IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume
III: Responsibility
Chapter 6 Mind Games
Friday, June 5, continued Night-time, and the village
lamps shine way too brightly. I
should've known that flaunting my knowledge of Malcolm's car would land me the
task of sabotaging jeeps. "You ready to
go?" I ask Damien. (She
whispered to me, there in my arms, briefly, before she became too weak to
speak.) "Damien?" "Uh huh." ("You didn't miss," she
said. "I haven't had my bleedings
ever since.") "That's Aron's
family's house, over there. You're to
call the eldest man "Uncle Stochi", the woman "Aunt Kia,"
the littlest girl "Cousin Mira," the next one..." "I memorized all that
already." "Then what are you
waiting for?" "Nothing." I watch him step from the bushes, hesitate,
hoist his thambriy on his shoulder like a gun and walk to the house as if he'd
been there many times before. (Alysha once told me that
girls stop their bleedings if they get too skinny. We all go hungry; I don't think a baby'd find
enough room in Kana's bony little body to make itself at home. So maybe nothing happened. Maybe I've got nothing to worry about.) I cover his back till he
reaches the door, knocks, makes a gesture when the door opens and the light
spills out. (And maybe the
Meritocracy will give us all votes for free.) Then I make my own sly way, by bush and by
tree, to the fourth jeep I come across.
Mustn't make it the nearest one to where a newcomer arrived. I crawl on my belly through
the grass and under the jeep. Quick
work, take a rock and dent a part that might run afoul of a very bad road--a
part that cannot function with so bad a bend in it. They will wonder, maybe, how it ran just fine
till now, but the damage almost makes sense.
Superstition rises fumelike from such in-between occurrences, the
explanations too close to discard but not quite covering all the facts. Obvious injury'd make them think of rebels
immediately. With this, what? Ghosts?
Maybe they will think of rebels, but not necessarily the ones who
fall to bullets and stay dead. In the distance I hear a
woman calling in her kids. A dog barks,
a door closes, and a thambriy begins to play. * * * (The army has never had
such gourmet fare in all its history as Sanzio D'Arco now acquires for his
troops--fat of the land. And they eat in
shifts--three teams have breakfast in their turns, three lunches follow, three
different dinners–here, in the banquet-hall of the evil old Master who once
ordered the amputation of Aron’s feet.
The women pressed into servicing the kitchen never go home, but set
their cots up in the relative dimness and privacy of the pantry, right over
there; they live in shifts, too. Sometimes the smell of it
drives me crazy. Sometimes I can kick
back and enjoy the scent in its own right--taste, after all, not hunger, always
drove me before, and taste and scent count as practically the same sense. But I know that I weaken daily—in my flesh
and my resolve. I kid myself to think
that smell can satisfy my needs. Yet compared to what he did
to Aron...what is it with you, D'Arco?
Why such mild torture, when I know you could twist whatever you want out
of my guts in a few hour's work? And what’s that in the
corner? Something someone shoved in between
the bars? A cookbook, to further torment
me. I throw it flapping across the cell
and hear the laughter all around. I see the Master come in,
unease increasing on his helpless face, staring at the scratched-up marble
floor as military cleats come and go, startling when a sneering young soldier
elbows him in passing, not quite by accident.
I can distract myself a bit, watching his discomfort. But such shabby
entertainments never last, and can't sustain me while they do. The men eat in front of me, a table pulled
right up against my cage, but the food stays out of reach even if I could
squeeze my arm between the bars. They
smack their lips in exaggerated relish, they belch, they rub their bellies, they
lick their spoons slowly. Sometimes they
even lick their fingers, eyeing me; I wonder what Sanzio has told them? And they like to waste food--throw it at each
other in my presence. Do they see the
women watching them, too, with families hungering back home? I think D'Arco likes to
drag it out. It must be that. He wants me to resist him for awhile, suffer
just this side of confessing everything.
He hates me more than his profession demands--perhaps I can use this to
my advantage. No surprise that he feels
that way; fat makes such a great, big target for men like him, men who hate
themselves and crave the most visible of sins to hate instead. What would you look like,
Sanzio D'Arco, if you had to wear your vices wrapped around you the way I
do? Do you think your shirt could hide
it all, however pure and white? But how much longer can I
drag this out, myself? And wouldn't he
just love it if the basest part of me yielded to his inquiries, if I couldn't
say, "He twisted it out of me with hot coals and thumbscrews," but
instead, "I traded all of your names for food," and then let them
look at the size of me, or let me look into a mirror and say that--even worse! Yes, that's the reason that
he does it this way. He'd rather degrade
me than cause me mere physical pain. But we can't always be
saints, can we? I'd know that I didn't
yield for gluttony, but for simple survival.
My head spins with low blood sugar and pounds with pain, my very skin
crawls with deficiencies. It has gone
way beyond sensations in the belly--the realest hunger that I have ever
felt. I'd know that, if I chanced to
fail. Wouldn't I? I could sink my teeth into
that pome, right over there. I could
feel its juices squirt into my mouth, I could taste its sugars on the tip of my
tongue and its fruity richness gushing back into my throat. I could...if only I reveal the members of the
network that I set up. How readily the flood of
names could spill out from my lips! Just
sounds, syllables--so easy. I could have
everything I need by tiny motions of the lips and throat--the heavy bars would
swing away without my lifted hand. And
then I could feast! But Uncle has committed
himself to a Penitential Monastery on my behalf--“moral quarantine,” they call
it. He has walled himself away forever
from all the children in the world--for the rest of his life he has denied
himself his greatest, most compelling pleasure. And why? Because it's the right thing to do. Because he loves me, and he hurt me, and he
does penance more to me than he ever could to God. And why not?
We only know God through the fellow creatures that we walk among. Uncle Donal starves himself
of what he wants more desperately than anything in the world, and all for
me. Can I live up to that love? Can I deny myself that luscious pome left
just beyond my reach, by sitting here without a word? I'm not as hungry as they think I am. Not anymore.) |
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