Girl in the Dark

by Marion Pauw

  The other patients started to laugh, as usual.

  “Me, I get horny as hell,” growled Eddie. “Nothing gives me a hard-on like putting my hands around someone’s neck and giving him a good squeeze. Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until the body goes limp.” Eddie gave a little mock demonstration.

  “That’s enough,” said Mo. “Save it for the next time you see the shrink.”

  “Sure, man, whatever you say,” said Rembrandt. “You just doing your job. Same way I used to do mine, nice and cool. You know all about that, don’t you, Mo.”

  The others started laughing again.

  According to Hank, Rembrandt had been a hit man. He’d worked with all the top crime bosses. “He’s got connections; we got to stay on his good side,” Hank had told me in the smokers’ yard. Hank always asked me to go with him even though I didn’t smoke. Out there, he told me what the other guys were in for. Hank himself was in for a series of aggravated assaults, Ricky had gone after his mother with an ax, and my former cellmate Eddie had a habit of raping and killing women. I had to listen to Hank’s stories because I didn’t have the guts to tell him he smelled bad and that I hated how he blew smoke in my face and that I was freezing in the windy courtyard.

  “Yeah, you’re real tough, Rembrandt,” Mo said. “But you’ll learn soon enough it won’t do you much good in here.”

  “Is that right? Ooh, now I’m scared.” Rembrandt got up from the couch and walked slowly up to Mo until there was hardly any space between them.

  I felt the hair on the nape of my neck stand on end. Even Ricky realized something was up. He stopped talking to the TV. The only sound left in the room was coming from the television set.

  “You’re breaking the rules,” said Mo, not twitching a muscle. “I’ve given you a warning. You’ve ignored it. So you’re confined to your suite for the next forty-eight hours.”

  Rembrandt stood his ground. “What rules you talking about, Mohammed? Rules that say we’re just supposed to do like we’re told, like a bunch of sheep? That all we can talk about is the weather, because anything else is out of line? That we’re not even allowed any fucking porn in here, so that all of us is walking around with a full load? That what you getting at?” Rembrandt’s arms were hanging loosely by his side. But you could tell he could lash out at any moment.

  “Got that right,” Eddie chimed in, but no one was listening to him.

  “Okay, Rembrandt, now you’ve gone too far. Forty-eight hours have just become seventy-two.” Jeannie must have heard the commotion, because she had come over and was standing next to Mo. She was wearing a flimsy blouse; you could see her bra. I didn’t think it was the right kind of thing to wear in a place full of sex offenders.

  Rembrandt turned his attention to Jeannie. “Has anyone given you a good banging lately, girl? ’Cause the way you dressing, you need it bad.”

  “That’s enough,” said Jeannie. “I’m calling security.”

  “You do that, sugar, be my guest. Think I give a flying fuck about spending some time in my room? Why don’t you take me there yourself?”

  Mo made a show of pressing the beeper attached to his belt. I heard a loud buzz and doors locking automatically.

  “Shit, man!” Rembrandt grabbed Mo by the collar. “I was just messing is all. What a pussy you are.” He shook Mo from side to side with each word. The chain holding Mo’s ID badge snapped and fell to the floor.

  “Hey, cool it,” said Jeannie. She didn’t sound cool at all. Her boobs were heaving up and down under her white blouse. I couldn’t keep my eyes off them. “Let go of him, or you’re in serious trouble.”

  “Stay out of it, bitch.” He let go of Mo and it looked as if Jeannie was next. I turned around. If I’d had the guts, I would have rushed to Jeannie’s aid.

  At that moment the doors opened and six guards stormed inside, brandishing clubs.

  Ricky began wailing loudly. “They’ve come for me! Don’t take me! Don’t take me!”

  “They ain’t after you, stupid,” snarled Eddie.

  Rembrandt was seized and handcuffed by two of the guards. The whole time he was yelling terrible stuff. About God and Mo’s mother’s cunt and how “You’re all getting it in the ass.”

