Джеймс Миченер - The Source

At the beginning of the third year Ximeno was again summoned before the tribunal, which now had in its possession a voluminous file of material linking him to Judaism. Informants as far away as the Italian city of Podi and the German city of Gretz had made depositions damaging to him, and the judges were completely satisfied that they had a secret Jew. Now the problem was to force him to confess and to incriminate others in Avaro who might have masked their evil practices as successfully as he had done. Over a period of four days he was interrogated in minute detail, and when he proved obdurate the tribunal had no alternative; they had to commit him to the torture.

He was dragged immediately to the subterranean vault long used for the purpose of extracting confessions, but he was not, as some might suspect, thrown into the hands of brutal men free to abuse him at will. He was delivered to a skilled and patient priest who had been conducting such interrogations for many years and who was assisted constantly by a knowing doctor who had learned from experience what torment the human body could absorb without expiring. There were few deaths from torture in the dungeon of Avaro.

On the other hand, the ordinary workmen who administered the three tortures which were allowed had become callous experts who had acquired a score of tricks guaranteed to break down the resolve of any secret Jews, so at the moment when Diego Ximeno was thrust into the dungeon these men already knew that he was someone special sent to test their skill. If they extracted a confession, they would be rewarded; if they failed, they would be rebuked. It was therefore a poignant moment when the handsome man of fifty, stalwart even after two years of imprisonment, stumbled into the torture chamber, gained his footing and stood in quiet defiance before the interrogating priest.

“Do you confess, Diego Ximeno?” the priest asked. The prisoner looked at the Dominican with contempt, whereupon the priest, who had often seen that particular look at the beginning of his interrogations, but never at the end, said to the doctor, “The prisoner refuses to speak. Is he qualified for the question?” The doctor studied Ximeno and thought: He’s arrogant and he’s in strong health. This one may take a long time.

The doctor nodded to the scribe sitting at the feet of the priest. It was this man’s job to record confessions and to confirm in writing that humanitarian safeguards were observed in the torture room. “Write down,” the priest directed, “that the prisoner was found qualified for the question.”

With this the Dominican signaled to the workmen, who with lightning force grabbed Ximeno, pinioned his arms and stripped him naked before he knew what was happening. With equal speed they lashed his hands behind his back, fastened twenty-pound weights to each ankle, and by means of a heavy rope attached to his wrists hauled him some forty feet into the air. From below, the foreman of the workmen shouted, “You’ll talk, Counselor.” They left him suspended for nearly an hour, while his arms, wrenched upward from behind, slowly pulled his shoulders from their sockets.

The ache throughout his body had become almost more than he could bear, and the Dominican, seeing his anguish and sensing that he might be ready to speak, came below him and called, “Diego Ximeno, do you now confess?”

Still uninformed as to the specific charges against him, Ximeno bore his pain in silence.

“Diego Ximeno,” the priest pleaded, “if you are in pain now, believe me it is only a beginning. Please confess or we must apply the question.” The prisoner made no response, so the priest returned to his small dais, instructing his scribe to record the fact that the prisoner had been offered mercy.

Suddenly, with terrifying shouts, the workmen dashed at the rope which suspended Ximeno and by means of prearranged holds allowed it to slip so that the prisoner dropped thirty feet, ending with a shattering halt which tore each of his major joints apart with maximum pain. His wrists, elbows and shoulders were mutilated, while the weights on his legs, magnified many times by the precipitous fall and the sudden stop, pulled apart his ankles, his knees and his hips.

Before Ximeno could identify his new pains the workmen pulled him back to the ceiling to initiate one of the worst features of the torture. At times they would shout and drop the rope. At other times they would shout and not drop it. Again, without warning, they would drop it only a few inches. At other times there would be the sickening fall almost to the floor and the hideous wrenching.

Ximeno was now beyond pain, and when the Dominican again begged him to confess the stalwart prisoner refused even to listen, so the rope was let go and he was dropped in a heap, quickly lifted onto a table and subjected to an entirely different kind of torment; for if the hanging and falling had constituted gross pain, which men like Ximeno could school themselves to resist, what was now at hand was psychological torture that few could withstand.

The table upon which he was laid had a small log across the middle, so that his back was severely strained and his stomach drawn flat in a position which of itself induced strangling. Then a funnel was placed in his mouth and his nose was closed. Huge draughts of water were poured into the funnel from an earthenware jar, and as his taut lungs gasped for air he alternately strangled, choked and gulped the water. It was an agonizing, shattering torture.

Before the second jar was poured, the priest returned and begged the prisoner to recant. “The tortures will cease,” the Dominican assured him, but apparently Ximeno was prepared to die and said nothing. The priest departed and the scrivener recorded the fact that the merciful offer had been made.

“This time you’ll speak,” the workmen promised. One leaned hard upon Ximeno’s distended stomach as it arched over the log, and the sudden movement of water throughout his internals almost killed him. Another placed in his mouth a cloth which long experience had proved to be of exactly the right mesh, and through this the water was now poured. Gulping, fighting for air, Ximeno sucked the cloth into his throat, where it embedded itself as the water trickled slowly through. It seemed that he must surely strangle, but at the end of the long agony the workmen suddenly jerked the cloth from his throat, tearing away the membranes and bringing blood.

“Now speak,” the workmen whispered, and when he refused, the bloody cloth was again inserted in his mouth. Six jugs of water, six strangling, terrifying, mortal jugs, were poured into him while strong hands pressed on his stomach, so that his lungs, his bowels and his heart seemed to explode.

He did not talk. So he was hauled at last to the final torture, where, spread in complete agony on the cold stones, his joints inflamed and his throat torn, he was given a few minutes of respite, during which he heard the priest begging him yet once more to avoid the worst agony which was now at hand. He remained silent, whereupon the soles of his feet were smeared with a mixture of pepper, oil, menthol and clove, and when the unguent was well into his pores fagots from an open fire were brought and passed back and forth across his feet, raising horrible blisters and sending throughout his body pain of an absolute magnitude. He fainted.

He awakened some time later in his cell. His mattress had been removed and he was lying naked on the stones, his heap of clothes beside him. He was unable to move either his arms or legs. His feet ached beyond human endurance, and his mouth had already become so scarred that each breath was agony. For four dreadful days he lay there hoping to die, and on the fifth, when his blisters were at their worst, his joints inflamed and his throat a mass of sores, he was dragged back to the vault, where the priest said, “Diego Ximeno, we have proof beyond question that you are a Jew. Please, for God’s mercy, confess and let us end this business.” Ximeno said nothing.