by Jo Mazelis
Stop thinking like this, she commanded herself, stop it.
By now part of her wanted to break into a run, but resisting this impulse, she walked more briskly until she came to the top of the steps. She looked back once; the lane was empty behind her, as she knew it would be. The steep steps leading down were also empty. They were dimly lit, but in the distance, partly obscured by a filigree of leaves and branches, was another streetlamp, promising a broader, more populated avenue.
She descended the steps quickly and cautiously. She had moved away from the first streetlamp whose light had been localised and meagre so she couldn’t see where she was going and the steps were uneven. Far off she heard a dog barking, suddenly and furiously.
Ten more paces and she was out of the alleyway onto the street. The road she found herself on was narrow and quiet. A number of vans and lorries, all of them with black and saffron-coloured liveries that bore the same inscrutable geometric logo, were parked in front of the concrete industrial building. Like wasps crawling over an abandoned picnic table.
There were no residential buildings that she could see. To the right, bounded on both sides by trees, the road disappeared in a sharp, uphill curve which she figured must lead back in the direction she had come. But the girl had instructed her to turn right. Marilyn pictured the girl smiling; so pleased with herself and so earnest, saying ‘droit’ and indicating with her slim elegant hand a right-hand turn. To the left the road swept away downhill towards a more brightly illuminated area where there must be more houses and perhaps shops and bars.
A number of cars passed, a van, one motorbike.
Marilyn moved to the edge of the pavement considering her choices. She should go right following the girl’s directions. She had no reason to doubt the girl and yet it just didn’t seem to make sense.
Some people had difficulty with left and right, even people with high intelligence who are able to deal with the most complicated of facts, theories, debates, science. A lecturer who had taught her years ago could effortlessly quote entire poems, everything from Spenser’s The Faerie Queen to Eliot to Seamus Heaney and Billy Collins; his knowledge was frightening, encyclopedic, and yet he mixed up left and right. He drew attention to his muddle-headedness, even telling the class how that morning he was late because he had lost his car keys, had searched high and low, then eventually found them in his microwave oven. So there was a chance, a very small chance, that the girl had made a mistake.
As Marilyn pondered her dilemma, (looking from left to right and slowly coming to the conclusion that she should go left, then at the first sign of a shop or someone on foot, she would ask for directions again) she noticed that directly opposite was another lane which, except for the interruption of the road, seemed to lead on from the lane she had emerged from. Inside the entrance to the second alleyway was an old fashioned street lamp with a curled neck like a shepherd’s crook. It gave the scene an aspect of enchantment. Marilyn crossed the road and looked down this new lane. It was much shorter than the other, with another set of steps. She could see how in the young girl’s mind the two lanes separated by a narrow road merged into one. You might be so used to taking this route, focusing on your destination, moving on automatic pilot that you would no longer think about or notice the road dividing it, and would forget to mention it to a stranger.
Less than twenty yards down the second lane was another crook-necked street lamp the same as the first, though its light seemed whiter and brighter, the hedges and shrubs beneath it were as green and glossy as if it were daylight.
She had hesitated long enough, she decided, and without another thought, Marilyn set off down the second alleyway. She was aware once more of the different effect this place had on sound, bordered as it was on two sides by high walls. Her breathing once more seemed amplified, and she heard, almost against her will, her barely perceptible footsteps and the swish of her clothes.
She remembered one of the lines she’d added to her poem, just before she left the house, ‘But I am only paper, mother.’ Paper mother – no comma and the meaning changed.
She stepped on something that snapped loudly underfoot.
Damn it, she would remember this, take this orchestra of sound and emotion and light and shade and remake it anew on a later date. Make it a poem.
She was only ten yards from the end of the lane with its stark, almost dazzling blaze of white light when a man suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere.
He had obviously been walking along the road which the lane led onto and had turned quickly and confidently up the alley. A tall, thin man (she had no doubt it was a man) dressed in a short black jacket such as a workman would wear.
Marilyn gasped. An audible sharp intake of breath speaking clearly of her fright, which caused the man to become as suddenly aware of her as she had been of him. The light was now behind him, but she saw recognition register in him, something in the forward slouch of his shoulders changed, stiffened, his head tilted upwards. She could not see his face, but knew instinctively that he saw her clearly and had all the advantage in that.
Self-consciously looking beyond him to the end of the lane, Marilyn continued to walk briskly forward, just as he continued towards her.
To pass a stranger, even a stranger in a narrow lane at night, all one had to do, all one was meant to do was to act as if they did not exist. How many thousands of individuals do we pass day by day, our paths like threads, twisting and turning, moving one step to the left or right to negotiate those in our path and hardly ever (unlike cars) colliding. Barely seeing or recognising one another. Deliberately keeping one’s gaze away, avoiding eye contact.
The lane was narrow, but there was easily enough room for Marilyn and the man to slip past one another.
She walked on. Not looking, not looking. Or rather only looking towards the distant space that was her destination; the end of the lane beyond the blaze of light. Everything else was absorbed only through her peripheral vision. The figure of a man dressed in a black jacket. A jacket at first glance, like a squarely cut workman’s coat, broad-shouldered, thigh-length, then she noticed that it wasn’t black, but navy blue, double-breasted, stylishly tailored.
