The Map

by T. S. Learner

  Then, with a sudden and violent thud, the assassin was upon him, the thin wire of a garrotte gouging his neck. Immediately, the musician deliberately fell back against his attacker, toppling the slight figure to the stone floor and managing to slip a thumb under the wire as they fell, buying him the moments he needed to reach for the cane with his other hand. The figure pinned under his large body appeared surprisingly small, but the assassin moved with the expediency of the professional killer, pulling on the wire ruthlessly, twisting and turning to get from under him. The musician, his brain racing with the clarity of an ex-soldier, eased the tip of the cane under the wire in place of his thumb. He then jerked the cane forward with both his hands and all his strength, snapping the garrotte. Swinging around, he wrestled with the assassin who he could now see wore a balaclava. The musician, although ill, was strong and used to combat. In seconds he had his hands around the assassin’s throat – it took another minute to finish him.

  The assassin fell back lifeless and suspiciously light in the musician’s arms. He laid the body out on the freezing flagstones, allowing the silence of the catacombs to close back over them. Crouching over the prostrate figure, he waited listening, half-expecting others to follow. There was nothing; apart from him and the corpse, the catacombs were empty. Reaching down he pulled the balaclava off – black hair shorn close to the skull in army fashion framed the face of a young woman, devoid of make-up, her body slight and flat-chested. Under the jacket hung a pendant, a curious symbol that seemed vaguely familiar. He pulled the chain off the corpse with an indifferent jerk. He would keep it: it might be a clue.

  He turned back to the chronicle now lying under the cross. It was undamaged. Deeply relieved, he picked it up. It must be returned to the family, he told himself. He would not live long enough to take it back, but there was one man he knew, someone he had also loved and who owed him his life. This man, more than anyone, would be able to take the heirloom back and perhaps more, perhaps even unlock the stories of the strange maps within it. He glanced at his watch, it was 3 a.m., the hour of the wolf as they used to say in the trenches. He would leave tonight before they try to kill him and steal the chronicle again.

  1

  Kensington, London, 1953

  ‘Harder, harder, big boy! I am yours!’ The girl, straddling August, screamed in Russian, her long hair a curtain that fell across his face, the small high breasts pushing hungrily between the strands as she pressed herself against him.

  ‘Big boy, da!’ August yelled back in an effort to lose himself in her pleasure. It was the fourth time they’d made love in seven hours and he’d travelled from very drunk to sober like a speeding car about to crash, the expected hangover now beginning to explode over each eyeball.

  ‘Da!’ She came, and he followed, an orgasm that accelerated into a pounding headache as she fell back, her slim body arching away from him like a gymnast. It was an interesting perspective, August noted, reminded of an Egon Schiele drawing. The sweep of her thin pale body topped with the thick black bush of her sex was both lyrical and erotic, but then again, he was a sap for beauty. Was this why he had let her spend the whole night? he wondered to himself, as she lifted herself off him, rolling to the other side of the unkempt bed.

  Sitting up, August began rolling a cigarette then realised with a sudden panic he’d forgotten her name. Irina? Yelena? Yolanta? From Leningrad, that much he remembered. Large green eyes, a narrow cat face and an intellectual passion he had found impossibly sexy. They’d met in a jazz bar he frequented, one that was always full of students and European emigrants. Armed with a smouldering anger and a sexuality that crackled through the air, she’d approached him and asked whether he was a saxophone or trumpet aficionado, then demanded he bought her a vodka. Full of idealism and bittersweet anecdotes about occupation, she’d taken him back to his own youth and all he’d lost growing cynical, and that had been motive enough to ask her back to the flat, but he hadn’t planned for her to stay the night. He never let them stay the night, not the one-night stands. It was too messy; there were women for one thing, and other women for another, that was how he functioned, had always functioned. Besides, August had a vague feeling he’d made arrangements for that morning, he just couldn’t quite remember what they were and the hangover wasn’t helping.

  ‘You read my language?’

  He turned. She was holding up a copy of War and Peace in Russian.

