The Wisdom of Crocodiles

by Paul Hoffman

  ‘Do you trust me?’ he said.

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied opening her eyes widely.

  ‘Shut your eyes.’ She did as she was told, laughing in nervous anticipation.

  ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘I don’t know. What are you going to do?’ She sensed him coming close to her and then she felt his hot breath on her face. She forced her eyes to remain shut. She waited. Gently, hardly noticeable at first, she felt him brush against her lips, and then he was kissing her softly. The desire to open her eyes was almost impossible to resist. She gave in. His hand was raised in front of her a few feet away and between his thumb and forefinger he held a ring. He said nothing as she looked at it, her lips slightly parted. He felt for her left hand and slowly slipped it on to her ring finger. She looked at it, watching the light refracting through the three diamonds, and for several seconds he felt as if she were somewhere else entirely. She looked at him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  They said nothing more for a long time but when they began to talk it was quietly, as if trying to avoid waking an invalid in the next room. She sometimes rested her forehead on his, sometimes leant back slightly in order to look at him. Without their noticing, the light began to fail until they realised they were talking in the dark. She stood up to switch on a table light but he stood up with her as she did so. She could feel that he was in the grip of something powerful as he pulled at the skin on the back of her hand. She sensed the emotion in him as an almost physical push and she was excited by his excitement. She pushed back and he pulled her towards him, one arm around her waist. He kissed her then let her go and, without looking back, walked towards the bedroom. As she followed him through the door, he grabbed her hand and pulled her behind him. She came to him and then, supporting her weight behind her shoulder blades, he laid her gently across the bed. She felt an unfamiliar harshness between the counterpane and thin sheet and with it a noise that was familiar but which she could not place.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  She raised her upper body and shuffled backwards to gain a comfortable purchase on the bed. He moved on top of her and handled her roughly with a desperation that was both alarming and exciting. His usual control, intriguing yet also slightly off-putting, had deserted him. His left leg came across her lower body and pushed her firmly into the mattress. She was dimly conscious of the unfamiliar sound and texture again. He slewed his body so that his weight pinned her down while leaving her right side free. He looked into her eyes, his own wild and oddly unfocused, and she felt swept by strange emotions: curiosity, a submission in the face of something at once distasteful and exciting and also subterranean, which she did not recognise as the beginning of fear. His left hand fastened across her forehead and he intertwined the fingers of his free hand with hers. She was deeply moved by the gentle way he did this, as if he were sifting for a lost valuable in warm sand. He arched his back so that he could look at her from the furthest distance possible. He held this look for a long time until he could see the first signs of uncertainty and puzzlement, then gently placed the flat of his hand over her eyes, held it there for a few seconds then covered her mouth. She tried to call his name but only half the sound emerged before he smothered it then pushed her head into the bed with terrible force. She started to struggle but he tensed his whole body, except his neck and head, and she could barely move. He bit her with all the strength in his jaws. She bucked in agony and his body jerked upwards. His teeth were not sharp enough to break through the skin and he pulled her head sideways so that he could tear at it with the force of the immensely developed muscles of his shoulders and neck. Her body heaved again in pain and terror and her face slipped briefly from his grasp and she screamed. It was a terrible sound, which resonated through her whole body, centred in the bowels. He bit and tore again. She thrashed beneath him and the blood sprayed out of the tear in her neck, pumping over his face, covering her bare shoulder and staining the counterpane. His mouth stretched open in an attempt to cover the tear he had made, but still the blood leaked. He began to drink, interrupted only by the fitful heaving of the woman beneath him.

