Giles Blunt: Breaking Lorca

Victor had not yet recovered from the shock of seeing his uncle kick the woman, hard enough to break the pubic bone you would have thought. He could never have imagined his uncle-so upright, so correct-kicking a woman.

He stood up and yelled, “Blindfold!” The guards always did this, so that any prisoner whose blindfold had slipped could readjust it. And prisoners were anxious to keep the blindfolds in place; to see a guard’s face was certain death.

Victor peered into the first cell, where the prisoners were laid out like sardines, head to feet, on the mattresses on the floor. None of them stirred. The second cell was the same, although at the sound of the peephole opening, one of them moaned for the latrine.

She was curled up on the bed, holding her abdomen. At the sound of the grate she moved her head slightly, but did not speak.

“Soldier!” This was Lopez yelling for him. Guards never called each other by name in front of prisoners. Victor shut the peephole and went back to the table. Lopez was there with a water bucket. “What’s she doing?”

“Nothing. Lying down.”

“Good. Go soak her with this.”

Victor took the bucket without a word. Ice cubes clicked against metal.

“I’ll open the door, you toss it and get out.”

They went down the corridor and Lopez opened the door.

The woman sat up at the sound and waited, breathing through her mouth. Victor hurled the water at her and it caught her right in the chest, completely soaking her shirt, her jeans and the mattress she sat on. She jumped up with a cry and stood gasping.

“Come on, soldier. Don’t hang around.”

Lopez locked the door and Victor followed him back to the guardroom.

“Good shot, man.”

His uncle was away for the afternoon, so Victor felt safe reading. He finished the Steinbeck and moved on to a James Bond story. He didn’t like it, but kept reading to keep his mind off what he had done. Soaking the woman with ice water. Well, it wasn’t torture, he supposed, but he had never done anything mean to a woman in his life. His father and mother had taught him to stand up when a woman entered the room, to offer his seat to a woman on the bus. And now he was expected to soak this prisoner again before he went off duty.

At six, Lopez came from the kitchen with a cart full of the evening meal. The prisoners got beans and tortillas, or beans and bread, always cold. Never anything else, never anything hot.

They passed the food through the slots of cells one and two, and then Lopez said, “Perez don’t get nothing tonight. But we’ll mix up something special for the new bitch.” He went out to the kitchen and came back with a half-pound container of salt. He handed it to Victor. “Go ahead, man. Pour it on.”

Victor poured a few tablespoons into the beans.

“Not like that, man. You got to really pour it on!” Lopez grabbed his wrist and twisted so that salt poured onto the plate in a white heap. “Stir it, man. Mix it in there!”

Victor stirred the mixture until it was thick as plaster. He delivered it to the cell and came back without waiting to see if she ate it.

“We don’t want them to say we don’t feed them.”

“What about Perez?”

“Take him something if you want, he won’t eat it. The sergeant was playing dentist with him this afternoon.”

As if hearing his name, Sergeant Tito arrived for a surprise inspection.

“Blindfold!” He strode right past the guardroom to the cells. He glanced in one after another, not pausing for more than three seconds before any of the doors. “Soldier! Outside!”

Victor followed his sergeant out to the yard. Tito screamed at him. “Your orders are to keep that woman wet at all times. Ice water every two hours. Can you explain why she is dry?” Before Victor could answer, Tito slapped the side of his head. “You going to make up your own rules now? Who do you think you are?” Again the open hand connected with his ear.

Victor’s head was ringing. “No one told me every two hours. I was going to do it again later.”

“You want to take a swim in the tank, Pena?”

“No, sergeant.”

“You want to play a little Submarine?”

“No, sergeant.”

“Then get a bucket and soak that bitch right now. You soak her and you keep her soaked. If that bitch gets so much as thirty seconds of sleep, I’ll cut your prick off, you hear me?”

Victor fetched a bucket of water. The woman backed toward the wall. He didn’t hesitate this time. He threw the water at her, and she shrank from him but made no sound.

His nights in the barracks were miserable. The other members of the squad had their own apartments in the city. That was part of the privilege of working for the squad, you didn’t have to live in barracks, you got to have your own place. But Victor was still on probation. For now, he lived in a tiny room at one end of the little school. It had five sets of iron bunk beds-all, except for his, with mattresses rolled up at one end.

He read late that night; books were the only thing that kept him sane. On his last day off he had ventured into the city and bought a stack of ten American novels from a used-book store. The Hemingway disappointed him because it was set in Europe, not North America, and Faulkner was too difficult. Victor finally settled on a detective novel, and it absorbed him completely. He didn’t have to look up too much vocabulary, and it was set in New York. The story took him from the luxurious apartments on Fifth Avenue to the sweatshops of Chinatown.

When he awoke the next morning, he thought there was a red dog lying on his chest. Try as he might to shift it, the dog would not get off. As his mind cleared, he realized the weight on his chest was fear.

He thought of the new woman prisoner. If he felt isolated and fearful, how must she feel? She would not have slept. She would have been too cold, too wet, too hungry. He had soaked her thoroughly before he went off duty, and when Yunques relieved him, he had added his own bucket right away. “Tits are too small,” he said with a grimace. Yunques was always saying tough things, but sometimes Victor wondered if he wasn’t putting on a show of bravado. Perhaps Sergeant Tito could be that carelessly cruel, but Victor wondered about Yunques and Lopez. Maybe under the macho talk they were just as scared as he was.

–

“Please. I want to see a lawyer,” the woman said. Victor had just thrown a full bucket of ice water on her, and rivulets streamed down her face. “I have done nothing wrong. I was simply taking food to the church basement.”

Victor stood in the door of her cell, breathing hard. Prisoners were supposed to be struck whenever they spoke. He locked the cell door and went back to the guard room.

She called after him in her unpleasant voice: “And I would like some food, please.”

“Special treat for the new bitch,” Lopez said. “Take a look at this.” He opened the lid of a small cardboard box, revealing the cockroaches.

“You going to put them in her cell?”

“Her cell?” Lopez looked truly puzzled. “Why would we put them in her cell?”

“For a joke?”

“We are not joking here, soldier. You should’ve figured that out by now.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll get the hang of things, I’m sure.”

“Put these in her food and serve it to her.”

Victor did as he was told.

“Well?” Lopez said when he came back. “How’d the bitch like it?”

“She felt the bugs,” Victor said. “Then she just put the plate on the floor and lay down again.”

“Really? She didn’t cry or nothing?”

“No.”

“You know, I think she may be a real hard-ass terrorist, this one. Most women scream like a motherfucker when we give them the bug dinner.”