Giles Blunt - Breaking Lorca

They listened for the rest of the morning to the sounds from the interrogation room. There was a tea party with cookies for one of the male prisoners. A tea party was a regular beating; a tea party with cookies was a beating with clubs.

When they dragged him back to the cells, Victor could not see a single mark on his face.

When the woman was first brought to the little school, she had been wearing a watch that hung loosely on her left wrist until the Captain had taken it from her. He brought it to the interrogation room, pulling it out of a manila envelope. It was a large man’s watch, a Bulova with gold trim and a gold flexible band. It was engraved on the back: To M. from J .

The Captain read the inscription aloud. “Who is this J.?” he asked her. “Who is this J. who gave you the watch?”

“Jose. Jose was my brother. He is dead now.”

“Brothers do not give watches to their sisters,” the Captain said. “Nor do they engrave them.”

He asked her the question over and over, and every time she gave the same answer.

Captain Pena said to Victor, “Clearly, the M. is just to convince us her name is really Maria, although we know it is not Maria. The J., however, is another matter. This J. could be a real person, and I want to know who it is.”

“I told you. It is my brother, Jose.”

“Listen,” the Captain said to her. “Maybe you can win your smelly little watch back.” He unbound her thumbs and slid the watch over her left wrist. “All you have to do is tell us what we want to know.”

“You wanted his name,” she said. “I gave you his name.”

Captain Pena kicked her in the shin-it would have looked childish had it not been done with such force. For the next few minutes the woman sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.

Victor had not seen her for the three days he was sick, and he was shocked by the change in her appearance. Her face had taken on a grey, corpse-like hue, and the set of her features had changed utterly. Where before they had had a fixed, determined look, now they were slack and puffy. The woman’s words were still defiant, but the sag of her shoulders and the slack muscles of her cheeks resembled only death. It was as if the spirit had already left her body, and what defiance remained was only reflex.

Perhaps courage itself is just a reflex, Victor thought, and cowardice too. No credit or blame could attach where there was only reflex. Neither the brave nor the cowardly would be responsible for their actions. She was not a saint, and he was not a demon.

“Hit her,” Captain Pena said to Victor.

Victor was caught off guard. He had sat himself down at the table with pencil in hand, ready as always to play secretary. “Pardon me, Captain?”

“You heard me. Hit her.”

The other soldiers folded their arms across their chests and watched.

Victor put down his pencil and walked around the table. An actual physical blow-his fist against her flesh-would be harder to administer than a shock. More personal. The woman tensed at his approaching footsteps.

Victor punched her in the belly, not too high. She doubled over.

“I said hit her, not tickle her. She didn’t even feel it.” Captain Pena stepped back against the wall, folded his arms like the others, and stared at Victor.

Tito moved away from the woman and stood beside the Captain. Then Yunques and Lopez moved to the opposite wall. He felt their eyes sink into him like fangs.

Victor’s terror expressed itself in a fury of punches. The woman had no time to recover from one before another caught her somewhere else. Some part of Victor still kept the blows low-the ribs, the side, the hip. He meant to give her a good one in the chest-a convincing punch that would knock her back against the wall without doing too much damage-but the woman chose that moment to tip forward and his punch connected with her face. He felt her tooth break the skin on his knuckles and he also felt the tooth snap. The woman tumbled back against the wall, cracking her head against it, blood pouring from her upper lip.

Cheers and whistles filled the room.

Victor staggered a little in the centre of the room, thrown off balance by his own violence.

Captain Pena bent over the groaning woman and pulled the watch from her wrist. He handed it to Victor with great solemnity, as if it were a medal of honour. “Good work, soldier. Such work calls for a little bonus.”

Lopez and Yunques gave him a thumbs-up sign, and even Tito gave his shoulder a squeeze. What gorgeous relief, their sudden acceptance of him-like cool water on a burn.

That night, the watch ticked loudly on the wooden crate beside Victor’s bed. It took him a long time to fall asleep, and the night was filled with bad dreams. In one, Tito was playing Submarine with him, half drowning him in the filthy tank. He awoke with a shout, and lay staring into the blackness until his heart subsided. Outside it was raining, the drops rattling on the garbage cans outside his window. The breeze brought smells not of the tank but of the nearby pastures.

The dial of the woman’s watch glowed in the dark: four-thirty. Would she be asleep now? Or was she kept awake by the pain of the beating he had given her? Punching a defenceless woman in the mouth, you couldn’t get much lower than that. He squeezed the watch tightly, and felt it ticking in his fist like a tiny heart.

When they drove into town the next morning, Victor was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. Sunlight poured through the Cherokee’s windows, and even through the tinted glass it felt hot. The heat made Victor even sleepier. This was the first time the squad had driven anywhere since El Playon. They did not usually venture out in daylight, but today was special. They were all dressed in impeccable uniforms, and in the back of the Cherokee they had two bewildered male prisoners, freshly scrubbed and wearing new clothing.

It was a big day. So big that Captain Pena had held a full-dress inspection first thing in the morning. He had yelled at them about the state of their uniforms, yelled at them to shine their boots until they were mirrors, were they a bunch of animals? Now the cleaned and pressed squad was heading into town and, despite his drowsiness, Victor could feel the pride inside the Cherokee. He indulged a fantasy, imagining himself part of a crack unit rolling into town for a victory celebration.

One of the cleaned-up prisoners was Ignacio Perez, whom Tito had nearly drowned playing Submarine. Victor had seen his papers. The other man was much older and had only one arm. Victor recognized him from the group cell that held half a dozen prisoners, but he knew nothing about him. Neither of the men was blindfolded, and they crouched in the back with heads averted from the light.

The square in front of the Presidential Palace was already crowded. Coloured strips of bunting were woven around the iron gates, and off to one side a brass band was playing. Sunlight flashed on their instruments.

Tito showed the guards his pass and they were allowed through. A stage had been set up in front of the palace. Tito drove around behind it and parked.

“All right, you faggots,” he said to the prisoners. “Make sure you smile a lot, you got that?”

The prisoners nodded.

“You got to smile like you love us, understand?” Tito grabbed Perez by the hair. “Understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” Perez said.

“You’d better. Otherwise, we’re going to pay a visit to your daughters later-show up at the plantation and cut their tits off. How you like that, huh?”

“Please, sergeant. We will smile the whole time.”

“You make it convincing, though.”

“Otherwise we cut up your daughters,” Yunques said, as if he had just thought of it.