Breaking Lorca Read Free Page B

and tried to breathe normally. The Captain had forbidden him to read, but he could not have read anyway. Labredo was begging the soldiers to kill him.
    Victor had tried to concentrate on his surroundings. The guardroom was elongated, and there were holes along one wall. He had thought they were bullet holes, but that made no sense, not on this inner wall, and now he realized that what he was sitting in had been the cloakroom at the back of a classroom. The holes were where the hooks had been.
    He counted the tiles on the floor, twenty-eight long, eight and a half wide. They alternated black and white, and if you looked at them quickly, they flashed in the corners of your eyes. On his left there was a large cork-board where the squad’s schedule for the week was pinned, along with various notices, some of them yellowing with age. “General Emilio Garcia will be speaking Friday night on the relationship of the army to the community in the auditorium at the Central Business Association.” General Garcia was long dead, his helicopter blown out of the sky two years ago by a remote-control bomb. A significant victory for the rebels.
    The screams had stopped, but the muffled cries and continuing shouts indicated that Labredo’s mouth had been taped shut. Even the toughest soldiers could bear only so many screams.
    Half an hour later the door had banged open and the soldiers’ voices billowed up the hall.
    “Man, that son of a bitch was hard to kill.”
    “You owe me fifty centivos, Lopez.”
    “Bullshit. You taped the fucker’s mouth shut. How do you know what his last words were?”
    “He was begging us to kill him.”
    “Doesn’t count. You gagged the little faggot.”
    “Peña,” Tito shouted, “open up! Labredo’s going back to his cell for a little snooze.”
    Victor sprang up and opened the door to the cells, and Tito, Lopez and Yunques carried Labredo past him. He had a glimpse of the pulped, bloody face, the blood-soaked trousers and then the pale bare feet waving in the air.
    “Clean up this faggot’s mess,” Tito grunted as they sidled past. “I want to see my face in that floor.”
    “Yes, sergeant.”
    “Lopez will take the guardroom. I want to see my face, understand?”
    That night, they drove the Grand Cherokee through town to El Playón. There was no need for a blackout in San Salvador; it was well defended and the rebels had no planes, no helicopters. At the crosswalks, pedestrians glanced at the tinted windows and looked away, or crossed the street. The Cherokees were unmarked, but everyone knew they belonged to the security services. The vehicles intoxicated the soldiers inside as if they had been drinking.
    “Look at that bitch,” Yunques said, breathing garlic across Victor’s face. He was pointing to a woman who backed away from the Jeep. “I think she’s going to shit herself. You think that’s really a baby she’s carrying?”
    “Why? You think she’s carrying a bomb?”
    “You never know.”
    “You just want to fuck her, Yunques. I know you.”
    “No, I don’t. I want to fuck that little baby.”
    “He wants to fuck the baby up the ass. Fucking Yunques.”
    “I don’t want to fuck it up the ass. I’m no pervert.”
    Their laughing filled the truck, and Victor had a vision of the laughter as heaps of garbage—bags of sour garbage bursting inside the truck.
    “Hey, Labredo!” Tito called. “How you doing back there, baby?”
    “Labredo’s pissed off with you, man. He ain’t going to talk to you no more.”
    Lopez put on a little voice, “Hey, somebody turn on the lights. I can’t see a thing,” and more laughter filled the truck.
    “Man,” Yunques said again, “that son of a bitch was hard to kill.”
    “I can’t believe you took his eyes out before you finished him off. You got to show them what you’re doing. That’s the only way they get the fucking point. Eyes you always take last.”
    “I tried to put one back. Fucker wouldn’t fit back in his