Intimate Relations with Strangers by David Valentine Bernard

Author:David Valentine Bernard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2007-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

HOW THE SOLDIER EMBRACED THE DARKNESS

After an indefinite period of time, the soldier woke up in a dark, windowless room. He coughed after his first two breaths. A pestilential stench burned the back of his throat and nasal passages. He had a flash of the last thing he remembered: the woman fading away in the light. He groaned, as if the recollection had gutted him. He tried to take stock of himself. He had a headache, and his vision was blurry. He was lying flat on his back. Above him, there was a light of some kind—a lamp. Trying to focus his eyes on the blurry, shifting image, made his headache intensify. He grimaced.

Then, after a moment of confusion, it occurred to him there were men above him. One was holding the lamp. This man kicked him then—not with vehemence, but with the kind of annoyed impatience one had for a sleeping dog.

“Wake up!” the man screamed now. The man then nudged the soldier in the ribs a few times with his boot, until the soldier propped himself up on his elbows and grunted in a manner that was meant to placate his abuser.

Presently, the other man started talking in the local language; the soldier tried to see the man’s face, but the sensation this caused was so sublimely painful that he almost felt drunk after the effort—

The man who had kicked him and screamed for him to wake up now began talking—in English—so that the soldier realized this man was translating for the other one:

“You have nothing we want,” the man began in a rapid, almost indecipherable cadence. “We want no information from you. You have no secrets we desire to know. We keep you alive only so our men can see what an American is—how weak you are. If we torture you, it is to show our men that Americans can bleed and scream. Nobody knows you are alive—or where you are. No negotiations are being made for your release. Your only purpose is to exist until we deem it is time for you to cease to exist. This is the power that we have over you. As we are men, we tell you there is no hope for your future, and that it is best for you to consider yourself already dead. Do you understand?” the man concluded abruptly. As he waited for the soldier’s response, the silence seemed almost thunderous. The soldier had been sitting there with his head bowed and his eyes closed, but he looked up now, defying the pain. Between the kerosene lamp’s flickering wick and his blurred vision, his captors’ faces seemed like something from a nightmare. He suddenly recognized the white turban of his enemy—

“Do you understand?” the translator asked again, after a pause of about five seconds.

“I understand,” the soldier said simply; and then, when the militants nodded and prepared to leave, he whispered, “Thank you.”

At this last comment, the translator looked back at him uncertainly, but then the men left, and the door was closed behind them, and the soldier found himself alone in the darkness.

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