A naked witch with smoky red hair, a witch with green eyes that glow in the dark, a witch with creamy white skin, this witch is sitting on my chest and I am buried in her body, and her hot hands are around my neck and her small thumbs are pressing hard into my throat and she throws back her head and she is laughing, a silvery chiming laugh, an inhuman pealing, a crazy clamor... I sat up, gasping for breath, and fought wildly with a mass of slippery stuff that was all around me, choking me. The distant din of church bells persisted. I tried to open my eyes. I was sitting naked on a bare four poster bed, stupidly holding the edges of the red satin sheets that had wound themselves around my head and which I had thrown onto the floor. I hurt all over. I wondered where I was. I wished the bells would stop their insistent toll.
I got up gingerly and went in search of water. I wandered around a maze of rooms until I found a kitchen. Dust lay thick on the counters. I pulled out an antique crystal tumbler from a cupboardand drank down seven glasses of water in quick succession. Tidal waves of nausea threatened to drown me but I gritted my teeth and held on. The bathroom was the size of a ballroom. I paid no attention to the rings of grime in the Jacuzzi. I was desperate. I fumbled with the complicated controls until I had jets of hot and cold water blasting me clean from every direction. I lay back in the tub and closed my eyes. I don't know how long I lay in the Jacuzzi but when I stepped out dripping I felt a little better. I felt even better after I had brushed my teeth with a black toothbrush which I picked out randomly from a pile strewn around the dirt-encrusted pink marble basin. I rubbed myself dry with a huge towel that might once have been white but which was now the color of smoker's teeth. When the towel reached my back I screamed in pain. I turned and looked at my back in the mirror. Ten trails of blood ran in neat parallel grooves from my shoulders all the way down to my legs. I fainted.
When I recovered consciousness, I may have sat on the edge of the bathtub and cried. I can't remember. The entire morning (or afternoon, I couldn't tell since my watch had disappeared) is in retrospect a complete haze. Pain refreshes in small measured doses, but these gaping wounds were simply too much to face, only days after my brutal beating from the Prague skinheads. I couldn't find my clothes anywhere so I wandered naked for hours, waiting for my wounds to heal or at least form scabs, walking from dining room to breakfast room to drawing room to billiard room to conservatory to library to guest room after guest room... The enormous apartment seemed completely uninhabited although I seem to remember seeing a middle-aged brown woman in a maid's uniform sitting placidly in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea. When she saw me walking around naked, the woman nodded and smiled, showing an expanse of broken teeth, but when I next walked into the kitchen she had disappeared. Eventually, I found my way back to the bedroom where I had woken up. I noticed a scrap of paper buried in the crumpled mound of satin sheets. `Liana. Kantstrasse. 9 pm,' the message read, hastily scrawled in an unfamiliar bold hand. I wondered if the message was meant for me. Who was Liana?
Even more arresting: who was Axel? The library was an immense room, each wall lined from floor to ceiling with rosewood bookshelves filled with first editions bound in calf leather. Each book bore the printed name plate: Ex libris Axel von Schadenfreude, with an elaborate coat of arms above the grandiloquent name. Axel von Schadenfreude was obviously something of a bibliophile; in fact, as I gradually realised after pawing through the books, most of which were in Latin and depressingly religious, he was one of Germany's largest Catholic publishers. What was his connection with Anastasia?
In another room with overstuffed sofas and coffee tables all shrouded with white draping, I found a gigantic canvas leaning against the wall. A naked woman stared out of the life-size picture. Curly auburn hair fell loose down to her slim waist. Her full lips were curled in an implacable sneer and her green eyes glittered with malice. One firm round breast mourned its twin which had been savagely hacked out with a kitchen knife, perhaps the same knife which lay next to the telephone... I picked up the phone receiver but there was no tone. The cord had been severed in a clean cut. I knew I had to get out of there. I went back to the bedroom and tried to find something to wear. The closet overflowed with piles of expensive crumpled clothing: lace lingerie and silk cocktail dresses and linen jerseys and brushed cotton polo neck sweaters and suede blousons as soft as butter. I managed to salvage some tights and an oversize grubby white silk blouse which I sincerely hoped would look enough like a shirt for me to walk to the nearest shop that sold men's clothes without incurring the ridicule of street urchins or the unwelcome attentions of other Berlin transvestites. I found my own overcoat miraculously hanging in the hallway amidst a crowd of other coats and even my shoes but my wallet was missing. However, I found a few thousand marks strewn around the foyer which I quickly pocketed.
I heaved a sigh of relief when I closed the door of the apartment behind me and walked down eight flights of stairs to the street. The church bells began to rung once again, as though I had set off some sort of trip wire: intent on fleeing Anastasia's lair, I ignored their warning. You see, at that time, I still believed in the possibility of escape. It is easy to be wise after the event.
Clothes make the man: clearly the first item on my agenda after escaping from Anastasia's apartment was to buy some clothes. I was in luck. The most fashionable shopping street in Berlin was just around the corner. I walked into an outlet of my favorite designers, Pour Jeunes Gentilhommes, picked out a few little necessaries (a sharp black six-button silk-cashmere suit, some simple silk shirts, a pair of pointy alligator boots), and asked the imperturbable sales clerk to burn the peculiar garments I was wearing. He raised his eyebrows slightly but then nodded with an air of blase comprehension when I gave him a generous tip and explained that burning those clothes was imperative for the maintenance of public hygiene.
I bought a plastic disposable watch on the street since I hadn't pilfered enough money to be able to replace my beloved platinum Bouvard et Pecuchet which my grandfather had bought in Zurich in 1925 and which he had sent to me on my eighteenth birthday through a French Embassy courier who could be sometimes be bribed to carry a few small presents from Mongolia. It was almost five in the afternoon. I wondered if Lulu was at her apartment. I found a phone box and called her.
"Darling!" Lulu sounded even more ecstatic than usual. "I had the most marvelous night of my life! How about you?"
"I can't remember," I replied. "What happened?"
"Nasty likes you. She called me from the movie studio and said she would never let you go." I shuddered. "Where are you, angel?"
"Near the Kudamm, I think, Lu."
"Baby, find the Pilsudski Hotel. I'll meet you in the coffee shop. I've got to talk to you before I go to Venice." And with that she hung up, leaving me staring enviously at the phone. Venice?
I wandered around the busy heart of Berlin until I found the ornate concrete wedding cake where I was to meet Lulu. She was already there, glowing. "Lulu, your aura is unbelievable!" I exclaimed, shielding my eyes from the glare.
"We're going to Venice tomorrow to get married. I've been waiting for Stash all my life! He's the man of my dreams!" A sour-faced waitress wandered over to our table, attracted by Lulu's radiance. She even smiled when she took our order.
"Why Venice?" I asked, ravenously devouring moist rich black chocolate cake. The perfect breakfast when washed down with cointreau café au lait.
"Because it's still there," Lulu replied, reasonably. "Who knows how much longer before it sinks?"
"Is Stash a romantic?" I asked curiously.
"Darling! He's even better. He's a cynic!"
"How long will your marriage last?"
"Oh, don't be so bourgeois, honey," Lulu chided. "We've already signed a post-nuptial agreement."
"What about Nectarino Nectarini? How is he going to handle all this love in Venice?"
"Who cares?" Lulu replied, heartless as ever. "Ex-fiances have rights to feelings?"
"And what happens now to the persona of Professor Louisa Frazer?" I asked curiously.
"Professor Frazer-Malinowski sounds even better," Lulu answered smugly. "I've always wanted a double barreled name."
"Will you send me a postcard from Venice?"
"Darling, of course," Lulu replied tenderly. "After all, I wouldn't have seduced him without your support. I told Stash all about it and we agreed that you're the godfather of our marriage. You have to give us presents on every anniversary."
I was happy for her. I said so. We kissed, fondly smearing whipped cream all over each other's faces.
But then she broke away and looked me in the eye. "I have to tell you about Midas," she said soberly.
"Who's Midas?"
"What is Midas," Lulu corrected me. "Now, honey, I want you to listen to me very carefully. Rasputin told me that he was investigating the mysterious death of Max Bulge."
"He told me that in Prague," I interrupted bitterly. "Before he killed poor Lucy and tried to frame me for her murder."
"Well, what he didn't tell you is that Bulge was a member of a mysterious club called MIDAS. Along with Eduard Kafir, the billionaire banker who just became toast in that mysterious fire in San Marino."
"So is this a club for dead billionaires?" I asked skeptically. "What's it got to do with me?"
"Xox is another of the members. And so is Sir Johnny Silver. As was Slo Lerner."
"Didn't he just die in a plane crash?"
"That's right. Now what do all these men have in common?"
"They're all billionaires. And some of them are dead. So what?"
"How does Terence Killjoy-Yuck know all these billionaires?" Lulu leaned back in her chair and stared at me.
"I don't know." I shrugged. "Maybe he plays bridge with them at some fashionable West End club. So?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, he does play bridge with some very rich people," Lulu nodded. "Which is interesting in itself. How can an Oxford don afford to play bridge for high stakes? Two hundred pounds a match point and he doesn't even play all that well anyway. But the important question is: why are there coded files about these billionaires in Terence's little notebook computer?"
"If the files are in code, then how do you know they are about these men? And how did you get hold of his notebook computer anyway?"
Lulu smiled wisely at me. "Guess, honey," she smirked. "The codes took Jonathan two weeks to crack. Unfortunately, he didn't manage to decipher any of the contents of the files since they self-destructed when he broke through the protection. All he managed to salvage were the names."
I stared at her. "Let me get this straight," I said slowly. "You seduced Terence..."
"No!" Lulu uttered a little shriek. "I wouldn't do that even for you, angel! Sleep with that vulture... ugh!" She shuddered. "No, I seduced Jonathan."
I gaped at her, aghast at the thought of Lulu toying with the virgin heart of that shy ungainly long-haired shambling gentle computer specialist. The image was too appalling to contemplate for very long. "How could you, Lu?"
Lulu giggled. "It was fun actually," she smiled, biting her lower lip. "I've always thought he's sort of cute. When you close your eyes you don't see the pimples."
"You are perverse," I said firmly. "You evil woman."
"Oi!" Lulu pouted indignantly. "Aren't you even a little grateful?"
"It's none of my business anymore." I shrugged. "I'm not working at the University of Truth and Justice anymore. I'm free."
"Oh, really, pudding-face? With a murder rap hanging over your head?"
"I'll just never go back to Czechoslovakia," I replied weakly.
"Do you really think this is about the stupid Czech police?" Lulu demanded sternly. "What about Rasputin? And why are you being followed?" I stared at her little finger which twitched discreetly towards a nondescript middle-aged man in a beige trench coat. He was sitting a few tables away from us, reading a German newspaper. I looked at Lulu in alarm. She nodded. "Didn't you see him last night?" she asked. "When we came out of my apartment building? And what was someone in a beige trench coat doing at a decadent Berlin nightclub? Saure said he let the guy in last night to find out whom he was after."
"Lulu, what is going on?" I asked plaintively. "What have I done? Why are these spooks after me?"
Lulu smiled at me mockingly. "You'll have to find out for yourself, sweetie," she said, getting up. "I'm going to Venice. Come and help me buy a wedding dress. And then we'll go to Liana."
"Who's Liana?"
"What is Liana," Lulu corrected me again. "It's a drug club. You'll like it. Nasty likes hanging out there."
"Oh, my God!" I moaned. "Is this all you people do? Go to clubs and sit around night after night drinking and taking drugs?"
"We also work like mad, sugarplum," Lulu answered acerbically. "I wrote a whole chapter of my new book and Stash and Nasty probably shot at least ten scenes of their movie. What did you do today?"
"I stole some money and then I bought some clothes," I said dismally. "I wish I were dead."
"It's the decadent lifestyle. Don't let it get you down, darling. You'll get used to it if Anastasia lets you stay. Nothing matters since we're all dead anyway," Lulu said reassuringly. She patted my cheek. "Welcome to the post-apocalypse, angel."
Monday, July 25, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 24
"Aren't you cold in that dress, Anastasia?" Lulu asked as we walked down the chill stairwell of her apartment building. I couldn't take my eyes off Anastasia's alluring ass half veiled in the fishnet dress, glowing flesh and inviting shadows, an intricate geometry of intersecting diagonals and slim curves, reeling me into unfathomable seduction.
"At least one feels something, liebchen," Anastasia drawled. "The heart pounds and so one knows that one is alive. Also, men seem to like it." She turned and looked at me insolently. "Don't you, little one?"
"I don't find gooseflesh terribly erotic," I replied, trying to stare her down and losing my footing in the process. I tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs and lay there clutching my ankle. The two girls walked past, laughing mercilessly. I hobbled after them into the cold night air. Anastasia slid gracefully into the driver's seat of a shiny black Ferrari. Lulu got in beside her after I had edged myself into the cramped back seat. We drove off in a squeal of tortured rubber.
"Why do you stay in this slum, Lulu?" Anastasia asked, turning a corner at high speeds, almost flattening an elderly couple transfixed in her headlights like outraged rabbits.
"East Berlin is so wonderfully drab," Lulu protested.
"There are some amusing places here now," Anastasia conceded, driving effortlessly through three consecutive red lights. "But I should have thought your tastes would be better served elsewhere."
