Code Name Verity(65)

I jumped up and began to scream at the top of my lungs (en fran?ais pour que la résistante malheureuse puisse me comprendre):

‘LIE! Lie to them, you stupid cow! Say anything! Stop being such a damned martyr and LIE!’

And I started wrestling insanely with the iron stub where the porcelain door handle used to be (before I unscrewed it and threw it at Thibaut’s head), which is pointless, because of course the door handle and its attendant hardware are purely decorative and all the bolts and bars are fixed to the outside.

‘LIE! LIE TO THEM!’

Oh – I got a result I did not expect. Someone came and pulled open the locks so suddenly that I fell out of the door, and they picked me up and held me blinking in the sudden bright lights, while I tried not to look at the wretched girl.

And there was von Linden, in civilian clothes, cool and smooth as a new frozen curling pond and sitting in a cloud of acrid smoke like Lucifer himself (no one smokes when he is around, I don’t know and don’t want to know what they were burning). He didn’t speak, merely beckoned, and they brought me over to him and threw me to my knees.

He let me cower for a few minutes.

Then:

‘You’ve advice for your fellow prisoner? I’m not sure she realises you are addressing her. Tell her again.’

I shook my head, not really understanding what the hell he was playing at this time.

‘Go to her side, look in her face, speak to her. Speak clearly so we can all hear you.’

I played along. I always play along. It is my weakness, the flaw in my armour.

I put my face alongside hers, as though we were whispering. So close it must have seemed intimate, but too close for us to actually look at each other. I swallowed, then repeated clearly, ‘Save yourself. Lie to them.’

She is the one who used to whistle ‘Scotland the Brave’ when I first came here. She couldn’t whistle last night, it’s a wonder they thought she could even speak, after what they had done to her mouth. But she tried to spit at me anyway.

‘She doesn’t think a great deal of your advice,’ said von Linden. ‘Tell her again.’

‘LIE!’ I yelled at her.

After a moment she managed to answer me. Hoarse and harsh, her voice grating with pain, so that everyone could hear her. ‘Lie to them?’ she croaked. ‘Is that what you do?’

I stood trapped. Perhaps it was a trap he had laid for me on purpose. All was very quiet for a long time (probably not so long as it seemed), and finally von Linden directed with disinterest, ‘Answer her question.’

That was when I lost my senses.

‘You f*cking hypocrite,’ I snarled at von Linden unwisely (he may not have known what the word meant in French, but still, it wasn’t a clever thing to say). ‘Don’t you ever lie? What the hell do you do? What do you tell your daughter? When she asks about your work, what truth does the lovely Isolde get out of you?’

He was white as paper. Calm though.

‘Carbolic.’

Everyone looked at him uncertainly.

‘She has the filthiest tongue of any woman in France. Burn her mouth clean.’

I fought. They held me down while they argued about the correct dosage because he hadn’t made clear whether or not he actually wanted them to kill me with the stuff. The French girl closed her eyes and rested, taking advantage of the shift in attention away from her. They’d got out the bottles and the gloves – the room became a clinic suddenly. The truly frightening thing was that not one of them seemed to know what he was doing.

‘Look at me!’ I screeched. ‘Look at me, Amadeus von Linden, you sadistic hypocrite, and watch this time! You’re not questioning me now, this isn’t your work, I’m not an enemy agent spewing wireless code! I’m just a minging Scots slag screaming insults at your daughter! So enjoy yourself and watch! Think of Isolde! Think of Isolde and watch!’

He stopped them.

He couldn’t do it.

I choked with relief, gasping.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘After she’s eaten. Fr?ulein Engel knows how to prepare the phenol.’

‘Coward! Coward!’ I sobbed in hysterical fury. ‘Do it now! Do it yourself!’

‘Get her out of here.’

—

There was paper and pencil laid out for me as always this morning, and the drinking water waiting along with the phenol and alcohol, and Fr?ulein Engel is rapping her fingernails in impatience across the table from me as she always does while she waits for me to pass her something to read. She is waiting eagerly to see what I have written this morning, I know, as it has not been explained to her what I actually did last night to warrant such vicious punishment. Von Linden must be asleep (he may be inhuman, but he is not superhuman). Oh God. There isn’t much left for me to write. What is he expecting me to finish with? Isn’t the end of the story rather obvious? I want to finish it, but I hate to think about it.