Claudine

by Barbara Palmer

  At the bottom of her heart she’d always suspected love would pass her by. The happy dream of a loving husband had been spoiled by too many clients wanting escorts younger than their own daughters, serial wife cheaters and fiancés booking a final fling before the wedding. Once, a client had phoned his intended to discuss their upcoming nuptials. The man cooed to his fiancée while sitting on the hotel bed, his penis stiff, stroking her naked sex.

  Claudine dried her hair and tried to make it look presentable, but it was a far cry from Lillian’s efforts. Alicia had hung her dresses up in the closet. She riffled through them, unhappy with the choices. Exasperated, she chose a navy outfit. She picked up the earrings Andrei had given her long ago when they first began to work together, hesitated about whether to put them on, but concluded she should and felt comforted. She poured a third cup of coffee, grabbed her tablet and went to the small library to read.

  Her mind wandered. She kept thinking about the last poem she’d received from Hock. Something about it bothered her. Not the allusion to the man in the iron mask, although his foreknowledge of her itinerary was troubling enough. Nor was it the death threat. It was something she hadn’t paid enough heed to at the time. Suddenly, she had it. Lani, the boy she’d shared a cot with when she first came to the orphanage. Her adoptive mother hadn’t known Lani’s name because the boy died before Jewel visited the orphanage. Therefore she couldn’t have passed that information on to her neighbor, Charles Hock. Hock hadn’t written the second poem. Someone else had.

  A tap at the door distracted her. It opened before she could answer and Ferrer entered. “This seems to be your home away from home,” he joked. “Alicia tells me you’ve closeted yourself here most of the afternoon.”

  Claudine shut off her tablet and stood up, smoothing her dress with her hands.

  Ferrer frowned. “Navy doesn’t suit you, my dear. It’s too severe.

  “Shall I change, then?” she asked good-humoredly.

  “Of course not. Soon enough the dress will be off you anyway.” He winked and took her hand. “Let’s go for a walk. I’ve asked for an early dinner so we can make the most of our evening.”

  “That sounds lovely. I was thinking. Once you feel we’ve . . . finished for the evening, I’d like to return to the city. It’s been a marvelous treat staying here, but I have an important appointment early tomorrow morning.”

  “By all means. You’ve been good enough to grant me the extra day.”

  “I’ll just call my driver to make arrangements.”

  Ferrer took her arm. “No need for that, my dear. Victor will escort you back.”

  She left her cell phone and tablet on the table and accompanied him to the salon, out onto the terrace and along the path they’d taken last night. Instead of following the route to the pool, he veered onto another trail running through the grove of trees. They soon came upon a round stone building roofed with a dome. Graceful Corinthian pillars circled the building.

  “The original owner built this summerhouse,” Ferrer explained. “Legend has it he hosted incredible debaucheries and used this place as a kind of Dionysian retreat. It was a temple, open to the air. Later he added the stonework you can see between the pillars, leaving only that wooden door. A woman died during one his revelries and he never used it again. He blocked it up and abandoned it.”

  She shivered. The tall trees surrounding it ensured the building lay in perpetual shadow; she’d already sensed malevolence about the place. The path ended at the shoreline where the surf jetted plumes of spray. They talked amiably about not much in particular, then turned around and retraced their steps.

  “I saw a garden from the library,” she said. “I imagine it would be especially beautiful this late in the afternoon—may we walk through it?”

  “Certainly. I’m glad to show it off.”

  The garden was protected by a high stone wall. As they neared it, she heard the twittering of birds again. “The birds are attracted to the scent of the fruit, I imagine?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” Ferrer replied as he opened an iron gate fixed into the garden wall. They entered a small orchard. He let her through and the gate clanged shut after him. The fruit trees were gnarled and overgrown and gave off a strong, cloying odor.

  “What kind are they?” Yesterday she’d thought she’d seen orange and red fruit hanging from the branches and assumed they were varieties of sweet and sour cherries.

  “Mostly peaches and pears, some apples.”

