it was steel rods,
sometimes it was boots. There were times when he rolled about the floor, as
shameless as an animal, writhing his body this way and that in an endless,
hopeless effort to dodge the kicks, and simply inviting more and yet more
kicks, in his ribs, in his belly, on his elbows, on his shins, in his
groin, in his testicles, on the bone at the base of his spine. There were
times when it went on and on until the cruel, wicked, unforgivable thing
seemed to him not that the guards continued to beat him but that he could
not force hirnself into losing consciousness. There were times when his
nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the
beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was
enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes.
There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing
nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain,
and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to
himself: 'I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain
becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell
them what they want.' Sometimes he was beaten till he could hardly stand,
then flung like a sack of potatoes on to the stone floor of a cell, left to
recuperate for a few hours, and then taken out and beaten again. There were
also longer periods of recovery. He remembered them dim