by Karen Runge
“Yeah. Come on.”
Their boots squeaked through the fine layer of fresh snow, the new fall still drifting over their heads. Thickening. Neven rummaged through his pockets and brought out a set of keys, still shiny, gleaming, unblemished. Padlock keys. Daniel knew by the shape. They made their way off the footpath and up into the small section of empty land between the back of the building and the perimeter wall.
The narrow concrete shed waited in winter quiet. The snow on its roof was lit with a low amber glow, cast by the few scattered lights still shining out from the windows above. Lights left on by night owls, or discrete sleepers who preferred to dream in daylight. Insomniacs pacing empty rooms. Secret lives. Unseen eyes moving around the apartments, their locked compartments, slippered feet shushing on grimy tile. It gave Daniel the sense that perhaps he and Neven were being watched.
But of course, in a city like this, everybody watches. Everybody looks. And nobody sees a thing.
The mouth of the shed was closed off with a sheet of chain-link. The space beyond it was vacuous, lightless. The gate, a steel frame netted with chain, was invisible from a distance, camouflaged against the fencing. With no light inside the shed, it was impossible to see beyond it.
“What is this place?” Daniel asked, surveying it.
“Nothing anymore,” said Neven. “Nobody knows about it.”
Stillness descended. Snowflakes the size of pennies joined. Soft as paper. The kiss of ice. Daniel brushed it off his nose. “It’s fucking cold,” he said.
“It’s not so bad.” Neven slid the key into the padlock and unhooked it. He yanked at the gate and it came free with an icy crack, swinging open with a brief metallic scream.
A sound came from within the black. Something that was almost words, the whisper of a moan.
Ada?
Daniel’s heart surged, skipped into frenzy. “That’s her? She’s in there?”
Neven stood aside for him. “Quick.”
They slipped inside. Neven swung the gate shut behind him. “I set a gas lantern down here somewhere.”
Neven vanished ahead. He took two steps in and Daniel was alone, staring, uncomprehending, into a darkness so total he could no longer see the condensation on his breath. It was warmer out of the wind but the chill air clung to him, teasing its way under the cuffs of his sleeves and pants legs. Beneath his clothes, he felt the hairs on his limbs rising. His scalp tightened.
I can’t see anything in here. Not even my breath. Not even that. But I am still here. And I am still breathing. Aren’t I?
Beyond the wall of black, Neven was moving around. Daniel followed the sounds of his steps, of his boots crushing gravel and scuffing against rough cement.
There was the sound of something heavy being dragged, moved, dropped. Metallic clang. It was obscenely loud in the close space. Each echo and vibration cracked against the walls, sending jolts down his nerves.
Daniel pulled his gloves off with his teeth and jammed them into his back pocket. His bare fingers stung then quickly numbed. He wanted his hands free, an impulse he wasn’t sure made much sense. Something instinctive, maybe. Telling him to be ready.
What am I doing here? What’s going to happen here?
At the question, his stomach twisted inside of him. Like he wanted to cry. Like he wanted to laugh. Like something inside of him was trying to break free. He choked. “Man, I don’t know if I can do this…sober.”
“Do something real for once in your fucking life,” Neven said from his end of the darkness, his voice hard, edged with an old fury. It echoed, raw and harsh and impossibly loud.
For a moment Daniel felt a quiver of unease.
Neven? Not Neven. There’s an understanding between us. Neven’s just like me. Isn’t he?
There was the tick-tick of metal on metal and a burst of light chased the shadows to the corners. It dimmed to a steady glow. The lantern was a large camping light. Heavy, by the looks of it. Neven was crouched over it, his face impossibly white in its glare. His profile was stark, pale against black. When he turned to look at Daniel, his eyes were obscured by shadow.
Daniel looked away from him. “Where is she, exactly?” he asked.
