Jasmine Nights (45 page)

He untied her roughly and pulled her to her feet, then snatched the blindfold off. She saw the brass bed, a sagging sofa with a rug over it, all soaked in the rust-coloured glow of the lamp. On the wall, above a chest of drawers, there were a couple of badly framed reproductions. Severin led her over to one in which a man in the foreground stood against a sea of mist with trees poking out of it. ‘I like this one,’ he said softly. ‘I studied art history, you know, before I was in the army. It’s called A
Wanderer in a Sea of Fog
, the artist is Friedrich,’ he added in a mechanical lecturer’s voice.

‘A wanderer in a sea of fog.’ His voice broke suddenly. ‘I feel this at the moment, because I liked your friend, I admired him even, I didn’t want it to happen like this.’

He was holding his belt in his hands, lip stuck out, his eyes innocent-looking and sad; for one confused moment she thought he would burst into tears.

When he kissed her, his breath stank of sausage and cigarettes.

‘No, no, please, no.’

‘This is pretty,’ he said woodenly. His hand squeezed her breast. ‘Your dress. It’s pretty, I like it.’ They both stared at the green silk, Felipe’s blood splattered on its hem. She began to thrash and push him off.

‘Don’t, don’t.’ She crossed her hands over her breasts.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said, his Adam’s apple leaping in his throat. ‘Just take your dress off, please, there is too much blood. Lie face down on the bed, and rest, all I want to do is to look at you.’

The zipper of her dress was on the right side. She pretended to struggle with it, her mind racing furiously.

‘So you studied art history?’ She forced herself to look directly at him. He was adjusting the silk scarf over the light, all fuss and long white fingers. ‘Where, may I ask?’

‘In Berlin – my college is a heap of bricks now.’ He inhaled noisily. ‘Take that off – I know the game you play.’ His voice was rough and would take no more nonsense. He jerked the dress over her head. She was wearing silk stockings and a suspender belt.

‘Lie down on the bed, take off your underclothes and brassiere.’

Her mind went a complete blank.

‘I’m not surprised to hear you were an art student,’ she said. She unhooked her suspender belt, still looking at him. ‘You have a very sensitive face.’ She could hear her heart thumping.

He looked surprised.

‘All I want to do is look at you,’ he said unsteadily.

‘Like a model in a life class,’ she said. ‘One who would like to stay alive.’

‘One who would like to stay alive,’ he repeated. She could hear him thinking.

‘So, if you are a model, let’s say in a sculpture class, I must measure you to get the proportions right.’

She felt something hard go down her spine – a belt buckle? A gun? – and suppressed a scream.

‘First, north and south.’ The cold scratch of steel moving down her buttocks. ‘You have a beautiful back,’ he said. ‘Then west and east’ – his voice slurred and he pronounced it
wessa
and
eassa
. ‘Whoops!’ He stumbled against her. He was drunker than she’d thought. The smell of vodka combined with sausage as he belched. ‘Begging your pardon.’

‘Accepted. The others,’ she said. ‘When will they get back?’

‘Not for a long time, shut up your mouth.’ His voice was petulant, she had spoiled his game.

There was nothing playful now about his hand shovelling between her legs. She could feel her hysteria rising; soon she would spit or scream or strike him.

‘Severin,’ she forced her voice low, ‘you’re too good for this. For your own sake, don’t do it.’

He was muttering in German, and then, ‘Shut up. You don’t know me.’

He turned her over abruptly, put the blindfold on again, and stuffed a pillow under her. ‘Keep quiet.’

Her jaw went into a kind of rigor mortis as he climbed on top of her. For a few seconds he flung himself blindly against her, groaning and swearing, but then she felt the flop of him against her stomach like a rag doll.

‘You can’t do this because you’re a good man,’ she told him, unclenching her jaw. She felt her head bang against the brass bedstead. ‘Your wife is a good person, you’re a good person.’

‘Don’t talk about her!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t say anything.’

His fingers jabbed inside her.

‘That is me,’ he shouted, ‘and that is me, and that is me.’

It hurt, it felt horrible, and when it was over, even though she could feel his full weight on her, his fluid leaking down the back of her legs, she thought quickly:
It hasn’t happened, it didn’t. He didn’t rape me
. Wishing she had her gun on her, so she could hurt him and hammer him, could shoot him dead.

