"I myself have cut it. Is now stuck with glue. Very poor quality." He eyed her anxiously. "You do not think we would harm you?"
"Wouldn’t you?"
"Oh no, miss. General Hakim is paying most large damage deposit."
Mr. Rabin thought of everything.
"What about this spitting business?" Dorinda asked doubtfully.
"It is very hard to spit straight through wire. Most miss."
"Won’t they throw things?"
"Yes, but wire protects," he glowed. "Also, we have military escort. I will be there." He sounded like general McArthur.
It was all too Arabian nights! With people like this no wonder Sheherazade could tell her thousand and one tales. "Did this poor girl actually toss a bomb?" she asked.
"Oh yes. At bridge. Much noise. She was caught on way to the border. Her jeep got a flat tire. Man with her shot. She very well known girl. Much bad. General Hakim most lucky to sleep with her."
"Why?"
"She fight and spit and bite. He must whip her every time they have tail. Is very good like that."
"And he’s going to keep her… keep her for that purpose?"
"For long time. When he tire of her, he’ll sell her to Rabin."
All was grist that came to Rabin’s mill. Dorinda felt like goods upon a shelf. This military truck bumped its way across an infinity of nothing. Corporal Kahdin exuded bonhomie, his gaze rarely leaving the curves and contours of the costly package to which he was escort.
"Have nice tits and belly," he informed their owner approvingly. "Face much nice too," he added as a chivalrous afterthought.
Surprisingly the corporal provided lunch from a package and a thermos produced from beneath the seat. The truck paused long enough for them to eat in comfort. For desert the corporal availed himself of the privilege of his office. Dorinda wished the floor of the truck had been softer.
When in mid afternoon they stopped again. Dorinda knew she had reached the scene of her ordeal. There were sounds. Corporal Kahdin became embarrassed. He produced the handcuffs awkwardly.
"Behind back, I’m fearing," he requested.
The hired girl turned and placed her wrists conveniently. How familiar the steel bands had become. He made them as tight upon her as he could without pain.
"Must be at back," he explained apologetically. "All peoples are wishing to see Jew girl’s breasts. Jew girls have fine breasts.
"But I am not a jewess."
"Ah true. But no one knowing. Your breasts are most fine. With little hands chain at back, cannot cover. Is not allowed for girl to cover in ceremony." Thoughtfully he inserted a finger beneath the briefs, pulled and let it snap back against her hip. "Most will think this should remove. But not now. General Hakim must believe in little something kept in reserve."
"If you’ll take off the handcuffs I’ll promise to show myself and cover nothing," the captive offered.
"This I would do. But people enjoy to see a girl in chains. Wicked Jew girl who tried to blow up bridge. She must be punished. But I put on handcuff. No more."
"Am I supposed to do anything?" the impending martyr asked bemusedly. "I mean, make faces, stick my tongue out? Do I sit down or stand up or lay on the floor? Should I look scared or brazen?"
"Not know brazen. Best look very haughty. Eyes flash fire and hate." The corporal did his best to demonstrate. "But I must ask you to stand up straight and turn about so everyone see. Is bad with truck in motion, but you manage." He looked at her with sudden compassion. "Must take tarp off now."
It was not a good moment for the nearly naked girl. The line that divided her from a girl sentenced to die on the morrow was to fine for comfort. Today there was no difference between them. She would receive the same insults and the same missiles and the same spittle as if she was the guilty one. She would be terribly alone. She wanted to cry, but would deny herself the comfort as long as she could.
The wire enclosed her, its gate locked importantly by a very official and distant corporal Kahdin. There was much tugging and small sounds of snaps and buckles. Without warning the tarp was swept away. She stood naked for the multitude.
There was the same surging cry that greets the players entering the field. Elation, awe, good spirits. Faces were everywhere. It was a roman holiday. General Hakim’s munidicence made it free for all. The first sticks and stones beat upon the wire with frightening volume.
The corporal seated himself with the driver. A small escort of uniformed troops, well armed, surrounded the vehicle and its unpopular cargo. The captured girl was thankful to see the general was protecting his investment. Such a crowd, left to its own devices, could easily kill her.
It was all frightening, beastly, and quite difficult. In spite of being within the limits of a town the road was far from smooth. All Dorinda’s energies were devoted to keeping her feet. With hands linked at her back it was not easy. The jolting of the truck forced upon her a constant change of stance so that the citizenry did indeed have a constantly changing view of their enemy. She thought, fleetingly, of the real saboteur crouched somewhere in a cell awaiting her captor’s pleasure. Assuredly this was not a land in which to espouse the rights of women.
Nostalgically a vision of Kyrexos and of her home in the USA flitted across her mind. In desolation she realised that she would probably never see them again. From what was happening to her now, the life expectancy of one of Rabin’s Rentals could surely not be long. She wept. The crowd roared its approval of her tears.
It was not a big place. But the circle and the various side streets on which the prisoner was to be exhibited accounted for perhaps four miles of shameful stumbling and balancing for the female object of everyone’s vilification. Most of the crowd followed to enjoy her exposure to the full, but heads stuck out of windows and doors. It was a gala day. The litter on the floor became an additional hazard for the caged girl striving to stand. Very little of what was thrown reached her with any velocity. But there were a lot of broken pieces that fell within the wire. Dorinda hoped that tears and haughtiness together were appropriate to the occasion.
The grand tour concluded, the truck was positioned in the center of the main square and came to a standstill. Corporal Kahdin unlocked the door to her cage and joined her within. He was smiling cheerfully. Undoubtedly the general would be pleased with his conduct of the day’s affairs. He carried something that caused his captive to wince.
"Are now on long display," he announced. "Poor girl are not allowed sitting down. She must stand."
"I’ll stand," his prisoner promised miserably. "You don’t have to chain me."
"Not needful." The corporal agreed. "But giving much more pleasure for all to see. Could not do in motion for fear of maybe fall. But now quite safe."
Grinning widely, so that Dorinda guessed he, too, was enjoying what must be done, he buckled the dog collar around her neck and snapped the light chain tether above her head to one of the hoops and the wire. No locks were needed. Handcuffed she was powerless to touch the new infliction. It gave her about a foot of latitude in which to turn. That was all. "Soldiers stay on guard. No harm come," he assured her earnestly as he left and locked her cage again.
Had Rabin and his daughter realised what they had consigned her to do? Probably. She was a woman. It did not matter. That had been the theme of the dinner conversation. Shame and indignity would be her lot from this time forward.
She let her eyes rove. The seething crowd had become amorphous, without identity. She felt their hate and their lust as she had not felt their sticks and stones. Those who got closest to the cage were men who had the strength, they were the ones she knew would conceal the rigid sex beneath their haik, longing to spend it within her loins. They were the ones for whom she wore the chains. Each could see her as his own. Each would violate her in his mind. She supposed it was not really much different from the plight of a girl in the stocks at Tyburn Hill, or held in a pillory in the old Massachusetts colony. No different from all the girls everywhere who had been displayed for crimes, real or imagined. Always the crowd had roared its approval of her body and her shame. There would be but few who saw virtue triumphant. For most she would be a visual instrument of latent lust.