Bella

by C M Blackwood

  She drove slowly into the midst of this overgrown asphalt jungle, where green shoots and leaves sprouted up out of the barren black pavement, and curled all around this way and that, so that the great square was neither parking lot nor field – but something in between.

  The place couldn’t have looked more deserted; but Clara wasn’t daunted. She continued doggedly round the building, till she came to a locked gate in a high fence, which barred the way to the back of the lot. Its metal looked strong and formidable; but she wasn’t willing to be dissuaded from her path. So she backed up, shifted into park, and revved the engine. With a slap of the gearshift, she flew into drive, and was suddenly catapulting across the earthy pavement. She crashed with a tremendous amount of noise into the gate, which gave way much more easily than she had expected, and fell down quite like a drawbridge, over which the tires spun mercilessly.

  Once she had made it to the back lot, her eyes were rewarded with the sight of lighted windows in the bottom level of the stone complex, and several vehicles parked near the great metal door. Already that door was opening, and confused collegians of César’s school of criminality were flowing out into the lot, to find the cause of the falling gate. Clara came to a screeching halt, and jumped out of the car. She ran to the little group that had assembled outside the building. At its head was Manolo.

  “Clara!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to find César,” Clara answered. “Tell me where he is.”

  But Manolo only shook his head, rather solemnly. “I can’t tell you that, Clara.”

  “Is he here?” Clara demanded.

  “No,” Manolo answered honestly.

  “Then where is he?”

  “I can’t tell you that!” Manolo repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “He’s busy.”

  “Busy with what?”

  “Business.”

  Clara narrowed her eyes, and asked, “Where’s Lucie?”

  Again, Manolo gave a mournful shake of his head. “Forget her,” he said. “Your business with her is over.”

  “Business?” Clara shrieked, as she caught wildly at Manolo’s collar. “This isn’t business, Manolo. This is my life! Now, please, I beg of you – tell me where to find my brother!”

  “It won’t do you any good.”

  “But what about her? Will it do her any good?”

  “No.”

  “But – but why? Why are you doing this, Manolo?”

  He shrugged, with the slightest trace of impatience flitting across his stony countenance. “It’s only business,” he explained.

  “If I hear that,” Clara cried, as she took firm hold of Manolo’s warm hands in her own cold ones; “if I hear that one more time, Manolo, I know it will drive me insane. We’ve known each other for years – haven’t we, Manolo? Aren’t we friends?”

  He appeared to think very carefully, for several long moments, before answering. “Yes,” he said slowly. “Yes – we’re friends.”

  “Well – do friends do such things, Manolo? Are they so cruel to one another?”

  Manolo didn’t reply.

  “Do you remember, Manolo,” Clara went on, “last year when your mother was ill? You had no one to help you, no one to come – so Maríbel and I stayed three nights, till your mother was well again. Do you remember, Manolo?”

  “I remember,” he said stiffly.

  “It was a favor, wasn’t it? A favor between friends?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then will you do me a favor, Manolo? Will you help me, this time?”

  The man’s stern visage was undergoing an uncomfortable myriad of uncertain expressions – and the men behind him were beginning to whisper. When Manolo opened his mouth to speak, one of the men shouted out, and drowned his speech.

  “Quiet, Manolo!” he said. “Don’t tell her anything.”

  “On the corner of Segundo and Castillo,” Manolo announced heedlessly. “A brick building, with a red awning over the door. Apartment 3C.”

  Clara didn’t stay long enough to see what passed between Manolo and his companions, as a result of his indiscretion; but was in the car and out of the broken gate, before she could hear a single angry syllable that was exchanged.

  34

  (Play)

  Again, César’s eyes were closed – and he seemed wholly unable to open them. He couldn’t see Lucie, and Lucie couldn’t see him; for her eyes were shut, too, against the immediate future. Immediate future, she noted, was all there seemed to be, as a prolonged one was becoming, with each involuntary jerk of César’s hand, more unlikely. She imagined that, sometime in the next few moments, darkness would become her constant companion; so why didn’t she want to open her eyes, and view for the last time the light of the world? Granted, it was a very dim and dirty world, especially in that cramped and horrid little apartment – but still it was life.

  So why didn’t she open her eyes? The answer was simple, and it was: that she didn’t want to see death as it came for her. She didn’t want to see its cold and spindly fingers, reaching for her with an iron grip. She didn’t want to see the space close between her and it, as it moved nearer. She would rather, much rather, that she only felt it. Because then, you see – well, then she would be dead, and all fear would have dissipated, anyway.

  So this, she thought, was how it would end. It certainly wasn’t anything like she had imagined. But then – she didn’t think that she had ever seriously considered what her death would be like. Perhaps she had thought it too far off, or too dismal a subject. But no matter what she had thought, it had come for her now, and it seemed very unnatural. It seemed like such a great wrong, such a great aberration and injustice, that she would have liked very much to be able to think about it a little more. She mulled the idea, for a moment, of asking César to hold off, for just a very short while, so that she could have some time with these thoughts. There was nothing worse, she judged, than dying confused.

