He was sitting on the edge of Christine’s bed in silly pyjamas, listening while she told him some story. From time to time she paused, and they looked at each other as if there were nobody else in the world. Later, Christine allowed him to comb her long hair. Elene felt a peculiar mixture of disgust and attraction at the sight, which so overwhelmed her that tears unexpectedly sprang to her eyes.
At breakfast the following day, throughout which Elene stared at the floor as if she had something to hide, Stasia, beaming with joy, announced that she had had the extraordinary good fortune — so close to retirement! — of being invited to a librarians’ conference in Prague.
As soon as Stasia left the house, Christine prepared herself a cup of hot chocolate. She hadn’t dared make the dangerous drink since the Little Big Man’s death. The temptation to sample its delights at least occasionally was great, but since then she had grown more cautious. Still, her doubts were not strong enough, because after savouring her portion she left vestiges of the chocolate in the little zinc pan she had used to prepare it. And so it was that Elene, coming into the kitchen late that night to fetch herself a drink, was able to walk to the stove unchecked and devour the chocolate. I don’t know if she recognised the scent, if she remembered the time when, as a little girl, before the move to Moscow, she had pounced greedily on the chocolate meant for her mother; but that didn’t matter any more, because Elene tasted it — and not only Elene. For before she had scraped the saucepan clean, Miqa also appeared in the kitchen. He risked putting himself at the mercy of Elene’s superciliousness, but the temptation was too great: the smell drew him towards the stove as if hypnotised. He even came and stood right next to her, and Elene, dreamily scraping the night-black mixture from the pan, did not complain, but closed her eyes in pleasure as Miqa tasted the chocolate by her side.
*
It had been a good day for Elene. A beautiful spring day. She had left the house without fighting with her mother and then — much more importantly — she had finally managed to get hold of her first record by her exiled aunt, in exchange for a brief, stolen kiss behind the school. She had always been intrigued by her father’s absent, taboo sister, but had never been given a straight answer to her questions, so she had begun to do some research of her own. She collected everything she could lay her hands on that had anything to do with Kitty Jashi, secretly pilfering photos from old family albums and hunting down defamatory articles about her in the Soviet press after she fled to the West; and also, later, cuttings from foreign music magazines that mentioned her songs. Even these were rare, and worth their weight in gold. But they were nothing compared to an actual record — and it wasn’t even a cheap, X-ray album, but the foreign original, with the original record sleeve!
Nothing seemed to stand between her and happiness when she returned home to find a note from her mother on the kitchen table. Nana had been invited to a colleague’s birthday party and wouldn’t be back before midnight. Christine was on a night shift; Elene’s dinner was in the refrigerator for her to heat up whenever she liked; she should be very grown-up this evening, not do anything silly, and, above all, stay at home.
Elene had no problem with that. She immediately retired to her room and placed the album reverentially on the record player. She sat on the bed, listening with rapt attention to the foreign language with the familiar melodies, and getting up twice to smoke a cigarette out of the window. When the record had finished, she played it again, turned up the volume, and tried to guess at least a few of the English words. Her English was terrible, but she promised herself firmly that she would work on it, for this record, for her dissident aunt, for her revered anti-hero. She was sitting on her bed, utterly lost in the music, eyes closed, mouthing the beautiful-sounding foreign words, when there was a knock on her door. She had completely forgotten that Miqa was still in the house, and threw open the door in annoyance.
He stood before her, with that fearful, hangdog expression Elene found so irritating, and asked her what the music was; it was very loud, you see, he’d been listening to it and found it very beautiful. For a moment, she considered pulling his leg and telling him it was The Doors or Jimi Hendrix, because he didn’t have the first idea about the new music; he was always listening to Christine’s bombastic arias. But she dismissed the idea — he looked too pitiful, standing there in the doorway — and instead she did something she had never done before: she invited him into her room.
‘That’s my aunt singing. She’s a star in the West. She’s in all the big magazines and everybody knows her.’
