by David Hewson
‘Are you ill?’
‘Sir?’
She looked at him, trying to be as young as she could.
‘You look ill. There is blood on your dress.’
She shook her head.
‘It is nothing, sir. I am not ill. I would like to go back to my family.’
He looked around the big desk, found an oil lamp and lit it. A smoky yellow light fell on the unlit corners of the room.
‘Before the war, you know what I did?’
‘No, sir,’ she said.
‘I worked in the hospital. I helped sick people. People who were bleeding. Like you. I still help people. This is a good thing. Everything I tell you, Cristina, everything will be good.’
‘I am not sick, sir. This just happens. It is not a sickness.’
‘No,’ said the man. He drew the curtain, walked to the door and bolted it. ‘But you should always do as the doctor tells you. Didn’t your mother tell you that?’
She could not see properly in the light. He shifted about in front of her in the dull yellow rays of the lamp. Then his arms were on her. And his breath.
‘Do not be afraid,’ he said.
She could feel the dress being lifted from her, mutely let him lead her to the bedroom.
But she screamed in agony at the pain he brought, screamed until he clamped his hand over her mouth, rocking, rocking above her, thrusting, filling her body with a brutal agony that seemed endless.
Then he screamed too, the world turned dark, revolved, seemed more dream than reality. They were in a place where good and evil coexisted hand in hand, were indivisible. They had gone there together.
The man looked spent, the handsomeness had disappeared. His breath came in short, desperate pants. She felt down with her hand, felt between her legs, where the blood now lay like a soaking rag between them, felt this stiff thing that was still inside her, wondered what she had done to make this happen.
He pulled himself from her, rolled over on the bed, wiped the sheet against his groin, automatically, without thinking. She looked down, trying to see in the dim light what had happened to her.
His breathing became regular. He stared at the ceiling. Then he sat upright, swung his legs over the side of the bed, started to pull up his trousers. She wanted to say something. She wanted to apologize. She found herself bound to him in a way she did not understand.
He stood up, fastened his belt, put his hands in his pockets and looked at her, grinning. She could not read the expression. Suddenly, from nowhere, a terrible ache, a terrible soreness gripped her. She put her hand on the place, pushed gently, started to cry.
He leaned over and held her by the chin.
‘Do what I say and you’ll be safe. You and your family. I guarantee it. This is a war. We walk a narrow path, life one side, death the other. We can both keep each other alive. If you do as I say.’
She nodded, then wondered whether the movement of her head was of her own making or simply the force of his hand, holding so tightly it hurt. The tears stung her eyes. She wiped them with the sheet.
‘There is a bath in the next room. Use it. I will lock the door behind me. That way you will not be disturbed. While I am out, I will see that your family is well looked after.’
He looked handsome again. A little like someone she remembered seeing on the screen in the little cinema near the cathedral. He was a pirate then.
The door closed. Only a dim light came through the closed curtains drawn against the small, square windows on either side of the room. She staggered to the bathroom, poured cold water in the tub, washed slowly, mindlessly. Then she crawled back into the bed and fell asleep.
TWENTY-FOUR
It was early evening. Outside, she could hear the sound of beasts. Was it just animals? No. There were human voices too: an excited undercurrent of men talking some way off. She could not make out the words, but she could sense the tension in their voices.
Cristina got out of bed, put on her pink-and-white cotton dress and started to try to make sense of the house. It was a tiny peasant’s cottage: one bedroom, one living room, a small bathroom, a small kitchen. There was a door to the front and one at the back leading from the kitchen. Both were bolted from the inside.
Every window was covered with a ragged, heavy curtain that blocked out both light and heat. She pulled one back at what she thought was the rear of the farmhouse. It opened onto nothing: just a bare rock hillside rising behind her, a few prickly pears struggling through the ochre earth. The light let her see the living room a little better. There were some men’s clothes strewn around the room on cheap wicker chairs, on the floor. The furniture she had noticed before. Some bottles of wine on an old, dusty sideboard. This was not some general bunkhouse. One man lived here, one man who had some kind of hold over the others outside.
The pain had now turned to a dull, low ache. In some way she almost felt proud of it. What had happened was outside her old life, with its narrow confines, cosy prettiness, its antiseptic regime. The old life could not have continued. She was bleeding, she was becoming something new, although her family, even her mother, refused to acknowledge the fact.
Only this man, alone in the world, had recognized this change. He had seen it, appreciated it for what it was and then taken her, introduced her to a new reality, of pain and blood and dark, raging feelings. A new reality that intrigued her, for all the hurt.
She wanted to think of her family. Try to help them. But she could not shake the image of this man from her head, so powerful was it. And the image of the act they had performed together, something so strange, so fundamental, so savagely perfect. Thinking back on it, reviewing it among the jumble of pictures and pained sensations, she saw it was some kind of door into a world more solid, more substantial than the one she had left behind that morning. She held her hands in front of her face. They did not shake. She was a Lucena.
