Mortals

Hopping mad would capture him. He was a peculiar figure, a gaunt, bald man in his forties whose prominent, knoblike cleft approached deformity. It was severe enough, in its resemblance to a pair of buttocks, that it might, Ray thought, have pushed Quartus out of the main game where the most symmetrical and physically standard usually won and into the military realm where traits like ferocity would carry you up the stairway to power no matter what you looked like, if you didn’t get killed along the way, and where rage at what nature had done to you could be productively redirected at selected representatives of the more normal population. He was cursing in Afrikaans. I have regular features, Ray thought. His appearance had never been an obstacle to whatever he might have wanted to do, for which it made sense to be thankful in the There but for the Grace of God Go I sense, a platitude which in itself ought to be enough to destroy religion at the root the moment anyone employing it fully grasped what it meant about God.

He was having a seizure of sympathy for Quartus, for his joke of a chin and for the dire anxiety showing in his exhausted-looking face. Ray had seen him plainly up close and he was not taking it well. Oppression is hard work, Ray thought.

Quartus was a Boer, definitely. His eyes were cornflower blue. One eyelid was burdened with a sty. From gums to mid-level, his teeth were tobacco-stained. If he had a wife she would pity him, seeing him as Ray was seeing him.

Both men lunged toward Ray, converged on him. All in the same moment his blindfold was jerked back into place and he was slapped across the mouth, twice, and then once, harder, on the side of the head.

These people knew how their blindfolds worked. And they had both immediately concluded that the thing hadn’t slipped down on its own, by happenstance. They hadn’t even given him the chance to claim that it was all an accident. They knew. And then one of them hit him again on the side of the head. The previous blow had left his ear ringing. Now it was howling. People are fools, he thought. Hitting his ear was counterproductive. Why would they do it if they wanted him to answer their questions with any celerity? They would have to shout. He would tell them why.

There was a lull. He heard the door close. And then they were back and someone was behind him forcing a hood over his head and pushing the blindfold down as he did. It was a black hood with a drawstring mouth. It was totally opaque and the thick cloth it was made from was saturated with a foul musk combining the odors of garlic, blood, and sweat. It was his own fault. He was breathing the perfume of his predecessors, the previous wearers of the hood. The thought gave him a perverse feeling of cold strength.

Another lull began. He had to keep in mind that all this hysteria about keeping him from getting a good look at the players was an indicator that they were expecting at some point to release him rather than kill him, or that at the very least they were interested in preserving the option. He held the thought. He wanted them to come back. He wanted this to start, so it could end.

It had started routinely, boringly, even. It had begun with Quartus smoking, blowing smoke Ray’s way, taking his time. Ray had been asked to give the story of what he was doing in the area, slowly, with detail. And he had. And Quartus had informed him repeatedly but patiently that he knew he was lying. And then Quartus had given him the opportunity to deny that he knew anything at all about the incriminada, the guns, the packets of rands and pulas, the stupid smoke grenades. And then Quartus had gone down a list of names, African names, starting with Samuel Kerekang, twenty names exactly, and given him the chance to admit he knew these names and knew how the names were connected and knew what these people were doing to innocent people all through the northwest, the crimes they were committing. And Ray had denied any knowledge of any of the names. And Quartus, affecting sadness, had said that, after Ray had taken a little time to think more, it would be necessary to go over the list again, only the second time there would be measures taken to help his memory. And then, after a break, when the session resumed, Quartus’s assistant had rewarded each denial of acquaintanceship or knowledge with blows to Ray’s arms and shoulders, not open-handed blows during this round, no. Ray had been struck with what felt like an enormous knot tied at one end of a length of rope. The thing came whistling down. The knot was the size of an orange. Quartus’s assistant swung the knot around in the air, making the whistling sound, more often than actually striking with it. That was for terror purposes. It was childish. He was a hittingbeast. It was to keep Ray off guard, never knowing when the next blow would land. And as to the implement itself, there was a reason it was being employed. The knot was yielding. You could hit more and bruise less. It was like the bar of Ivory soap in a kneesock that some bastards used for hurting people during interrogations. The theory was that when it was brought down full force the bar would break in two along the grooved line scored into its midsection, making bruises but not breaking bone, if he was remembering correctly, or was it that the soap broke precisely before causing unconsciousness, hurting and shocking the victim just up to that point? He couldn’t remember. The knot was different but similar. It wasn’t like being hit with a mallet. It could go on longer, obviously. So far they were hitting him mainly through his clothing. There was protection in that. Everything was subject to change. They were taking another break.

He devoted himself again to listening. He had a task, which was to remember, record, register everything, against the possibility that someday somebody would be interested in punishing these stupid villains, unlikely as that might be. He would be ready, he himself, by God above. We all need a task, he thought. Iris had been given a task, by him, her task being to be his beloved, his be-all, which she had gotten tired of or gotten to dislike. If that was the case he was sorry, but it was still true that we all needed tasks. He thought, I’m not a great… thing, thing to love forever… I am not great nor do I think continually of those who were truly great, which would be a waste of time, colossal waste of time. Only a fool would do that. He wanted the interrogation to proceed. The hard part was coming. Life is extreme, he thought.

He was getting an idea. He could do something on the order of who was it, Lee Marvin, in The Dirty Dozen, when he fouled up a word association test by taking every response from baseball, being completely unhelpful to the psychiatrist testing him, giving him nothing. In his own case he could answer every question with a gem, a quotation from English Literature, verse especially. He could try it. He could try it a little later, depending on how things went. And if he could pull out quotes that were somehow apposite to the question he was refusing to answer, that would be best of all.

The door opened and closed and his friends were back. There was some shuffling of papers. Someone was lighting a cigarette. No, they both were. Someone was standing over him, close, blowing smoke at him, probably the assistant. There could be something positive here. He would never want to be a smoker again, after this. The negative associations would be helpful. It was Iris who had gotten him to stop smoking even before the worst news about the health effects of smoking had come out. So the question was whether his vices would reassert themselves in the next stage of things, when he was alone, when she was somewhere else, not helping. The answer was no, he hoped. Your charred breath was a phrase of hers from the first days of their marriage.

Quartus began. “Meneer, now you are going to tell me the truth. I am finished with playing about. I am finished and that is all. So.” Papers were being handled.

Quartus continued. “So, meneer, I will tell you why you have come to be with us. You have a friend, meneer, who was at one time to be found not so far away, at Toromole. You came to call on him, isn’t it?”

Ray said, “No. Nothing you are saying means anything to me. I’m not going to Toromole. And what shall I call you? How shall I address you properly? I know I asked this before but I think you failed to answer.”

“Call me nothing, meneer.”

Quartus’s English was decent, but the hardness of his b’s and d’s and his phrasing reflected the influence of his bedrock Afrikaans, a language whose standard delivery, in Ray’s opinion, resembled biting more than it did normal talking.

The smoke was too much and Ray began coughing. It was bad. It was torture, in fact, coughing inside a hood. It was clever, too, as a form of torture, if you were concerned to leave no marks, half suffocating a victim with smoke while he had a hood on. He hadn’t heard of it. He would have to be ready to hold his breath if this was going to continue. The varieties of torture here were pretty infinite. His chest hurt. His throat, too. He craved water. They wanted him to beg for it.

But someone else was coughing, having a coughing fit right along with him. Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust, he thought. Whoever was coughing had a condition. He thought it must be Quartus. For a moment they were animals together in a similar affliction.

“Who do you think I am, then?” Quartus asked, when the fit had passed.