In a new short story, novelist Colum McCannresponds to Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a continuing series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration.
IN THE east we've got the Water Machines. They produce a scream like none you've ever heard before. Today it's Raoul. He's brown as a dog. He is hauled first by the hair over the low wall. He wears no shirt. His body is scraped along the ribcage. He wears a little religious medal at his neck. He is barefoot. When he kicks his heels, the bottoms of his feet are white. I find that curious. How can someone can be so dark but their palms and soles are so white? He shouts, Please no. We laugh. Please no.
The heat bears down on the tarmac. There are six of us. We like working the water machine on a day like today. It's the coolest place. We can allow the spray to dampen our faces. It feels like a soft wet cloth on our shirts. Raoul tries struggling to get free. They all do. I have no idea why they don't find out sooner or later that it's easier to accept it. They don't have to struggle, they should just take what's coming to them. It's easier that way. Then we can finish them off and just throw them over the wall to join all the others. But they always kick and scream and raise hell, so we have to clamp them. I think they should learn to take what they get.
Sometimes it's easy enough just to shove a shirt in their mouths. We have to be careful not to use our hands or else they might bite us. We don't have a lot of the high-tech gear. We haven't been given night-vision glasses. We don't even have electric cattle prods. We've put in requests, but the supervisors always drag their heels.
Raoul's a little soft. We just shove a stick under his jaw and push his head so far back that he can't scream. I just don't like the screaming. His neck stretches so far that he looks a little like one of those birds that fly high across the sky. The religious medal is caught between his teeth. He sucks on it, bites on it with his teeth. It is a tiny gold disc. We push his neck back so far that the gold chain snaps.
He coughs and splutters and the little religious medal falls from his mouth, rolls off the tarmac, into the sand.
You can tell a lot by a person's eyes. Raoul's are huge and brown.
That little disc of cheap gold probably means a lot to him. There's spittle at the corner of his mouth. He thrashes so hard that the stick at his neck slips, and his head bobs free. He screams and we kick him, once in the head, once in the ankles, and once in the balls. We clamp his mouth and shove the stick even harder under his neck.
We carry him off the end of the tarmac. Let his gold medal rot back there in the sand, we don't care.
We have two at Raoul's head, two at his feet and two at his side, his silence to keep. I control the stick. There's a lot of precision in that. You have to get it right at the base of his neck so it lodges hard. His body goes limp for a second and he's much easier to carry.
HE'S PROBABLY trying to figure a way to escape. They always try to lull us into a false sense of security. I'm no fool. I put a knee in his ribcage to remind him. He recoils. That'll teach him.
We step into the circle of spray that comes from the Water Machine.
It's cool on our shoulders. It almost makes you feel at peace. We slam Raoul up against the water pipe and strap him there. Belts work best. Rope tends to rot and fray.
The water is enough to drive you mad when you sit underneath it. Raoul tries to wriggle free. We take turns hitting him with sticks. It could be worse. It was worse for me, that's for sure. When I was captured in the old days, they took me to the Spin Machine. On the Spin Machine they make you lie down and prop your head out over the edge. Each time you turn they hit your head until it's a bloody mess.
We have to be careful. There's been some problems. There are new guidelines. The supervisors brought them out. So now we hit Raoul just enough that there won't be any blood. Blood is the worst of all. I hate having to explain the blood to the supervisors.
The Spin Machine is in the west, the Ropes are in the north for body burns, and the Tunnels in the south for the rats. Depending on how we feel, we use them all. Sometimes we take them from one to the other. I hate when they cry. It's worse than screaming. They should take it.
Me, I took it. Raoul should learn from me. But he's never going to listen. That's the problem with people like Raoul. They never learn to listen. They need to have a stick shoved under their neck and their bodies strapped to the water machine and then they need to be beaten.
That's the only way they learn. Then they don't cry anymore. And when they've had enough they come on our side.
I can see it in Raoul's eyes. The pupils are not so big anymore.
They're narrow and tight and glassy. He's beginning to understand. A few more kicks, a few more whacks, and then he'll know. A little trickle of snot slides down his chin where his medal was. That's the good thing about the water machine. The water wipes the snot and the marks away. Nobody knows.
Get up, Raoul.
He whimpers and falls.
Please, he says again, please.
He goes scurrying up the tarmac towards the sand. He falls down, looking for his medal and chain. We laugh. He's looking in the wrong place. That's hilarious. That's the funniest thing that's happened all day.
It's almost supervisor time. I hate supervisor time as much as screaming. They want to keep the rules complicated. They're always trying to muddy the waters. Then they come along and unlock the gates and shout, Come on, guys, come on, hurry up kids, time for dinner! Oh look George you got mud on your hat! Oh look Richard you tore your trousers. Oh look Carl, you forgot your new toy. Oh look Raoul you must've dropped your gold chain! They're thick, the supervisors.
That's what they are. They're mean and thick and they always arrive late. And then they drag us home kicking.
One of these days we're going to turn on them. That's what we're going to do, me and Raoul, we're going to get them. We'll buy our own cattle prods, wait'll you see. We'll get our night-vision glasses. That's a fact, it's a known fact, and who's going to stop us? No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
This is one in a series of 30 stories and essays by leading Irish writers marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The series was created by Sean Love for Amnesty Ireland and continues next Saturday. www.amnesty.ie