Neven got to his feet and stepped away. And Daniel saw the cage. It was set against the far wall, a hulking frame of tight wire, a sheet of tarp rolled up on top of it in a neat coil. It was a large cage, the kind used for transporting animals. Stepping closer and past the light, Daniel saw there was a girl locked inside. She was crouching, her hair hanging in her face, her knees to shoulders, her arms wrapped around her shins. The cage was barely large enough to contain her. The light from the lantern caught her skin and gave it a warm glow, though Daniel knew she had to be freezing, had to be hurting. Naked like that. Confined like that. Her muscles cramping, her spine aching in its rigid curve. He waited for her to exhale, hoping to see a puff of breath. None came.
Ada?
Daniel wished he could see her face.
“You know she’s pregnant, right?” Neven asked.
“Yes. I know.”
“She asked me to punch her in the stomach. She asked me to punch her as hard as I wanted. She asked me for help. She came to me, you understand? She wanted me to punch her. Hard as I wanted.”
“That sounds like her.”
Neven frowned in the semi-darkness. His dark eyebrows drawn tight. That unreadable expression. “You don’t mind?”
“I don’t know if I mind. She was leaving me. Should I?”
“She was leaving you, and she came to me. You know that? I think she loves me.” He paused. “I think I love her. But what about you? Do you love her?”
Daniel winced at the phrase. He’d never said it to her; she’d never said it to him. This had made sense, before. It wasn’t an emotion he understood, and he hadn’t thought she understood it much herself. In its own way, wasn’t that why he’d thought she was so perfect for him? So right?
“I don’t think it ever really worked like that,” Daniel said. “Between her and me.”
“That’s a shame. I thought you two were onto something. You told me ‘every great love story involves at least a little blood.’ Or something like that. Remember?”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, that’s true. I believe it. It’s a kind of…love.”
“So you do love her.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Not now. She wanted to kill my baby. She wanted to leave me. I haven’t figured out yet how I feel about that. Not very good, I think.”
Neven dropped his hands to his sides. Something that might have been hope drained from his face. He turned to the cage, the movements of his feet louder in the tight space. “What do you want to do with her?” His tone was desolate.
“I told you. I don’t know yet. What about you?”
The girl in the cage twitched, shivered. She still hadn’t made a sound.
“Me?” Neven paused. “I want to give her everything she ever wanted.”
Daniel stepped back. “By all means.”
From across the space of dark and light, Daniel saw Neven’s lips form a smile.
– FIFTY-SIX –
What do you do with a woman who can’t love? Not herself, not another. Not the life inside her. You teach her to love. You remind her of gratitude. The benefits of closeness. The pure, beauteous ecstasy that exists in reprieve.
He wanted that light in her eyes. That look of something deep within her breaking, that look of surrender, of discovering the joy beneath it. Thick as syrup, rich as blood. Binding.
He touched her fingertips through the bars. Bare skin, cold flesh, her nails split and broken from clawing at the cage, from pulling at the bars. Her hands smeared brown with dried blood. Cuts on her palms and fingers.
“You don’t have to do this to yourself,” he told her. He told her many times. “I’ll come back for you. Every night. You know I will. But you have to give up while I’m gone. You have to realise what I am to you.”
He layered t
he cage with blankets before he pulled the tarp back over it. She wouldn’t be warm, but she wouldn’t freeze. A compromise between comfort and torment. What his father had done for his mother had been much the same.
And I understand it now, he realised. I thought I understood it before, but I didn’t, not really. How could I have, without the experience myself? I know why he was so sorry, every time. I’m sorry too. Even now. But this is what they mean when they say “cruel to be kind.” She’s saving me. I’m saving her. It’ll be okay. It will.
He pressed wet sponges against the bars and let her suck them dry. There was beauty in this, the feeding. His father hadn’t done that for his mother. Neven wished that he had because this was another level to this beautiful thing, this thing so terrible it could only be powerful. The cage, the care, the silence and the love building just beneath.
When I let her out, it’ll be…she’ll be…
He tried not to imagine it because his excitement ran too deep and he didn’t want it spoiled with fantasy when the time finally arrived.
