,” she said dully. Her voice was now little more than a whisper.
“Louder, please. I can’t hear you.”
“It makes me happy.”
“We are not going to kick you, today. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“It makes me happy.”
“We are not going to fuck you. We are not going to pull out your hair. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“It makes me happy.”
“We are not going to hang you from the pipes today. Doesn’t that make you happy?”
“It makes me happy.”
“We are not going to stick any rats inside you, not even any cockroaches. What do you think about that?”
“It makes me very happy.”
“And today, the General will not be attaching himself to you. That must make you
very
happy.”
“It makes me very happy.”
Victor was glad to hear this also, but it was obvious from the Captain’s tone that something else was going to happen. Something unpleasant.
“Good,” said Captain Peña. “Excellent. Because we want you to be happy. We don’t want to hurt you. All we want is for you to tell us your real name. After that, you can fill in the details. Who you report to, who works with you, where you drop off supplies. That kind of thing.”
“But I know nothing of these matters. I’ve told you a thousand times.” The woman spoke into her chest, she did not raise her head.
“Yes, a thousand times,” the Captain said pleasantly. “A thousand times, and a thousand lies. But today it will all change. It is all about to change, and we are not even going to lay a hand on you. Bring him in.”
Now the woman’s shoulders jumped a little. And she lifted her face. It was still swollen, the upper lip puffy where Victor had hit her.
Tito opened the door and shouted the Captain’s order down the hall. A moment later Yunques brought the boy in, soaking wet. Yunques was not soft like Victor; he would have made sure the boy did not sleep.
“I want you to introduce yourself to this woman.”
The boy faced one way then another. It always took the prisoners a while to get used to being blindfolded. They were never sure if they were being spoken to unless they were addressed as
whore
or
faggot
.
“Yes, you. Tell this woman your name.”
“My name is Jaime Reyes.” The blindfold emphasized the full lips, his girl’s mouth.
“Very good,” the Captain said. “You’re doing very well so far. Now, tell this woman here where you are from.”
“I live on the Cuzcatlán plantation. Near El Playón.”
“Tell her how old you are.”
“I am thirteen years old. I will be fourteen in October.”
“Bastard,” the woman said quietly.
“Now, now,” the Captain said. “There is no need to insult the boy. We have every reason to believe he is a legitimate child of God-fearing parents.”
“Do not do this,” the woman said. “For your own soul’s sake, I beg you, do not do this.”
“Thirteen years old, Miss Whoever-you-are. Thirteen years old, this boy. Would you like to turn fourteen?”
“Yes, sir. I will be fourteen in October.” The boy was on the edge of tears, and Victor saw that the fabric of his shirt, even though wet, was trembling.
“Thirteen. You must have been confirmed this year.”
“Yes, sir. At the cathedral.”
“Did the bishop give you a little slap on the cheek?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me, I never understood that slap. What does that little slap mean, exactly?”
“It means—it means that our faith will be tested. Our faith will be tested, and we must prepare ourselves.”
“Well, I’m glad you are prepared, Mr. Fourteen-in-October. Very glad. As a man of faith, little Jaime, you will be interested to know that this woman here is an incarnation of the Virgin Mary—although I assure you from first-hand experience, she is no longer a virgin. Nevertheless, she has the Blessed Virgin’s wonderful power to protect. You know about this? To intercede. Remember this, Jaime. I am God, and this woman here is the Blessed Virgin.”
The prisoner strained forward in her chair. “You are evil,” she said in her cracked voice. “You are an evil man. The woman does not live who would knowingly bear you a son.”
Captain Peña ignored her. “This woman, little Jaime, this woman can cause you pain, or she can save you from pain. It is
entirely in her power
, I want you to be clear on this. Whether you are in pain or not, whether you shed tears or blood, it is
entirely within her power
.”
“Please don’t hurt me, sir. I have done nothing wrong.”
“Don’t be afraid. I’m sure Our Lady will protect you. Do you have any brothers or sisters, Jaime?”
“Two. Two sisters. They are younger than me.”
“No brothers?”
The boy swallowed. Beneath the wet shirt, his breathing was as fast as a rabbit’s.
“Answer the Captain, faggot.”
“I have one brother, but I don’t know where he is. I believe he is with the rebels in Chalatenango.”
“A brother with the rebels in Chalatenango. Well, this is an unexpected bonus. What is your brother’s name?”
“Dario.”
“Dario Reyes. The Blessed Virgin here may be personally acquainted with him. But we don’t know, little Jaime, because Our Lady will tell us nothing. That is going to end very soon. Is there anything you would like to say?”
