And now the roads and houses were starting to become decidedly thinner as they left Chiswick and started to cross Hounslow Heath. Below she could see scrubland, sandy, patched with gorse and young birch and cut through by the odd stream. There were a few isolated cottages and an inn not far from a dilapidated mill. Here and there were market gardens, neat, cultivated properties with working sheds and small stables. Two ponies panicked at the sight of the approaching balloon and galloped frantically around their paddock.
Once or twice amid Fred’s giant thrustings, the Duchess asked herself if he might not enjoy penetrating her in the more conventional manner. The “tradesman’s entrance”, however, had been his first objective, and he was not, she concluded, a man to be deflected from what he had so dramatically set mind and body to achieve.
Over the pond at Hounslow village Fred said, “You’re a tight girl, Carrie.”
“Serve you right, you bugger,” said the Duchess. “That’s my tradesman’s entrance. You can’t expect politeness at the back door.”
“Give me a chance,” he said.
“Nobody ever had a better one, buggering a lady of quality in a balloon. What more could you wish for?”
Fred finally reached an explosive climax just as they sailed over Feltham Station. The Duchess had grown impressed by his stout endurance. He’d begun to roger her at Chiswick, a long, long twenty minutes before. Fred came with great thrusts and hoarse cries. He shouted out his pleasure. “Oh, yes, Carrie, oh yes...”
“Did you enjoy that?”
There was a mixture of triumph and relief in her voice. It was more or less a rhetorical question, but she took a woman’s pride in the extraordinary allure that her buttocks held for him and the comfort of knowing he was effectively “finished”.
She answered for him.
“I felt you did. I’m glad you did.”
In truth, she was very fond of Fred.
Moreover, she was really taking quite a shine to ballooning.
FATIMA
Adnan Mahmutović
Adnan Mahmutović became a refugee of war in 1993 and ended up in Sweden. He worked for a decade with people with brain damage, while studying English and philosophy. He has a Ph.D. in English literature and an MFA in creative writing, and is currently a lecturer and writer-in-residence at the Department of English, Stockholm University. His stories deal with contemporary European history, and the issues of identity and home for Bosnian refugees.
It’s football time in Munich. Every autumn the same thing. Packs of football fans and hooligans rush by me and disappear in local bars, howling, “Bayern, Bayern.” I don’t know if the team won or lost. They always sound the same to me, keyed up for victory or disappointed after a lost game. I can’t locate where the crowd is coming from. The arena’s not that close to this part of the city. I feel nuts. Every face in the crowd is like one of my customers, people I’ve pleasured for ten years now.
The closest hooligan-free bar sucks me in and even though I never drink booze, I feel like getting drunk. I’ve been to this bar before with a couple of girls. They call it Drei Drei Drei (Three, Three, Three). It has three fat but clean bartenders, and you have to order at least three Seidels of beer before they crack a smile. Everything costs three times as much as in any other decent place. They say the beer’s great, but all I’ve ever had is Schweppes, bitter soda.
The place is small and vibrating with deep male voices. The owners have provided only a small TV, yet every man gazes at the screen. The only man who isn’t broken and bald moves a little to the left to make an opening for me at the bar. He sticks out from the usual crowd. His skin is black, he wears a light grey suit and smells like Aqua de Gio, the fresh Armani fragrance, although the man’s sweat gives it an extra twist. His fist-long beard has beautifully hanging curls. His hair is bushy, yet his arms seem shaven. I edge closer. He says to the bartender, “Another one.” The double-chinned man puts a glass of bright red fluid in front of me.
“I call it the Red Sea,” the black man says and takes a long slow sip, hardly changing the level in the glass. I can tell he is at least forty. There are white hairs in his beard and wrinkles on his forehead and around his mouth. He must have been smiling a lot in his life.
“I guess you like to be called Moses.”
“Joyce goes just fine.”
“May I call you James?”
“Joyce O’Hara.”