  He drank for about five minutes until the struggling stopped and the first involuntary shivers began, as if she were being fed tiny electric shocks. He stopped as soon as he felt this, slowly lifting his mouth from her neck but by no more than half an inch, relieved to be able to breathe through his mouth again. Then he pulled himself up further, his hand still tight on her mouth. Holding his breath, he looked into her eyes. Horror was clearer now than terror, and the physical shock of her wound and loss of blood had left her weakened and dazed. He searched her eyes and seemed to see something. Underneath the growing paralysis something in her was still alert. He bent down and sucked at the wound for about twenty seconds, then raised his head as if he were bringing a hidden thing deep inside her to the surface and this was now what mattered. Slowly the balance shifted until he was gazing almost continuously into her eyes, with only the occasional dip of his head to drink. He searched her eyes again and marshalled all that he found there: incomprehension, fear, pain, disgust, shaping and ordering them until he could get a clear sight of what would keep him alive. He let his hand slip from her mouth. For the five minutes before she became unconscious he watched her sense of his betrayal of her love deepen and spread like a terrible stain until it coloured everything, even her terror at her approaching death. Her eyelids fluttered then closed. He shook her and they opened but her sight was failing. He shook her again and for the last time she saw his face clearly and felt his rapt attention, lacking either pity or malice and then she was gone.

  She was still alive, however. He got off the bed, knelt beside it and pulled her limp body to one side. He began to suck again at the wound until he could feel the flow of blood grow sluggish as her heart slowed. Suddenly her body twitched as she suffered a heart attack. He stood up and walked to the bathroom to wash his face and hands. When he returned, she was dead.

  Standing by the bed he felt under the counterpane, reaching for the sheet of thin polythene underneath. Without the bedcovers to muffle it, the sound was unmistakable. He pulled it up and used it to roll her body into the centre of the bed, covered her with one side of the counterpane and polythene, walked to the other side and did the same. He carried the body into the bathroom, laid it on the tiled floor, took off his shirt and went back to sit down on the bed.

  Carefully, as if protecting an injured back, he turned and pushed the pillows on to the floor, then slowly lowered himself onto the bed. After about five minutes a faint flush of red appeared on his chest which then began to deepen and spread like an allergic reaction up to his neck and shoulders and then to his face. It faded, but then appeared on his stomach, now enlarged and taut like the belly of a starving child or a bald head going red in the sun. Then it, too, faded, leaving his skin a delicate pink. His eyes, half-closed, blinked slowly every few seconds like those of a small child about to fall asleep. During the next half-hour a slow and irresistible peace seeped into every muscle. When it reached the tip of his toes he fell into a sleep that was rare, excellent and still.

  When he started to wake up it was without any idea of how long he had been asleep. It had been, in fact, about three hours. He heard a groaning noise and, groggy, for one terrible moment thought it might be Maria, somehow still alive. Just as he realised that the groan was coming from him, he felt an unpleasant surge in his stomach, massive and palpable like a child turning over in its mother’s womb. There was an unpleasantly metallic taste in his mouth. He tried to swallow but the mucus covering the back of his throat was choking him, and he had to reach deep into his mouth with his finger to clear it. He looked at the sticky substance on his forefinger. It was red. Then he recognised the taste.

  The skilled oenophile can trace a glass of wine not only to a vineyard but also to a particular place and time of pressing. Steven inhabited a world without smell or flavour. Milk
was much the same as alcohol; garlic and chocolate differed only in texture. Everything in him was reserved for blood. A little went a long way and though he, too, used it as a fuel, what he was mostly nourished by was something more complex than sugars or amino acids. At first this evidence of the supernatural disturbed him: its ghostliness failed to match up with the grim drive to live that nagged at him every minute of the day, irritating even his twilight attempts at sleep. But after a while it seemed just common sense: babies lacking the touch of adult skin decline to grow, well-fed children suffering abuse will fail to thrive, men’s hearts stutter given sufficient aggravation as they work. The lump in the throat, the swallowing of pride, the eating of humility in a pie: these are not poetry. Emotions have a taste and their flavours are stronger or more discreet depending on their nature. Strong flavours mask those more subtle. The love she had felt for him was briefly tainted by terror, disgust and fear – but she did not feel these things for long enough to stop him getting what he wanted. But love, in turn, concealed: inside Maria there had been many hiding places, many dead-ends, many oubliettes where things were bottled up in strictest confidence, most of them irrelevant to Steven’s need – except for one. This had needed several hours to make itself apparent, hidden so deep in her that even she had not been more than fleetingly aware of it before she put it aside. The taste he recognised was that of reservation. She had been holding back. Something in her was dissatisfied with him; something deep, minute and very poisonous.

