Pavel & I

by Dan Vyleta

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘Cigarette.’

  ‘There’s a pack in my coat pocket. I can’t get to it in this sardine tin.’

  She reached over and ran her fingers through the mink until she found his pocket. His elbow brushed her face as he shifted gears.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  She straightened up, opened the packet and lit a smoke. The monkey wrinkled its nose in disgust.

  ‘I talked to your wife,’ she said abruptly.

  ‘When?’

  ‘I don’t know. A week back. She called me your “hoor”.’

  ‘Did she? What a splendid word. She must have it from a novel. It’s shocking what women will read these days.’

  ‘Is she still in the house?’

  ‘No. She left before I got back. I hardly saw her at all.’

  He turned to her then with half an eye. Let go of the gear stick and placed his hand upon her thigh, gently, almost shyly, one chubby hand, and the monkey jeering in his lap.

  ‘I missed you, Sonia,’ he whispered. ‘It’s been ten long days and I haven’t had a single fuck.’

  Here we go, she thought and didn’t move.

  ‘I won’t,’ she said, her voice level.

  He removed his hand, put it back on the stick.

  ‘We’ll see.’

  It was hard to tell whether or not he was angry.

  ‘I haven’t seen Pavel since I got back. We should say hello to him later. Peterson tells me he’s taken to my wife’s cooking.’

  She didn’t reply, and he gently steered the car off the road and down his villa’s driveway.

  ‘Quite frankly, I can’t believe you fell for him. I thought you were immune to such folly. Counted on it, to be frank.’ He got out, cradling the monkey, and walked around the car to open the door for her. ‘It’s been ever so disappointing.’

  Sonia didn’t respond. He walked her to the front door, then up to his study. His words turned in her. The thing was, the disappointment was not altogether his. Once upon a time she had thought she was immune to folly as well.

  No sooner had the two figures disappeared inside the house than an engine was coaxed into a coughing start behind a wall of bushes some thirty yards down the road. A car soon emerged, leaving behind a pile of loose shrubbery and an empty bottle of vodka. It did not turn on its lights until it had made it past the first bend, then went roaring towards the nearest public phone, located in a hotel lobby a good mile down the road. There, surrounded by British officers who had requisitioned the hotel for the evening in order to celebrate a subaltern’s twenty-first, the driver stood in one of a row of booths, trying to dial the number. He had trouble with it because his fingers were well and truly frozen. It had been a long wait. After six or seven attempts he finally succeeded. The voice that answered was Russian. ‘Yes?’ it asked.

  ‘It’s the Colonel. He’s back from his outing. And he brought the woman.’

  ‘Good. We’ll be right over.’

  When I heard the Colonel’s car pull up in the villa’s driveway, I beat a hasty retreat. I jumped out of Fosko’s chair, nearly knocking over the glass of brandy I had poured myself but did not have the heart to consume. As I stood, stamping life into my cold feet, I noticed that I’d left the warm imprint of my buttocks on the chair’s buckskin seat. At the room’s centre the clothes iron was still smoking on its perch, the whole of its surface gleaming bright pink now. I rushed to unplug it; wished there was time to hide the glass and drum my arse out of the Colonel’s leather; open the window and freshen the air. By then I could already hear his key in the door; heard her cross the threshold with the double click of woman’s heels. It was all I could do to race down the stairs and hide out in the kitchen while they traversed the living room. Then, another two steps and I was back in the basement, at the top of the stairs, that is, resting my back against the door. I don’t really know why I was so reluctant to run into the Colonel; I doubt he would’ve begrudged my being a witness to his evening’s triumph. You might say it was a loss of nerve. Whatever was going to happen was to some small degree my fault. Perhaps Pavel had rubbed off on me and I was growing ‘a conscience’. Had he known, it might well have pleased him. I was about to voice the thought when I caught sight of him. Good God, he looked forlorn: a bearded Monte Cristo, grubby hands buried in his hair. The electric light stood mirrored in his eyes, making them impossible to read.

