Kabobs, Chilis, and other things that shouldn't be combined with Human Flesh
So... Valentin is in the hands of SIS. Oh dear.
If you don't want to read about torture, feel free to skip this one. I was kind enough to put all the interrogation in one chapter for you, though. I feel that I should give some sort of life update, but LJ is largely a graveyard in which I post fiction now. So... yeah. Fuck it.
11- Cerebellum
Valentin's wrists chafed against the cuffs. The rough wood of the simple English chair cut into his arms. He drummed his fingers against the back of the chair, keeping the circulation going. Couldn't have limbs going to sleep in the middle of an interrogation.
His clothes lay in a lump halfway across the cellar. Against the North wall, Guzman lay unconscious, tied hand and foot.
Dante stood in front of Valentin, surveying the damage with a soda bottle in hand. Guzman had not been forthcoming. He maintained his importance to science as a leading researcher on the human cerebellum. The cerebellum, apparently, was a region of the brain controlling fear and pleasure responses.
Guzman was going to his execution in the morning, so it was of little consequence.
The Russian had been even less talkative than the scientist.
Dante stalked around Khilkov. The man's hands were still securely cuffed behind the back of the chair. Stripped down to his underwear, Khilkov was covered in goosebumps. The cellar wasn't known for its warmth and comfort, after all.
“What a lovely evening at the pub, eh?” Dante smirked at the prisoner. The Russian didn't seem to know any English, but Dante could make quips in French just as easily.
The 'pub' above them had been under construction for years. It was an SIS front. Beer would never run from its taps, patrons would never stumble down the lane to little bar over the sea cliffs. It held only agents and prisoners and secrets.
“I see you've been a guest of the Soviet prisons, my friend,” Dante smiled at Khilkov, all teeth.
Valentin stared straight ahead, as if Dante's dashing figure were transparent.
Dante crossed his arms like a schoolmaster and began,
“The skull tattoo on the front of your shoulder- a death's head- means you are a murderer. The epaulet on the other shoulder... Solitary confinement.”
“Made this look like a fucking vacation,” Valentin replied, in voice like dry suction.
“That's the spirit!” Dante chuckled, “A strapping man like yourself has been in worse straits, I'm sure.”
Valentin had a wooden skewer stuck under each toenail, courtesy of Tycho. The pain wasn't producing the desired effect, but one of Adele's citrus and vinegar mixtures might add a nice seasoning to the wounds, Dante thought.
“You look like the enterprising kind, not one to toe the Party line. No doubt Communism can be a lucrative cause, but nothing to martyr yourself over.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“So the last one- the little agent with the wooden skewers- he was the bad agent,” said Valentin, “And you're going to play my fucking advocate. First lesson of interrogation. Or is there some subtle fucking nuance to SIS technique that I'm missing?”
“No gaining your goodwill, then,” Dante replied.
“I'm insulted that you'd try,” Valentin grinned like a madman.
Dante took his bottle of carbonated water, infused with the extract from Adele's Thai chilis, carefully tended to bring out every drop of the heat. The smell of it, however faint, whispered to him of foreign cuisine- noddles and barbaric meats, eaten in a walless hut during a tropical rainstorm. Oh Asia, he thought, where I first learned such skills that serve me now.
He seized the Russian's hair, forcing his head back until his neck pressed against the chair back and his eyes rolled upward in fury.
Good men fear men like this, Dante thought, men like this who come creeping after their wives and daughters. Flabby and disreputable with lines around the eyes and ferocious teeth. Predatory, filthy men. While the warriors were away, men like this came after their women like greying wolves.
He shook the bottle, holding his thumb over the opening. When the foam pressed upward, he held the bottle under Khilkov's nose and let the fluid go.
The jet of chili-infused soda shot into Valentin's nose, and he choked himself screaming. Blood and soda water gushed down from his nostrils as his eyes watered in rivers.
“That was just the appetizer,” Dante told him, “Wait until you have a taste of the entree. You are already a kabob, perhaps Thai cuisine is just the thing.”
Valentin let off a string of mat, in spite of his burning throat and the inferno playing on behind his eyes.
Dante swept out, wordlessly.
Guzman lay unconcious.
The room was cold, damp in that typical English way.
Valentin collected himself in silence. His own death sat separately in his mind, a logical possibility like a numerical equation. He couldn't give up on life just yet.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and a woman came in.
Valentin's trip to England had been a fog. Being under the influence of those gas masks was like being pleasantly drunk. Lights and colors whirled by, numb and disjointed. There had been two women, he thought. The little blonde from the Oasis, who shivered and whined. And this one, quieter, tall, with dark hair.
She shut the door behind her and glanced at Guzman.
