Breaking Lorca (7 page)

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 shin—it would have looked childish had it not been done with such force. For the next few minutes the woman sucked in her breath through clenched teeth.

Victor had not seen her for the three days he was sick, and he was shocked by the change in her appearance. Her face had taken on a grey, corpse-like hue, and the set of her features had changed utterly. Where before they had had a fixed, determined look, now they were slack and puffy. The woman’s words were still defiant, but the sag of her shoulders and the slack muscles of her cheeks resembled only death. It was as if the spirit had already left her body, and what defiance remained was only reflex.

Perhaps courage itself is just a reflex, Victor thought, and cowardice too. No credit or blame could attach where there was only reflex. Neither the brave nor the cowardly would be responsible for their actions. She was not a saint, and he was not a demon.

“Hit her,” Captain Peña said to Victor.

Victor was caught off guard. He had sat himself down at the table with pencil in hand, ready as always to play secretary. “Pardon me, Captain?”

“You heard me. Hit her.”

The other soldiers folded their arms across their chests and watched.

Victor put down his pencil and walked around the table. An actual physical blow—his fist against her flesh—would be harder to administer than a shock. More personal. The woman tensed at his approaching footsteps.

Victor punched her in the belly, not too high. She doubled over.

“I said hit her, not tickle her. She didn’t even feel it.” Captain Peña stepped back against the wall, folded his arms like the others, and stared at Victor.

Tito moved away from the woman and stood beside the Captain. Then Yunques and Lopez moved to the opposite wall. He felt their eyes sink into him like fangs.

Victor’s terror expressed itself in a fury of punches. The woman had no time to recover from one before another caught her somewhere else. Some part of Victor still kept the blows low—the ribs, the side, the hip. He meant to give her a good one in the chest—a convincing punch that would knock her back against the wall without doing too much damage—but the woman chose that moment to tip forward and his punch connected with her face. He felt her tooth break the skin on his knuckles and he also felt the tooth snap. The woman tumbled back against the wall, cracking her head against it, blood pouring from her upper lip.

Cheers and whistles filled the room.

Victor staggered a little in the centre of the room, thrown off balance by his own violence.

Captain Peña bent over the groaning woman and pulled the watch from her wrist. He handed it to Victor with great solemnity, as if it were a medal of honour. “Good work, soldier. Such work calls for a little bonus.”

Lopez and Yunques gave him a thumbs-up sign, and even Tito gave his shoulder a squeeze. What gorgeous relief, their sudden acceptance of him—like cool water on a burn.

That night, the watch ticked loudly on the wooden crate beside Victor’s bed. It took him a long time to fall asleep, and the night was filled with bad dreams. In one, Tito was playing Submarine with him, half drowning him in the filthy tank. He awoke with a shout, and lay staring into the blackness until his heart subsided. Outside it was raining, the drops rattling on the garbage cans outside his window. The breeze brought smells not of the tank but of the nearby pastures.

The dial of the woman’s watch glowed in the dark: four-thirty. Would she be asleep now? Or was she kept awake by the pain of the beating he had given her? Punching a defenceless woman in the mouth, you couldn’t get much lower than that. He squeezed the watch tightly, and felt it ticking in his fist like a tiny heart.

When they drove into town the next morning, Victor was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. Sunlight poured through the Cherokee’s windows, and even through the tinted glass it felt hot. The heat made Victor even sleepier. This was the first time the squad had driven anywhere since El Playón. They did not usually venture out in daylight, but today was special. They were all dressed in impeccable uniforms, and in the back of the Cherokee they had two bewildered male prisoners, freshly scrubbed and wearing new clothing.

It was a big day. So big that Captain Peña had held a full-dress inspection first thing in the morning. He had yelled at them about the state of their uniforms, yelled at them to shine their boots until they were mirrors, were they a bunch of animals? Now the cleaned and pressed squad was heading into town and, despite his drowsiness, Victor could feel the pride inside the Cherokee. He indulged a fantasy, imagining himself part of a crack unit rolling into town for a victory celebration.

One of the cleaned-up prisoners was Ignacio Perez, whom Tito had nearly drowned playing Submarine. Victor had seen his papers. The other man was much older and had only one arm. Victor recognized him from the group cell that held half a dozen prisoners, but he knew nothing about him. Neither of the men was blindfolded, and they crouched in the back with heads averted from the light.

The square in front of the Presidential Palace was already crowded. Coloured strips of bunting were woven around the iron gates, and off to one side a brass band was playing. Sunlight flashed on their instruments.