“Please don’t hurt me, sir. I am not a rebel. I have done no wrong.”
“I believe you. I am sure you are a good boy. That is the whole point. Soldier,” he barked at Tito, and the boy’s shoulders jerked up to his ears, “what shall we do with him?”
“Hard to say, Captain. There are many possibilities.”
“Give me your thoughts. What would be most effective, in your view?”
“How about we cut his thing off. We cut his thing off, we cook it, and then we feed it to the Virgin here. Make her eat it.”
“Very imaginative.”
“Please don’t hurt me, sir. Please—I will do anything you say. Anything you want me to, I’ll do.” The boy was crying hard, his words wildly distorted.
“Or we could pull his fingernails out. That’s very painful.”
“It’s a little bloodier than I had in mind. And a little slow. I hate to make a mess in here. Look at that, he’s pissing his pants.”
“You fucking little faggot, I’m going to make you lick that up.”
“Leave it for now. Give me some ideas.”
“Cocksucker. Pissing on our clean floor. How would you like to meet the General, huh? How about I introduce you to the General right now?”
“Leave him alone,” the woman said. “Please. Just let the boy go, and maybe I can tell you some things you want to know.”
The Captain, Tito, all the soldiers looked at her. Silence fell over them as they realized that she had offered to talk. The only sounds were the boy’s.
“She’s talking,” Victor said hurriedly. “Let me drag this little faggot back to his cell.” He grabbed the boy by his soaking collar.
Captain Peña shrieked, “Leave the boy where he is!” He slapped the woman full force across the face. “You think you make bargains with us? You think maybe you will
negotiate
with us? You whore. I will show you how we negotiate. I will show you exactly how we negotiate. On your back, faggot. Get down on the floor.”
The boy was handcuffed, but he began to kick out blindly. His foot connected glancingly with Victor’s groin, and he doubled over and groaned, as if the injury were great. Lopez and Tito wrestled the boy to the floor, pinning him down on his back.
“Get his leg up on the bed frame. Just the heel. Get his leg up.”
They dragged him across the floor, the boy begging
please, please, please
the whole way. Victor had sunk to his knees with eyes closed. He could hear in the knife-edge of his uncle’s voice, in Tito’s silence, in the sharp, near-hysterical cries of Lopez and Yunques, that a threshold had been crossed. Violence had been launched. Violence had been launched and was now as impossible to recall as a missile that has been fired.
“Listen to this,” Captain Peña yelled in the woman’s ear. “You listen close to this sound! If you weren’t such a whore, this would not have happened.”
The boy’s leg was propped up on the bed frame at a forty-five-degree angle to the floor. Captain Peña took one step and jumped onto the leg with his full weight. Victor’s gorge rose at the sound it made and he nearly vomited. The boy was shrieking uncontrollably.
“You hear that, whore? You hear? This boy’s leg is broken. That’s what you’ve done. You’ve broken his leg. You could have stopped it, and you didn’t. Next time you beg for mercy, I want you to think about what you did to this boy.”
Tito kicked the boy in the head and the shrieks turned to moans.
“Put them together in her cell. Keep them both wet. Nobody gets any sleep until this bitch has told us everything she knows: brothers, sisters, grade school teachers, past lives, everything. This bitch is going to sing.”
“Shit, boss,” Tito grumbled, “I was hoping we could set the little faggot on fire.”
“Maybe tomorrow.” Captain Peña shrugged as he went out the door. “It all depends on the Virgin.”
FOURTEEN
I
T WAS NOT NECESSARY
to torture the boy further; the woman was quite broken. The next day she sat across the table from Captain Peña and Victor and she told them everything they wanted to know.
And now it was over. The torture was done, the questions were done, it only remained to kill her.
It was nine o’clock, the night was black and violent. The sky had opened, and rain thundered around the little school in chestnut-sized drops that clattered on the hood and roof of the Jeep. The soldiers wore their plastic ponchos, beneath which their heavy arms bulged as if they were pregnant.
The woman was led—handcuffed, blindfolded, at gunpoint—to the Cherokee. The filthy tank top clung to her breasts, making the nipples stand out. Victor guided her into the back of the truck. The boy, unconscious and feverish, had to be carried. His pants were torn to the knee. A rough end of shin bone poked through the skin.
Even with the wipers flapping back and forth, the rain reduced visibility to a few yards, and Victor had to drive at a snail’s pace. He knew the way to Puerto del Diablo—not because he had been there as a soldier, but because it was on Lake Ilopango, where he had gone swimming many times. Diablo was a high cliff east of the beaches where he had sunned himself as a teenager.