  ‘I speak a little, badly,’ he told her in Russian, reluctant already to expose much more of himself.

  ‘Is good,’ she replied then sprung up in that restless way some women get just after lovemaking. Stark naked, and in the morning light, he could now see she did indeed have both the body and grace of a dancer. She was also achingly young, younger than he remembered from the night before. She went over to the mantelpiece and picked up a photograph entitled, ‘1933, Harvard, Boston.’

  ‘This is you with father, yes?’

  A shimmeringly young August stared defiantly out of the frame, an aura of privilege and entitlement enveloping him like a faint smudge. Very blond, dressed in his graduation gown and cap, optimism radiating from every pore, he stood beside his father – Senator Winthrop of the Republican Party. The patrician’s hand grasped the young August’s shoulder – the king with his heir under his command. August lit the roll-up then exhaled a long cool plume of white smoke, the nicotine dampening down his hangover.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ he answered, more bitterly than he’d intended.

  ‘Once upon a time? This is not a fairy tale, this is your life, no?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him in a long time. We argued.’

  ‘Argued?’ She put the photograph back carefully, as if she were placing an offering at an altar.

  ‘About Marx, if you have to know.’

  ‘Ah, like we did last night.’ She smiled, and for some strange reason looked less naked for doing so.

  ‘No, not like last night. My father is a fascist.’

  ‘An American fascist, this is not possible.’

  ‘It is possible.’

  She shrugged, moving onto the next photograph. ‘And this one, this was when you were student?’

  He glanced over. It had been taken on the River Cherwell in Oxford – three students punting on a lost sunny day, suspended in memory, himself, Charlie and the girl, hauntingly beautiful. Iris? Chantelle? He vaguely remembered the lovemaking, tears and a few terse letters but that was all. But who’d been the fourth element, the photographer himself? It was odd August had forgotten but there he was, on the punt sitting between Charlie and the girl, smiling across at this unseen chronicler. God, I look so much older than in the first photograph, so formed in my determination. Gone was the air of entitlement, in its place something more vulnerable, more angry. What did I lose in those years?

  Staring across, he was back there, the gentle splash of the punt as it slipped into the water, the sudden cry from a startled duck flapping its wings wildly as it skimmed across the river, the murmur of Charlie reciting Donne, and colouring all of it the sense that they were blessed, poised on the edge of something vast, eternal and incredibly exciting, perfectly placed to change the world. August’s heart beat faster just thinking about it. He could even smell the faint smoke of coal fires drifting up from houses along the bank, the scent of lilac threading the soft air like light. And there was Charlie, with his longish hair and a goatee in that workman’s flat cap he always wore, staring moodily across the water. I miss you, more than life.

  The two men had met in August’s first year at Oxford, both reading Classics and Oriental Studies, but Charlie Stanwick had been a scholarship boy, a streak of brilliant rhetoric and lateral thinking, son of a Glaswegian bricklayer and teacher, and determined to transform the world. A dedicated Marxist, he’d persuaded August to join the party and volunteer with him for the International Brigade when the Spanish Civil War broke out. They both left together for Spain in January 1937.

  August, now yearning f
or the quick oblivion of a glass of whisky, turned to the window. Outside the last-gasp spring snow fell in wilful gushes, in a determined chaos that reflected the turmoil in which he felt he had, again, stupidly placed himself.

  ‘Yes, I was a student, at Oxford.’

  ‘So you must be academic, but what is this photograph, of you as soldier?’ She held up the last picture of a burned-out and barren olive grove, in which a battalion of battered-looking makeshift soldiers posed. There were eight of them, armed with ancient Soviet rifles, some with knives pushed into their leather belts, all with the red beret pulled low over the brow. Visibly older, August stood in the second row, holding his fist up in the characteristic salute of the Spanish Republican Army. The contrast between the August in the first photograph and this August was extreme. He’d lost that tight cast of hope that defines the jittery years between fifteen and twenty, the years in which all seems possible. There was a new maturity to his face, a bleak realism in his gaze. The wound that would become the scar was now visible on his left cheek. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and Hemingway, Jarama Valley, 1937 was scrawled in ink at the bottom of the photograph. The writer, tall and instantly recognisable, stood in the middle of the men, a rifle slung over his shoulder for the sake of authenticity, looking back at the camera acutely aware of posterity’s glare.