“Hi,” she looked up at Valentin, “I'm Agent St. Cyr, you can call me Bianca.”
She pulled up a stool and sat, like a boy, limbs sticking out at varied angles. She was in her early thirties, harsh-faced, with bad posture and hair that was stuck into a makeshift bun with a pencil. Hardly the information-grabbing seductress.
Valentin's feet throbbed. Pulses of pain shot up his shins ever few moments, but it was bearable. Mostly, he just felt exhausted. These Brits were the most stuck-up lot of toy soldiers he'd ever met.
Better to just get the torture and death over with, he thought. The anticipation sawed against his ribs, incessant and irritating.
“I'm supposed to get basic information out of you,” said Bianca, “But you won't talk to them, so you're sure as shit not gonna talk to me. They never really respect me, you know. Cause I'm a woman and French and a Nazi and so on.”
She sighed.
“You're a Nazi?” Valentin summoned a laugh.
“Keeping the faith alive,” she made a mock salute, “So I've met men like you. A lot of them were with us in the SS. You won't tell me anything. I respect that.”
“So why don't you just fucking shoot me already?”
Bianca shrugged, “For entertainment.”
“Of all the pubs in the world, why did you have to walk into mine?” Valentin winked.
She laughed, throwing her head back, slapping her knee.
“You're funny. I like you.”
Bianca leapt up from her chair. Her foot hit Valentin square in the face with impossible speed. He choked, spitting out the blood that filled his mouth. A moment later, pain blossomed across his nose as the raw flesh of his nostrils burst out with blood. Again.
“It pisses me off that those assholes set me up to fail,” she sat back down, “See, prisoners get this idea that they can scam me. They think I'm weak. I've been doing this longer than Dante or any of these fucks. I was raised to be a killer, part of an ancient family of criminals.”
Valentin had heard about them, the great criminal families who lived in secret, passing their trade through generations. Poisoners, spies, assassins. It wasn't nearly as relevant as his bloody face, which began to itch with the force of a hundred wool turtlenecks.
Bianca kept going,
“Prisoners are so much fun, though. There's just no consequences! I like shocking people in small ways-at dinner parties and such- just to see those horsey British uppercrust faces get that face of disgust. But with you... Well, I can say anything. Do anything.”
Valentin spat out a salty mouthful of blood. This was torture, he thought, listening to some harpy unburden her thoughts.
“Human flesh tastes like pork,” she told him, “Oh, they say everything tastes like chicken. Snake tastes like chicken, but flakier. We taste like hogs, which says more about human nature than any existential philosophy. Lion, on the other hand, is tough.”
He wondered if she'd really eaten a human being, or if that was just for shock value, to see if he was paying attention even though it felt like red hot pokers were jamming into his arms.
She dug inside her sack of a coat and drew out a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon.
“Dinner?” asked Valentin. Moving his mouth helped the itch.
Bianca ignored him and gestured with the spoon,
“That tattoo on your side, what's that for?”
It was a picture of the sun coming over the horizon, with silhouetted birds flying around it.
“It means I was born free and should stay free,” he told her.
“Huh, interesting. I like it. That's why we do this stuff,” she waved the spoon around the room, “Why you put up with the assholes and the people shooting at you and the stakeouts in the rain. You do it for those moments without chains, for that next horizon.”
They sat in silence for a moment. She took the cap off her peanut butter and stuck the spoon in.
“And here we are now!” she grinned, painfully.
The itch grew unbearable, and Valentin rubbed his chin against his shoulder. Dried blood clogged his nose, but the thought of sniffling was too painful. He had to hold everything in place, even if his toes were kabobs and his nose felt like a squashed tomato.
“Where was I?” Bianca stuck a spoonful of peanut butter in her mouth, talking around the stickiness, “My father was Leon St. Cyr. He was a Nazi, too. Murdered along with the rest of the family before the war ended. He fought in the Great War, too, in the French army. Did you know him?”
“Do I look like a War Encyclopedia?” Valenin said between itches, “I don't remember a St. Cyr.”
“Gnarly war, anyway. Were you at Sonne?”
She shoved more peanut butter in her mouth and smacked her lips around the spoon. Valentin gave an affirmative grunt. He got the feeling he could tell her every personal detail and state secret in his mind, and she would just shrug and go one with her own life story.
“Right,” said Bianca, after swallowing, “So we've all seen this and that. It's different for you Russians though. So many people. Like expendable cattle. I always said Russians were part of the lower races. Killing a bunch of them isn't like killing a bunch of us.”
“Spare me your Nazi propaganda,” said Valentin.
The peanut butter reminded him of farm mud- a cocktail of dirt and animal shit. He hadn't eaten in thirty hours or so, but had passed the point of tangible hunger. At least the fascists occasionally gave him water, but he figured that was just for the joy of watching him piss himself.
