‘If you don’t shut up, you’ll be next,’ Jorge shouted, lifting the shears again. ‘Where’s your brother?’ he asked Teresa, and still Teresa did not speak. Jorge began to hack the second handful of hair.
Just say something, Tere, Olive thought. Anything, a lie. But Teresa was mute, keeping her eyes on the burned--out church, and Olive could almost feel the whisker--touch of dark hair falling against her own neck. Teresa still did not flinch, but Olive thought she could see fear glimmering in her eye, buried deep within that blank look.
‘Where is he?’ came the question, again and again. And still, Teresa was mute, so Jorge cut more of her hair, close to the line of the skull, emerging as a clumpy, patchy thing. ‘You’re a furry mushroom,’ Jorge said, laughing. No one in the village joined him, but neither did they move to stop this spectacle.
‘Teresa,’ Olive called. ‘I’m here.’
‘For all the good you’ve done her,’ said Gregorio.
Once the bulk of Teresa’s hair was gone, Jorge produced a barbering razor from his pocket. ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Gregorio. ‘We’ve done what we needed to do. She got the message.’
‘I don’t think she has,’ said Jorge, placing the blade on the top of Teresa’s head. He began to shave the remaining patchy tufts until she was completely bald, the ancient humiliation, back to the Bible days, the days of blood.
‘This is what happens,’ said Jorge, holding the razor aloft, ‘when you conceal information about a wanted criminal and fail to cooperate with the law.’
‘The law?’ said Olive.
The villagers remained immobile. Teresa’s skull was covered with weeping nicks where he’d cut into her skin. Jorge pulled Teresa up out of the chair, and she moved with him like a puppet, her eyes dead.
‘Now take off your skirt and blouse,’ he said.
‘Stop!’ shouted another woman next to Olive, and Jorge stalked towards her.
‘You next, Rosita?’ he said. ‘You want to look like a mushroom too? Because I promise you can be next.’ Rosita shrank away, shaking her head, fear distorting her face.
Slowly, Teresa peeled off her skirt and blouse, revealing her skinny legs, her underwear. Olive wanted to seize her, but she worried that darting forward and grabbing Teresa might now make things worse for her. Jorge seemed so pumped up, and even though Gregorio was less sure of himself, he could be equally dangerous.
From the truck, Gregorio fetched a smock--like dress that looked like it had been sewn in the sixteenth century, and a bottle, the contents of which Olive couldn’t work out. He put the smock over Teresa’s head, and helped her elbows and hands through the heavy sleeves. ‘Take off your shoes, Teresa,’ he said, like a parent to a child, and when Teresa obeyed him, it made this grotesque theatre absurdly painful.
When Teresa’s fingers fumbled over the knot in her shoelaces, Gregorio grew impatient and sliced them in two with his flick--knife. And it seemed to be this – more than the shaving, more than the stripping – that finally unleashed Teresa’s rage. Her one pair of shoes, so neatly polished despite their age, were now unbound flaps of leather lying in the dust. She cried out and fell down.
‘Get up!’ Jorge screamed, but she didn’t move. Jorge thrust the bottle at her. ‘This is what we do to traitors,’ he said.
‘Who’s the traitor?’ Teresa replied, her voice a croak.
‘Do you want me to pour it down your throat myself?’
Teresa stared up at him, still refusing. ‘Gregorio,’ Jorge said. ‘You do it.’
Gregorio was upon her before Teresa could ready herself. He pinned back her arms and drove his knee into her lower back. Pallid and sweating, he grabbed her jaw and hinged it open. ‘Drink it!’ he screamed. The shock of Gregorio turning on her seemed to make Teresa numb with terror, and Jorge worked the neck of the bottle into her mouth with relative ease.
‘Drink it,’ Gregorio hissed. ‘Drink the lot.’
Opening her eyes wide, Teresa turned her head so that Gregorio was forced to meet her gaze, and she kept them open as the contents was emptied down her throat. Some of the villagers ran away at this point, the spell of violence finally broken by this horror.
When the bottle was empty, the men let Teresa go. She gagged, strands of oil falling from the corners of her mouth, pooling into the dust.
‘Who knew we lived next door to the Devil?’ one man near Olive whispered.
‘Go home now, Teresa,’ Jorge said. ‘And try not to shit yourself. If we haven’t found him in the next few days, expect another visit.’
Teresa rose to her feet and stumbled, and Olive pushed past the men to take her by the arm. This time, they didn’t stop her. Teresa sagged against Olive’s side, and the two girls staggered out of the square, the remaining villagers parting to let through this gagging, bald creature, whose bowels might go at any minute, thanks to the dosage of an entire bottle of castor oil.
No one jeered her progress – not even half--heartedly, in the presence of Jorge and Gregorio. No one said a thing, slack--mouthed in horror. They watched the girls carry on up the dusty path, out of the village towards the finca. They kept watching, right until the point they couldn’t see them any more.
Jorge and Gregorio stepped into the truck and revved away in the opposite direction. Gradually, the square fell empty except for the dark clumps of Teresa’s hair, abandoned in the gravel.
21