by Lee, Tanith
“What?”
Doors were opening all along the train. I half thought I might get out, for sometimes the train stayed at these halts for an hour. But what was there to see? And already old women were bringing baskets of eggs and loaves and would cluster round me, earth-smelling and jabbering. In one place, on a similar journey, I had had a baby thrust into my arms. Whether this was a plea for money, or they simply wanted me to buy it outright, I didn’t know. The guard had come and saved me, shouting, brushing me off. The baby did not cry at all. The poor thing was mauve. What horrible adult half-recalled trauma would all this become in its later years?
Down the corridor now came pushing a band of peasants in a red fug of smell and noise. They carried parcels of chickens and one, another guitar, while granny hobbled behind holding up the family samovar.
The force of this pushed the blond man into me and so both of us back into my compartment.
At once he shut the door, locked it.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu,” he said. Leaning on the mahogany he undid the vodka bottle. “You have a glass?”
I fetched the toothbrush glass and he filled it to the brim, and handed it back to me.
“To your health.”
I swallowed the glassful and he took one directly from the bottle. I knew at once in ten minutes we should be seated on my bed in our shirt-sleeves, passing the bottle between us.
Anna would have said to me, “You must be more careful. For heavens sake, he could have been diseased. Syphilis, TB.” Then again she might not. Anna has had times of avid interest in my adventures, all judgment suspended. And Esther...Esther would hardly care either way. While they grew up in starched white little-girl dresses, in a gloomy flat some way above the Nile, I flourished in an Egyptian river-slum. Of course I remember almost nothing about it, since our father withdrew me from it when I was less than five. Again, what adult traumas has it left me? Plenty, I assure you.
The train was only in the station a short while. It left with such abrupt rapidity that, judging by the outcry, certain people were left behind. God knew what would then befall them. Perhaps the locals were, during winter, cannibals.
In any case we were by then sitting on the bed, our coats thrown off because someone stoked the carriage stove and with the vodka we were warm. We passed the bottle to and fro.
He said to call him Stephan – which very likely was not his name. He did not bother to ask my name, calling me instead very quickly by flirtatious pet titles. Finally he leaned across and kissed me on the mouth, while we trembled violently to the motion of the deranged train.
“Do you like this?” he asked, “and...this?”
The sour sodomous ache of lust had the color of darkness. We put it off for hours, and all the light, the peculiar twilight that lasted all afternoon, was gone, when eventually we savaged each other. I had him the first, then he had me. There was a bolt on the door, which I had thought to use. The steward knocked and unlocked in one movement, and finding the door resist, called out. I told him to go away.
About six, Stephan went out while I was lying in a half doze, sore and stupid, too dazed yet to have regrets. He returned with two bottles of champagne. He said dinner would go on until one in the morning. The fat woman had winked at him. Stephan said she knew perfectly well what we were at, and had given him too a handful of the cigarettes. Had I been aware, they had each a grain of opium in them?
He’d wounded me in a dozen places, grazed, blackened and drawn blood. I had done as much for him. He poured champagne down my throat and sat astride me, torturing me with his mouth. I remember his thin white body, with its pristine, faun-like muscles. How his back rippled in the lamplight, his hands gripping me under each arm. He had a canine beauty, though very little body hair. There was something truly terrible about him. The black night beyond the window, frayed now and then with orange cinders, provided an unavoidable motion. The train surged forward, fucking the night on and on. He had the power to make me come, and in the end I resisted him, and still came in long gouging twists of feeling. I began to wish he would go but he showed no need to. Once, as I had him, he muttered a strange phrase in his misleading French: “Ne que v’on desir.”
At last we got up, set ourselves to rights, and went to the dining-car together. Our faces were faultless, but under our clothes we hid the bleeding ravages. The Spirit of Eating had sat waiting for us, complacent, like some ancient goddess to whom the male act of congress is especially pleasing. She knew, it was obvious, almost sniffing at us, approvingly, and gliding us to our seats. We were served roast goose, which was reserved for only a few of the diners. The smell was so rich I thought I’d have to leave the car, but the champagne and vodka saw it down. Stephan ordered black bread. It was full of husks. Perhaps he wanted to choke me. There was nothing like opium in the train cigarettes, though they were heady as cigars.
