Corner of the Dead

Chapter 2

[ 79 ] C H A P T E R 2 E L C U A R T E L G E N E R A L D E L E J É R C I T O is a modern building that looks as if it is built on sticks, surrounded by gray haze. There are no windows. I ask Karl if the Pentagon has windows. We are standing on the pitted gravel in front of El Cuartel, facing each other. This place could be the moon for all the craters and stones and dust. Dust falls and settles on our shoulders. The street is perfectly still but for the moving silt. We need to go inside, Karl says. What good will that do? We need something from them, a formal request, access. Access? To the prisons. Karl pulls a piece of paper from his pocket. At least to these, the ones listed. Even if we can’t find Enrique maybe we can find someone from the raid. We work our way through from one office to the next, each with a steel desk nailed to the floor. The authorization has seals and stamps and blue letters in script. Each stamp costs more and when they ask we pay in dollars. A guard takes us to an underground prison. There is nearly no light. I look beyond the rusted bars and filthy windows to faces so swollen it is difficult, nearly impossible, to see where the eyes might have [ 80 ] been. But no eyes are better than eyes. It is the eyes that follow me. There are black and blue faces caked in blood. Some are fresh and oozing, wounds from stabbings and beatings, gunshots , too. I smell rotting flesh, which is different from burning skin or hair. I now know the difference. We are not allowed to enter the room off the main corridor. From under its door comes the smell of excrement, and it is where the screams begin. I ask the guard in a whisper to tell me, please, what it is that is happening in there. There is a metal bed and water. We strap them down and apply electricity to different parts of their bodies. They tell us what we need to know. A war is on. It is the only way you might find your friend. The cries grow louder. I can’t tell if they are from men or women. We keep going, moving through the passageways. In the next row are prisoners so young they could be nine or ten years old. It is forbidden to say anything to them. I think maybe they can no longer talk. It could be they have forgotten the words, or there are no words, or could it be that their tongues have been cut out? Karl, wouldn’t you bleed to death? What? he asks. If they cut out your tongue wouldn’t you bleed to death? ...