Chrysalis

by Jeremy Welch

She giggled girlishly with pleasant embarrassment.

  “Bet you’ve never seen a black woman blush. You can’t see it but boy we do and can you feel it! I’m smoking hot.”

  She took his hand and placed it on her cheek. It was hot as an Aga.

  “No one has said anything like that to me for years. Don’t you hesitate to say it again, even if you don’t really mean it,” she laughed. “You’re right, I am mighty happy.”

  “You know you can make me happy too. If you could just…”

  She interrupted him with a smile.

  “I know what you’re going to ask. I will. I will try to get Irena to come to the meetings. If she does I will persuade her to take part in some training, no, I will make her. I always get what I want.”

  Her face dropped the smile and a look of sadness replaced it.

  “You be careful, Sebastian, you just be careful where you put your hope and faith. These girls have been on their own a long time. Although young they have the tiredness of old age. Sometimes like old people they can only see the end.”

  “I know,” he said but he didn’t. He couldn’t believe that a twenty-something woman could even consider the option of the end.

  “She’s in a bad spot at the moment. She is worried they will sell her on or move her to another city. I’ve asked her friend Sacha to keep an eye on her. The girls tell me that you do too.”

  Sebastian blushed. He thought his nocturnal sentry duty went unnoticed.

  “See, that’s the only difference between white people and black people, you show when you’re blushing but we feel it!”

  Throughout the course of lunch Sebastian looked around him, the clatter of cutlery, frigid earnest exchanges between businessmen and convivial laughter between mothers lunching. That familiar surreal feeling; within less than 1000 metres men were humping prostitutes, prostitutes feigning pleasure at being humped whilst at the same time despising themselves and their clients. Some of the girls whilst groaning in thespian pleasure were fearful for their lives. Ones like Irena didn’t see the end of the fuck, nor the end of the day but the desired end of their lives. Meanwhile, in the restaurant, the cutlery clattered, the waiters smiled and the conversation rose and fell. He lost his appetite and his happiness.

  “It’s not nearly enough to make a change is it? The 10,000 will make no difference to anything, will it?”

  Rosie pushed her empty plate away from her.

  “Sebastian, it will, I know it will. It can’t change the lives of all of them, but if it does for one it will be the best return on the money – just one.”

  He tried to believe her; he hoped she was right.

  “Make it Irena, make her that one.”

  “I’ll try, but for her it’s complicated. Her situation is very difficult.”

  She didn’t know that he was behind the windfall but she felt he had a say, an ownership on how it was spent.

  “If it’s a good return to change the life of one, why not spend it all on one? Ten thousand is enough to pay them off, buy her from the traffickers. Surely you know how to do that.”

  It was the first time he had seen her angry; her face didn’t go red but he thought he felt the heat from her body.

  “I’m a hooker, Sebastian, not a people smuggler! What I do know is 10,000 won’t even touch the sides of the debt Irena has with them, not even close.”

  “But for that amount of money she could get a new identity, a new passport. She can go somewhere far away from them.”

  The heat from her had subsided. Her reply was simple and delivered without malice just as a fact.

  “And her parents would have to pay? Either way they would pay.”

  The plates jumped and the cutlery fell with a clatter as his fist hit the table top. Eyes turned to their table, conversation temporarily halted.

  “It’s hopeless.” His face contorted in anger. He looked around him and shouted, “What are you looking at, you fuckers? You know nothing, you smug bastards!”

  Their departure had been in silence. Outside it was sunny and warm.

  Softly she touched his arm and as softly she spoke.

  “Trust me, Sebastian, I’ll do all I can for her. You will just have to hope I can help her. That’s what the other girls are doing, hoping it will change. Most of the time it’s not enough but without it there really is nothing else.”

  Chapter 15

  In front of him the two headed pieces of A4 paper stared blankly at him. Apart from their headings the pages were bereft of text. One read “Love/Happiness”, the other “Hope/Expectation”. The pages had wrinkled and aged since they were first written at university. Looking at them he tried to recall the number of times he had crumpled the pages into a ball and sent them binwards in anger, relief, hatred, desperation. After resting there for periods ranging from seconds to days they had been retrieved, opened and flattened by his open hand and placed back in his book. Today he had repeated the exercise. The two pages formed the spine of his book from which the bones had grown to form a strong skeleton; a body he believed would be muscular and ripped with additions of characters and plot. He hadn’t really known at twenty what these four words meant. Then they were out-of-focus words blurred by naivety. The intervening years had taught him otherwise; these were the essence of existence. He looked at his computer screen and was pleased with the day’s editing when his mobile rang.

  “It’s your mother here.”

  Sebastian was always at a loss why his mother always announced herself, as if an attendee at a ball. He had explained to her that her name was spelt out on the phone when he received a call from her and after thirty-five years he was capable of distinguishing her voice from a call centre scammer based in Malta. But the tone of her voice was a reprimand; he hadn’t phoned for a while; the implication that he might not recognise her voice was implicit.

  “I hope you’re paying more attention to completing you book than to phoning your mother,” she said rather tartly.