"Where are we going tonight?" Lulu asked.
"We are meeting Stash at Der Mauer," Anastasia replied, whipping the Ferrari through a maze of dark alleys. "It's a new club," she explained. "Owned by my hairdresser. We thought you might enjoy it." Anastasia braked savagely at the nondescript entrance of a warehouse. A young man in khaki uniform and jackboots goose-stepped up and saluted stiffly. "Real East German border guards. Saure pays attention to detail. He is a good hairdresser." Anastasia rapped at the warehouse entrance three times. The door opened a crack. A furtive eye looked us over and then the door opened wide.
"Princess!" A little bald man in dinner clothes exclaimed ecstatically, kissing Anastasia's hand and bowing obsequiously all around. "At your service. Princess, the gentleman is already here. I have had your table arranged in the bunker. I thought you would be more comfortable there. Please tell me if you have any special desires this evening." He giggled and rubbed his pudgy little hands.
We walked into an immense space packed with young people. The room was divided in half by a high concrete wall. Tables on either side shuddered with the deafening sound of machine gun fire. Searchlights played across the room. Groups of grungy desperadoes amused themselves trying to climb across rows of barbed wire. Four sentry towers stood in each corner of the warehouse and men in uniforms stood at attention in the turrets, holding rifles. A corpse or two lay artistically asprawl on the floor. We picked our way through to the center of the room and clambered down a metal spiral staircase which led to a small cellar. Swastikas and yellowing portraits of Hitler hung on every wall.
A man sat alone at a table laid out for four. He rose slowly as we approached, kissed Anastasia on the cheek, took Lulu's hand in his and brushed the air above it with his lips, and then turned to me. "Stanislas Malinowski," he murmured as we shook hands. He was a tall man with very broad shoulders hunched together slightly. He had the most melancholy eyes I had ever seen: cold pale blue, crinkled at the edges, they seemed to have seen it all. His thin lips were twisted into an agreeable sneer and a broad scar ran diagonally across the lines on his wide forehead. He wore his thinning blond hair a little too long at the back. I guessed that he was in his late thirties, Polish, and a gentleman.
"What do you do, sir?" I asked once we had been served. I'm always more polite with a drink safely in hand.
"Please call me Stash," Stanislas replied with equal politeness. "I am a director."
"Theater or film?" I used to take part in amateur theatricals in the primary school I attended in San Salvador. I had won considerable notoriety at the age of seven for my portrayal of Jesus as an incompetent young carpenter. My father had even received death threats on my life from ultra-Catholic extremists.
"Don't you remember, angel, we saw Sodom together in Oxford," Lulu brightly reminded me from across the table.
I stared wide-eyed at Stash. It was all I could do to prevent myself from gushing about how much I had enjoyed Sodom and the even more gloomily erotic Gomorrah. Lot's Daughters, the most recent and controversial of Malinowski's black and white series of Old Testament movies, had won critical acclaim and prizes galore but it had also sparked off violent protests in New York and Jerusalem where angry demonstrators had set fire to an art theater in which the movie had just opened, inflicting third degree burns on a popcorn vendor with no sense of smell who died a few days later in hospital of his injuries, a tragedy which gave rise to the United Nations sponsored Campaign to Enhance the Status and Power Of the Olfactorily Labored (official acronym: CESSPOOL). "What are you working on now?" I asked.
"Uriah's wife," Stash said, carefully filling his glass with equal measures of gin, vodka, and ether.
"Is that the one King David was after, so he sent her husband into battle to die?"
"Yes. Lots of sex and violence. And everyone dies miserably." Stash looked a little happier. "Just what they deserve."
"Stash is a good Polish Catholic. He believes that beautiful Jewesses should be portrayed as bitches," Anastasia said evenly.
"That's why I chose you for the role, Nasty," Stash replied equally equably. "So few actresses reveal their innate viciousness. You are the exception that proves the rule. Whatever that means." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I have worked with many actors. Most are good liars. One actually believes for some time that they have feelings, even brains," he added graciously. "But all actors, by definition, want people to stare at them. Sit passively and eat popcorn and look at me and drool! And yet these monsters of vanity and narcissism also want to be liked. The contradiction is infuriating. I would gladly see all actors strangled at birth like female infants in the Third World. Or perhaps one would wait until they first revealed this vicious propensity. Then one might shut them up in a cave without food or water as the Namuna Indians do to children suspected of hysterical leanings." Stash smiled widely, his lips still pressed together tight.
"If you hate actors so much, why don't you stop directing?" Lulu objected.
Stash and Nasty laughed at this piece of naivete. Lulu blushed. "I always do," Stash answered. "Every movie is my last. Then I run out of money and I have to make another movie, knowing that it will only cause me anguish." He spread out his broad calloused hands in a graceful gesture of resignation. "Life is suffering and one has to make a living. Therefore one must suffer. It is better than being bored."
"What did you do before you become a director?"
"I was an anthropologist," Stash said sadly. "And a mountain climber. One day my harness broke and I fell and broke my back in three places and then I had plenty of time to think about my life as I lay in the hospital. I decided that this sort of prostitution appealed to me. They say that I am a good director. And I enjoy these old Biblical myths. These stories of human greed and divine cruelty."
"Midas," I said, remembering something. Lulu crinkled her eyes at me. Very casually, she leaned over toward Stash. Her black dress slipped off one round white shoulder.
"I don't think that myth is in the Old Testament," Stash said mildly. "But, yes, he too was greedy and the gods took advantage. Whom the gods would punish, they grant his every wish." He looked at Lulu and smiled. Their hands grazed each other as they picked up their drinks. My eyes met Anastasia's phosphorescent glitter. Her knee brushed mine under the table.
"Where did you get those bruises?" Nasty asked curiously. "Do you like to be beaten?" Small hot fingers stroked my thigh.
"Some skinheads in Prague got a little carried away," I said, trying to control my breathing. The fingers slid deftly under the napkin on my lap. "It was really my own fault." I told them briefly about my chequered career at the University of Truth and Justice.
"Does Max von Hohenstaufen have something to do with this strange university? He is a cousin through one of my mother's marriages," Anastasia explained indifferently. "The most boring fellow. His son is nicer but he always has this guilty look in his eyes. Just because Max mistreated him as a child. Poor Willi. He is now working as a prostitute near the Zoo."
Stash laughed. "Maybe I should tell Flysenko to study male prostitutes," he murmured to himself.
"Flysenko? The Polish sociologist?" I asked. "He will also be teaching at the University of Truth and Justice soon. Cain Piknik recommended him."
"Well, yes, Piknik would. The man has an insane sense of humour. He used to give the policemen little foil medals when they came to arrest him. He can also whistle with his asshole. Very confusing when we were trying to escape arrest together. Nobody was ever sure if Piknik was a real dissident or an agent provocateur. After the revolution, he became very wealthy. He claims it is from his pornographic newspaper but nobody believes it. Most mysterious. But at least he is amusing. Flysenko, on the other hand…"
"Do you know him?"
"We taught together in Warsaw many years ago. If you were still at this university, you would have the dubious pleasure of hearing Flysenko give pompous lectures on the connection between pleasure and pain." Stash's lips curled. "As though one learns about such things by talking about them. For over two decades, he has been claiming to be working on a monumental study of prostitution. But he is still doing his field research."
Stash, Nasty, Lulu and I sat in the cellar drinking and talking for hours. When we eventually emerged from the bunker at four in the morning, the fun had only just begun upstairs. A group of giggling girls sat astride the wall, chipping at it with sledgehammers while beneath them gangs of hippies and skinheads slamdanced savagely in ankle deep water from the fire hoses and water cannons of the border guards. Tear gas and cordite hung heavy in the humid air. Sniggering happily, pudgy Saure watched it all and raked in the cash.
Stash said that he would drive Lulu home. Nasty just took one of my fingers and ran the tip of her tongue along its length lingeringly. Then she bit it. Viciously. I could feel my heart pounding. I knew I must was alive.
"At least one feels something, liebchen," Anastasia drawled. "The heart pounds and so one knows that one is alive. Also, men seem to like it." She turned and looked at me insolently. "Don't you, little one?"
"I don't find gooseflesh terribly erotic," I replied, trying to stare her down and losing my footing in the process. I tumbled down a flight of concrete stairs and lay there clutching my ankle. The two girls walked past, laughing mercilessly. I hobbled after them into the cold night air. Anastasia slid gracefully into the driver's seat of a shiny black Ferrari. Lulu got in beside her after I had edged myself into the cramped back seat. We drove off in a squeal of tortured rubber.
"Why do you stay in this slum, Lulu?" Anastasia asked, turning a corner at high speeds, almost flattening an elderly couple transfixed in her headlights like outraged rabbits.
"East Berlin is so wonderfully drab," Lulu protested.
"There are some amusing places here now," Anastasia conceded, driving effortlessly through three consecutive red lights. "But I should have thought your tastes would be better served elsewhere."
"Where are we going tonight?" Lulu asked.
"We are meeting Stash at Der Mauer," Anastasia replied, whipping the Ferrari through a maze of dark alleys. "It's a new club," she explained. "Owned by my hairdresser. We thought you might enjoy it." Anastasia braked savagely at the nondescript entrance of a warehouse. A young man in khaki uniform and jackboots goose-stepped up and saluted stiffly. "Real East German border guards. Saure pays attention to detail. He is a good hairdresser." Anastasia rapped at the warehouse entrance three times. The door opened a crack. A furtive eye looked us over and then the door opened wide.
"Princess!" A little bald man in dinner clothes exclaimed ecstatically, kissing Anastasia's hand and bowing obsequiously all around. "At your service. Princess, the gentleman is already here. I have had your table arranged in the bunker. I thought you would be more comfortable there. Please tell me if you have any special desires this evening." He giggled and rubbed his pudgy little hands.
We walked into an immense space packed with young people. The room was divided in half by a high concrete wall. Tables on either side shuddered with the deafening sound of machine gun fire. Searchlights played across the room. Groups of grungy desperadoes amused themselves trying to climb across rows of barbed wire. Four sentry towers stood in each corner of the warehouse and men in uniforms stood at attention in the turrets, holding rifles. A corpse or two lay artistically asprawl on the floor. We picked our way through to the center of the room and clambered down a metal spiral staircase which led to a small cellar. Swastikas and yellowing portraits of Hitler hung on every wall.
A man sat alone at a table laid out for four. He rose slowly as we approached, kissed Anastasia on the cheek, took Lulu's hand in his and brushed the air above it with his lips, and then turned to me. "Stanislas Malinowski," he murmured as we shook hands. He was a tall man with very broad shoulders hunched together slightly. He had the most melancholy eyes I had ever seen: cold pale blue, crinkled at the edges, they seemed to have seen it all. His thin lips were twisted into an agreeable sneer and a broad scar ran diagonally across the lines on his wide forehead. He wore his thinning blond hair a little too long at the back. I guessed that he was in his late thirties, Polish, and a gentleman.
"What do you do, sir?" I asked once we had been served. I'm always more polite with a drink safely in hand.
"Please call me Stash," Stanislas replied with equal politeness. "I am a director."
"Theater or film?" I used to take part in amateur theatricals in the primary school I attended in San Salvador. I had won considerable notoriety at the age of seven for my portrayal of Jesus as an incompetent young carpenter. My father had even received death threats on my life from ultra-Catholic extremists.
"Don't you remember, angel, we saw Sodom together in Oxford," Lulu brightly reminded me from across the table.
I stared wide-eyed at Stash. It was all I could do to prevent myself from gushing about how much I had enjoyed Sodom and the even more gloomily erotic Gomorrah. Lot's Daughters, the most recent and controversial of Malinowski's black and white series of Old Testament movies, had won critical acclaim and prizes galore but it had also sparked off violent protests in New York and Jerusalem where angry demonstrators had set fire to an art theater in which the movie had just opened, inflicting third degree burns on a popcorn vendor with no sense of smell who died a few days later in hospital of his injuries, a tragedy which gave rise to the United Nations sponsored Campaign to Enhance the Status and Power Of the Olfactorily Labored (official acronym: CESSPOOL). "What are you working on now?" I asked.
"Uriah's wife," Stash said, carefully filling his glass with equal measures of gin, vodka, and ether.
"Is that the one King David was after, so he sent her husband into battle to die?"
"Yes. Lots of sex and violence. And everyone dies miserably." Stash looked a little happier. "Just what they deserve."
"Stash is a good Polish Catholic. He believes that beautiful Jewesses should be portrayed as bitches," Anastasia said evenly.
"That's why I chose you for the role, Nasty," Stash replied equally equably. "So few actresses reveal their innate viciousness. You are the exception that proves the rule. Whatever that means." He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I have worked with many actors. Most are good liars. One actually believes for some time that they have feelings, even brains," he added graciously. "But all actors, by definition, want people to stare at them. Sit passively and eat popcorn and look at me and drool! And yet these monsters of vanity and narcissism also want to be liked. The contradiction is infuriating. I would gladly see all actors strangled at birth like female infants in the Third World. Or perhaps one would wait until they first revealed this vicious propensity. Then one might shut them up in a cave without food or water as the Namuna Indians do to children suspected of hysterical leanings." Stash smiled widely, his lips still pressed together tight.
"If you hate actors so much, why don't you stop directing?" Lulu objected.
