“It’ll take a few minutes. Come back to bed.” I could do it now, Theo thought. I could do it right now.
Milos bounded back toward the bed, his dick bouncing crazily. He kneeled by the side of the bed, grabbed Theo’s wrists and guided the thin man’s hands to his throat. Theo’s hands slipped around his neck. He bent to kiss Theo’s lips. “Squeeze harder,” he whispered into Theo’s mouth. The grip grew tighter. He wrapped his hands around Theo’s hands and pressed them into his flesh. His dick had gotten so hard it almost hurt. His breath was coming in gasps now. Blood pounded in his head.
Theo was out of bed now, kneeling on the floor, kneeling between Milos’s naked thighs, his knee pressing hard into the Slavic boy’s soft balls and hard dick. He pressed Milos’s head back till the boy arched his back, groaned, fell backwards against the cold floor. Theo threw himself onto Milos’s squirming body, dick against dick, hands still around his new lover’s throat. He took Milos’s lower lip between his teeth, bit down hard, made blood flow. The dark, metallic taste filled their mouths like a sudden shock. They came, both came, brutally, desperately, ecstatically. Theo loosened his grip, stroked Milos’s beautiful face, wiped the tears from his eyes.
“I’m hungry,” Milos said.
“You’re welcome to the kitchen, but I’m afraid you won’t find much to eat.”
While the naked boy was rummaging around in the hollow cabinets, Theo reached for the remote and switched on the TV. A too-handsome blond man was reading the news. “Police are still searching for the killer of a man who was found murdered in the darkroom of a popular gay leather bar this week . . .”
None of this is simple. I wanted it to be simple, the relationship of predator and prey. Instead, I have this, this boy here, someone to – God, I don’t know, look after? – just when I’ve become so tired, so fucking weary. Just when I’ve begun to sow the seeds of my own destruction.
Unless, of course, he himself is part of the process.
On the third morning, they were lying entwined in each other’s arms when the doorbell rang. Theo struggled out of bed and pulled on a thick woolen robe.
Pieter was at the door. “Mind if I come in? It’s freezing out here.”
“It’s not a convenient time, Pieter. I’m sorry, but you could have called first.”
“Who’s this, then?” Pieter’s pale blue eyes were staring at Milos, who’d gotten out of bed and was standing a few feet behind Theo, naked, one hand loosely cupped around his dick.
“Pieter, this is Milos.” Theo’s voice was dead. “Milos, Pieter.”
“Is he one of us then? Have you had him yet? No?” Pieter walked over to Milos, reached for the boy’s ass, and kissed him on the cheek. “Well, don’t worry dear, he will.”
Pieter turned on his heel, walked out the door, and was gone.
“What did he mean, ‘one of us’?” Milos asked while he was pulling on his pants, preparing to go out in search of breakfast.
“Perhaps I should tell you,” Theo said. This has gone on long enough, he thought.
I told him. I told him everything. He didn’t say a word. I don’t even know him well enough to be able to read his face. So I don’t know.
He’s out now, gone to get some breakfast for himself. He’s lucky that his hunger can be assuaged so easily. Has he gone to the police? No, I doubt it. Will he be back? I have no way of knowing. Do I even want him to come back? Outside the windows, the gulls are swirling above the half-frozen canal. Do I even want him to come back?
It was already early afternoon when Theo heard the click of the key in the lock. Milos locked the door behind himself and just stood there, the chilly light playing on the angles of his face. For a moment they watched each other in silence. Then Milos knelt at Theo’s feet, reached into a little bag he was holding, and pulled out an old-fashioned straight razor. He opened the gleaming blade and held it against the skin of his forearm. Looking deep into Theo’s eyes, he drew the razor across his flesh, leaving a gleaming red line in its wake. He offered his wound up to the tall, thin man standing above him. Theo leaned down, put his lips to the blossoming flow, and nursed gently. As he sucked at the upwelling blood, he felt the boy’s body shudder, tense, then shudder again. It was not till he drew his lips from the wound that he realized that Milos had used his free hand to unbuckle his jeans and take out his cock. His half-hard dick, shiny with cum, still rested in his fingers.