  ‘Is she safe?’ he called to me as I made my way down the stairs. His voice was hoarse. I wondered had he been shouting.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Don’t play with me, Peterson. Is she safe?’ I sat down at my table and rubbed the back of my neck.

  ‘How the hell would I know?’

  ‘You promised, Peterson. Remember that you promised.’

  He spoke so agitatedly, flecks of spittle carried all the way over to my desk.

  I counted the minutes. Literally counted them out, my eyes fixed on my wristwatch. Pavel was talking, howling in the background, but I ignored him. I almost got up after three, but then settled back and counted out a further five. With every second it became clearer to me what I would do. By the end, it seemed inevitable to me, the feeling that sneaks over you just as you lean into your first kiss. Man does not get closer to providence than that.

  ‘Pavel,’ I said, and got up to unlock his cage. ‘You must understand that I cannot let you go. You must understand this.’

  I stepped into his cage to explain myself.

  ‘Where is Sonia?’ he croaked at me.

  ‘Upstairs. With the Colonel.’

  ‘Is she alive?’

  ‘I think,’ I said, and laid a hand upon his shoulder, ‘I think we should play some chess now. A nice game of chess, I think. Let’s see whether I’ve got any better.’

  I turned my face for a moment, to locate the board.

  This was when he threw himself at me, and rammed a fist into the side of my throat.

  But I didn’t tell it right. I didn’t tell you how we stood, my hand on his shoulder, sweat on our brows, coming to terms with the moment. I remember shifting my weight just before he lashed out at me, treading a cockroach underfoot. It made a popping sound. I might have missed it, but Pavel noticed; started, one eye on my boot. Pavel, hoarse from howling, his hand already crumpled in a fist, and yet he noticed. It was almost shameful.

  We both knew what would happen next. It was as though it was written into the moment. In truth, I hardly felt the punch. I went down, a little too easily perhaps, and lay limp while he wrestled gun and keys from my belt. He locked me in the cage, took the safety off the gun, and ran up the stairs. Somewhere, upstairs, Sonia was fighting for her life. I wonder whether this meant he expected to find her rutting, or dead.

  Pavel closed the door behind him, and I closed my eye, struggling to follow the sound of his tread as he entered the house.

  The house was larger than he had imagined. He forced himself to search it slowly, methodically, telling himself that nothing would be worse than to fail her now, be caught by a chance guard or a dog trained to maul. It cost him, this patience; he bit his cheeks bloody under its gag. Already, he was shivering. The upstairs was much colder than the cellar, and Pavel’d gone prowling in his undershirt. The air, to him, smelled impossibly sweet. It spelled out to him that, nine days into captivity, and despite his attempts at getting clean, he must stink to high heaven.

  Pavel stepped out of the basement and found the kitchen and larder, some stew on the stove, ready to be re-heated. The two doors at either end gave on to hallways, one leading to the front door, the other deeper into the house. He chose the latter, turned left into a drawing room. It held a leather sofa, an armchair and footrest, the leather’s brown clashing with a red paisley-patterned blanket. To one side stood a cabinet loaded with an old-fashioned gramophone and a sizeable collection of classical music. Vivaldi, Bach, Pachelbel; tokens of a love for the baroque. A corner ashtray cradled the butt of a single half-smoked cigar. N
ext door, to the right, a library of sorts; German law books, dusty, and a corner devoted to Agatha Christie in translation. On the wall, the study of a dark-skinned nude, somewhat sub-Gauguin, her nipples red against a tranquil sea. Underfoot, a Persian carpet, well worn. Another door down, the family dining room. A polished oak table, set for a lonely diner and abandoned. A fresh napkin made of starched cotton. Walnut cupboards lined the wall, and a display cabinet with china. Through the bay window there was a view of the garden, smothered in snow; pines around the fringes, reaching for the moon. A rectangle of light was shining down from an upstairs window. Upon this gleaming stage, a shadow of movement, impossibly enlarged. Pavel, shivering now, chewing bloody patience.