  The guards dragged him away. Just before they pushed Rembrandt violently out through the doors, he suddenly glared at me. I looked around. I was the only one standing on the far side of the room.

  “I’m going to get you! I’m going to get you!” He was screaming so loud that his voice cracked. I’m not even sure if he was really looking at me or at the gray brick wall. All I know is it scared the shit out of me.

  “There goes our great connection.” Hank walked up to me. “He’ll be in the cooler for a nice long time.”

  I didn’t answer him. Why did Rembrandt have it in for me, the way everyone always seemed to have it in for me in the end? I couldn’t think of a reason. Had I missed the signals, as usual?

  I had discussed this with the shrink back at the Mason Home. He had shown me pictures of faces. I had to tell him if the people in the pictures were happy, angry, or frightened. Later on he’d added startled, relieved, sarcastic, and incredulous. The last three were hard. I still wasn’t very good at telling which was which. You can never be totally sure. You can’t just ask someone, “Is the emotion you are feeling right now relief?”

  Mo rearranged his collar and Jeannie had tears in her eyes. She was sad, that was easy to tell. Everyone was just standing around. What were we supposed to do? Should we just go back to our usual activities?

  “Back to your suites,” said Mo. “We’re all going to cool off for a while.”

  We walked to our cells. Nobody was joking. There wasn’t even any grumbling. There was a buzzing sound and the doors locked. I stood in my empty cell and thought about how good it would have felt if the fish had been there waiting for me.

  “Hey, Raynus,” I heard Eddie shout. “Your little girlfriend, the bitch you’re so sweet on, she almost got it good, didn’t she.”

  I walked into the shower stall, sat down on the closed toilet seat, and put my hands over my ears. “Saturn, Maria, Hannibal, François, Margie, Peanut, Venus, and Raisin. And King Kong. We mustn’t ever forget King Kong.”

  CHAPTER 16

  IRIS

  Kim de Boer’s attorney sent us a proposal. Van Benschop was to take the film off the Internet, pay six months of Kim’s salary, since she had been unable to work, plus another six thousand euro in compensation—around twenty thousand euro total.

  The proposal was delivered to me by courier. Aaron was splashing around in a half-filled inflatable kiddie pool, playing with his plastic whales. I read it while tanning on a lounge chair in the sun.

  “I’m just going inside, okay?” I told Aaron. “Mommy has to make a phone call.”

  He barely reacted, intent on his new favorite game, which involved reciting whole passages from Finding Nemo.

  Wrapped in a towel, I sat down at my mother’s desk and called Peter van Benschop.

  He wasn’t happy. “I already paid her. I paid her the agreed-upon amount. She signed on the dotted line. She didn’t seem to have any problem with it during the shoot . . .”

  “Maybe because she was in shock?” I regretted saying it before the words were out of my mouth. I looked out the window. Aaron still didn’t seem to notice that I’d gone inside.

  “Very funny,” said Van Benschop.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll stop with the sarcastic remarks. Now, as far as . . .”

  “What good is it to me to have a lawyer who’s constantly disparaging me?”

  “I’m not disparaging you.”

  “You are.”

  I sighed and gazed out the window again. Aaron was throwing his whales up in the air to watch them land in the pool with a big splash. It was too nice outside to prolong quibbling.

  “Getting back to the business at hand—I think I have a pretty good sense of Miss De Boer’s state of mind during the shoot.” In the video sh
e’d looked quite cheerful—at first. Wearing hot pants and a transparent T-shirt, she’d sat giggling on a leather couch. But less than three minutes later, you can see fear and disgust in her face. At the end of the film she was apathetic, almost like a zombie. I’d had trouble making myself watch to the end. “But could you please tell me how she was after the shoot? Did she go straight home?”

  “She went and took a shower, then had a Coke . . .”

  “With you?”

  “Shower, you mean?” he said eagerly.

  “I was referring to the Coke.”

  “We all sat around having a drink afterward, the whole crew.”

