Giles Blunt - Breaking Lorca

“What’s wrong?” someone was saying.

It’s just a Jeep, he told himself, a recreational vehicle. They’re everywhere. But his legs trembled all the same.

Lorca ran.

Viera and Helen turned on the path, gaping after her.

“It’s the truck,” Victor managed to say. “The Jeep. It’s what the Guardia drive.”

“Good God,” Helen said. “Where the hell’s she going? Does she expect us to go and pry her out of the bushes?”

“We can’t just leave her,” Viera said. “She doesn’t know the park. She might get lost.”

“Michael, Lorca is a grown woman.”

Lorca had rounded the pond. She vanished among the trees below Belvedere Castle.

“I will go,” Victor said.

“You’d better not,” Helen said. “You don’t know her moods.”

But Victor was already hurrying toward the pond. The trees were not yet in full bloom; dark figures moved among winding paths. As Victor entered the darkness of the Rambles, a ball of fur scuttled out from the bushes trailing a red leash. Victor nearly tripped headlong. “Sorry,” a young woman called to him. “Scampy, you come back here right now.”

He stopped at the crest of a small hill. Below him on one side, cars rushed across the Seventy-ninth Street transverse; above him on the other, laughing children ran around the castle.

“Lorca?” he called. “Lorca, where are you?” A couple walking hand in hand parted to let him pass. “Excuse me,” he said to the man, “did you see a young woman run in here? Dark hair? This tall?” He held his hand, palm down, about five feet off the ground.

The man shook his head and started to walk on, but the woman pointed down the hill they had just climbed. “There was a woman by herself, near the water.”

“Water?”

“By the willow trees. She was wearing blue jeans and a loose blue shirt.”

Victor thanked them and hurried on. He had to clamber down some rocks to reach the waterside path. The willows were visible from the far side of the tiny lake where youngsters and tourists rowed rented boats. Their fronds trailed over the banks and into the water.

As he came around the curve of the hill, he could see a flicker of blue between the emerald branches. “Don’t be afraid,” he said in Spanish, forgetting his fear for the moment. “No one will harm you here.”

There was a shuffling sound from the willow; the blue disappeared.

“Please don’t run,” he said softly. “There is nothing to run from.”

Silence from the willow. Distant laughter from the lake. From farther off, the barking of a dog.

“The truck,” he said. “I know it frightened you. It frightened me too. It’s just like the ones the Guardia drive-the tinted windows, everything. Believe me, I know them well.”

Two men came around the hill holding hands. They glanced at Victor talking to the tree, but were too engrossed in each other to remark on it or laugh.

“The tinted windows,” Victor pressed on. “They like them, the Guardia, because they know it is frightening to be watched by someone you cannot see.”

Not a word from the willow. From the water, the creak and splash of oars.

“You know why else they like those dark windows? They like them because they are cowards.” Cobardes . He spat the word.

“English, please.”

The reply was so faint, the words so unexpected, that Victor was not sure he had heard correctly. “Pardon me?”

“Speak English. I hate the sound of Spanish now. To me, it is an obscenity.”

“You?” he said in English. “Named after a fine Spanish poet, you can disown your language?”

“It is a good word, disown . I disown everything. If I could, I would disown myself.”

Victor knew all about that. He longed to disown Victor Pena body and soul, not just his name. But probably only death could do that.

“I prefer English now.” Lorca’s harsh voice, with its cracks and hoarse texture, emerged from the tree as if from a confessional. “It feels …. it feels so far away.” She said far away as if it were a quality of great and rare beauty.

“Yes. It does feel far away. I am still not used to it.”

A pause. Then, from the tree: “You are a good person, aren’t you.”

“I am not,” he said. “I am not a good person.”

“You are a good person,” she repeated in a factual tone. “It is obvious you are. I, however, am not.”

“No, no,” Victor started to say, but she shushed him.

“Let me say it, Ignacio. I thought at one time that I was a good person. I imagine every person on earth thinks that he or she is good. A little bit good. I thought that I was good and kind. I thought that I was generous. I even thought that I was brave. Now I know otherwise-that I am none of those things. And sometimes this knowledge is hard to bear.”

“It is not knowledge, Lorca. It is anger and disappointment. I feel those things too. I feel them about myself. About things I have done. Things that happened at the little school.”

“People are dead because of me. Because I talked. It would have been better if they had really shot me on that cliff. It was just sheer luck that cliff gave way beneath me.”

“That’s how you survived? The cliff gave way? Where was this?”

“Diablo. The middle of a storm. Hard, hard rain. Suddenly a mudslide, and I nearly drowned. It would have been better if I had.”

The rain and the wind came back to Victor. The distant roar of the sea, and the dead boy. It was me, he imagined saying. That was me, behind you with the gun. But he could not face her hatred. “You blame yourself,” he said. “But no one else blames you. At the little school, you were known as the bravest.”

“Known how? By who? Prisoners were not allowed to speak.”

“We whispered together, as you know. When we spoke of you, it was only in admiration.”

“You are mocking me.”

“I swear, Lorca. Even the guards. I heard two of them talking one day. They said you were the toughest.”

He pulled the fronds aside and stepped into the cool, dark space within. Lorca shrank from him, pressing her knees into her chest. She was trembling all over, though whether from the cold and damp beneath the willow or still with fear, Victor could not be sure.

We are like lovers in here, he thought. Only a lover should be with a woman in such a dark, secluded space. He reached tentatively toward her shoulder, but drew back when she looked up at him.

“I told them where my sister lived, and now she is dead. You understand me?” Her eyes overflowed, but she did not allow herself the relief of real weeping. “She is dead .”

Victor murmured in a low monotone that was almost prayer, “They beat you, and you did not speak. Shocked you, and you did not break. Half drowned you, and you spit in their faces. Even they raped you, and you said nothing.”

“Raped me.” She looked at him with sudden ferocity. “Who told you they raped me?”

Victor stammered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”

“This is a lie. This is the guards’ lies. They did not rape me. Beat me, yes. Everything else, yes. But rape me, no. They did not rape me.”

“But you said they did. The other day.”

“No, I said they did not . You think they would lower themselves to do this? You think they would dirty themselves? Contaminate themselves with a guerrilla bitch? Never. You hear me? Never.”

“I am sorry. I should have thought before I spoke.”

“You imagine I would still be alive if they had raped me? I would hang myself from the nearest tree. I would have shot my brains out.”

“I am so sorry. Please forgive me.” She had turned her back on him, and Victor cursed himself for a fool. Rape, he suddenly realized, was the most lasting torment the little school had inflicted on this woman. The pain of the shocks may have receded, the bruises from the beatings healed, but she would go on and on being a woman who had been raped, and that knowledge was too much for her. “Please forgive me,” he said again.