Corruption

by Adam Vine

  “Looks like we found the party,” I said.

  Kashka nodded. “This quarter is better than Main Square. It’s cheap here, and there are more locals than tourists.”

  “Looks authentic,” I said.

  “We have a saying: you can only find authenticity by accident,” Kashka said.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s the rest of it? That can’t be the whole thing.”

  “You can only find authenticity by accident, because in searching for authenticity, you destroy it. Here,” Kashka said, and pulled me by the hand down a hidden alley. I couldn’t see anything except for the dim yellow glow of a flickering lamp at the end of the tunnel, under which we found a second tunnel, which opened to a dimly-lit courtyard overgrown with unkempt weeds and ivy. The only sign that there was any kind of establishment was a handwritten chalk sign that read (in Countryish): Local beer – 3.5 crowns.

  “This is my favorite place. It is called Magika,” Kashka said, as she pushed open a heavy wooden door and laughter and music suddenly filled the abandoned courtyard.

  We stepped into a bar no bigger than my apartment. Beyond the iron-braced double doors was a candlelit parlor decorated to look like a magician’s study, complete with an alchemy lab, huge black candles, and an assortment of stuffed dead reptiles hanging over the bar from copper wires.

  I knew from the name of the place that it was based on the poem I was translating, Arkadius. Magika was the name of the force the evil forest spirits who were loyal to the king used to repel Arkadius and his army so they couldn’t march on the royal castle.

  And it was packed. Kashka led me by the hand through a secret door behind the bookcase on the back wall that led to a room decorated like the great hall of a castle, filled with communal tables. There was even a suit of armor. The armor looked real, but I noticed a conspicuous lack of weaponry.

  We found the last two open seats and took our jackets off. Kashka sat down. “I’m going to go get us some drinks,” I said.

  When I returned with our beers, Kashka was busy checking her makeup in a small handheld vanity mirror shaped like a half-opened bar of chocolate. “You look beautiful,” I said off-handedly.

  She must have thought I was being serious. “You say this to every girl.”

  “Yeah, I do.” I thought that was what Ink would say, but she didn’t smile. I quickly changed the subject. “I think we’re the only people in here speaking English.”

  “Can you not speak any Countryish?”

  I shook my head no. “The only words I know are yes and no, which I learned from Google.”

  “And what are the words for yes and no in Countryish?” Kashka said.

  “Yes is tak. No is nie. Ask me a question.”

  “Any question?”

  “Tak.”

  “All right. Do you like me?”

  “Tak,” I said.

  “Now it’s your turn,” she said.

  “Okay, Kashka. Do you enjoy listening to Gangster rap?”

  “Tak. It’s okay. What do you call them? Sweaty pants?”

  I chuckled. “Track suits.”

  “Tak. I like them. They are nice.”

  “Do you own a track suit, Kashka?”

  “Nie.”

  “Me neither.”

  The conversation fizzled. I was about to get up and order another one when someone tapped me on the shoulder.

  It was an old woman. She was wearing the same traditional flower-print dress Kashka had worn the night we met, and was offering me a bundle of red roses. Her head was covered in a shawl, and her upper lip was thick with a carpet of gray hair capped by a huge black wart.

  The flower lady raised the flowers so I could look at them, repeating the Countryish word for please: “Prosze. Prosze.”

  Kashka said something snappy to her and the old woman scowled. I didn’t understand what she said, but I was certain it equated to scram or get lost.

  The flower lady cursed at Kashka and brushed me on the shoulder with an old, warty hand. Kashka said something meaner, but the old woman wouldn’t go away. She stared at me with the saddest puppy dog eyes I’d ever seen. Finally, she muttered something scathing and moved onto the next table.

  “What did you tell her?” I said when the flower woman was gone.

  Kashka lowered her voice. “She is a gypsy. She says she has no food and cannot eat unless we buy her flowers. She says I have a rich man, she is a poor old woman, and she will starve if we don’t help her.”

