by Rose Fox
A few minutes later, Adam rested a small pile of items on the counter that included two underpants, a cotton-knit T-shirt, white socks embossed with Russian letters and a round bar of laundry soap. On the bottom shelf below the counter, Adam rummaged among some fabric tote bags to find a suitable backpack to replace the one that had been stolen and added it to the pile.
The sales assistant placed one hand on the pile and the other on her chest. She said something in Russian and, in order to better demonstrate what she was saying, pushed the bank notes he had taken out to pay her back into his wallet.
Adam understood that she didn’t want payment for the clothes and he shook his head vehemently. He showed her that he would go if she didn’t accept payment but she stood beside him and pulled him to the opening that was draped with a blue curtain covering the entrance to a small apartment.
Behind the curtain, she released his hand, crossed her hands over her chest and stared deep into his eyes. She swayed from side to side as if embracing herself or asking to be embraced and repeated a Russian word again and again, “pazhalustu, pazhalustu, (please, please).” He understood that she was asking him for something and he also understood what it was.
Adam stayed with her.
He embraced this young woman, who was a stranger to him, very lovingly, gazed at her blushing face and stroked her with long slow movements. She took off her clothes and Adam caressed her ample breasts, her wide hips and rejoiced in her smooth skin that was soft as silk and succumbed to him passionately. The young woman clung to him with so much strength that he was certain he would melt and disappear at the end of this unplanned act of love.
He made his way back to his room with a spring in his step and felt that he had done something good for himself and for another soul, who was hungry for love.
Later, he stood in the shower for a long while and let the water prickle his neck and back. He put his soiled clothes to soak in lukewarm water he ran into the sink and dropped the round bar of soap he had purchased in it.
When he finished he went down to the ground floor and entered the small dining room of the house. The modest meal was wonderful; a thickly sliced round loaf of black bread with salted butter and hard cheese. He selected a yellow omelet from a variety of covered omelets and took a tomato from a straw basket and half of an especially long cucumber he never knew could reach such a length.
When he finished eating he went out into the courtyard. It was eight thirty in the evening and the air had begun to chill. Soon, nothing remained of the heavy heat of the day. People strolled along the street, some led their dogs on leashes behind them and others rode on bicycles and when darkness took control of everything, a few streetlights turned on. The area was strewn with dots of light spilled from the streetlights and created a uniform golden line.
Adam turned round and came back to the lobby. The woman who had received him on his arrival had been replaced by a young blond man, who was talking on the phone. The youngster signaled Adam that he had something for him, took some light colored fabric, which looked like a small kerchief, out of a drawer and held it out to him. He said a few words in Russian and suddenly Adam caught on that the young man was speaking to him in English, but with a heavy Russian accent.
“Someone brought this scarf and said it is for you.”
Adam gazed at the scarf. A figure was embroidered on the corner and he straightened it out between his fingers. The figure was embroidered in pink thread that changed to red and suddenly he recalled that scarf from the meeting in the pub in London, on that fateful night with Abigail.
He spread the cloth between his fingers and held it to his face, inhaling its aroma into his soul. And he understood. This was the only way they could show that Abigail was here.
Adam waited for further information about Abigail but a day had gone by since his arrival. True to his decision not to remain in any place for longer than that, and he left on the following morning.
Adam decided to backtrack and began riding westwards, in the direction he had come from in order to meet up with Abigail. He made an effort to travel on side roads and hoped he would notice the arrival of newcomers.
Along the road, a few country houses and fields stretched as far as the eye could see. He realized that this was not a thorough test, but there was no other way of finding Abigail. Now, he remembered Naliboki village, the third village that he and Anton entered after leaving the forest. The memory of the route sent shivers down his back.
Adam found it hard to think of Anton, his dead friend, and he forced himself to shut him out of his memory so as not to let sadness take control. He decided that when this was all over and, only then, he would allow himself to wallow in his memories and work through his grief.
It began to rain but the air was still warm, so Adam put the rain cloak in his new backpack and continued slowly on the right side of the road. The drops continued running down and wet his shirt. He stopped and rummaged in his backpack, pulled out the cloak and threw it on his back.
Five minutes later it began raining so hard that he couldn’t see more than a meter ahead of him through the windshield so Adam stopped and remained sitting on the motorcycle at the side of the road. When the rain lessened, he was able to discern the houses of the village and he rode there.
He tried to find out if a visitor, riding a bicycle, had arrived or if a taxi had been there. He didn’t imagine that Abigail would hike across the breadth of the country. In this village, the houses were set out in the shape of an ‘H’ and he rode slowly around the houses on his motorcycle. He stopped and entered a small store and, using gestures, asked if someone had seen a ‘tourist’ but the shopkeeper shook his head.