  “It’s too early for those to be ripe—no?”

  “Most of them—yes.” Ferrer said.

  His answer puzzled her. What were the colors she saw, then? A ladder leaned against one of the trees farther off and she could make out Victor balanced upon it, a basket propped on one of the ladder steps, picking what must have been the early pears. White dots of bird excrement littered the sparse grassy ground. The lower leafy canopies seemed alive with fluttering birds. She craned her neck, trying to catch sight of them.

  “How beautiful,” she was on the point of saying when it dawned on her what she was looking at. Dozens of songbirds—robins, chickadees, goldfinches—hung upside down from the branches by their spindly legs, twisting, trembling and flapping their wings in a frenzy to get free.

  She understood now what Victor was dropping into his basket. Dead birds. After he gathered them, Victor would pluck and gut them, throwing the leavings—organs and entrails—onto the ground.

  She swung around to face Ferrer. “What in God’s name are you doing here? This is terrible!”

  “They feel nothing,” he said flatly. “Victor slits their throats quickly and efficiently.”

  Her breath stopped. Ferrer went on as if his words had no effect on her. “It’s an old Cypriot custom. From my homeland. We paint the tree branches with a lime-scented syrup. The bird’s legs stick to it. They can’t get away. It’s a perfect time to harvest them while they’re trying to fatten up over summer. They’re a delicacy in most Mediterranean countries. We make a tasty dish with them called Ambelopoulia.” He acknowledged the look of horror on her face. “You seemed to like it well enough.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Alicia served it to you for supper last night.”

  Her throat convulsed. “She said it was quail.”

  “Ah,” he chuckled. “Perhaps she thought you’d be sensitive about it. You see, my dear, if it had been quail—how is that any better? They’re dear little birds too. Frankly, I don’t see much difference.”

  “I’m going in. I don’t want to stay here any longer.”

  He took her arm again. This time, the pressure of his hand was a little too hard. “We can enter the house through here,” he said. “Dinner should be laid out by now.”

  Eating was the last thing she wanted to do. “I’m afraid I’m not very hungry.” She changed the subject. “You know, I thought you were American. You don’t have any trace of an accent.”

  “The very first thing I did when I came here was to work like hell to erase it. I hired a voice coach. I wanted to fit in.”

  When they reached the small library, a fire had been set in the grate, the terrace table brought inside and placed in front of the fire. Dinner and drinks were already laid out. Red wine, rare roast beef with fries and fresh garden vegetables. It would have been appetizing if her stomach wasn’t still lurching from the sight in the orchard. Her gaze fell upon the desk. “Where’s my tablet and cell phone?”

  “Quite safe and sound. Alicia removed them to your room before she left.”

  “She’s not here?” She felt a flicker of panic in her gut.

  “It’s her night off.”

  “Let’s sit down, then. My appetite is back.” The lie slipped easily from her lips; she wanted to get the evening over with as soon as possible. She tried to make small talk. “Tell me about Cyprus.”

  A hint of irritation showed in his features, which he quickly covered up. “Even though I spent my childhood ther
e, my memories of it are not happy ones. I grew up under the thumb of a tyrant, my father. If you don’t mind, I prefer not to spoil our evening by recalling those days.” He uncorked the wine and poured each of them a glass. “To my beauty,” he said, holding up his glass. She took a couple of hearty swallows to steady her nerves.

  “You look under the weather today, my girl. Alicia said you spent a restless night.”

  “Yes, I did,” she admitted. “Because of a nightmare. A recurring nightmare I’ve had since my childhood.”

  “Did that occur because of some dreadful experience when you were young? Some form of abuse? Sadly it’s common enough.”

  Her fingers worried the scar on her wrist. How strange that he would pinpoint the reason so accurately. Her vision seemed to grow foggy momentarily; she blinked to clear it.

  Ferrer spoke before she had a chance to reply. “Your reluctance to talk about it confirms my thoughts. I suspect abuse was involved. Most people would think such acts absolutely vile. That would be the predictable view. And yet perhaps you reached the wrong conclusion. It might help to come to terms with it if you saw it from a different perspective.”

