Giles Blunt: Breaking Lorca

Carey watched them quizzically. The blond man was still hammering at the same point on the phone. “Well, you ask him this,” he was saying. “You just ask that son of a bitch who does he think is paying the bills down there.”

His words flicked a switch in Victor’s memory. He could not immediately place the phrase, but it sent his nerves, already straining at the top notes of fear, up another semitone.

“No, you ask him,” the man was saying into the phone. “Just you ask him: who does he think’s paying the bills down there?”

The flat blond hair flashed again, and Victor remembered now. The American had said those same words to Lorca. They had echoed harshly off the tile walls of the little school: “Who do you think pays the bills around here?”

The phone was slammed down.

The man swivelled around and introduced himself to Wyatt. “Greg Wheat. What can I do for you?”

Carey answered for him. “Gentleman here thinks he saw some personnel from El Salvador. Military personnel.”

“Who did?” He aimed a thin finger at Wyatt. “You? You’re personally familiar with the El Salvador military?”

“Not me,” Wyatt said. “Ignacio here thinks he saw them.” He turned to indicate his annoying charge, but the space where he had been standing just a moment ago was empty.

Lorca opened the door tentatively, and Victor pushed his way past her. “Pack your things,” he said. “We’re moving.”

Lorca’s hair was still wet from the shower and clung to her neck in a damp tangle. She frowned at him. “Moving?”

“There’s no time to talk. Just pack. Where’s your suitcase?” He found the suitcase in her closet and threw it on the bed. He started heaving her clothes into it: her good shoes, a sweater, the dress she had chosen for her appearance before the committee. “Are there things you need in the bathroom?”

Lorca stood frozen in the middle of the room. Shadows he had not seen for weeks darkened her face. She opened her mouth to speak, the jagged tooth visible.

Victor grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Lorca, now!”

“They have come for me,” she said dully.

“Yes. They have come for you. For both of us. The Captain and one of the men. There may be others.”

“I knew they would come. I knew from the beginning.”

“Lorca, get your shoes on. We have to move.”

She sat on a chair and reached blindly for her shoes. She started to put one on, stopped, and looked up at him. Then the question came, as he had known it must come. “How did you recognize them, Ignacio?”

“I saw them at the deed ceremony. It does not matter. The point is, they are in the hotel across the street. Right this minute. Watching this room.”

“They allowed you to see their faces?”

“Mother of God, Lorca, we have to go!”

“You were blindfolded. All of us were blindfolded.”

“Lorca, I was not blindfolded at the deed ceremony. Will you please tie your shoes?”

“You saw their faces, and they didn’t kill you? This I don’t believe.”

“Fine. Stay and die.”

Still she did not move. Behind the dark, frightened eyes, facts and suspicions were clicking into place. Victor could almost hear it, the sound of her world reconstituting itself.

“My name is not Perez,” he said at last. “Ignacio Perez is dead. He was shot a few days before you were taken to Puerto del Diablo.”

He had said it now. It could not be unsaid. He felt no sense of relief, only-once again-the sensation of stepping off a cliff. He tried to prepare himself to receive her hatred, the way a fighter prepares to receive blows. “My name is Victor Pena. I was a soldier. A soldier at the little school.”

Lorca remained staring up at him from her seat on the chair, one hand still gripping her shoe. Her face had gone pale. A terrible silence flowed from her, as if a knife had entered her ribs but the pain had not yet registered.

“These scars?” Victor showed her the knuckles of his right hand. “I got these scars when I punched you. It was me who punched you in the mouth and broke your tooth.”

From Lorca, a sharp intake of breath.

“The Captain was screaming, ‘Hit her, hit her, hit her.’ I had to obey. They would have killed me. Everyone had to take part-otherwise, how could they trust you? I should have refused. That would have been the right thing, but I could not refuse. I was too afraid. I was not brave like you.” The memory of her bravery brought tears to his eyes, but he repressed them. He had no right to tears.

“No,” Lorca said. “I don’t believe you. Why you are telling me these lies? It cannot be true. I won’t believe.”

“It’s true. It was my hand on the General when they questioned you. You remember they were instructing someone? ‘First you turn it no higher than two. Gradually you make it stronger.’ It was me they were instructing.”

She shook her head. “Why are you saying this? You are not capable of such things. All right, maybe you were in the room. Maybe they forced you to do some things …. Where are you going, Ignacio? Come back!”

Victor went down the hall to his room. He didn’t switch the light on, he didn’t have to. He reached under the mattress and found the two items he was looking for, one small and light, the other dark and heavy. He crossed to the window. The lights were out across the street, he could not make out any shadows on the balcony. They would be closer now.

Lorca was sitting as he had left her, except that one hand shaded her eyes now, as if from a terrible light.

“For the first three days, I threw cold water on you. I fed you a meal full of salt. A meal full of cockroaches. One day I watched you sucking water from your shirt.”

Lorca’s hand moved from her eyes to cover her mouth. Her eyes went dark as pits.

“Then they raped you. We raped you. I lay on top of you myself.”

“No,” she said behind her hand. “No.”

“I was the last one, that first day. The fourth one. I could not do anything because I was so sick and afraid. But I would have, Lorca. I would have. I am not like you.”

“No. No, please. It’s not true.”

“It is true. That’s how I recognize these soldiers, Lorca. I was one of them.”

“It’s not true. You were a prisoner.”

He took hold of her hand and opened the fingers like a child’s. He thrust into her palm the watch that had been ripped from her wrist. “This was my reward for hitting you that day. For breaking your tooth. Remember how they cheered? The Captain pulled this off your wrist and gave it to me.”

The watch lay ticking in her hand like a bomb. Lorca stared at it dumbly for a moment, then turned it over and looked at the inscription.

Suddenly exhausted, Victor sank to the edge of the bed and hung his head. He could no longer bear to look at her. He stared at the carpet as he spoke. “Your courage changed me, Lorca. Seeing how you bore your pain. Seeing how you cared not for yourself but only for others. Ever since we hurt you, I have wanted nothing but to make it up to you. To take back the wrongs I committed. Probably I wanted your forgiveness. Not probably, definitely. I wanted your forgiveness.”

“I hate you,” she said softly.

“So do I, Lorca.”

“I hate you more than I have ever hated anybody. I hate you more than the man who ran that stinking place. I hate you more than any of them.”

“Yes. I don’t blame you. But now you must run. You must run, before they come for you.” He was still on the edge of the bed, his head hanging down. There was a sudden movement, and then a white light exploded in his skull.