  He backtracked, found the staircase off a door in the drawing room. Got confused about where he had seen the light, and stumbled into the upstairs bathroom; patches of water on the floor. Soap shavings and pubic hairs ringed the plughole. Next to it, the master bedroom. It had been slept in, though only one half of the bed showed signs of use: a slender imprint, long, dark hairs upon the pillow. In the guest room to its right the mattress stood stripped and showed the dark ring of a pee stain, moist where someone had tried to wash it out. Another cot stood close by, still clad in its linen. At the end of the corridor yet another door – closed. A sliver of light underneath, and the stench of old tobacco. Pavel put his ear to it. The door was padded in leather. It cradled his lonely cheek.

  Pavel stood, caressing the door, and heard precisely nothing.

  She watched it as though it was happening to someone else, impressed by its colours and sense of the absurd. Fosko had walked her up to his study without comment. Had turned on the lights and let loose the monkey. It sat on the ground for a moment, sniffing the air, its nostrils dilating as it sorted through its flavours. It clambered up the ironing board, drawn by the residual heat; sat chattering, paws grabbing at the column of steam. The next moment, it leapt to the ground, interposed a cartwheel, took hold of the curtain and pulled itself up to the windowsill, before returning to the Colonel, fawning at his feet. Both Fosko and Sonia stood and watched its shenanigans. When it wrapped the Colonel’s boot into a tight embrace they almost smiled.

  Fosko walked over to the window and opened it an inch; stooped to straighten a corner of carpet, then returned to the table and picked up a glass of brandy that had been poured but left undrunk. Sonia studied him intently. She used the wall mirror, half-veiled in condensation. The Colonel stood framed in ornamental gilt, from chubby chest to placid chin. There was no hurry to his movement, no sign of urgency at all, nothing that would divulge his plans for her. Sonia called to her mind the words he’d spoken in the car; the hand upon her thigh. He had made her an offer. She had answered it. ‘I won’t,’ she had told him. She wondered whether it was true.

  He seemed to guess her thoughts. Stood with his back turned to her, pouring the brandy into a plant pot, the plant yellow and sickly, and launched into speech.

  ‘You know, Sonia,’ he said, and stroked a withered leaf between thumb and finger. ‘I have always thought of you as the perfect mate. I’m not just talking physically, though you have a rare gift there, too. Angular yet supple, and an arse-cleft like a painting.’

  He tore off the leaf and watched it sail to the ground.

  ‘It’s more than that, though. Something in your attitude towards the act. A rare enthusiasm. Your face, of course, says you hate it, and most likely you genuinely do. But your body, Sonia. Your body loves the touch. It gives itself over, shamelessly. I have never had anything quite like it.’

  He bent to one knee, opened the door of a corner wardrobe with a little golden key, and reached into it with both hands.

  ‘I’ve always wondered whether you owned up to it. Being born for love. My wife, by comparison, is as frigid as a floor plank, though she tries, the darling. Good God, how she tries. It is ever so grotesque.’

  He straightened up, lifting a large metal box, and carried it over to the table. A lens and a set of reels protruded from its angularity. A plaque marked it as army issue. Fosko lined up the machine with the wall behind the desk, placing its front feet on a book to elevate them slightly. The monkey launched itself at the projector and began dismantling one of its reels. Fosko swept it off the table with a disapproving tut.

  ‘Behave.’

  Then he turned his attention back to Sonia.

  ‘You must be pining to see Pavel,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we can get to that later tonight.’ His hand reached into his coat pocket and fished out the reel of microfilm. ‘Really, it’s just a matter of finding an accommodation.’

  He licked his fingertips, caught hold of the end of the film and slowly, methodically, began unreeling its first yard.

  ‘We are, after all, reasonable people, you and I.’

  She long saw it coming. The moment the film would come apart in his hands and he’d realize it had been cut in half. For a second he was simply undone: puzzled, slack-jawed, ribbons of film trailing from each of his hands. All the colour drained from his face. He hunched as though in seizure, the mink riding him like a bitch. Sonia made a mistake then.