  “Jesus,” I said, reaching for my pocket.

  “Stop. Don’t give her anything,” Kashka said. “I know this woman. She is always going up to people at the Square pretending to sell them flowers. She steals from them. She makes all of us other flower girls look bad. Plus, she is old. Do not let her touch you. She will curse you.”

  You’ve gotta be kidding me, I thought.

  “It’s cool. No worries,” I said. “I won’t buy you a flower from her, then. But, listen, Kashka… are you all right? You seem a little out of it tonight.”

  After a long silence, Kashka said, “Yes, Dan. I’m okay. I am just tired. I haven’t slept.”

  “Since when?” I said.

  “Since last night,” Kashka said.

  “You haven’t slept in twenty-four hours?”

  “Nie.”

  “Why?”

  “I never sleep. It’s because I don’t eat, and I have bad dreams,” Kashka said.

  Red flag number two, I thought. “Jesus. What are you doing here? You should be at home, sleeping.”

  “I wanted to meet with you.”

  I smiled uncomfortably. “That’s very kind of you. But, you should take better care of yourself.”

  “You sound like my mom,” Kashka said.

  “Maybe you should listen to her,” I said. I didn’t want to belabor the point. “What were we talking about, again?”

  “So what do you do with your free time?” Kashka said.

  “Mostly drink. I used to do martial arts,” I said.

  Kashka looked confused. “Uh huh. Okay. Which martial arts?” I don’t think she knew what the term martial arts meant in English, and was trying to glean it from context.

  I played along. “I did Kendo for about fifteen years. I was state champion. Six times.” I held up six fingers to demonstrate.

  “So, does that mean you will protect me?” Kashka said, taking my hand.

  Jeez, does this girl not know how clingy she sounds? Maybe it’s different here. “Protect you from what?” I said.

  She got quiet, and suddenly I could see she wasn’t kidding. “I don’t know. Guys.”

  “Who?”

  “Different ones.”

  “Bullshit. Is someone bothering you?”

  “Well, to be honest, it’s my ex-boyfriend. He is still angry at me. You say at me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why not with me?”

  “You can say both. Don’t avoid the question. How long ago did you break up with this guy?” I said.

  Kashka thought about it. “Seven years ago,” she said.

  I choked mid-sip. “Seems like a long time to hold a grudge. What did you do to the guy?”

  Kashka gazed at the wall, her eyes blanking like a doll. “We were together for many years. He was my first boyfriend. I was planning to marry him. But he cheated on me. So I left him. Not at first. We had many fights. But then I did not want him anymore. He was a bad man.”

  I cleared my throat. “I mean, that’s not so bad.”

  “It is here,” Kashka said.

  I took her hand. “Kashka, nobody is going to mess with you while you’re with me, understand?” I only half-believed myself when I said it.

  Kashka gave me a sweet, obviously rehearsed smile. “Thank you. But I can take care of myself. Yes, Maciek hates me, but we will never run into him. And if we do, he will not say anything.”

  I tapped her glass and said, “In that case. Ready for another?”

  Kashka hopped in her seat.
“Tak!”

  An hour and three rounds later, we were stumbling through Slaughterhouse Square, arms and waists entwined. Kashka took me to a music club called Fetish in a deep brick cellar underneath an old tenement building. We stood at the bar and Kashka ordered us a tray of vodka shots. My head reeled at the sight of the twelve little glasses in front of me. I’m already shitfaced. Red flag one million.

  “Drink,” she said. “I want to dance with you.”

  We took our shots, danced, drank, and danced. I was drunk enough that I didn’t give a damn if I had two left feet. Our dancing mostly consisted of Kashka rubbing her ass on me and then turning around so we could make out. At one point, she stuck her hands down my pants right there on the dance floor. I got embarrassed, so I backed away, gave her my best Steve McQueen impression – I’d watched hours of clips of his old movies on YouTube earlier that afternoon – and said, “You wanna get out of here?”