  His stomach heaved. He ran to the bathroom, fell over Maria’s bound body and cracked his head on the toilet bowl. He vomited with a painful retch. There was surprisingly little. It was dark red, almost black, and liverish. He vomited again until he was drained and sobbing with exhaustion; and still he retched. He slumped to his knees and rested his head on his arms, his breathing laboured and irregular like a toddler after a lengthy tantrum.

  He remained like this for perhaps half an hour until his breathing slowed and became rhythmical, his heart stopped racing and the pain in his head settled to a dull throb. He undressed and got into the bath and ran the taps until it was half full. Weakly he washed himself. The water turned a pale rust colour rippled with strands of undissolved blood. It looked, he thought, as he lay back exhausted, like liquid marble. He dried himself with immense care so that no blood would drip onto the carpets and left the bathroom. Wearily he saw that the blood had already seeped under the door and had stained the bedroom carpet.

  Although it would take time to do it properly, the bathroom was completely tiled and could be steam-cleaned. The blood-stained carpet would have to be cut out and replaced. The real danger was the small drop of blood left unnoticed from the killing. He padded towards the kitchen and, passing the full-length mirror in the living room, caught a fleeting reflection: old-looking and startled, his body white, as if he had been soaked in bleach.

  The unusually large stainless-steel sink was built low so it was easy for him, even in his weakened state, to sit on one of the double drainers with his feet perched on either side of the sink. He half filled it then mixed in some low-sud automatic washing powder. He let his feet and fingers soak for twenty minutes until they puckered like miniature mountain ranges. While he waited, he rested his head on his knees and tried not to be sick. Feeling slightly better, he took a wooden toothpick from a box on the window ledge and began to clean under his nails, wiping the contents onto a small sponge that he would burn with his clothes and the sheets. He would also clean her body before disposing of it, careful as the most painstaking manicurist. He filled a jug with water and meticulously rinsed the sink again and again. At last he had finished. He stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked around, checking that he had not forgotten anything. Suddenly he felt cold. A thrill of pain and nausea struck him and he sank to his knees to stop himself fainting. He remained on all fours for several minutes. When he tried to move he felt a sharp pain in the back of his head. He lay down and the pain receded, to be replaced by an uncomfortable pumping sensation. He tried to move again. The pain was worse. Slowly he crawled out of the kitchen, across the living room and into the bedroom where he pulled himself onto the bed. It took him forty minutes to make the journey. He lay there letting the pain fade and getting colder: the sheets and blankets from the bed were wrapped around Maria. He lay still for an hour, freezing, thinking about the blood hardening in the bathroom and how endless the task of removing it would be. At last the central heating came on and slowly warmed the room. The hairs on his body, erectile with cold, sensed the increasing warmth and began their slow decline to lie flush against his skin. He fell asleep.

  It was the cold that woke him up again eighteen hours later when the heating had gone off for the second time. His back muscles felt as if they had been tied in thick knots by clumsy hands and then lubricated with sand. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat still for a moment, breathed out heavily and slowly stood up. All things considered, he could have been in worse shape.

  He took things easy for the rest of the day, and as it wore on he felt better although still delicate. The various pains and aches dissipated but were replaced by a sense of fullness. He stayed away from the bathroom.

  Over the following two days he began to feel stronger and by the end of the third day he could see that his skin had lost its patchy, dull appearance and looked increasingly sleek. This puzzled him because he had been keeping at bay the fear that he was now faced with slow starvation. After a time it occurred to him why this was probably not the case. Some of the complex chemicals in wine or beer are toxic, but even when taken in sufficient quantities to poison they also contain food: minerals, vitamins, liquid solids. Drunks slowly strychnined by their addiction seldom eat but do not starve. He would live to regret his mistake, whatever it was.