He spent the nights with her. Wrapped up in his coat, leaning against the wall beside the cage, his wrists resting on his knees. This too was more than his father had done. He rolled back the tarp on the side facing him and peeled back the blankets so that she could see him, and he could just make out the contours of her face, the shadows of her eyes. The stench that came from the cage was unimaginable. Dead skin, sweat, urine. And something metallic and foul, like rotten blood. But he breathed through his mouth and made himself ignore it.
The worse it is now, the better it will be later.
If you love someone, you make sacrifices. You sacrifice yourself. You sacrifice her. And then something better takes its place.
He touched her cold fingers, caught between the bars of the cage. When he felt her tremble, he believed it. Their truth. His and hers.
Ada. You and me.
Her breathing was a little tight, a little low. Sometimes he thought he heard a whistle between rasps, a song coming from somewhere deep in her chest.
He talked to her. He told her all the things about himself he’d thought of saying but hadn’t. Had wanted to say before but couldn’t. He watched her face to make sure she wasn’t sleeping. Her eyes—glassy, stark—stared back.
Sometimes, in moments of silence, Neven thought he heard footsteps. People, moving around outside. Sometimes heavy booted feet squeaking through the snow. Sometimes lighter, slower, a woman moving cautiously through the stillness of late night. Neighbours coming home from business dinners, parties, bars. People walking their dogs. He didn’t know. He kept quiet then, and listened. Once or twice he thought the steps were circling the shed. Sometimes he dozed, waiting for them to pass. When he came back to consciousness it was always with a sense of disorientation—his head throbbing; his back aching; his hands numb, twisted between his legs. He woke in cold and confusion—Where am I? What is this?—and then he turned and saw the cage beside him. He saw Ada, her eyes open and fixed on him. Staring at him from across her knees. Shivering.
“I want you to tell me your stories,” he said. “I’ve told you mine.”
Clutching her fingers through the cage, he leant his head close to hers. And her mouth moved, but he heard no words. Was she trying to talk, or was she mocking him? Her mouth was parched—that was it. He fed her water. The sponge, his fingers, her mouth.
“Tell me, Ada. Tell me again. Try again.”
Her eyes, bloodshot even in the semi-darkness, brightened with urgency. Her hands shook. Her lips moved faster. He heard her tongue tapping her palate. Words. Those had to be words. But all he heard was the whistle in her breath, and the wind moving against the walls beyond them.
– FIFTY-SEVEN –
Daniel found her luggage a week later. Her green hiking backpack crammed with underwear, skirts, dresses, jeans. Her red leather carrycase filled with shoes and books and keepsakes. Two crystal glasses padded with tissue, placed in a cardboard box. Her obsidian necklace, wrapped in a strip of silk, stuffed into the toe of a canvas slingback.
The bags had been left outside his front door sometime while he was at work. There was a note attached to the handle of the carrycase, written in clear print. Not Ada’s hand.
Hi Daniel,
Ada left her bags with me, but she hasn’t come back for them. Do you know where she is? I guess you can send it all to her, wherever she’s gone. I would’ve called, but don’t have your number.
I hope she’s okay. Are you okay? Call me?
Jean
137 3346 6614
Jean. Who was Jean? He used to know, but now it escaped him. Was she the bottle blonde or that minxy little redhead? One of Ada’s more obscure expat friends, anyway. One of the many she wouldn’t entertain the idea of allowing him to fuck.
He crushed the note in his hand and tossed it in the trash. He sat down and stared at the bags, then stood again to retrieve the note and the box of matches they—he!—kept by the stove. He sat down on the couch and burned the note, watching Jean’s tight, tidy lettering blacken and twist and dissolve into ash.
Ada. So what’s happened to her?
Once or twice in the week he thought he’d seen Neven near his office, walking far ahead of him, his leather jacket too light for the cold, his hands in his pockets, his head bowed. On at least one occasion he thought he’d seen a woman with him, a woman he had almost believed was Ada until he realised her hair was different, a little too long, a little too dark. Something different, anyway. And he’d only seen the backs of their heads.