  “What do you mean?”

  His face grew serious. “You’re a beautiful woman and no doubt were an adorable child. A little blond angel. Isn’t that why your adoptive mother chose you out of all those other dismal children?”

  “How did you . . .”

  “Perhaps the man involved loved you. You only see the harm because you don’t have the full picture. You have no idea what his feelings were.”

  “When did you find out about me? Who told you?”

  He smiled sympathetically. “The past is not so easily hidden my dear. What do you recall about that man?”

  She had difficulty forming her next words. “Only his terrible eyes.”

  “There may be an explanation for that. He wore a surgical mask. He had to. Tuberculosis was rife among the children.”

  The years fell away. She stared at his black eyes, and remembered. Her stomach convulsed in fear. The man who offered her pearl necklaces, who chatted about Newport history, whose fingers had probed her most private parts—was her torturer. Her gaze fell on his wineglass. He hadn’t tasted so much as a drop.

  Her chair tipped over as she lurched to her feet. She grabbed her glass by the stem. The remnants of her wine spattered the white tablecloth like drops of blood. She smashed the rim.

  Her reaction caught him by surprise. He’d only half risen when she came at him with the spear of glass. He threw his hands up and the shard sliced the fleshy base of his thumb. She jabbed again and cut into his upper arm. He swore and grabbed a napkin to staunch the welling blood.

  She ran for the door.

  She’d almost reached it when her legs turned to sponge and she fell heavily to the floor. Her heart felt tight; her lips numb. She tried to crawl on her hands and knees but only moved a few inches before she flopped on her stomach. Ferrer stood over her. She craned her neck; gaped at him. His figure seemed to enlarge and then blend slowly with all the other objects in the room into wavering strands of color. The color modified, became one flat screen of gray. He said something to her. She had no idea what the sounds meant.

  CHAPTER 30

  Maria felt as though she were being carried through water in slow motion. She thought she heard doors opening and shutting, had a sense of descending. She entered a sphere of bright white light. She wondered idly whether she’d died and this was the entrance to heaven.

  She was much closer to hell. Her arms and legs were jerked roughly away from her sides, her hands and feet tethered to some structure that kept her upright, with her toes barely touching the floor. It took all her strength to raise her head. She heard heavy footsteps receding; a door bang closed.

  Her stomach cramped as the drug wore off, scorching her throat with wine and bile. Hardened leather straps bit at her wrists and ankles as she tried to twist away from them. When her vision cleared and she could focus better, she saw a tiled floor and windowless walls. Another apparatus sat directly in her line of vision; a scaffold with diagonal braces called a Saint Augustine’s cross; chains and straps hung from it. Beside it an assortment of sexual aids, a variety of dildos, anal balls, harnesses and rings lay on a counter. Placed near a sink was a trolley with a groove running around its circumference, reminding her of the morgue tables she’d seen on TV. Piled in one corner on the counter were her tablet, bag and suitcase. Ferrer had removed all evidence to show she’d ever been upstairs.

  She tried to scream. It came out more like a croak. Her legs were so tightly bound she could only shift them a few inches, and she realized her dress was ripped along the side seam to the waist in order to allow her legs to be pried apart. From somewhere behind her she heard a key turning in the lock. She let her head droop again and feigned unconsciousness.

  “She’s still out.” Victor’s voice.

  “Shouldn’t be,” Ferrer replied. “Get the needle and stick it in her pubis; that will rouse her.”

  Maria opened her eyes. Ferrer stood before her naked and smiling. He wore only boots. A crude bandage was wrapped around his hand and upper arm.

  He dropped something metallic on the counter and walked closer to her. “Ah,” Ferrer said. “I presumed you were faking. You’re good at that sort of thing, aren’t you?”

  “Where am I?” Her speech was slurred a little from the drug.

