How much longer would they keep him? How many more
months? Years?
He is naked, but in the mornings he pretends to put on socks
and shoes. He play-acts getting dressed, even knots a tie. He gets
ready for his day at work – the interrogation.
Sometimes they don’t turn up.
Then, in the evening, Mfundi mimes brushing his teeth. He
runs his tongue over the top row, imagines them gleaming white.
The day is over.
There was a moment, a few weeks ago, when he noticed he’d
been putting the wrong shoe on first. At home, without ever
thinking about it, he’d always first put on his left shoe. He stared
at his bare foot for a long time. He wanted to sob. They said they
would never stop until he told them everything. No body, they
said, could hold out for ever.
“We’ll get your story”, the policeman smirked. “Eventually.”
But it wasn’t his story they were interested in. They didn’t
want to know who he was, and how he had come to be here, and
what had driven him to take up the armed struggle. They weren’t
interested in all the pain and heartbreak and the terrible price of
resistance. No. They were after information; names and addresses
and locations. Especially one name, which he must bury as deep
in his soul as he could, somewhere so deep he’d be dead before
they reached it.
****