His left leg was twitching internally. Not long before it started to visibly shake. How close was he to the end? He wondered. Would there be hours of torture, or would it just be talk of 'lower races' and a bullet to the head?
Bianca went on,
“It's a different thing to take people of the lower races. They might scream and carry on, but most animals do unless they're bred in captivity. They have to be broken. But what the fucking Russians did to our people was despicable. I was there when your Mongol horde took the camp at Gross-Rosen. 'Liberated' it, like a bunch rampaging beasts would liberate an art gallery.”
More and more of her teeth showed when she spoke. Valentin half expected her to spit in disdain. Meanwhile, his leg quivered against all his attempts to keep himself steady.
“Your lot was always surrendering and begging for mercy, but we fought to the end. We didn't flinch, at Gross-Rosen, we held fast with all the honor and courage of kings. Even under your disgusting half-yellow comrades, the women of the SS-Helferin didn't scream.”
Her face grew tighter, and she stuck another spoonful of peanut butter into her puckered mouth, wiped her face with one hand, and set the jar down.
“Fascinating,” Valentin croaked.
“How rude of me! Did you want some?” she pointed to the jar.
He shook his head, sending tremors of pain through his skull. The itch and the agony were becoming a real symphony of discomfort. It could only get worse from here.
Bianca pushed her stool aside and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring up at Valentin's battered face.
“You're such a communist,” she paused to laugh, “I wasn't talking about you, it's obvious you're not one of those halfbreed Mongol Russians.”
“Really,” he said, but the word caught on his chalky tongue.
“But you look so offended, and you shouldn't be. The whole communist dream of human equality is the silliest fairy tale I've ever had the privilege of being too jaded for. You don't do lesser people any favors by leaving them to their own devices. They need rulers.”
Valentin opened his mouth, then shut it. Talking hurt, and he shouldn't be talking anyway. Even if just to debate international policy with Agent St. Cyr.
She snorted and rose from the floor, producing a flask from her pocket.
“To disagreement,” she made a mock toast with the flask, “May we have a lively debate until the Honorable Dante finds another use for you.”
Bianca drank, then tipped the flask into Valentin's mouth.
The fire of alcohol washed over his mouth. Then he tasted the smoke and earth of the whiskey, and a warm rush rose through his head.
Bianca, meanwhile, was still going,
“I've been to Africa, with the Ahnenerbe. They are repulsive apes, barely human at all. And your
Communist Dream would treat them as equals. Ha! Those tribes live in grass huts, running about naked. Their language is all gulping and clicking, like beasts.”
“History will vindicate us,” he croaked back.
Valentin remembered something Saboteur had said, back at the Supperclub, about annoying languages. Saboteur had betrayed them. Now he was in this godforsaken pub and Olivia...
He could only hope that she was alive, after the beating she'd taken at the hotel. His own life was an acceptable loss for their cause. They were all expendable, but Olivia didn't have to be expended so quickly.
Especially since it was his baiting of Saboteur that let the Fascists find them. If the Fascists had Olivia, they would taunt him with it. She was safe, he thought, and the thought of her sitting in warm comfort somewhere bolstered him a little.
What would his last thought be? Maybe some noble sentiment of worldwide revolution and self-sacrifice. Maybe just relief that the pain would end.
He's looked death in the eye enough times that the thought seemed leaden. His mother had been right, he was an inhuman brute with no emotions.
Religion would be such a nice salve. In a few hours they would give him more drugs, the shaking would get worse, the pain less tame. It would be soothing to think of an afterlife, a golden barracks where good Communists got their eternal reward.
If nothing else, to see his dead comrades again. Or his wife and son, dead all these years and buried in the shell of Stalingrad. If their neighbors didn't eat the corpses to stay alive, he thought.
What a fucking shithole the world was.
But he thought it would be best if he could hold the thoughts of all the good moments- the crisp vodkas and the perfect kills and the insatiable women. The horizons and unchained moments.
Bianca shoved the flask in his mouth, and the rush of whiskey wiped the image of Olivia from his mind.
“I'm jealous of you. You've haven't watched your dream die yet. You haven't watched it shrivel and scorch under an onslaught of fucking baboons. How long have you been a Commie?” asked Bianca.
He got the feeling he could tell her anything, and she'd just shrug and tell him more stories about the Nazis.
“I lived in Russia for a long time. Stalingrad, Samara. Unpleasant places, I'm not a Soviet fanatic. Eventually I was called to Moscow.”
“But how long?”
“Fifty years,” he said, “It's in my fucking bones.”