  “Still in Newport. I must confess to a little lie. The original owner who built the summerhouse I showed you earlier did not cease his orgies. He took them underground. My establishment here is a kind of gentlemen’s club for men who seek clandestine pleasures and require complete discretion. They are connoisseurs of sexuality. Little is forbidden these days, but some practices still require secrecy. I make a fine bit of money off their proclivities. Not very much different from your source of income.”

  “I don’t hurt people.”

  “If there’s hurt, as you call it, only the lewd and immoral need fear it. Degraded women who have only themselves to blame.”

  “Like me, you mean?” She stared at him defiantly.

  “Yes, my dear, exactly like you.”

  “How did you find me after all these years?”

  “When I came to this country eighteen years ago, I tried to find you but I didn’t know your adoptive mother’s surname—your adoption records were sealed. At Siret you were listed simply as Maria, so neither did I know your birth name, Lantos. It was only when one of the members of our club befriended his next-door neighbor that I learned where you were and what had become of you.”

  Maria shivered with fear. Keep him talking and distracted, she thought. Try to buy some time. “You mean Charles Hock. He’s sitting in jail now for assault and first-degree murder.”

  Ferrer laughed. “Oh yes! The other Romanian prostitute. Her resemblance to you was remarkable. When he brought her here we had a delightful time. Hock is a man of awful appetites; but that just makes him easy to manipulate. He was quite willing to do anything I asked. All he demanded in return was a tiny taste of the infamous Claudine he’d heard so much about. How could I deny him that? Now the police have him in custody and I’m not even on their radar. It’s ended very well, I think.”

  “And what makes you believe he hasn’t told the police about your dungeon here? Tried to bargain with them? That’s the first thing I’d do.”

  Ferrer pulled up a high stool and dragged it toward her. He stopped about five feet away and perched on it. His flaccid penis drooped between his thighs. “He has two daughters, one at Cornell, the other at Berkeley. Apparently he does have some redeeming features, because he places a higher value on their lives than revealing anything about me or our club.”

  “And how did you escape having any redeeming features at all?”

  He chuckled. “My girl, the time for idle talk is over. You were kind enough to stay for an additional evening. It’s wasting away. Victor wants a sample before I send
him upstairs. You see, I’m not so far gone that I’m not willing to share.”

  Maria retched at the thought of Victor’s fat fingers touching her. She twisted her right wrist, made her hand as narrow as possible to see if she could wriggle out of the bindings. The bonds held firm.

  “There’s no point in squirming. It’s not attractive.” Ferrer looked past her and beckoned with a crooked finger.

  She could hear Victor approach her from behind: the slap of his bare feet on the tile, and the sound of his fat thighs rubbing together as he waddled toward her. He yanked her dress up to her shoulders. A cold blade brushed her hip. Victor used shears to cut through one leg of her panties, then yanked the tattered briefs down to her ankle. Ferrer’s eyes glittered at the sight.

  Victor’s fingers, plush like sausages, examined every inch of her, every hollow, every orifice. His tongue followed the trail of his fingers. She shuddered every time his fingers and mouth touched her skin.

  He moved around to her front. She spit in his face. Ferrer laughed at her feeble attempt to defend herself. Victor rubbed his face on her stomach to wipe the spit off. He sucked first one, then the other nipple. She tried to twist her body away, but that only excited him more. He raised his head and sucked the flesh underneath her jaw, leaving an angry red mark on her skin.

  He opened his mouth to flick his red tongue over her lips. Maria kept her lips firmly closed, and wrenched her head sideways. She bit the top of his ear. He shook his head like a wet dog and yelled. She clamped down even harder and tasted blood. He plowed his fist into her stomach. Her belly crumpled with the pain. Maria shrieked; it felt as though something had broken inside her.

  “That’s enough, Victor; you’ve had your taste. Give us some privacy now.”

  When the door closed behind Victor, Ferrer continued: “I’d have left you alone, you know, if only I’d discovered that my little angel had grown to become an honest woman. Married perhaps, with children to her credit. Not a whore.”

  “Get your disgusting carcass away from me!” She panted in an effort to recover her breath after the blow.