Ernesto hungry

The straps rubbing against the parchment skin of his wrists and his ankles, just gristle and tendons left of them, reminded him he was a body, the light coming in through his thinned eyelids reminded him he was a mind, still a consciousness of some kind. Translucent. A body, just a body. He regretted having any mind left and was glad he'd learned to shut it down long ago. Didn't Silvia once say that was what all the childhood blows had been for? To get us ready for the blows of capitalism? He heard the footsteps approach and felt his throat gag in anticipation of the feeding tube. He recognized the smell of the guard he never looked at, refused to look at. He smelled of sun cooked terror sweat, a bit like monkey piss, overlain by artificial citrus. The thinner Ernesto became, the more translucent, the more sensitive the cilia in his nose were. His eyes formed a flitting image of coral, and of Cheito's flippered feet, moving along the reefs off Playa Caracol. He was becoming plantlike, absorbing nutrients from the air. "Ernesto." The voice was too loud, high pitched, young. He pushed a finger between his rigid lips, pried apart his clamped jaw, pushed the feeding tube as fast as he could, scraping the roof of the mouth and at the same time tilting back the chair (some humans had devoted time and effort to adapt a dentist's chair, so that when the hunger strikers were force fed it would be more difficult for them to vomit). He felt his throat constrict, begin to gag, and then despite his will, release and yield. All his theories of war and power reduced to this: if his throat refused the food he won; when his throat disobeyed his mind this was was defeat; the moment when his throat released and the cells of his body like plant roots like coral cilia sang with the joy of nourishment, was defeat. Feeling hunger and then no longer feeling hunger, getting past hunger, he won; yielding to hunger, his cells' treason, was defeat. Nobody had to know that he was hungry, that his cells were hungry and that secretly they were glad of all this: the straps, the tilting chair, the terror stinking guard he'd never seen. Not looking was still a way to win. Everything that his mind controlled refused the feeding. But his body wanted something else. His body wanted to live. Even like this, even here, even knowing what his mind now knew about what a human being was capable of inflicting upon another human, his body wanted to live.
That was always the question in protracted struggles...Which was victory and which was defeat. The morning Silvia came by and sat on the edge of his bed, and he saw her first thing as he woke up, and he knew that he would take her back...had that been victory or defeat? She'd left him for a man, a gringo, owning class...he shuddered even now in this condition, he didn't know the name of the feeling...some pummeling amalgam of humiliation, pain, terror and rage...But he had chosen to take her back.
War was war. Struggle or be annihilated. War reduced to this encounter on a tilted chair, His weapon reduced to not swallowing, and the weapon let go by his cells, the clamor from his cells. And still, a voice rose in his mind, the words formed, there was victory in living to fight another day.
The man stepped away, adjusted the chair, perhaps an act of humanity, he had found an angle that prevented vomiting and still allowed Ernesto the least possible discomfort, somehow the angle kept all his blood from going to his head. Was this the guard's defiance? Who was he? Ernesto had not looked at him. Now his mind eased the word into his awareness.. Yet. He had not looked at him yet. Maybe there was something to be gained from studying the man. Now that the battle was reduced to the two of them, it was important for him to know his enemy.

Ernesto opened his eyes. Food in his cells, sugar in his brain, and he noticed that he could notice, that now he saw in ways that before he hadn't seen. His eyes too were rejoicing in this. They had been made to see and they welcomed it, they had been made to seek beauty and now they sought the crack between the planks covering what must be a window, sought light, sought what was barely visible on the other side, leaves maybe, a branch, something green, iridescent and piercingly alive.

The guard stepped into the feeding room and this time Ernesto opened his eyes and watched him approach the chair. He was very young, square shouldered, shorter than Ernesto had imagined, there was some fat around his muscles and around his jaw, he looked Ernesto in the eyes and his gaze was steady. To think there was a mind behind those eyes that had just watched his face contort, a will had moved those hairless hands that had just rammed a feeding tube into his throat.
"Now, will you meet with your attorney?"

He was having thoughts from a sugar dizzied brain, or having the thoughts of his treacherous clamoring cells. He heard himself say yes. Was this defeat?