The main thing was not to look at his face. To look in a man’s face; to meet his eyes was to suggest engagement, it was an invitation. The woman must set her face so that no emotions were betrayed. Do not smile. Do not show fear. The face must be a detached stoical mask. Even if she is certain she is being scrutinised, gazed at boldly.
All of this, the flood of thought in the seconds between seeing the man and plunging on forward down the lane which is bounded on both sides by high walls and is well lit.
Eyes fixed on the distance, two legs scissoring sharply, her breathing once again becoming rapid and shallow.
All of it happening so fast.
Three of her strides and two of his (he is faster, his legs longer) and she should be past him.
There is a sort of rush of wind, not wind but the velocity of two objects going in opposite directions, each pressing, pushing, agitating the air.
Or not wind but the rustle of his clothes, her clothes. Or her breath, loud suddenly, magnified by effort, by fear.
Or his breath. His heavy breath. Asthmatic. Laboured breath. The lungs pulling hard in preparation for action. His ribs opening like wings.
A rush then, of something, a near object in a narrow space, an object far larger than her. Her eyes off somewhere, but noticing that the coat is a pea jacket. Yes, that is the name for this sort of garment.
And then she is knocked sideways.
The sickening body-jarring thud of his shoulder striking hers. The massive force of it – a shock. She staggers – she was mid-stride, half off-balance anyway and so her left ankle bends, her left shoulder hits the wall with as much force as her right received when the man barged into her. The same force, but this one sharper, against a solid object: a crack, the wind knocked out of her with a word half-formed on her tongue. The word an excl
amation, oh!
What was she trying to say? Ow? Or ouch? But it’s not really one of those silly words, it’s just a sound.
Her knees buckle and she goes down, her body twisting and folding, arms raised to catch at something, anything to stop herself. Her left hip strikes the stone path, bearing all of her weight, carrying all the velocity of her movement, all the suck of gravity, and her head rolls back and hits the wall. The explosion of pain is familiar, there is a sharp, cracking, brittle quality to it.
Automatically, she scrambles to right herself, to get back on her feet and continue on down the lane to the destination she has been so focused on. But she is a twist of awkward, boneless weight, stars sparkling before her eyes as if to prove that those cartoons in her childhood were not merely imaginative in their visual tropes and clichés.
She scrambles inelegantly, the brick wall offers no purchase and she feels heavy and weak.
For a second or two she has forgotten the man, forgotten how this happened. Or perhaps she assumed, (as much as a thought process as complicated as assuming: assessing, analyzing, guessing, assimilating knowledge of past, present, future and strategising can be said to happen in such circumstances) that he, like a machine, a steam engine, a rolling rock, a falling boulder, a charging bear, a stampeding horse has continued on his way barely noticing the small obstacle now sprawling in his wake.
Failing to right herself, she half-twists around, pushes herself forward so she’s on her hands and knees, like a dog. She is self-consciously aware of this humiliating pose, of how stupid she must look. Then she draws one leg up, so her foot is now flat on the ground, and her pose is like that of a runner on the block and her head is beginning to clear.
She sees a disembodied foot out of the corner of her eye. A foot in a white trainer with a trim consisting of several narrow stripes in navy. A leg too, unsurprisingly. Dark denim trousers, the dye thick and rich, midnight blue, brand new, unwashed as yet.
She begins to push, to heave herself upright and when she is halfway there (when she no longer needs help) a hand is wrapped around her upper arm, another around her elbow and she is carried upward a little faster and more violently than she might have expected. She sways giddily, lurches forward towards him.
‘Oop la!’ he says in a sing songy way.
Such kindness.
‘Oh!’ she says. ‘Oh.’ The poet with only one vowel sound in her vocabulary to mark this moment.
He is still holding her arm with both hands.
‘Oh,’ she says again and registers the signals of pain coming from various parts of her body; her ankle, her hip, both shoulders, her head.
‘Oh.’
He is bending towards her, leaning in, adopting an attitude of concern.
She senses something wet and warm on her forehead, a trickle, a tickle of movement across the skin above her eye. She reaches up with her free hand to touch the place. Her hand which is trembling now and thus clumsy, jerks tentatively at the place where she feels the wet seep. The pads of her fingers touch something warm and sticky. She tastes iron on her tongue. Or perhaps she smells it, smells blood and fear and shock.
Her hand fidgets away from her head, and she holds it in front of her face so that she might see the blood-dipped fingertips.
He is standing too close.
He lets go of her elbow, takes hold of her upraised wrist and lowers it from her sight.
‘Non, non, non, non,’ he instructs her in a breathy whisper.
She looks at him now. His face looming over hers, too near, almost out of focus. A long face, the light striking one side of it, deep eye sockets. His breath hot and moist on her face, mint toothpaste that almost smells cold. Also perfume smells, a sharp grapefruity cologne. Flecks of dry skin in his eyebrows.
