Free Breaking Lorca by Giles Blunt Page B

everybody what went on here.”
    “That’s not true either. I’m on your side. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
    “Oh, yeah? We’ll see about that.”
    He and Lopez had guardroom duty that afternoon. Lopez was always more friendly to him when the others weren’t around.
    “What did Tito mean about my leaving just when things got interesting? Did she talk, the Sanchez woman?”
    “No, she didn’t. She seems determined to die, this bitch. It’s unaccountable.” Lopez could come out with words like that once in a while. Talk like a complete thug and then suddenly he would use a word that sounded like the tattered remains of an education.
    “She had more meetings with the General?”
    “Not just the General. She’s made the Captain angry now. It’s becoming personal now, and that’s much worse for her. We did the water thing to her—have you seen that yet?”
    “No.”
    “Put a wet towel over her face, pour water all over it. Basically drowns them without killing them. She choked and cried like a motherfucker but didn’t tell us a thing.”
    “Maybe she really knows nothing. Maybe she is innocent.”
    “Don’t be an idiot. If she was innocent, she would have told us everything she knows. She would have given up her grade three teacher by now, if she was innocent.” Lopez laughed at some memory. “When the rat trick doesn’t work, you know they’ve got to be FMLN. Let me tell you, I wish I had as much balls as this bitch.”
    “Maybe she will never talk. Maybe some people—”
    “Don’t be stupid. You think she’s going to continue this way if we take her eye out with a pencil? We’re just going easy on her because she’s a woman. We can afford to take time. Otherwise they turn you into a monster, and that’s no good. Then it’s like the bastards have won—the rebels, I mean. If they turn you into a monster, it’s like all the things they’ve been saying about us are true. But listen, my friend.” Lopez leaned forward and spoke in a quieter voice. “If I were you, I’d worry more about myself. Tito is going to have your nuts in a vise if you don’t participate more. I mean it. He don’t like what he’s heard about you. He don’t trust you. This afternoon you better show some enthusiasm or, you know, there might be an accident one night—a grenade or something.”
    They listened for the rest of the morning to the sounds from the interrogation room. There was a tea party with cookies for one of the male prisoners. A tea party was a regular beating; a tea party with cookies was a beating with clubs.
    When they dragged him back to the cells, Victor could not see a single mark on his face.

ELEVEN
    W HEN THE WOMAN was first brought to the little school, she had been wearing a watch that hung loosely on her left wrist until the Captain had taken it from her. He brought it to the interrogation room, pulling it out of a manila envelope. It was a large man’s watch, a Bulova with gold trim and a gold flexible band. It was engraved on the back: To M. from J .
    The Captain read the inscription aloud. “Who is this J.?” he asked her. “Who is this J. who gave you the watch?”
    “José. José was my brother. He is dead now.”
    “Brothers do not give watches to their sisters,” the Captain said. “Nor do they engrave them.”
    He asked her the question over and over, and every time she gave the same answer.
    Captain Peña said to Victor, “Clearly, the M. is just to convince us her name is really Maria, although we know it is not Maria. The J., however, is another matter. This J. could be a real person, and I want to know who it is.”
    “I told you. It is my brother, José.”
    “Listen,” the Captain said to her. “Maybe you can win your smelly little watch back.” He unbound her thumbs and slid the watch over her left wrist. “All you have to do is tell us what we want to know.”
    “You wanted his name,” she said. “I gave you his name.”
    Captain Peña kicked her in the