by David Mathew
And if gambling was an old coat in his closet, it was good to put it on once in a while.
Now relax…
Having returned home at past three in the morning, Benny was tired and wired at the same time; he was ordering himself to relax… Relax, you’ll give yourself a heart attack, Benny. Have a drink. Have a snooze… And he stood in his library, a vodka in his fist, waiting for his books to calm him down, as they sometimes would. But no, it wasn’t going to happen, he knew. This evening and this morning – oh, what a buzz! – had been a little like the old days; the rambling, gambling old days, in the sense that he’d placed a couple of small bets and he’d won big.
Yes. Recently, Benny had won big, thanks to Maggie.
2.
She hadn’t minded any of the deception up to now, nor the thinly-veiled disguises, the apparitions, the sleights-of-hand, some of it had even been fun. Most of it, in fact. In Maggie’s opinion, Yasser had become a lovely puppet, obedient, erotic and lithe; so no, it would not be fair to say that she lost sleep contemplating how she’d used him. Maggie hadn’t minded any of that at all…
However. She really had minded blasting Yasser in the face with reptile venom anaesthetic. She had not enjoyed that bit one iota. Not even letting him have his way earlier in the evening – allowing him briefly to become the monster that she believed existed ‘neath his skin – had worked as a way of forewarning herself about the guilt that was sure to follow. She’d convinced herself, partly (how? she now wondered) that if Yasser was given the opportunity to slap her around a little, and of course to get his penis wet, then he wouldn’t mind it quite so much when he had to face the next act of Maggie’s betrayal.
She’d remained fully dressed, and now she stood up and adjusted her clothing. ‘I’d like to ask you a favour,’ she said.
‘Me too. Turn the light off on your way out.’
‘I will. Don’t hurt him. That’s the favour I’m asking.’ Maggie wondered if she would also ask another. She contemplated enquiring if he’d mind if she used his en suite. There was bound to be some mouthwash or some toothpaste in there… but she’d never entered his en suite before. She should ask his permission first.
‘…Who?’
‘Yasser. You know who.’
Lying naked on top of his duvet, Benny frowned. ‘Have I ever hurt anyone?’ he asked – somewhat disingenuously, in Maggie’s opinion. An affectionate smile brightened his features. Nostalgia? Reminiscence? Unselfconsciously, no longer looking in Maggie’s direction, he began to brush his scrotum with his fingertips.
‘You hurt me.’
Maggie was now by the door. Before she knew what she had done, she had smacked her lips together, the better to generate some saliva with which to refresh her tastebuds in the absence of anything minty. Her breath was crowded with the remains of stale drink; with the taste of burning petrol, the flavour of stagnant moisture from the Edlesborough house’s waterlogged air… and now with Benny’s own most recent contribution to her mouth. No. There was no doubt about it. Her breath was rank, and it was heartbreakingly so. Maggie had long since got used to the taste of Benny’s semen. But she’d been shocked by his penis tasting of another woman’s secretions.
‘You’re special,’ Benny answered. ‘Of course I won’t hurt him, girl. Not interested in that game no more.’
Maggie waited for the unspoken clause, to be added to this blatant lie, but it didn’t arrive. If she couldn’t find mouthwash or toothpaste, a coffee would make do.
‘Thanks,’ she admitted finally. Apparently, Benny had nothing more to say. His eyelids had descended.
‘The light. On your way out,’ he muttered, his hand resting on his quickly drying penis.
3.
While Benny slid the greased chute down into an all-but untroubled sleep, Maggie took her time choosing the right room in which she’d spend the remainder of her darkness (she had never been one for resting in the daylight). In the end she settled for a bedroom on the third floor. It was tastefully decorated, old-fashioned and charming. None of this, however, Maggie noted. For one thing, she had slept in the room before – during one of those nights when she was certain that Yasser would not come knocking – and for a second thing, she was weary to her bones.