Outside, the voices grew louder. Cristina looked at the front window. It was long and deep, the frayed curtains blocking out everything. There was a simple wooden chair at one end. She dragged it into the middle by the gap in the curtains, kneeled on it, leaned forward and opened a tiny chink of light between the two pieces of fabric. There was a musty smell there, old and dry and dusty. She looked for a cause, then realized it was the curtain itself. Years of dirt, damp and neglect were woven into its fabric. She peered through the chink and saw the sun low and quiescent in the sky.
The view gave directly back towards the camp. The gates were shut. She wondered what the rest of her family were doing. Whether her parents had been allowed to see the others. Whether they were even thinking of her.
In front of the camp, close to the bull pen and the practice ring, groups of men stood chatting to each other in the low, tense voices she had heard when she first awoke. They were still too distant for her to distinguish the words. Far away, beyond them, she could make out movement in the practice bullring. Someone was pushing the machine she had seen before, on a holiday trip somewhere, on a bull farm. The machine she thought of as the ‘chaser’: a set of horns on wheels they used when they were training. Some people were in the ring, moving slowly around. It was impossible to make out what they were doing.
Cristina closed the curtains slowly and got down off the chair. A big, aching hole had appeared in her stomach. She searched through the kitchen. There was a loaf of dry, hard bread, some cheese, some old ham. She looked in the drawer set into the battered wooden table, found a sharp little knife and carefully cut away at the corners of the food, paring a shaving of cheese, a shaving of ham, a thin slice away from the loaf. She rolled the meat and cheese together, put them on the bread and folded it over. The food was so dry it almost made her choke. She found the jug and drank some water. It was lukewarm and tasted of dust.
Then she sat down and waited for him to return.
Afterwards, when she was recovering in the nervous calm of the house in Jerez, wondering if the climate might change and whether she would have to retu
rn to La Soledad, she tried to count the days. It could have been thirty, perhaps more. There was no way of knowing. Each ran into the next, seamlessly, as if melded together, day and night. His own life did not run on some conventional path. She had soon come to realize that. Sometimes he would be there when she was woken by the sunlight illuminating the bedroom window. Naked, stubble on his chin, his cheeks. She would look at him asleep and remember how the bristles hurt, chafing at her face, her shoulder, as he strained and pushed above her.
When he slept it was so soundly that she thought nothing would wake him. If she went into the kitchen, took the little knife from the drawer, returned, then cut his throat from ear to ear, watching the blood flow on the sheets, would he wake to see her standing over him, the little blade flashing in the sun? No. She did not think so. Such an act was possible, perhaps deserved. But she did not do it. She could have killed a man. Of that she was certain. But not him. There was a bond between them. He protected her and if, in the beginning, it had started as rape, then the act had changed, over the days. Now she welcomed him, expected him. He taught her, looked after her, was both guardian and lover, and for this she was grateful.
Sometimes he did things – touched her small breasts, kissed the nipples and watched them grow and stiffen – things that made her feel different, grown-up, like a woman. There was a moment, and it had not taken long, when she realized that she wanted this to happen, would be disappointed if he simply rolled over and went to sleep (as sometimes he wanted to, since he seemed to be tired, worried, distracted so often). When this had first happened she had touched him on the chest, felt the soft, black hairs there, the warmth of his skin, explored his body, reached down to stroke what lay between his legs and, to her astonishment, felt it grow and harden between her fingers, heard the pattern of his breath change, and then, without thinking about what she was doing, kissed him there.
It was an act of complicity and, once performed, there could be no turning back.
He told her never to leave the place. He locked it each time he went out. She heard the key in the door and never tried to escape. There was nowhere to go and, in any case, she did not want to leave. The dark interior of the farmhouse became her world, its walls the boundaries of the known universe. The days seemed endless; it was rare he returned from wherever he visited before the light was fading. The best nights were spent locked together, sweating, panting, entranced by the harsh, rough sweetness they found there. She started to look after the cottage, to care for his clothes. Each morning, before he left, he brought water in for her to wash things, some food. She learned how to fry eggs that he brought warm from the coop she could hear outside.
It was at least a week before she asked about her family. His face grew dark. He looked away. She hated herself for posing the question.
Eventually he said, ‘I told you. I can keep you alive. There are crazy men here, in La Soledad. They do things I cannot stop. If I tried, they would kill me. Be patient. When the fighting subsides in the city, and that will not be long, then things will be safer, more secure. But do not press me. Do not ask questions. Above all, stay inside. Do not remind them of your presence. I will do my best for your family.’
She marked the hesitation in his voice. ‘And for me?’
‘And for you. Always.’
She smiled. It was true. They were two against the world. She had sensed this all along and now he had confirmed it.
‘Your pact is with me. Not my family,’ said Cristina, eyes glittering in the dark.
Antonio Alvarez stared at her and wondered what key he had turned to begin the transformation he had witnessed. She now looked older. She was dressed in a peasant shift he had brought one day. She was still slim, but her breasts were growing and she could pass as a farmer’s young wife, pretty, full of life. He thought of his own life, back in the city, and wondered how his hunger could have led him so far. Then he thought of the night, their limbs moving together on the stiff hay mattress, her face in the moonlight, eyes closed, mouth half-open, the gentle, bird-like sound of her moaning. It was not possible and he hated to face the thought.