Stash and Nasty laughed at this piece of naivete. Lulu blushed. "I always do," Stash answered. "Every movie is my last. Then I run out of money and I have to make another movie, knowing that it will only cause me anguish." He spread out his broad calloused hands in a graceful gesture of resignation. "Life is suffering and one has to make a living. Therefore one must suffer. It is better than being bored."
"What did you do before you become a director?"
"I was an anthropologist," Stash said sadly. "And a mountain climber. One day my harness broke and I fell and broke my back in three places and then I had plenty of time to think about my life as I lay in the hospital. I decided that this sort of prostitution appealed to me. They say that I am a good director. And I enjoy these old Biblical myths. These stories of human greed and divine cruelty."
"Midas," I said, remembering something. Lulu crinkled her eyes at me. Very casually, she leaned over toward Stash. Her black dress slipped off one round white shoulder.
"I don't think that myth is in the Old Testament," Stash said mildly. "But, yes, he too was greedy and the gods took advantage. Whom the gods would punish, they grant his every wish." He looked at Lulu and smiled. Their hands grazed each other as they picked up their drinks. My eyes met Anastasia's phosphorescent glitter. Her knee brushed mine under the table.
"Where did you get those bruises?" Nasty asked curiously. "Do you like to be beaten?" Small hot fingers stroked my thigh.
"Some skinheads in Prague got a little carried away," I said, trying to control my breathing. The fingers slid deftly under the napkin on my lap. "It was really my own fault." I told them briefly about my chequered career at the University of Truth and Justice.
"Does Max von Hohenstaufen have something to do with this strange university? He is a cousin through one of my mother's marriages," Anastasia explained indifferently. "The most boring fellow. His son is nicer but he always has this guilty look in his eyes. Just because Max mistreated him as a child. Poor Willi. He is now working as a prostitute near the Zoo."
Stash laughed. "Maybe I should tell Flysenko to study male prostitutes," he murmured to himself.
"Flysenko? The Polish sociologist?" I asked. "He will also be teaching at the University of Truth and Justice soon. Cain Piknik recommended him."
"Well, yes, Piknik would. The man has an insane sense of humour. He used to give the policemen little foil medals when they came to arrest him. He can also whistle with his asshole. Very confusing when we were trying to escape arrest together. Nobody was ever sure if Piknik was a real dissident or an agent provocateur. After the revolution, he became very wealthy. He claims it is from his pornographic newspaper but nobody believes it. Most mysterious. But at least he is amusing. Flysenko, on the other hand…"
"Do you know him?"
"We taught together in Warsaw many years ago. If you were still at this university, you would have the dubious pleasure of hearing Flysenko give pompous lectures on the connection between pleasure and pain." Stash's lips curled. "As though one learns about such things by talking about them. For over two decades, he has been claiming to be working on a monumental study of prostitution. But he is still doing his field research."
Stash, Nasty, Lulu and I sat in the cellar drinking and talking for hours. When we eventually emerged from the bunker at four in the morning, the fun had only just begun upstairs. A group of giggling girls sat astride the wall, chipping at it with sledgehammers while beneath them gangs of hippies and skinheads slamdanced savagely in ankle deep water from the fire hoses and water cannons of the border guards. Tear gas and cordite hung heavy in the humid air. Sniggering happily, pudgy Saure watched it all and raked in the cash.
Stash said that he would drive Lulu home. Nasty just took one of my fingers and ran the tip of her tongue along its length lingeringly. Then she bit it. Viciously. I could feel my heart pounding. I knew I must was alive.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 23
I was more than usually giddy when I woke up. I felt light-headed when I yawned, as though I was exhaling a dark thundercloud, purging away my chequered career at the University of Truth and Justice. Lying there with my arms behind my head, smiling into the darkness, I felt exhilarated, rejuvenated with every fresh breath. I was young, penniless, and in Berlin. I was ready for new adventures. I started by exploring my friend Lulu's apartment.
I found Lulu in a large room at the other end of the corridor, sitting at a desk covered with papers, the floor around her strewn with thick books. Her hair shone like a streak of molten gold in the cone of yellow light shed by the heavy desk lamp. Hearing my footsteps, she turned and scowled at me. "Since when have you been grinding your teeth in your sleep?" Lulu asked sternly. "I hit you but you just kept sleeping."
"When did you wake up?"
"Ages ago. You slept all day. At first I thought that the noise was a death rattle but it went on too long so I finally figured out that you were just grinding your teeth."
"All the stress I've been under."
"Sugarplum, stress is no excuse. Teeth are crucial. I bet Flossie still brushes thrice a day."
"Always," I confirmed. "Even when she's drunk. But what does Floss have to do with my teeth?"
Lulu gasped and put a hand to her lovely mouth. "You haven't heard?"
"What?"
"Flossie's been missing in weeks. She's being held hostage by these Sikh separatists whom she was interviewing. They're threatening to pull out all her teeth, one by one, week after week, until Punjab is liberated."
"Floss does have a lot of teeth," I said with outward nonchalance although my head was spinning like a top.
"It was on the news every night until some Amerikan dentist got kidnapped in Burma."
"Copycats?"
"Well, it makes sense," Lulu replied reasonably. "Amerikans are so obsessed with perfect teeth. The guerrilla groups finally realized how to get attention. It had to happen some time."
"What is the Amerikan government doing about it?"
"Dental diplomacy. They're offering the guerrillas free toothpaste for every man, woman, and child. And a million dollars in ransom money."
"So there is a tooth fairy after all."
"Aren't you worried?" Lulu said reproachfully. "Flossie is your best friend in the world."
"She can always get dentures." So that was why Flossie had not responded to my last letter asking her how she had heard of the Fund for Peace and Love, which had given her money for her research on Sikh militants, and which, as I had later discovered, was one of Xox's clandestine conduits for passing on covert funds to revolutionary groups around the world. "Lulu, may I make a quick phone call to Prague?"
"Go right ahead, darling," Lulu replied cheerfully. "The next tenant will take care of it."
I picked up the telephone and called the office of my former boss, the rector of the University of Truth and Justice, Professor Otto Hell. To my relief, Hell picked up the phone himself, grumpily.
"Otto?" I asked anxiously. "I'm calling from Berlin. I need a favour."
"What is it?" Hell responded crossly. "I'm playing chess right now."
"With whom?" I asked jealously.
"Your friend Immanuel. Want a blow-by-blow description?"
"I'm sorry to bother you. Otto, but my best friend has been kidnapped by Sikh separatists in India. Would you mind speaking to Xox about it?"
There was a long silence. "Sorry," Otto said finally. "Immanuel just moved. Why do you think Xox could help?"
"He finances the Sikhs, doesn't he?"
The sound of wrapping paper crumpling. Hell was laughing. "Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Why should he use his influence to free your friend?"
"As a favor to you?"
Hell sighed. "I'll speak to him about it tomorrow."
"I don't know how to thank you," I said, sincerely.
"I'll think of something," Hell growled. "What are you doing in Berlin?"
"Visiting a friend," I replied cheerfully. "I'll send you a postcard."
"Do that," Hell answered. "Stay in touch."
"Good luck with the game." I put down the phone and slumped to the floor in relief.
Lulu stared wide-eyed at me. "What was that all about, sweetie?"
"Hell will tell Xox to tell the Sikhs to free Flossie," I explained concisely. "Isn't that nice?"
"It's lovely," Lulu replied. "Are they going to do it just out of the goodness of their little hearts?"
"Everyone owes someone something."
"So what does Hell owe you?"
"Nothing. But now I owe him a favor."
"You are so sentimental." Lulu shook her head. "I can't wait to tell Floss about this. Go take a shower, angel. We don't have much time and I want you to tell me what to wear."
"Where are we going?"
"Nasty called me. She said that Stash wants to have a drink with me." Lulu looked pleased with herself.
"Who are Nasty and Stash?"
"Oh, just people I met," Lulu said vaguely. "You'll like them."
"Do you like them?"
"Well..." To my amazement Lulu blushed. It was very becoming. I told her so. She grinned and stuck out her tongue provocatively at me. I kissed her. "Oh, go brush your teeth, sweetie," Lulu said, freeing herself. "Your mouth tastes terrible." She examined my appearance and shook her head. "You look like a wreck. What have you been doing to yourself? No, don't tell me now, just go and get ready. And hurry!"
I squatted in a rusty bathtub that had seen better days and cut myself in three places while shaving with soap and a dribble of freezing water. Bleeding onto my shirt, I emerged from the bathroom and collided into Lulu, naked, stripped for action, carrying a heap of dresses over her arm into the bedroom.
"I'm getting horribly fat," Lulu said, throwing the dresses onto the floor. She peevishly pinched a tiny fold of flesh at her wasp waist. "And my breasts are sagging."
"They are not," I said hotly. "They're just fine. Cute and perky as ever. I've never seen you worry about your looks."
"Honey, stop bleeding all over the place," Lulu said querulously, pulling on sheer black stockings. I admired the view. "It's really hard to get bloodstains out of parquet. I don't know whether to sleep with Stash. What should I wear?"
"The severe black jersey if you want to sleep with him. The flowery print if you don't," I advised. "Weren't you telling me just last night that you were giving up sex?"
Lulu pulled the black knit dress over her head. "He seems special," she said, her voice muffled by the cloth. She extricated her lovely head from the dress and smoothed its folds over her shapely body. "He's got charisma."
"How can you tell?" I asked, intrigued.
"You'll see. He's so cool. I don't even know if he wants to sleep with me. Sugar, will you please signal if you think I should seduce him?"
"Should I wink at you? Kick you under the table? Puff out my cheeks and blow?"
Lulu considered the options. "If you think I should, say `Midas', okay?"
"Why `Midas'?"
The doorbell rang loudly. "I'll tell you later," Lulu said mysteriously, lacing up her shiny black boots. "Go open the door, cherub."
I opened the door. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against the doorway. She looked up and smiled slowly at me. A mass of copper curls glowed dimly around the green flames that were her eyes. She was wearing a dress of black netting and nothing underneath. I noticed irrelevantly the small pink freckles that dotted her very pale heart-shaped face. "You're bleeding," she said huskily. I couldn't place her accent. "Do you mind?" She leaned forward, put her hands on my shoulders, and licked my cuts with quick feline flicks of her hot tongue. I shivered. "I love the taste of blood. My name is Anastasia. My friends call me Nasty. They are right."
From the frying pan right into the inferno, I sighed to myself, my face buried in the smoky red cloud of Anastasia's hair: I was a burnt child who dreaded passion's flames, yet I seemed destined to play with fire and get burnt once again.
I found Lulu in a large room at the other end of the corridor, sitting at a desk covered with papers, the floor around her strewn with thick books. Her hair shone like a streak of molten gold in the cone of yellow light shed by the heavy desk lamp. Hearing my footsteps, she turned and scowled at me. "Since when have you been grinding your teeth in your sleep?" Lulu asked sternly. "I hit you but you just kept sleeping."
"When did you wake up?"
"Ages ago. You slept all day. At first I thought that the noise was a death rattle but it went on too long so I finally figured out that you were just grinding your teeth."
"All the stress I've been under."
"Sugarplum, stress is no excuse. Teeth are crucial. I bet Flossie still brushes thrice a day."
"Always," I confirmed. "Even when she's drunk. But what does Floss have to do with my teeth?"
Lulu gasped and put a hand to her lovely mouth. "You haven't heard?"
"What?"
"Flossie's been missing in weeks. She's being held hostage by these Sikh separatists whom she was interviewing. They're threatening to pull out all her teeth, one by one, week after week, until Punjab is liberated."
"Floss does have a lot of teeth," I said with outward nonchalance although my head was spinning like a top.
"It was on the news every night until some Amerikan dentist got kidnapped in Burma."
"Copycats?"
"Well, it makes sense," Lulu replied reasonably. "Amerikans are so obsessed with perfect teeth. The guerrilla groups finally realized how to get attention. It had to happen some time."
"What is the Amerikan government doing about it?"
"Dental diplomacy. They're offering the guerrillas free toothpaste for every man, woman, and child. And a million dollars in ransom money."
"So there is a tooth fairy after all."
"Aren't you worried?" Lulu said reproachfully. "Flossie is your best friend in the world."
"She can always get dentures." So that was why Flossie had not responded to my last letter asking her how she had heard of the Fund for Peace and Love, which had given her money for her research on Sikh militants, and which, as I had later discovered, was one of Xox's clandestine conduits for passing on covert funds to revolutionary groups around the world. "Lulu, may I make a quick phone call to Prague?"
"Go right ahead, darling," Lulu replied cheerfully. "The next tenant will take care of it."
I picked up the telephone and called the office of my former boss, the rector of the University of Truth and Justice, Professor Otto Hell. To my relief, Hell picked up the phone himself, grumpily.
"Otto?" I asked anxiously. "I'm calling from Berlin. I need a favour."
"What is it?" Hell responded crossly. "I'm playing chess right now."
"With whom?" I asked jealously.
"Your friend Immanuel. Want a blow-by-blow description?"
"I'm sorry to bother you. Otto, but my best friend has been kidnapped by Sikh separatists in India. Would you mind speaking to Xox about it?"
There was a long silence. "Sorry," Otto said finally. "Immanuel just moved. Why do you think Xox could help?"
"He finances the Sikhs, doesn't he?"
