Breaking Lorca by Giles Blunt Read Free Book Online Page B

way you can keep silent. It rips the screams right out of your throat.”
    “God, Uncle. How did you stand it?”
    “I couldn’t stand it. I wanted only to die. If I had had anything to tell them, I would have told them: names, dates, locations, you name it. I would have given up my mother to stop that pain.”
    “But the Sanchez woman—she’s been taking it for three days now. Surely if she had anything to give up, she would have done so by now.”
    His uncle shrugged. “Some guys, you can pull their teeth out one by one and they won’t tell you a thing. Pull their hair out? Nothing. You break their fingers? Silence. Then one day, for a little variety, you force them to swallow a few turds. Suddenly they sing like a sparrow. Just a little shit! It’s not even painful! Suddenly you can’t shut them up.” The Captain shook his head in wonder. “I am constantly amazed by human nature.”
    Captain Peña’s house turned out to be a modest two-storey adobe, much smaller than its neighbours, hidden behind the highest walls on the crest of a hill. They were greeted at the side door by Victor’s aunt, a slim woman in her mid-forties, slightly bent at the shoulders, as if weighed down with some old sorrow. Whatever grief this might have been, she had long ago learned to keep hidden behind a wide, reassuring smile.
    “You are out of the infantry now, at least,” she said to Victor when they were settled in the living room with tea and biscuits. She made no mention of his having recently been condemned to death. “I’m so glad for you. It’s terrible what our soldiers have to endure out there.” She gestured vaguely, as if “out there” encompassed every place on the far side of her lace curtains, as if once you got beyond the gleaming floors, and the smells of lemon oil and lavender, only chaos could be expected to reign.
    “Yes,” Victor said. “Lucky for me the Captain saw fit to rescue me.”
    “Couldn’t have a blot on the Peña name, could we, my dear?” The Captain put an arm around his wife and pulled her close. “Old Iron Pants here wouldn’t stand for it.” He winked at Victor.
    “Don’t you call me that,” said his wife with a weary laugh. “Iron Pants, really. Did you ever hear such a thing?”
    “It’s true. This little woman has more macho than our entire squad, I’m not kidding you. I have to watch what I do.”
    “Eduardo is always telling me that he’s not as stern as everyone says he is,” Mrs. Peña said. “But frankly, I have my doubts.”
    “He does run a tight outfit,” Victor said with a smile. “Very disciplined.”
    “Really? He’s quite a softie at home. Do you remember from when you visited us as a boy? Once he comes through that door—poof!—no discipline at all.”
    As if to demonstrate the point, Captain Peña’s twin daughters, seven years old, came in with their nanny. At first, in the presence of a stranger, they were subdued and quiet. They were introduced and made solemn curtsies and smiled, showing matching gaps where their front teeth had been. But soon they began to climb, laughing, all over their father. He sat back in his easy chair and let them romp all over his lap. They hung from his arms, climbed around his neck, their little flowered dresses riding up, exposing the perfect young limbs, the tiny underpants with pictures of Disney characters on them.
    The Captain laughed too, and covered his little girls with kisses. He took first one and then the other into his arms, fixed his mouth to their neck, and blew hard, making a loud, obscene noise that delighted them. They squealed and cackled and begged for more. Victor stared in amazement at their beautiful skin, their innocent, open faces. Their cries were miniature parodies of the Sanchez woman’s shrieks.
    Why had his uncle brought him here? Officers were not supposed to fraternize with enlisted men. Perhaps he intended it as a carrot to dangle in front of him. The lace curtains, the polished