Tito showed the guards his pass and they were allowed through. A stage had been set up in front of the palace. Tito drove around behind it and parked.

“All right, you faggots,” he said to the prisoners. “Make sure you smile a lot, you got that?”

The prisoners nodded.

“You got to smile like you love us, understand?” Tito grabbed Perez by the hair. “Understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” Perez said.

“You’d better. Otherwise, we’re going to pay a visit to your daughters later—show up at the plantation and cut their tits off. How you like that, huh?”

“Please, sergeant. We will smile the whole time.”

“You make it convincing, though.”

“Otherwise we cut up your daughters,” Yunques said, as if he had just thought of it.

Tito gave Perez several light slaps on the cheek, as if reviving him from a faint. “It should be easy for you to smile! No more Submarine! No more tea party! You should be happy! Today you get to go free—unlike your buddies back at the school.”

A row of seats had been reserved for the squad just behind the front row. They filed in and sat down. Captain Peña turned around and looked them over from the front row. He didn’t smile, just nodded at Tito and turned around again to face the stage.

The stage was not large. Most of the space was taken up by flags: the flag of El Salvador, the flag of the United Nations, the flag of the United States. Several dignitaries sat down in the handful of seats. Victor caught a glimpse of blond hair flashing in the sunlight and recognized Mr. Wheat, the American who had visited the little school.

Members of the foreign media, as glamorous to Victor as movie stars, were there in abundance. Photographers crouched before the stage taking preliminary readings. The air was alive with expectation. The band played another march, and Victor rubbed at his knuckles where the woman’s teeth had cut him.

Then the President of El Salvador came out on stage and took a seat. He waved in acknowledgement of the applause, but he did not address the audience. One of his ministers—a balding man in an impeccable pinstripe suit—stood before the microphone. Victor didn’t know his name, but he had seen his photograph many times.

The minister spoke first on the dignity of labour. He noted how the nation could not survive without the people who worked the soil. It was in recognition of this fact that the present administration was committed to land reform. The President nodded his head in agreement; Mr. Wheat stared impassively at the crowd.

“Today’s ceremony,” the minister went on, “is not a great moment in history. We are not gathered at a great turning point. What we celebrate today is simply a quiet example of quiet justice: under our Land to the Tiller program, those who work the land ….” Here he paused for effect. “ …. will own the land.”

Tito and Lopez escorted the two prisoners to the side of the stage. The one-armed prisoner was sent up first, his features fixed in a grotesque jack-o’-lantern smile.

The minister held up a scroll and spoke not to the prisoner but to the audience. “Señor Bartel, this deed transfers ownership of one-tenth of the land you have worked for the past twenty years to you and your family. On this piece of land you may plant what you want. Or, if you choose, you may sell this land for whatever the market will pay. Any profit from this piece of land goes directly into your pocket.”

Turning to the prisoner for the first time, the minister handed him his deed. The prisoner kept smiling and nodding his head. The document joined their two hands, and a lusty round of applause went up. Camera flashes lit the backdrop.

The one-armed prisoner took his seat again, and then a man Victor recognized as General Damont stepped up to the microphone. Damont was in charge of El Salvador’s anti-terrorist strategy. He had a grave, courteous manner. He thanked the minister and the President for teaching him the wisdom of reform. “Justice and wisdom,” the General said, “will win this war for me.” He was completely unfazed by the stage, the crowd, the cameras, pausi ng between sentences with the confidence of a seasoned actor. “Justice and wisdom will take from the terrorists the very ground they stand on. How do I know this? The proof of this, my friends, is the constant stream of defectors from the other side.”

Ignacio Perez was sent up to the stage.

The General faced him, one warrior to another, and placed the microphone between them. “You were a member of the rebel forces, is that correct?”

“Yes, General. That is true.” Perez seemed much more natural than the one-armed man. Nervous, but natural.

“Could someone lower this microphone, please? I want everyone to hear what this man has to say.”

A technician was produced. He lowered the microphone to the prisoner’s height.

“You were a member of the FMLN, is that correct, Señor Perez?”

“Yes, General, I was a member of the FMLN. But I can no longer fight for these people.”

“And why is that? Why can you no longer fight beside them?”

“The last village we were at. The campesinos refused to give them food. So the rebels burned their village to the ground. They killed the old men with bayonets, and they raped all of the girls.”

The General nodded gravely. “Tell me this. Why did you join the rebels in the first place?”

“I joined the rebels for one reason. I joined the rebels because they promised us we would have land. Not a lot, but a piece of land of our own to work.”