The sound of wrapping paper crumpling. Hell was laughing. "Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. Why should he use his influence to free your friend?"
"As a favor to you?"
Hell sighed. "I'll speak to him about it tomorrow."
"I don't know how to thank you," I said, sincerely.
"I'll think of something," Hell growled. "What are you doing in Berlin?"
"Visiting a friend," I replied cheerfully. "I'll send you a postcard."
"Do that," Hell answered. "Stay in touch."
"Good luck with the game." I put down the phone and slumped to the floor in relief.
Lulu stared wide-eyed at me. "What was that all about, sweetie?"
"Hell will tell Xox to tell the Sikhs to free Flossie," I explained concisely. "Isn't that nice?"
"It's lovely," Lulu replied. "Are they going to do it just out of the goodness of their little hearts?"
"Everyone owes someone something."
"So what does Hell owe you?"
"Nothing. But now I owe him a favor."
"You are so sentimental." Lulu shook her head. "I can't wait to tell Floss about this. Go take a shower, angel. We don't have much time and I want you to tell me what to wear."
"Where are we going?"
"Nasty called me. She said that Stash wants to have a drink with me." Lulu looked pleased with herself.
"Who are Nasty and Stash?"
"Oh, just people I met," Lulu said vaguely. "You'll like them."
"Do you like them?"
"Well..." To my amazement Lulu blushed. It was very becoming. I told her so. She grinned and stuck out her tongue provocatively at me. I kissed her. "Oh, go brush your teeth, sweetie," Lulu said, freeing herself. "Your mouth tastes terrible." She examined my appearance and shook her head. "You look like a wreck. What have you been doing to yourself? No, don't tell me now, just go and get ready. And hurry!"
I squatted in a rusty bathtub that had seen better days and cut myself in three places while shaving with soap and a dribble of freezing water. Bleeding onto my shirt, I emerged from the bathroom and collided into Lulu, naked, stripped for action, carrying a heap of dresses over her arm into the bedroom.
"I'm getting horribly fat," Lulu said, throwing the dresses onto the floor. She peevishly pinched a tiny fold of flesh at her wasp waist. "And my breasts are sagging."
"They are not," I said hotly. "They're just fine. Cute and perky as ever. I've never seen you worry about your looks."
"Honey, stop bleeding all over the place," Lulu said querulously, pulling on sheer black stockings. I admired the view. "It's really hard to get bloodstains out of parquet. I don't know whether to sleep with Stash. What should I wear?"
"The severe black jersey if you want to sleep with him. The flowery print if you don't," I advised. "Weren't you telling me just last night that you were giving up sex?"
Lulu pulled the black knit dress over her head. "He seems special," she said, her voice muffled by the cloth. She extricated her lovely head from the dress and smoothed its folds over her shapely body. "He's got charisma."
"How can you tell?" I asked, intrigued.
"You'll see. He's so cool. I don't even know if he wants to sleep with me. Sugar, will you please signal if you think I should seduce him?"
"Should I wink at you? Kick you under the table? Puff out my cheeks and blow?"
Lulu considered the options. "If you think I should, say `Midas', okay?"
"Why `Midas'?"
The doorbell rang loudly. "I'll tell you later," Lulu said mysteriously, lacing up her shiny black boots. "Go open the door, cherub."
I opened the door. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against the doorway. She looked up and smiled slowly at me. A mass of copper curls glowed dimly around the green flames that were her eyes. She was wearing a dress of black netting and nothing underneath. I noticed irrelevantly the small pink freckles that dotted her very pale heart-shaped face. "You're bleeding," she said huskily. I couldn't place her accent. "Do you mind?" She leaned forward, put her hands on my shoulders, and licked my cuts with quick feline flicks of her hot tongue. I shivered. "I love the taste of blood. My name is Anastasia. My friends call me Nasty. They are right."
From the frying pan right into the inferno, I sighed to myself, my face buried in the smoky red cloud of Anastasia's hair: I was a burnt child who dreaded passion's flames, yet I seemed destined to play with fire and get burnt once again.
Friday, July 22, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 22
"Who is it?" A languorous purr from behind the massive wooden door. Still panting from climbing six flights of stairs in this East Berlin apartment building, I gasped out my name. The door opened wide and I fell into Lulu's bare arms. "Darling! It is you! I thought it had to be some horrible sex-maniac at this time of the morning. I felt this wonderful frisson of excitement..." Lulu murmured delightedly, her little teeth affectionately nibbling my earlobe. "Come in, sweetie. You must be freezing. Do you want coffee or hot chocolate or brandy or all three?" Chattering away vivaciously, Lulu led me by the hand into her apartment. I leaned against a wall and looked on while Lulu glid around the dark kitchen, deftly pulling out a bottle of milk dangling from a string outside her window, pouring milk into a battered saucepan, lighting an ancient stove with a match, rinsing out two chipped mugs, pouring serious slugs of brandy into them, lighting two cigarettes and handing one to me with a smile which changed instantly to a look of concern when she saw my battered face. "What happened?" Lulu shrieked. "Have you been getting into fights, you bad little boy?"
"It's a long story, Lu. Do you happen to have any chairs in this apartment?"
"Well, there used to be a lot of chairs when I moved in," Lulu said, smiling wickedly. "But Michel managed to destroy most of them, just by sitting in them. Well, all right, he also threw one or two at me. I'll probably have to replace them all when I leave."
"Michel?"
"Oh, he's this rugby player who came up to me in a bar and told me that he had this terribly important match the next day and that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to concentrate because he would be standing around on the pitch dreaming of me and so would I please sleep with him?"
"And so you did. Strumpet." I took a sip of my brandy-laced hot chocolate, sighed with contentment, and slumped onto the floor. "I hope they won."
"Oh, don't sit on the floor, love, it's so dirty. I'm sure there are cockroaches and mice all over the place." Lulu shuddered. "I haven't cleaned the place since I came. I'm such a slut." She led me out of the kitchen. "Come in here where it's comfortable." We walked into a small room which was all bed. The yellow flicker of a candle on a low corner table dimly illuminated the edge of the tapestries that billowed all around the mattresses and cushions and blankets and rugs on the floor. Lulu plumped cushions all around me and wrapped me in a comforter. "Isn't that better, honey?" she murmured, snuggling up to me.
"It's wonderful, Lulu," I said sincerely. I sniffed her fragrant hair, sighed fervently, and closed my eyes. "Where's Michel?"
"Oh, I didn't feel like getting involved with him."
"Because he threw chairs at you?"
"Oh, that was fun. But, no..." Lulu sighed. She snuggled up closer to me. "You know, dearest, a time comes in the life of every woman when she needs to get serious. When she has to ruthlessly eliminate all distractions, all frivolities. I feel like I have to get down to business."
"You're pregnant," I said, appalled. "What are you going to do, Lulu?"
Lulu sat up indignantly. "Of course I'm not pregnant!" she exclaimed. "Do I look like an idiot? No woman with a brain in her head has babies if she can help it."
"But everyone talks about this biological urge. Like a time bomb or something."
"Male propaganda," Lulu explained succinctly. "For centuries men have been telling us how much we really want to have babies. As though any rational creature would want to go through the harrowing sufferings of childbirth," she sniffed. "Would you want to put your foot on a landmine?" She glared at me.
"Lulu, I'm on your side," I said, trying to appease her. "I have never understood why people keep having babies. Why do they do it?"
Lulu smiled at me and put her head back in my lap. I stroked her smooth forehead. "Because they're stupid," she said. "And bored. They want a new toy. It's so important to stop little girls from playing with dolls."
"So what are you planning to do with your life now, Lu?"
"I'm going to eliminate sex."
"From the entire planet?"
"I would if I could, angel, but I'm going to start with my life. Oh, sex is fun sometimes but is it really worth it?" I could feel Lulu's warm breath high on my thigh. I squirmed and drank down my hot chocolate.
"So what are you going to do instead?"
"I'm going to work hard."
"No, Lulu," I responded crossly. "Now that really is stupid. Take drugs or something if you're so bored with sex. Climb mountains. Jump off bridges. Go jogging. I'm disappointed in you. I never thought you would say something so banal and trite and Puritan as that."
"But really," Lulu insisted, turning to look up at me. "Wouldn't it be fun to be Professor Louisa Frazer, forty something, hair pulled up in a severe bun and tortoise shell glasses and an intimidating academic reputation, rather than being Lulu, the cute flirt?"
"Professor Frazer is such a predictable persona, Lu. You'll turn into her anyway. Can't you just be both academic and flirt in the meantime?"
"It confuses men," Lulu sighed. "Especially big strong brainless men. The kind I like."
"You win some, you confuse some. Aren't you too young for a midlife crisis?"
"No. I had one last month. I almost got married."
"Anyone I know?"
"No. His name is Nectarino. He's Italian. I met him at a party given by Princess Fi."
"Is he big and strong and brainless?"
"Totally." Lulu smiled beatifically. "Absolutely brain-dead. Doesn't speak a word. He just grunts. He's yummy."
"Sounds like a husband made in heaven. So what happened?"
"I panicked at the last moment and cancelled the wedding after the arrangements had all been made. His family was awfully angry. I thought they would hire a hitman to get me."
"What made you panic?"
"When we met the Pope," Lulu replied. "Nectarino insisted that we have an audience. It's an old family tradition. Apparently all the Nectarini do it before they get married."
"Does the Pope look fake?" I asked, interested. "I knew this girl in college whose name was Caroline Wojdyla. She claimed that the pope was her third cousin twice removed. One time she went to the Vatikan and met the old geezer, and she swore that he didn't look at all like in the family pictures. Caro was convinced that the real Pope, her cousin, had been a liberal who wanted to legalize abortion and birth control and women priests and the marriage of priests and that he had been secretly bumped off in an evil Vatikan conspiracy by all these reactionary Monsignors and Cardinals who had found some old Polish look-alike as a replacement. Of course, Caro was a pro-choice campaigner and a frightful liar, so I didn't know whether to believe her and I've never met the man myself. Did you think the Pope looked real?"
"Actually, he looked like a wax doll." Lulu giggled. "I wanted to pinch him but Nectarino wouldn't let me. Apparently bankers aren't allowed to pinch their clients."
"Nectarino is the Pope's banker?"
"Well, the Nectarini are. His family has been financing the Vatikan since the Middle Ages."
"So is Nectarino filthy rich?"
"Obviously, sugar." Lulu sniffed. "He wanted me to wear all this ugly jewellery. Dripping with diamonds."
"You could always sell the diamonds after your divorce," I offered. "Alimony is a feminist's best friend."
"It was dynastic stuff," Lulu replied. "Passed on down the generations. The Nectarini would definitely hire a hitman if I tried to sell their jewels. Besides, Nectarino doesn't understand the concept of divorce. Marriage is for life."
"Sounds like a prison sentence. Is that why you escaped to Berlin?"
"Yes. I had to get over this perverse feeling of wanting to imprison myself for the rest of my life with one person. It's so addictive, this craving for commitment." Lulu sighed. "Even now, I wish some big strong man would just ride up on his white horse and take me away..."
"Shame on you," I scolded. "You even wrote a book on Freud. You know what white horses stand for."
"The big strong man's mother," Lulu said dreamily. "Or is that cows? Sweetie, I'm so tired. Let's go to bed."
"Okay." I looked at my watch before I blew out the candle. Six in the morning. A hidden dawn turned the tapestries a luminous purple as Lulu and I fell fast asleep in a chaste embrace, seeking nothing more from each other's bodies than the pleasure of animal warmth. Simple sins are so often the best.
"It's a long story, Lu. Do you happen to have any chairs in this apartment?"
"Well, there used to be a lot of chairs when I moved in," Lulu said, smiling wickedly. "But Michel managed to destroy most of them, just by sitting in them. Well, all right, he also threw one or two at me. I'll probably have to replace them all when I leave."
"Michel?"
"Oh, he's this rugby player who came up to me in a bar and told me that he had this terribly important match the next day and that he was afraid that he wouldn't be able to concentrate because he would be standing around on the pitch dreaming of me and so would I please sleep with him?"
"And so you did. Strumpet." I took a sip of my brandy-laced hot chocolate, sighed with contentment, and slumped onto the floor. "I hope they won."
"Oh, don't sit on the floor, love, it's so dirty. I'm sure there are cockroaches and mice all over the place." Lulu shuddered. "I haven't cleaned the place since I came. I'm such a slut." She led me out of the kitchen. "Come in here where it's comfortable." We walked into a small room which was all bed. The yellow flicker of a candle on a low corner table dimly illuminated the edge of the tapestries that billowed all around the mattresses and cushions and blankets and rugs on the floor. Lulu plumped cushions all around me and wrapped me in a comforter. "Isn't that better, honey?" she murmured, snuggling up to me.
"It's wonderful, Lulu," I said sincerely. I sniffed her fragrant hair, sighed fervently, and closed my eyes. "Where's Michel?"
"Oh, I didn't feel like getting involved with him."
"Because he threw chairs at you?"
"Oh, that was fun. But, no..." Lulu sighed. She snuggled up closer to me. "You know, dearest, a time comes in the life of every woman when she needs to get serious. When she has to ruthlessly eliminate all distractions, all frivolities. I feel like I have to get down to business."
"You're pregnant," I said, appalled. "What are you going to do, Lulu?"