His weight shifted; he grunted, an animal grunt of dismay, exasperation.

‘I should have told the others about you,’ he said, as if this was her fault and she disgusted him. ‘They only know about Felipe. I should have told them.’ He stood up abruptly and left the room, slamming the door behind him. She waited, her heart jumping out of her chest, listening for his footsteps on the stairs, but there was only silence. He was standing on the landing, or so she imagined, waiting to pounce again.

A second or so later, the door opened. He came over to the bed and jerked her roughly to her feet.

‘Get up, put your clothes on and do your hair.’

Her legs buckled as her feet touched the bare boards. She dressed herself in a daze and patted her hair, bewildered by the sight of her face in the mirror. He led her barefoot around the patch of dark blood where Felipe’s head had spilled, down the stairs into the hall near the kitchen.

When she yelled, he prodded her sharply in the back. ‘Do that again,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and I will shoot you.’

In the kitchen, the wreckage of the party lay on a worn Formica table – a plate of half-eaten cheeses swimming in wine; smeared glasses; a pat of butter covered in ash and old cigarettes. He locked the door behind them.

He handed her a tea towel after she had been sick.
Stay calm
, she told herself,
you must stay calm
.

‘They’ve taken your friend away.’ Severin’s face was pale and twitching. ‘They wanted you to go with him, but I said I would question you first.’

His unimpressive performance in the bedroom had clearly rattled him. His gestures were muddled, jerky; he seemed to have trouble looking at her. He threw crockery and food into a half-full sink, shattering several glasses as he did so. He swooped down on her, and pulled her so roughly on to the table that her arms almost jerked out of their sockets. He picked up his gun; it was pointing towards her as he inched backwards groping in the direction of a portable gramophone that sat incongruously on the sideboard surrounded by dirty plates and glasses.

He had several tries at lowering the needle on to a record.

‘Don’t move, Turkish girl,’ he said. ‘Stay there and sing your songs.’

When the music came on, she was concentrating so hard that the room seemed to tilt wildly.

She felt filthy and defiled. She hurt. But she wanted to live – it felt like the most important thing on earth. The record was old – for the first few bars it crackled like forest flames. And then she heard the sprightly introduction to ‘Mazi’, the song with a tango beat that had once made Tan sigh and roll her eyes.
The past is a wound in my heart. My fate is darker than the colour of my hair
. Thank God she knew it.

‘Sing it.’

Her mouth felt sore from the gag, but she sang the first verse as clearly and confidently as she could, amazed at the sounds that came out of her – truly, it was like another person singing. When she got to the first chorus, though, her confusion was evident, and she felt giddy with fear – in a couple of bars she’d come to the end of the words she knew.

The swooping violins dissolved into silence. He took the needle off, and looked at her, shaking his head. His skin was so white that she could see the blue bulge of the veins in his temples as he spoke.

‘I am a translator, madame,’ he said softly. ‘My Turkish, I think, is better than yours.’

He poured himself a glass of brandy and drank it quickly. There was a kitchen clock behind his head; it was almost five o’clock. My last day, she thought; they’ll know now for sure.

‘Why didn’t you tell them about me?’ she said.

He put a piece of half-eaten salami into his mouth; he chewed it, still looking at her.

‘I should have.’

‘Felipe’s dead,’ she said. She still couldn’t believe it.

‘Yes.’

A stray piece of salami rind hung from his lips; his tongue made a slapping sound as it pulled it back.

‘What was your game with him anyway?’ he asked almost mildly. ‘Were you sleeping together?’

‘No – we’ve only just started to play together.’

‘Why did you come out here with him alone?’

‘That’s what we were told to do.’

She looked at him blearily. It crossed her mind to tell him she’d been booked through Mr Ozan, about ENSA, but they seemed to have reached a point where she could only say simple things.

‘What about the others, when will they be back?’

‘I don’t know.’ He was drinking the dregs from several glasses. ‘You were not very kind always, you wouldn’t sing the songs I wanted,’ he complained, pushing a heap of dirty plates aside.

‘I’m sorry,’ she answered with the wooden politeness of a waitress dealing with a tiresome customer. ‘Which did you want? I could sing them now.’

He squeezed his eyes tight shut.

