“The fact that they are orphans. Is the United States against feeding children?”
“I’ll ask the questions. Who invited you to be part of this humanitarian effort?”
“I told you. No one. I volunteered. All I do is collect a few cans of food and bring them to the church basement.”
Wheat looked at the Captain, shaking his head at her obstinacy. Then he turned back to the woman. “Who asked you to volunteer?”
“No one. Why is that so hard to believe? If I make up a name to please you, they will just beat me when they find out it is false. If I give you the name of a real person who has nothing to do with me or the orphans or the rebels, that person will be arrested and tortured just like me. But you still won’t have whatever it is you want.”
“I want to know the source of the embassy leak.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“Do you know a woman named Teresita Sanchez?”
“Teresita Sanchez. No.”
“Teresita Sanchez-Vega.”
“I don’t know her.”
“Are you sure you want to stick with that story?”
“It’s not a story. It’s just the way it is.”
“She’s a typist at the embassy.”
“I’m glad. Jobs are precious these days.”
“I’m asking you if you know her.”
“And I’m telling you the truth. I do not know her.”
“Your name is Sanchez, her name is Sanchez. And you don’t know her?”
“It’s a common name. Surely you know this.”
“San Salvador is not that big a town.”
“It’s two million people!”
“You have the same last name.”
“I don’t know her. If I did, I would not deny it, because I have no dealings with this person, no connection whatsoever. I wish I could tell you yes, if that would get me out of here.”
“You said you would co-operate.”
“Believe me, I’m trying to. At this moment I want nothing more than to please you, to make you feel that I am trying to help you by telling the truth.”
“This is what you call co-operation?”
“Please. Just entertain for a moment the possibility that I am not lying. Ask yourself what I have to gain and what I have to lose.”
“You know exactly what you have to gain. So tell me the truth: do you know Teresita Sanchez-Vega?”
“No, sir. I don’t.”
“This is not co-operation. I’m going to let you think about it some more. I’ll ask you again in ten days.”
“I don’t think so. By then I will be dead.”
“Get her out of my sight,” Wheat said.
The Captain snapped his fingers, and Yunques led her away to the cells.
“She has a real attitude problem,” Wheat said when she was gone. “Real hard case, that one.”
“To tell you the truth,” the Captain said, “we don’t suspect this prisoner of any connection to the embassy. We only suspect her of taking food to the enemy.”
“But we had this Sanchez at the embassy. We were sure she was the leak.”
“And now you’re not sure?”
“Little Miss Sanchez was killed, see. But the leaks started up again.”
“You killed her?”
“I resent that, Captain. What kind of outfit do you think we run?”
“Forgive me. You thought she was a spy, she was killed, naturally I thought ….”
“She was raped and murdered on her way home one night. Terrible thing.”
“Terrible.”
“Of course, the fact that the leaks started up again after she died doesn’t necessarily put her in the clear.”
“No. There could be more than one leak.”
“I want you to hang on to this Sanchez prisoner. You understand, I’m under a lot of pressure to plug that leak.”
“I understand.”
“And if I can ever do anything for you one day, well, one hand washes the other, right, Captain?”
“Right. We will keep on her, Mr. Wheat. Don’t you worry.”
TEN
The American’s visit was so brief as to seem hallucinatory. One moment he was there, the next he was nothing but a memory of blond hair and a whiff of aftershave. When he was gone, the soldiers had their lunch, and then in the afternoon the woman was brought back to the interrogation room, where they left her alone, tied to the chair. Tito liked to make her wait like this, knowing the torture would come but not knowing when or what form it would take. After half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, they connected her up to the machine as if she were herself an electronic device without which the little school could not run.
Once again Victor took down a record of the interrogation while Tito worked the dial. All through the woman’s screams and the shouted questions, Victor felt a growing thickness in the back of his throat like an oncoming cold. And at the crown of his head there was a sore spot as if he had been tapped with a small, hard object there. Much of what he wrote was blurred with sweat.
Then Tito shocked the woman too hard and she fainted. When they could not revive her, Lopez and Victor carried her to her cell.
“Too bad the whore is not on our side,” Lopez muttered. “She is one tough bitch.”
Victor was glad to be on guard duty while his colleagues interrogated other prisoners. He could hear the mutter of gunfire from the nearby rifle range, and the odd sergeant’s shout from the garrison. He sat at the little table, his head in his hands, feeling himself sink into a fever as if toward the bottom of the sea. He hardly noticed when they came for Ignacio Perez, the man in the cell across from the woman’s. Perez was the only prisoner there who seemed to Victor as if he might actually be a guerrilla. He was not much older than Victor, short but powerfully built, and he resisted the soldiers like a wild dog, kicking and screaming at them.
Victor’s brow was hot as an iron in his hand. He barely heard the shouts and cries coming from what used to be the little school’s playground. They were playing Submarine with Perez. So far, Victor had not had to participate in that particular game, where one or two soldiers would toss the prisoner into the tank of water that had been fouled with every kind of filth the school could produce. The prisoner was then forced beneath the surface at the end of a restraining pole, and held there until he near drowned in the shit and piss. Who thought these games up, Victor had wondered when it had first been explained to him. But this day he hardly noticed Tito’s laughter or Perez’s terrified, choked cries.
Later, when Lopez came to relieve him, he sat down at the table with a weary sigh. He looked Victor up and down. “What’s wrong with you, Pena?”
“Nothing. Except I just ….” Victor had to lean on the back of the chair to steady himself. His words were slurring like those of a drunk. “I think maybe I’m getting a cold or something.”
“You’re shivering like a-”
Victor didn’t hear what Lopez said next, because a gauzy curtain closed between them. He felt a smile spreading like butter across his face, and then his legs folded beneath him.
For the next three days he lay in bed, clenched in a fever, except for the times when he dragged himself to the barracks toilet. At his lowest point he perched on the toilet while at the same time leaning over a bucket, discharging violently from both ends.
In bed, dreams and memories intermingled. He dreamed of his uncle’s appearing to him like an angel of deliverance at the military prison. He dreamed of Mr. Wheat walking among the bodies of El Playon amid a scent not of death but of aftershave. Spirits rose like steam from the bodies, calling Victor to join them-death wasn’t so bad, it wasn’t so bad once you got used to it. It was better than being afraid all the time. In the dis tance, a woman called a name he couldn’t quite make out.
The doctor visited him. Later, Victor wasn’t sure if it had been real, because the doctor had grown a small moustache and his hair was black again. But it must have been real, because there was a bottle of medicine on a small wooden box that was his bedside table. It tasted like licorice and made the dreams even more vivid.