Lulu sat up indignantly. "Of course I'm not pregnant!" she exclaimed. "Do I look like an idiot? No woman with a brain in her head has babies if she can help it."
"But everyone talks about this biological urge. Like a time bomb or something."
"Male propaganda," Lulu explained succinctly. "For centuries men have been telling us how much we really want to have babies. As though any rational creature would want to go through the harrowing sufferings of childbirth," she sniffed. "Would you want to put your foot on a landmine?" She glared at me.
"Lulu, I'm on your side," I said, trying to appease her. "I have never understood why people keep having babies. Why do they do it?"
Lulu smiled at me and put her head back in my lap. I stroked her smooth forehead. "Because they're stupid," she said. "And bored. They want a new toy. It's so important to stop little girls from playing with dolls."
"So what are you planning to do with your life now, Lu?"
"I'm going to eliminate sex."
"From the entire planet?"
"I would if I could, angel, but I'm going to start with my life. Oh, sex is fun sometimes but is it really worth it?" I could feel Lulu's warm breath high on my thigh. I squirmed and drank down my hot chocolate.
"So what are you going to do instead?"
"I'm going to work hard."
"No, Lulu," I responded crossly. "Now that really is stupid. Take drugs or something if you're so bored with sex. Climb mountains. Jump off bridges. Go jogging. I'm disappointed in you. I never thought you would say something so banal and trite and Puritan as that."
"But really," Lulu insisted, turning to look up at me. "Wouldn't it be fun to be Professor Louisa Frazer, forty something, hair pulled up in a severe bun and tortoise shell glasses and an intimidating academic reputation, rather than being Lulu, the cute flirt?"
"Professor Frazer is such a predictable persona, Lu. You'll turn into her anyway. Can't you just be both academic and flirt in the meantime?"
"It confuses men," Lulu sighed. "Especially big strong brainless men. The kind I like."
"You win some, you confuse some. Aren't you too young for a midlife crisis?"
"No. I had one last month. I almost got married."
"Anyone I know?"
"No. His name is Nectarino. He's Italian. I met him at a party given by Princess Fi."
"Is he big and strong and brainless?"
"Totally." Lulu smiled beatifically. "Absolutely brain-dead. Doesn't speak a word. He just grunts. He's yummy."
"Sounds like a husband made in heaven. So what happened?"
"I panicked at the last moment and cancelled the wedding after the arrangements had all been made. His family was awfully angry. I thought they would hire a hitman to get me."
"What made you panic?"
"When we met the Pope," Lulu replied. "Nectarino insisted that we have an audience. It's an old family tradition. Apparently all the Nectarini do it before they get married."
"Does the Pope look fake?" I asked, interested. "I knew this girl in college whose name was Caroline Wojdyla. She claimed that the pope was her third cousin twice removed. One time she went to the Vatikan and met the old geezer, and she swore that he didn't look at all like in the family pictures. Caro was convinced that the real Pope, her cousin, had been a liberal who wanted to legalize abortion and birth control and women priests and the marriage of priests and that he had been secretly bumped off in an evil Vatikan conspiracy by all these reactionary Monsignors and Cardinals who had found some old Polish look-alike as a replacement. Of course, Caro was a pro-choice campaigner and a frightful liar, so I didn't know whether to believe her and I've never met the man myself. Did you think the Pope looked real?"
"Actually, he looked like a wax doll." Lulu giggled. "I wanted to pinch him but Nectarino wouldn't let me. Apparently bankers aren't allowed to pinch their clients."
"Nectarino is the Pope's banker?"
"Well, the Nectarini are. His family has been financing the Vatikan since the Middle Ages."
"So is Nectarino filthy rich?"
"Obviously, sugar." Lulu sniffed. "He wanted me to wear all this ugly jewellery. Dripping with diamonds."
"You could always sell the diamonds after your divorce," I offered. "Alimony is a feminist's best friend."
"It was dynastic stuff," Lulu replied. "Passed on down the generations. The Nectarini would definitely hire a hitman if I tried to sell their jewels. Besides, Nectarino doesn't understand the concept of divorce. Marriage is for life."
"Sounds like a prison sentence. Is that why you escaped to Berlin?"
"Yes. I had to get over this perverse feeling of wanting to imprison myself for the rest of my life with one person. It's so addictive, this craving for commitment." Lulu sighed. "Even now, I wish some big strong man would just ride up on his white horse and take me away..."
"Shame on you," I scolded. "You even wrote a book on Freud. You know what white horses stand for."
"The big strong man's mother," Lulu said dreamily. "Or is that cows? Sweetie, I'm so tired. Let's go to bed."
"Okay." I looked at my watch before I blew out the candle. Six in the morning. A hidden dawn turned the tapestries a luminous purple as Lulu and I fell fast asleep in a chaste embrace, seeking nothing more from each other's bodies than the pleasure of animal warmth. Simple sins are so often the best.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 21
"So you're leaving? No skin off my nose," Fyodor declared, vigorously rubbing his small pink snub nose. He smiled, showing shiny steel fillings. I grinned back. Fyodor was probably my favorite student at the University of Truth and Justice, and certainly the most insane. I was bringing down my things when he accosted me in the elevator and forcibly took a couple of bags despite my protests.
"Unfortunately, I have to leave for now. But I wish you all the best, Fyodor. Don't stay up every night playing computer games, okay?"
Fyodor tugged at his scalp and made a face at the chunk of hair that came away in his hand. Fyodor didn't have much hair to spare. His father was Bulgarian and his mother Ukrainian and Fyodor had spent his childhood in a grimy village on the outskirts of Chernobyl, playing with stuff that glowed in the dark. An earlier bout with cancer had taken his spleen. He was far from unusual: most of our students seemed organ-deprived in one way or another. Sasha, the glowering Croat neo-conservative, had lost an eye (and his heart, according to the university wags) in the Balkan wars. Pretty little Natasha ate only kasha, oatmeal porridge, because of severe childhood malnutrition in Minsk. I was sitting opposite her one day at lunch when she ate some apple pie at the rash urging of her friend, Felicia. No one else noticed as Natasha held a napkin to her mouth and discreetly removed a bleeding portion of gum and tooth, still held in the delicious pie crust. Felicia was a plump jolly blonde from a provincial Romanian town, and unless you looked especially carefully past her carefree laughter, you would hardly notice that her left arm was paralysed and withered and that her laughter had a spluttering breathless edge to it from the black fumes that billowed from the giant aluminum smelter conveniently located near her town. I could attach poignant stories to familiar faces and as I left I knew that I would miss their old-fashioned courtesy and delight in conversation.
"Where are you going now?" Fyodor asked.
I checked my watch. "I'm meeting Immanuel and Divka for coffee, and then I have an appointment with some skinheads."
"Skinheads?" Fyodor seemed delighted. He ran his hand over the few remaining strands of red hair standing out in sharp contrast to his dead white scalp. "May I join you? I'm practically a skinhead myself."
As Fyodor and I took a tram down to the main train station, I looked back at the tall building that housed the University of Truth and Justice, its windows shining brightly in the orange blaze of a winter sunset. So much had happened in the few weeks since I had come to Prague. I felt a pang of nostalgia, tart and premature as unseasoned wine. I looked away and then looked back again. A green and white police car had turned the corner into the driveway of the university building, its lights casually flashing. And then another, and another. The tram pulled away and I lost sight. My nostalgia had disappeared in a hurry.
Fyodor was singing to himself softly, oblivious of police cars or of the heavy blank hostility of the other occupants of the crowded tram. He pulled out a mouth organ just as the tram lurched to a halt at the train station. I had a sudden idea.
"Fyodor," I hissed. "Have you ever been a busker?"
"A street musician?" Fyodor shrugged. "It's how I earned my train ticket to Prague this summer."
"Great. Let's find Immanuel and Divka and then do a little busking, okay?" We threaded our way through crowds of commuters and located Immanuel and Divka at the small café just inside the train station where we had arranged to meet. I greeted them and hurriedly explained my plan.
Predictably, Immanuel was flustered and confused, as philosophers tend to become at such moments. "Lemme get this straight," he blurted, contorting his thin face in an anxious grimace. "We should all try to hide in the crowd because the police are after the wrong person?"
"It's perfectly clear," Divka said impatiently. "The police want to use our poor friend here as a scapegoat. Since they are looking for him by himself, they will walk right by a group of street musicians. She turned to me, her face glowing. "And then you can get away!"
"I'm in." Fyodor took off his green corduroy cap and threw it onto the ground. He threw some change into the cap and pulled out his harmonica. "What shall we sing?"
"We'll make something up." Divka tugged at Immanuel's arm. "Come on, this is so much fun. I haven't done this since the last time the communists were looking for Wenceslas and we passed him on from one apartment to another by the fire-escape at the back of the building. They never figured out what was going on until he slipped and broke his ankle."
"You think the police will just walk by?" Immanuel sounded sceptical. "He's pretty distinctive, you know. Not that many Mongolians around here."
Divka shrugged. "We'll disguise him somehow."
I had an idea. "Divka, are you wearing stockings?" Puzzled, she squinted at me and nodded. "Will you give them to me?"
"My stockings will disguise you?"
"If I put them on my head."
"They're my only pair without holes," Divka pouted but then she relented. We stood in front, whistling nonchalantly as we shielded her from the stares of passers-by, as she hiked up her skirt and pulled off her pantyhose. An old drunk buying cigarettes behind Divka made an appreciative face when she mooned him.
Divka winced as I ruthlessly ripped her hose into two and pulled one half over my head. "I need holes for my eyes and mouth," I said, my voice muffled. Divka pulled out nail scissors from her capacious bag and carefully cut through the nylon. With growing enthusiasm, she began painting in eyebrows and applying a little rouge.
"There," she said, happily applying a little last-minute lipstick. "What a pretty skinhead you make."
The police car sirens grew closer. We went outside and took up position discreetly beside the main doors of the railway station. Divka and Fyodor struck up an impromptu a capella number, taking turns with each line, while Immanuel and I clapped and sang along, just as fat Lieutenant Boruvka breathlessly rushed up with a contingent of his men:
O Mister Fat Man
Whom do you seek?
Huffing, puffing
Out of breath
Why hunt the meek?
Think of your heart
Lard clogging your veins
Pushing, shoving
Always wrong
Why take such pains?
Do you want a heart attack
Turning blue, a falling cop
Jerking, convulsing
Dead fat man
Why didn't you stop?
The police gathered around after their unsuccessful sortie and the drug dealers and pimps cautiously emerged from assorted crevices in the cavernous train station. Immanuel raised his quavering tenor in an old Bob Dylan song. Boruvka and his troops retreated, crestfallen, having found no sign of their quarry. Just when I thought we were safe and began peeling off my stocking mask, Boruvka cast a last glance back and shrieked triumphantly. Many shirll whistle blasts later, the police hordes came galloping back in tidy formation.
"Get going!" Fyodor urged, shaking me out of my paralysis.
I regretfully abandoned my precious ostrich-skin bags. "Take care of my stuff for me, will you?"
Divka kissed me on the cheek and then my friends shoved me back into the train station. I looked at my watch and began to run. I had an appointment that I couldn't afford to miss. Fifteen breathless minutes later, I was shaking liberal Bob's hand in a deserted square in a working-class district. Desperate for cash, I had made a deal with Bob, a ticket to Berlin in exchange for a few photographs with some skinheads who wanted to punish me for being involved in the death of a white woman. The skinheads just wanted to teach a lesson to the Vietnamese community and the growing Chinese Mafia in Prague, and I had after all been working in an institution of higher learning., The skinheads quickly warmed up to their task of beating me up under the manic choreography of Bob and a photographer from his newspaper for Amerikan expatriates, Prahahaha!, and the additional impetus of a growing crowd of interested onlookers who jeered, hissed, tried to join in the fun, and when prevented, contented themselves with throwing rotten vegetables at me as I lay prostrate and bleeding from the brass knuckles and steel-toed boots of the skinheads, who then turned their attention to the photographer when he belatedly realized that he had enough pictures and tried to dissuade them from kicking me to death, but once he too lay unconscious on the pavement and the police sirens became louder, the skinheads left, still shaking their fists at me. All smiles, Bob gave me my ticket to Berlin and two hundred extra dollars, swearing that I had been the making of his newspaper and promising similar jobs in the future.
I staggered back to the train station. An hour later, I was gingerly applying antiseptic to my wounds in a small stinking train toilet, wincing at each shuddering jerk as the train jolted its way out of Prague. I would probably need stitches but I had cleaned most of my cuts and bruises for now. I stuck my head out into the narrow corridor and jerked it back in again. Lieutenant Boruvka stood on the fast-receding platform , vainly trying to stop the train. Just to be safe, I pulled Divka's stocking mask on again and stepped out into the corridor. As I came back towards my seat, a skinhead in full regalia, all swastikas and safety pins, cried out in fear and ran away screaming in guttural German. I stood baffled for a moment and then saw my grotesque reflection in the train window. Divka's makeup had smeared and run and my eyes and lips looked like they had melted. I was something out of Dali, a skinhead's nightmare. I smiled at myself and slipped into dreamless sleep.
"Unfortunately, I have to leave for now. But I wish you all the best, Fyodor. Don't stay up every night playing computer games, okay?"
