Dawn was peering through the bedroom window, a tentative grey light spreading its day blanket over the Amsterdam roofs I had a generous view of from my top-floor suite.
I lay on the bed, swaddled in thick, damp, white towels but sleep wouldn’t come.
Within an hour, rumours of life were creeping up from the street below and I slipped on a sweatshirt and an old pair of jeans and trainers and took the lift down to the lobby. There was nobody in reception, just the sounds of someone vacuuming the back office. I walked out. There was an autumnal chill in the air.
Ten minutes away, some of the floating stalls at the open-air flower market were opening, deliveries being unpacked, displays watered and arranged. The orgy of colour illuminated the grey morning as flowers, bulbs, plants, seeds, accessories and souvenirs were spread out. A young woman with a teardrop tattoo below her left eye and punk-like attire was putting out baskets of cannabis starter kits across the front of the stall’s display. Her dyed black hair was cut in an asymmetric bob and I noticed she had identical trainers to mine.
Moving along the quay my gaze was assaulted by the sunshine colours of all the tulips littering each and every stand. It was a flower we seldom had occasion to see back in Donetsk or even St Petersburg. I loved the clean shape of tulips, the serene uniformity of their curves. I somehow found them peaceful. Even though none of the stalls were yet open, I convinced one of the assistants to sell me a large bunch of tulips in a variety of colours, and also treated myself to an immense bouquet of other flowers, roses crowded with lilies, sunflowers and gardenias. I ambled back to the hotel with my armful of flowers, attracting curious stares in the now busier lobby where tourists were trouping in single file from the lifts to the breakfast room.
In the bedroom again, I stripped, and assembled the flowers across the white, crisp bedsheets, orchestrating a deluge of wild vegetation all along the bed’s perimeter. I lay down at their centre, my own pale, bare skin now set off by a glowing halo of colours.
It felt like madness. It was madness.
I took a deep breath and extended my hand to the drawer of the bedside cabinet on my right, taking out the small green velvet bag in which I kept my thirteen amber pieces. I scattered them across my skin where most settled in unsteady equilibrium while others slid down into the graveyard of flowers surrounding me. The largest piece, an almost transparent block of amber, watery-like in appearance but uncloudy, naturally shaped like a heart without the intervention of human hands, sat, ready to fall sideways if I moved, halfway below the fall of my breasts and my navel. I took it between my fingers, brought it to my mouth and rolled it around my tongue. Now lubricated I pulled it out and carefully inserted it into my sex, gasping as its unyielding hardness passed my lips.
Then, at random I took another, smaller piece of amber and placed it inside my mouth where it nestled in the hollow of my cheek.
I was erasing the Inca Priest, the dance, the meaningless sex masquerading as art.
Now I was filled.
By Amber.
By Chey.
And sleep finally came.
I was woken from deep slumber in mid-afternoon. The sounds of Leidseplein were now loud and cheerful, rising all the way up to my window and, when I peered through the curtains, a cold sun was casting its light on the city.
As I came to my senses, I realised it was my phone ringing that had shaken me out of my deep lassitude.
I fumbled for it, spat out the amber piece sitting in my mouth over the flower-laden bed. The other one, I realised, as a pang of fuzzy pleasure shot through my insides all the way to my brain, was still lodged inside my cunt.
‘Hello?’
‘Luba, you left me a message. What is the matter?’
It was Madame Denoux. It must be morning in New Orleans.
I composed myself as I felt the anger stream back.
‘I’m done with it,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘I mean it. I’m in a mind to give up the whole dancing thing, Madame,’ I continued. ‘I enjoyed it before. But now it makes me feel terrible.’
‘You just have to be more dispassionate about it all, Luba,’ Madame Denoux said.
‘Dispassionate!’ I shouted. ‘That’s not what I signed up for . . .’
I brushed some of the flowers surrounding me from the bed and they fell to the carpeted floor, scattering in improbable patterns. My finger swept slowly across the smooth ridges of one of the amber pieces lying there, and it felt comforting and peaceful.
