One Day in the Life

        After breakfast they were, as always, marched out to the bus.  They were driven maybe ten miles, to what looked like a series of gravel pits.  She stepped out with the others, under the watchful eye of a heavy-set guard with a machine gun.  They walked up a stony hill.  She felt the warm stones under her toughened bare feet.  It was a warm day.  She would be sweating but she did not mind that.  She slowed down to keep in line with the others as they trudged up in their clothes and heavy boots.  She looked down at the tight abdominals of her concave tummy.  There were no mirrors in her life but she knew that she was in excellent physical condition and the labor was not as hard for her as it was for most of the others.

        In her undercover role as a visiting Polish fashion model she had known makeup, styled hair, painted nails, and of course a wide selection of exquisite clothes.  Now she had none of these.  The prison barber periodically hacked her black hair short and clipped her fingernails and toenails.  Her pubic hair, formerly trimmed to a “landing strip”, had grown lush and abundant in the open air.  Her armpit hair grew too.  She didn’t mind; in fact her body hair kept her arms and legs from chafing as she toiled and sweated in the hot sun.

        When they got to the top of the stony hill they found a flat plain of dirt with piles all over.  Today’s task was to move the dirt piles into a waiting truck.  She braced her widely-spread toes against the dry clods and thrust the shovel in.  In a few moments she was well ahead of the inmates to her left and right.  One can get used to almost anything, she mused.  I’ve gotten used to being naked, to going barefoot over rough gravel, to not talking all day. . . I’ve even gotten used to sleeping on that bare bench, without pillows or sheets or even a soft pad.  As long as she kept her wits about her, she would survive.  Her unit must know she was here, and must know that she was being kept naked.  A Geneva Convention violation.  They could find a way to get her out of here.  She would be released. Though she wished they would get on with it already.

        Certainly they had access to the reports of the weekly inspections.  In her case they were individualized and intense.  She was led into that small windowless room with a metal table, where the inspector waited with usually two or three assistants, or maybe they were witnesses.  Mostly they were male -- another Geneva violation -- with an occasional female.  As the others watched, she was examined all over for marks, bruises, wounds.  She raised her arms and spread her legs to make every part of her accessible.  She spread her fingers and even raised her feet and spread her toes.  It went on for five minutes and was totally silent.  Apparently they were not allowed to ask her questions.  At the end, she lay back onto the table and held her legs open so that her vaginal lips could be examined for signs of sexual abuse.  And then turned around on all fours so that her buttocks could be spread and her anus carefully probed in the harsh overhead light.  There was no sign of torture or abuse because, strictly speaking, there had not been any.  Finally the inspector would nod to the guard and she would be led back to her cell.

        Her C.O., and whoever else was copied on her mission, had to know she was being kept naked.  She was convinced of that.  Though nudity was necessary for the inspection, the inspectors must have thought it odd that she didn’t come in dressed in at least a robe.  And there was the all-over tan, and the tough soles.  The inspectors were obviously hindered by narrow terms of reference, but permanent nudity was the only possible explanation for the tan and the soles.  What else could be inferred?  That she was allowed to sunbathe nude?  That she liked going barefoot?  She smiled mordantly at the absurdity of someone engaging in such speculations, and paused for a moment in her labors, standing upright, only a little winded, her toes curling over the top of the shovel blade.  The day had to come, and come soon, when she would be led to the Warden’s office and given her release, and a set of clothes and an airplane ticket back to Base.

        She returned to shoveling.  The short water break at 10 o’clock, then they went back, advancing to another series of dirt piles and another truck.  She was in the middle of the line, distinguished by her nudity and by being the only one using her shovel left-handed.  She noticed that this was the sixteenth time during her captivity that they had done this earth-moving work; and the fifth time this month.  Judging from the bus routes, the locations were all close to each other.  She also knew that earthen barriers were used in the nuclear reactors that this country was suspected of building.

        The ability to observe minutely, and to remember what she observed, were critical to her mission and she continued to use her professional capabilities while an inmate.  She had been noticing that the guard for her wing (she thought of her as “Tasha”) did not like being given orders by her boss, a kind of sergeant (whom she thought of as “Natalya”).  And that Natalya seemed to be in bad graces with the Assistant Warden.  And that Natalya seemed to come to work with a hangover a few times recently.  A guard with an alcohol problem, disliked by the others and afraid of losing her job, could perhaps be cultivated.  The nude prisoner had noticed that Tasha had not been at her post a few times.  Last month the nude had looked, with a calculated degree of surprise, at the empty station on the wing -- so that Natalya noticed her face and then the empty station.  Natalya no doubt put Tasha on report, and was grateful for the tip.

        The high heat of the day arrived before the 1 o’clock lunch.  The nude prisoner was sweating profusely but so were the rest in her coffle, possibly more so in their uniforms.  Sweat dripped from the nude’s chin, from the downward slopes of her tanned jiggling breasts with big sun-darkened nipples, and rivered from her saturated pubic bush down each muscular leg to the bare insteps.  Now lunch: water, coffee and a sandwich.  She ate alone, the prisoners sitting apart, conversing quietly.