“Shall I come back with you?” he asked.
The Spirit had dipped blackened glasses into sugar and vodka, filled them with vodka, set them alight, and so brought them flaming blue. Stephan swallowed down the flame. Well. He’d already swallowed mine.
“If you want to sleep, take the berth,” I said. “I’ll stay in the corridor.”
“You’ve had enough of me.”
“I’ve had enough.”
“And I can sleep in the bed-place?”
“Please. That’s quite all right.”
“How generous you are,” he said, “you Jews. So scared of us all, you have to placate us.”
“If you don’t want the bed, don’t have it.”
“Ah, petite amande—”
I blew out the flame and drank the hot vodka, which burnt my lips. We had been cautious in kissing. A nice change after Georges, who was liable to knock out your teeth.
Stephan shrugged. He said the funny little nonsense phrase again. “Ne que v’on desir.”
“What?”
He replied, in English now, primly, “I don’t want that, myself.”
I must have misheard the French. Or else he misused the language, saying exactly what he did not mean at all.
“I’m tired,” I said.
“But you’d give me the bed. Ah, mon monstre—”
I threw a flare of money on the table, enough for the Spirit of Eating, and for him too, if he wanted.
I left the dining-car and went back to my berth. Here I shut, locked and bolted the door. But I knew, when he came and politely knocked, I would have to let him in or at least reason with him. The colossal drinking had sobered me, and I wondered if he would now want to slit my throat or scar my face, drinking my blood, then robbing me of anything useful. Georges had spent most of our last days warning me about such people (shades of Anna in her schoolmarmish mode). Once he had tied me up and thrashed me with a piece of rope. But Georges didn’t have much stamina. His arms soon ached and I wasn’t badly hurt. Then he wept at his weakness, his inability to punish me. Even the struggle on the stairs had only harmed my watch.
No one knocked. It was two or three in the morning. I rolled restlessly about on the ruined bed, smelling Stephan’s expensive cologne and spent healthy spunk. He had left behind a composite aura of something dangerous, wholesome yet metallic, clean yet impure. I wished he would come back, and dreaded him.
Sleep came, in small unnourishing slices, and I woke fully with a steely dawn. The blind was up, and birds, flying before the sun, threw forward their shadows into the carriage so they seemed to fly straight in and through the wall.
As the train moves, so do the sun, moon and stars. Everything moves. Even the heart. Unavoidable.
But the train wasn’t moving. It was static. My bones had so recorded its rumble and jangle, they played it still. Behind my shut lids, everything sped forward. But no longer.
Some station had occurred again. More cows and pigs and bonfires and grandmothers.
Yet, even after I’d got up, washed and shaved, dressed myself, the train sat still where it was.
The steward rapped, a
nd called, “Monsieur, monsieur, we are broken up.”
I flung wide the door in alarm.
“An accident?”
“Not, not. Snow-bank. Before train, do you see?”
I said that I did. When he was gone, I put on my greatcoat and went out into the corridor, where the door had been left partly open. It was now fearfully cold; I mean it made you afraid. You couldn’t think what to do with it. I got out of the train and slid down into a mound of snow to my knees.
On all sides was the nothingness God had lost interest in. Here and there black figures trudged up and down, two or three with primitive lighted torches, whose purpose I couldn’t guess. The train was so black and large; it plainly had no place there. You could see this now. Reality must suffer a fatal inanition when plunged among the utterly unreal. Up ahead, a snow slip could be on the line, but that was merely inevitable. It might have dropped straight from that unpainted and undecorated sky. Here there was not even a forest to be seen, let alone a station, a village, a shed. The birds had passed over, but we were immaterial to them.
With a meaty grunt, the Chocolate German thumped into the snow beside me. His basket was empty and his brawn-like, mottled face greasy with desolation.