“Had enough?”
For now,” Theo said. “For now.”
Milos pressed his hand against the gash to staunch the flow. “I love you,” he said.
Theo stared out of the window at the flocks of gulls diving, wheeling, diving again.
Sometimes I think back to the great days of Amsterdam. Down by the Montelbaanstoren, desperate men with nothing to lose boarded ships that would take them to the edge of the world. I would watch them sail off, and wonder how they felt as they looked back at the cozy brown city they might never see again. Maybe the way I do when I look into this Slavic boy’s eyes.
Another day passed. Theo was feeling faint with hunger. He offered Milos some of the hashcake he’d bought at the gay koffieshop, waited till the boy was asleep, then slipped out and bicycled to the Web. He found a boy that was to his liking, very young, short and slight, with a nose ring and a dazzling smile. It was easy to get him to go to the darkroom, easy to get him into a cabinet, easy to pull the clothes from his body until the boy stood naked before him, thin almost hairless, with a small, almost delicate hard-on. Delicate, that’s what he is, Theo thought as he slipped his hands around the boy’s thin neck. He knew that this was stupid, doing this here, so soon after the other one. Even so, he pulled the boy closer, till he could feel the boy’s body heat, till the skinny young boy began jamming his hard little dick against his leg.
“Please let me suck you,” the boy gasped, reaching for Theo’s crotch. The naked boy kneeled. Theo watched as the kid opened his fly, gulped down his cock. A thousand miles away. The boy seemed to be a thousand miles away. A bony white shape in the airless gloom. Skinnier even than he was. But not, despite his voracious cocksucking, anywhere near as hungry.
In a few short moments, Theo’s hunger was sated.
Milos’s heart. I lie here undreaming, watching him sleep. Deep within him, within his fragile, mortal body, his heart pumps, steadily, erotically, sending life through the network of his veins. His heart, his secret heart.
I want to reach inside him, into his soft ass, slide my hand up into him until I grasp his heart, feel its mindless beating. Hold his life in my hands. Feel the coursing of his lifeblood against my fingertips.
But do I want to love him? Do I want him to love me?
“The police were around to my place, asking questions.”
“They haven’t been here yet.”
“They will be.” Pieter was sprawled in Theo’s living room, sipping strong black coffee. “You’re the one, aren’t you, Theo? You’re the one who did it. Stupid of you.”
Theo stared at the square of moonlight on the floor.
“You’ve ruined a good thing, brought trouble to the rest of us, too.” Pieter’s pale blue eyes shone in the semi-darkness.
“You’re angry, then?”
“Not really angry, Theo. But if trouble comes, I won’t be there for you, none of us will. You do understand, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
The front-door lock clicked open. Milos walked in, arms loaded with groceries.
“Ah, I see the dream boy is home,” Pieter sneered.
“Why do you hate me, Pieter? Is it because you’re jealous?”
“How wrong you are, boy. I knew Theo long before you arrived on the scene, and I’ll know him long, long after you’ve gone.”
“Why, then?”
“Because Theo is acting like a damn fool, and you’re a part of that. You’re a threat to him. A threat to us all. You think you understand. Maybe you even think Theo loves you. But you understand nothing, n
othing at all. You’re just a little fool, a young, young fool.”
“I think you’ve said enough.” Theo’s voice was flat, expressionless, lacking passion, maybe lacking conviction. “I think you’d better go now.”
“Maybe I’d better. But when this all comes crashing down, you’ll remember what I’ve said. Though it will be cold comfort to you then, Theo.” Pieter smiled grimly. “You may not believe this, but I wish with all my heart that I turn out to be wrong.”
He was at the door, wrapping a long woolen cape around his shoulders. “Take good care of Theo, little boy. He’s in trouble. Big trouble.” He opened the door. The cold night blew in. And then Pieter was gone.
