She began to undo the buttons of her blouse. ‘Elva, I cannot stay with you.’
She paused then, her blouse now fully open with the sides hanging loosely across her breasts.
‘You don’t like me? What did you want?’
Before I could answer, before I had to produce lame words in reply, we both heard a thud coming suddenly from near at hand, followed by a childish cry of pain. Elva turned away from me at once and went to a door on the far side of the room. She went through, leaving it open behind her.
I saw that beyond the door there was another room, small and dark, insects whining in the stuffy air, and in it was a tiny cot made of wicker. A child had fallen from the cot and lay on the floor crying, an arm curled under its chest. Elva picked up the child, and swiftly pulled the diaper from its loins. She dropped the soggy fabric on the floor. She held the little boy against her, cradling his head and trying to soothe him. For several minutes the boy was inconsolable, his face red with crying, tears and saliva glossing his little face. Elva kissed him again and again.
I realized that the boy, in falling from the cot, must have landed on his hand. When Elva took the little clenched fist in her fingers he screamed with extra pain. Elva kissed the hand.
She kissed the fingers and she kissed the palm, and she kissed the tiny, puffy wrist.
Elva opened her mouth and some trick of the bright light in the main bedroom made her white filed teeth shine out momentarily. She brought the little boy’s hand up to her lips and took the fingers into her mouth, sucking and working her lips forward until at last the whole hand was inside her mouth. All the while she caressed his arm, making tender, soothing noises in her throat.
At last the little boy stopped crying, and his eyes finally closed. With one hand she smoothed the covers in the cot, then leaned over and laid him carefully on the mattress. With deft movements she wiped him clean with a small cloth, then slipped a fresh diaper on him. She tucked the single cover under the mattress. Her naked breasts swung maternally over his head.
She pulled the two sides of her blouse together as she straightened, then she walked back into the room where I was still standing. She closed the door behind her.
Before I could say another word Elva pointed at the belt of my trousers and with a swift motion of her hand indicated that I should start undressing.
‘The child …’ I said.
‘The child has to be fed. To feed him I work.’
She pulled the blouse off and dropped it on the floor, then slipped out of her skirt. When she was naked she sat on the bed, leaning back against the pillow with one knee raised, so that I should see all of her. I undressed rapidly and lay beside her on the bed. We began foreplay at once. Elva kissed me passionately as we roused, and I tentatively explored her mouth with my tongue. The edges and points of her serrated teeth were sharply dangerous and she made play with her mouth, pretending to savage me. Soon tiny weals were appearing on my arms, my chest, as she snarled in her throat and lightly dragged her teeth across my flesh, my tongue, my lips.
She bit me, though, with the same great tenderness she had shown to her child.
When we had finished the act of lovemaking she began to cry and lay beside me in the bed with her back to me. I stroked her hair and shoulders, again thinking about leaving. I was embarrassed by being there; I had not often been with whores. Our union had been brief, but for me, after months of forced abstinence, it was satisfying enough. There had not been the vermilion passion that Slenje’s words stirred up in my mind, but Elva was an expert and exciting lover. I lay tensely but with my eyes closed, wondering if I should ever see her again once I had left.
From the next room there came a quiet whimpering noise, and Elva moved away from the bed at once and opened the interconnecting door. She peered at her baby but apparently the little boy had only stirred in his sleep. She closed the door again. She returned to the bed, where I was already sitting up, preparing to put on my clothes.
‘Don’t leave yet,’ she said.
‘I’ve had my time with you,’ I said.
‘You were not here for time,’ she said, and pushed me with both hands flat against my chest. I allowed myself to fall back across the mattress. ‘You paid for what you wanted, and what you have had. Now this is what I want for myself.’
She crawled on me in mock ferocity and straddled me, kissing my neck and chest, again running her frightening teeth across my skin. She licked the weals she had raised earlier, then created some more. I tingled with pain, with the anticipation of more. Her lovely body pressed against me in many exciting and erotic ways.
I was quickly aroused again and tried to roll her over on the bed beside me, but she stayed above me. She went on kissing and sucking at my skin, teasing me with her pin-sharp teeth. Her head moved lower, across my stomach.
It seemed to me, as her mouth at last found my rigid organ and took it deep inside, that there was a sense of lemon pleasure, and the liquid, sucking sounds of her mouth became like a hot pool of stagnant voices, endlessly circling …
I was in terror of the synaesthetics, knowing that I became unable to tell reality from falsity. I had a vision of Elva’s mouth, lined with tiny knife blades, closing around me, slicing into me. Her tongue, eagerly licking and stroking my shaft, had the consistency of mercury. I looked down at her: I saw her bobbing head, her hair tangled and strewn across my stomach, and in my synaesthetic torment I visualized her as some monstrous animal, chewing into my gut. Struggling against the madness of my visions I reached down with my hand and laid it on the back of her neck. Her hair fell slinkily across my hand, like the shaggy fur of an immense animal, but I stroked her, feeling the shape of her head and neck, concentrating on the reality of her.