  It seemed strange to me that after having been pissed on and subjected to all sorts of other nasty stuff, you’d still feel like sitting around with the crew sipping a soda. But I decided not to say anything that would prolong the conversation unnecessarily. “So we can conclude that after the shoot, Miss De Boer was by all indications . . . in good form,” I continued.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Something else. You told me over lunch that she’d approached you. Can you tell me how that came about?”

  “Her boyfriend called me. He said his girlfriend wanted to make some extra bucks.”

  I had to suppress my exasperation. “That’s not the same thing as someone approaching you on her own initiative, is it.”

  “Well, the two of them came to see me in any case, and we made a deal.”

  “With whom did you make the deal? The friend, or Miss De Boer?”

  “Well, she signed it.”

  “Who did the negotiating?”

  “Her friend.”

  “With friends like that, you don’t need enemies.” I had to learn to control myself better.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Didn’t it occur to you that the girl herself had very little say in the matter? Are you really sure you did right by her?”

  “There you go again, pointing the finger. And didn’t we agree to call her a young woman?”

  I sighed. “I’m just appealing to your common sense. Again, it is not my place to judge you. That’s the judge’s job. All I’m trying to do is make you see what it looks like from the other side.”

  “You don’t get it, do you, and you don’t want to understand. All you have done is point fingers. Why have you never asked what’s motivating me?”

  Aaron was still stolidly playing with his whales out in the yard and I was starting to get a chill sitting inside.

  Van Benschop didn’t wait for my reply. “It may be called ‘hardcore,’ but it’s just another way of making love. That’s the way you ought to look at it. By going to extremes, a person can reach a kind of ecstasy. You have to view my film work as an ode to the human body’s surrender.”

  I wondered if Van Benschop had taken an adult-ed philosophy course at the local community college. “Of course. As I said before, acting in good faith, I’ll do everything I can in your best interest. I’ll contend in your defense that Miss De Boer knew exactly what she was in for and had signed a contract. That she was so eager to participate that she even forged her date of birth. I’ll also inform them that she joined you in a drink with the crew afterward. We’ll leave the boyfriend out of it.”

  “What do you see happening?”

  “How hard is it to take the video down?”

  “If it gets out that I’m being sued, it could get very hot.”

  “In that case we’ll have to offer her a considerable sum. Enough for her not to turn it down. But not too much. That would look like an admission of guilt.”

  Aaron had clambered out of the pool and was on his way to the back door, naked and dripping. “Mr. Van Benschop, I’ll get on it right away and e-mail you the proposed counteroffer in the morning.”

  CHAPTER 17

  RAY

  “There’s someone coming to see you today,” said Mo.

  For as long as I’ve been in prison, my mother has come and visited me just a couple of times. Margaret and Pierre had also visited once. They used to come back to the Netherlands every summer, when it got too hot in France. When they heard I wasn’t on Queen Wilhelmina Street anymore, they came and looked me up in prison. Although Margaret said it would be the last time, because Pierre was getting too old to travel.

  He’d changed, Pierre. He walked more slowly and had to stop to catch his breath every few steps. It was only ten steps from the door to the visiting room table and four chairs.

  “All those years in the bakery have worn him out,” Margaret told me. She still talked just as loud as before. “He just doesn’t feel like doing anything anymore, do you, Pierre?”

  The whole time, the twenty minutes they were with me, it was Margaret who did the talking. Pierre didn’t say a word; he didn’t even look at me. I didn’t say very much, either. I think all three of us were happy to have Margaret fill up the silence by describing the farmers’ market in Grasse.

  Rosita was never mentioned. The mother dough wasn’t, either.

  “My mother’s coming here?” I didn’t think she would come; she’d been pretty firm about that, actually. Not even for a chat with Dr. Römerman, at least that’s what he’d told me. But Dr. Römerman also said it was time for me to face up to what I’d done, even though I hadn’t done anything.

  “No. Another lady is coming to see you.” Mo glanced at a list. “Iris Kastelein.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Don’t you know her?”