  He waited until the next morning before tackling the bathroom so that his neighbours would not hear him making odd noises at suspicious hours. People notice small things that are out of the ordinary: pink suds, minor changes in behaviour, odd smells and the moving of rolled-up carpets at three a.m. It had cost him many scares to learn that real secretiveness involved a powerful awareness of routine. He went to the Do It All store at Staples Corner and hired a carpet cleaner and another machine for steaming wallpaper. At first he tried to liquefy the blood in the bathroom using the wet heat of the wallpaper stripper, but this was messy and therefore dangerous. He learned that with the right amount of heat he could simply soften the blood so that it would remain solid yet slip away from the tiles using the scraper. The mixture of digestive juices and blood warmed by steam gave off an appalling stench, which even several cans of air freshener could not entirely hide. Within a surprisingly short time, about four hours, the bathroom looked clean to superficial inspection. Hours of work remained with many different kinds of blood-obscuring cleansers and abrasive powders: Sparkle, Kilrock, Sugarsoap and Shiny Sinks; Kleenoff, Ajax, bleach, Bar Keeper’s Friend; and Mr Muscle, Vanish, Viakal and SOS.

  The cleaning was all made more difficult by the increasing discomfort in his lower abdomen. It was not so much a pain as a sense of being full. His head began to ache mildly, although this could have been because of the chemicals evaporating in a confined space. Then the fullness in his lower abdomen became an uncomfortably hot sensation. He tried urinating, but although he wanted to, nothing happened. Repeatedly he stood over the toilet waiting, but the sensation went away. Finally a slow dribble came out, stinging and hot. Then a powerful pressing sensation began, but as if it were being held back. He gasped as a sharp pain hit the base of his urethra. It started to move upward as if he were pissing needles. He tried to stop but the relentless slow grind continued as his eyes bulged in agony. Another dribble emerged, this time yellowy-red. There was a pause, a sharp stab, and then a gush, and looking down he could see something hard and pointed poking out of the top of his penis, enfolded in the delicate softness of his urethral skin. It stuck with the bloody urine leaking around it and he was forc
ed to squeeze it out with a stifled scream. It emerged slowly like an obscene crystalline tongue. Then it was out and in his hand. A rush of urine burned its way like acid over the torn skin.

  This happened seven times. He took three Kapake analgesics every four hours to dull the pain. It worked. The level of pain remained merely unbearable. After three days it stopped and he was left with a handful of muddy coloured crystals which shed a powdery residue. He crushed one easily but found that it would not dissolve in water or anything strongly acidic or alkaline. Carefully he tasted a tiny grain. It was overpowering and nastily familiar. He spat it out immediately but could taste it for hours afterwards, and it caused the muscles in his neck to knot again like an old tree. But at least the pain was explicable and therefore priceless. The incentive to avoid mistakes next time would be very great indeed. Nevertheless he felt sore, weak and humiliated because only luck had saved him, and he resented luck like a favour from a magnanimous rival you knew would not be there to bail you out a second time.

  Disposing of the body was a practised routine, but her body had lain unattended for much longer than normal. Having finished smearing Maria in Nutradol gel to disguise the smell of decay he zipped her into a thick rubber body bag and carried her downstairs in a Day-Glo orange hold-all. At about eleven a.m. he took it downstairs and put it in the back of his twelve-year-old Mercedes 350 estate. Within ten minutes he was heading around the City and out towards the bridge which had replaced the decaying Blackwall tunnel. The old Mercedes swept over the wide roadway which gave a fine view of London. Downstream the Thames fell to the sea washed in a brilliant sunlight softened by a thin layer of cloud. For perhaps this one day in the year it gave the remains of the brutal heavy industries on either side of the river – cement, iron ore – a derelict pastel grandeur.