‘You are so talented and beautiful, my dear Luba. This is just a blip. You cannot give up your dancing. Everyone is talking about you as your reputation spreads. It took me years to get where you are already, you know.’
But I’d made up my mind.
‘I want out,’ I said.
‘Surely not?’
‘I do.’
‘Please reconsider.’ Madame’s voice was pleading now.
‘No.’ I was adamant.
‘So what will you do?’
‘Maybe just normal dancing, I don’t know.’
‘The rewards will not be so significant, you realise that?’
‘I do. But I’ve saved a lot already. Maybe I’ll take a long vacation. Then I’ll see.’
I could almost hear her thinking.
‘Yes, that’s good. An extended break. Excellent idea. Refresh your mind and body, Luba. And then we will talk again, no?’
She explained how taking a break from performing would make my absence felt even more, increasing the demand for my unique services, increasing the price. She suggested that together, she and I could arrange it so that my appearances would become even more exclusive, rare even. That I would only perform at times and in places of my own choosing from here onwards. Madame Denoux begged me to consider this possibility once I had completed my sabbatical. Would I?
I reluctantly agreed.
After the previous night, I wasn’t sure that I would ever dance again, but I also knew that I would never get any satisfaction from anything else. I had come to enjoy the travel, the lack of earthly ties. I would find a way to recover from this and I would find it soon. I had nothing else in life.
Maybe even one day I would come across Chey. Somewhere exotic, somewhere new. Both outlaws, adventurers.
I had answered his letter. My words had been feeble and tentative, but I had tried, in my own way, to forgive him for what he was or might turn out to be. I’d left the door open. Confessed to the pain that being parted from him had caused in my soul. But the letter had, after passing from post to post, been returned. He was no longer living in Gansevoort Street and had left no forwarding address.
Right now, my future was a blank space. I could do whatever I wanted to do.
Today, I decided I would visit Amsterdam’s museums. I’d never had the opportunity to do so before. My hotel room on Leidseplein was available for two more nights and had been paid for in advance. Tomorrow I might call on a travel agent and exchange my return ticket to New Orleans for a flight to somewhere else. Maybe the Caribbean again. But Barbados or Jamaica this time. Become an explorer. Meet people. Have adventures.
I was hungry. I washed my face and teeth, dressed. A simple spring cotton dress with discreet polka dots reaching to just below my knees, which left my shoulders bare. Found a thin cashmere jumper in my luggage and put on flat ballet shoes and strolled out.
There were stalls by the Central train station selling chips with mayonnaise, which I had sampled on the day I arrived. That’s where I would go, then I’d catch a cab for the Rijksmuseum to look at the Rembrandt collections, just like any other tourist. My heart already felt lighter at the prospect of a swathe of empty days ahead. Maybe I could rediscover myself. Find peace.
By the time I reached the ticket counter, there was only an hour left before closing time. I would have to rush. Or then again not, as I could return the following day and take my time. I smiled. It felt like a luxury.
I was in the West Wing
contemplating The Night Watch when I heard an amused voice over my shoulder.
‘Has anyone ever told you that you are as beautiful clothed as you are naked?’
I turned round.
The face was familiar from countless photos I had come across in newspapers and magazines. An English rock star who called himself Viggo Franck. I’d never actually heard his music. His band, the Holy Criminals, had a reputation for excess and mostly played arena tours, I knew.
In the flesh, he was shorter than I expected, although his thin frame provided him with a form of illusory height. Up front, his long, untidy hair was a cuckoo’s nest of artful tangles that hadn’t seen a comb since the Middle Ages. His spindly legs were encased in the tightest pair of jeans I had ever come across, as if sprayed on, fraying at the bottom edges where his heavy black leather boots took over, showing half an inch of pale ankle. Had I been wearing heels, I would have towered half a head above him.
