“And if you don’t participate in one way,” Yunques 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?”
“Not just the General. She’s made the Captain angry now. It’s becoming personal now, and that’s much worse for her. We did the water thing to her-have you seen that yet?”
“No.”
“Put a wet towel over her face, pour water all over it. Basically drowns them without killing them. She choked and cried like a motherfucker but didn’t tell us a thing.”
“Maybe she really knows nothing. Maybe she is innocent.”
“Don’t be an idiot. If she was innocent, she would have told us everything she knows. She would have given up her grade three teacher by now, if she was innocent.” Lopez laughed at some memory. “When the rat trick doesn’t work, you
“Maybe she will never talk. Maybe some people-”
“Don’t be stupid. You think she’s going to continue this way if we take her eye out with a pencil? We’re just going easy on her because she’s a woman. We can afford to take time. Otherwise they turn you into a monster, and that’s no good. Then it’s like the bastards have won-the rebels, I mean. If they turn you into a monster, it’s like all the things they’ve been saying about us are true. But listen, my friend.” Lopez leaned forward and spoke in a quieter voice. “If I were you, I’d worry more about myself. Tito is going to have your nuts in a vise if you don’t participate more. I mean it. He don’t like what he’s heard about you. He don’t trust you. This afternoon you better show some enthusiasm or, you know, there might be an accident one night-a grenade or something.”
They listened for the rest of the morning to the sounds from the interrogation room. There was a tea party with cookies for one of the male prisoners. A tea party was a regular beating; a tea party with cookies was a beating with clubs.
When they dragged him back to the cells, Victor could not see a single mark on his face.
ELEVEN
When the woman was first brought to the little school, she had been wearing a watch that hung loosely on her left wrist until the Captain had taken it from her. He brought it to the interrogation room, pulling it out of a manila envelope. It was a large man’s watch, a Bulova with gold trim and a gold flexible band. It was engraved on the back:
The Captain read the inscription aloud. “Who is this J.?” he asked her. “Who is this J. who gave you the watch?”
“Jose. Jose was my brother. He is dead now.”
“Brothers do not give watches to their sisters,” the Captain said. “Nor do they engrave them.”
He asked her the question over and over, and every time she gave the same answer.
Captain Pena said to Victor, “Clearly, the M. is just to convince us her name is really Maria, although we know it is not Maria. The J., however, is another matter. This J. could be a real person, and I want to know who it is.”
“I told you. It is my brother, Jose.”
“Listen,” the Captain said to her. “Maybe you can win your smelly little watch back.” He unbound her thumbs and slid the watch over her left wrist. “All you have to do is tell us what we want to know.”
“You wanted his name,” she said. “I gave you his name.”
Captain Pena kicked her in the shin-it would have looked childish had it not been done with such force. For the next few minutes the woman sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.
Victor had not seen her for the three days he was sick, and he was shocked by the change in her appearance. Her face had taken on a grey, corpse-like hue, and the set of her features had changed utterly. Where before they had had a fixed, determined look, now they were slack and puffy. The woman’s words were still defiant, but the sag of her shoulders and the slack muscles of her cheeks resembled only death. It was as if the spirit had already left her body, and what defiance remained was only reflex.
Perhaps courage itself is just a reflex, Victor thought, and cowardice too. No credit or blame could attach where there was only reflex. Neither the brave nor the cowardly would be responsible for their actions. She was not a saint, and he was not a demon.
“Hit her,” Captain Pena said to Victor.
Victor was caught off guard. He had sat himself down at the table with pencil in hand, ready as always to play secretary. “Pardon me, Captain?”
“You heard me. Hit her.”
The other soldiers folded their arms across their chests and watched.
Victor put down his pencil and walked around the table. An actual physical blow-his fist against her flesh- would be harder to administer than a shock. More personal. The woman tensed at his approaching footsteps.
Victor punched her in the belly, not too high. She doubled over.
“I said hit her, not tickle her. She didn’t even feel it.” Captain Pena stepped back against the wall, folded his arms like the others, and stared at Victor.
Tito moved away from the woman and stood beside the Captain. Then Yunques and Lopez moved to the opposite wall. He felt their eyes sink into him like fangs.
Victor’s terror expressed itself in a fury of punches. The woman had no time to recover from one before another caught her somewhere else. Some part of Victor still kept the blows low-the ribs, the side, the hip. He meant to give her a good one in the chest-a convincing punch that would knock her back against the wall without doing too much damage-but the woman chose that moment to tip forward and his punch connected with her face. He felt her tooth break the skin on his knuckles and he also felt the tooth snap. The woman tumbled back against the wall, cracking her head against it, blood pouring from her upper lip.