‘I know who she is,’ said Miqa, in his unusually deep voice, listening again, attentively, to the chords of Kitty’s guitar.
‘And where would you know her from?’ she asked, in a demonstratively bored tone.
‘She used to go out with my father.’
Elena lost her composure. She jumped down abruptly from the window ledge where she had seated herself to smoke.
‘What are you saying? That’s rubbish!’
‘He doesn’t talk about it. But he still keeps a photo of her. And all the letters she wrote to him in Siberia, too.’
For a long moment Elene froze. She tried to calm the chaos in her head. How come she knew nothing about this? She suddenly felt so stupid, with her violent need to be different, her burning desire for protest and attention, her quest for points of reference. She had thought she knew something, that she had discovered it all by herself, that it was entirely hers, and yet again it turned out to be a half-truth, a coin of which she apparently knew only one side. It was enough to drive a person to despair!
This primitive loner was claiming to have better, more intimate knowledge of her idol; not only that, he was even telling her his father had been close to this woman, that they had been a couple!
What else was being kept secret from her? Was that why Miqa’s family was bound so tightly to her own that everyone felt responsible for this peculiar boy? It was all too much for her, and in an attempt to show him that she still had the upper hand, she flung herself down beside him on the bed, sprawled out, pulled in her knees, stretching and writhing like a cat in the sun. To her disappointment, he ignored her contortions and concentrated instead on listening to the music, so in sheer indignation at his obtuseness she grabbed his elbow. He jumped, and stared at her in bewilderment. They were strangers to each other, and that was clearer to them than ever before in this moment of sudden physical proximity.
‘You’re hurting me,’ he protested.
‘Don’t be a baby.’ She laughed, and increased the pressure on his arm.
‘Hey, Elene, what are you doing?’
Suddenly he was shouting. It amused her. Was he finally leaving his ivory tower of poetry and melancholy and deigning to come down to her unromantic level?
‘What, are you afraid of me?’
‘Elene!’
In that moment she jumped at him, like a monkey that has just discovered climbing, and threw him backwards onto the bed. Before he could say or do anything she had scrambled on top of him and was sitting on his groin. She started tickling him and pinching his belly. Feeling a mixture of arousal and pain, he tried to wriggle free of her arms and push her away, but she seemed to be enjoying herself too much to let him. She clung to him with all her might, even biting his neck. He could have pushed her back and off the bed with a single sweep of his hand, but something prevented him. He was trying to grasp what exactly he was experiencing, but it was all happening so quickly his thoughts couldn’t catch up.
Was he allowing this game to continue because, although she made a point of flaunting her vulgarity and lack of restraint, she was still a girl with slim ankles and sharp cheekbones, small ears and delicate wrists? Or was it because it gave him some kind of satisfaction?
‘Please, stop it!’ Miqa repeated, not believing his own voice. She went on squealing with delight, squeaking with amusement. Beads of sweat s
tood out on her forehead; her cheeks were red, and saliva had collected in the corners of her mouth.
This girl, upon whose birth the stars had smiled, who only needed to stretch out her coquettish little hand to have whatever she desired, couldn’t seem to leave him alone. The thought both scared and fascinated him. She was a stranger; she was ungrateful, she was spoilt, she was disrespectful, she was egocentric and moody, and she was the legitimate successor in this family. She, not him.
‘You don’t like girls, do you? Only old women …’
Elene was provoking him. He froze, stopped defending himself; she continued, undeterred: ‘You think you’re so superior, don’t you? With your French and your secretiveness and your poetry?’
‘Elene, stop it!’
He was livid. Perhaps it would do him good to have this fight with her at last, to wage war with her openly instead of hiding away so that they would tolerate him in this house, like a sick puppy. Perhaps he should tell her to her face for once what he thought of her; perhaps he should run the risk of her hurling her anger in his face? Or was it better to wait until she made a mistake, until she showed some weakness, then expose her? What should he do to put himself out of danger, so that he wouldn’t have to relinquish his place in this family?
