The Hunter From the Woods (2 page)

She goes along the darkened Great White Way. The night’s breeze stirs tent folds. Moonshadows lie at her feet. Her heart is beginning to beat harder, it seems, with each step. She is going to see the boy who takes care of the animals. Her lover. Her desire and her freedom, if just for a little while.

As the saying goes: There is no winter in the land of hope.

He is waiting for her, as always, in the green tent.

He is a strange boy. He stays by himself most of the time. He seems to prefer his own company and the company of animals. Seventeen years old, he’s told her. His first name Mikhail. He hasn’t offered his family name, nor does she ask. He arrived at the circus little more than a month ago, with no belongings, wearing baggy clothes that might have been stolen from a fence where they were drying in the sun. Had he ever owned shoes? He never wears any. He is lean and sun-browned, and she can count his ribs. He has an untidy mop of shaggy black hair that always seems to have straw in it, and when he stares at her calmly and fixedly as he does with his luminous green eyes something in her soul thaws and warms and melts. At the same time, something lower than her soul moistens and tightens and readies itself like a creature over which she has no control. It was such the first time she saw him, and has been every time, and is now.

He has lighted a few candles for them, in his private space of hay where he sleeps.

He has put down a wheat-colored blanket and smoothed a place for her. But first, before she can enter his domain, he turns and picks up something folded upon a piece of clean canvas, and turning toward her again he smiles and lets unfold the beautiful dark blue dress he has brought for her, and Devora catches her breath because no one has offered her such a gift for a very long time. Of course there were the wildflowers he had for her last week…but
this
…

He tells her to try it on, so that he can take it off.

Over from the far side of the tent, Devora hears the wolf pacing in its cage.

She does what he asks, with great happiness. The dress makes her feel sleek. It makes her feel…what is the word, when one feels uncommon? Well…
uncommon
. She won’t ask where Mikhail stole it from, because now it belongs to her. She owns so few pretty things. She tells him she loves it. Loves, loves, loves it. The woman who gave her birth told her to say
loves
a lot to a certain kind of man, because they liked to hear it. Devora is very sure Mikhail is that kind of man. Boy. Whatever he is.

But she knows she must have him, for the need for him is rising in her and as he advances and begins to slowly and gently remove her new dress she puts her arms around his neck and he kisses her mouth so softly it is like a feather tracing the outline of her crushed red lips. An angel’s feather, Devora thinks. For truly this boy has come to her from Heaven.

He blows out every candle but one.

The wolf paces faster, back and forth. The leopard sits watching, its single eye catching a glint of light. The bear sleeps, and shivers a little in some dream of honey.

Apart from the caged animals, the horses and the zebra doze but the ears of the intelligent mule twitch to catch the sounds of human passion.

Devora interrupts their deep kisses to remove her lover’s clothes. Then they sink down together upon the blanket in the hay, and she puts a hand in his thick hair and guides his head between her thighs because this is what she craves most tonight, and he is so good at it, he is so wonderful at this, and so she moves against his tongue faster and harder and he is patient and content to give her everything she needs.

She will not ask who his teachers were. She will not ask who else he has loved in this way. But she loves, loves, loves this, and it is a sensation the selfish Octavius Zloy has never given her.

When she is wrung out and trembling and the sweat of heat and exertion glistens on her body, she tells Mikhail what she needs now to do for him, and he turns over and says he is all hers, which sounds to her ears even better than music.

She has a little trouble with this, though, and he understands why because she’s told him about the force of Octavius Zloy’s thrusts into her mouth, and how he seemed to want to choke her and though Octavius Zloy is not very large he uses himself like a battering-ram in her throat. So Mikhail quietly says, as he always does, that all else of life might be pain but love should be pleasure, and so he moves her back upon the blanket and lets her wait for a moment as his tongue plays with her navel and downward. Then he slowly presses into her, and they are one.

As the boy moves within her, Devora looks up into his handsome face and green eyes. A light sheen of sweat glows on his cheeks and forehead. She thinks she could live with him forever. She thinks she could follow him wherever he went. But, alas, he has no money. He is a pauper, whereas Octavius Zloy has a boxful of money hidden somewhere in the trailer. She dares not search for it, but she believes it’s there because her husband has never lost a bout and so never had to return any coins.

Mikhail’s rhythm is stronger. He is ardent and powerful and somehow older than he seems.

She has told him, over the many nights, how her husband has beaten her. And he has seen the marks, too. She has told Mikhail how the brutish wrestler took her from her home when she was sixteen because she was the prettiest girl in the village, and he was a bully passing through and no one could stand up to him. So the thirty-year-old Octavius Zloy, which was not his real name but suited him as much as his hurtful hands suited his selfish soul, threw her into the back of a wagon and told her she belonged to him. He was so huge and so terrible, she had told Mikhail, that fighting him was like trying to fight a whirlwind. So she had simply waited for her moment to escape, and yet…the moment never seemed to come. Where would she go if she tried to run away? Who would help her? And if he caught her—
when
he caught her—it would be more blood on her face and on his fist. It was if, she’d said, he was trying to make her look as ugly as he was inside.

Mikhail and Devora kiss and bite and cling to each other as they thrust together, and the wolf and leopard are both very interested in this performance.

At last, when the spasms have shaken both of them and Devora has squeezed her eyes shut and cried out and Mikhail has pulled out of her and left his white signature upon the damp hair between her thighs, she rests her head against his shoulder and in the golden light he listens to her speak.

