The political side of the prison was overcrowded and they'd had to put the sleep deprivation equipment in one of the cells in the long-term block for criminals. The guard took her down, strapped her on to the hard wooden bench and clamped the earphones over her head. Felsen watched through a crack in the grille of his cell door, such comings and goings were interesting to a man to whom nothing had happened for two years. And to see a woman, too.
Jorge and Manuel went out to lunch. They ate fish, drank a bottle of white wine and two bagacos each. In the afternoon they interrogated a further four prisoners. At five o'clock Jorge went home. Manuel went down to the sound room. He took the keys from the guard and let himself in to the narrow cell. Maria Antonia Medinas lay on the board, convulsing under the straps. The noise pounding through her head was faintly audible from the door. Manuel turned the machine off. Her body stilled. He leaned over her, hands clasped behind his back. The good doctor. She looked wild, confused and frightened, like a car-crash survivor staring up through a shattered windscreen. Muscles twitched. Her breasts heaved.
Manuel lifted off the earphones. She swallowed hard. He brushed the hank of hair off her forehead, which was clammy cold with sweat. He wiped his soft, dry palms together slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. He smiled without showing his teeth. The good fattier. The sick child.
'It's been hard,' he said, in the softest, most calming voice he could find. 'I know how it's been. But it's over now. You can go to sleep. A long deep sleep. Then we'll have a little talk and, you'll see, after that everything will be all right.'
He patted her cheek. Her lids dropped. Her mouth crinkled oddly and a tear crept down her cheek. He wiped it away with his thumb. Her eyes opened. He could see her gratitude.
'Don't say anything yet,' he said. 'You sleep first. We'll have time, plenty of time, later.'
Her eyes closed and her mouth slackened in her face. He replaced the silent headphones over her ears. He left her and instructed the guard that nobody was to go into the cell.
Manuel drove west to Estoril. He felt good. He felt happy. For once he wanted the company of family. They ate dinner together, his father, Pica and Pedro. There was a festive mood in the house with eve rybody finding their appetite again after the days of brutal swelter. They all agreed to go up to the cool of the mountains in the Beira for holidays in August.
Manuel slept until his alarm at 2.00 a.m. He woke up with a leap in his heart, a strangling excitement. He dressed and made a cheese sandwich with the best Queijo da Serra and drove back to the Caxias prison.
The guard was playing cards on a different floor and it took some time for Manuel to find him and get the keys. He let himself into the cell and relocked the door. He heard her rhythmical breathing. He undid the straps on the bed. The girl rolled on her side and curled up. He sat and rested his hand on her hip. He shook her shoulder. She whimpered. He kept at it, jiggling her small shoulder-bone between his thumb and forefinger. She came awake with a desperate sigh. She rolled and her eyes snapped open, straight into fear.
'Don't be scared,' he said, holding up his hands, showing no weapons, no intent.
She pushed herself up the bed and sat with her back to the wall, her knees tucked up under her chin. One of her shoes was missing. He retrieved it from the floor. He put it next to her bare foot. She slipped into it. She remembered this man. The kind one. The one to watch.
'I have something for you,' he said, and gave her the cheese sandwich wrapped in a paper napkin.
'Water,' she said, hoarsely.
He found the guard's clay pitcher full of cool water. She drank heavily, the spout of the pitcher not once touching her lips. Water spilled over her lip and dripped down her chin darkening a patch on the top of her left breast. She checked the inside of the sandwich and ate it. Then she drank again, not knowing when the kindness was going to stop.
Manuel offered her a cigarette. She didn't smoke. He lit one himself and paced the room. He gave her the last pastel de nata he'd bought that morning. She wolfed it.
She rested the back of her head against the wall. He's strange this one, she thought, but they're all the same underneath. Manuel suddenly sat down, close to her, so that she inched back her feet. He crushed out the cigarette with his foot. He looked at her throat.
'What do you do in Reguengos?' he asked.
'I'm a loom operator. I make mantas'. Blankets.
'Is the factory closed for the summer?'
'No. They gave me time off to come and see my uncle.'
She tried to take it back once it was out. She'd never spoken about the uncle before. Manuel noted it, but ignored the obvious. It would all come out in the end. She clasped her fingers together around her knees as if that would stop other things leaking out. You have to watch this one.
'There's a big fair for mantas down south somewhere, isn't there?' asked Manuel.
'Castro Verde.'
'I've never been.'
'There's not much call for mantas from Lisboans,' she said, and he felt: a little stupid.
'It's true, it's true,' he said. 'I'm from the Beira myself.'
'I know.'
'How's that?'
'The cheese in the sandwich,' she said, to show him she was sharp again.
'My father has it brought down, and all the chouricos, morcelas and presuntos. The best in Portugal, without a doubt.'
'There's nothing wrong with a good paio Alentejano. "
'The heat. The heat's not good for it. It sharpens the meat.'
'We have ways of keeping things cool.'
'Of course, the cork.'
'And the cork oak produces acorns, which feed the pigs, which makes…'
'You could be right,' he said, enjoying himself talking like this with a woman. 'We only think of the heat when we talk of the Alentejo.'
And communists, she thought.
'And the wine,' she said.
'Yes, excellent tinto, but I prefer Dao.'
'You would, coming from up there.'
'When this is all over you should let me show you…' he let the sentence drift.
She stiffened inside and looked intensely at the man's ear. He was staring across the room, smiling. He turned. Their eyes connected.
'When what's all over?' she asked.
'This resistance.'
'Whose resistance… to what?'
'Your resistance,' he said and looked down.
He ran a finger and thumb around her slim ankle and then drew them down her foot to the rim of her shoe. The touch shot panic up to her throat. She wanted to squeal. She pressed her head back into the wall, closed her eyes for a moment to gather herself. He smiled at her. When she reopened her eyes he was closer, his soft face moving closer, his full, red lips under the moustache, parted.
'Filho da puta,' she said, under her breath, but they were so close her breath mingled with his, and he reared back as if she'd slapped him.
Things happened in the man's face. The softness went. The jaw bunched. The eyes closed a fraction and walled over. His large soft hand reached over her knees and grabbed a twist of her blonde greasy hair. He yanked her head round so sharply her body was forced to follow.
She was kneeling on the edge of the bed, her neck stretched back. He pushed her face into the corner, his thick fist bunched in the back of her head. A hand reached round and wrenched the skirt out from under her knees. Her voice left her. Nothing would come up over her voice box. Her cheekbones hurt where he forced her face into the corner. She felt her skirt come up over her thighs. She lashed out with her fist behind her. He pulled her head back and thudded her face into the wall. Her skirt was around her waist. He tore at her underwear like a feral animal. It had gone green inside her head and she couldn't get things straight any more. There was only one moment when she managed the faintest cry of the smallest child in the night. Pain flashed between her legs. Her body jolted. Her forehead thumped into the wall.