  We were walking back toward my place through the gloomy, tangled streets of the Old City, when Kashka stopped me and said with a low quiver in her voice, “Dan, this is the last time we will see each other.”

  I smirked. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to Italy on Wednesday,” Kashka said.

  “You’re telling me this now?”

  She shrugged. “I’m sorry. I made this plan many months ago.”

  “Are you coming back?” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  My mind and heart fell simultaneously. “I don’t want you to go, and if you don’t want to tell me why you’re going, that’s fine. I’ll survive. But I don’t want this to be the last time I see you. Will you call me if you come back?”

  “You didn’t give me your phone number,” Kashka said. “Why not?”

  “I already told you. I don’t have a phone here yet.”

  Kashka sighed. “A-ha. Okay. I thought you just didn’t want to. In Country, when a guy doesn’t ask a woman for her phone number, and tells her to meet him someplace, it means he won’t be there.”

  “But I was there,” I said.

  Kashka didn’t listen. “Usually it means he doesn’t want to see her again. Maybe you thought, who is this slutty Countryish girl? Maybe you only wanted to have sex with me, or see me once or twice, and then you would find new girl. Or maybe you have a girlfriend back at home, in the States. This is what I thought.”

  Christ, this girl has issues. What happened to the giggly girl who practically ate my face off last night outside Castle of Beer? And at what point did she get replaced by Wednesday Addams? I guess I’m not one to judge, though. I’ve got plenty of baggage myself.

  I put my hand over her lips. “Stop it,” I said. “I’m here, with you, because I want to be. That’s the only reason. How about this - I’ll give you my email address and Facebook. That way you can look me up and know I’m exactly who I say I am.”

  She put her arms around my neck and kissed me. “Deal.”

  “Are you still going to Italy?”

  “No.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “This was all some kind of test, wasn’t it.”

  “Yes. It was,” Kashka said.

  “Did I pass?”

  “You did.”

  “You are fucking impossible,” I told her.

  She started laughing. “I know.”

  Kashka turned the light off as soon as we got through my front door, self-consciously clutching her breasts as I took her shirt off and we made out on my bed. She had a tiny porcelain belly and the skin of her back and shoulders was polka-dotted with moles.

  We didn’t have sex that night, but I woke up at dawn to feel Kashka’s lips kissing their way down under the elastic band of my boxers. We didn’t go all the way, only to Third Base. Still, she was the only girl I’d gone that far with other than Carly.

  To be honest, it seemed somewhat cold and mechanical.

  When I woke up again, she was putting on her clothes. “I’m supposed to go to the village to see my mom today. I can bring you fresh eggs and jam,” Kashka said.

  “Sure.”

  As I was putting my own clothes on, Kashka touched the obsidian arrowhead I wore around my neck, the one Carly had given me the day of the West Coast Invitational. “I like your necklace. What is it?” Kashka said.

  “It’s a Native American arrowhead. Made from obsidian.”

  “What is obsidian?”

  “Volcanic glass.”

  “I don’t understand. Please explain?”

  “It’s lava that froze and hardened into stone.”

  “A-ha. Okay. I didn’t know the word,” Kashka said. “Who gave it to you?”

  I pulled my shirt over my head, making sure the necklace was tucked out of sight. “I don’t remember. I’ve had it forever.”

  I pulled her to the side of the bed and kissed her on the stomach. “When will I see you again?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I will email you.”

  I wrote my email address on a scrap of paper, and she wrote her phone number down for me.

  I knew I could sleep with Kashka if I wanted to, either on our next date or the one after, but despite my two-year dry spell, something wasn’t right. What had at first come across as intriguing personality quirks now belied deep emotional scarring that I wasn’t sure I could deal with without hurting her. Plus, I’d been in a relationship for almost ten years before losing Carly, and had never had a one-night stand. As cute as Kashka was, and as much as I wanted to be like Ink, I didn’t think I could just use somebody like that, especially someone who was so obviously troubled.

  I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to see Kashka again.