When he left the village and got back on the wet road, he saw a cyclist riding towards him in the distance and his heart skipped a beat. He progressed very slowly in the direction of the cyclist and was disappointed when he saw a fair-haired youth and decided to stop in front of him. He made signs to ask him if he had seen a woman riding a bicycle. The fellow nodded and added some words in Russian. He also spoke some English and understood what Adam wanted to know.
“Yes, she’s in Svetlana’s hotel. The hotel is good and there is a bicycle there”, he said.
Adam was excited. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a banknote, which he pressed into the hand of the cyclist in front of him.
“What’s the name of the village?” he asked.
“Novgorod,” the man replied as he closed his fist around the banknote. "The village is over there, about another two or, perhaps, three kilometers away.”
When Adam thanked him, the man gestured and told him in broken English that someone had died at the hotel the night before and an ambulance had come to take him away.
Adam stared at the youth in concern but the youngster noticed his worried look and immediately elaborated that everyone knew it was a man, who died, not a woman. He also added that the dead man was dressed in… and he pointed to a black part of his cycle. Adam thought he was about to explode with worry and couldn’t calm down. The memory returned of the man in black rising from the sand over Anton, who was in his death throes.
Anxious, Adam raised his arm in the direction the young man was giving him to Svetlana’s hotel. He felt that there, he would at long last meet up with Abigail and his heart quivered with emotion.
Of course, he didn’t know that at that same moment two cars were coming towards him in the first of which, Abigail lay unconscious after her abduction from the hotel and that his own fate was to be sealed in another few minutes.
Chapter Twenty Two
The black and white striped armored vehicle progressed slowly through the deserted area. It rocked over the mounds of sand and snake pits as it trampled the high grass and thorns. The two captives lay motionless on the net drawer on the floor as they were shaken by the bumping of the vehicle over the rough terrain.
Suddenly, it stopped in the middle of a desolate field. The rear door faced a closed e
ntrance that only the driver knew of. He spoke softly into his radio transmitter and waited.
The door to a cave opened behind him and cold, musty-smelling air emerged from the black crater. The rear door of the vehicle creaked open on remote control. Three heavy metal hooks on the ends of cables, which extended out of the cave, caught and dragged the net door out of the vehicle.
Comatose, Abigail and Adam were tipped up off the net tray and onto the heavy cables and as they lay crosswise on them, they rolled down gently into the open entrance to the cave. They dropped with a soft thud on a board that had been laid on the moist sand. A round metal circle, like a sewer cover, slid across and closed the entrance leaving everything in darkness.
Two militia men dragged the prisoners to two hollows that had been prepared in advance. They were each collared with a ring attached to metal chain links, like dogs. The chains clattered as they were attached to loops stuck in the compressed sand walls. The men tied them with nylon ropes on their shoulders, waists and legs and then left the place.
From that moment the musty dark cave became the tomb in which they were buried alive.
Abigail regained consciousness and looked around in amazement.
Her nose itched and she tried to scratch it, only to discover that her arms were tied to the sides of her body. She felt the rope wound round her body and her legs and realized that she lay like a trussed animal in the moist sand. The air was musty and stank and everything around her was cloaked in darkness.
Abigail closed her eyes and opened them again to convince herself she wasn’t dreaming and she tried to reconstruct what she remembered. She recalled the lobby of the hotel and the commotion outside but could not remember more than that. She was dizzy and tried to sit up, but she couldn’t. Then she tried to roll over the neck collar pulled the iron chain that clanked in her ears.
‘What’s happening to me? How did I get here and why am I lying on the sand?’ She panicked,
She heard voices in the distance that gradually grew louder and hoped that someone would come to ask where she was, but the voices grew distant again and faded. The cold began to penetrate her body and Abigail wondered whether she should shout so that the people who had passed by before would come to her at once but she suppressed the urge. She thought out loud, trying to understand her situation.
“If I’ve been tied with ropes and chained to the wall, then I am a hostage, a prisoner.” She stared at the sand walls around her and a new thought crept into her mind that perhaps she was no longer alive and was buried in the ground. “Oh, then the voices I heard belonged to people walking above.”
Abigail began to hallucinate.
'Ah, something happened to me; they thought I was dead and that’s why they buried me. Immediately after that she thought again. Perhaps I really am dead?'
It seemed very logical to Abigail but when her stomach made hollow sounds she understood that she was still alive. She opened her eyes and closed them, swallowed saliva and then, spat it out. Yes, she was alive. She also felt the cold and her nose itched again.
The hours passed as she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t dead and that she was not lying in a grave. Suddenly she restored the image in her mind of the woman, who had appeared in the lobby of the inn and squirted cold spray on her face. That was when Abigail realized her situation.
Adam lay a few meters away from her in a bigger hollow and, like her, was tied and trussed in a collar and ropes. Adam had lost a lot of blood from his injury and the broken thigh bones stuck out of his lacerated flesh. His face was swollen and his hair and beard were smeared with blood and mud and gave him a wild appearance. He moaned feebly, but had not yet regained consciousness.