  ‘Soldier or academic, which is it?’ the Russian girl insisted. Irritated, August got up out of the bed. At thirty-eight years of age he had a rangy physique that marked him – no matter what clothes he wore or language he spoke – as definably American, of old blue-blood Bostonian, a heritage he’d done his utmost to escape. He was a striking figure: missing the tip of his signet (shot off at Fatarella by a Spanish fascist), the angularity of his face was softened only by the mouth that was curiously feminine in shape and size, a broken nose and a scar that zigzagged from the corner of the right eye down to his lip. Conflict, both inner and outer, was stamped all over his body, contributing to an air of masculinity that was fatally attractive. He stubbed out the roll-up, then took the photograph out of her hand and put it back on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Listen Yelena —’

  ‘My name is Yolanta.’

  ‘Yolanta, it’s getting late and I have work to do …’

  She snaked her body around his, her nipples brushing against his chest, her sex touching his. She was almost as tall as him and the total effect was undeniably and annoyingly arousing.

  ‘You answer my question, then we make love for the very last time and then I go. Deal?’ She paused. ‘Soldier or academic?’

  Now erect, he couldn’t help himself. ‘Fighter,’ he murmured into her tangled fragrant hair as he lifted her up onto his hips. Entering her with a violence that made her gasp, he carried her over to the bed. Lowering her down, he began to pound into her, the quickening of both of them pushing all thought out of his mind, the delicious tightness of her, the soft taut skin enveloping him, taking him away from himself, from all that he’d become …

  ‘August!’ The voice was outraged and chillingly familiar. He stopped mid-penetration, then looked over his shoulder at Cecily, his fiancée, still in her coat and with a bag over her shoulder, standing at the end of the bed, staring at them horrified.

  ‘How could you?’ Her voice tiny and strangulated, she seemed paralysed in disbelief.

  ‘What are you doing back from your holiday!’ He rolled off the girl, so shocked he found himself taking refuge in banalities. Cecily still hadn’t moved. It was as if she couldn’t believe the tableau before her.

  ‘I came back early, to surprise you. I thought you’d be pleased.’ She reached into her bag and pulled out a package of cigarette boxes. ‘I even brought you the cigarettes you like.’ She threw them at his head, causing him to duck. ‘Lucky Strikes!’ Now she moved, running for the front door.

  August leaped off the bed.

  ‘Your wife?’ the Russian girl ventured from the bed, revelling in languid nudity.

  ‘Just get out! Get out!’ August shouted back at her as he rushed to catch Cecily. ‘I can explain!’ He caught Cecily’s arm at the door.

  ‘What have you done? You’ve broken us, you’ve broken us into pieces!’ Cecily told him, struggling, then burst into tears as the Russian pushed past, still dressing, slamming the door behind her as she left.

  ‘She means nothing, Cecily!’ He fought her flailing arms as he pulled her into an embrace. Eventually her sobbing receded into a sullen anger. It was then that she broke away and started pacing the bedsit furiously.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why you gave me your keys if you intended to sleep with other women!’

  Cecily’s voice pounded like nails into his head, his hangover having transformed it into a fragile glass bowl out of which he now found himself peering. Yearning to escape, August glanced towards the window, the events of the evening before seeming to drift across the windowpane as elusive as the fog that cloaked Kensington. He barely noticed a black car pulling away from the other side of the kerb. Suddenly he remembered he was still naked.

  He grabbed his dressing gown; with it wrapped around him he felt less vulnerable. A certain self-righteous indignation now swept away the humiliation of being caught in flagrante delicto.

  ‘It wasn’t like that, Cecily. She seduced me, if you have to know. Besides, I was drunk, I didn’t know what I was doing, what I was risking,’ he said.

