by Tua Harno
He looked at Sarah, who nodded. Martti rubbed her labia with the lubricant coming from inside her and shoved his finger into her, where it was so much hotter than Sarah’s mouth. Sarah crinkled her eyes shut, as if trying to remember something. Martti stopped, but Sarah’s eyes popped open. “Keep going.”
She reached for the waistband of Martti’s jeans. She undid the buttons and stroked his cock through his underwear. Her fingers couldn’t quite reach, but he still got hard. Martti stripped off his jeans and underwear and lowered himself onto Sarah. Her body grew tense from the weight, as if she were steeling herself to bear it. Martti tried to hold himself up on his elbows, but Sarah drew him closer from the waist. She guided his cock into her; it felt as if he were entering the only flexible, receptive part of her.
Sarah clamped her lips down on Martti’s ear. Something about it repulsed Martti and he raised his head. Disbelief and tenderness flashed across Sarah’s face. Martti raked a hand through her hair, saw her nipples chafing against the edge of her bra. Martti tried to shift the cup aside, but when Sarah reached back to unclasp the bra, Martti stopped her.
Martti’s grip on her hair tightened when he could feel that he was about to cum. He pulled out his cock and let the semen spurt onto the sheets between her legs. Then he climbed up from the bed, the covers dragging along with him and falling to the floor. Sarah’s panties were around one of her ankles.
“You need to take a shower?” Martti asked.
“You go first,” Sarah said. She sounded sober, spoke in a normal voice.
Martti wanted to take a shower, but the thought crossed his mind that wet hair would give him away to Eva more obviously than Sarah’s smell on him. He closed the bathroom door and washed his half-stiff cock in the sink, cursed the separate hot and cold taps. Was he really going to ask Eva if he could sleep on her couch in this state?
Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at the phone in her hand. “I don’t know what I have to do, but I have to do something.”
Martti didn’t know what she was talking about.
“You’re not leaving, are you? I’m the one who’s supposed to go.” Sarah made as if she were getting up from the bed, but listlessly.
“You don’t have keys to your room,” Martti said.
“How Freudian is that?” Sarah chuckled.
The laughter felt liberating to Martti. At least she wouldn’t cry so hard again tonight. While Martti was tying his shoes, Sarah shut herself in the bathroom.
“Just stay here, Sarah. Do you need to be somewhere in the morning?” Martti asked through the door.
“I’ll wake up. I never oversleep, no matter how hungover I am,” Sarah answered. “Thanks, though.”
Martti heard the shower turn on.
Martti exited his room; the air outside was fresh. He leaned against the railing and listened to the camp. The noise from the mess patio didn’t carry this far. The bleary light of the streetlamps glowed between the dongas; a transformer stood in the middle of the courtyard with its signs about voltage and danger.
Martti was reluctant to return to the patio, wondered if Eva had gone back to her own room by now. She must have, even though some nights she left Lily sleeping alone for several hours at a time.
Martti felt as though a belt were around his chest, tightening to the last hole. He pictured Sarah in her bra and her jeans, and wished he could think what had happened halfway dressed hadn’t happened at all.
I didn’t make any promises to Eva, Martti thought, fully aware he wouldn’t be able to wriggle free of how he was feeling. What had happened with Sarah would remain an unpleasant if perhaps harmless unspoken thing between them, and Martti recognized the pattern. This would be the first unspoken thing, and the ones that followed would grow out of this one. Why did he always do this? Even now he had a hard time feeling what he had done was wrong. Maybe he was simply incapable of feeling intensely enough.
The patio bar was still humming with voices and life when Martti stepped in to buy wine. They didn’t sell hard liquor at the mess—you had to bring it in with you, and Martti hadn’t packed a single whiskey bottle for this assignment. Since he’d been thinking about Sanna, he’d packed gym shoes and shorts. And the Hemingway that waited in his backpack, unopened.
A few scattered parties sat at the tables. Martti looked around and considered where to plant himself. It would feel best to sit alone and collect his thoughts, or let the wine warm and soften them, but then he saw Jake sitting at the far end of the patio.
Martti took a seat in front of him. Jake blinked and looked past Martti’s eyes. The thought crossed Martti’s mind that maybe Jake had received some bad news from home, too. It was unusual finding him sitting here.
“I was just having a chat with Eva. She doesn’t get what kind of game you’re playing with that shrink.”
“I’m not playing anything. Sarah was drunk, she needed someone to put her to bed.”
Jake looked at the ground, where the yard lights formed even circles.
“Did you know that Eva’s ex-husband used to beat her?”
Martti hadn’t heard this directly from Eva, but he’d assumed there might be something of the sort in her past.
“Not just a couple of slaps across the face. We’re talking cutting and burning, everything you can imagine, plus some things you can’t. Totally fucked, mate.” Jake turned toward Martti, his feet shuffling. “Maybe she didn’t dare tell you.”
“Why do you say that? Why wouldn’t she?”
“Maybe she wouldn’t be good enough for you anymore.” Jake’s feet didn’t slow their agitated beating.
Martti blew out through his lips.