The windows fogged up and he had to slow down even more, wiping them off with the back of his hand. He was afraid that Tito, slouched in the seat beside him, would start to scream about not taking all night to get there. But nobody spoke. The atmosphere in the Jeep took on a thick, damp solemnity. The boy groaned whenever they went over a bump.
Victor could see Lopez in the rear-view. He wore an abstracted air, as if his mind were switched off. If Lopez felt any guilt about the murder he was about to assist in, the heavy features gave no clue.
They came to a sign that pointed to the public beach one way, Puerto del Diablo the other. Victor made a right, and they drove now in a slightly tenser silence.
“Stop here,” Tito said.
“My name is Lorca,” she had told them. Ten days of screams and tears had left her nearly voiceless. “Lorca Viera.”
“Lorca? Lorca is not a first name. You want me to drag that boy in here and snap his arm too?”
“My name is Lorca,” she said again, and Victor wrote it down. He was writing everything down. “My father loved very much the poetry of Federico García Lorca. He named me after this poet. It is a strange name, I agree.”
“And this father of yours, tell us about him. Who is he? What does he do?”
“He’s in his grave. He has been dead eight years. His name was Paul Nuñez-Viera.”
“Oh, no. You have to be making this up. You are telling me your father was
General
Viera?”
“General Viera, yes.”
“My God, I knew him! Isn’t that amazing? I took a night-tactics class under him! General Viera! He was a wonderful soldier. A wonderful warrior! My God, you didn’t mess with that man—he was one of the most intelligent, respected—can you really be related to him?”
The woman shrugged. “He was my father.”
“Until the terrorists killed him. What a loss that was. What a catastrophe.”
“For you, maybe. Not for the country. My father killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people. His death was a victory for El Salvador.”
“You’re disgusting. Your own father.” The Captain asked about her mother then. Her mother was also dead.
“Will you get the boy a doctor?” she asked suddenly, catching the Captain off guard.
“Maybe we will get him a doctor. It depends how things go with you.”
“The bone is through the skin. He will die of infection.”
“Tell us more about your family.”
Her relation to the famous general had changed the Captain’s view of her, Victor saw. Even if she had hated her father, she could not deny the blood in her own veins, and the Captain was a great believer in blood. He spoke to her now as if they had struck up an acquaintance on a long train trip.
“You have a sister, do you not?”
“I have a younger sister. Teresa.”
“Teresa works with you?”
“She works with me, yes. She helps feed the children at the church.”
“Address, please.”
She gave an address. Victor knew as he wrote it down that it would be the correct one. The sister would not be there now; the prisoner had won that battle. But she might be found eventually.
“But you don’t just feed the children at the church, do you, Miss Viera. The food you were carrying was meant for the FMLN, wasn’t it. Tell the truth, now. I really don’t want to hurt that boy any more.”
“Part of the food was for the children. The rest goes to the rebels.”
“Thank you. Now we are making progress. Tell me how the schedules were arranged—we only caught you by accident, you know. It was just a random check.”
She told the Captain what he wanted to know. The thin mouth, the drawn cheeks, her broken tooth—her features were a picture of exhaustion.
The questions went on. Coffee was brought, pads of paper were filled. The three of them took breaks and smoked cigarettes, Victor silent, Captain Peña chatting about inconsequential things. As the afternoon wore on, the Captain addressed the woman as if her own destruction had been a project they had worked on together—a tough job on the verge of completion—and now they could sit back and relax together.
He imagines that he has won, Victor said to himself, but this woman, this Lorca, has defeated us all. Because of her strength, the Captain and his men, all of us, have degraded ourselves. Her tank top is filthy, her face streaked with blood—the boy’s, probably—and her hair is matted, but this woman is cleaner than we will ever be.
Victor’s forearm cramped from scribbling all the things Lorca Viera told them. She told them how she dropped the food, a large box with a smaller box inside, at the church. She told them who sent her messages; his code name was all she knew, but she told them where she picked them up and the code names of those she relayed them to. More names, more addresses. So many addresses, but she had held out long enough that they would all be empty now.
Sometimes, as she paused to remember something, the tip of her tongue would touch the jagged edge of her front tooth. And then her words would emerge like small metallic objects, colourless and cold. All animation was gone from her, all passion, all hope, leaving just the voice, dry as blowing grass.