His dark eyes glittered with mischief and his smile was disarming, almost a little boy’s, questioning, gazing at me with both undiluted appetite and genuine curiosity, as if I was a rare specimen in a zoo or a shop window.
I calmly withstood his attention, my eyes unavoidably checking out the significant, and obvious, bump inside his jeans which the uncanny tightness of the material only served to emphasise.
He followed the path of my eyes and his smile turned into a knowing grin.
‘You have an advantage over me,’ I remarked.
His face lit up.
‘Love your accent, girl . . .’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘Are you really Russian?’ he continued.
‘From the Ukraine, actually,’ I pointed out.
‘Wonderful,’ Viggo stated.
The previous night was the only time I had ever performed in Amsterdam, whether just as a dancer or as part of a sex duo, so it made sense that Viggo Franck would have seen me there.
Seeing me pensive, Viggo continued, ‘Yesterday night I was a spectator. I had an invitation.’
‘I see.’
‘I’ve seen a few live sex shows here and there, Hamburg, the old 42nd Street joints in New York when I was still a callow youth, Tijuana, here, but yours was beautiful. You turned it into a thing of grace. Truly. I’d been warned that you were unique, they were right. It was worth it at any price,’ he said.
‘I’m flattered,’ I said. ‘However, it was a bad night to catch me. I can do better when my heart is in it.’
Out of the corner of my eye I caught the fixed gaze of the little girl in the yellow dress as she stood in the light in Rembrandt’s painting.
‘If that’s the case,’ Viggo Franck said, ‘I must arrange to attend your next performance and see you at your best.’
‘There might not be further shows,’ I pointed out. ‘I have no plans for future performances.’
His mouth opened slightly in a gesture of disappointment, like a child being denied an indulgence.
‘I find that sad,’ he remarked.
‘All good things must come to an end.’
‘It wasn’t just the sex, you know,’ Viggo Franck went on. ‘It was a combination of everything, the way you danced, the elegance and the eroticism, the music, you made it into an unforgettable experience. And I know a few things about stagecraft . . . A thing of beauty, truly.’
There was an announcement on the Tannoy that the museum would be closing in fifteen minutes and we had to make our way to the exits.
I was about to retrace my steps through the labyrinth of the Rijksmuseum’s long corridors and galleries with the English rock star trailing in my wake, tightening my grip on the canvas bag hanging from my bare shoulder, when I heard him cry out, ‘Wait!’
‘Yes?’
‘Join me for a coffee?’ he asked.
I had no other plans. And his company would save me from the terror of my own, alone in the hotel room with nothing but my thoughts. I accepted.
Night was falling. There seemed to be no bars or coffee houses in the immediate vicinity of the museum so we ambled south, exchanging indifferent small talk until a few blocks away we reached yet another canal that was bordered with a variety of cafes and restaurants. As we selected one and stepped inside, I noticed how Viggo’s unkempt appearance attracted attention from the passers-by, mostly women of all ages.
I remembered he was known as a ferocious ladies’ man, although to me right now, he was amusing and harmless, eager like a puppy. I knew I had that effect on men, but that was from the vantage point of my presence on stage, when I was highlighted by the spotlight and the artifice of the situation, not necessarily when I was the same old Luba, wearing a simple polka-dot cotton dress and flat shoes, and no make-up, the one I saw in the mirror every day. The girl Chey once knew.
‘Can I ask you just one thing?’ I said as I sat down and ordered a double espresso from the young waitress who couldn’t stop staring at Viggo as he installed himself in the facing seat and asked her for a glass of white wine. Not once had she even looked at me, rapt as she was by the rock singer’s appearance in the cafe.
‘Of course,’ he assented.
‘Don’t bombard me with questions about how I became a sex performer, okay? I’m a dancer. The rest just sort of happened, I suppose. But it’s not something I wish to talk about. Not now.’
His lip curled in disappointment, as if I had just torpedoed the whole thrust of his conversation. Then a sparkle appeared in the corner of his eye and he livened up.