And soon reality returned. She was sucking me with the greatest of gentleness. I remembered the tender way she had mouthed the hurting hand of the little boy, the light touch of those deadly teeth as she played them across my chest. I began to love her in a way and watched as she moved back a little, lifting her head so that I could see what she was doing. Her lips were around the end of my shaft, her cheeks concave as she sucked so steadily. I could feel her lightly gripping me with her pointed teeth, holding my glans across her quivering tongue. As she looked up towards me I climaxed violently and happily.
I said, when I had dressed, ‘You must take the whole hundred.’
‘We agreed fifty.’
‘Not for that, Elva.’
She was lying where I had left her, face down on the bed, her head turned so that she could watch me. Her hair was blowing in the cool stream of air from the electric fan. I noticed that the skin on the back of her legs had been damaged in some way. There was a pattern of recent scars high on each thigh, and on the soft skin across the joint behind her knees.
‘You paid for once. We agreed the price.’
‘You need the money,’ I said.
‘I wanted you again,’ she said. ‘No charge.’
I looked at the five silver coins, lying where she had placed them on the top of the dresser.
‘I’ll leave them there anyway,’ I said. ‘Buy something for the boy.’
But she sat up at once, then levered herself upright with a stiff movement. Her pale skin was faintly blotched with pink from where she had lain. She took the five coins and slipped them into the breast pocket of my shirt.
‘Fifty.’
That had to be the end of it.
I heard the sound of her child again, waking in the next room. Elva glanced briefly in that direction.
‘You don’t have to leave,’ she said. ‘I have to feed him, then maybe …’
‘Who is the boy’s father?’
‘My husband.’
‘Where is he?’ I said.
‘The whores took him.’
‘Whores?’
‘The Faiandlanders. They took him when they left, the fucking bitches.’
She told me that there had been sixteen hundred troops in Winho Town durin
g the second occupation, all of them women. Every man in the town had been taken into custody by them. When our troops relieved the town the men had been taken away as the enemy withdrew. Only males who were extremely old, or pre-pubertal boys, were left behind.
‘Do you suppose your husband is still alive?’ I said.
‘I think he is. There have been no reports of massacres and there are known to be prisoners. But how would I know otherwise? Anything could have happened.’
She was sitting, naked still, on the edge of her bed. I expected her to cry again but her face had a hard, resistant expression and her eyes were dry.
The child had started to cry in the next room.
‘Why do you want me to stay?’ I said. ‘Are you frightened of something?’
She opened her mouth wide, laid one of her fingers on her tongue. Her teeth held back, like the cutting edges of saws. She rubbed her finger to and fro on her tongue, then pretended to suck on it.
‘You like that?’ she said.
‘Well, of course.’
‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘I like you.’
I stood there facing her for a few moments, torn between my conscious wish to escape from the tragic young woman’s life, and a deeper sense that I should stay and protest falsely that she had been more than a way of passing time. I would then have to try to help in some way.
‘I don’t know,’ I said helplessly.
‘Then go. That means you have decided what you want to do.’
I had.
‘Shall I come again?’ I said.
‘If you wish to. It will be fifty every time. No extras.’
She turned away from me. She put on a long shift-like garment, pushed one foot into a slipper and searched around for the other, peering down at the floor. I opened the door, and a few moments later I was standing in the scumbered street that ran steeply outside her house.
The next morning I learnt that one of the infrequent ferries would be calling at Winho Town before midday and I decided to leave the island. While I was waiting for the boat to arrive I walked slowly through the narrow streets of the town, wondering if I would see Elva.
It was hot and humid again, so I undid the buttons at the front of my shirt to let some air in and try to stay cool. It was then I noticed that a tracery of fine scratches had appeared on my chest and I remembered the way Elva had teased me with her sharpened teeth. I touched one of the longer scratches. There was no pain to speak of but the weal was now a much brighter red than before. I wondered if some kind of infection had set in. As I walked along I kept my eye open for a pharmacy, thinking it might be sensible to buy some antiseptic cream.
The town, languid under the pressure of the windless heat, felt moist and soft, and the air around me was like the intimate embrace of female flesh. I felt I was suffocating and as I walked along I repeatedly turned my head to and fro, trying to gulp in some oxygen. It was only when I reached the harbour and stood on the pier where the ferry was expected that I realized I was suffering yet another synaesthetic attack. It seemed to be a mild one. With the consolation of having identified the problem I immediately felt a little better.
I paced up and down the pier, trying to detect the real substance of the hard concrete surface through the rubbery, imprecise texture that my distorted sensations were lending it. My mouth and throat were sore, tasting synaesthetically scarlet, my back and legs were stiff and my genitals were hurting as if trapped in a vice. The feeling of physical agony was so real that I thought again that I should go and search for a pharmacist, or even a doctor, but I did not want to miss the ferry.
Glancing down, I saw that several of the scratches on my chest were beginning to open. Blood was smearing where my unbuttoned shirt flapped against me.
At last the ferry hove into sight. After it had docked I walked the short distance to its berth with the other passengers. Knowing I should have to pay a fare again, I reached for the notes in my back pocket but then remembered the repeated difficulties I had been having with the high-value notes. I still had the five silver coins that Elva had given me and I reached into the breast pocket of my shirt.