‘Yes.’ Some of his brandy had dribbled down his chin. ‘Something nice for me, for once.’

He was staggering now and when he asked for two German songs, it occurred to her that he had confused her with somebody else. ‘This is a lovely song,’ she said quickly. She sang ‘J’ai Deux Amours’ without taking her eyes off him.

‘More songs,’ he said. He was sounding sleepy.

Behind him the hands of the clock slid to ten past five; it was possible the others would be back soon.

She sang ‘The Raggle Taggle Gypsies’, the songs coming randomly into her head now with no particular meaning to them.
Tonight she’ll sleep on the cold dark earth
, her own voice as thin and scared as a runaway child.

‘A draggle toggle is a funny word,’ he said, his mouth lopsided. ‘What does this mean?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’ Her throat was sore now, she was giddy. ‘A collection of things with no meaning.’

‘All these songs, what do they mean?’ He put his hand against the table to steady himself.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ She shook her head.

He asked her then if she knew a song by Purcell called ‘Dido’s Lament’, mumbled something about a sister.

She said she did not know it, so he sang it for her in German first. The melody was hauntingly sad, even though his voice was slurred.

‘What do the words mean, Severin?’

She saw his lips quiver.

‘In English it goes ‘
Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate
’. They sang it for my sister.’

‘Your sister?’ He was shaking.

‘She was a musician too, she was on her way to college; one of your bombers got her.’

He started to cry; his blond hair poked through his fingers. He shuddered and groaned, and shook his head vigorously as if in violent dispute with himself. Then he looked up at her, shrugged, and they exchanged the strangest look – somewhere between wild hilarity and sorrow.

‘I have a wife also in Germany,’ he told her. They were sitting opposite each other now, the wrecked party between them. ‘We are childhood sweethearts. I miss her . . . I want to go home.

‘It was my wife who sang this at my sister’s funeral; she was at college with my sister. She would be horrified . . .’ His face convulsed. ‘They took me to concerts, they . . .’ His eyes looked shrunken and red.

He reached out for his glass again; her hand stopped him.

‘Listen,’ she said, ‘if one of the others had stayed behind, it could have been much, much worse for me. I know that. I’m sure of it.’

He gave her a foggy look.

‘I nearly did a bad thing. I was so close.’ He held his thumb and index figure together. ‘
This
close.’

She felt the sting of sick rise in her throat just at the thought of it.

‘I wanted to,’ he mumbled, his head on the table again.

She touched him on the crown of his hair.

‘Listen. Do me one favour – just one! Drive me somewhere, anywhere. I won’t say it was you.’

He looked at her for the longest few seconds of her life, and then at the clock with a start.

‘Oh my God! My God!
Dummkopf! Dummkopf!
’ He banged his hand to his forehead. ‘Where are the keys? The keys.’ He pulled a drawer out of the kitchen dresser so violently that it fell on the floor. When he found them, he grabbed her hand and flung her out the door.

Dawn had come in a wash of dull grey light as they made their way towards the car. He made her sit beside him in the front, and placed his revolver between them, and then he abruptly changed his mind and tied her up again and made her lie in a foetal position in the boot, which stank of petrol. A canvas bag of tools dug into her cheek. He drove off in a skid of tyres, and then it was like being a passenger on the worst fairground ride you could possibly imagine, as he drove on and on, faster and faster down the curving road, the car veering from side to side, the canvas tool bag bumping her face.

She was going to die now, she was sure of it, thinking of his pale sweating face, the brandy he’d sunk in greedy gulps before they’d left.

She tried to think of some prayers from school: ‘Oh my God, I am sorry and beg pardon for my sins . . . forgive me, forgive me my trespasses. I’m sorry . . .’ And then a cracking, tearing sound like a giant forest fire, a dull thunk as her head hit the spare wheel, a shriek of tyres, and then the car left the road, and tumbled over and over and over again until it stopped.

Chapter 38

It was Barney’s father Dom first thought of when he found himself face down in the sand and rigid with shock. So good old Barney’s pa was right, he reflected, absent-mindedly picking bits of glass out of his wrist – one more effing overconfident eejit had bitten the dust. He turned over and lay for a while on his back, taking in with an expression of almost dopey wonderment the array of brightly coloured lights jumping behind the shroud of his parachute.