“Thank you. So were you,” I whispered back. Were was chilling.
* * *
—
Of the others in our section I learned little. Their names, sometimes. The names of their firms. Some firms had specialized in domestic work—divorces, child custody, and so forth—so if women were now the enemy I could see why they might have been targeted; but being in real estate or litigation or estate law or corporate law appeared to offer no protection. All that was necessary was a law degree and a uterus: a lethal combination.
* * *
—
The afternoons were chosen for the executions. The same parade out to the middle of the field, with the blinded condemned ones. I noticed more details as time went on: how some could hardly walk, how some seemed barely conscious. What had been happening to them? And why had they been selected to die?
The same man in a black uniform exhorting into a microphone: God will prevail!
Then the shots, the toppling, the limp bodies. Then the cleanup. There was a truck for the corpses. Were they buried? Were they burned? Or was that too much trouble? Perhaps they were simply taken to a dumpsite and left for crows.
On the fourth day there was a variation: three of the shooters were women. They weren’t in business suits, but in long brown garments like bathrobes, with scarves tied under their chins. That got our attention.
“Monsters!” I whispered to Anita.
“How could they?” she whispered back.
On the fifth day there were six women in brown among the shooters. There was also an uproar, as one of them, instead of aiming at the blindfolded ones, pivoted and shot one of the men in black uniforms. She was immediately bludgeoned to the ground and riddled with bullets. There was a collective gasp from the bleachers.
So, I thought. That’s one way out.
* * *
—
During the days new women would be added to our group of lawyers and judges. It stayed the same size, however, since every night some were removed. They left singly, between two guards. We did not know where they were being taken, or why. None came back.
On the sixth night Anita was spirited away. It happened very quietly. Sometimes the targeted ones would shout and resist, but Anita did not, and I am ashamed to say that I was asleep when she was deleted. I woke up when the morning siren went off and she was simply not there.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” one kind soul whispered to me as we stood in line for the pullulating toilets.
“I’m sorry too,” I whispered back. But I was already hardening myself for what was almost surely to come. Sorry solves nothing, I told myself. Over the years—the many years—how true I have found that to be.
* * *
—
On the seventh night, it was me. Anita had been noiselessly abstracted—that silence had had a demoralizing effect all its own, since one could vanish, it seemed, with nobody noticing and not even a ripple of sound—but it was not intended that I should go quietly.
I was wakened by a boot applied to the hip. “Shut up and get up,” said one of the barking voices. Before I was properly awake I was being yanked upright and set in motion. All around there were murmurs, and one voice said, “No,” and another said, “Fuck,” and another said, “God bless,” and another said, “Cuídate mucho.”
“I can walk by myself!” I said, but this made no difference to the hands on my upper arms, one on either side. This is it, I thought: they’re going to shoot me. But no, I corrected myself: that’s an afternoon thing. Idiot, I countered: shooting can happen anywhere at any time, and anyway shooting is not the only method.
All this time I was quite calm, which seems hard to believe, and in fact I no longer believe it: I was not quite calm, I was dead calm. As long as I
thought of myself as already dead, untroubled by future cares, things would go easier for me.
I was steered through the corridors, then out of a back entrance and into a car. It was not a van this time but a Volvo. The back-seat upholstery was soft but firm, the air conditioning was like a breath of paradise. Unfortunately the freshness of the air reminded me of my own accumulated odours. Nevertheless I relished the luxury, despite the fact that I was squashed in between my two guards, both of them bulky. Neither said anything. I was simply a bundle to be transported.
The car stopped outside a police station. It was no longer a police station, however: the lettering had been covered over, and on the front door there was an image: an eye with wings. The logo of the Eyes, though I did not yet know that.
Up the front steps we went, my two companions striding, me stumbling. My feet hurt: I realized how out of practice they had become, and also how wrecked and filthy my shoes were, after the drenching, the baking, and the various substances to which they had been subjected.