Fyodor tugged at his scalp and made a face at the chunk of hair that came away in his hand. Fyodor didn't have much hair to spare. His father was Bulgarian and his mother Ukrainian and Fyodor had spent his childhood in a grimy village on the outskirts of Chernobyl, playing with stuff that glowed in the dark. An earlier bout with cancer had taken his spleen. He was far from unusual: most of our students seemed organ-deprived in one way or another. Sasha, the glowering Croat neo-conservative, had lost an eye (and his heart, according to the university wags) in the Balkan wars. Pretty little Natasha ate only kasha, oatmeal porridge, because of severe childhood malnutrition in Minsk. I was sitting opposite her one day at lunch when she ate some apple pie at the rash urging of her friend, Felicia. No one else noticed as Natasha held a napkin to her mouth and discreetly removed a bleeding portion of gum and tooth, still held in the delicious pie crust. Felicia was a plump jolly blonde from a provincial Romanian town, and unless you looked especially carefully past her carefree laughter, you would hardly notice that her left arm was paralysed and withered and that her laughter had a spluttering breathless edge to it from the black fumes that billowed from the giant aluminum smelter conveniently located near her town. I could attach poignant stories to familiar faces and as I left I knew that I would miss their old-fashioned courtesy and delight in conversation.
"Where are you going now?" Fyodor asked.
I checked my watch. "I'm meeting Immanuel and Divka for coffee, and then I have an appointment with some skinheads."
"Skinheads?" Fyodor seemed delighted. He ran his hand over the few remaining strands of red hair standing out in sharp contrast to his dead white scalp. "May I join you? I'm practically a skinhead myself."
As Fyodor and I took a tram down to the main train station, I looked back at the tall building that housed the University of Truth and Justice, its windows shining brightly in the orange blaze of a winter sunset. So much had happened in the few weeks since I had come to Prague. I felt a pang of nostalgia, tart and premature as unseasoned wine. I looked away and then looked back again. A green and white police car had turned the corner into the driveway of the university building, its lights casually flashing. And then another, and another. The tram pulled away and I lost sight. My nostalgia had disappeared in a hurry.
Fyodor was singing to himself softly, oblivious of police cars or of the heavy blank hostility of the other occupants of the crowded tram. He pulled out a mouth organ just as the tram lurched to a halt at the train station. I had a sudden idea.
"Fyodor," I hissed. "Have you ever been a busker?"
"A street musician?" Fyodor shrugged. "It's how I earned my train ticket to Prague this summer."
"Great. Let's find Immanuel and Divka and then do a little busking, okay?" We threaded our way through crowds of commuters and located Immanuel and Divka at the small café just inside the train station where we had arranged to meet. I greeted them and hurriedly explained my plan.
Predictably, Immanuel was flustered and confused, as philosophers tend to become at such moments. "Lemme get this straight," he blurted, contorting his thin face in an anxious grimace. "We should all try to hide in the crowd because the police are after the wrong person?"
"It's perfectly clear," Divka said impatiently. "The police want to use our poor friend here as a scapegoat. Since they are looking for him by himself, they will walk right by a group of street musicians. She turned to me, her face glowing. "And then you can get away!"
"I'm in." Fyodor took off his green corduroy cap and threw it onto the ground. He threw some change into the cap and pulled out his harmonica. "What shall we sing?"
"We'll make something up." Divka tugged at Immanuel's arm. "Come on, this is so much fun. I haven't done this since the last time the communists were looking for Wenceslas and we passed him on from one apartment to another by the fire-escape at the back of the building. They never figured out what was going on until he slipped and broke his ankle."
"You think the police will just walk by?" Immanuel sounded sceptical. "He's pretty distinctive, you know. Not that many Mongolians around here."
Divka shrugged. "We'll disguise him somehow."
I had an idea. "Divka, are you wearing stockings?" Puzzled, she squinted at me and nodded. "Will you give them to me?"
"My stockings will disguise you?"
"If I put them on my head."
"They're my only pair without holes," Divka pouted but then she relented. We stood in front, whistling nonchalantly as we shielded her from the stares of passers-by, as she hiked up her skirt and pulled off her pantyhose. An old drunk buying cigarettes behind Divka made an appreciative face when she mooned him.
Divka winced as I ruthlessly ripped her hose into two and pulled one half over my head. "I need holes for my eyes and mouth," I said, my voice muffled. Divka pulled out nail scissors from her capacious bag and carefully cut through the nylon. With growing enthusiasm, she began painting in eyebrows and applying a little rouge.
"There," she said, happily applying a little last-minute lipstick. "What a pretty skinhead you make."
The police car sirens grew closer. We went outside and took up position discreetly beside the main doors of the railway station. Divka and Fyodor struck up an impromptu a capella number, taking turns with each line, while Immanuel and I clapped and sang along, just as fat Lieutenant Boruvka breathlessly rushed up with a contingent of his men:
O Mister Fat Man
Whom do you seek?
Huffing, puffing
Out of breath
Why hunt the meek?
Think of your heart
Lard clogging your veins
Pushing, shoving
Always wrong
Why take such pains?
Do you want a heart attack
Turning blue, a falling cop
Jerking, convulsing
Dead fat man
Why didn't you stop?
The police gathered around after their unsuccessful sortie and the drug dealers and pimps cautiously emerged from assorted crevices in the cavernous train station. Immanuel raised his quavering tenor in an old Bob Dylan song. Boruvka and his troops retreated, crestfallen, having found no sign of their quarry. Just when I thought we were safe and began peeling off my stocking mask, Boruvka cast a last glance back and shrieked triumphantly. Many shirll whistle blasts later, the police hordes came galloping back in tidy formation.
"Get going!" Fyodor urged, shaking me out of my paralysis.
I regretfully abandoned my precious ostrich-skin bags. "Take care of my stuff for me, will you?"
Divka kissed me on the cheek and then my friends shoved me back into the train station. I looked at my watch and began to run. I had an appointment that I couldn't afford to miss. Fifteen breathless minutes later, I was shaking liberal Bob's hand in a deserted square in a working-class district. Desperate for cash, I had made a deal with Bob, a ticket to Berlin in exchange for a few photographs with some skinheads who wanted to punish me for being involved in the death of a white woman. The skinheads just wanted to teach a lesson to the Vietnamese community and the growing Chinese Mafia in Prague, and I had after all been working in an institution of higher learning., The skinheads quickly warmed up to their task of beating me up under the manic choreography of Bob and a photographer from his newspaper for Amerikan expatriates, Prahahaha!, and the additional impetus of a growing crowd of interested onlookers who jeered, hissed, tried to join in the fun, and when prevented, contented themselves with throwing rotten vegetables at me as I lay prostrate and bleeding from the brass knuckles and steel-toed boots of the skinheads, who then turned their attention to the photographer when he belatedly realized that he had enough pictures and tried to dissuade them from kicking me to death, but once he too lay unconscious on the pavement and the police sirens became louder, the skinheads left, still shaking their fists at me. All smiles, Bob gave me my ticket to Berlin and two hundred extra dollars, swearing that I had been the making of his newspaper and promising similar jobs in the future.
I staggered back to the train station. An hour later, I was gingerly applying antiseptic to my wounds in a small stinking train toilet, wincing at each shuddering jerk as the train jolted its way out of Prague. I would probably need stitches but I had cleaned most of my cuts and bruises for now. I stuck my head out into the narrow corridor and jerked it back in again. Lieutenant Boruvka stood on the fast-receding platform , vainly trying to stop the train. Just to be safe, I pulled Divka's stocking mask on again and stepped out into the corridor. As I came back towards my seat, a skinhead in full regalia, all swastikas and safety pins, cried out in fear and ran away screaming in guttural German. I stood baffled for a moment and then saw my grotesque reflection in the train window. Divka's makeup had smeared and run and my eyes and lips looked like they had melted. I was something out of Dali, a skinhead's nightmare. I smiled at myself and slipped into dreamless sleep.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 20
Who killed Lucy Setton? And why? I walked down the corridor towards my room in the University of Truth and Justice, remembering Lucy's angelic demeanor, her bizarre incapacity to comprehend money, her soft warm body… I was overcome by the memory of walking down this same corridor with Lucy just days before, laughing and idly talking as we set out on our ill-fated quest for vegetables, from which she had never returned. We had lost our vegetables and her death had brought no closure. I was still reeling from Steele's revelations. Why had Lucy changed her mind in the taxi with Steele and decided to go to the train station? Who had hired her at the University of Truth and Justice? How was it possible that she had no past? And who had killed her?
I was assailed by more than just questions as I opened my door: out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark shape hurtling towards me. I ducked out of the way but not fast enough. A heavy object struck my shoulder and then smashed onto the floor in a crystalline clangour of shattering glass. I cried out in pain and turned towards my opponent. The lights went on and I was looking into the concerned faces of Marek, the big blond barman and pretty Annichka from the reception desk.
"What are you doing here? We thought you had left Prague already!" Marek and Annichka exclaimed.
"You mean you were trying to kill someone else?" I asked weakly, rubbing my bruised shoulder. "Or just practising your pitching? You nearly took my head off."
"I wanted to," Marek said with conviction. "Whoever raped and murdered Lucy deserves to die horribly."
"What are you talking about? Whom were you trying to get?"
"The murderer, of course."
"How did you know he would be here?"
Their faces were as confused as mine. "You told us."
"I did?"
Annichka nodded eagerly. "You called me half an hour ago. You sounded really excited. You said you knew who had killed Lucy and that he was going to go to your room to get some vital evidence. And you told me to get someone to wait here till the door opened. Whoever opened the door would be the murderer. You said to make sure to hurt him first because he would be very dangerous. So I ran up to the bar and got Marek. And he brought a bottle of vodka to throw."
"Like a grenade," Marek confirmed. "So it would look like an accident."
"Like the vodka bottle just spontaneously exploded?" I asked kindly. Marek looked blank. "Never mind. Annichka, why did you think it was me?"
"Well, he said he was you. And he knew my name. And he sounded Amerikan."
"A distinctive accent. Guess that rules out a lot of people," I said, exasperated. But then I saw her brimming eyes and sighed. "Don't cry, dear, I know you meant well. And it would have been lovely if Lucy's murderer were lying here right now in a pool of blood and vodka. Instead I've got a sore shoulder and we don't even have anything to drink."
Marek extracted another bottle from his well-worn leather jacket and held it out to me.
"Didn't trust your aim, huh?" I took a long gulp of vodka. The slow hot trail down my gullet took my attention away from my throbbing shoulder. "Here, Annichka, you'd better have some too. You're shaking. Let's get away from this broken glass. That's better. Now let's try to figure out what is going on here."
"Maybe I was speaking to Lucy's murderer!" Annichka's voice went squeaky with excitement.
"Or an accomplice. In any event we know they wanted to kill me. Or to cause me seriously bodily harm."
"Why would they want to do that?" Annichka asked, puzzled. I blessed her silently. "What makes you dangerous?"
"I wish I knew. What a strange story about wanting to retrieve vital evidence from this room."
"Maybe we should search the room," Marek suggested.
I shrugged. "Sure. I have to pack anyway."
Embarrassingly, it was little Annichka who found the panties as Marek and I messed around through my assorted clutter. She cleared her throat noisily and held them up for our inspection: a pair of white cotton panties, speckled at the top and sides with faded brown stains. "I found these in your bed," Annichka said reproachfully. "Buried under the sheets and blankets."
"Oh my God. The missing panties." My head felt oddly light. I felt rather than saw Marek reach over to catch me as I fainted. The next thing I felt was the vodka bottle being forced between my lips and teeth like a cold glass nipple. I coughed and spluttered and blinked open my eyes.
"Are those Lucy's panties?" Marek asked, wide-eyed. "What are they doing in your bed?"
"Good questions." I nodded woozily. "I have a couple more myself. Are those blood stains on the panties? Who planted the panties in my bed?"
"It's normal for blood to get onto panties," Annichka said boastfully. I remembered with an inexplicable pang that she was just sixteen.
I shook my head. "Lucy's panties were always spotless."
"How do you know?" Annichka asked severely.
"Go check for yourself," I replied evasively. "You have a master key, don't you? Lucy's room is right next door."
Annichka shook her head. "But all her stuff is gone. They took it away this morning."
"The Amerikan Embassy?"
"No, someone came from New York."
"From New York?" I repeated stupidly.
"One of Mr. Xox's people. Professor Masaryk came down to the reception desk with this guy and told me to open Lucy's room for him.
"What did he look like?"
"He was really tall and thin and kind of hunched over. I didn't really see his face properly because he was wearing this ugly hat but his voice was strange. He was speaking through his nose and it kept cracking."
"Was he Amerikan?"
"Nooo…" Annichka sounded unsure. "I don't know. He was nice, though. He thanked me and patted me on my head. Oh, and he gave me his card also for the Amerikan embassy if they had any questions about Lucy's things. Here…" Annichka dug into her jeans. I noticed that they fit her very nicely. She pulled out a card and gave it to me.
"No first name. Dr. Koroviev. Exponential Investments. That's Xox's company. Why would they…" I blew out a long slow sigh. The memory of Xox's joyous rutting with Lucy in the room next door came vividly back to mind. Was Xox trying to protect himself? From what? Had Lucy been blackmailing him? "Do you guys know if Xox is married, by any chance?"