“You silly Reds!” she laughed, slapped her knee again, and sat back down, “Your language, from what I hear, has a whole dialect for swearing. Which is definitively awesome. But the nicknames, they're wretched.”
She leaned forward, taunting him like they were in a schoolyard,
“Sasha, Borya, Grisha, Sanya, Misha, Valya...”
The list carried on. He stared at the Nazi medals on the inside of Bianca's lapel. Her words chafed more than his wrists. She spat out names of affection with her thin lips and reptilian face and taunting sing-song. The names meant nothing to her. He doubted she'd ever felt affection for anything that wasn't covered in a swastika or peanut butter.
Bianca finally shifted in her seat, and sighed,
“I grew up in a criminal family, so I'm insatiably curious about normal families. How is it, growing up in a Communist house? With a little babushka wife and freedom-hating brats scampering around.”
“Don't you ever shut up you miserable fucking harpy,” Valentin shot back, “Give me more of that fucking truth serum and put my balls in a fucking vise if you want to know so desperately.”
“Oh-ho-ho! I have hit a nerve there,” Bianca made a token effort at straightening her posture, “Children, what a waste. They start out looking like bloody worms, and turn into caterpillars who endlessly shit themselves. Do I offend? Do you have spawn?”
His leg was full-on shaking. His shoulder muscles spasmed. If only he had that Nazi bitch in the chair, and could turn her face to a violet pulp. She talked about communist wives and children as if they were insects, ripe for the squashing. That was the Nazi way. The words made his nausea rise again.
“Oh dear, you've turned against me, just when we were starting to be friends,” she drew a handful of bamboo skewers from inside her jacket.
No wonder the tailoring was so roomy, Valentin thought, she keeps everything in that coat.
She went behind the chair, and he felt her fingers against the raw skin of his wrist. Her touch was cold, somehow bluish.
Guzman moaned from his corner. Valentin had forgotten all about him. Delirium setting in.
“I'm supposed to get your name, and Max's address. Set up to fail, but I might as well amuse myself,” she drove the first skewer under his left thumbnail.
A wave of pain surged up his arm. His toes curled in reaction, straining against the skewers there. Another stab of pain his his left forefinger, and his body contracted so hard all his organs lurched against each other. If he'd had anything to vomit, it would have come up. As it was, he coughed and shuddered.
When each finger was made into a kabob, she drew the slivers of bamboo out, one at a time. Valentin lost the strength to clench his jaw, and screamed.
Afterward, freezing sweat ran down his body, and aftershocks stabbed his arms and legs. His breath echoed through the cellar. Guzman had opened his eyes, and watched them mutely as Bianca put the bloody skewers back in her pocket.
“Pain is a gift. It takes us back to a primitive, essential feeling, a moment of pure experience,” she said.
She knew both sides of this game. At Gross-Rosen, she lay for two days on a concrete floor with a bullet in her leg and half her ribs broken. Nothing could replace the clarity of those hours, where the edges of the world stood out so clearly, where everything burned bright with no thought to the next moment.
“We wouldn't be here if you hadn't misbehaved with Dante and Tycho,” she said.
Valentin looked up at her and forced himself to smirk. It was surprisingly easy.
“Come sit on my lap and I'll show you misbehavior.”
She bent over him, close enough that her cold, inhuman breath brushed against his lips.
“I admire your fortitude, you know,” she murmured, “I hate the decadence of these nobles. You seem like a life-seizing sort. Embrace this, remember all the glories and carry your pain and fear like a burning crown.”
He smashed his forehead into her nose.
Bianca leapt back. The hit was weak, but her eyes watered anyway. She tripped, found her balance, and placed her foot on Valentin's shoulder.
His gaze ran down her leg- force of habit- and he realized that his vision would start fucking up before too long. The world already seemed off its axis. Bianca shoved him with her foot.
The next moment, a crushing blow hit his arms. He lay on his back, his arms still cuffed and now smashed between his body and the floor. The ceiling had mold spots. His face itched again.
Bianca loomed over him, one military boot next to his face, reeking of dirt and age.
“I could piss on your face,” she paused to snarl, then got her peanut butter and went back to chit-chat, “Good stuff, the peanut butter. It was rationed during the war, so of course they ordered fifty-odd cans of beans instead of one peanut butter. But what can of beans was ever so delicious?”
She smiled and turned to Guzman,
“I'll get you out if I can, but not at risk to myself. I've got a good job and I want to keep it. But I'll keep the other agents from going down here for a few minutes. A guard will check in ten minutes or so. If you make it to the cars, I'll make sure you get on the road to London.”
Guzman rasped thanks.
Bianca knelt and loosened the ropes on his hands and feet.
“You're too good to die here,” she told him, and went to the door. As an afterthought, she looked back at the fallen Valentin,
“Good luck with those monarchist assholes.”