Jake shook his head. “Fuck, I’m a sad cunt.”
“There’s nothing pitiful about liking someone,” Martti said.
The two of them sat there in silence. They could hear benches being dragged, first toward and then away from tables, glass bottles clinking against each other and thudding hollowly against tabletops, hardened hands wiping down the wooden surfaces. Stories were being drawn on the tables, invisible lines and explanations, the road ran here, the dig was this close and then! Listening almost made Martti happy. But the voices also grumbled, low, in self-pity and disgust. The things that were impossible to put into words turned to phlegm, rattling in their throats.
Somewhere someone would come up with an alcohol-free mining community, once robots had replaced everyone except the people who programmed them.
“You want another?” Jake asked.
“You having one?”
“Yup.”
Jake came back to the table with a full bottle of wine and poured them both a glass. The silence continued. Jake intermittently rubbed his eyes and seemed to stay hidden behind his hands for long stretches. Sitting in silence suited Martti just fine, although something about Jake’s presence made him uneasy. Sarah would have been a good person for Jake to talk to right now, whatever it was the kid was stewing over.
Martti realized he had thought Jake’s childlike nature would protect him, but the kid was over thirty. How often did he stare off into space? And why had he turned down leave? He couldn’t be short on cash. He owned several homes around Perth, where prices were constantly rising. The kid was getting richer by the minute, just sitting there.
“You come up with any new stories lately?” Martti asked.
“I think I’m going to head to bed,” Jake said, not waiting for any protests.
Martti turned to watch him walk across the patio. A current of air slipped under his yellow shirt, sending it billowing at the back. The tables had emptied except for a handful of men.
Martti turned back to gaze into the darkness. Now he had space to himself, peace. But there was no getting away from the stars, and his hands had clenched into fists under the table. Why wasn’t the intensity wearing off? That had been his and Sanna’s greatest fear, that everything would fade, and now he was hoping it would. He didn’t have the strength to carry somet
hing this powerful anymore.
He wasn’t the only one.
26
SANNA
Sanna didn’t know if one hour had passed, or a day. She was sitting in the same spot, starting another day. Is this yesterday’s tea or today’s?
“Good morning.”
Ralda’s smile was less warm. “We’re staying here no matter what.”
“Until when?”
“There’s no date, no goal. The days will come to us, we’ll be here.”
“Why?” Sanna asked, although she already knew the answer: so they’d learn how to live that way. You could only learn it by accepting your lot and your place. “But I can’t give birth here.”
“Babies have always been born in the outback. I told you how it happens, how the umbilical cord is left until it drops off by itself, how it’s wrapped around the neck and allowed to dry.”
Sanna shook her head. “No. I’m not going to give birth in the desert, and I don’t want to live this way. I want to go back.”
For a moment Sanna waited to see if this was the reaction Ralda was looking for, if this was the thing she’d been hoping to get out of Sanna by hammering away at her tenacity. But Ralda didn’t relent. They would remain in the desert.
The next day, a fresh pot of tea.
Sanna was done caring about manners; she rummaged through Ralda’s backpack.
“You don’t even have our phones! Where are they?”
Ralda didn’t answer.
“Or flares. What will you do if one of us is injured? Learn to accept it?”
Ralda looked at her with her riveting, hard eyes, their inscrutable gaze. There was no mysticism, no secret. There was Ralda’s will and Sanna’s will, and both of them could not be realized. Sanna collapsed onto a dried stump and cried. Ralda came over to her and hugged her, holding Sanna’s head in her hands.
“Sanna. I’m the one who decides. I’ll take responsibility.”
That’s what Sanna had wanted, for someone else to take responsibility for her life, ever since Mom had lowered her head to Sanna’s lap, but no more.
“Not anymore, Ralda. Let’s go. I have to get out of here.”
But Ralda refused.
Sanna had heard that some women went crazy while they were expecting. She tried to examine her reasoning. Was it possible she was being paranoid? But there was no proof of reality other than the repetitive days and the fact that Ralda refused to lead her out of the desert. Time gnawed at her.
“Your relationship to time will change,” Ralda had promised her, and so it had. Sanna was afraid time and her strength would run out, the way the sand in an hourglass vanished, faster toward the end.
When Sanna saw Ralda at the campfire the next morning, her face behind the sparks, she knew what had happened, but she still ran up to the flames. The tatters of the torn map were shriveling up in the burning branches.
Sanna followed Ralda when the other woman started off—even though she thought Ralda was taking her deeper into that place she didn’t want to go, into darkness. She didn’t know how she would survive in the desert without Ralda, without her ability to find them water. But I’m just as likely to die with her as without her, she thought.
“You won’t die in childbirth,” Ralda told her at midday. “How do you think they lived out here in the desert for 60,000 years?”
Sanna had no idea. She knew herself, knew her city-born body and mind. This environment was alien to her, hostile.
By evening, they stood at the foot of a rock. Ralda said they didn’t have to worry about windy days anymore. The beam of the flashlight showed a chink in the wall. Strong stone walls, their home.
“I thought caves were where the black winds lived,” Sanna said.