“All right then Joyce,” I switch to English and his eyes brighten. “A bloody Irish, ha. I thought your German was funny.” At that moment I don’t feel like turning down a drink, so I take a sip and suddenly feel as if I am in another world. It’s cranberry juice. I try to keep my face straight, and ask, “You’re having your period or what?”
He smiles. He has a small slot between his big front teeth, like my first lover Aziz. I shudder at the thought of him but shake it off, like a dog shakes off water. I breathe deep to relax. I figure Joyce is lying about his name, but I like the spiel. If he wants for a moment to be someone else, that’s fine, I’m used to it. I say, “Irish, I like that. Been here a while, mate?”
“Couple of years. I’m with Bayern.”
“Say no more. Playing?”
He reacts to the irony by slightly biting his lip, and then he says, “Coaching.”
“Even worse. So the football-god brought you here?”
“Not really. It was love. A woman.”
“Ha, you must be an awful coach.”
“You can say that again. Or not really, I mean Bayern is a big team after all. But then you’re right, marriage and football zeal, it’s tough, like having two mistresses you can’t live without. Anyway, my wife split the other year and the rest is, well you’ve heard this story before, right?” He turns back to face the bartender who’s wiping clean a big, ceramic Seidel and sneering at him. He mutters, “I’m boring you” and tips his head forward.
I sit beside him and pull my glass close to my cleavage. I can tell he has caught the move with the corner of his eye and is fighting not to stare. He starts to fidget with a coin. I say, “On the contrary, a pitch-black Irishman sipping at a glass of cranberry juice, in Germany of all places. I can swallow that, but to pose as the Bayern coach, now that’s sacrilegious. I live here, dammit. The man who leads the Reds to victory nowadays is called Ottmar Hitzfeld, and he looks like Swiss cheese.”
He laughs. It’s as if he wanted to test me with the bizarre picture of himself. I ask, “So really, where are you from?”
“Ireland. Honest to God. I live there. I’m originally Nigerian but I’ve lived half my life with the Irish. My mother married one back in the eighties.”
“So you weren’t totally bullshitting me?”
“No. But my name’s not Joyce, it’s Jonah.”
“What brings you to Munich, Jonah?”
“I’m here to talk to some journalists and writers about a project we’re starting.”
“No kidding, you a writer?”
“Goodness, no. I’m just a supporter of this organization called the PEN. Ever heard of it?”
I wave my head.
“It’s like an international support group for writers under persecution by their governments. We fight for freedom of speech and press, you know, basically help people out. The president is a Nigerian author and that’s how I got into it. It’s somewhat personal for me, but I’m really just a small businessman. I sell organic food in the UK.”
“So you’re the good guy, helping people out even when you don’t get filthy rich. Reminds me of my... ah never mind.”
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re very original. You stick out, like in this bar.”
He turns around and takes a look at the other guests. There is only one bloke in the steamy atmosphere who might be a Turk, but he has bleached his hair. Jonah says, “I never thought of myself as original. You seem to care for that.”
“Not really, but it can come in handy at times. A good story’s what everyone wants.
A year ago, a German immigration judge declined a Somali woman’s stay permit, because her story was full of clichés.”
“You’re kidding? What did she say?”
“Lots of murder, someone burnt down her house, then rape, you know, the usual bitter clichés of war. The damn judge said he’d heard that story before.”
“That’s horrible. How do you know all this? Are you a lawyer or something?”
I laugh so much it feels as if my lips are cracking. “Not really. Though I have a special bond to law and law-people.” I haven’t laughed like this in years. I feel vulnerable, open, but also great. I wouldn’t mind laughing more. My God, have I come so far in my life I can say “Once upon a time I laughed?”
“This woman, she’s a hooker now, just four blocks from here, in the so-called crimson belt of the city.”
“Really, where’s that?”
“Ah, you’re interested already. It’s an imaginary ring that cuts through the city, neither the centre nor suburbia. That’s where the big brothels are, stuff like that.”
Jonah drops the coin but doesn’t bend down to get it. He blushes. “Are you...?”