  She had been considering this for a few moments, and was just on the verge of voicing her request, when something very surprising happened. There came the loud bang of a gunshot, and she thought very seriously that she was killed – but then her hearing protracted, widening more and more to include additional sounds, and she realized that she was nothing of the kind. Her next thought, then, was that she was dreaming. So when she opened her eyes, and saw a dim figure standing just outside the apartment door (which now stood ajar, and whose knob had been shot clean off, apparently by a gun that the dim figure held in its hand), she only smiled faintly at the workings of her imagination. She was glad to see, that they had held to hope and optimism till the very last.

  But her smile faded, and she became very grave again, when she realized that she wasn’t dreaming at all. Since she wasn’t dead, either, there could only be one explanation. The door was standing open; its knob was shot off; and there was a dim, shadowy, mysterious figure, standing in the hall without. Well, perhaps not so mysterious, as its shape was very familiar. Perhaps not just familiar, either – as Lucie knew better than anything that it was Clara.

  She stepped into the room, gun held aloft. “Hello, Lucie,” she said, with a quaver in her voice, and a tear in her eye. But then she turned her face towards her brother, and it seemed somehow to stiffen. “Hello, César,” she said.

  “Hello, Clara.” He tilted his head to the side, and pointed his finger. “Where did you get that gun?”

  “From a hooker down the street.”

  “Filthy whores.”

  “What are you doing here, César?”

  César looked at her for a long moment, and then turned his head very slowly to Lucie. “There is something I must do, Clara,” he said. “You will not want to see. Please go.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I will not wait, to spare you.”

  “You won’t be doing anything tonight, César.”

  His eyes narrowed, and his hand round his pistol became steadier
. “What does that mean?” he asked.

  “It means,” said Clara, with her eyes fixed on the hot tip of her own gun barrel, “that I will kill you, my brother, if you don’t put down your gun.”

  He gasped with obvious emotion. “You would kill me,” he said, “for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I am your brother!”

  “And she is my life.”

  “That makes no sense. You only just met her! Do you mean to say, that all the years you did not know her, you had no life? That what life you had meant nothing? That all your plans –”

  “Not my plans. Mamá’s plans, and Papá’s plans. Never mine.”

  “Then you did not love Tomás?”

  “No.”

  “You shame me, then! You are a disgrace to your family.”

  Clara laughed aloud. “I am a disgrace!” she exclaimed. “You are a criminal, César! It would break our parents’ hearts, to know what terrible things you do. You have killed before. You would have killed again, if I didn’t come!”

  “Your coming makes no difference,” César said coldly. “I will kill if you stay – and I will kill if you go.”

  “The only difference, I suppose, will be whom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shame me. I will not call you my brother.”

  “And I will not call you my sister. It is settled, then! I can kill you.”

  He began to swerve the barrel of his pistol, to point it at Clara; but Lucie leapt at him before he could make the full motion. There was a swirl of color and a roar of sound. Limbs crossed and clutched in every direction. Both guns went off – and the scene closed for a little.

  ~

  When Lucie woke, she found herself sprawled on the floor, with a great lump under her hair and a splitting headache. It seemed she had struck her head against a protruding corner of the metal bed frame.

  Heedless of the pain, however, and eager to know what had happened, she struggled up to her knees, and looked around.

  Lying on the filthy carpet (stained now even worse than before, with the addition of large red pools that complemented very horribly what other suspicious and rusty spots had decorated it already) were Clara and César, with their faces turned towards each other, as if still in opposition. But their eyes were closed, and the guns had fallen from their hands. Neither of them moved.

  Lucie crawled to Clara as quickly as she could, and hovered over her for a moment, with her hand pressed to a bleeding place in her chest, and her eyes searching desperately for some sign of movement. Presently, however, there were none to be found; and so she dove one hand into César’s bloody pocket, to remove the cell phone that was there. He moaned, and shifted at her touch; but she only got to her feet, and kicked him square in the head. She looked down at him, and was content that, between the bullet wound to his shoulder and the swift kick to his head, she wouldn’t be bothered by him anytime soon.

  She hastily connected to the operator, and requested an ambulance. Then she glanced once more at the unconscious César, and asked that the police would be sent, also.

  After providing what information was needed for them to be found, she fell back down again, and knelt over Clara. Her body was still, and her face was painted with a peace that enraged Lucie. The blood from her wound seemed flowing even faster, now. Lucie applied the pressure of both her hands, and cried warm crystal tears over the blood that would, if she were a phoenix, have dried it up entirely. But alas, she was not a phoenix; and she could only lie down beside Clara, doing what she could to stanch the bleeding, while she cried like she would never cease.

  So this was the end. It would have been better, she knew, if César had simply shot her, and tossed her body over a bridge, to float for a while down some dark and lonely river, till she sank to the bottom, where she would lay forever like some eerie, disintegrating mermaid; or till she washed up on one of the banks, to lie unseen and unlooked for till she rotted down to the bones.