But his body refused to cooperate, would not respond to his thoughts. His body was trapped by his fear. He pinched her thigh and made her cry out in pain; then he grabbed her shoulder and threw her onto the other side of the bed by the wall, taking care that her head didn’t hit the hard surface. She resisted, wrapping her slender legs in their white knee-socks sideways around his pelvis. Her brown school dress slid up, revealing her white cotton knickers.
‘Stop it … Elene, stop it, please!’
He was imploring her. His voice was suddenly so submissive again that her desire to provoke him was immeasurably increased. She propped herself up, leaned down towards him, alarmingly close, and looked him in the eyes. He could smell her, smell her light perspiration, the scent of her skin perfumed with lavender soap; her hair hung down in his face, tickling him. He tried to look away. She suddenly looked so grown-up, so determined. Why was she doing this? What was she trying to achieve? What was she feeling? Why did she always seem to be a few steps ahead of him?
When would it end — this sense of inferiority brought on by her full-throated laugh, her ostentatiously flaunted popularity, the way she giggled whenever he passed her in the school playground? When were the insults and the provocation going to end?
‘You’re ruining everything! You idiot!’
Now her euphoria was mixed with aggression. Her voice trembled, and he saw tears glittering in her eyes. This was a battle she was fighting with herself. He was ashamed to have witnessed it, and he realised that she would never forgive him for having seen her in her moment of weakness. But he didn’t want her to forgive him. The memory was sure to taste sweet. It would always be a trump card in his hand. Perhaps the best thing to do was to hold out, to wait until she disgraced herself in her family’s eyes? Perhaps it wasn’t really even a question of winning but of allowing her to win? Perhaps, in order to survive, it was more important to be able, at the right moment, to lose?
‘We’re just playing around, it’s fun, don’t you think it’s fun?’
She was screaming now, like a madwoman. He couldn’t tell from her voice whether she was about to roar with laughter or burst into tears.
And when — exhausted, sweaty, her hair tangled — she sat up over him and slowly started to lift the rumpled skirt of her dress, he knew that he had lost. But he didn’t know whether it was the right kind of losing.
She pulled her dress over her head and sat there, like a little child, in a vest with a pattern of yellow ducks and a pair of white cotton knickers. Miqa was overwhelmed: so many feelings washing over him, shifting from one moment to the next.
No girl had ever been this close to him. But he hadn’t wanted it like this; he had never dreamed of this. Not this arbitrariness, not this animality: it repelled him.
There was nothing tender or gentle about her movements, her expression. Nothing happy. It had nothing to do with him. And yet he couldn’t prevent himself from being disconcertingly aroused.
She took off her vest as well, squatting before him in a polka-dot bra that encompassed her small breasts. She began to unzip the trousers of his school uniform. He wondered where she got this self-assurance, how she could deal with this situation so clearly and decisively; he was shivering all over, incapable of moving, of making any kind of decision. If this is her revenge on me, thought Miqa, why is she hurting herself as well? Why is she humiliating herself?
In one swift movement she pulled down his trousers and stared at his bulging underpants.
‘Take them off!’ she ordered, not taking her eyes off his crotch. When he didn’t move, she tugged at the elasticated waistband of his underpants and reached inside. She touched him, tentatively, with mingled disgust and desire.
She lay down on top of him, clumsy, hesitant, her knickers the only barrier between them. He caught himself counting to ten: one, two, three … She wrapped her right hand around his penis, holding it like a candy-floss stick, something wooden and lifeless. He tried to wriggle onto his side, to get away from her, but felt unable to throw her off. He loathed himself, and he loathed her even more.
And suddenly, with imperceptible speed, a kind of darkness descended on him. He sat up, threw her on her back, and buried her beneath him, beneath his broad chest, pulled her knickers down with one hand — as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if he had done it a thousand times before — and pushed her legs apart.
