She did not understand him at first.
"Tu mejor tesoro," he said. "Your greatest treasure."
"Thank you, no," she said, and rose, and started for the door.
"Un momenta," he said. "I did not yet give you permission to leave."
"I wish to go back to my cell," she said.
"You will go back when I allow you to go back."
"I wish to telephone the American consul."
"Ah, yes, we once allowed prisoners to telephone outside. But the privilege was abused, an escape was arranged via telephone." He shrugged. "We do not permit it any longer."
"When the consul comes to visit…"
"Yes, he is supposed to come once a month. But Monterrey is so very far away, eh? Has he been here yet?"
"When he comes…"
"We had another American here once, a man. The consul came to see him three, four times a year."
"When he comes, I'll tell him you have my passport."
"Ah, but he already knows this. A prisoner's personal belongings are always turned over to the authorities for safekeeping. I am keeping your passport safe for you, quenda. I could burn it, you know, and then it would be very difficult for you to obtain another one when finally you are released from here. But, in any event, that is a long time in the future. For now, I will keep the passport safe for you. And I will give you your jewelry, if you want it. The jewelry can make things easier for you here. It is not such a terrible life here if one has the wherewithal. The jewelry can make things easier. I can make things easier."
He picked up the riding crop, and rose, and came around the desk. He was at least six inches shorter than she was, a squat little man wearing jodhpurs and high, brown leather boots. Smiling, he walked to where she was standing.
"Raise your gown for me," he said.
"No." she answered, and turned, and walked swiftly to the door.
It was locked from the outside.
He came up behind her and struck her without warning, bringing the short whip down hard on her shoulder. She was turning toward him, her hands instinctively curled in defense, when he struck her again with the crop, just above the collar bone, and then once more across the breasts. She punched out at him, and then dodged away from him and around him, running from the door to the small shuttered window, and throwing the shutters open—the window was barred.
She ran back to the door again, twisting the unresponsive knob again, the riding crop striking her back, shouting "Help!" in English and then "Socorro!" in Spanish, and then whirling on him and flailing helplessly at the hissing whip, feeling its sting on the palms of her hands, backing away from it, wincing with each rhythmic slash, covering her face at last, and crumbling beneath the blows he rained on her withering shoulders, finally collapsing on her knees before him, her face still covered.
He would not stop hitting her.
He whipped her till she was whimpering, her hands streaked with blood, blood seeping through the shoulders of the white caftan, "Help me, someone, please," she moaned, and still he hit her, his grunts accompanying the swishing of the crop, whipped her flat to the floor, whipped her prone at his feet, her bleeding hands clasped behind her neck. He rolled her over then, and lifted the hem of the caftan with the tip of the riding crop.
"You have splendid legs," he said. "Tienes hermosas piernas."
With both hands he yanked the blood-spattered caftan above her waist and then brought back the whip as if to strike her across her exposed crotch. She cowered in terror, but he did not hit her again. He began laughing instead and then slowly unbuttoned the flap of his trousers.
He paid for her services later.
With a gold bracelet she had bought in Los Angeles.
She sold the bracelet for sixteen hundred pesos, the equivalent back then of two hundred U.S. dollars. She had paid four hundred dollars for it in L.A. With the money, Marilyn bought clothing, blankets, and a mattress, and was able to keester the remainder for the purchase of food. It was Belita who taught her to put the money inside a condom (which Marilyn purchased from Luis) and slide it up into her rectum; Belita had been in and out of prisons and jails from the time she was fourteen. The Spanish words for asshole keestering were "metertelo en el culo."
With part of the money, she bought writing paper, envelopes and postage stamps, and paid Luis two hundred pesos besides to mail a dozen letters to people she had known in Los Angeles and Houston. She learned later that all correspondence passed through Dominguez's office, and when she received no answers, she realized he had not permitted her letters to leave the prison, for fear of spoiling the very good arrangement he had with her. "Nuestro pacto secreto," he called it.
Every day at three o'clock, Luis would knock on the door leading to the cell block, and he would call out her name, and then shout "Alcaide!" and she would be led again to the warden's office where the entire prison population knew Dominguez would take his pleasure with "La Arabe Dorada," the nickname sticking because Dominguez insisted she wear to their daily meetings not the grey smock she now wore in the cell block, but instead what he called her "vestido de novia"—her wedding dress. He no longer used the riding crop on her, except to raise the hem of the caftan as she stood before him, the tented cotton hanging on the tip of the whip as he examined her blonde pubic hair in seemingly amazed discovery each time.
He took to calling her Mariucha, the Spanish diminutive for Mary. Tenderly, he would caress her burnished mound, hoping for a response from her. She stood before him glacially; he might have been her gynecologist. He would ask her then to hold the robe above her waist while he unbuttoned his fly as he had done the first time, slowly and deliberately, lingeringly, as if threatening an awesomely massive exposure that would cause her to gasp in wonder. The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse. In minuscule erection, he would lead her to the battered leather sofa against the wall, there to achieve within minutes the climax he had been hungering for since breakfast.
Afterward he would shout vituperation, blaming her for the corruption of his religious beliefs and his moral values, heaping upon her obscenities he dredged from the reeking swamp of his mind. He would then angrily knock on the door and bellow to Luis to unlock it. He told her once that he did not trust a key anywhere within her reach. "You are a treacherous cunt, Mariucha," he said to her, the Spanish word "concha"—despite its literal translation as "shell"—just as stinging as its English counterpart.
She still feared the whip.
He had stopped beating her, yes, but the whip was always in his untrusting hand, even as he mounted her. She suffered his weight upon her, suffered the worm of his manhood inside her, suffered his daily ejaculations because she dreaded the whip and was afraid he might use it again if she provoked his displeasure. Better the words of scorn and anger following his pitiful spasms. Better the endearment "Mariucha." And then, quite suddenly, it occurred to her that she might become pregnant by him, spawning an evil little monster in his own image, and this frightened her more than the whip did.
When one day at the beginning of November he generously offered her another piece of her own jewelry as recompense for her imagined ardor, she asked if she might have her diaphragm instead. He had never seen such a contraption before, and did not know what it was. He suspected it was more valuable than the jewelry, perhaps, but he could not fathom how. He examined it closely, turning it over and over in his hands, searching for the hidden clue to its worth. Shrugging, he gave it to her at last, together with the mysterious tube of jelly.