booted feet leap to the ground. She heard the booted feet approach her. Her right hand, first, was dragged behind her body and snapped in a handcuff, and then her left. She lay cuffed. A hand forcibly jerked out the dart. She heard it placed in the pocket of a leather jacket. Then she felt herself being lifted lightly to a man’s shoulders, her head over his back, and carried to the Land Rover.
She moaned, and fell unconscious.
6
Dr. Brenda Hamilton awakened.
She lay on her side on the cot. Her left hand, extended, lay under the curved iron bar at the top of the cot; her right hand lay beside her face; she looked at the slender, small fingers it seemed so small, so delicate compared to that of Gunther, or William, or Herjellsen, to a man’s hand.
The half light of late afternoon, golden, hazy, filtering, dimly illuminated the room.
The white-washed interior seemed golden and dim. She looked up at the arched roof, its beams, the corrugated tin. It was hot, terribly hot. She remembered that she seldom spent time in her quarters before sundown. She remembered that she had, once, awakened similarly. She remembered then that she was a prisoner.
She tried to move her hand, her left hand. Something jerked at it. She beard a steel cuff slide on iron. She sat up. She was handcuffed to the iron bar at the head of the cot.
She sat wearily at the edge of the cot. She wanted to relieve herself. She looked across the room to the wastes bucket.
She got up, to pull the cot to the side of the room. It remained fixed.
It had been bolted to the floor: It was aligned with the floor boards designated by Gunther. She smiled. The alignment of the cot was no longer her responsibility.
She considered, briefly, urinating on the floor, or soiling the mattress.
She would not do so.
She knew she was, at the slightest sign of insubordination, subject to physical discipline, and that it would be, unhesitantly, administered. She wondered what they would do to her for having attempted to escape.
How foolishly she had run to their arms. How easily she had been recaptured.
She remembered the Land Rover pursuing her, terrifying her, loud and roaring, through the midnight bush, the glare of its lights, the sting of the anesthetic bullet, Gunther’s cuffs.
She looked at the girl in the mirror, facing her, sitting on the edge of the cot, a steel cuff confining her to it. The girl was weary, filthy, her dress torn, her hair awry and filled with dust; her face was dirty; her hands were dirty, and there was dirt, from digging, black, under the fingernails; her legs were covered, too, with dirt, and scratches and blood.
They had brought her in as she was, from the bush, thrown her on the cot, handcuffed her to it, and left.
She was hungry, and thirsty, and wanted to relieve herself, and clean her body.
She lay back, on her side, her legs drawn up on the striped mattress, on the cot, her left hand under the curved iron bar at its head.
She smelled her body. She smelled, too, fresh plaster. The hut, she conjectured, where she had broken through it, through the closet, had been repaired.
She closed her eyes against the heat.
Then, almost against her will, she opened her eyes, wanting to look again in the mirror. Lying on her side she regarded herself, her head and hair, her figure, the curve of her hip and waist, the dress well up her thighs, the curves of her legs and ankles. She looked at herself, sullenly. She did not jerk at the handcuff. She lay quietly, secured. She had not escaped.
At six P.M. the door was unlocked.
The large black, who had beaten her, entered. His companion entered behind him.
Behind them came Herjellsen, and Gunther and William.
Brenda sat up.
Gunther came to her and unlocked the cuff from her left wrist.
Hamilton rubbed her wrist.
Herjellsen motioned for Dr. Brenda Hamilton to lie across the cot, as she had before, her hands on the floor, her head down.
The smaller black then dragged the dress up over her body, and half over her head, confining her arms in it.
“Beat her,” said Herjellsen.
While the men watched the larger black, with his belt, doubled, struck her, sharply, below the small of the back, fifteen times.
The beating, Hamilton knew, was not intended to be physically punishing. It was intended to be emotionally humiliating. It was. But, too, it stung, terribly. She could not keep tears from her eyes. She felt like a child. She knew it was not a man’s beating, but a woman’s beating. In tears, she realized it was more in the nature of a severe rebuke for naughtiness than anything else. It meant, clearly, that they were not particularly annoyed with her, that she had not worried them, that her escape attempt had not been, and was not taken seriously. Her effort, to herself, though foiled had been momentous desperate. Now it was being punished, sharply, but trivially. She supposed she was being punished at all only because she had been insubordinate, and they felt that something in response, however trivial, should be done to her. She asked herself if this was all her escape attempt was worth to them, all it had earned her.
The beating also told her that she was a woman, not worth the severe discipline that might be accorded a male.
That, too, humiliated her.
It taught her in a new way that she was a female, only a female.
She wept, too, because Gunther and William were watching. How could she face them again?
The last blow fell.
Gunther pulled her, she still tangled in her dress, sobbing, to her side. Her left wrist was jerked to the vicinity of the iron bar at the head of the cot. She felt it locked again in the cuff that dangled there.
She was confined as before. The men left.
She, furious, frustrated, helpless, felt like a punished child. She wept. She was furious at what men could do to women, if they wished. She hated their strength, and her own weakness. They can treat us like children, she wept.
“I hate you!” she cried.
Then she was afraid that they might hear her, and return to punish her again. “I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate you.” But mostly she hated herself, that she was a woman.
How could she ever again face Gunther and William?
Then she knew how she could face them again, and only how she could face them again, only as a woman-a woman-and one they had seen being beaten.
Then, after a time, she no longer hated being a woman. She lay on the thin, flat, striped mattress, on her side, her wrist helplessly handcuffed to the iron bar at the head of the simple cot, and looked at herself in the mirror. Her small, luscious, curved body, captive, formed a remarkable contrast to the thin, flat mattress, its linearity, the plainness of the iron cot, on which she was confined. She studied herself in the mirror, her head and hair, the deliciousness of her body, her legs, the slenderness of her ankles. Then no longer did she hate that she was a woman. She found it again, strangely perhaps, a precious thing to be. And she found herself, too, strangely enough, pleased that men were strong enough to do to her what they had done. She found herself, for some strange reason, pleased that one sex was so much weaker than the other. And, perhaps most strange of all, she found herself pleased that she was of the weaker sex.