‘Non, non, non,’ he shakes his head, clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
Slowly he lets go of her wrist (though his other hand still encircles her upper arm, the grip, firm, unrelenting) and brings his hand up to her head.
‘Non, non, non, non.’ He draws his fingers over her face, brushing her hair away, first from the wound, then in a more general way, lifting a single stray hair and replacing it. All the time staring intently as if he is inspecting her. As if he were a doctor, or more disturbingly, a hairdresser or perhaps a sculptor making her anew, improving her to his standards. Then he began stroking her hair, smoothing it in place, leaning in closer, closer.
She did not like the repetitive pressure of his fingers on her head, the side of her face. She suddenly realised it was not comfort, it was nothing to do with her injury, with tending the wound, it was just what he wanted to do.
She was recovering by degrees, absorbing more fully what had happened, what was happening, what might happen.
And all the time he was stroking, stroking her hair.
His ‘non, non, non’ had mutated into rhythmic murmuring, ‘hmm, mm, mm.’
Enough, she thought and jerked her head away from the relentless stroking. ‘I’m…’ she managed to say, but the movement of her head had been too sudden, too fierce, and she lurched unsteadily, giddy, her head swimming in a galaxy of stars again.
‘Sit,’ he said in English, his voice becoming more assertive suddenly, as he forced her down, pulling on one arm, pushing down on her shoulder until she was in a squatting position with her back against the wall.
‘No, I don’t want to sit. I need…’
‘Anglais?’ he had squatted as he forced her down, so that he was now resting on his haunches. Both of his hands remained in place, the one gripping her arm, the other pushing her shoulder back and down.
‘Just let me…’ She began the frantic scrambling with her legs again. Useless with him holding her in place, his greater height and strength all giving him the advantage.
‘Non!’ he said sternly and in one quick movement he had pushed her down sideways, so that she was lying on the path against the wall. His knee and lower leg were pressed across her thighs, his left arm was pinning her right arm down and with the same hand he held her other wrist. She struggled in earnest now, grunting a low guttural, ‘No.’
With his free hand he pointed at her face, a warning. His nails, she saw, were bitten and ragged, the skin around the fleshy pads raw and blood-spotted.
‘Non!’ he growled.
She was almost completely mute. When does the screaming begin? When?
First comes appeasement.
‘Sorry,’ she said, then blinked slowly, swallowed. Mouth dry, heart thumping. ‘Sorry.’
This seems to please him, he begins to brush stray hairs from her face again.
She looks at him, then looks away, looks at him again
His eyes move over her face, from her mouth to her eyes, to her neck to her forehead.
She tries to tune him out. To tune herself out. To remove herself mentally from this place. But there is no place she can send herself to. No past, no future. Only this.
He strokes her hair, her hair, her hair. The same place obsessively, so that it almost hurts.
Stop it, a voice locked inside her head says, stop it, stop it!
‘Please,’ she says in a whisper.
He strokes her face, then brings his hand down so that it is lightly resting on her throat, the thumb under her jaw, the heel of his hand on her Adam’s apple, his fingers curling towards the back of her neck. She has a very little neck, like … who was it? Was it Anne Boleyn or Lady Jane Gray who mentioned this fact helpfully to her executioner? Marilyn knows this because of the man she was seeing before she began dating Scott; he had playfully measured her neck with his hands and mentioned the murdered queen, then, ever the braggart, had quoted a poem he had written on the subject.
This was different. She felt the threat of this stranger’s hand, even though his touch was gentle. To scream now would cause the hand to tighten.
She thought of the baby.
If she died now, then so would the baby.
Tears sprang to
her eyes. Her mouth distorted, she whimpered, not meaning to.
The hand around her throat, the fingers and thumb moving slightly were either attempting something like a caress, or they were testing her neck, measuring the job in hand (literally) or else it was she herself who was being tested in order to discover the measure of her willingness to submit.
The tears spilled from her eyes, burned as if they were caustic, were made of some unknown chemical compound that might act as a primitive animal defence against attack, a bee sting, a snake bite, the hot stink of a skunk, the black, veil-like release of squid ink in water.
He was making those ‘mm, mm, mm’ sounds again, breathing deeply as if immensely satisfied by this pleasurable moment.
It was ridiculous to find herself lying down on a public path with this man holding her down, pinning her arms and legs as he casually played his fingers over her neck, while she did not scream or fight, but merely succumbed to his power.
She blinked and tried to focus beyond him; the street lamp seen through tear-blurred vision gave off long rays of light like a pale yellow star. Above it the mesh of leaves and branches revealed glimpses of an indigo sky and a waning moon.
What did he want?
If she knew she could provide it, pretend it.
Sex? Was that it?
Power?
Love?
She could only acquiesce. Should she make those same mewling ‘mm, mm’ noises he was making, so that he would think they were in accord; that she chose to lie here on this filthy ground, that this was something she wanted?
She saw now that he must have barrelled into her deliberately, knocking her sideways into the wall with tremendous force, and understood that her confusion in the first minutes after (because it seemed as if what had happened was accidental and he was helping her) had stopped her from fighting, running, screaming.