Fully clothed, Maggie collapsed onto the delicious double bed. She did not turn out the bedside lamp; the illumination was murky and spot-on. Surely sleep would follow like a dream.
It might have… if she hadn’t thought of Yasser, again.
She sat up. She felt dirty. Spastically her fingers twitched, striking non-existent matches until she told them to stop. What to do? The running of a hot bath might wake Benny, so that was out. And besides, there was only one real choice.
Experiencing a resurgence of her desire to see Yasser (to see, to explain and even to confess), Maggie slipped from the bedroom and crept down stairways in the quiet dark. The house was familiar. She knew the groans of its old bones and the creaking secrets of its pressure points, which she largely remembered to avoid, stepping with a dancer’s finesse until she’d reached the ground floor.
Just as Maggie was wondering what she’d say if she encountered any of the help on her travels, she was given the opportunity to find out. Up ahead, six or seven doors down on the right, a figure climbed into the corridor’s murk and closed a door firmly behind her. It was Eva. Maggie had known her for some months, or at least been aware of her. (Eva was not the type of girl, Maggie thought, that one ever knew.) ‘Hi, Eva!’
The other woman did not return the greeting. ‘You’re up early,’ she said instead.
‘I haven’t been to bed. I can’t sleep.’
‘I have some horse anaesthetic in my quarters…’ Eva offered, stepping in Maggie’s direction.
‘I’ll pass. Thanks… I was hoping to see Yasser. Will that be okay?’
Eva shrugged. ‘It’s not my house. You can see who you want, as long as Benny doesn’t mind.’
‘He won’t mind.’ Maggie pointed at Eva’s right hip. ‘Can I borrow that?’
Eva’s smile was enigmatic. ‘Ever fired a pistol before?’ she wanted to know.
‘A shotgun. Never a pistol.’
‘They’re chalk and cheese… but seeing as you and Benny are as thick as thieves, how about this? You tell me why you want it and I’ll say no but accompany you, if it’s protection you’re after.’
‘What else would it be?’ Maggie replied, her voice harsh.
Eva shrugged again. ‘You sound fond of this Yasser.’
‘So?’
‘So maybe you’d like to put him out of his misery.’ Eva turned on her heels and walked back the way she’d come.
Maggie followed. Through her mind galloped murderous images; in one she shot Yasser in his pretty little mouth; in another she disposed of Shyleen so that Yasser would have no choices to make in the future. Maggie it would be, all the way.
Beyond the door was the flight of stairs down to the basement. At the bottom of the stairs, another door. Eva placed her left thumb against the panel that was set at her shoulder height, and the electronic eye decoded the whorls in her print. The door buzzed; a lock clunked.
Eva walked into the vivaria.
4.
As usual, it was the smell that first alarmed Maggie – far more so than the thought of what she knew that the interlocking rooms contained – and her nostrils flared and worried as she followed behind Eva.
The basement stank of sleep. Stank of patients and patience and sickness. Part hospital ward, part reptile house at the zoo, the air seemed mouldy and in need of a set of open windows.
From floor to low ceiling, every piece of wall space was occupied by metal shelving units; on every shelf was a glass tank containing reptiles and the incandescent bulbs that kept the creatures and their habitats at the appropriate sauna temperatures. The bulbs burned brightly; the
y emitted enough light for Eva not to need to flick on the wall switches.
Machinery hummed; and although it was not cold in the basement, Maggie shivered. The sound of her footfalls, and those of her guide, relayed back and forth between the stone floor and the glass fronts of tanks. As if aware of the presence of humans, the occupant of one especially large tank – a yellow adder – uncurled itself swiftly and butted the front of its prison.
Despite everything that Maggie had seen (or done), snakes continued to give her the creeps. She didn’t much like lizards either, but it was snakes that got her the worst - their lazy movements, their cruel eyes… But no more than she could block her nostrils from the scent could she hold her eyelids shut against the sight; the best that she could manage was to hold her gaze straight ahead – at Eva’s shoulders – as the two of them moved through the chambers, and to hope that nothing had mastered the art of escapology.
