“Are you comfortable?” Britta asks.
Julietta smiles. She looks more excited than scared. Britta knows what’s going on inside her. Julietta is thinking that it has to be possible simply to hold your breath. She believes she can rely on her self-control. Besides, it’s not a “real” situation. If something goes awry, Britta will stop. In a few minutes, everything will be over, Julietta will be given a towel to dry her hair, and they’ll go out for coffee and talk about what happened. She won’t be brought to a cell to be tortured some more with cold, heat, or noise. Julietta’s almost looking forward to the experience; it’s as though she were trying her hand at an extreme sport—free diving, perhaps, or parachute jumping.
Britta knows all that. She’s been through it. Everything she expects of her candidates is something she’s subjected herself to first, including the sojourn in the clinic, the spurious abduction, and the fake execution. None of that was nearly so bad as the waterboarding.
That first time, she and Babak had done Internet research and read CIA manuals and field reports for days until there was no more reason to put off the event any longer. While they were buying a plastic watering can in the garden department of the home improvement store, they kept bursting into laughter. They were surrounded by hoses, spades, fertilizers, and rubber gloves, and suddenly they could see torture instruments in the simplest things.
They were still living in Leipzig, and Britta’s student apartment was their only choice for a venue. They laid a wide board over the bathtub so that the water would make as little mess as possible. A tossed coin decided that Britta’s turn would come first. Babak tied her to the board with two cotton scarves, yanking and pulling at her for so long that Britta finally yelled at him to get on with it. Her lighthearted jitters had given way to genuine tension. Babak activated the timer on his cell phone. They’d agreed to a one-minute time limit. The decision to quit sooner than that was up to the active partner.
He placed a kitchen towel over her face. Britta thought she would take a deep breath, hold it, and keep her mouth tightly closed so no water could get in. Holding her breath for a minute was harder than she thought it would be, but it could be done. She’d been practicing.
Babak poured water onto her face.
Britta got through the first seconds with no problem. The towel became fully soaked, the cold water flowed over her face and neck and splashed on the ceramic bathtub. Nevertheless, she quickly realized that simply holding her breath wasn’t an option, because the water entered through her nose. She thought she could take up thirty seconds by exhaling very, very slowly, and then time would be nearly up.
But the degree of counterpressure she could generate by slow exhalation wasn’t enough. The water streamed into her sinuses, and so to get rid of it, she forcefully expelled the air in her lungs. After that, they were empty.
Britta tried to escape the water, jerking her head back and forth so she could breathe through her mouth, but the wet cloth already filled her oral cavity. She tried to blow out the water pouring into her pharynx, sinuses, windpipe, and gullet, but her lungs had already completely collapsed. She understood that she must not in any case lose control, and she lost control. Her form rigid as she braced herself against her restraints, she took deep breaths through her nose, drawing in more and more water; it ran everywhere, filling her eyes, her ears, her brain. Her body went wild. Britta knew she was going to die.
When the board tipped up and Babak dropped the watering can to catch her, not even forty seconds had passed. Britta needed ten minutes to come back to her senses. She crawled shivering under the bathroom sink and struck out at Babak if he attempted to get ahold of her. She was convinced he’d tried to kill her.
Babak didn’t take his turn that day. Or the following day either. Britta was in no condition to perform waterboarding, on him or anyone else. She sought again and again to clarify what had happened to her. There was a threshold beyond which self-control and reason had no part to play. When she drew water into her respiratory tract, she had lost mastery over herself. Hell had swallowed her. She’d never felt a panic even remotely comparable to that. If she imagined having to repeat the experience, the panic returned at once. If she’d had the choice of letting her fingers get smashed by a sledgehammer or going through another waterboarding, she would have chosen, without hesitation, the sledgehammer. She would have sold her whole family. She would have said anything, done anything, given up anything.
Over the course of the following weeks, Babak insisted that she should subject him to the same treatment. They had to be on the same page. Britta knew he was right. She wouldn’t be able to work with him anymore if he hadn’t experienced the same thing she had. She improved the arrangement and found a way to secure the board. Babak’s reaction was identical to hers. Britta cried the whole time. When she dropped the can, the stopwatch had reached forty-five seconds.
