“Tell us your name.”
The woman could not have answered even if she had wanted to. She was beyond the reach of the Captain’s words. He yelled at her several more times to reveal her name, but she only kept screaming.
Tito climbed on top of her.
She turned her head to the wall.
“Tell us your name and this will stop.”
“You are scum. I will tell you nothing.”
Yunques was next. It seemed to go on forever, the squeak of the springs and the cries she tried to suppress.
“What is your name?”
“Maria Sanchez. Please stop. Please don’t do this anymore.”
“It’s very easy. Tell us your name and it will stop.”
“I’ve told you my name. Maria Sanchez.”
The Captain snapped his fingers at Victor. In their excitement, the others had forgotten he was there. Now they looked at him, and Victor knew there was no escape. To hesitate would be death: he would be taken out and shot, or they would drown him in that tank full of piss and shit-at best, he would be delivered to Casarossa and shot by firing squad. He unbuckled his trousers and lay on top of the woman.
Her skin was scorching. She smelt like a wet dog. Victor’s penis was a tiny, fearful thing in his hand. He pretended to enter her. He humped up and down a few times. Then he groaned and climbed off.
If she revealed his fakery, he was dead.
But she did not. She cried behind her blindfold, and the small breasts quivered with each sob.
They raped her repeatedly over the next three days, Victor faking it each time, until they tired of her. By then she was becoming too swollen for them to enter.
“This is just the softening-up process,” Captain Pena told Victor in his office. “We don’t really expect them to talk during these preliminaries. It’s just to break their spirit. If she was a man, we’d make him eat shit. Then, when we begin the real pressure, they will know who they are dealing with.”
“But it’s illegal, isn’t it? I mean, it’s rape, isn’t it?”
“You saw what happened to Labredo. You think she would prefer the Labredo methods?”
“No. I’m just worried, you know, about the law.”
“‘In the defence of one’s country, there is no such thing as a crime.’ You know who said that?”
“The President?”
“Napoleon said that. The greatest warrior, the most enlightened ruler, who ever lived.” His uncle lit a cigarette and exhaled the smoke luxuriously. “Look, I don’t get any kick out of screwing this bitch. It’s just a technique, like any other. You afraid she’s going to tell someone?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“She will tell no one. If she has a husband, he will disown her. If she does not have a husband and this gets out, she will never get one. I think you’re making a fundamental confusion,” his uncle said more softly.
“What is that, sir?”
“You are confusing what happens in here with our lives outside. Obviously, none of us is the kind of person who would do these things in the normal course of existence. It doesn’t reflect on who you are as a person. War is a separate reality.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you have any questions, Victor, ask me now. I am your uncle and I want you to understand.”
“I do have one question, sir.”
“Go ahead.”
“Why are you so sure this woman is with the rebels?”
The Captain shrugged and exhaled a stream of smoke. “I’m not.”
SIX
The woman put up a struggle when they came for her each morning. She would curl up against the wall, she would kick out wildly, unseeing, but her attempts to evade them were hopeless. Lopez would simply punch her in the stomach, and then they would carry her, doubled over, along the hall to interrogation.
“So stupid,” Lopez remarked. “You’d think she’d get the idea first time.”
On the fourth day, the routine changed. Sergeant Tito came instead of Lopez. “Congratulations, bitch,” he said. “The General’s here to see you. You get to take a shower.” She backed away from them as she always did. Tito seized her by the arm. “We can’t have you going in there like this. You smell like shit.”
The shower was in the soldiers’ bathroom, just off the kitchen. They led her past the other cells, the woman moving in a hunched, head-down way that was new in her. Even so, she had the temerity to question them. “Which general is it? What is his name?”
“I’m not authorized to tell you his name,” Tito said. “Maybe he’ll tell you, if you ask politely.”
“But he is in charge of the jails, this general? He interviews all the prisoners?”
“Yes, most of the prisoners get to have a chat with the General. I guarantee, he will be interested in your views.”
“Do I get to speak to him alone?”
“We will be there the whole time. Why? You’re not planning to tell him anything nasty about us, are you?”
“I will tell him the truth.”
Tito jerked her shoulders so that she banged her forehead against the doorway. “Sorry,” he said.
They took her into the bathroom and removed the thong that bound her thumbs together. Tito started the water.
“Can I take my blindfold off?”
“Not if you want to live. We’ll be right here, watching you. Take your time. Get nice and clean. We don’t want the General thinking we mistreat you.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Tito sat at the kitchen table and drank a coffee, muttering over the sports section. Victor remained standing with his back to the bathroom doorway. When he finished his coffee, Tito got up and removed the woman’s clothing from the floor where she had left it folded.
The water stopped running. “Is there a towel, please?”
“No towel,” Tito snapped. “You don’t need no towel.”
She stood with her arms folded in front of her. She looked even skinnier in the shower, ribs showing beneath the tiny breasts. Even with the blindfold obscuring her expression, Victor saw she was trying to assess the situation. She squatted down and felt the floor where her clothes had been. The ugly voice dropped down a note. “May I have my clothes, please?”
“No point,” Tito said. “The general will just have you take them off again. He will be checking you for marks of mistreatment. Cuffs.” She turned around and Tito looped the thong around her thumbs and pulled it tight.
When they led her out into the hall, Yunques whistled.
“Shh,” Tito hissed. “The General’s here!”
“Oh, shit. Sorry, sergeant.”
Captain Pena was waiting for them in the interrogation room, sitting at the little table like a customs official. There was a pad and a jar of pencils in front of the chair beside him. He motioned to Victor to sit there, then turned his attention to the woman. “We will be taking down a transcript of everything that is said here today. Please be seated and tell the General your name.”
Tito led the woman to the chair and set her squarely in front of it. Naked and dripping water, she sat down. Victor noticed on the desk a piece of equipment he had not seen before, a black box the size of a tabletop radio with a pointed dial in the middle. Two black leads coiled out from it, and above the dial were two words in white script, General Electric.
“Will you tell the General your real name, the Captain said. “Don’t give us the Maria Sanchez line again.”
“Maria Sanchez happens to be my real name. I can’t help it if it’s a common name. General, are you here?” Blindly, she turned her head toward Victor. “General, these men have raped me every day since I’ve been here. For three days now. Every morning they rape me.”
Tito shouted, “She’s lying, General! Don’t believe her!”
“Every morning they come for me, they hit me. They hit me and then drag me here and rape me. Please, won’t you have a doctor examine me? He will see I have been raped.” She choked on the words, struggling to get her breath.
This woman hides her fear better than I, Victor had thought more than once. But nothing is more expressive than the naked human body. Although the room was hot, the woman’s small muscles shook as if exposed to icy winds. And with every breath, a deep quiver travelled through her in a wave.