I wipe the sweat breaking from my eyebrow thinking: Here we go again, you can’t hide, you’re a 101 prostitute. It’s in your blood now, you’re a stereotype now, like computer geeks, cops, mad scientists, or fair ladies. I say, “I have to make a phone call.” The bartender directs me with his hitching thumb. I go there and pretend I’m talking to someone for ten minutes.
Back at the bar I grab my glass, which the Nigerian has moved closer to his, and without giving it much thought, drink it all. I laugh again. “Cranberry juice, I hear that’s good for bladder infection.”
He laughs and I can see his big molars. I love that. He drinks up his juice and says, “So what’s your story? You can start with a name. A false one will do.”
I never use a false name. I want there to be a little piece of me in every pretending. I say crisply, “Fatima.”
His eyes bulge and both his hands glide down to his knees.
“I’d never guess you’re Middle Eastern.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t blow you up.”
“I’d take you for a regular German girl.”
“Bosnian.”
“Ha, I see. You got me there. Bosnia, you say? I imagined you’d be more like, I don’t know, the Turks.”
I say nothing. He goes on, “I heard Germany’s sending you all back.”
“I guess I had an original story to give and got to stay.”
He looks like a kid staring at sweets behind a thick window.
“Which is?”
“Lost love,” I say, trying to laugh at myself but failing. I am glad that at least he can laugh at me. “I’m like my father. He left his whole family in Western Bosnia to move in with Mum in this mountain town. He rebelled against the old tradition that a man should stay at home and bring a wife into it. Good that Mum was rich.”
He gives me that say-no-more-I-know-what-you-mean look.
I hiss, “Hey, he wasn’t like that. He loved her.”
“I’m sure.”
“Screw that tone!”
He bends his head down then looks up again with puppy eyes and a sad expression. I bite my thumbnail a little then take hold of the empty glass just to remove the finger from my mouth. I laugh.
“What is it?”
“It’s just so funny. I can almost see Mum right now, the way she moved like old Bosnian noble people do, flaunting all the exclusive-edition books they bought for me. They put a lot into my education. I guess I’d be something of a disappointment to them now.”
Jonah says nothing for a while then, “I assume your parents are dead. I’m sorry.”
I feel off guard. Why am I talking about my parents?
“You loved them a lot, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but then, I don’t know, really. My father was always working. I never got to know him properly, and Mum, I didn’t like the way she was living for the moment, everybody gathered, safe and preened, no matter what. She was no visionary. Well yes, I did love them a lot. I’ve just put all that behind me.”
Jonah snaps his fingers at the sulky bartender and gets another round of juice. I take a sip and shudder. When I first saw Jonah, I thought to take him home with me, but now that he has dug up some old memories of mine, I don’t know. I don’t really feel like having ordinary sex, none of that cosy making love. I don’t feel like extraordinary sex either. I don’t feel like anything but walking by the Isar and feeding the swans.
Jonah is silent as a fish. I scan him from top to toe and drink up the bitter beverage. I kiss my fingertips and touch the rim of his glass, saying, “Well, I doubt you can afford anything else. Don’t get yourself drowned.” I leave the bar, wondering if he’s watching me as I exit the building.
I flow up the street with the river of people who are crying, “Bayern. Bayern.”
Later in the evening, I sit on the toilet, muttering, “That damn cranberry juice.” I think I might have some slight infection after all. Or perhaps I am just nervous. I’ve had this problem for years now. It’s not an easy thing to deal with in my profession. Every day’s different. Every task demands the best performance. I try not to lie down and simply let myself be screwed in a passive way. That doesn’t make a man come back. Sometimes I eat a lot of chocolate and get constipation. Ah, no one wants to hear such things.
The next morning, to cap it all, I have this unexplained butterflies-in-the-belly feeling and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. Is my body trying to tell me I have a crush on the Nigerian already? Why did I get away from him so quickly, and with that kind of remark? Because I feared he’d wake up the next morning and toss me some money? Have I started to shun men I like?