Even if we release her, Victor thought, this woman will be a ghost. Who could afford to be seen with her, a known detainee? What man would want her? It would be known she had been raped many times, and men had trouble forgiving the victims of rape. The woman had been extinguished. That was the object of the enterprise, he saw now, and they had achieved it. I have done that, he admitted to himself. I have done that to this woman because, unlike her, I am without courage.
“I believe you said earlier you have a brother,” the Captain said. “Where is he, now? Is he with the rebels also?”
She shook her head.
“What was that? I didn’t hear you.”
“Miguel hid from the war. He went to law school in the United States. My father thought he would come back, but Miguel stayed there. I hated him for it, running from the war like that. He married a North American woman and he stayed. Now, I don’t care. I am happy he is safe.”
“Address, please.”
“His office is on Seventh Avenue, I don’t remember the exact address.”
“We aren’t about to pay him a visit, you know.”
“I know. I did not write to him much. I don’t remember the address.”
“Home address?”
“I don’t know. Some boulevard in New York City.”
Victor’s impressions of New York were shaped by movies. He imagined tall buildings, flowers, fountains, and beautifully dressed people.
Captain Peña circled back from family matters to her connection—slight though it was—to the rebels. Gradually, the gaps in her knowledge were established as consistent and thorough. After three or four hours it was clear she had nothing else to tell them.
“All right,” the Captain said. “Thank you very much. Your troubles are over now. No more pain for you. Tonight we take you to Puerto del Diablo and shoot you.”
“I see. Even though the President has been denying that Diablo is an execution site.”
“Presidents have to be protected from some things.”
“Why do you have to kill me?”
“You were aiding the rebels. It’s called treason, and the punishment is death. It’s simple justice.”
“Then why are we all blindfolded? Justice does not hide its face.”
“Don’t lecture me, whore. I don’t care who your father was.”
“Will you let the boy go now? He has served his purpose, hasn’t he?”
“I haven’t decided yet about the boy. In any case, it’s none of your business.”
In the end, they took the boy with them. Tito had insisted. The boy had seen faces at the plantation; the sergeant could not risk the security of his men. More important, Victor knew they could not forgive the boy the evil they had done him. When he was safely dead, the wound they had inflicted on their own consciences would heal over.
“Stop here.”
Victor pulled to the edge of the road and switched off the motor. Rain hammered at the Jeep and slid in sheets down the windshield.
“Please,” the woman said. “I know my life is over. But don’t kill the boy.”
After her final interrogation, she had been no longer kept in solitary. She and the boy had been thrown in a cell shared by half a dozen others. Through the peephole, Victor had seen her comforting the boy, and she had repeatedly requested medical attention for him.
“You can let him live,” she said now. “Surely you remember how young you were at thirteen?”
“Don’t talk,” Tito said—softly for him. Then he turned to Victor. “Listen, baby, you don’t do a lot of the heavy work, do you?”
“Sergeant?”
“I just volunteered you. You take that bitch to the edge of the cliff and you kill her.” Tito was pure force, his black eyes implacable. “Lopez, you do the boy. Well? What are you waiting for?”
Victor forgot to put up the hood of his poncho. Rain poured down his neck and into his shirt as he went around the back of the Jeep and opened the door. The woman stepped out of the Jeep without being pushed or pulled.
“Which way?” she said. “Let’s get it over with.”
He took her arm with absurd gentleness and led her the twenty paces to the edge of the cliff. The lake was hidden by curtains of rain, but he could hear the waves sloshing seventy-five feet below.
Victor took out his service pistol and pulled back the hammer.
“Mother of God,” she said. “What are you waiting for!”
He stood behind her and raised the pistol to the back of her head. Her hair clung like seaweed to her small, round skull.
Ten yards away, Lopez leaned down and fired into the head of the prone boy. Once, twice. The rain absorbed the noise, making the shots sound like the tinny pops of a cap gun.
Victor’s finger tightened on the trigger. The woman shifted her weight, and suddenly the mud gave way beneath her. The gun popped, there was a muzzle flash, and she was gone. Victor was frozen to the spot. He had missed her, he knew he had missed her. Shooting anything that close up, he would have felt the flash on his hand, but the gun had discharged into empty air.
The mud had collapsed beneath her just as he had fired. He did not hear her hit the rocks below. She was probably still alive. Had the others seen? Would they suspect?
Apparently not. They heard the shot, they saw her fall.
All the way back to town, Victor’s hands trembled on the steering wheel. The rain clattered on the Jeep and reflected the headlights, all but blinding him. He nearly missed the turnoff that would take them back along the service road toward the little school.