A Flogging
Leaning his left elbow on the chest of drawers again, playing with his mustache-end with his left hand, standing indolently cross-legged, Einarson began to flog the soldier. His right arm raised the whip, brought the lash whistling down to the soldier’s back, raised it again, brought it down again. It was especially nasty because he was not hurrying himself, not exerting himself. He meant to flog the man until he got what he wanted, and he was saving his strength so that he could keep it up as long as necessary.
With the first blow the terror went out of the soldier’s eyes. They dulled sullenly and his lips stopped twitching. He stood woodenly under the beating, staring over Grantham’s head. The officer’s face had also become expressionless. Anger was gone. He showed no pleasure in his work, not even that of relieving his feelings. His air was the air of a stoker shoveling coal, of a carpenter sawing a board, of a stenographer typing a letter. Here was a job to be done in a workmanlike manner, without haste or excitement or wasted effort, without either enthusiasm or repulsion. It was nasty, but it taught me respect for this Colonel Einarson.
Lionel Grantham sat on the edge of his folding chair, staring at the soldier with white-ringed eyes. I offered the boy a cigarette, making an unnecessarily complicated operation out of lighting it and my own—to break up his score-keeping. He had been counting the strokes, and that wasn’t good for him.
The whip curved up, swished down, cracked on the naked back—up, down, up, down. Einarson’s florid face took on the damp glow of moderate exercise. The soldier’s gray face was a lump of putty. He was facing Grantham and me. We couldn’t see the marks of the whip.