“Is that full?” asks Julietta, pointing to the green watering can. They’re in The Bridge’s basement. Julietta’s lying on the treatment table, which Britta bought at a surgical supply store’s closeout sale shortly after opening the practice. To avoid accidents, Babak bolted the feet of the table to the floor. The multipurpose room is tiled and has a floor drain, so they can simply let the water run where it will.
“To the brim,” says Britta, lifting the can to show how heavy it is. It’s still the same can they used the very first time.
“Then it looks like I won’t get thirsty tonight.”
Joking is also something they all try. Julietta’s eyes are a little darker than usual. Britta attaches her to the table with straps and has her make a declaration of consent into the tablet’s camera, just in case; nobody has ever complained afterward.
“Now I’m going to put a cloth over your face, and then we start,” Brita says.
There was a time when she used to give a brief introduction at this point, explaining that this was a purely psychological procedure, that it entailed no danger to life or limb, that the straps were employed only for the candidate’s safety, and that the whole experience would last less than a minute. When it became clear to her that she was speaking these words merely to reassure herself, she stopped giving the introduction.
Following an impulse, Britta smooths a strand of hair back from the girl’s forehead. Julietta displays no emotion, but Britta nevertheless senses that she trusts her. She quickly covers Julietta’s face with the checkered kitchen towel. Things are easier after that. Britta becomes a machine performing simple movement patterns. Lift the watering can, tip it forward slightly, let the water run out. Carefully at first, so that the cloth isn’t dislodged, and then more liberally after the material is wet and heavy and clinging to the victim’s face. Julietta’s features show through the cloth, making it look like a death mask.
It’s the same as when I water flowers, Britta tells herself. Same container, same contents, identical movement.
Julietta’s degree of self-control must be a record. After twenty seconds, she continues to lie completely still. Britta finds this irritating. Why make such an effort, you ambitious little twit, you’re only human too, you work the same way we all do, there’s no prize to be won here. When another fifteen seconds have gone by, so has Julietta’s resistance. She coughs, swallows water, jerks her head back and forth, braces herself against the lashing straps. Britta increases the amount of water pouring down on Julietta’s face; the can gets lighter. The wriggling and writhing make Britta even more aggressive. It’s only water, she thinks, calm down, I thought you were a hard-ass, you’re supposed to love tormenting yourself, where’s your self-hatred now, super suicide girl?
The anger does her good, it’s the only way for her to cope with the situation. Finally the watering can is empty. Britta flings it across the room, clattering over the tiled floor. The stopwatch says fifty-five seconds. Britta takes the towel off Julietta’s face and undoes the straps. Using both hands, she’s careful to keep the girl from falling or slipping on the wet tiles, supporting her until they reach the low chair ready in the corner. Julietta looks a fright, her wet hair hangs in her face, she’s bent in half, holding her belly, coughing and spitting like someone drowning. Britta’s scorn for this broken fragment of humanity is so great that she must turn away. When Julietta finally grows calm and sinks into the chair like a corpse, Britta sits on the dry end of the treatment table, draws up her feet, and puts her arms around her knees. Julietta’s chest rises and falls in regular breathing, almost as if she were asleep. Britta’s about to ask her if she wants to continue in the program. She imagines that Julietta will curse her and then burst into tears and bawl, like a little girl something terrible has happened to. She’ll just want to go back home to her mama. Britta will comfort her and rattle off a few formalities, to the effect that she won’t be charged anything, that all her documents will be destroyed, that silence is to be expected as a matter of course on both sides. She’ll tell her that a new stage of her life is now beginning, and that she’ll understand one day why she was fortunate to work with The Bridge.
Babak will be sad when Julietta leaves the program. Maybe the two of them will remain in contact and meet once a week to play darts. The sweet kid was just fooling us, big talk, nothing behind it, in the end only a little Mega-girl who lost her way. Britta can’t deny that she feels a certain relief. Marquardt will be happy when she tells him she has a special mission for him.
Britta lets herself slide off the table and goes to fetch a dry towel. She’s wondering whether Richard will have enough time this evening to go out and do something nice, treat themselves, or whether they’ll simply stay in and watch a movie in the cozy comfort of their own home, when Julietta says something Britta has never heard before. Not in this situation, not in this place, not after what happened just a few minutes ago.
Julietta says, “Again.”