She tells him that Octavius Zloy has vowed he is going to kill her when he awakens. She tells him that her husband may be insane, and that he cannot be stopped.

Mikhail listens. The wolf is pacing again.

She tells him that if she was free from Octavius Zloy she would find a way back to her village. But how to be free from him? How to be free from such a mad whirlwind as that?

Mikhail is silent for awhile. Then he says he will go to the trailer and talk to Octavius Zloy.

Devora shakes her head and tells him that talking will not do. She tells him that Octavius Zloy only understands violence, and so if Mikhail wants to help her he must go into that trailer where the bad man is sleeping and knock his brains out with whatever is at hand.

Then, she says, she can be rid of him. The
world
can be rid of him. And she will be free. But, she says, he has vowed to kill her when he wakes up…so what shall happen next?

And she presses her head against Mikhail’s shoulder and cries a little bit, until Mikhail stands up, his face grim and his lips tight. He puts on his clothes and says he will go and talk to Octavius Zloy.

This time, Devora does not speak.

Mikhail says he will return and, without a weapon but his own slim frame and fists, he strides out of the tent on his urgent mission.

Devora waits for awhile.

Then she puts on her drab gray dress, made ugly with the patches that hold it together, and she looks with contempt at the blue dress the traitor has brought her.

He will learn a lesson tonight, she thinks. The lesson will be: do not stand and let Zolli take your hand, when you belong to me. Do not smile and laugh and talk with Zolli, the little bitch, and think that I don’t see what you’re doing. I could put a knife into Zolli’s heart and twist it a hundred times, but instead I will stab you in the heart with a blade called Octavius Zloy.

Yes, she thinks. Her eyes are slitted, her face crimped with ugly rage because her jealousy is and always has been a crippling disease. Go talk to him. He will be awake by now. Go talk to his fists, because I have told him you steal things and beware that you come to steal the moneybox in the dark of night.

I will survive as I always have, she thinks. I will take my blows from him, because I know that when he beats me it is out of the purest love and sweetest possession.

She knows that the boy and Zolli have been here, right here, in this same place. She knows that they must have laughed at her stupidity, for letting herself believe that the boy cared only for her.

No one cares for her but Octavius Zloy.

He has told her so himself.

Devora stands up and leaves the tent, and she walks slowly and gracefully, as if in a dream, back the way she has come, back along the dark and moonshadowed Great White Way, back to the gypsy trailer where by now her husband has delivered justice to a very evil boy.

As the saying goes: A stranger’s soul is like a dark forest.

And Devora is very certain the strange boy carries within him an unknown wilderness. But it is not one that any other woman in this circus will share, and for sure it will not be the simpering and smiling and oh-so-pretty Zolli.

The trailer’s door is open. Wide open. There is only blackness within.

Devora goes up the steps and then inside. She speaks softly, calling for her husband. She hears breathing in the dark. It is a harsh rushing of breath. She smells the caged wolf on her skin. She spends a few seconds fumbling for matches and the candle on the table near the door, as she continues to call for her husband. He should be right there, the bed is right in front of her. The match flares and the candle’s wick is lighted and she holds the flame out and then she sees the blood.

Well, she thinks, justice has been delivered. Perhaps
too
harshly, but still…

And she smiles a little, not thinking yet of what she’s going to say to her husband to explain where she’s been, except out walking in the moonlight as she sometimes tells him when he is contrite and weeps like a little child after he awakens.

Then by the candlelight she sees the red mass on the floor at her feet and in it is something that might be a beefy arm torn from its socket, and there a leg with a massive thigh clawed to the crimson muscle and white bone.

On the floor are blood-spattered clothes. She has seen those clothes tonight. She has removed those clothes tonight.

She calls in a weak and trembling whisper for Octavius Zloy, her husband and her protector, the tyrant of her heart.

The candlelight finds a head upon the bloody planks. It has a slab of a chin and small eyes and bears an expression of open-mouthed wonder and horror. On the end of an arm that has an elbow but no shoulder is a clenched fist, the scarred knuckles already turning blue.

Devora is about to scream when something shifts just beyond the range of the light.

He speaks from the dark. What he says she can’t understand, because it sounds like a growl. It sounds like an animal’s rage put to nearly-human voice. Then he speaks again and this time his voice is almost his own.

“You’re free,” he says.

And he repeats it: “You’re free.”

Devora shakes her head and spittle drools from her mouth. Because she doesn’t want to be free. She doesn’t know how to be free. She knows only that he beats her because he loves loves loves her so very much. He wants her to be the perfect wife for a great man like himself. And the film that is to be based on his life…she was to star in it also, and they would be stars together on the cinema screen, and both of them so uncommon the dolts and whores in her village couldn’t stand to look upon the savage sun of their faces. He had promised about the film. Just as soon as he raised enough money.

Then all life would be pleasure, and so many people would be jealous. But now…
now
…

A hand moves into the light, reaching for her. It is not quite human, and seems alive with moving, shifting bands of hair.

“I love you,” the boy whispers.

A word comes from Devora’s bruised lips.

That word is
Murder
.

She speaks it again, louder:
Murder
.

And now her eyes widen into terrified circles and she lets the scream go that will awaken the entire village of the circus and have the first of them here within seconds:
Murder
.

A figure leaps from the darkness. It is strangely-shaped, glimpsed from a nightmare. As Devora staggers backward, the figure throws itself into the bolted window shutter and crashes through. Devora screams
Murder
again but now she is alone in the trailer with the torn meat, broken bones and smeared guts of a wrestler.