Story: Sympathy for the Torturer (part four)

Sympathy for the Torturer

(part four)

“If we were to bring a confederate of hers into custody, if some resister knew where the grenade had come from… You wouldn’t expect us to be nice about letting him conceal that information?”

Herward had forced this argument before, on every occasion that suggested it. Anton had not given in (yet…he repeated the word in his mind). The torturers said the same thing. Their victims were supposed to forget they had. This persuasion could then feel so true, so fresh and familiar all at once.

“Why would Crispola have friends in the resistance? I don’t think she meant doing wrong.”

“If you say so, Anton, I’ll believe it. I’m not from the capital.” Herward shrugged. “So you don’t tell me she didn’t like answering my questions?”

The pitfall was not in whether, though it was hard to tell, Herward required a yes or no. Anton had no reason to come to a Hidtha woman’s defense. He wouldn’t do it, to find himself ambushed at some later date. Which was too bad, another way his country was lowered by the G.R.A., in that you had to quell your sense of fairness to a stranger.

“You would like to say we aren’t allowed to save lives. That’s what it comes down to, Anton.”

He was walking, fingering out remains. The center had been like creamy fluff, the edges gummy. A metallic taint. Chewy, like taffy. Cold hanging on, twenty minutes or so after Herward had been given the G.R.A. product. Anton felt resentment building, that the ice cream was a sham substitute, that he wanted more of it. He had to carry the plastic glued to his sticky hand, having darted from washing in a public fountain.

An officer had ridden up on her motorbike.

Herward could make great strides meting out small, dumb privileges.

To spurn comfort called for Palma’s sort of pride. Anton had not been psychologically overmastered by prison and torture, but he crawled for the G.R.A. He supposed it true of the others…they were all tired, tired, of their country’s long death.

He walked, rejecting an undercurrent of suggestion, a radio voice that cropped and cropped, that came from the lampposts, not his faulty brain. Mrs. Leonhardt is your mother. Why didn’t you take the ice cream home and share it with her? She shares everything with you.

True or false. He had written none of his poetry, once under her roof. Why it troubled him, this ebbing of a gift that was not a gift…

Only empty signals flashed at empty windows

Shut up, he told the line. You’re trite. How do you like it? Trite, derivative. He supposed Mrs. Leonhardt would sneak, but thought she would not mock. She would look at his private things, but she would not look probingly, for clues that he hadn’t given up resisting, as he knew the guards had.

4

Sympathy

Sympathy for the Torturer (part five)

(2016, Stephanie Foster)