Marek and Annichka looked at each other in bewilderment and shook their heads. Annichka was still clutching her discovery. I felt guilty for getting these two involved. Did fingerprints transfer to panties? Suddenly a thought flared across my mind. "Annichka," I said urgently. "Show me exactly where you found those. No wait a moment." I sprinted across the room to the wash basin and watched in the mirror as Annichka bent over the bed, her slim body obscuring my view. The rocket in my mind exploded into spectacular fireworks. "Rasputin!" I screamed. "Fucking Rasputin planted them!"
Gingerly avoiding the broken glass by the door, we went up to the bar and Marek made us all steaming hot whisky toddies. We turned off the lights and huddled around the fireplace. I watched Annichka's young face glow pink and gold in the flickering light as I began piecing together an explanation.
"Fact one: Lucy was sleeping with Xox." Annichka gasped in surprise. I nodded grimly. "It's true, Annichka. I saw them doing it. Fact two: nobody knows where Lucy came from or how she got her job at the university."
"That's not true," Marek piped up unexpectedly. "I was here when Lucy came to the university. She was wearing a tight white T shirt." He closed his eyes and licked his lips. "Man, she looked good…" Annichka punched his beefy arm hard and swore at him in Czech. Marek reddened. "She had a backpack. It was right by her chair."
"Who interviewed her?"
Marek looked surprised. "Professor Masaryk of course. He was her boss, no?"
I whistled. "Well, isn't that interesting. Let's change Fact two. Professor Masaryk falsely denies knowing how Lucy was hired. Fact Three: Lucy's stuff was taken away by mysterious Dr. Koroviev from New York who works for Xox. Fact Four: Lucy's panties were missing from her body." I nodded at Marek and Annichka. "The police told us. Fact Five: Lucy's panties were planted in my bed by someone who came to visit me… on the night that Lucy disappeared and was probably murdered." My voice faltered as I remembered asking Rasputin about the blood on his hands. "He told me he had an accident at the train station."
"But what was Lucy doing at the train station?" Annichka asked sensibly. I told them about our evening at the wine bar with Steele and about Lucy's peculiar change of plans.
"Maybe your friend Steele did kill her," Marek pointed out. "And just dumped her body. We only have his word that Lucy actually decided not to go home with him and went to the train station instead."
"You're right." I sighed. "Unfortunately, we also only have my word that Rasputin ever came to Prague and that he put those panties in my bed. If that fat detective found out, he would definitely put me in jail and throw away the key…"
"We won't tell him."
"I know," I said gratefully. "But the fact is that someone is trying to make it look like I killed Lucy. First Rasputin plants those panties. Then you get this mysterious phone call saying that vital evidence is hidden in my room, hoping that either you would kill me or that those panties would get found. I've got to figure out what is going on before they come up with something else."
"What are you going to do?" Annichka asked.
"Rasputin said he was going to Berlin. I've got to track him down somehow. Can you hide those panties for me? The blood on them is the only evidence we've got that Rasputin was involved."
"Sure." Annichka giggled. "I'll put them under a pile of my own panties. No one will notice."
"Okay. Just don't wear them or wash them, all right? Lucy was definitely murdered. This may involve some very important people. Like Xox. Or Professor Masaryk." I watched my words sink into their sober young faces. "We all need to be very very careful. Whoever killed Lucy will probably strike again."
I was assailed by more than just questions as I opened my door: out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark shape hurtling towards me. I ducked out of the way but not fast enough. A heavy object struck my shoulder and then smashed onto the floor in a crystalline clangour of shattering glass. I cried out in pain and turned towards my opponent. The lights went on and I was looking into the concerned faces of Marek, the big blond barman and pretty Annichka from the reception desk.
"What are you doing here? We thought you had left Prague already!" Marek and Annichka exclaimed.
"You mean you were trying to kill someone else?" I asked weakly, rubbing my bruised shoulder. "Or just practising your pitching? You nearly took my head off."
"I wanted to," Marek said with conviction. "Whoever raped and murdered Lucy deserves to die horribly."
"What are you talking about? Whom were you trying to get?"
"The murderer, of course."
"How did you know he would be here?"
Their faces were as confused as mine. "You told us."
"I did?"
Annichka nodded eagerly. "You called me half an hour ago. You sounded really excited. You said you knew who had killed Lucy and that he was going to go to your room to get some vital evidence. And you told me to get someone to wait here till the door opened. Whoever opened the door would be the murderer. You said to make sure to hurt him first because he would be very dangerous. So I ran up to the bar and got Marek. And he brought a bottle of vodka to throw."
"Like a grenade," Marek confirmed. "So it would look like an accident."
"Like the vodka bottle just spontaneously exploded?" I asked kindly. Marek looked blank. "Never mind. Annichka, why did you think it was me?"
"Well, he said he was you. And he knew my name. And he sounded Amerikan."
"A distinctive accent. Guess that rules out a lot of people," I said, exasperated. But then I saw her brimming eyes and sighed. "Don't cry, dear, I know you meant well. And it would have been lovely if Lucy's murderer were lying here right now in a pool of blood and vodka. Instead I've got a sore shoulder and we don't even have anything to drink."
Marek extracted another bottle from his well-worn leather jacket and held it out to me.
"Didn't trust your aim, huh?" I took a long gulp of vodka. The slow hot trail down my gullet took my attention away from my throbbing shoulder. "Here, Annichka, you'd better have some too. You're shaking. Let's get away from this broken glass. That's better. Now let's try to figure out what is going on here."
"Maybe I was speaking to Lucy's murderer!" Annichka's voice went squeaky with excitement.
"Or an accomplice. In any event we know they wanted to kill me. Or to cause me seriously bodily harm."
"Why would they want to do that?" Annichka asked, puzzled. I blessed her silently. "What makes you dangerous?"
"I wish I knew. What a strange story about wanting to retrieve vital evidence from this room."
"Maybe we should search the room," Marek suggested.
I shrugged. "Sure. I have to pack anyway."
Embarrassingly, it was little Annichka who found the panties as Marek and I messed around through my assorted clutter. She cleared her throat noisily and held them up for our inspection: a pair of white cotton panties, speckled at the top and sides with faded brown stains. "I found these in your bed," Annichka said reproachfully. "Buried under the sheets and blankets."
"Oh my God. The missing panties." My head felt oddly light. I felt rather than saw Marek reach over to catch me as I fainted. The next thing I felt was the vodka bottle being forced between my lips and teeth like a cold glass nipple. I coughed and spluttered and blinked open my eyes.
"Are those Lucy's panties?" Marek asked, wide-eyed. "What are they doing in your bed?"
"Good questions." I nodded woozily. "I have a couple more myself. Are those blood stains on the panties? Who planted the panties in my bed?"
"It's normal for blood to get onto panties," Annichka said boastfully. I remembered with an inexplicable pang that she was just sixteen.
I shook my head. "Lucy's panties were always spotless."
"How do you know?" Annichka asked severely.
"Go check for yourself," I replied evasively. "You have a master key, don't you? Lucy's room is right next door."
Annichka shook her head. "But all her stuff is gone. They took it away this morning."
"The Amerikan Embassy?"
"No, someone came from New York."
"From New York?" I repeated stupidly.
"One of Mr. Xox's people. Professor Masaryk came down to the reception desk with this guy and told me to open Lucy's room for him.
"What did he look like?"
"He was really tall and thin and kind of hunched over. I didn't really see his face properly because he was wearing this ugly hat but his voice was strange. He was speaking through his nose and it kept cracking."
"Was he Amerikan?"
"Nooo…" Annichka sounded unsure. "I don't know. He was nice, though. He thanked me and patted me on my head. Oh, and he gave me his card also for the Amerikan embassy if they had any questions about Lucy's things. Here…" Annichka dug into her jeans. I noticed that they fit her very nicely. She pulled out a card and gave it to me.
"No first name. Dr. Koroviev. Exponential Investments. That's Xox's company. Why would they…" I blew out a long slow sigh. The memory of Xox's joyous rutting with Lucy in the room next door came vividly back to mind. Was Xox trying to protect himself? From what? Had Lucy been blackmailing him? "Do you guys know if Xox is married, by any chance?"
Marek and Annichka looked at each other in bewilderment and shook their heads. Annichka was still clutching her discovery. I felt guilty for getting these two involved. Did fingerprints transfer to panties? Suddenly a thought flared across my mind. "Annichka," I said urgently. "Show me exactly where you found those. No wait a moment." I sprinted across the room to the wash basin and watched in the mirror as Annichka bent over the bed, her slim body obscuring my view. The rocket in my mind exploded into spectacular fireworks. "Rasputin!" I screamed. "Fucking Rasputin planted them!"
Gingerly avoiding the broken glass by the door, we went up to the bar and Marek made us all steaming hot whisky toddies. We turned off the lights and huddled around the fireplace. I watched Annichka's young face glow pink and gold in the flickering light as I began piecing together an explanation.
"Fact one: Lucy was sleeping with Xox." Annichka gasped in surprise. I nodded grimly. "It's true, Annichka. I saw them doing it. Fact two: nobody knows where Lucy came from or how she got her job at the university."
"That's not true," Marek piped up unexpectedly. "I was here when Lucy came to the university. She was wearing a tight white T shirt." He closed his eyes and licked his lips. "Man, she looked good…" Annichka punched his beefy arm hard and swore at him in Czech. Marek reddened. "She had a backpack. It was right by her chair."
"Who interviewed her?"
Marek looked surprised. "Professor Masaryk of course. He was her boss, no?"
I whistled. "Well, isn't that interesting. Let's change Fact two. Professor Masaryk falsely denies knowing how Lucy was hired. Fact Three: Lucy's stuff was taken away by mysterious Dr. Koroviev from New York who works for Xox. Fact Four: Lucy's panties were missing from her body." I nodded at Marek and Annichka. "The police told us. Fact Five: Lucy's panties were planted in my bed by someone who came to visit me… on the night that Lucy disappeared and was probably murdered." My voice faltered as I remembered asking Rasputin about the blood on his hands. "He told me he had an accident at the train station."
"But what was Lucy doing at the train station?" Annichka asked sensibly. I told them about our evening at the wine bar with Steele and about Lucy's peculiar change of plans.
"Maybe your friend Steele did kill her," Marek pointed out. "And just dumped her body. We only have his word that Lucy actually decided not to go home with him and went to the train station instead."
"You're right." I sighed. "Unfortunately, we also only have my word that Rasputin ever came to Prague and that he put those panties in my bed. If that fat detective found out, he would definitely put me in jail and throw away the key…"
"We won't tell him."
"I know," I said gratefully. "But the fact is that someone is trying to make it look like I killed Lucy. First Rasputin plants those panties. Then you get this mysterious phone call saying that vital evidence is hidden in my room, hoping that either you would kill me or that those panties would get found. I've got to figure out what is going on before they come up with something else."
"What are you going to do?" Annichka asked.
"Rasputin said he was going to Berlin. I've got to track him down somehow. Can you hide those panties for me? The blood on them is the only evidence we've got that Rasputin was involved."
"Sure." Annichka giggled. "I'll put them under a pile of my own panties. No one will notice."
"Okay. Just don't wear them or wash them, all right? Lucy was definitely murdered. This may involve some very important people. Like Xox. Or Professor Masaryk." I watched my words sink into their sober young faces. "We all need to be very very careful. Whoever killed Lucy will probably strike again."
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
#GenghizInLove: Episode 19
I shivered as I stood outside the University of Truth and Justice building, waiting for a tram to carry me to my appointment with Steele. It was a cold grey day and the icy wind spat sleet in my face, like sporadic sniper fire announcing the approach of an advancing army, and even the vitamin I had taken could not entirely mask from me a chill premonition of the coming of winter. I felt an animal urge to find a snug shelter, to squirrel away a few nuts, to hibernate... I glanced around at the other passengers on the crowded tram as we slowly rode through the heart of Prague and I even half-envied them their shabby shoes, their drab nylon clothes, their bad haircuts, their shapeless bodies, their cramped apartments, their boring jobs, their security. Even half a loaf seemed better than no bread at all.
I got off the tram before my stop and walked over a bridge, a broad concrete span across the slow colorless wide expanse of the Vltava river. I was glad to enter the expensive warmth of the Cafe Classique, to walk across its marble floor towards the corner table where Steele sat morosely reading a newspaper, oblivious to the inviting glances and excessively short skirts of the painted women sitting all alone around him, sullenly ignoring even the intricately decorated moulding on the ceiling high above him.
"So what's with Tirana?" I asked Steele, sipping the cappuccino promptly brought to me by a portly waiter with a dignified white moustache and a manner redolent of old Vienna.
"Tirana?" Steele responded with fake cheeriness. "Why, it's the captivating capital of alluring Albania. The land of my dreams!"
"Why did they transfer you there?"
"They said I'd outlived my utility here." Steele's lower lip quivered. "Amerikan attaches should not be suspected of murdering their fellow nationals. The personnel department in Washington said that they had never heard of something like this before. They said that Congress would probably hold hearings. The Secretary of State is worried that Congress might slash the budget for the foreign service as a whole. Seriously bad publicity. I blamed it all on you but they said that I had to redeem myself somehow. So my boss, Shirley, told me to deal with shipping Lucy back home."