If you don't want to read about torture, feel free to skip this one. I was kind enough to put all the interrogation in one chapter for you, though. I feel that I should give some sort of life update, but LJ is largely a graveyard in which I post fiction now. So... yeah. Fuck it.
11- Cerebellum
Valentin's wrists chafed against the cuffs. The rough wood of the simple English chair cut into his arms. He drummed his fingers against the back of the chair, keeping the circulation going. Couldn't have limbs going to sleep in the middle of an interrogation.
His clothes lay in a lump halfway across the cellar. Against the North wall, Guzman lay unconscious, tied hand and foot.
Dante stood in front of Valentin, surveying the damage with a soda bottle in hand. Guzman had not been forthcoming. He maintained his importance to science as a leading researcher on the human cerebellum. The cerebellum, apparently, was a region of the brain controlling fear and pleasure responses.
Guzman was going to his execution in the morning, so it was of little consequence.
The Russian had been even less talkative than the scientist.
Dante stalked around Khilkov. The man's hands were still securely cuffed behind the back of the chair. Stripped down to his underwear, Khilkov was covered in goosebumps. The cellar wasn't known for its warmth and comfort, after all.
“What a lovely evening at the pub, eh?” Dante smirked at the prisoner. The Russian didn't seem to know any English, but Dante could make quips in French just as easily.
The 'pub' above them had been under construction for years. It was an SIS front. Beer would never run from its taps, patrons would never stumble down the lane to little bar over the sea cliffs. It held only agents and prisoners and secrets.
“I see you've been a guest of the Soviet prisons, my friend,” Dante smiled at Khilkov, all teeth.
Valentin stared straight ahead, as if Dante's dashing figure were transparent.
Dante crossed his arms like a schoolmaster and began,
“The skull tattoo on the front of your shoulder- a death's head- means you are a murderer. The epaulet on the other shoulder... Solitary confinement.”
“Made this look like a fucking vacation,” Valentin replied, in voice like dry suction.
“That's the spirit!” Dante chuckled, “A strapping man like yourself has been in worse straits, I'm sure.”
Valentin had a wooden skewer stuck under each toenail, courtesy of Tycho. The pain wasn't producing the desired effect, but one of Adele's citrus and vinegar mixtures might add a nice seasoning to the wounds, Dante thought.
“You look like the enterprising kind, not one to toe the Party line. No doubt Communism can be a lucrative cause, but nothing to martyr yourself over.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“So the last one- the little agent with the wooden skewers- he was the bad agent,” said Valentin, “And you're going to play my fucking advocate. First lesson of interrogation. Or is there some subtle fucking nuance to SIS technique that I'm missing?”
“No gaining your goodwill, then,” Dante replied.
“I'm insulted that you'd try,” Valentin grinned like a madman.
Dante took his bottle of carbonated water, infused with the extract from Adele's Thai chilis, carefully tended to bring out every drop of the heat. The smell of it, however faint, whispered to him of foreign cuisine- noddles and barbaric meats, eaten in a walless hut during a tropical rainstorm. Oh Asia, he thought, where I first learned such skills that serve me now.
He seized the Russian's hair, forcing his head back until his neck pressed against the chair back and his eyes rolled upward in fury.
Good men fear men like this, Dante thought, men like this who come creeping after their wives and daughters. Flabby and disreputable with lines around the eyes and ferocious teeth. Predatory, filthy men. While the warriors were away, men like this came after their women like greying wolves.
He shook the bottle, holding his thumb over the opening. When the foam pressed upward, he held the bottle under Khilkov's nose and let the fluid go.
The jet of chili-infused soda shot into Valentin's nose, and he choked himself screaming. Blood and soda water gushed down from his nostrils as his eyes watered in rivers.
“That was just the appetizer,” Dante told him, “Wait until you have a taste of the entree. You are already a kabob, perhaps Thai cuisine is just the thing.”
Valentin let off a string of mat, in spite of his burning throat and the inferno playing on behind his eyes.
Dante swept out, wordlessly.
Guzman lay unconcious.
The room was cold, damp in that typical English way.
Valentin collected himself in silence. His own death sat separately in his mind, a logical possibility like a numerical equation. He couldn't give up on life just yet.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and a woman came in.
Valentin's trip to England had been a fog. Being under the influence of those gas masks was like being pleasantly drunk. Lights and colors whirled by, numb and disjointed. There had been two women, he thought. The little blonde from the Oasis, who shivered and whined. And this one, quieter, tall, with dark hair.
She shut the door behind her and glanced at Guzman.
“Hi,” she looked up at Valentin, “I'm Agent St. Cyr, you can call me Bianca.”