“We shall be here one week,” he announced.
“Indeed.”
“Last time it is one week. This time will be one week.”
“Really.”
“All chocolate sold,” he told me with a sinister pride. “They buy it all. Food will run out. And no wood for the stoves. Already all the vodka is drunk.”
Oh, yes, I was quite scared. But more of its idea than because I believed it.
Then he lurched malevolently at me, and as I trod quickly back to avoid him, he said, “You had him.”
I turned away. The Chocolate German pawed my shoulder. “Let go.”
“You had him. We all have had him. He has gone through train like the rodent. Even I. I had him. Never before, I swear. Only woman. Against the wall of a barn in a station, yesterday.”
“What are you talking about?”
The Chocolate German took no notice. “He have says he will do it. Makes a list, ticks it off. The first night. Before you get on. Back then. All of us. The peasant rubbish too. Yes, yes, he had them. Last night. They lined up for it, I sold them chocolate as they waited. Their women went to the other end of the carriage not to see. And now he’s done, the train has stops.”
I lit a cigarette. I was in the land of storytellers. Even Georges had story-told me that. Leaving the Chocolate German where he had sunk in the snow, I walked down the line, passing the mediaeval men with torches.
In the fireman’s cabin was a hell of flamelight, but no driver. The enormous muzzle of the train faced out across the waste, up to its stack against a whiteness like a tumbled hill.
Faintly I heard wolves howling over the snow. I thought to myself I had probably actually eaten enough, and drunk it too, to last me a week. That snow could be sucked for fluid. That the German lied about the wood stores on the train.
When I had got back on, I met the steward in the corridor.
“No cause for concern,” he said, parrot-fashion, bitterly.
“No, of course,” I answered, like a good child.
In the dining-car the Spirit of Eating stood in a black fur coat that swept the ground, directing her uniformed slaves. Seeing me, she came up and said, “We will not starve,
“No, Madame.”
There were already rolls and butter laid, the samovar smoked among its tumblers of jam and cinnamon. The train, now that the doors had been closed again, was reasonably warm, as warm as it ever had been.
As I began my breakfast, I heard the shovels start work up the line. But no one else entered the dining-car. Presently the Spirit of Eating again rolled up to me. She posed a moment, looking with her stony, Cybele eyes. Then she said in her own odd French, “He would not wait. He got out and went on alone.”
“Who, Madame?”
“Your friend.”
“I haven’t a friend in the world, Madame.”
“The blond monsew,” she said.
“Are you saying,” I asked, “he left the train to walk?”
“Yes, monsew.”
Oh, I was supposed to widen my eyes, and press her for more. How was this possible? Wasn’t it unwise? Was he insane? I let her fill my cup with fur-black tea, and only said, “Then I expect he’ll make the wolves wait their turn.”
The X’s Are Not Kisses
Tanith Lee and Esther Garber
After Jaidis had left, Emily decided to clean the flat, very thoroughly; what had once been called a Spring Clean. She began with the small bathroom, which was usually done once a week in any case, and went on to overhaul the kitchen area, scouring the stove, removing everything from the cupboards, washing and burnishing glasses. She went over the tiles with something supposedly miraculous she had seen in a TV advert, but the result was disappointing. Nevertheless, it produced a lovely smell.
Following this, Emily spent the weekend working on the large main room. She cleaned the long windows and the wide mirrors, shampooed the carpet, dusted down the curtains with an appliance on the hoover she had never used before. She polished the tables, and brushed the ornaments with a soft brush meant for a camera lens.
Outside the flat it was indeed spring, and Emily bought a dwarf laurel and two young bay trees.
Then, she stood outside the tiny bedroom that Jaidis had always used as her office and chamber of practice. Emily stood with her flaxen head on one side, wondering.
To clean or not to clean. This was the private room, which normally she had never entered, unless invited. Here Jaidis kept her accounts, typed her business letters, worked with her guitar, composed, or sometimes remained in profound silence, the door shut.