  He knew he had to distract her before the call developed into a one-sided berating.

  “It’s coming along very well actually.” The “actually” he stressed to justify the absence of calling, hoping it conjured up single-minded industry.

  “Well I do hope so.”

  He recognised the tone and knew she wanted to ask something else.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, darling.” The pause, he waited. “I mean, Amsterdam is a… how should I put this? Unusual place. I mean drugs and you know the other thing, girls for sale. It attracts odd people.”

  “Thanks, Mum, so now I’m odd.”

  “No, darling, of course not.”

  Something was worrying her. He could picture her twiddling with the paperweight he had made her when he was seven. She always did when she wanted to talk to him about something important. It had a love heart in the middle, red and slightly misshaped. He knew she had been talking to Zoe.

  “What’s Zoe been saying?”

  “Nothing.”

  He knew it was coming, he just had to wait. She inhaled deeply, held her breath for a few seconds. Out it came tumbling down the phone.

  “She says that you have made some odd friends. She says there are girls you might have been sleeping with, then there is some butch woman that you seem attached to, they all wear makeup and drink too much. She says they’re gypsies and trouble, probably all taking drugs too. Also you live in the red light district and are probably sleeping with prostitutes when not taking drugs yourself. She says that you will probably run away with this circus and end up as an usher or ticket seller living in a communal caravan with everyone. She says you’ll probably have many children by different girls, maybe even set up a ménage à trois with a man.” Her imagination was more terrifying to herself now that she had given voice to it.

  “No she didn
’t. She did not say any of that.”

  The phone went silent. She would be straightening her back now, her fingers around the paperweight.

  “Well not exactly. She did say they were odd.”

  “Mum, you have to stop worrying about me, I’m in my thirties, I can look after myself.”

  He had been through this all his life. The teachers at school were predatory, the sergeants at Sandhurst sadists, the bosses in the City avaricious monsters teaching greed.

  “Oh darling, as a parent you start worrying the moment you have children and the last thing on your mind when you die is worry about your children. Parents love their children more than themselves, more than anything in the world, it’s a boundless love.”

  “I’m fine, really.”

  He knew he had to assure her, comfort her that all was well or her imagination would drag her to endless dark corners; dark corners where muggers, killers and creatures were waiting to end his life.

  “I know you are, darling.”

  She was clearly unconvinced, aware as she was that a child never really understands the perils that can befall them, even a child in their thirties.

  “Zoe’s not fine though. She seemed upset when she came back, sad even.”

  Her hand would be tightening over the paperweight. She had moved into intimate territory. Sebastian found comfort in the knowledge that Zoe and his mother worried about him, but Zoe talking to his mother about intimacy was no comfort. Sebastian and his mother were close, Zoe and his mother were close. Zoe and his mother were never closer than when talking about Sebastian. They had often planned subtle assaults on his previous girlfriends. The well-bred Anastasia whose family history they had studied and found a distant relation who had murdered his wife. Bad blood is what they used to say. Jane, the artist’s daughter who had, according to them, an unnatural relationship with students as she posed naked on a Wednesday evening at the Clapham Arts Club. Probably a nymphomaniac.

  “Well she shouldn’t have been.” The paperweight would be nestled in her open upturned palm.

  “She was.”

  “Well she shouldn’t have been.” He knew he would lose.

  “She was, she was sad.”

  “I told her I loved her.”

  The paperweight would be in the air now, a smile on his mother’s face. It must have landed in her palm.

  “Then why is she sad?”

  She was suspicious, hands around the glass heart.

  “I didn’t tell her that exactly. But I told her all the same.”

  He knew that if his mother had been younger and exceptionally strong the paperweight would be crushed into shards. He listened for the shattering sound.

  “Why are you so afraid of love, Sebastian? Don’t listen to your wicked Uncle George, he’s divorced and quite why it took so long I have no idea, poor Mary. Even before the marriage it was doomed. His view of a marriage is that it’s a dreary dinner with the pudding served first. He’s wrong.”

  “I didn’t know he thought that. Perhaps he’s right.” Maybe that’s why the divorce rate is so high.

  “Well he’s wrong, he’s a lazy, selfish oaf.” That was the zenith of his mother’s insult. “He just wouldn’t try. Look at your father and me.” He did but he didn’t see much love there. “He drives me mad, he is bombastic, sometimes boring, always repetitive, emotionally stillborn.” Just as he thought in fact. “But I loved him when I met him and I love him now. Love is a wonderful thing, Sebastian. It starts as passion and over time takes many guises: closeness, sharing, companionability and experiencing things together. When you’re our age it’s about togetherness and jointly reliving all of these things all over again. Some say it makes you blind but I believe it opens your eyes. Don’t be scared of it. She won’t hang around for you, she won’t wait forever.”

  He had never heard his mother talk with such enthusiasm about his father; it was at odds with what she said daily. Her passion for the subject of love was also new to him; she spoke of it with unusual frankness. He believed her; she did love his father.

  “I know, I know, but I have to finish something. I know I need to complete it to feel I’ve changed. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes, but I hope, for both your sakes, you finish it soon.”