He hadn’t bothered with it. He didn’t have the time or inclination to think about her, or about her with him. Or any of that shit. Except now her suitcases had arrived back at their—his!—apartment.
What do you really know about Neven?
The thought came from a cool, remote part of his brain, calm and smooth and clear enough to startle him.
Nothing, he realised. Or at least, not much. Maybe not much at all.
The voice returned, and he focused on it, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees. Ada’s still yours, Daniel. You found her first. She married you. How do you feel about some other guy taking her up, just like that? When she’s yours. Yours.
He hadn’t thought about what Neven had done with her after he left the shed that night. He’d very deliberately made sure not to think about it. The spite in him saying, I hope he fucks her up. The part of him that did, in fact, care about her answering. Let him give her exactly what she wants. If that’s what she wants. These thoughts only, and nothing more.
But what was it that she wanted? And, maybe more importantly, what did Neven want?
Was it possible that she was still out there, trapped in that cage? Neven said she’d asked him to punch her. He hadn’t told Daniel if he’d actually done it or not. Or…how hard.
Daniel was sitting very still, very straight. He felt a pulse of something—panic?—surge up from his belly and seize his heart. The jolt came fast and was so intense it almost hurt.
“That’s my wife,” he said to the empty room. To himself.
He found his feet. He grabbed his keys.
* * *
The padlock hung open, hooked through the mesh. Although it wasn’t full dark yet, the shed was lost behind an inky haze. For a moment Daniel thought it was just the pollution—and it may have been—but the shed stood too close to Neven’s apartment building, and that long, thick shadow fell over it. Ate it whole. The building’s outline sharpened as he got closer. The snow on the ground, a little thinner now, had turned hard and grey over the past few days. It cracked under his steps.
Daniel pushed the gate open—it moved in a series of stuttering shrieks—and walked into the narrow concrete space.
The smell that met him was thick, rich, smothering, the stench of sweat and effluent, of open wounds left too long, of spoiled meat and stagnant water. The smell of the city itself, in many ways. Except that was the smell it carried in summer. No
t now, not at this time of year when the filth was frozen over, locked under ice. And there was a sick sweetness to it that for a moment made him think of—
No.
“Neven? Are you here?”
He took another step in and nearly tripped over the camper’s lantern. His foot crashed against it and it collapsed on its side with a clang so loud that Daniel almost screamed, adrenaline sluicing his blood.
Once the echo had stilled, silence returned. He wished he’d brought a torch or a lighter or something—anything—to help him see by.
I’ll walk to the back wall. I’ll walk slowly, and I’ll feel for the cage. Just to find out if it’s still there. If the girl—Ada?—is still locked inside of it.
He’d almost reached it when he heard the sob, the sigh, the sound of a voice that had been held in too long, breaking on tears.
“Neven?”
Daniel reached an arm out and his fingers scraped the concrete wall. He stepped closer and his foot bumped against Neven’s knee.
“It didn’t work,” Neven said from below him. “I opened the cage but she wouldn’t reach for me. I tried to pull her out, but she wouldn’t take my hands. She didn’t want to touch me. To hold onto me.”
Daniel stood very still for a moment, staring, forcing himself to see. After a minute he made out the shape of the cage. It was just to his left, its hard edges glimmering softly in the black and white fuzz of his weak night vision.
“Is she still inside?”
“Yes.”
Daniel thought for a moment. When he spoke, his voice trembled. “Is she…is she breathing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Goddammit, Neven.”
Daniel sank to his haunches and felt along the edges of the cage. The top was open. His hands vanished inside and he felt blindly, groping. He touched something soft, something cold. Something alive? His fingers travelled, trembling. Her thigh? Her shoulder? He moved his hand further back and he felt the feathery taper of her hair. He tugged at it and it came loose in his fingers. Quickly he rose off his knees, bending in, cupping her face. Her mouth was slack—not rigor mortis, she might not be dead—her head hung loose on her shoulders.