She pulled up a stool and sat, like a boy, limbs sticking out at varied angles. She was in her early thirties, harsh-faced, with bad posture and hair that was stuck into a makeshift bun with a pencil. Hardly the information-grabbing seductress.
Valentin's feet throbbed. Pulses of pain shot up his shins ever few moments, but it was bearable. Mostly, he just felt exhausted. These Brits were the most stuck-up lot of toy soldiers he'd ever met.
Better to just get the torture and death over with, he thought. The anticipation sawed against his ribs, incessant and irritating.
“I'm supposed to get basic information out of you,” said Bianca, “But you won't talk to them, so you're sure as shit not gonna talk to me. They never really respect me, you know. Cause I'm a woman and French and a Nazi and so on.”
She sighed.
“You're a Nazi?” Valentin summoned a laugh.
“Keeping the faith alive,” she made a mock salute, “So I've met men like you. A lot of them were with us in the SS. You won't tell me anything. I respect that.”
“So why don't you just fucking shoot me already?”
Bianca shrugged, “For entertainment.”
“Of all the pubs in the world, why did you have to walk into mine?” Valentin winked.
She laughed, throwing her head back, slapping her knee.
“You're funny. I like you.”
Bianca leapt up from her chair. Her foot hit Valentin square in the face with impossible speed. He choked, spitting out the blood that filled his mouth. A moment later, pain blossomed across his nose as the raw flesh of his nostrils burst out with blood. Again.
“It pisses me off that those assholes set me up to fail,” she sat back down, “See, prisoners get this idea that they can scam me. They think I'm weak. I've been doing this longer than Dante or any of these fucks. I was raised to be a killer, part of an ancient family of criminals.”
Valentin had heard about them, the great criminal families who lived in secret, passing their trade through generations. Poisoners, spies, assassins. It wasn't nearly as relevant as his bloody face, which began to itch with the force of a hundred wool turtlenecks.
Bianca kept going,
“Prisoners are so much fun, though. There's just no consequences! I like shocking people in small ways-at dinner parties and such- just to see those horsey British uppercrust faces get that face of disgust. But with you... Well, I can say anything. Do anything.”
Valentin spat out a salty mouthful of blood. This was torture, he thought, listening to some harpy unburden her thoughts.
“Human flesh tastes like pork,” she told him, “Oh, they say everything tastes like chicken. Snake tastes like chicken, but flakier. We taste like hogs, which says more about human nature than any existential philosophy. Lion, on the other hand, is tough.”
He wondered if she'd really eaten a human being, or if that was just for shock value, to see if he was paying attention even though it felt like red hot pokers were jamming into his arms.
She dug inside her sack of a coat and drew out a jar of peanut butter, and a spoon.
“Dinner?” asked Valentin. Moving his mouth helped the itch.
Bianca ignored him and gestured with the spoon,
“That tattoo on your side, what's that for?”
It was a picture of the sun coming over the horizon, with silhouetted birds flying around it.
“It means I was born free and should stay free,” he told her.
“Huh, interesting. I like it. That's why we do this stuff,” she waved the spoon around the room, “Why you put up with the assholes and the people shooting at you and the stakeouts in the rain. You do it for those moments without chains, for that next horizon.”
They sat in silence for a moment. She took the cap off her peanut butter and stuck the spoon in.
“And here we are now!” she grinned, painfully.
The itch grew unbearable, and Valentin rubbed his chin against his shoulder. Dried blood clogged his nose, but the thought of sniffling was too painful. He had to hold everything in place, even if his toes were kabobs and his nose felt like a squashed tomato.
“Where was I?” Bianca stuck a spoonful of peanut butter in her mouth, talking around the stickiness, “My father was Leon St. Cyr. He was a Nazi, too. Murdered along with the rest of the family before the war ended. He fought in the Great War, too, in the French army. Did you know him?”
“Do I look like a War Encyclopedia?” Valenin said between itches, “I don't remember a St. Cyr.”
“Gnarly war, anyway. Were you at Sonne?”
She shoved more peanut butter in her mouth and smacked her lips around the spoon. Valentin gave an affirmative grunt. He got the feeling he could tell her every personal detail and state secret in his mind, and she would just shrug and go one with her own life story.
“Right,” said Bianca, after swallowing, “So we've all seen this and that. It's different for you Russians though. So many people. Like expendable cattle. I always said Russians were part of the lower races. Killing a bunch of them isn't like killing a bunch of us.”
“Spare me your Nazi propaganda,” said Valentin.
The peanut butter reminded him of farm mud- a cocktail of dirt and animal shit. He hadn't eaten in thirty hours or so, but had passed the point of tangible hunger. At least the fascists occasionally gave him water, but he figured that was just for the joy of watching him piss himself.