I haven’t been able to sleep. I walked the frozen streets till dawn, till mid-morning. My wanderings have led me here, to the Rijksmuseum. To the long hall that leads to The Night Watch, hordes of tourists squinting at Rembrandts. Over here, to one side, almost ignored, hangs The Jewish Bride. It’s an astonishing painting, one of Rembrandt’s finest. A light seems to glow from within the couple, he placing his hand upon her breast. Over her heart. Their hands meet in unutterable tenderness. The light remains undimmed, through all the years since it was newly made.
And this tenderness, it makes me want to weep. Only I can’t weep. Because I’m closed off, forever cast out from the tenderness of this couple, this simple love. And so I can’t weep, because I can’t feel. Not like they feel. And so whatever else I’m trying to feel is turning to bitterness, to anger. I can see why that man took out a knife and slashed The Night Watch. If I had a knife . . .
If I had a knife . . .
“Where have you been?” Milos asked. “The police were here looking for you. They said they’d be back later.”
Nothing can kill me, because I’m not alive. Not in the way other people are. Not in the way Milos is, warm, feeling, hot blood coursing through his veins, blood that he kneels to offer me. His heart is a work of art, a work of art of unutterable tenderness.
When I told him I had to go, he said he wanted to come with me. To escape. There’s no place to escape, I said.
He stripped himself naked for me. His dick was already hard. He begged me to put my hands around his neck. To squeeze hard.
His heart is a fucking work of art.
When the police arrived at the apartment by the Oosterkerk, they found the door ajar. They called out; no one was home. They pushed the door open. In the middle of the living room floor was a pool of blood, three, maybe four feet across. It had been shaped into the form of a heart, a wet valentine. The outer edges of the heart were drying to a duller brown, but the center of the heart was still shiny, wet, red.
On the wall above the heart, someone had thumbtacked a post card to the wall. A reproduction of a painting. A Rembrandt: The Jewish Bride.
So fucking tired. So fucking weary. So very, very old.
Nacht Ruck
Karen Taylor
I first saw her at an auction. I wasn’t the only one who stared; she had brought a buggy alone.
She loosely wrapped the reins around the hitching post, next to a line of buggies and wagons, moving among the horses with an assurance I’d never seen in any woman. Then I saw the limp, and knew that no man would have married her.
She was greeted, and I saw her nod to a few of the women. I followed her into the barn, watched her settle in front of Mama, adjust her white prayer cap on her greying hair, and pull work out from the basket she was carrying. I moved closer to see her hands busily braiding strands of black horsehair. Mama bent forward from her seat, talking to her briefly. They chatted, and I saw her hands never stopped moving. She caught me staring and when I started, she smiled. Mama beckoned to me and I moved to her side, shyly. Mama introduced me, and she reached her hand out to shake mine. Her hands were calloused around the outside, from the base of the palm to the second joint of her little finger and on the inside of her index finger. To my surprise, her palms were no more calloused than my own. Her fingers were small and fine, the tendons prominent against the back of her hand, rising from the skin near the wrist to disappear above the knucklebone. I was sorry when she released me, and when I touched my hand to my face, it smelled of lanolin. My eyes followed her hand back to its work in her lap and I noticed her index fingers bent slightly back toward her hand. I wondered if it was from work, her age, or some infirmity.
Mama said something about getting a basket of laundry from the woman’s buggy, and I remained. She asked me about the book in my hand and laughed when I showed her: Mirror of the Martyrs. I still preferred the inspirational book to any worldly literature I had tried. I told her I sometimes imagined my own body pressed to death by rocks, stretched on the rack, flogged with nettles, wanting to know if I, too, could bear the tortures our Amish heroes had done so many centuries ago. She nodded, knowingly, her fingers twisting the horsehair in her lap.
I asked her if she missed not having a husband. She laughed merrily, her eyes dancing. I sometimes miss having children, she said. But not the other. I wanted to ask her why. But I thought I knew – and color flooded my face in a rush of heat. She saw it and, gently, her hand covered mine. We stood there silently, until Mama returned. The woman smiled at Mama, and asked that we meet at the market the following Saturday, asked if I could help her pack up and bring her work home. She can stay the night, the woman said, as she returned to the work in her lap, her hands busy plaiting the strands in her lap. I watched the tendons flex beneath the skin, and trembled.