  She smiled.

  A proper smile, teeth and all. She imagined she even broke into dimples. He saw it, saw her happy, here upon the ashes of her defeat, and threw back his shoulders.

  ‘Where?’ he barked. ‘Who?’

  Her joy dissolved in fear. She swallowed the smile; cast off the dimples.

  Shook her head.

  Retreated.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know? The film’s in pieces and you don’t bloody know? Sonia,’ he whispered. ‘One of these days you’ll break my fucking heart.’

  Said it and launched himself at her, a whale of a man, skin so pale you’d swear he’d died underwater.

  She jumped to the side, desperate to avoid him, looking for shelter behind the ironing board’s flimsy frame. He did not bother going round it. Instead he took hold of its wood and threw it to the side, ramming one corner into the wall. The iron went flying. She remembered watching it, following its arc with her eyes – a lifetime of fear of fire taking hold of her. Sonia stood paralysed. The fat man, he lunged again.

  She almost felt him slamming into her; the hurt of her spine as it caught the windowpane. Fat fingers tight around her windpipe, a knee parting her crotch; his big mouth chewing her up, literally.

  He never made it, though. Something caught him short. The monkey. It had watched their dance with mounting excitement and chose that moment to make a run for its master’s boots; had a good mind to mate with them, in fact, judging by its erect manhood, a pink little worm that had screwed itself out of its fur. A twenty-pound monkey latching itself onto polished leather, a whale growing out of its shaft. It should hardly have been enough to slow him down.

  It cost Fosko his balance, though. A fat man in motion, and a monkey on his boot; his arms missing the woman and running headlong for the window now, snow crystals livid upon its panes. Trying to avoid collision, he threw his weight to the left.

  Slipped on a corner of carpet, fine Persian silk.

  Overbalanced.

  And fell.

  For a fat man, he hardly made a sound at all.

  It took her a while to realize he was not getting up again. She stood still and counted the seconds. The only movement in the room was the monkey, screwing Fosko’s boot for all it was worth. Then, in the total icy quiet, there issued a moan. Sonia cast around, found a paperweight on the desk, and walked over to the fallen giant. Out of the side of his skull, a good inch above the ear, grew the pyramidal body of his clothes iron. The blood poured from the wound and congealed upon its steaming surface. It stank of sausage.

  The fat man wasn’t dead. His eyes stood open, his lips were moving, then one hand, searching his body for hurt.

  ‘Please,’ he mumbled. ‘Please.’

  Sonia retched and was violently sick down the front of the silk blouse the Colonel had bought for her the
day she’d agreed to be his whore.

  Pavel eavesdropped and heard precisely nothing. It was clear to him that whatever had happened, he’d arrived late. The knowledge of it sickened him. He reached for the doorknob and slowly swung open the door. All of a sudden, the gun in his hand felt out of place. It made as little sense as if he’d come carrying roses.

  Behind the door, the Colonel’s study. An icy draught issuing from an open window. On Pavel’s right, a desk and chair; a projector set up to illuminate the wall; a reel of film unravelled across the ground. On his left, the Colonel. Lying prone on one side; his legs moving, slowly, sluggishly, walking his body in a circle around his head’s pivot. It was as though it had been nailed to the floor. The floorboards slick with fast-cooling blood, and steaming. Crouching to one side, high heels planted in the Colonel’s effluvia, jacket and blouse torn off, and greenish bile discolouring her skirt’s chequered front: Sonia; crouching in a black lace bra, her hands and arms smeared with blood,tears in her mascara, and a rhythm to her body as though she was rocking it asleep. She, too, was steaming in the cold of the room. Steaming from her mouth and from the blood on her arms; from her armpits and the sweat upon her brow. It clung to her like a shroud.

  ‘Sonia,’ he said.

  She didn’t seem to hear him. Instead she started screaming. He dropped the gun, sat down next to her, and shushed her like a frightened dog. Meanwhile, next to them, the Colonel kept on making his rounds.

  Already Pavel had begun to ask himself what they should do with his corpse.