Something soft and warm wrapped itself about my two searching fingers, and I snatched them out at once.
There was a hand gripping my fingers!
It was a small, perfect hand. A child’s hand. It was pink in the bright daylight, severed at the wrist.
I stepped back, shaking my hand in wild horror.
The child’s hand gripped me more tightly.
I let out a cry of fright and swung my arm frantically, trying to throw off the little hand, but when I looked again it was still there. I turned away from the throng of other waiting passengers on the quayside and took hold of it with my free hand, trying to wrench it away. I pulled and pulled, perspiring with horror and anxiety, but nothing I could do would make it relax its hold. I could see the effect of the tight grip on itself: the tiny knuckles were white with tension and the ends of the fingers, around the minute nails, were bright red. The two fingers it was gripping were beginning to throb, so great was the pressure on them.
No one on the quayside was taking any notice of me, because there was much confusion caused by the arrival of the disembarking passengers. Everyone was trying to get on and off the boat at once and people were shoving each other in the crowd. I had moved to the edge of the mêlée, obsessed with the horror of what was happening to me. I stared round in anguish, feeling I should never be released from the nightmare of the child’s severed hand.
I made one more attempt to free myself by pulling with my other hand, but then resorted to desperate measures. I put my trapped fingers on the concrete surface of the quay and pressed down on the child’s hand with my boot. I leaned forward, putting on as much weight as possible. The child’s hand tightened more. I shifted position, raised my foot, stamped down. As agony coursed through me the child’s hand relaxed a little, and I snatched my fingers away.
Suddenly I was free, and I jumped back.
The child’s hand lay on the quay, the little fingers still tightly clenched into a fist.
Then the fingers opened, and the hand began to crawl quickly towards me, like a bloated pink spider.
I dashed forward and brought my boot down on it with all my weight. I stamped again, then again, and again …
The large banknote caused another argument on the ferry, and to bring it to a swift end I let the ferryman keep it without paying me change. I was in no condition to argue. I was shaking convulsively and the scarlet pains in my throat and mouth, and the larger searing agonies of my chest and genitals, were growing worse with every minute. I was almost unable to speak.
When the business of the fare had been settled I went to the stern of the ferry and sat alone, trembling and frightened. The voyage was already under way and we had passed through the concrete arms of the harbour walls. Behind me the angular shapes of Winho’s mountain range stood darkly against the sky, a silent valediction. The sea was calm. When I looked to the side of the boat, away from the white turmoil of the wake, I could see the rays of sunlight shafting down through the green depths.
I had no idea where the boat was taking me.
My shirt was stained with blood in several places and I took it off. I felt on the outside of the breast pocket to see if the coins were still inside. I was terrified of slipping my fingers into it once again. I could not feel the coins. I held the pocket upside down over the deck of the boat, but nothing fell out.
As the ferry moved further out to sea, and Winho became distant behind us, I sat bare-chested in the glaring sunshine, watching one scratch after another ooze blood down my chest. At intervals I used my shirt to clean myself up a little. I dared not try to speak to anyone because my mouth was an open pit of pain. I could feel streams of blood slipping down through the unshaved bristles on my chin. When I used the lavatory I discovered that my groin was a mess of gore and blood.
Back on the deck, as I crouched in agony, the other pa
ssengers stayed away from me.
The boat went from one island to the next, making brief stops at each port, but I did not leave it until night was about to fall. By this time we had reached the island of Salay and I went ashore. That night I slept in the local garrison, having to share a room with sixteen other officers, more than half of whom were women. My dreams were rich and textured with agony, and lurid colours, and an uncontrollable and unfulfilled sexual desire. Images of Elva’s mouth haunted me. I awoke in the morning with what I thought was an erection, but instead the sheets of the bed were stiff with the blood from my wounds.
The
Trace of Him
•
The study was lodged high beneath the eaves of the house, and it was imbued with traces of him. It had not changed much in the twenty years since she was last there – it was more untidy, a mess of papers and books, standing on, lying beside, heaped below the two tables and a desk. It was almost impossible to walk across the floor without stepping on his work. The room was otherwise much as she remembered it. The window was still uncurtained, the walls unseeable behind the crowded bookcases. His narrow divan bed stood in one corner, now bare of everything except the mattress, although she had never forgotten the tangle of blankets she had left behind when she was here before.
The intimacy of the room was a shock to her. For so long his study had been a memory, a hidden joyful secret, but now it had become tragic, bereft of him. She could detect the scent of his clothes, his books, his leather document case, the old frayed carpet. His presence could be felt in every darkened corner, in the two squares of bright sunlight on the floor, in the dust on the bookshelves and on the volumes that stood there in untidy leaning lines, in the sticky ochre grime on the window panes, the yellowed papers, the dried careless spills of ink.
She gulped in the air he had breathed, paralysed by sudden grief. It was incomprehensibly more intense than the shock she had felt on receiving the news of his illness, his imminent death. She knew she was rocking to and fro, her back muscles rigid beneath the stiff fabric of her black dress. She was dazed by the loss of him.