after that he felt his right leg being lifted. Every part of him screamed as his bare foot was placed into the open grate of the oven, above the dying fire. He came violently alive and screamed into the sock and tried to withdraw. But the men held him there.
“Do you understand?” the man above him repeated calmly.
Adolfo nodded vigorously as he kicked and rocked and tried to get away. The man turned toward the others. They withdrew his foot and set it back down. The flesh screamed and he was viciously awake. But the pain focused his mind. He was panting through the sock and squirming under their grip. He looked up wide-eyed at the one dark face.
The man removed the sock and held it over Adolfo’s mouth. “Who do you work with?” he asked. Adolfo was panting heavily. His foot felt icy-hot, like ocean spray on a bad sunburn.
He felt them lift up the other leg.
“Who do you work with?”
“A general,” Adolfo gasped. “An Air Force general named Pintos. Roberto Pintos.”
“Where is he stationed?”
Adolfo didn’t answer. It was time to wait a little before lying again. The one time Adolfo had met General Amadori — the real general, not this imaginary General Pintos — was at a meeting of nonmilitary aides in an airplane hangar in Burgos. There, the General had warned everyone that this day might come. That they might be found out and interrogated. He said that once the war had begun, it wouldn’t matter what they said. But he cautioned them to hold out as long as possible for their own sense of honor.
“Where is General Pintos stationed?” the torturer continued.
Adolfo shook his head. The sock was crushed back into his mouth and he felt himself jerked forward on the left and his foot placed into the ferocious heat. His struggles were as frantic as before. But while the pain was awful and it drew sweat from every inch of him, there was one thing comforting. The pain in his right foot was not so blinding anymore. He held on to that thought until the pain in his left foot tore it from his mind and sent sheets of anguish up and down his entire body. Except for his right hand. He felt nothing there. Nothing at all, not even pain — and that scared him. It made him feel a little dead.
They pulled his foot from the fire and dropped it back down. They pinned him again. The dark face came close to him again. The tears in Adolfo’s eyes smeared the black shape.
“Where is Pintos stationed?”
The sheets of pain had become a constant burning, but it was less intense. Adolfo knew that he could hold out until the next round — whatever the next round was. He was proud of himself. In a strange way he felt free. Free to suffer, free to resist. But it was his choice.
“Ba — Barcelona,” Adolfo moaned.
“You’re lying,” the torturer replied.
“N-no!”
“How old is he?”
“F-fifty-two.”
“What color is his hair?”
“Brown.”
The torturer smacked Adolfo. “You’re lying!”
Adolfo looked up at the face and shook his head once. “No. I speak… the truth.”
The face hovered a moment longer and then the sock was shoved back down. Adolfo felt himself tugged to the side. They grabbed his left arm and held it and pushed his hand into the opening.
He screamed in his throat as his fingers curled into a fist and fought to get out of the heat. And then everything went dark.
He woke bent over the sink with water rushing down over the back of his head. He coughed, vomited up the stew, then was dropped onto his back on the floor. Every patch of flesh on his feet and left hand throbbed hotly.
The sock was thrust back in his mouth.
“You’re strong,” the dark face said to him. “But we have time and I have experience. The first things men always give up are lies. We will continue until we have the truth.” He bent closer. “Will you tell us who you work with?”
Adolfo was trembling. The parts of him that weren’t burned or broken were chilly. It seemed very odd to feel something so trivial as that. He shook his head twice.
This time he wasn’t moved. The sock was pushed harder into his mouth and held there. One of the crowbars was raised over Adolfo’s right shoulder and was swung down hard. The bone broke audibly under the blow. He cried into the sock. The crowbar was raised again and struck lower, between the shoulder and elbow. Another bone broke. He cried again. Each blow brought a burst of agony and a yelp and then numbness.
Each scream was a rent in his will. The pain was just pain but every scream was a surrender. And as he surrendered those pieces of his fighting spirit, he had less to draw on.
“When you talk, the beating will stop,” the voice said.
Someone started working on his left side and he jumped and howled with each strike. He felt the wall of resistance crumble faster now. And then something surprising happened. He didn’t feel like himself anymore. His body was broken; that wasn’t him. His will was shattered; that wasn’t him. He was someone else. And that someone else wanted to talk.
He said something into the sock. The face came down and the beating stopped. The sock was removed.
“Am… Am…”
“What?” said the dark face.
“Ama… dori.”
“Amadori?” the face repeated.
“Am… a… do… ri.” Each syllable rode out on a breath. Adolfo couldn’t help himself. He just wanted the pain to stop. “Gen… er… al.”
“General Amadori,” the face said. “That’s who you work with?”
Adolfo nodded.
“Is there anyone else?”
Adolfo shook his head once. He shut his eyes.
“Do you believe him?” someone asked.
“Look at him,” someone replied. “He hasn’t got the wits left to lie.”
Adolfo felt himself being released. It felt good just to lie there on his back. He opened his eyes and stared up at the dark figures gathered around him.
“What do we do with him?” one man asked.
“He killed Senor Ramirez,” said another. “He dies. Slowly.”
That was the final word on the matter — not by concensus but because the man swung his crowbar down on Adolfo’s throat. The fisherman’s head jerked up and then fell back as his larynx shattered; his dead arms didn’t move. Then he lay there tasting blood and wheezing. He was able to draw just enough breath to remain conscious but not enough to satisfy his lungs.
The pain settled into a steady roar, which helped to keep him conscious. He was Adolfo Alcazar again but the agony in his limbs and in his throat made it difficult to string thoughts together. He couldn’t decide whether he’d acted courageously by holding out for as long as he did or cowardly for having succumbed at all. Flashes of thought said yes he’d been brave, then no he hadn’t. And then it didn’t seem to matter as he shivered and the pain suddenly attacked him. Sometimes it came in like the tide, engulfing him. Sometimes it lapped at him like tiny breakers out at sea. The small swells he could manage. But the big ones tortured him. God, how they made him shake all over.
He had no idea how long he lay there and whether his eyes had been open or closed. But suddenly his eyes