  That was what would have happened to her. Clara, though, would still be at home, surrounded by her family on all sides, and equipped with all the necessary tools to once more become happy and free. She wouldn’t be lying, as she was, on a disgusting carpet, bathed with blood that shouldn’t have been shed. Lucie would be dead – but Clara would be safe. That was what she knew. That was what she wanted.

  Her head was beginning to pound, in a way that blocked the flow of her thoughts, and which ran like a pulse or an electric current, filling her body with a dull kind of shock that left her hands and feet tingling. Her heart beat thickly, and slowly, as if it were moving through a heavy sludge. Her breath came sharp, and quick, and the air was not enough. Her vision began to blur, and the room seemed to spin round on an axis fixed somewhere below. She moved nearer to Clara, and pressed harder against her chest.

  Her mind filled with ideas and images. She thought of Sylvie, and of Robert; of her mother and father now dead. She wished, despite everything, that she could see her brother again. She thought of the Vicentes, and wished she could have made things better with them. She wished she could have erased the hatred – the hatred of all that had passed. She wished she could erase all the hatred in the world, so that nothing was left but a warm and shining glow of peace – where no one was every hungry, or cold, or alone. Still there would be sickness, as there always was; but the sick would be surrounded by love on all sides, with the chairs by their beds filled with family and friends, and their hearts filled with a joy that couldn’t be vanquished by death. No one would be hurt, or murdered by evil people; for there would be no evil people, only the good and the pure, the giving and the well-meaning. The lines would be long outside the gates of heaven, though St. Peter ushered them in as quickly as he could, with open arms. The devil would sit on his fiery throne, and weep tears of remorse and regret. He would sit alone for a while, sad and lonely; but then he would go to his Father, and seek His forgiveness. He would atone somehow, and would be loved once again by his good Father, who would scold him – but who would kiss him afterwards, and forgive him. All would be well, and quite as it should be. There would be no more war, because there would be only one side – and that was the side of the good and the just, the fair and the true. Someday the earth would die, and the hosts of heaven would fill the universe. There would be no armies there, and no weapons – but only a love that radiated throughout all creation, and shone with the stars.

  35

  (Stop)

  Lucie must have passed out of consciousness, sometime while she lay there on the floor, awaiting the arrival of the ambulance that seemed like it wouldn’t ever come. But finally it did come, with its pair of paramedics and its gurney. Upon entering the room, however, and surveying the situation, the paramedics realized that they were in need of rather more than just the one gurney.

  As per Lucie’s request, the police came, too. As they were helping Lucie to her feet, she pointed wildly at César, and shouted that he had kidnapped her, tried to kill her, and then shot Clara. She begged them to arrest him; but they merely answered that they had to bring him to the hospital first.

  “Let the doctors take a look at him,” answered one of the officers. His partner spoke no English, it seemed, and only watched the proceeding with a steady frown. “Then we’ll arrest him for you.”

  Contented with this promise, Lucie dropped down onto a hard little shelf in the ambulance.

  “Lie back, miss,” said one of the paramedics. “You’re not well. You need to rest.”

  “Not until I see Clara,” she replied. “Where’s Clara? Where is she?”

  “She’s right beside you, miss.”

  Her head had been spinning so quickly, she hadn’t even seen Clara there, lying on a gurney to the left of her.

  “Is she all right?” she cried. “Is she all right? Tell me, damn you –”

  But she never heard the answer; for when her raised voice reached its peak, the paramedic injected her with a sedative. One moment she was strainin
g against two pairs of arms, trying to reach Clara – and the next she was lying, with the world turning in a wide circle, all around her head. Then she closed her eyes, and was gone for quite some time.

  ~

  When she woke, she found herself (quite as she had done just a few weeks before) lying in a bright white hospital room. The only difference, this time, was that there was no Clara beside her.

  Clara! Where could she be? She must be somewhere nearby. Lucie tried to leap out of bed, but was painfully and unceremoniously jerked back down to the mattress, by the plastic tube that was sticking out of the crook of her elbow. So she reached down, gritted her teeth, and yanked the needle and tape away. A moment later she was on her feet, and in the hallway, running she didn’t know where.

  It wasn’t long, however, before a nurse stopped her. She was a middle-aged white woman, and she spoke to Lucie in English.

  “Miss!” she cried, coming cautiously towards Lucie from the opposite side of the hall. “Miss, you should be in bed. Who removed your IV?”

  “I did.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that! You’re ill, and dehydrated. Please get back to bed!”

  “Where is Clara Vicente?”

  “I’m sorry – you can’t see her now. She’s not even awake.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s well enough. You’ll both be better off, though, if you just get back to bed!”

  “I don’t want to go back to bed. I want to see Clara!”

  “I’m afraid you leave me no choice,” said the nurse. She turned her face from Lucie, and looked towards a triangular desk, which stood perhaps thirty feet down the hall.

  “Luisa?” she called.

  “Qué?” answered a woman behind the desk.

  “Call an orderly for this young woman, please.”