When they brought him to the cave and tied him up, an argument arose between two guards. They questioned whether it was worth giving the man medical treatment and whether it would make a difference to anyone if he lived or died. The two saw the break in his leg as well as the large pool of blood.
The younger of the two studied him and said:
“I say that even if he gets medical treatment he won’t survive for more than an hour.”
He drew closer to Adam, looked at him again and decided that it was really just a question of no more than an hour. The second guard, who was senior in rank to him, looked at Adam and said:
“I think that if he has survived till now in this condition, he could last for at least another three hours, but no longer than that.”
“Three hours!?” the first exclaimed.
“Okay, perhaps I exaggerated, two and half hours from now. Let’s bet on whether I’m right.”
“Fine. What are we betting for?”
“I suggest the winner gets an hour less guard duty at the loser’s expense.”
“It’s a deal.”
They shook hands and continued walking slowly down the dugout corridor.
Two hours later, they peered into the hollow again and saw that he was still alive and in the same condition. The senior guard looked at Adam and scratched his head.
“Listen, perhaps we should talk to someone and tell them to come and decide what to do with him?”
The second guard shrugged and continued striding ahead, mumbling angrily, as he understood that he had lost the bet. From time to time the guards passed by and glanced in Adam’s direction.
Five hours later, as the winner of the bet was about to complete his shift, the senior guard looked at him and said,
“Look, brother, it’s unbelievable. He’s still alive. Listen, he’s even groaning.”
“Ah, so neither of us wins, not you and not me!” the young guard joked.
His friend pulled him away.
“It really makes no difference to us whether he lives or dies. Between you and me, those damned Zionists will pay whatever we demand for him, anyway.”
He spat on the sand below him as they both sniggered and continued on their patrol towards the exit.
* * *
“I’m thirsty, I’m so thirsty.” Abigail mumbled.
She turned her head to the right and then to the left in an attempt to relax her neck muscles. She tensed her arms against the ropes for a moment and released them, then raised her head a little from the sand and let it down again.
A short while before, she had smelled something strange and turning her head to its source, saw something yellow. She shifted her head towards it, stuck out her tongue and licked it. It tasted like raw unbaked dough. Using her tongue and front teeth she managed to maneuver it into her mouth. She grabbed it between her teeth and bit off a piece, moving it from side to side as she chewed wildly on the dough. All her saliva glands and her tongue participated in this meal and she swallowed pieces of it, almost without chewing. She didn’t even give a moment’s thought to how it tasted or what she was eating.
When she finished, she relaxed her neck muscles and allowed her head to fall back into the sand. She was exhausted. Her eyelids felt heavy, but as she was about to fall asleep, she heard someone say:
“That man is still alive. Come, let’s check out that female lying there.”
All at once she caught on that they were speaking colloquial Arabic, her familiar mother tongue.
The voices grew closer; she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. When one of them got close to her and kicked her with his boot, she opened her eyes. She tried to reach out with her hand to where he had kicked her, but couldn’t.
The man laughed and said, “wow, look at that,she ate the stuff we threw her.”
There was no response, but after a few seconds she heard another voice.
“Hey, did you see that? She looked at us.”
“So what?”
“Did you see what eyes she has?”
“Ah, really!? No, I didn’t, Come on, let’s look at them.”
She felt herself being kicked again, in exactly the same spot as before and she opened her eyes immediately because she preferred to look at them than be kicked again. The two stood
over her and checked her out, as she did them. They were wearing sand-colored clothes. As she looked at them, she noticed one of them winking at his friend and heard him say to the other, “you stand guard. It’ll only take a minute. I’ll finish with her and then you can continue, Okay?”
He passed his weapon to his friend and knelt down on one knee beside her.
Abigail trembled helplessly between the ropes and was suddenly overcome with a terrible sense of fear. He bent down beside her on his knees, roughly pulling at her clothes. Then, she began going crazy. She didn’t know what happened to her, her arms and legs moved wildly within the ropes that bound her and she was unable to control herself. Spasms overcame her muscles and each one of them trembled with waves of shock and she was like a leaf blowing in the wind. She looked like a wounded animal. She foamed at the mouth and strange moans burst from her throat like a tiger caught in a net.
The guards recoiled in shock and one of them exclaimed in fear,
“What’s this? Wow, she’s crazy ‘majnuna’!!”
The guard, holding both their weapons, stared at her again, retreated a step and began running to the entrance while the second guard, who was still leaning over her, peered at her for a few more seconds. Then he got on to his feet and ran to join his partner as he yelled:
“Come back, don‘t run away, she’s nuts, that’s all, just crazy!”
* * *
A bright light suddenly flooded the darkness of the cave and an unexpected gust of air entered for a few seconds and immediately disappeared as darkness took over again. Once more, the smell of mold returned to his nostrils, but Adam was aware that someone had just entered the cave.