He felt a numbing warmth spread through his body; he was somehow slipping below the surface.
He thought he had lost consciousness. Her faint cry reached him from afar, as if she weren’t close, so close he could smell her breath, taste her skin, bury his head in her hair.
Her face contorted in pain; she bit his shoulder. He was hurting her, but what a wonderful feeling it was. How quickly his fear had abated. How good it felt not to have to think about whether or not he was loved, whether or not he was good enough for this family. How liberating! How wonderful not to have to be good enough, not even to have to be good!
After he had spilled himself inside her, as if in an epileptic fit, she moaned quietly and looked him straight in the eye. He recognised something like fear in her gaze. And it gave him satisfaction. For a moment he considered reassuring her, perhaps even cautiously taking her in his arms, but she sat up, leaned against the wall, and stared blankly at the thin trickle of blood running down her thigh.
*
There was something wrong with Fred. But Kitty didn’t have time to deal with it now. She couldn’t think about Prague and Fred at the same time. The two worlds were irreconcilable. She had to pack her suitcase, her guitar — no, actually, the first thing she had to do was phone the cultural attaché of the Czechoslovak embassy — or, no, she had to make it clear to Amy that she absolutely did not want a chaperone for Prague — or …
Fred had not turned up the previous night, again. She had come round — most inconveniently — at midday, and had now been sitting in Kitty’s flat for over three hours with empty eyes and an inane expression, lolling on her sofa in nothing but her knickers and staring off into space. Too much drink, too much smoking, too much … She must have pumped herself full of some infernal mixture; there was something abhorrent about this half-dead stare. It frightened Kitty. She had seen that look before. Not often, but often enough. Kitty had seen traces of this lethargy in Fred when she came to stay at her flat after partying through the night. It was the way she’d looked when she returned from America: when was that, exactly? Kitty had to think about it — no, no, there was no time for that now, she would have to talk to Fred when she got back from Prague, not now, she absolutely mustn’t get on the plane without hav
ing had enough sleep.
And when the doorbell rang, Kitty was so lost in thought, so preoccupied with all the things she still had to sort out before she left, that she didn’t even press the buzzer on the intercom but simply flung open the door. Amy was holding a paper bag with fresh fruit in one hand and beautiful long-stemmed amaryllises in the other. Her blonde hair was damp from the light summer rain. She marched straight into the kitchen and set down her purchases, then started looking for a vase. Kitty was speechless. How often had she feared this very moment? She felt suddenly wretched in anticipation of the storm about to break over them all.
‘What’s the matter, aren’t you going to say hello? I need a vase. A pretty vase. I have some good news for you when you get back, but you know what I think about the socialist nonsense you’re inflicting on yourself by going on this trip. And Madame doesn’t want my company, either, although actually I wouldn’t mind taking a peep behind the Iron Curtain — I mean, how often does one get an opportunity like that? — but fine, never mind … So what I wanted to say was: when you’re back, there’s a chance we might even leave Britain and go on tour to —’
She broke off in mid-sentence. She was standing in the living room, holding her flowers, staring at Fred dozing half-naked on the sofa.
Kitty, leaning against the cool kitchen wall, could hear her heart pounding. And she heard something fall to the floor. The beautiful amaryllises, presumably. Then footsteps again. Fred must be so out of it she hadn’t even registered Amy’s presence.
Amy walked past her, went to the sink, and ran some tap water into a glass. Without looking at Kitty, she asked, ‘How long? How long has it been going on?’
Anything would be better than this composed voice, this control, this bitter chill.
‘I don’t know any more.’
Amy turned and looked at her. Kitty lowered her eyes. Suddenly, Amy burst into piercing laughter — the last thing Kitty had expected. She laughed and laughed, although Kitty didn’t know whether this hysterical laughter was born of hopelessness or self-protection.
The Eighth Life Page 55