Prose

Maria smells the sweat of the five men that hangs heavy in the stuffy room around her and the vomit pushes up in her throat, so that she has to force herself to swallow to stop the bile that is rising.
 
She is on her hands on the floor of the room, with her legs in the air and her feet against the wall and feels the blood pulsing in her head.  She feels tired and sore and weak and she is feverish and has dysentery from the unhygienic and irregular food.

She looks at the five men upside down where each of them is eating a juicy steak and some potatoes chips at the table and the smell reminds her, about the pains of hunger that is burning in her stomach.

Maria notices a cockroach running on the floor in the direction of the table and she swallows with difficulty to again avoid vomiting.

”Maria, work along with us and I promise you that you will also get such good food,” Carlos remarks friendly.  “Come on girl, it doesn’t help any one that you are exhausting yourself like this.  Who gains anything from it?”

It is clear to them that Carlos’s words has no impression on her and the Russian growls almost like a wolf, while he looks at her and is devouring his meat.

”As truly as I, Petrof Petrofski am alive, you will beg me to talk, bitch,” he threatens, but in her thoughts Maria is again living through the short time that she and Ryno had spend together and she does not even hear him.

Petrofski flies up from his chair and grabs the cockroach, before it can get away.  There is a kind of sadism in his eyes, when he walks up to Maria.

Maria is first aware of the Russian near to her, when his big fist explodes in her stomach and she falls down like a broken rag-doll and cannot help but to dirty her clothes.

Petrofski pulls her up by her hair and tries to push the cockroach into her mouth.  She spits into his face and presses her lips fiercely on each other and when he grabs at her to smash her in his massive arms, his fingers are wet.

Petrofski pulls his nose as if he is handling something revolting.  “Go and wash yourself!  Come on, go and clean yourself,” he growls and wipes his hands clean against her T-shirt before he pushes her away from him.

When Maria stumbles into the office with the women guard, the electric cord that had been lying in the corner is in Petrofski’s right hand and he is hitting lightly with it on his own left hand, as if he is testing it.

She notices a vein on his face beating dangerously, when he walks up to her.  “Let us understand one thing clearly, bitch, iron also melts.  The one or other time I will have you talking.  No, you are going to sing like a canary.”

Maria chokes in the smoke of the Havana cigar, on which he is sucking and which he is blowing on purpose into her face and she starts coughing terribly.  The dishes are removed from the table and Petrofski grips onto one of her arms and it feels to her as if her arm is crushed under his fingers.

”We are reasonable.  You can save yourself a lot of trouble and pain, if you work along with us.  Give us the names of the other agents that worked along with you.  Give us anything,” Carlos begs when her arms are pulled roughly to her back where her hands once more are being cuffed.

Maria stares wordless at them.  She is not going to break, she decides.  They have heard her scream of pain, they have humiliated her into the ground and she has dirtied herself in front of them, but the last bit of self-respect they are not going to take away from her.

Petrofski hits her so that she falls flat on her stomach on the table and she is breathless for a moment, before he once more reaches for her hair and drags her to have only her lower legs protruding from the end of the table.

She bites on her teeth not to scream, when it feels as if all her hair is being pulled from her skull.  Her legs are tied together to each other with a piece of rope, before the Russian pulls her running shoes and dirty socks from her feet.

The electric cord eats into the soft soles of her feet and she bites on her teeth to stop herself screaming from pain.  The pain is so severe, that it feels as if she is going to loose consciousness.  Every time that the cord eats into the soft skin, it feels as if she is being burnt with a white hot iron.

”Talk, bitch talk,” Petrofski roars while he is hitting her without mercy with the electric cord.  Maria feels how every lash pulls blood from the soles of her feet that are running over her ankles and toes.

The Russian does not stop the beating and when she cannot hold it any longer, she again hears that terrible screaming in her ears and she cannot believe it when the beatings eventually do stop.

The woman guard again escorts her to her cell and every step that Maria takes, wants to make her scream in agony, but not a sound comes from her lips.

Maria is astonished to find an iron mug with drinking water and a glass in the cold cell and her mouth is so terribly dry and she is so thirsty, that she has to stop herself to drink all the water immediately.

She drinks a bit of the water, before she uses the glass to wash the cuts on her feet.  She tears hear blouse right through the middle, before she ties the two parts around her feet to try and stop the wounds from getting some infection.

It is for Maria like a nightmare when she wakes at three o’clock, where she lies on the tiny bed under the stinking blanket and the woman guard looks down with hatred at her.

Petrofski and his friends are waiting on her in the office and it’s the first time that they are looking tired.  “Did you decide to work along and to start talking,” Petrofski wants to know from her where he is hitting with the electrical cord on the open palm of his hand.

”You can spit on me, you can hit me and shock me but I cannot tell you what I do not know.  It is true that I wanted to leave this country.  Who would like to stay in this backward little country, when a bright future waits somewhere else?  Where that guard of yours had got that magazine, I do not know.  It and the radio transmitter is evidence that you had planted on me.  It is not a crime to yearn for a better life somewhere else.”

”Who do you think we are?  Some kind of idiots,” Pretrofski roars before he smacks her a few times with the open hand.  There is blood flowing over her face, when her nose starts bleeding and it feels as if he is going to shatter her teeth.

When she looses her consciousness, Petrof Petrofski gets a hold of himself again and throws a beaker of water out over her.  Maria however stays lying there without any sign of life.

He kicks her, but gets no reaction.  Did he go too far, he wonders but when he feels her pulse its beating strongly.  “Carry her back to her cell,” Petrofski orders the guards.

When they come and fetch her two days later, her wounds have become septic and she is delirious from fever.  “Get a doctor!  We cannot let her die before she talks,” Petrofski orders.

It is when the doctor is readying his injection with antibiotics that Maria comes back to her senses.  “Now, God no,” she screams and they push her down on the bed to inject her.  She is sure that they have decided to inject her with Amazin, Sulfazin or Reserpine, as they had got no co-operation from her and now they are doing as the Russian have done for many years with their dissidents.

She can however feel no noticeable reaction.  It’s Natrium Pentatol, truth serum, she convinces herself.

”I know nothing!  I have nothing to tell you,” she screams and when the fever gets hold of her again she lies shivering while her teeth hit on one another.

When Petrof Petrofski and the doctor leave her cell, she lies under the stinking blanket and prays to die, but from tiredness she falls into a deep sleep.