  “No.”

  “Strange. She says she’s related to you.”

  Hank came and sat next to me at lunch. He’d been avoiding me for the past few days. I didn’t know why and I didn’t feel like asking him, either.

  It was fish cakes day. They were on a plate at the far end of the table, but I could smell them. I was in the mood for a fish cake.

  “You and me, we’re buddies. Right, Ray?”

  The plate was coming this way, but it wasn’t close enough for me to take one.

  “I’m the only one you talk to, right? The only one looking out for you?” Hank turned and yelled, “Hey, pass those fish cakes!”

  A new inmate, his name was Jamal, tossed a fish cake at him. The plate stayed where it was.

  “Jamal. I know you still have to get used to the rules in here. But one rule is that we don’t throw our food,” said the social worker with the glasses—I could never remember his name.

  “Rude behavior at mealtimes means confinement to your suite for two days, okay, we all know,” said Hank. He wasn’t scared of this one. I’d heard that the social worker with the glasses sometimes smuggled in cocaine. You could buy it from him at fifty euro a gram. And the quality was excellent, I’d overheard Eddie tell Rembrandt.

  Hank was yakking on and on. But my attention was elsewhere. On the fish cakes that were making a tour of the table but never seemed to land close to me, but also on the news about the visitor coming to see me. I didn’t know if it was good news or bad news. My mother was the only family I had. And her name wasn’t Iris Kastelein.

  “Are you listening to me?” Hank was breathing right in my face. Reeking of fish cake and tobacco.

  I nodded.

  “You are such a smart guy. I’ll show you the ropes. Since we’re buddies and all. Understood?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said quickly.

  “The way you could . . .” Hank stopped because the social worker was looking at him pointedly. “Hey, don’t you want a fish cake?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Dammit, Deepak, pass those fish cakes over here, will you?”

  Hank passed me the fish cake platter. There was only one left. It was a bit squished and split open, with the white spilling out. I picked it up and bit off one end. It tasted good. I loved the crusty exterior combined with the gooey warm insides, and the little flecks of fish in it.

  “Just look at the kid sucking on that thing!” yelled Eddie. “Hey, Raynus, it’s goo-food, isn’t it?”

  All the
other guys started whistling and cheering.

  “Okay, enough,” said the social worker with the glasses.

  “They’re coming for me!” wailed Ricky. “I know it.”

  “Oh, Ricky-dick, shouldn’t they be upping your dosage?” asked Eddie.

  Everyone thought that was very funny.

  They had already settled me at the visitors’ table when the woman whose name was Iris Kastelein came in. Mo came in behind her and sat down on a chair by the door next to the guard.

  He nodded at me. “All right, Ray?”

  Iris Kastelein was a pretty young woman. Like the ones from the neighborhood with the big houses that would come to the bakery specially and stand in a long line to buy croissants.

  “Oh, that’s funny,” was the first thing she said. “My son looks exactly like you.”

  She’d only just arrived and already she was making fun of me. I didn’t reply and concentrated on keeping my hands in check.

  I felt myself getting mad. She was making me all confused. What did she want?

  She sat down on the plastic chair opposite me and looked at me the way the Mason Home shrink had sometimes looked at me. As if by staring into my eyes she thought she could see into my brain. I didn’t like it.

  “You must be wondering who I am and what I’m doing here.” She had a nice, calm voice, I had to admit. She talked the way the anchorwomen on TV talk, not like the people who live on Queen Wilhelmina Street. And not at all like the guys in here. “Or were you aware of my existence? Have you known all this time?”

  I glanced at her face. She had dark eyebrows and eyelashes caked with black mascara. Like Rosita used to.

  “I think I’m your sister.” Her voice was shaking.

  It took a while for me to find my voice. This didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be. This woman was crazy, obviously.

  “Could you say something, please?”

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “So tell me, what’s your mother’s name?”

  “Agatha Antonia Boelens,” I recited.