His left leg was twitching internally. Not long before it started to visibly shake. How close was he to the end? He wondered. Would there be hours of torture, or would it just be talk of 'lower races' and a bullet to the head?
Bianca went on,
“It's a different thing to take people of the lower races. They might scream and carry on, but most animals do unless they're bred in captivity. They have to be broken. But what the fucking Russians did to our people was despicable. I was there when your Mongol horde took the camp at Gross-Rosen. 'Liberated' it, like a bunch rampaging beasts would liberate an art gallery.”
More and more of her teeth showed when she spoke. Valentin half expected her to spit in disdain. Meanwhile, his leg quivered against all his attempts to keep himself steady.
“Your lot was always surrendering and begging for mercy, but we fought to the end. We didn't flinch, at Gross-Rosen, we held fast with all the honor and courage of kings. Even under your disgusting half-yellow comrades, the women of the SS-Helferin didn't scream.”
Her face grew tighter, and she stuck another spoonful of peanut butter into her puckered mouth, wiped her face with one hand, and set the jar down.
“Fascinating,” Valentin croaked.
“How rude of me! Did you want some?” she pointed to the jar.
He shook his head, sending tremors of pain through his skull. The itch and the agony were becoming a real symphony of discomfort. It could only get worse from here.
Bianca pushed her stool aside and sat cross-legged on the floor, staring up at Valentin's battered face.
“You're such a communist,” she paused to laugh, “I wasn't talking about you, it's obvious you're not one of those halfbreed Mongol Russians.”
“Really,” he said, but the word caught on his chalky tongue.
“But you look so offended, and you shouldn't be. The whole communist dream of human equality is the silliest fairy tale I've ever had the privilege of being too jaded for. You don't do lesser people any favors by leaving them to their own devices. They need rulers.”
Valentin opened his mouth, then shut it. Talking hurt, and he shouldn't be talking anyway. Even if just to debate international policy with Agent St. Cyr.
She snorted and rose from the floor, producing a flask from her pocket.
“To disagreement,” she made a mock toast with the flask, “May we have a lively debate until the Honorable Dante finds another use for you.”
Bianca drank, then tipped the flask into Valentin's mouth.
The fire of alcohol washed over his mouth. Then he tasted the smoke and earth of the whiskey, and a warm rush rose through his head.
Bianca, meanwhile, was still going,
“I've been to Africa, with the Ahnenerbe. They are repulsive apes, barely human at all. And your
Communist Dream would treat them as equals. Ha! Those tribes live in grass huts, running about naked. Their language is all gulping and clicking, like beasts.”
“History will vindicate us,” he croaked back.
Valentin remembered something Saboteur had said, back at the Supperclub, about annoying languages. Saboteur had betrayed them. Now he was in this godforsaken pub and Olivia...
He could only hope that she was alive, after the beating she'd taken at the hotel. His own life was an acceptable loss for their cause. They were all expendable, but Olivia didn't have to be expended so quickly.
Especially since it was his baiting of Saboteur that let the Fascists find them. If the Fascists had Olivia, they would taunt him with it. She was safe, he thought, and the thought of her sitting in warm comfort somewhere bolstered him a little.
What would his last thought be? Maybe some noble sentiment of worldwide revolution and self-sacrifice. Maybe just relief that the pain would end.
He's looked death in the eye enough times that the thought seemed leaden. His mother had been right, he was an inhuman brute with no emotions.
Religion would be such a nice salve. In a few hours they would give him more drugs, the shaking would get worse, the pain less tame. It would be soothing to think of an afterlife, a golden barracks where good Communists got their eternal reward.
If nothing else, to see his dead comrades again. Or his wife and son, dead all these years and buried in the shell of Stalingrad. If their neighbors didn't eat the corpses to stay alive, he thought.
What a fucking shithole the world was.
But he thought it would be best if he could hold the thoughts of all the good moments- the crisp vodkas and the perfect kills and the insatiable women. The horizons and unchained moments.
Bianca shoved the flask in his mouth, and the rush of whiskey wiped the image of Olivia from his mind.
“I'm jealous of you. You've haven't watched your dream die yet. You haven't watched it shrivel and scorch under an onslaught of fucking baboons. How long have you been a Commie?” asked Bianca.
He got the feeling he could tell her anything, and she'd just shrug and tell him more stories about the Nazis.
“I lived in Russia for a long time. Stalingrad, Samara. Unpleasant places, I'm not a Soviet fanatic. Eventually I was called to Moscow.”
“But how long?”
“Fifty years,” he said, “It's in my fucking bones.”
“You silly Reds!” she laughed, slapped her knee again, and sat back down, “Your language, from what I hear, has a whole dialect for swearing. Which is definitively awesome. But the nicknames, they're wretched.”
