Story: Sympathy for the Torturer (part three)

Sympathy for the Torturer

(part three)

She had pantomimed at Anton. “That’s right. Take those off…you get me? You can’t hide your face indoors.”

He saw his dark glasses crushed in a pocket. Tossed in a bin marked Lost and Found. “Prove those are yours.” He would have to put his name on a list to replace them. Leaving the house would be a worry again, just when he’d found this way of doing it. He stood blank, churning, and the guard, racing around her desk, had clamped his arm.

Only to keep him from struggling while she took the glasses, Herward said. She would have given them back.

If hands were laid on his person he would fight. These delay-making, resentful job holders, already given their places, these citizens so fortunate to be trusted and labeled fit…

“Yes, you have been shown your life. All you will ever be.”

It was a worthwhile thing to be reminded of, and Anton wanted to remind them.

“Is that enough? I’ll go back.”

Herward touched often, and did now, tapping Anton on the wrist and pointing to show the queue empty.

“More bread.”

“Have mine.”

Herward said, when Anton was hampered by a full mouth, “Listen. How would it be, how would you personally like it…? Because I try to do what I can for you. Vonnie and Jovie…”

Anton drained his milk, thinking at Herward, don’t imagine it. Don’t bring them into it.

“Working tandem, those two, they can…”

Gestures. Herward had grown up knowing the sisters; this cinematic what-can-one-who-knows-them-say-about-them pause, however…

“They can make you feel like you’re in a movie.”

“How would I personally like it?”

“Suppose she had been warned we were coming up?”

“Crispola.”

“Because you know I’m not conjecturing. I was telling your mother about that incident with the grenade in the stairwell. You heard me. That was in B-Sector. I trained under one of the men killed.”

Herward seemed to think that, for having been released and given several classifications, a color-coded strip at the bottom of his badge that signaled danger to every G.R.A. soldier he passed on the street (each as though drilled to it resting a hand on his pistol), Anton no longer belonged to Palma. Herward had fabricated this friendship, and now he presumed on it.

“Next time, I won’t come with you.”

“I hope you will.” Herward scratched his chin. “Ah. I see what you mean. Not bad for a joke. You don’t mind my looking after you?”

And since he had to fill this blank with an answer, Anton said, “No.” He added, “Thank you.”

3

Tourmaline

Tourmaline (part one)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)