Giles Blunt - Breaking Lorca

No sound from within.

“Lorca? Mr. Perez was kind enough to come all the way out to Queens. The least you can do is say hello.”

“Maybe this was not a good idea,” Victor said. “I should go, I think.”

Viera shook his head, speaking insistently at the wooden door. “Lorca, dear. You have to see people sometime. You can’t stay cooped up like a pigeon.”

“Go away, Miguel. Leave me alone.”

The ugly voice made Victor’s heart shrivel. Memories crawled in his belly like worms.

“Lorca, please. Won’t you at least say hello to Mr. Perez?”

“No. Leave me alone.”

The wires, the dial, her screams. Suddenly Victor was terrified she would recognize his voice, even though he had said almost nothing to her. Even though it had been in Spanish. “I should not have come. No one wants to remem ber that place,” he said, and backed toward the stairs. “I will go. You don’t have to drive me, I will take the subway.”

“No, no. You must stay for dinner.”

“You’re very kind. But it’s better that I go.” He started down the stairs. As he did so, the door was thrown open and Lorca Viera stood in the opening with black accusatory eyes. It was the first time he had seen her eyes.

“Where is this Mr. Perez?” She glared at him as if she would spit. The black eyes looked him over, taking in his cheap jacket, his wrinkled pants. “You were at the little school?” Escualito . She had unnerved him further by speaking in Spanish, though English was the language of this household.

“Yes,” he answered in English. “I was at the little school. We never spoke. We were in different cells.”

“There was a Perez there,” she said in English. “They shot him.”

Victor looked at his feet. “I heard the same about you.”

“How could you even know my name?”

“Later I shared a cell with others. They told me your name. But they said you were shot.”

“Unfortunately, I did not die.”

“In my case, they shot the wrong man.”

“Bravo. So what do you want from me? You want to fuck me or something?”

“Lorca ….” her brother put in, but she went on bitterly.

“I got news for you, Mr. Perez. I was not raped in the little school, you know? So if you imagine maybe the guards fucked me so often I got a taste for it, you’re wrong, okay?” She had begun to shake from head to foot. The claw-like hand was white and trembling where it gripped the edge of the door.

“Lorca, please,” said her brother. “Mr. Perez only came to say hello. I asked him to come here. I thought you might talk to him. You don’t talk to anyone else.”

“But I did, Michael. I did talk, didn’t I? I talked too much, if you recall. And because I talked, our little sister is dead.” Once more she turned the black, excoriating eyes on Victor. “You some kind of vulture, is that it? You come to feed on what the guards left behind? Well, I’m not dead yet, Mr. Perez. Maybe when I am, my brother here will give you a call and you can come by and fuck the corpse.”

She slammed the door in her brother’s face. He looked down at the floor, shaking his head. “I have no words,” he said. “No words to tell you how ashamed I am.”

“It’s all right,” Victor said softly. “Your sister suffered a lot. She just wants to forget.”

“I am deeply ashamed.”

“Please, Mr. Viera. She just wants to forget.”

Viera said nothing more until they were downstairs. “But that’s the point,” he said. “Lorca does not forget. She cannot forget. She stays in that room all day long and all she can think about is that terrible place you were in. She has to talk to someone about it. It’s the only way she will ever truly forget.”

“Did she even come out to say hello?” Helen Viera stood in the kitchen doorway clutching a salad bowl in one hand, a wooden fork in the other.

“It’s okay,” Viera said. “Lorca is not having a good day, that’s all.”

“Lorca’s been having a bad day for going on two years, Michael. She was rude to you, wasn’t she.” The doughy, expectant face turned to Victor.

“It’s all right. She suffered a lot.”

“Yes. And doesn’t she let us know it. Are you sure you won’t stay for supper?”

“I am sure. Thank you very much, though.”

Viera opened the door. “You understand, my sister didn’t talk like this before the jail. This is anger, a reaction-well, it’s true she was always angry, but not like this, not in this pointless way. Most days she won’t even speak. She eats in her room. If you could have known her as a girl-she was so happy, so lively ….”

“She has a lot of spirit. I am sure she was delightful.”

“Mr. Perez, I don’t know what to do. This is so hard on everyone.” He tilted his head slightly toward the kitchen. “She has her good days, sometimes. Why don’t you give me a phone number, and I will call you when she is feeling a little more-”

“But she doesn’t want to know me. She said so very clearly.”

“Sick people are often not interested in their cures. Please, will you let me call you? In return, I will refund your consultation fee.” He pulled some bills from his pockets.

Victor tried to refuse the money, but the lawyer would not hear of it, pressing the bills into his hand. When Viera asked for his phone number, Victor gave him the number of the restaurant’s pay phone.

A week after they had disposed of Lorca Viera, Captain Pena had taken Victor into the kitchen for what he called a cup of tea, although Victor had never seen his uncle drink tea. The Captain opened a pint of chocolate milk, which he gulped down with audible pleasure. Victor drank a Coke.

“Victor,” Captain Pena had announced sonorously, as if from a pulpit. “Victor. They can say what they want of me when I am dead. They can say that Pena was an ugly bas tard, they can say that Pena was a fool, they can say that Pena was too hard, too soft, too mediocre. I don’t care.”

“I’m sure no one will say those things, sir.”

His uncle raised one hand to forestall contradiction and with the other wiped chocolate milk from his moustache. “The press, the army, the bureaucrats, they can say what they want-and they will, too, I know them. But one thing they cannot deny. What they cannot ever deny is that Captain Eduardo Vargas Pena-no matter what the situation-Captain Eduardo Vargas Pena stood by his family. Always he was loyal to his own.”

A scream like tearing metal came from the interrogation room, where Tito was at work.

The Captain continued. “And as a man who always comes to the assistance of his family, I have-yet again, my underachieving nephew-I have yet again come to your rescue.”

“How, Captain?”

“The United States of America is offering to train five hundred troops at Fort Benning, Georgia. Fort Benning, my boy! The School of the Americas! All of our best warriors have gone there, all of our toughest officers. Believe me, a course at the School of the Americas is a sure ladder to success in this army. And I-by pulling more strings than you can ever hope to count-I have managed to get your miserable carcass into it.”

“You have? But that’s wonderful, sir!”

“Ah, you are excited, I see.”

Excited? Victor could barely suppress tears of joy.

“You have no idea,” his uncle went on, “how difficult it was to secure this opportunity, given your sorry record. I had to call in every possible favour-some of them imaginary. I owe a lot of people now, on your account. You understand me? A lot of people. Well? You have nothing to say?”

“I’m overwhelmed, Captain. Truly. I don’t know what to say.”

“Let me down again, and I will man the firing squad myself.”