The rest of the auction was a blur. I didn’t dare return to the barn, and joined my friends under the big elm outside. Nearby was a group of boys from our church, some of them smoking cigarettes. We ignored them and watched the grown-ups going in and out of the auction barn while we giggled and gossiped under the tree. It was summer, and all of us were trying our parents’ patience. We were all the age of rum springa, the years between childhood and before baptism, enjoying our years of freedom before joining the church and giving up our worldly adventures. Sarah and Amy were going to a non-Amish friend’s house that afternoon to watch a video. Hannah had cut some of the hair from around her face and was daring me to do the same. Last week Josh had actually purchased a truck from a boy who had joined the Church, and took us all over to LaGrange, to play miniature golf. Katie whispered to us that after the miniature golf party, she and Grace and some of the boys stayed on to drink beer. One had gotten so drunk he passed out in his buggy and only got home because his horse knew the way. I gasped appropriately, but was privately relieved that Josh had dropped me off before the evening went too wild. Liquor was not my form of rebellion. My rebellion was much more secret, and only today had I ever met anyone else who even suspected. Even as I was thinking it, I saw the woman limp back to her buggy, free the horse from its post, and struggle in. The whip flicked across his flanks, and I flinched. Had she seen me? I thought I saw her smile as she drove past, but maybe it was just a wish.
I could think of nothing but her for the week. My chores were a mild distraction; watching the younger ones, walking them to the one-room schoolhouse I had attended until eighth grade, free after that to go about real world learning, as my Mama would say. The youngest children I would meet at noon and walk home to have the lunch I made for them. But the rest of the day’s chores were different each day. Monday I helped Mama bake the pies and breads for the market. Tuesday morning I was up before dawn firing up the gasoline-powered washing machine for laundry, getting the clothes on the line that stretched from the house to the barn early enough so Mama and I could pack the baked goods in the buggy and Papa could drive us to town by nine. Wednesday my sisters and I weeded the garden and plucked the sweet peas for shelling in the shade on the porch. That night I promised Mama that I’d get up early enough to do the extra laundry she had brought home, and I dreamt all night of lying in those sheets.
I was up before dawn on Thursday, washing her sheets, her quilts, caressing them as I hung them in a pleasing pattern on the line. I returned
to the kitchen, helping Mama bake another batch of pies and bread for the weekend, and making several dozen cookies as well. Friday I stayed home while Papa took Mama to the market, because the baby was not feeling well. I fixed up a basket to hold the laundry I’d be taking with me on Saturday, filling it with sweet pea, rose petals, lemon balm, and other scents pulled from the flower garden. I packed a carefully folded black dress, black stockings, white apron and black prayer cap. And in the bottom of the basket, I placed my nacht ruck, my nightdress, for bundling.
Bundling started centuries ago when unheated houses led hosts to double up with their guests for warmth. The tradition evolved into a form of courting for those of us in our rum springa years, the only time boys and girls are allowed to be alone together before marriage. It is so fixed in Amish tradition that in my grandparents’ day, a preacher who once spoke out about it in Shipshawana was silenced for nearly five years. It was because of this tradition that I was not yet ready to give up my rum springa years and join the Church. Truly, I suffered from the sin of vanity. I wanted to be seen in my nacht ruck, my bundling dress.
I had finished my nacht ruck over a year ago, when I turned sixteen, even though there was no boy I fancied, and none that fancied me enough to suggest calling after dark, to tiptoe into my room and spend the night with me, and come down for breakfast the next morning to meet my folks. By the time I was sixteen I was pretty sure there would never be a boy I fancied like that. But I had made a dress anyway. It was a ruffled, pale lavender color, its capped sleeves exposing my arms almost to the elbow. Pink ribbons at the sleeves, collar and hem were unbelievably indulgent, the result of work secretly done over the past winter. The buttons on the bodice were an extravagance that only highlighted the worldly nature of the dress – something that would never be worn once I joined the church. The nacht ruck represented my freedom, and I wanted more than anything to wear it for someone. I thought about her that night, and secretly touched myself after my sister fell asleep next to me, silencing myself in the down pillow so as not to wake the little ones.
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