Waiting for the Barbarians

“‘The old man says they were coming to see the doctor. Perhaps that is the truth. No one would have brought an old man and a sick boy along on a raiding party.’ I grow conscious that I am pleading for them.”

The Magistrate is referring to the Indigenous old man and boy who have been captured as prisoners by Joll and his men. The Magistrate objects because logic would dictate that the old man and the sick boy could not be dangerous. It does not matter whether Joll believes they are dangerous or not: He is going to make an example of them and intensify the town’s fear of outsiders.

“Of the screaming which people afterwards claim to have heard from the granary, I hear nothing.”

The screaming happens during the interrogation of the boy and the old man. The Magistrate does not hear it because he has purposely walled himself off from it. He is trying to pretend that it is not happening, but in doing so, he becomes hyper-aware of both the torture and his desire to escape it. This incident is the beginning of his moral dilemma that changes his attitude toward the Empire.

“Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt. That is what I bear away from my conversation with Colonel Joll.”

At the root of Joll’s method is the belief that infliction of pain of the accused is a sure way of obtaining confession. The veracity of the confession is not the purpose nor the concern. Torture as a means of displaying power is a hallmark of the Empire. Joll, rather than