Emily retreated. She sat down on the couch in the main room, and thought about the thing she had thought about ever since Jaidis left. Which was, did Jaidis mean to come back?
There were three scenarios. First, that Jaidis would be gone for a week, ten days, a month, something like that. After which she would return and everything would resume as before. Secondly, that Jaidis would return, and explain to Emily that all was changed, and they must work something out, something that would be of course ultimately demoralizing and painful. The third possibility was that Jaidis would simply call her and say, “I’m sorry, Emily. But I’m not coming back. Can you pack up my things and send them on?”
It was really for this reason that, when Jaidis had specified that she would telephone Emily every evening, between six and eight, Emily had said, “Oh, no. You know how I sometimes have to work late. And any way, it will be difficult. Just phone me if you need anything.” Jaidis had said at once, “You’re determined to make this as bloody for me as you can, aren’t you?” Emily did not say, You are making things very bloody for me. She did not even say, Every time the phone goes, I shall feel sick with fear. She said, “I’m sure, if it’s as bad as it seems, you’ll find it awkward to phone. Just – just call when you – when it’s over.” Which terrible double meaning only struck her later, once she was alone.
They had made love the night before Jaidis went away. Jaidis had been passionate and inventive, but Emily had had to pretend. Probably Jaidis knew this. But they did not discuss it, or anything. In the morning they had gone quickly through the budget for the month. Jaidis, a self-employed musician, tended to earn more but not on a regular basis.
Emily’s job at the bookshop now provided the backbone for bills and rent. At ten, the taxi came, and Jaidis, with a fleeting kiss, went immediately towards the door, Jaidis dark as a shadow, graceful as a lion, and Emily stood there in her drained whiteness, with her heart exploding, dry eyed and smiling, not from pride, but from terror.
When the door shut, and she had heard the sound of Jaidis’ light footfalls running down towards the street, the taxi starting, the wheels in the rain, Emily fell to her knees. After an hour pressed to the car
pet, she saw the fluff that had got tangled into it with the tempest of her tears, and so decided on the spring cleaning.
They had met in the summer of the year before.
It was one of those rare, hot, perfect European nights that imply one might be anywhere short of the equator. Up on the terrace garden of the bookshop, there was a publicity party, with two quite well-known authors reading from their new books, bottles of cold wine, and an elegant buffet, complete with salmon and green seedless grapes.
Emily had wanted to work in the bookshop for some while, ever since she had gone past it every day, wretchedly on her way to somewhere not so nice. It was exquisitely clean, all glass and foot-deep plush, with escalators, a coffee-bar, and, best of all, stacks of books, the ancient and the modern, rising in tiers upon tiers, like a mountain built of words and dreams, life and fantasy. She had gone for her interview diffidently, but her instant mastery of the complex computer system, her knowledge of authors past, present and in embryo, and her undoubted, mostly unconscious, charm, saw her installed inside the week. She had been an employee only two months on the evening of the party. Emily had gone in a short black frock, with her blonde hair combed loose, not to entice, merely to be part of things.
The two authors were a fat woman with a mane of black and grey curls, and a thin old man in glasses with a slight stammer. Both read superlatively well, and afterwards came together over the wine. Here it was soon apparent that they had fallen in love. Quite literally that. For some reason they had never met before, and, as Emily discovered, they were both alone. Now their minds, bodies and spirits flew to meet, and a wonderful bloom of excitement rayed out from them, making them as heady to be near as two teenage lovers. Emily could have laughed aloud in pleasure. It was a marriage made in Heaven: her heavenly bookshop.
Half an hour later heaven provided some music, too.
There was a childlike quality to Emily, completely unirritating since she knew nothing about it. She went lightly through the crowd, and sat down on the clean paving, near enough to be able to watch the guitarist at her craft, what she did to draw the glorious alternating silver and contralto sounds from the instrument. At first Emily was only dazzled by Jaidis, who was, of course, entirely and defiantly dazzling. In innocence, Emily gazed on her, not thinking of herself at all.