She leaned forward, taunting him like they were in a schoolyard,
“Sasha, Borya, Grisha, Sanya, Misha, Valya...”
The list carried on. He stared at the Nazi medals on the inside of Bianca's lapel. Her words chafed more than his wrists. She spat out names of affection with her thin lips and reptilian face and taunting sing-song. The names meant nothing to her. He doubted she'd ever felt affection for anything that wasn't covered in a swastika or peanut butter.
Bianca finally shifted in her seat, and sighed,
“I grew up in a criminal family, so I'm insatiably curious about normal families. How is it, growing up in a Communist house? With a little babushka wife and freedom-hating brats scampering around.”
“Don't you ever shut up you miserable fucking harpy,” Valentin shot back, “Give me more of that fucking truth serum and put my balls in a fucking vise if you want to know so desperately.”
“Oh-ho-ho! I have hit a nerve there,” Bianca made a token effort at straightening her posture, “Children, what a waste. They start out looking like bloody worms, and turn into caterpillars who endlessly shit themselves. Do I offend? Do you have spawn?”
His leg was full-on shaking. His shoulder muscles spasmed. If only he had that Nazi bitch in the chair, and could turn her face to a violet pulp. She talked about communist wives and children as if they were insects, ripe for the squashing. That was the Nazi way. The words made his nausea rise again.
“Oh dear, you've turned against me, just when we were starting to be friends,” she drew a handful of bamboo skewers from inside her jacket.
No wonder the tailoring was so roomy, Valentin thought, she keeps everything in that coat.
She went behind the chair, and he felt her fingers against the raw skin of his wrist. Her touch was cold, somehow bluish.
Guzman moaned from his corner. Valentin had forgotten all about him. Delirium setting in.
“I'm supposed to get your name, and Max's address. Set up to fail, but I might as well amuse myself,” she drove the first skewer under his left thumbnail.
A wave of pain surged up his arm. His toes curled in reaction, straining against the skewers there. Another stab of pain his his left forefinger, and his body contracted so hard all his organs lurched against each other. If he'd had anything to vomit, it would have come up. As it was, he coughed and shuddered.
When each finger was made into a kabob, she drew the slivers of bamboo out, one at a time. Valentin lost the strength to clench his jaw, and screamed.
Afterward, freezing sweat ran down his body, and aftershocks stabbed his arms and legs. His breath echoed through the cellar. Guzman had opened his eyes, and watched them mutely as Bianca put the bloody skewers back in her pocket.
“Pain is a gift. It takes us back to a primitive, essential feeling, a moment of pure experience,” she said.
She knew both sides of this game. At Gross-Rosen, she lay for two days on a concrete floor with a bullet in her leg and half her ribs broken. Nothing could replace the clarity of those hours, where the edges of the world stood out so clearly, where everything burned bright with no thought to the next moment.
“We wouldn't be here if you hadn't misbehaved with Dante and Tycho,” she said.
Valentin looked up at her and forced himself to smirk. It was surprisingly easy.
“Come sit on my lap and I'll show you misbehavior.”
She bent over him, close enough that her cold, inhuman breath brushed against his lips.
“I admire your fortitude, you know,” she murmured, “I hate the decadence of these nobles. You seem like a life-seizing sort. Embrace this, remember all the glories and carry your pain and fear like a burning crown.”
He smashed his forehead into her nose.
Bianca leapt back. The hit was weak, but her eyes watered anyway. She tripped, found her balance, and placed her foot on Valentin's shoulder.
His gaze ran down her leg- force of habit- and he realized that his vision would start fucking up before too long. The world already seemed off its axis. Bianca shoved him with her foot.
The next moment, a crushing blow hit his arms. He lay on his back, his arms still cuffed and now smashed between his body and the floor. The ceiling had mold spots. His face itched again.
Bianca loomed over him, one military boot next to his face, reeking of dirt and age.
“I could piss on your face,” she paused to snarl, then got her peanut butter and went back to chit-chat, “Good stuff, the peanut butter. It was rationed during the war, so of course they ordered fifty-odd cans of beans instead of one peanut butter. But what can of beans was ever so delicious?”
She smiled and turned to Guzman,
“I'll get you out if I can, but not at risk to myself. I've got a good job and I want to keep it. But I'll keep the other agents from going down here for a few minutes. A guard will check in ten minutes or so. If you make it to the cars, I'll make sure you get on the road to London.”
Guzman rasped thanks.
Bianca knelt and loosened the ropes on his hands and feet.
“You're too good to die here,” she told him, and went to the door. As an afterthought, she looked back at the fallen Valentin,
“Good luck with those monarchist assholes.”