“And now, Señor Perez? Now that your own government has promised you a piece of land?”

“Now I will fight for the government.”

“You are volunteering for the army?”

“Yes, General. I regret I ever joined the rebels. They are the enemy of the people and I want to destroy them.”

“Well, you are welcome in my battalion any day.”

The General held his hands up in ostentatious applause. The dignitaries behind him—even the President—rose and clapped their hands. The entire audience rose to its feet and clapped loud and long. Before the applause could subside, the band struck up the theme from
Rocky
.

The General smiled brilliantly. Seeing this, the prisoner remembered Tito’s warning and he smiled brilliantly too. Then, in what looked like a completely spontaneous bit of theatre, the General hugged him. He would not have done so yesterday, Victor thought, when Perez was filthy from Submarine.

The President gave a short speech after that, thanking the Americans for their help and vowing to continue his struggle for reform.

When they were at the Cherokee again, Tito took the deed from the one-armed prisoner. “You’ll get it back,” he said. “It has to be formally notarized.”

Ignacio Perez made to get back into the Cherokee.

“Where you going, you idiot?”

The prisoner looked at him blankly.

“Don’t you understand anything? You’re free to go.”

“Free?”

“Yes, free. Absolutely and completely free. You are a landowner now. We will have the deed notarized and bring it to you tomorrow.” He reached out and pumped the prisoner’s hand energetically. “So long, Ignacio. No hard feelings, I hope. It’s just war, you know, and war …. war does funny things.”

TWELVE

“T
HANK YOU, MY CHILDREN
,” Captain Peña said when they were back at the little school. “You were very well behaved, and I’m giving you the afternoon off.”

The men made childish noises of approval, slapping each other and mussing each other’s hair, although none of them touched Victor.

“That’s the good news,” the Captain continued. “The bad news is, you have to work tonight.” The Captain waited for the exaggerated groans to subside. “Tonight we have another ceremony to attend. A very different ceremony. Tonight we will hand over to Señors Bartel and Perez their deeds of property. Fully notarized. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”

The sun was still strong outside, so Victor took a book and went to sit at the edge of the pasture under a tree. He read a few paragraphs, but it was such a pretty day, he found himself looking up at the white columns of cloud, the deep blue of the sky above the hills. From a nearby hillock, three heifers gazed at him with melancholy eyes.

So far, it had been a better day than most. True, the land ceremony was something of a sham—all right, it was a complete fake—but at least two prisoners had gone free. And now the Sanchez woman was getting the afternoon off. That was a good thing too. He dozed for a while, and woke when he heard his uncle’s footsteps on the gravel road. Victor jumped to his feet and saluted.

“At ease, soldier,” the Captain said, and lifted his bottle of chocolate milk as if to say, You see? I know how to relax and take a break. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir. A wonderful day, sir.”

“If only it were peacetime, I would take the family for a picnic somewhere. The twins love a picnic. They get so excited.”

“I can imagine. They are beautiful girls.”

Captain Peña gestured with his milk bottle toward Victor’s book. “Reading again, I see.”

“Yes, sir. It was free time. I never thought—”

“You’re right. I did not forbid you from reading on your own time. Still, you disappoint me, Victor.”

“I’m sorry, Captain.”

“Look, things are very cozy with the Americans right now. You remember Mr. Wheat? Mr. Wheat and I get along very well. We understand each other’s needs. There’s a chance I may be able to get you into a training course with the Americans.”

“In Panama?” Victor’s heart began to pound. If he could get to Panama, he might be able to escape altogether. He could escape to the North.

“No, not Panama. The Americans are offering training at Fort Benning. In the United States.”

“I heard it was only the Atlacatl battalion going there.”

“Maybe yes, maybe no. I am trying to arrange things. Now, do me a favour.”

“Yes, sir?”

Captain Peña pulled a packet of matches from his pocket and pressed them into Victor’s palm. “Burn that fucking book.”

That sad little bonfire spoiled the rest of Victor’s afternoon. He lay on his bunk until suppertime, the blackened, curling pages vivid in his mind.

Even as he sat in the driver’s seat of the Cherokee, he could still see the title turning brown and then flaring up. He started the truck and waited for the rest of the squad to pile in.

Tito was beside him, clutching the two deeds of property. He had assembled the squad after supper and told them all to change into street clothes but to bring their automatic weapons and side arms. Lopez slid into the back seat, and a moment later Yunques.

“Let’s go,” Tito said. “I want to get this over with.”

“The left headlight isn’t working,” Victor said.

“Fix it later. Let’s go.”

