My negligee vibrates in the draught when I go out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. I take a notebook and a pencil. It’s so dark I can’t tell the pages from the cool air. It doesn’t matter. I know they are blank. Then, as if the pen forces me, I write down a name, Aziz. The written name forces him to life again, where he belongs in a story of me. I press the tip against the paper. It sinks deep and sticks in this self-made hole. The ink seeps out and wets the paper. I walk into the loo, throw the pen into the toilet, but then take it out immediately and put it in between the blank sheets. The paper sucks it dry. I open the book to a new page and write my name on a dry blotch, where I hope it lies next to his. I go back to the kitchen and put it in the large tea jar I received from a Japanese customer a few years ago.
I go back to Jonah, turn the paper lamp on and pull the blanket off him. With hungry eyes, I divide him into parts, like some strange butcher deciding which bits and pieces are good for which dish. Some bits and pieces tingle the tip of the tongue, some are best when they fill the whole mouth, some when they only touch the back of the tongue or the hard cavity.
I touch his circumcised penis. His testicles are unusually small, for a big bloke like that. An old fear drums in my head. I lift up his balls, check and double-check everything. It’s my old anxiety kicking in. Even though so many years have passed since Aziz and I separated, whenever I unbutton someone’s trousers, my hands shake and I make it a holy ritual, for fear to discover someone else with the same secret. I slow everything down: slowly touching, slowly feeling, slowly smelling, and slowly listening to the person’s breathing. Judge Max said this fascinated him about me, the constant anxiety. Most girls know what they have to do and do it mechanically, to get it over and done with. I still fear what’s going to happen. Every single time the fear takes over and it shows, even when I have control in my hands. That excites people.
There’s nothing wrong with Jonah. I look at his beardy face. He looks like a bust of Spartan king Leonidas that I saw in the office of Professor Stier a year ago. It was made of dirty white plaster. The professor made a bed of books on the carpeted floor, tied me to the huge bust of Leonidas and took me from behind. I stared at the engraved name, as Professor Stier kept impersonating a lion.
I crawl back next to my lover, take his hand, and slip it between my legs. He wakes up. He won’t let me suck him. Instead, he wants to please only me now. He kisses me from top to toe, licking me exhausted. Then, when I’m slowly vibrating like the heavy sound that lingers both inside and outside the brass shell of a tube, when I can no longer open my eyes for fear he’ll disappear, he enters me and I climax, one two... then relax.
Hoping that thought can stream from my head to his, I think, “Marry me Jonah. Make me legitimate in the eyes of the people, any people. Take me away from here.” I kind of regret thinking the last part. I love Munich, but I once loved Aziz and still I left him.
A couple of nights later, I wave to my Nigerian Leonidas as he drags his feet up the stairs of a green plane to Ireland. In my other hand, I clutch his business card with a number jotted on the back. The secret number. I gave him a number too.
He calls back the following morning, before even Munich traffic has woken up. I try to make myself talk because I’m absolutely stunned. He actually called back. Like my first date, I have nothing to say for fear he will find me boring, but I can’t hold his hand and glance at him either. I sit in silence. The clock’s tick-tock is like a bell.
“Fatima.”
God, I love the way my name breaks in that Irish accent.
“Jonah.”
“I think I’m going to apply for the Bayern coach position.”
I laugh. “I can be your secretary then.”
“You tease. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
I want to say the same but keep gulping saliva.
“Can you come to Ireland?”
Damn, now I definitely don’t know what to say. Whatever he may have guessed about me it’s about to stop being guesswork and turn into good hard facts.
“Fatima, are you still there?”
Oh, I’m still here, but I wish I were on the plane to Dublin. “Right here. You see... oh my God. All right.” I say, the way I used to deliver my oral exams back in school. “I’m an illegal immigrant Jonah. Unless you can find some tough sailor with an old rusty boat to ship me over there, chances are I’ll never see U2 playing at home.”