Ralda started climbing up the rock face.
“I never thought you’d do me harm.”
“Be patient. You won’t feel that way for long,” Ralda said and tried to touch her.
Sanna stepped backward on the narrow path, almost slipped and fell. She caught a glimpse of Ralda’s face. Would Ralda have reached out a hand to stop Sanna from falling? She wasn’t sure.
Day had dawned, and light reached the front of the tent, warming Sanna’s toes. The other end of the tent was still in shadow, the air on her face cool and damp.
She wondered what mood she would wake up in. She remembered how little Sanna tried to guess while sitting at the edge of the bed: Which foot was the wrong one? Ville’s advice was Land on both at the same time, dummy. How she strained and felt one heel hit the fringe of the rag rug before the other. It was going to be another Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day for Sanna.
Childhood felt like a dream.
This was real. She was lying in a tent erected in a cave, in the middle of the desert. She heard no movement outside, and for a second she wondered where Ralda was. Ralda hadn’t spent the night inside the tent.
She wanted to subject both of them to her tests, study what would happen to them over the months. “This is the most effective treatment for depression,” Ralda had assured her. “Six months and you’ll be a completely different person.”
But I don’t want to be. I want to be the person I am, I want that totally average, aggravating, sad life, my annoying Mom and aloof Dad, my cocky brother, and above all this child, this human conceived out of a lie and desperation. I want to see if life will work with Martti. I want to find out what it is to love someone so improbable.
I want to go back.
Sanna had carved these sentences for Ralda, laid them out at her feet the way a street merchant displays his wooden beads and purses: Please, take them all. I can even give them to you and I won’t lose them. This is my truth, and I can’t lose it.
Ralda had just continued cleaning the sand out of their supplies. She lit a candle to the people of the cave.
Sanna didn’t want to look at the paintings. She had seen their white faces and gaping eyes in the light of the campfire. A crowd populated the entire western wall.
“I told you we wouldn’t be alone.” Ralda bowed so deeply her nose touched the ground. “I found this cave as a child. No one else knows about it.”
Sanna turned away. There was no view down the cliff. In the crackle of the firelight she could make out the opening, but other than that, the world had shrunk to the size of the cave. This lone illuminated spot amid infinite darkness. They could have been in outer space, on a distant star.
Perhaps she would learn to love Ralda, her captor, if there were no one else in the world.
But there was someone else inside her, and she wanted to show this child the whole world, not just this warm, dry refuge where potable water trickled down the back wall.
“You said six months? Why six months, specifically?”
“It’s how long the rite of passage lasts. But you might need more.”
If Sanna weren’t going to give birth within the next six months, could she imagine staying? No, she couldn’t. She wanted Martti, she even absurdly hoped she would finish her thesis and continue her research. This was insane. She missed her own life, the one she had considered escaping through death.
She glanced at Ralda hopefully. Perhaps she was just testing her?
“But people will start looking for us!”
“Not me,” Ralda said. “It’s not unheard of for me to spend a year or two in the field. I’ve done it in the past.”
Sanna guessed she would be missed sooner, but not necessarily in time. The only one who would miss her immediately would be Martti. But what did he think about her now that he hadn’t heard from her in weeks?
“And that miner of yours stopped sending messages when you told him you didn’t want to receive them anymore.”
Sanna felt the horror and the sadness in her throat when she realized what Ralda had done.
Forgive me.
“It’s for your own good. You’ll see before long. And the mining company needed to be informed you wouldn’t be coming back. We don’t want them
blowing up and mining the last of these sacred places, do we?”
Sanna swallowed her tears. She hated this person. And how she had admired Ralda, her self-confidence, her erudition.
“But what about my mother? She gets worried easily.”
Ralda nodded. “I thought about that, but I decided it would take her a couple of months to take action.”
Or longer, Sanna thought. Mom wouldn’t muster the nerve to call anyone, least of all Dad. And Sanna didn’t dare hope for anything as far as Dad was concerned. Especially if Dad thought his daughter hadn’t finished her thesis.
“We’re over three weeks’ walk from any habitation. Of course you can try your luck finding water.”
Sanna closed her eyes. Ralda knew she couldn’t even kill herself anymore. Threatening to do so was pointless. “What if there’s an accident?”
Ralda looked at her, knew Sanna was wondering which appendage she could do without. What if she cut off an ear, a finger, a foot?
“Wouldn’t you go for help then?”
“It happens, people have accidents. We’ll manage the best we can.”
“But why me exactly?”
Ralda let out a bored snort.
“I never thought you’d be so recalcitrant. But maybe that’s part of this. Old habits die hard.”
“Ralda, please take us home. I’ll give you anything.”
“Anything at all? Really, Sanna?”
“Yes, whatever you want, as long as no harm comes to the baby.”
“So you have your limits.”
“Of course I do! What are you thinking?”
Sanna didn’t understand what they were talking about anymore. Did Ralda want her baby?
“I don’t want to sleep with you, Sanna, and when the time comes, I’ll help you give birth to a healthy baby. I’m on your side when it comes to that,” Ralda said. “I will not harm you.”