‘Then tell me about the tattoo – the gun?’ he asked.
‘It’s a long story,’ I replied.
‘Then give me the abridged version. I’m an impatient man,’ he said.
‘It was a whim, a spur-of-the-moment thing.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Because of a man. Someone I knew. He owned a gun and something happened . . .’
‘He shot at you?’ The words rushed out.
‘No. I shot his television screen.’
‘Wow,’ Viggo said.
Remembering that day, I smiled. In retrospect, it now felt madly amusing. It wasn’t at the time.
‘I couldn’t keep my eyes off it while you were dancing,’ Viggo Franck said.
‘Just the gun?’ I asked mischievously.
‘Not quite,’ he confessed, licking his lips, retrieving the taste of his wine. ‘There was a lot more to see, and I have perfect vision.’
His eyes locked with mine. This man who had seen me fucked by another.
I remained silent.
‘You’re the sort of girl I’d like to write a song about, babe,’ he said, altogether serious again.
Ever since Chey’s letter and the unwitting revelation of what he saw in me and thought of me, I had often tried to imagine how others pictured me. The fact that I was so often on display and couldn’t fathom how the vision of the spectators accorded with the diffuse vision I had of myself. In a way, I wanted to be the heroine in my own story, the shining star in my own life.
‘You’re sort of mysterious, aloof but terribly real,’ Viggo continued.
‘Real, because you’ve seen me naked, having sex, you mean?’
‘Not just that . . . Can I call you Luba?’
‘It’s my name.’
The mention of song-writing about women brought a memory floating to the surface of my mind.
A few weeks ago, as I’d crossed the Atlantic on an overnight flight that brought me to Europe and the two gigs I’d signed up for first in Cannes and then the recent one in Amsterdam, I’d read a book I’d picked up at the bookstore on the concourse of O’Hare airport in Chicago. It was by an English novelist, titled Yellow, and told the turbulent story of a young foreign woman in Paris in the 1950s who fell in and out of relationships in the Latin Quarter amongst a crowd of jazz musicians and expatriates. Somehow I had identified strongly with her and the novel had affected me in a curious fashion. I convinced myself that the character was based on a real person, someone I
could feel was real and tangible and that I almost knew. I had never heard of its author before – it was a first novel and he was listed as an academic in London. What was it about Brits that they wanted to be inspired by imperfect women, that they were attracted by the flaws in our characters, the damage?
‘Maybe I will. Write that song,’ Viggo concluded, emptying his glass.
‘You’re welcome. Just keep my name out of it,’ I said.
He paused, contemplating me in a dreamy way. He was an interesting man, there was no doubt about it, but his reputation preceded him and I knew deep down that he was not a man for all seasons. He was the kind of guy the old Luba might have amused herself with just for a night or two. I hadn’t stayed with any of the men I’d slept with after Chey for more than a single night – apart from Lucian. After the sex, they had bored me. Sometimes I sighed with ennui even as we made love. Viggo felt as if he was maybe worth a week. But inside I felt nothing but empty. I couldn’t face the silence of my own mind, but I did not feel ready for company.
The truth is that I didn’t know what I wanted.
He looked at me with hunger.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘And please don’t be offended. I know what you do, or have done if you’ve decided to stop, but would you ever consider . . . performing . . . just for me? Your price,’ he said, lowering his eyes, as if shameful that he was proposing money.
I sighed. I knew the question had been inevitable. At least he was tentative and not full of himself in the knowledge that he was rich enough to acquire anything.
‘You say “perform”,’ I noted. ‘Did you mean just dance, or have sex with you?’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers. Whatever you would grant me.’
I pondered.
Perhaps someone so warm and honest in his nature might be just the thing to ease me back into things. With him I would be secure, for a time, and I would not be alone. I felt myself with Viggo Franck. Perhaps I could dance for him. And if I could dance for him, then I could learn to dance for others again.
Eighty Days Amber (Eight Days) Page 15