"Back to Utah?"
"Utah?" Steele looked puzzled. "Why Utah?"
"I've always wondered too. Lucy told me she was a Mormon. She told me that she had studied linguistics at Brigham Young University and that she was over here to convert people."
"First I've heard of it," Steele said. "Nobody seems to know anything about this girl's past. I called your university and they said that they had no records at all on Lucy. All they knew was her last name. Setton. No next of kin. No home address. Nobody even knew how she got her job at the university. Or at least that's what they said."
"Really? Whom did you speak with at the university?"
"Some old Czech guy, crotchety professor type. He was really snotty at first, wanted to know how old I was because he never again wanted to have anything to do with young Amerikans."
"It must have been Professor Masaryk," I said with glad recognition. The University of Truth and Justice already seemed very far away. Perhaps, one day it would seem so far away that I could tell funny stories about it. "She was his secretary. He really liked her."
"He sounded like he hated her. Said that she was nothing but trouble. Always on leave when he needed her."
"Huh!" I snorted. "He was always snivelling when she wasn't around to feed him vitamins."
"Vitamins?" Steele stared at me incredulously. I realized that I hadn't mentioned Lucy's propensity for dispensing her extraordinary mood-changing pills to everyone in the university. I told him all about it. "Sounds like psychotropic drugs to me," Steele responded robustly. "Vitamins, my ass!"
"You think Lucy was a drug dealer?" I asked cautiously. Steele and Luke had been good friends in boarding school but now that Steele worked for the government I wasn't sure whether to mention Luke's expertise in illegal substances. I decided not to tell Steele that I had asked Luke to analyse the vitamins.
"I don't know what to think about that chick," Steel replied dubiously. "The Records Office in Washington said that they had no records of any passport being issued to a Lucy Setton."
"But what about her personal belongings? She must have had photographs from home or something..."
"Nope." Steele shook his head decisively. "The university couldn't find a single thing that would identify her. It's like she had no past. No jewellery, no photographs, no letters. They turned her clothes over to us. They've all been bought in the last three months, all in boutiques here in Prague. Mostly stuff from Sellaton. Nothing distinctive, just whatever is cool these days."
I had a sudden inspiration. "What did she pay with?"
Steele stared at me. "Huh?"
"Cash? Credit card?" I was really excited. "She had a problem with money."
"An addiction or what?"
I shook my head impatiently. "No, she just couldn't grasp the concept. Cash to her was just dirty paper. She couldn't figure out why I wanted to be paid."
"Well, someone bought those clothes." Steel rubbed his chin with a long knobbly finger. "I think. Maybe they were shoplifted."
"Is there any way to check?"
"Not really. Who would remember? A tank top, a pair of jeans. A couple of dresses. White cotton panties. Generic stuff."
"And Masaryk couldn't tell you who hired her at the university?" The beginning of a suspicion began to coil lazily in my mind. Maybe Lucy really had no past. Or maybe someone didn't want to tell us about her past.
"I'm telling you. She came out of thin air."
"This is really strange." Why would Professor Masaryk hide information about Lucy? I had to return to the university to pack up my bags. Maybe I could ask a few questions.
"Tell me about it," Steele said bitterly. "I was the one kissing little Miss Thin Air, remember? Who knows what kind of diseases she had? I'll check out about this Mormon connection but I bet that Brigham Young and the Utah police say that they've never heard of her. We're stuck with a body and nowhere to send it. And everyone says it's my fault. So they're sending me to Tirana."
"Why?"
"Well, they want to check out Socks more carefully. Apparently they're beginning to wonder if he hasn't been double-timing the CIA all along. Not that he was ever a straight-forward agent or anything. As far as I know, the guy just passed on CIA bucks to dissidents, especially in this part of the world. Philanthropy is good cover, I guess. Nobody suspects you because they already suspect you, if you see what I mean."
"Yes," I said slowly, thinking of my friend Godfrey's remarks over the phone a few weeks earlier about the strategy of triple-bluff, of finessing one's way onto a higher level of uncertainty. "Yes, I see what you mean."
"And now, after Max Bulge fell off his yacht, all billionaires born in the Eastern Bloc are automatically suspect. So I'm supposed to find out about X-O-X's past in Albania. And because I worked on Wall Street they think I can find out whether he was a front for the Albanian communists. And since the Albanian regime was propped up by Beijing, maybe X-O-X has actually been working for the Chinese all along. In which case, maybe the revolutions of 1989 were all a Chinese plot? Shit." Steele scratched his head. "This is top-level CIA geopolitical analysis. Seriously classified stuff. Why the hell am I telling you all this?"
"It doesn't matter," I reassured him. "It's okay. I'm not working at the university anymore. I'm going to Berlin."
"Lucky bastard. They have cafes in Berlin. I bet they don't have places like this in Tirana," Steele grumbled. "I'll miss all this luxury. I've heard that they don't even have taxis in Tirana. Everyone rides around on bikes. It's exile. Deportation. A death sentence. It's the end of my career. It's like being posted in Rwanda or Burundi. I'll never make ambassador now. My father will be so disappointed. And it's all your fault."
"Oh, come on. Think positive," I urged brightly. "Maybe you'll do a great job and find out everything about X-O-X and then the Secretary of State will give you a medal."
"Fat chance. Maybe the Chinese will when they take over the world. This coffee's terrible. Let's switch to whisky."
"It isn't even noon yet."
"So what? They're all Muslims in Albania. I probably won't even be able to get a drink there. Adding injury to insult."
And so Steele and I sat all afternoon in the Cafe Classique drinking whisky after whisky, reluctantly brought to us by the portly waiter, his nostrils dilated with dignified disdain and his wizened neck shaking in palsied disapproval of the atrocious alcohol abuse he was being forced to abet. I felt adrift in a clammy fog through which I dimly saw a pretty blonde in a white dress sitting on a cloud, one little finger demurely raised to her rosebud mouth, one azure eye closed in an enigmatic wink. I had the uncanny feeling that I hadn't heard the last of Lucy Setton. Or her vitamins. Or the University of Truth and Justice. Or its mysterious founder, the cryptic Mister Xox. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. To err is human, to forget divine.
I got off the tram before my stop and walked over a bridge, a broad concrete span across the slow colorless wide expanse of the Vltava river. I was glad to enter the expensive warmth of the Cafe Classique, to walk across its marble floor towards the corner table where Steele sat morosely reading a newspaper, oblivious to the inviting glances and excessively short skirts of the painted women sitting all alone around him, sullenly ignoring even the intricately decorated moulding on the ceiling high above him.
"So what's with Tirana?" I asked Steele, sipping the cappuccino promptly brought to me by a portly waiter with a dignified white moustache and a manner redolent of old Vienna.
"Tirana?" Steele responded with fake cheeriness. "Why, it's the captivating capital of alluring Albania. The land of my dreams!"
"Why did they transfer you there?"
"They said I'd outlived my utility here." Steele's lower lip quivered. "Amerikan attaches should not be suspected of murdering their fellow nationals. The personnel department in Washington said that they had never heard of something like this before. They said that Congress would probably hold hearings. The Secretary of State is worried that Congress might slash the budget for the foreign service as a whole. Seriously bad publicity. I blamed it all on you but they said that I had to redeem myself somehow. So my boss, Shirley, told me to deal with shipping Lucy back home."
"Back to Utah?"
"Utah?" Steele looked puzzled. "Why Utah?"
"I've always wondered too. Lucy told me she was a Mormon. She told me that she had studied linguistics at Brigham Young University and that she was over here to convert people."
"First I've heard of it," Steele said. "Nobody seems to know anything about this girl's past. I called your university and they said that they had no records at all on Lucy. All they knew was her last name. Setton. No next of kin. No home address. Nobody even knew how she got her job at the university. Or at least that's what they said."
"Really? Whom did you speak with at the university?"
"Some old Czech guy, crotchety professor type. He was really snotty at first, wanted to know how old I was because he never again wanted to have anything to do with young Amerikans."
"It must have been Professor Masaryk," I said with glad recognition. The University of Truth and Justice already seemed very far away. Perhaps, one day it would seem so far away that I could tell funny stories about it. "She was his secretary. He really liked her."
"He sounded like he hated her. Said that she was nothing but trouble. Always on leave when he needed her."
"Huh!" I snorted. "He was always snivelling when she wasn't around to feed him vitamins."
"Vitamins?" Steele stared at me incredulously. I realized that I hadn't mentioned Lucy's propensity for dispensing her extraordinary mood-changing pills to everyone in the university. I told him all about it. "Sounds like psychotropic drugs to me," Steele responded robustly. "Vitamins, my ass!"
"You think Lucy was a drug dealer?" I asked cautiously. Steele and Luke had been good friends in boarding school but now that Steele worked for the government I wasn't sure whether to mention Luke's expertise in illegal substances. I decided not to tell Steele that I had asked Luke to analyse the vitamins.
"I don't know what to think about that chick," Steel replied dubiously. "The Records Office in Washington said that they had no records of any passport being issued to a Lucy Setton."
"But what about her personal belongings? She must have had photographs from home or something..."
"Nope." Steele shook his head decisively. "The university couldn't find a single thing that would identify her. It's like she had no past. No jewellery, no photographs, no letters. They turned her clothes over to us. They've all been bought in the last three months, all in boutiques here in Prague. Mostly stuff from Sellaton. Nothing distinctive, just whatever is cool these days."
I had a sudden inspiration. "What did she pay with?"
Steele stared at me. "Huh?"
"Cash? Credit card?" I was really excited. "She had a problem with money."
"An addiction or what?"
I shook my head impatiently. "No, she just couldn't grasp the concept. Cash to her was just dirty paper. She couldn't figure out why I wanted to be paid."
"Well, someone bought those clothes." Steel rubbed his chin with a long knobbly finger. "I think. Maybe they were shoplifted."
"Is there any way to check?"
"Not really. Who would remember? A tank top, a pair of jeans. A couple of dresses. White cotton panties. Generic stuff."
"And Masaryk couldn't tell you who hired her at the university?" The beginning of a suspicion began to coil lazily in my mind. Maybe Lucy really had no past. Or maybe someone didn't want to tell us about her past.
"I'm telling you. She came out of thin air."
"This is really strange." Why would Professor Masaryk hide information about Lucy? I had to return to the university to pack up my bags. Maybe I could ask a few questions.
"Tell me about it," Steele said bitterly. "I was the one kissing little Miss Thin Air, remember? Who knows what kind of diseases she had? I'll check out about this Mormon connection but I bet that Brigham Young and the Utah police say that they've never heard of her. We're stuck with a body and nowhere to send it. And everyone says it's my fault. So they're sending me to Tirana."
"Why?"
"Well, they want to check out Socks more carefully. Apparently they're beginning to wonder if he hasn't been double-timing the CIA all along. Not that he was ever a straight-forward agent or anything. As far as I know, the guy just passed on CIA bucks to dissidents, especially in this part of the world. Philanthropy is good cover, I guess. Nobody suspects you because they already suspect you, if you see what I mean."
"Yes," I said slowly, thinking of my friend Godfrey's remarks over the phone a few weeks earlier about the strategy of triple-bluff, of finessing one's way onto a higher level of uncertainty. "Yes, I see what you mean."
"And now, after Max Bulge fell off his yacht, all billionaires born in the Eastern Bloc are automatically suspect. So I'm supposed to find out about X-O-X's past in Albania. And because I worked on Wall Street they think I can find out whether he was a front for the Albanian communists. And since the Albanian regime was propped up by Beijing, maybe X-O-X has actually been working for the Chinese all along. In which case, maybe the revolutions of 1989 were all a Chinese plot? Shit." Steele scratched his head. "This is top-level CIA geopolitical analysis. Seriously classified stuff. Why the hell am I telling you all this?"
"It doesn't matter," I reassured him. "It's okay. I'm not working at the university anymore. I'm going to Berlin."
"Lucky bastard. They have cafes in Berlin. I bet they don't have places like this in Tirana," Steele grumbled. "I'll miss all this luxury. I've heard that they don't even have taxis in Tirana. Everyone rides around on bikes. It's exile. Deportation. A death sentence. It's the end of my career. It's like being posted in Rwanda or Burundi. I'll never make ambassador now. My father will be so disappointed. And it's all your fault."
"Oh, come on. Think positive," I urged brightly. "Maybe you'll do a great job and find out everything about X-O-X and then the Secretary of State will give you a medal."
"Fat chance. Maybe the Chinese will when they take over the world. This coffee's terrible. Let's switch to whisky."
"It isn't even noon yet."
"So what? They're all Muslims in Albania. I probably won't even be able to get a drink there. Adding injury to insult."
And so Steele and I sat all afternoon in the Cafe Classique drinking whisky after whisky, reluctantly brought to us by the portly waiter, his nostrils dilated with dignified disdain and his wizened neck shaking in palsied disapproval of the atrocious alcohol abuse he was being forced to abet. I felt adrift in a clammy fog through which I dimly saw a pretty blonde in a white dress sitting on a cloud, one little finger demurely raised to her rosebud mouth, one azure eye closed in an enigmatic wink. I had the uncanny feeling that I hadn't heard the last of Lucy Setton. Or her vitamins. Or the University of Truth and Justice. Or its mysterious founder, the cryptic Mister Xox. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. To err is human, to forget divine.
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