The notion of stepping on something by accident was a horror; it made her shiver once more, and her mouth tasted suddenly of sick and soot.
Here beneath the house, there were no more doors between rooms and chambers; if you had passed the security test at the first door (the recognition of your thumbprint), there was nothing denied. Doorways had been stripped of their doors and their metal fittings; the warren that this had left behind, however, did not feel welcoming to Maggie. It felt threatening. And as they moved from one monk’s cell to the next, each one stuffed with more tanks of reptiles, not to mention the crickets, bugs and crawlies on which the reptiles would feed, Maggie longed for the occasional closed door, at which she could have tested her courage – with the intake of a vomit-and-smoke-flavoured breath, a measurement of the tingling in her arms. In the absence of any obstruction, her ride through the vivaria was wild; it felt too fast… even though it was precisely what Maggie had wanted (but dared not hope for - a guided tour of the atrocities. Regardless of the fact that she would have ventured down here anyway (her own thumbprint was known by the system, and she would have marshalled the bravery somehow), Maggie far preferred the assistance of her chaperone. (That the chaperone in question was a hard-nosed bitch, with a pistol erect on her waist, didn’t hurt!) But what was the other woman’s hurry? Slow down! You’ll give us both heart attacks!
Maybe Eva had been about to complete her shift, Maggie realised; maybe she’d been on her way to the Land of Nod. Maybe. A show of gratitude, in either case, would surely not go amiss: keep her sweet. ‘I’d like to say thanks,’ Maggie began – but Eva cut her short.
‘Do you know the one they call Connors?’ she asked over her shoulder. Her foot hit a sensor and a light was triggered into life in the next part of the catacombs. (This would happen from now on – lights popping awake – and in some places the jogged sensors activated a ceiling fan or an extraction pump.)
‘Only by name. Benny’s mentioned him.’
‘He was telling a story earlier on about his missing brother – when they were kids… Moments like that that I realise what a wretched thing it is we do.’
Maggie thought about contradicting the accusation, but she said instead, ‘Agreed.’ For it was wretched. She knew that it was wretched. But she also knew that the wretched could be addictive. And furthermore, she knew that she was hopelessly addicted to suffering (that of others and her own), every bit as much as Benny was.
By now the two women were deep underground, and surely beyond the limitations of the house’s walls. The maze of interlocking rooms – some large, some no bigger than a broom cupboard – went on and on and on; and not for the first time, Maggie wondered how long this subterranean workspace – part laboratory, part prison, part mental asylum – had taken to build. And who would Benny have paid to construct it all in the first place.
When she saw the first of Benny’s human prisoners over Eva’s shoulders, Maggie felt clammy all over. And not only because it was so hot this far from the door. Maggie stopped in front of one of the dozens of four-foot high fans that blew the warm air around this part of the dungeon. She hadn’t realised how much her back had perspired; the fan glued her top to her skin.
A few steps ahead, Eva also stopped walking. Having turned to evaluate the hold-up, she followed Maggie’s line of vision.
The prisoner was in the nude on his metal cot. At some point he had thrashed his blankets to the mud floor, but for now he was still, albeit with an eyes-wide-open look of horror on his features, his mouth similarly agape, revealing a bowl of gold fillings – like someone who had been photographed mid-scream. Indeed, the only thing that contradicted the horror of which the man appeared to dream was the unenlargeable erection he sported.
‘Big soldier, ain’t he?’ Eva asked, chuckling.
Although Maggie had never seen a penis quite like it in terms of scale, her first thought was of Benny. She wondered if he got excited when he saw his prisoners getting hard-ons in their sleep.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Kuba. He’s Polish – last seen walking from farm to farm, offering to pick strawberries and potatoes for minimum wage.’ Eva sounded confident; she also sounded flirtatious (to Maggie), as if she was on the brink of divulging a brand new joke. ‘Sometimes he talks in the mother tongue.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m not encouraged to talk to our residents, but Benny has never exactly forbidden it either. It’s good to be reminded of how much vocabulary you’ve forgotten in your second language.’