  Cecily stopped pacing. She stood in front of the small gas fire set in the old Georgian hearth. Ominously it spluttered then died. In the kitchenette over the sink the gas meter gave out a click as it switched off. In seconds the room began to cool. In ten minutes it would be freezing, even though it was April. Ignoring the heater, Cecily stared at her lover, angry with herself for desiring him even now, covered by another woman’s caresses like invisible tattoos. ‘You’re drunk a lot lately, and you’ve stopped writing. It’s like you’re careering towards disaster and I just can’t help you.’ Her eyes welled with tears again, making him feel even guiltier and even more filled with self-loathing.

  ‘You can help, you do help, Cecily. Listen, I don’t want to lose you.’

  ‘Then why don’t you share things with me? Your past? What really happened in Spain, what really happened to Charlie!’ She was shouting now and August hated shouting women.

  ‘Stop it, Cecily, you’re on dangerous ground.’

  ‘Have you ever thought that you might be unconsciously sabotaging any possible happiness you could have? It’s not just the women or the drink, what about the debtors, August? Don’t think I don’t know about them. You had a job, a well-paid lectureship and you gave it up to pursue your “research”, and now you have writer’s block …’

  Close to losing his temper, August closed his eyes then opened them again. To his relief Cecily was still there.

  ‘Look, maybe I am just hell-bent on destroying myself, maybe I’m a lost cause, just another loser addicted to risk —’

  ‘We are not at war now!’ Cecily screamed, despite herself. Outside there was the soft thud of snow, as if her voice had dislodged it.

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ he murmured, one hand twisting into another. Why couldn’t he just touch her? Staring at him, Cecily felt her anger dissipate, like a puff of air leaving her body. She didn’t want to fight any more.

  ‘Why did you ask me to marry you?’ Her voice had shrunk to a plea.

  August shrugged, there were no words left. The pain over his temple was beginning to throb again and the whisky from the night before had started to rise up in nausea. He tried stretching his face into a smile but his scar ached – phantom trauma.

  ‘I guess I thought I needed saving.’ He didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  Cecily pulled the diamond ring off her finger and placed it on the mantelpiece.

  ‘You’re married already …’ Her hand flew up towards the rows of books that sat against the walls, piles marked with notes that read ‘The poisoning of Germanicus by P
iso – the use of poison and witchcraft in Ancient Greece’, ‘Myths and magical herbs’, ‘Virgil’s Eclogues’, ‘The Annals of Tacitus’, and other titles interspersed with Marx, Descartes and copies of Life magazine. ‘… to your work, your past, your research and that manuscript you will never, ever finish. I was an idiot to think I could change you.’ Picking up her hat, she started to walk out.

  Incredulous, he stared after her, at the seams of her stockings, the neatly arranged hair, the back of her shoulders as she swung towards the door, not believing she’d actually reach it. He waited for her to turn back to him, only when her hand reached out for the handle did he spring into action, bolting across the thread-worn rug.

  ‘You can’t leave, not because of a lousy one-night stand!’ He grabbed her arm.

  The doorbell interrupted them. Startled, they both stopped struggling then Cecily shook herself free. But it kept ringing, drilling through their argument, through August’s blinding hangover.

  ‘You’d better answer it, it’s probably the next woman you intend to seduce,’ Cecily stated, flatly. The doorbell rang again. It was August’s cue – he knew somewhere under his throbbing headache he didn’t want to lose her but he was too exhausted, existentially and emotionally, to win her back – not again.

  He pushed past her, out into the corridor then pulled the front door open angrily. The freezing wind billowed out his dressing gown and blew against his naked legs, jolting him back into a sharp reality.

  There was no one there. He stared out into the fog peppered with late snow. It wasn’t quite nine and the morning was still gloomy, the pea-souper thick enough to hide ghosts as August’s sixth sense stretched out in the white. Nothing. He turned back to the door, then heard a voice he hadn’t heard in years.

  ‘August?’ A tall, thin figure clutching a guitar case and a walking cane stepped out of the bushes to the side of the front path.