Now he doesn’t know how to respond.
“Besides, you know what I am, don’t pretend you don’t.”
“I know, I know, I’ve been thinking about it ever since I met you, but I don’t think I care. I want you beside me.”
I feel weak and lie on the floor. “I like you too Jonah, and I don’t care what you do for a living either.”
He laughs nervously. “Is there any way you could come round?”
“I told you. They say Europe is losing its borders, but that doesn’t mean you don’t get checked when you cross these non-existing walls.”
He hawks and says, “All right. I’ll see what I can do. You don’t happen to be an exiled writer or something, so I can ask the PEN to help you out?”
That moment an entire vision of a possible future opens up before me, like the projections on old, rotting screens. The romantic flickering type of vision. My God, could this for one second be an opportunity? A writer, does that include a wannabe journalist? I don’t dare ask. Instead, as the reel of my alternate future starts tangling in the projector and melts from the heat of the machine, I say, “No, not a writer. But maybe I should give it a try. Write a memoir or some such thing.”
“Maybe, Fatima. Can you? You’d have to prove yourself. These people are rather posh. They only support the best, and preferably political writers.”
I say, as if it mattered, “No romance?”
“I don’t know. I can ask.”
“Stop it now.”
“What?”
“Stop messing with my head. Stop blowing Irish fantasies into my head. Can you come here? Can you smuggle me out? Can you come like a damn superhero riding on a whale to fetch me by the Isar bank? I didn’t think so. It was really nice meeting you Jonah.”
I hang up, then think, my God what have I done? Why can’t I be nicer? I love fantasies, but I just hate being in one. I’ll end up in a lunatic asylum, if they still keep such places. Now that would be a real-life solution, feign I’m crazy, that I’m mental, and, my God, I am losing my mind.
For months, Jonah does not call. I’m still having glimpses of him. One night, I imagine him in the strange shape of one Siamese twin, the other half being my old love Aziz. Jonah to the right, Aziz to the left. They are attached at the hips and shoulders, with only one arm each. I shake my head to separate them or to remove that horrible image completely. Jonah fades away but not Aziz. The mind forgets things easily, but my whole goddamn body remembers my lovers. It’s like that mitosis experiment I did in the sixth grade with peas and lukewarm water. The two are completely different but when they meet, the small thing sucks the huge one into itself and then they grow together into something else.
From THE BRONZE HORSEMAN
Paullina Simons
Paullina Simons was born in Leningrad, USSR, and at the age of ten, her family immigrated to the United States. After graduating from university, and after various jobs, including working as a financial journalist and as a translator, Paullina wrote her first novel, Tully. She has since written Red Leaves, Eleven Hours, The Bronze Horseman, The Bridge to Holy Cross (also known as Tatiana and Alexander), The Summer Garden, TheGirl in Times Square and Road to Paradise. Many of Paullina’s novels have become international bestsellers around the world. The Bronze Horseman is set during the Siege of Leningrad: For Tatiana, love arrives in the guise of Alexander, who harbours a deadly and extra-ordinary secret.
Alexander carried her in his arms to his tent, setting her down on his blan ket and closing the tent flaps behind them. It was subdued and dusky in
side, with only the barest sunlight filtering in through the open ties. “I would have brought you inside the nice, clean house,” he said, smiling, “but we have no quilts, no pillows, and it’s all wood and a hard furnace top.”
“Mmm,” Tatiana muttered. “Tent is good.” She could have been on a marble floor of the Peterhof Palace for all she cared.
Alexander was hugging her to him, but all she wanted was to be lying down in front of him. How did he do that? “Shura,” she whispered.
“Yes,” he whispered back, kissing her neck.
But he wasn’t... he wasn’t doing anything else, as if he were waiting, or thinking, or...
Alexander pulled away from her, and she saw by the reserve in his eyes that something was troubling him.