Although Maggie had not come here to listen to anyone’s war stories (not even Yasser’s), she felt that she might learn something from Eva; but neither the time nor the place seemed appropriate. Something about Maggie’s demeanour must have said that she was impatient to proceed. Eva’s features tautened, all good nature frittered away. Without checking to see if Maggie was behind her, she walked on.
Lights winked on ahead of them as they approached Yasser.
The Village Idiots
1.
Needless to say, the explorers’ arrival had not gone unnoticed. Though the game underway kept hold of the attention of many, there were some who turned to view and size up the new arrivals, their expressions (if they could be read at all) mixing wonderment with candid disgust.
Bernadette (for one) did not enjoy being the object of such open evaluation. Usually it was she who did the evaluating: she assessed a head wound, the result of a sharp instrument trauma; she broke bad news and read faces. It had been a while since the tables had been turned in this way, and she said:
‘Guess they don’t get many tourists around here.’
The comment had not been meant as a joke – not exactly – but Massimo smiled good-naturedly, and was about to say something like: I’m not surprised, if that’s how they treat them – when Connors pipped him to the post and spoke first.
‘That’s Dorman’s head,’ he said clearly.
The game was brought to a rousing finale a few minutes later, when a shortarse pug on the three-eyed players’ side performed a turnaround jump shot of which a basketball professional would be proud. Dorman’s battered face did not touch the hoop: the head described a perfect arc, and with a gentle sound it fell through the ragged netting and was caught by one of the opposition’s defensive line.
Whoops and applause. A long whistle.
2.
As Bernadette and Massimo embarked on a round of handshakes, encouraging smiles and what they hoped were friendly nods (even the occasional curtsey), the better to let the crowd know of their amiable intentions, Connors eschewed all formalities and strode out into the middle of the makeshift basketball court, and sat down. The sit did not appear voluntary: it was more like a slump and a collapse; and as soon as he was established on his backside, he leaned forward slightly and cupped his bearded chin in both hands, his elbows on his knees. No portrait painter could have fashioned a more convincing portrayal of despondency or melancholy.
What to do?
Bernadette a
nd Massimo exchanged glances, their expressions flickering from warmth to worry and back again. Atchoo and the guides were several metres away, presumably telling the story of their travails. For the moment, it was impossible to ask the boy to go over and sit with Connors. Any attempts to offer consolation to Connors were firmly the responsibility of Bernadette and Massimo… and Bernadette was not absolutely convinced that Massimo would know what to do either. She was not sure that the two men got along.
No.
Bernadette would do this on her own – she would have to. Many had been the friends and relatives that she’d spoken to and held, following the death of a loved one – an unsuccessful operation, perhaps. Bad news was a language she spoke. Not fluently, granted; but competently.
Making international gestures of abject apology, Bernadette moved through and away from the crowd that was swiftly disbanding. She crossed over to the hunched potato sack that Connors had become. Wordlessly she sat nearby him, maintaining a respectful distance. He noted her presence, then resumed an inspection of his palm.
‘First sign of madness, you know,’ said Bernadette.
Connors regarded her again.
‘Looking for hair,’ she explained.
She’d intended it as a joke but it was not taken as one.
‘I’m already mad,’ Connors told her.
‘There is absolutely no way I can tell you to snap out of it.’
‘Good.’
‘Not after you’ve seen your friend’s head used as a netball,’ said Bernadette.
Connors was shaking his head. ‘He was no friend,’ he answered quietly. ‘I hardly knew him more than three hours or so. And it wasn’t like I didn’t know he was dead. I saw it happen.
‘True. But a team sport’s a different thing,’ Bernadette attempted to rationalise. ‘Surely.’
‘His whole head, you’ll notice. I didn’t imagine that, did I?’