The roads were pitch-dark. Driving with one headlight made Victor nervous. He kept veering to the right, where the one good light wafted over the trees.

In the confined cabin of the truck, the smell of rum was almost overpowering. Tito had spent his free time drinking in town, and now he was in a bad mood at having to cut his festivities short. When Yunques and Lopez started horsing around in the back, he screamed at them to shut up.

They drove to town in a heavy silence. They passed the Presidential Palace, where stray strands of bunting blew from the iron fence.

For the next fifteen minutes the only words uttered in the Cherokee were Tito’s barked commands of
left, right here, left
. Each time, he jabbed a thick finger into Victor’s line of vision. They were headed in the direction of El Playón, but before they reached the cliffs, they turned up a rutted road at the edge of a plantation.

“Easy, Peña. You’ll rip the tailpipe off this thing.”

“The road is very bad.”

“Easy!”

A mile up the road, they came to a row of shacks, corrugated tin roofs over crumbling adobe walls. The night was as beautiful as the day had been, and men were gathered in groups of three or four around kerosene lanterns in front of the shacks. They stood up at the sound of the approaching truck, their eyes flashing white in the headlights.

“Stop here. As soon as we get out, Peña, you turn this thing around to face the gate. Lopez and Yunques, you cover me. I will deal with these dogs. I want to make this quick.”

“You just want to take out the two?”

“We have orders only for the two. Two only, and to pick up the boy.”

“What boy is that?” Victor asked. Tito hadn’t mentioned any boy in the briefing after supper, but he knew he was often not told things.

“That one there will do.” He pointed to a skinny boy in a long white shirt. He had long hair and a pretty mouth that gave him a feminine look. They got out of the Jeep and Victor turned it around.

Tito leaned in the window and breathed rum over everything. “Keep the motor running.” He walked over to the gathering of men in front of the shack. The kerosene light cast deep shadows in his eye sockets and turned his face dull yellow. “I need Bartel and Perez. I have their deeds for them.”

“Bartel and Perez are not feeling well,” one of the men answered. “Perhaps too much celebrating today. I will give them their deeds.”

Tito brandished the two scrolls. “These are legal papers. They must be personally delivered. Personally delivered and personally signed for.”

“Why do you bring legal papers in the middle of the night? Why are they not in a legal office?”

“You want to make some kind of argument? You want to make trouble?”

“No. We don’t want trouble.”

“As soon as I give Bartel and Perez these papers, these men are landowners. Landowners, you understand? Haven’t you heard of Land to the Tiller?”

“Yes, I have heard of this program. These men own land now?”

“Okay, it’s nothing grand. We’re not talking about a plantation, here. Just the little acre they’ve been working. Now, are you going to let me give it to them or you going to make trouble?”

“I am right here.” It was Ignacio Perez who spoke from the doorway of the first shack.

“Señor Perez! Good to see you again! I have your deed for you. Come out into the light so everyone can see the new landowner. Soldier,” he said to Lopez. “Cuff that boy. The boy comes with us.”

“Why do you need the boy? Just give us the papers.”

“Where is your buddy Bartel?”

“Señor Bartel is sick. He has a fever. Please. Don’t take the boy.”

The boy’s mother came out and went down on her knees in front of Tito. She began begging and crying.

“Get Bartel out here now. We will give him his deed and then we will go.”

“I will give him his deed. I told you, he is sick.”

“Use your head, Perez. You want us to search house to house for this guy? People could get hurt. Houses could get destroyed. A fire might break out. Shut up, you whore.” He cracked the woman on the skull with his rifle butt, and she lay still at his feet.

Nobody moved.

Victor watched in the rear-view mirror as the one-armed Bartel was brought out, barely able to walk. His face was slick with fever.

“Bartel! Good to see you again! We have your papers for you. Your deed of property.”

Tito raised his machine gun and then casually, like a man spraying bugs, flicked his wrist once, twice, and hosed them both down.

Women screamed. Children woke crying. And men ran into the bushes.

“Yunques! Give Señor Perez his deed of ownership.”

Yunques knelt in the dirt and opened Perez’s mouth, set the scroll in it, and closed the man’s jaw on it. He did the same to Bartel. Dead legs twitched.

The road was empty. Just the soldiers and the kerosene lamps.

“Anybody else?” Tito called to the bushes. “Any other faggots out there want a little piece of land? A little piece of property to call home? No?”

Lopez shoved the boy into the back of the truck.

As the others climbed in, there was whimpering from the shacks. From the bushes, nothing but the blowing of the leaves.