  It was only after the call that he realised that Zoe had discussed the whole weekend with his mother. It put him ill at ease that his and Zoe’s thoughts were now theirs – Zoe’s, Sebastian’s and his mother’s. He wanted to phone Zoe and tell her it was between them, they didn’t need a referee.

  He stared at the two pieces of A4. Love was supposed to be unconditional, but it wasn’t, not at any stage; it was all about hope. Young love was all hope, parenting was all about hoping for children, middle age was about hoping for companionship, old age hoping to recall all the previous hopes and death hoping the dead were at peace. Perhaps Anneke was wrong; it wasn’t about love. Maybe Rosie was right; without hope no one had anything.

  Too early for his sentry duty he wandered over to the Vlinder in the hope of finding someone from the cast of the Spiegel tent. He would have to wait a while as the show would be just ending. As a regular he nodded to the barman; the beer appeared with no exchange of words. Looking around him the bar seemed desolate and underpopulated except for the possums, the permanent fixtures that never left the twilight of the bar, always wide-eyed from fear of daylight. Reflected faces staring back from the mirror of those sitting at the bar alone. Tables of two and some of three with only their drinks for company. It was the ones at the bar that concentrated his attention. The old man with a face telling of labour who spoke to no one, his eyes always mirror ward, lost in the past or in hope of a different future. The young man on his own, almost furtive, chasing a whisky down after finishing his glass of lager in two gulps. He would smile at himself in the mirror later as he conjured up images of happiness, becoming happier with each passing glass. In the corner mumbling to herself the middle-aged woman puffy faced from booze and her hands scrawny and veined from lack of food. Sebastian decided it had been a bad idea to sit in the bar alone.

  If there was no one in the Vlinder to offer him comfort he could offer some to Irena. He approached from the opposite side of the canal. He knew her cell, knew that she was always next to Sacha. He saw Sacha in matching white pants and bra made fluorescent by the light from within. The cell next to her had a coffee-coloured girl dressed in a soft leather basque; she was lazily flipping a whip on the interior of the glass door as she unenthusiastically tried to attract business. That was Irena’s cabine. He looked at the row of cells, women dressed to cater for male fantasies but no Irena. He quickened his walk to the little bridge that crossed the canal. Crossing the water he started at the furthest part of the row of cells and studied each girl as if shopping for sex. Arriving at Sacha’s cell he saw that the curtain was drawn. She was busy. He continued to the end and waited. The curtain of Sasha’s cell parted and a man slipped out sideways like a coin, trying to look invisible as he fiddled with his flies. The white-gym-shoed pimp watched Sebastian approach Sacha. Business was good; the watch would be his sooner than he thought.

  He had learnt from his last meeting with Irena to conduct his questioning with a leer so as not to attract attention.

  “Where is she?” his eyes peering over her shoulder to check she wasn’t hiding inside.

  “Tap your right buttock as if you’re checking for your wallet.” Sacha held his hand and smiled coquettishly.

  “I don’t have a wallet.”

  “Do it now and take a look over your shoulder quickly as if you are checking that there is no one you know watching.”

  She pulled him into the room and closed the curtain.

  He had seen into the rooms but never been in one. It was dimly bathed in red light from a strip bulb fixed to the ceiling, the room small and functional. A bed, larger than a single but smal
ler than a double, was fixed to a wall. There was no bedcover just a sheet and a towel with a starlight scene covering half the bed. The walls were mirrored. At the rear of the room was a locker similar to the ones in sports changing rooms but without the air vents; there was only a slit like a post box at the top. A sink with nothing decorating it. The only other piece of furniture was a flip-top bin with crumpled tissues and used condoms trying to escape. The floor was white with tiles, and the smell of disinfectant fought with perfume. It was as welcoming as a doctor’s consulting room. For those that used the girls for sex the sex had already taken place in their minds before they entered. It was a soulless place.

  “Sit on the towel, it’s clean.” She opened the lower part of the locker and put on a lilac cardigan which she held closed around her chest.

  It was hot and Sebastian itched with pinpricks of sweat; he didn’t want to take off his jumper.

  “It’s OK, take it off, I know it’s hot in here but don’t forget we’re almost naked most of the time.”

  He decided to keep it on.

  “Irena, she’s not working? Is she ill?”

  She sat next to Sebastian on the towel; it was the only place that she didn’t work on. She crossed her legs. Sebastian looked at her feet, one static on the floor the other bouncing from her ankle. He wanted to see between her toes. She lit a cigarette and followed the jet of exhaled smoke with her eyes.

  “No, she’s not ill. They have changed her work rota.”

  Not for the first time the banal way in which the girls spoke of their work in industrial productivity terminology sickened him – fucked to shifts, fucked to rotas. He nodded as if this was a normal work practice. It was for them.

  “Some new girls have arrived and she has to show them the ropes. They start the new girls slowly, so she will be doing the morning shift, from 11.00 onwards. It gets busy over lunchtime.”

  The considered induction process of the employer towards his employee: break them in slowly. How considerate, he thought. The new girls wouldn’t be broken in slowly, they were already broken beyond repair.