‘Stay inside. Stay silent. Stay away from the windows,’ he said, then rose from the table, gathered his jacket and unbolted the door.
In the brief sunlight of his going she had nodded and said, ‘Yes.’
But she was still a child and she did not mean it.
TWENTY-FIVE
Something had changed outside, something she sensed in his eyes, in the way the voices had shifted beyond the locked door, in the air itself. The atmosphere had become more taut. Antonio spent longer away from the house. She missed him. Sometimes in the evenings he was so tired that he fell asleep straight away, and woke only when she mounted him, legs around his belly, hand feeling gently at his groin.
But the act had changed. His excitement had dwindled, had been diverted elsewhere. There was a look on his face she did not understand, did not like. And she did not dare ask what had put it there, what was happening outside, in La Soledad and beyond.
One evening he was even later than usual and she was bored, resentful, feeling neglected. She had washed his clothes, she had made some food. Half of it was uneaten. She had drunk some of the harsh red wine he brought in uncorked green bottles. It made her head spin, made her think wild thoughts. When she drank too much she sometimes felt ill. But not this night. This night it filled her with curiosity, with bravery, with impudence.
She went to the big front window, kicked the chair aside and slid in front of the curtains. It was night, but there was a full moon, glorious and silver in the starry sky. She could not remember such a beautiful evening, ever. Everything was clear and still under the pure white light. Even the barren land of La Soledad, the cheap little buildings, the picket fence of the encampment, they all seemed right. She remembered a phrase she had heard her brothers saying when they played soldiers: All present and correct. This was how the landscape in front of her now looked. Everything – scrubby rock outcrop, straggly clump of prickly pear, rough iron outhouse – was in its place.
She stared happily at the scene, rapt, dreaming. Then came a noise she would never forget. A sound of human agony, so loud, so tortured, she thought she could feel the pain itself. It went on and on, like the cry of a beast being slaughtered and a distant inner voice said to Cristina: Get down, get away from the window, forget, go to sleep.
This was not possible. Not without knowing. The screams came again and she shivered in the heat of the night. Cristina got down from the ledge, went to the table where Antonio kept his papers, opened the little leather attaché case and pulled out a pair of field glasses.
The sound came again and she walked back to the window. She had never used the glasses before, but she had watched him playing with them, focusing on the horizon as he stood at the curtains, watching, silently, for something she could only guess at. The eyecups were sandy and hurt her skin. She took the glasses away from her face, scrubbed them with her sleeve, then tried again. It was hard at first, but she got the idea. The focus was fixed and her eyesight was good. Soon she could make out the detail of the gates, the shape of the rocks and terrain in the distance. Then she returned to the camp, tried to see if there was a gap somewhere that would let her peer in, beyond the picket fence. But there was nothing.
The screaming was becoming fainter. She gave up on the perimeter and moved left, to the bull pen, where a few dark shapes stood immobile. Then she ranged further, to the practice ring; the shapes of men, and other creatures, began to form in her line of vision, and she felt herself make an involuntary gasp. The inner voice spoke once more. Again she ignored it.
She could see Antonio, silver grey in the moonlight, seated on the top row of the three-tier benching. In front of him, on both sides, were ten or so other men, all seated, all watching what was going on in the ring. She could not read their expressions at this distance; she was grateful for that.
Cristina moved the glasses slightly and turned
to look in the ring. A man was tied to the practice chaser, hands bound to its handles. From the way the moonlight shone on his back she guessed he must have been stripped to the waist. He slumped over the handles, almost as if asleep. Then, from behind, a figure appeared, with small things dragging ribbons in his hands. He walked towards the man, pulled back his arms, threw something. It flew through the air and stuck into the man’s back. She watched as the head went up in agony, braced herself for the scream that came, thin and terrifying through the night air.
From the side of the ring came someone on a small horse. He had a lance in his hand. It stuck out comically in front of the animal, too big, too ungainly. She heard, dimly, laughter from the men seated on the benches. The horseman jogged slowly towards the centre of the ring. He looked bored, as if he had done this too many times. With a lazy sweep of his arm he lifted the lance, then thrust two, three times into the man’s side. The wheeled frame moved a few feet. The men at the side screamed foul abuse. The lance rose and fell again, and the frame shifted once more before the figure bound to it slumped again.
The shouting was getting louder, impatient, annoyed. The spectacle didn’t seem to please them. Cristina looked at the men again. They frightened her. Then she saw Antonio, still seated above them, raise his hand, make a gesture she did not understand. There was a small cheer. One of those at the front stood up and walked into the ring. He was carrying something long and thin in his hand. She closed her eyes, then found she had to open them. It was a sword.
They were yelling now, really yelling, but the figure strapped to the frame remained motionless. Maybe he was dead already, she thought. Maybe it would be better that way.
The man with the sword reached the frame. He looked at the body, prodded the torso with the blade. There was some small movement. He shrugged his shoulders. Then he lifted the head, looked into the face, let it drop back hard onto the frame, lifted the sword, high so that the moonlight glittered like ice along its length, shouted, then stabbed, again and again, stabbed the head, the back, the sides, madly, in a frenzy, yelling, yelling, yelling.