Butterflies keep multiplying so I decide to put myself and my destiny to a test. In the evening, I will go to the same Drei Drei Drei bar, hoping to find the Nigerian fighter for the maladjusted writers. The odds are against me, no doubt, but then maybe I made a great impression. If he isn’t there, then the fates decided that way, but if he is, then I’ll thank God and start thinking about how to pursue this familiar but uncanny feeling for a man.
I try on every dress I own, every pair of stockings and shoes. I decide which make-up and eau de toilette go with which garments. In the end I shove everything back into my wardrobe and put on black trousers, a purple jumper that Mary knitted for me as thanks for the rich customer I gave her, and finally, a long winter jacket I got from Red Cross back in Bosnia, which I kept as a memento.
I paint my face quite sloppily and rush out. The air is so cold I can hardly open my eyes. Instead, I fumble my way to the S-Bahn stop. It takes almost an hour to get downtown. There’s an accident close to the city centre. The streetcar stops at one point, close to the river Isar. I take this as a sign. So, before going to the bar, I walk down to the Isar to wash off my make-up. There is a crust of ice over the surface close to the banks. In the middle, the stream is still free. A frozen swan floats by.
The bar door is like a stone slab. My frozen arm feels like shattering as I both push and pull because the door won’t open either way. I pant and then push hard. It opens and my eyes become misty, as Max’s glasses do when he enters my warm room on a cold day.
I squint. Jonah’s not there, of course. I almost wave my hand at the sky thinking, “You just don’t give me a break, do you?” I feel an instant remorse for my thoughts, as some sense of spirituality tells me I can’t hurry the Boss in what he feels is right for me. I got this from mekteb, an extra-curricular religious education I went to on weekends for five years. I liked going there with other girls and boys, before imam Atif became more and more ill. My parents didn’t force me. They weren’t particularly religious. Mum only followed other women to the mosque during Ramadan. Father’s religious practice boiled down to occasionally crying out, “My God”, “Inshallah”, and “Goddamn”, like the bulk of the new Communists, out of old habit. Only m
y parents never made good Communists either.
I survey the bar once again to make sure Jonah isn’t inside, then go for the door.
“Fatima?” My name rings nicely with that strange accent. I want everything around me to freeze for a moment, so I can take a couple more cold breaths, but no such luck, I have to turn round and face him. Water is dripping from his fingers and he dries them against his baggy trousers. He wears a white jumper, like golfers wear. I read from his rapidly opening and closing lids that he’s both surprised to see me and that he’s been here for a while, perhaps since I first left him, hoping I’d come back. The body never lies. He pulls his shoulders back and up but they are still heavy with desire. Few of us can control our bodies to the extent that they don’t betray our secret feelings, and his whole body says he’s been waiting. I cannot tell for how long. Obviously, he hasn’t been drinking anything strong, yet his hands tremble and his lips have become thinner and paler. Then the most important sign, he is ready to jump at my wink.
I walk over to Jonah, determined not to ponder on serendipity, coincidence, or fate. I fear that any answers, true or false, would ruin everything. I just let everything be as it is for the moment. I take his extra-large hand into my extra-small one, lead him out into the traffic buzz, kiss him right there for everyone to see, and then take him home. I lead him in without turning on the lights. That way he won’t get the sense of the place.
At first, I fuck the Nigerian fast; just to break the already thawing ice and then I let him fall asleep. I put on a negligee and fall asleep myself. My dreams set me on fire and I wake ready to conquer my lover, this time thoroughly. I suck him dry of all his riches, like a real empress. Only, I have no country to back me up, no imperial power behind me.
His sighs rustle like autumn leaves. His black skin is hairless and his palms gentle. I contract. He twitches and moans. I’m wet inside and out. I don’t call his name. I sit on him, as gently as my warm silhouette on the wall opposite the window, lighted by crescent moons. He twitches, one, two, three, times, and his head falls back on the pillow. I wait until he goes limp and then I pull myself up from the slack penis. I leave it wet and drenched in my smell. A trickle of blood runs down my thigh. It is lukewarm and quick, but it stops just above my knee and curdles. I don’t feel pain.
Desire Page 28