“What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t look at her. “You said so many upset things to me yesterday... not that I don’t deserve all of them...”
“You don’t deserve all of them.” She smiled. “What?”
He took a deep breath.
“Ask me.” She knew what he wanted from her.
His eyes remained lowered.
Shaking her head, Tatiana said, “Lift your head. Look at me.” He did. Kneeling in front of him, Tatiana held his face between her hands, kissed his lips, and said, “Alexander, the answer is yes... yes... of course I’ve saved myself for you. I belong to you. What are you even thinking?”
His happy, relieved, excited eyes flowed into her. “Oh, Tania.” For a moment he didn’t speak. “You have no idea... what that means to me –”
“Shh,” she whispered. She knew.
He closed his eyes. “You were right,” he said emotionally. “I don’t deserve what you have to give me.”
“If not you, who?” said Tatiana, hugging him. “Where are your hands? I want them.”
“My hands?” He kissed her ardently. “Lift your arms.” He took off her sundress and laid her down on the blanket, kneeling over her, roaming over her face and throat with his hungry lips, roaming over her body with his hungry fingers.
“Now I need you completely naked before me, all right?” he whispered.
“All right.”
He took off her white cotton panties, and Tatiana in her weakness watched him in his weakness, staring at her and then uttering, “No, I can’t take it...”
He put his cheek against her breast. “Your heart is pounding like gun-fire...” He licked her nipples. “Don’t be scared.”
“All right,” Tatiana whispered, her hands in his damp hair.
Bending over her, Alexander whispered, “You tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it. I’ll go as slow as you need me to. What do you want?”
Tatiana couldn’t reply. She wanted to ask him to bring her instant relief from the fire but could not. She had to trust in Alexander.
His palm pressing into her stomach, Alexander whispered, “Look at you, your wet, erect nipples standing up, pleading with me to suck them.”
“Suck them,” Tatiana whispered, moaning.
He did. “Yes. Moan, moan as loud as you want. No one can hear you but me, and I came sixteen hundred kilometers to hear you, so moan, Tania.” His mouth, his tongue, his teeth devoured her breasts as her back and chest and hips arched into him.
Lying down on his side next to her, Alexander eased his hand between her thighs.
“Wait, wait,” she said, trying to keep her legs together.
“No, open,” Alexander said, his hand pushing her legs apart. With his fingers he traced her thigh upward. “Shh,” he whispered, wrapping his free arm around her neck. “Tania, you’re trembling.” His fingers touched her. Her body stiffened. Alexander’s breath stopped. Tatiana’s breath stopped. “Do you feel how gently I rub you,” he whispered, his lips on her cheek. “You... so blonde all over.”
Her hands were clenched on her stomach under his forearm. Her eyes were closed.
“Do you feel that, Tatia?”
She moaned.
Alexander stroked her up and down and then in small circles. “You feel unbelievable...” he whispered.
Her hands clenched tighter.
He rubbed her a little firmer. “Want me to stop?” He groaned slightly.
“No!”
“Tania, do you feel me against your hip?”
“Hmm. I thought that was your rifle.”
His hot breath was in her neck. “Whatever you want to call it is fine with me.” He bent over her and sucked her nipples as he rubbed her and rubbed against her –
In circles, in circles –
As she moaned and moaned –
And –
He pulled his fingers away and his mouth away and himself away.
“No, no, no. Don’t stop,” Tatiana murmured in a panic, opening her eyes. In the palpitating tension of her flesh she had begun to feel combustion, and when he stopped, she started to quiver so uncontrollably that Alexander lay on top of her briefly to calm her, pressing his forehead to her forehead. “Shh. It’s all right.” He paused for a second and got off her. “Tell me what you want me to do.”
Unsteadily, Tatiana said, “I don’t know. What else have you got?”
He nodded. “All right, then.” He pulled off his shorts and knelt in front of her.
