“She’s lying,” Tito said again. “We are not animals here.”
“Shh,” Captain Pena said. “Quiet, sergeant. Let the prisoner speak.”
“General-” She choked back tears to address Victor once more. “I swear to you I have done nothing wrong. I have broken no laws. I am not with the rebels. I don’t know any rebels. I am not even political. I don’t deserve to be treated like this. Nobody deserves to be treated like this.”
Victor concentrated on writing her words down. It gave him an excuse to avoid her blind stare.
Lopez was about to say something. Captain Pena cut him off with a motion of his hand. There was a long pause, the only sound that of the woman’s sobbing. Clear mucus dripped from her nose and she tried to sniff it back. “May I dry myself, please?”
“You may not. The General wants you nice and wet. Are you going to tell him your real name now?”
“Maria Sanchez. It’s the only name I have.”
“All right, Miss Sanchez. Have it your way. Shake hands with General Electric.” The Captain gestured at Victor. “You do it. Sergeant, show him how.”
The woman’s hands were tied to the arms of the chair. Tito showed him the tube of conductive jelly, the electrodes with their little alligator clamps and duct tape. Then the sergeant grabbed the index finger of her left hand. “For fingers, just use the electrode. You tape it.”
“Don’t do it for him,” said the Captain. “Let him do it. He has to learn.”
The woman started to kick, and Lopez tied her feet to the chair legs.
Victor spread conductive jelly on the woman’s bony finger. It was messy, his hands were shaking so badly. “Don’t do this,” the woman said. “Please do not do this.”
“Shut up, whore.” Tito slapped her hard across the head. “Do the other hand. Same finger.”
When it was done, the Captain told Victor to sit down again. “All right, soldier. Watch where I put this dial. There is an art to it.” He turned the dial to the number two.
The woman made a sound like nothing Victor had ever heard-a prolonged, unearthly howl.
The Captain shouted over her. “Don’t give them any more than thirty seconds the first time. We want them still able to talk.” He turned the dial back to zero and the woman slumped in her chair.
She’s dead, Victor thought. But after a moment she started to breathe, inhaling with a sound like tearing fabric.
“You do it this time.” The Captain slid the black box toward Victor. “Turn it a little higher. Around three.” Victor turned the dial, and the Captain shouted again over the woman’s howls: “Second time, you give them a little more. And a little longer. Forty-five seconds to a minute.”
Victor turned the dial back to zero and the woman fell to one side-so heavily that both she and the chair tipped over.
Tito and Lopez set the prisoner upright again. “Goddamn,” Tito said, “she’s really out.” He patted her cheeks-a strangely gentle thing to do, under the circumstances.
The Captain ordered Lopez to bring water. Lopez returned a moment later with two large bottles of Perrier water, as if he were making a joke. He shook one of the bottles and held his thumb over the opening, spraying the woman from head to foot.
“Makes it worse,” the Captain explained. “The minerals are more conductive.”
Lopez shook the bottle again and sprayed her until it was empty. When she was fully conscious again, the Captain turned on the machine. Every muscle in her body stood out like a rope, and once more she made that terrible sound.
“Third time, you really let them have it. Turn it up to four, maybe even five if they are strong enough. Give them maybe two minutes.”
This time it took ten minutes to revive her. “Next session I will give her less and we will have the doctor on hand. It’s always hard to judge first time with a prisoner. But I think today she will tell us her name.”
I would have told them everything in the first minute, Victor thought.
“Take down whatever she says-it’s important to keep a record.”
Captain Pena stood over the woman. For the hundredth time, he asked her her name. But she was only capable of groaning now. “Mother of God, Mother of God ….”
“It’s entirely up to you how long it takes. We have all the time in the world, here.”
The woman said something unintelligible.
“What’s that? What did you say?”
“Decree,” she managed. “Decree 107. Ten days only. Ten days, you have to let me go. It’s the law.”
The Captain looked at Tito, and the two of them laughed. After a moment’s hesitation Lopez and Yunques joined in. Victor smiled as if he saw the joke too.
The Captain raised his hand for silence. “You really imagine we’re just going to let you go? ‘Oh, thank you very much, Ms. Sanchez, sorry to bother you’? Sorry, bitch. It doesn’t work like that.”
“You have only ten days. Ten days is the law.” Somehow she had found her voice again.
“What is your name?”
“I will never tell you my name.”
The Captain and Tito exchanged a glance. They’d both heard it. At last the woman had admitted she still had a name to reveal. Victor saw her mouth open after she had spoken, as if to suck the words back in again. It was her first mistake, and she knew she’d made it.
SEVEN
“I know exactly what it feels like,” his uncle said.
They were driving up the winding street to his house in the Santa Ana area. It was a good neighbourhood; one could tell by the height of the walls surrounding each property. Some were as high as sixteen feet, composed of different layers of brick and stone, like geological strata. All were topped with razor wire.
His uncle had moved here only recently, after his convenient “death,” and Victor couldn’t imagine how he could afford it. The area was far too exclusive for most military men. In fact, Victor remembered an occasion as a child walking through this neighbourhood just out of curiosity, staring in wonder at the houses set like jewels at the end of their long driveways. There were no walls then, just the long drives and the palm trees and the houses that looked like palaces out of fairy stories. He could not believe that the little children playing in the yards were of the same flesh and blood as he, they looked so clean and pretty.
Then a Guardia patrol stopped him and told him to get the hell out-he did not belong there. He didn’t even resent them for it, because he knew they were right.
“Yes,” his uncle was saying, “I am personally familiar with the General’s handshake.”
“I’m astounded,” Victor said. “You were actually tortured?”
“Of course I was not tortured. What we do at the little school is not torture. It’s high-pressure interrogation. Torture is what they did to the martyrs-skinning them alive, cooking them, that kind of thing.”
Victor did not see how this differed from the sufferings of Pedro Labredo. “Who interrogated you?”
“Some Guardia asshole. This was two governments ago. Before your time. They thought I was part of a coup conspiracy. I wasn’t, unfortunately-I’d be a lot richer now if I had been. Anyway, this Guardia guy, he introduced me to the General, and let me tell you, it hurt like hell. You know what it feels like, Victor? It feels as if your flesh is splitting open. It feels as if your flesh is splitting open to the bone. You remember that little earthquake we had a few years back? That crack that opened up all along Ilopango Street?”
“I remember.”
“That’s how it feels. Like your flesh is splitting open. You stare at yourself afterwards-you look at your arms and legs, you feel your belly-and you’re amazed that your flesh is still together over your bones. You can’t believe you haven’t split in pieces. There’s no way you can keep silent. It rips the screams right out of your throat.”