When Tatiana saw him, she sat straight up. “Oh, my God, Alexander,” she muttered incredulously, backing away.
“It’s all right,” he said, smiling from ear to ear. “Where are you going?” His hands held on to her legs.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, staring at him in astonishment. “No, no. Please.”
“Somehow, and in His infinite wisdom,” Alexander said, “God has ensured that it all works the way it’s supposed to.”
“Shura, it can’t be possible. It’ll never –”
“Trust me,” Alexander said, staring at her with lust. “It will.”
He lay her down flat, and said, “I cannot wait a second longer. Not another second. I need to be inside you right now.”
“Oh, God. No, Shura.”
“Yes, Tania, yes. Say that to me. Yes, Shura.”
“Oh, God. Yes, Shura.”
Alexander climbed on top of her, supporting himself on his arms. “Tania,” he whispered passionately, “you are naked and underneath me!” As if he could not believe it himself.
“Alexander,” she said, still trembling, “you are naked and above me.” She felt him rubbing against her.
They kissed. “I can’t believe it,” he said, his breath shallow. “I didn’t think this day would ever come.” He paused and then whispered, “Yet I couldn’t imagine my life without it. You alive, under me. Tania, touch me. Put your hands on me.”
Instantly she reached down and took hold of him.
“Do you feel how hard I am,” he whispered, “...for you?”
“God, yes,” she said in crazed disbelief. Seeing him was a profound shock to her. Feeling him was entirely too much. “It’s impossible,” she muttered, stroking him gently. “You will kill me.”
“Yes,” Alexander said. “Let me. Open your legs.”
She did.
“No, wider.” Alexander kissed her and whispered, “Open yourself for me, Tania. Go ahead... open for me.”
Tatiana did. She continued to stroke him.
“Now, are you ready?”
“No.”
“You are, you are ready. Let go of me.” He smiled. “Hold on to my neck. Hold on tight.”
Slowly Alexander pushed himself inside her, little by little, little by little. Tatiana grasped at his arms, at the blanket, at his back, at the grass above her head. “Wait, wait, please...” He waited as best he could. Tatiana felt as she had imagined she would – that she was being torn open. But something else, too.
An intemperate hunger for Alexander.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’m inside you.” He kissed her and breathed deeply out. “I’m inside you, Tatiasha.”
Softly she moaned, her hands around his n
eck. “Are you really inside me?”
“Yes.” He pulled up slightly. “Feel.”
She felt. “I can’t believe you... fit.”
Smiling, Alexander whispered, “Only just, but yes.” He kissed her lips. Took a breath. Left his lips on her. “As if God Himself joined our flesh...” He took another breath. “...Me and you together, and said, they shall be one.”
Tatiana lay very still. Alexander was very still, his lips pressed against her forehead. Was there more? Tatiana’s body was aching. There was no relief. Her hands went around to hold him a little closer. She looked up into his flushed face. “Is that it? Is that all there is to it?”
Alexander paused a moment. “Not quite.” He inhaled her breath. “I’m just – Tania, we’ve been so desperately longing for this...” he whispered into her mouth, “and the moment will never come again.” He gazed into her face. “I don’t want to let it go.”
“All right,” she whispered back. She was throbbing. She tilted her hips up to him.
Another moment.
“Ready?” He pulled slowly and slightly out and pushed himself back in. Tatiana gritted her teeth, but through the gritted teeth a moan escaped.
“Wait, wait,” she said.
Slowly he pulled halfway out and pushed himself back in.
“Wait...”
Alexander pulled all the way out and pushed himself all the way in, and Tatiana, astounded, nearly screamed, but she was too afraid he would stop if he thought she was in pain. She heard him groan, and less slowly he pulled all the way out and pushed himself all the way in. Moaning, she gripped his arms.
“Oh, Shura.” She was unable to breathe.
“I know. Just hold on to me.”
Less slowly. Less gently.
Tatiana was feverish from the pain, from the flame.
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