  THE CITY

  I WAS OUT on my lunch break strolling through the Old Town, lost in my own head and attempting to hold eye contact with every pretty girl I saw, when I came upon a crowd of people gathered at the corner of St. John’s Street. Curious, I edged my way to the front, curious to see what all the fuss was about, and stood next to a group of fawning teenage girls. It was a magic show. The magician was Ink.

  I almost didn’t recognize him. Ink was wearing a blue suit with a white shirt, a skinny wool tie, a silk pocket square, and gold cufflinks. His wild midnight hair was tied up in a top-knot.

  He was juggling a deck of playing cards, shuffling them through the air and rolling individual cards down his arms and hands to fall seamlessly back into the ceaseless flow circulating through the air. There was a small radio next to him playing 1920s American jazz.

  Ink saw me and winked, but stayed in character as the song changed to a slower tempo minor swing. Ink let the playing cards fall to rest in a neatly stacked deck in the palm of his right hand.

  The audience applauded.

  Ink took the top four cards and put the others away. He held them up so the audience could see them: ten of hearts, ace of clubs, two of diamonds, and the king of hearts. Ripping the cards in half, Ink approached four teenage girls standing at the front of the little crowd and gave each girl half a card, folding the remaining halves in his pocket square and tucking them inside the breast pocket of his coat.

  The first girl gave Ink her hand and he closed it around the torn ten of hearts with great flourish, kissed her fingers, whispered an unheard spell, and pulled the same, un-torn card from the folds of her scarf. The girl gasped and covered her mouth.

  When Ink opened her still-clasped hand, it was empty. The only ten of hearts was the whole, pristine card Ink was holding. That’s easy to explain, I thought. She’s in on it. Or maybe he hid a spare card there while he distracted the audience by giving her the other half.

  Ink moved on to the next girl, took her torn-in-half card, the ace of clubs, put the card half in his mouth and swallowed it. Ink opened his mouth to show the audience there was nothing inside. He cupped the girl’s cheek softly with his hand, staring into her eyes. She looked flattered, but a bit uncomfortable, and for a second I wondered if an angry father was about to fall out
of the crowd and land with his fist on Ink’s face. Instead, Ink stroked the girl’s hair. She smiled nervously. With a sudden flick of his wrist, he pulled the ace of clubs – complete and untorn - from behind her ear.

  The audience cheered. The four girls giggled to each other.

  Okay, that was a good trick, I thought. But it’s still not magic. He had a double of the same card hidden up his sleeve. And I’m sure the girls are in on it now.

  Ink approached the third girl and motioned for her to hold her card half, the two of diamonds, up high where everyone could see. Ink tapped the card with his pinky, then closed the girl’s fingers around it and breathed into her palm. When he motioned for her to unclench her fist, there were two cards there: both the two of diamonds.

  I have no idea how he did that.

  The audience started to applaud, but Ink held up a patient hand, telling them to wait. The trick wasn’t over. He gestured for the girl to throw her cards up in the air, gave her an example of how to flick her wrist so they would fly straight. She looked terrified that she was going to mess up his show, but Ink put a reassuring hand on the small of her back and nodded.

  The girl threw the cards quickly, one after the other. Both cards sprouted throwing knives mid-flight. Ink’s knives found their targets perfectly, ripping the cardboard with a soft hiss. The audience gasped and clapped, and the knife-impaled cards twirled down to Ink’s awaiting hands like bombs with paper tails.

  Ink didn’t acknowledge the audience’s thundering applause. Without missing a beat, he moved on to the fourth and final girl, beckoning for her to present her card half, the king of hearts. She held it up high with a gleeful smile. Ink repeated the gesture of taking the girl’s hand and folding her fingers around the card, as he had at the beginning of the last trick. But this time he ignored the card completely, reached down, stuck his hand up the bottom of the girl’s pea coat, and pulled out a bird.

  What the hell? Impossible...

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was a real, living, breathing hawk bobbing up Ink’s arm, displaying its feathers and cooing; it wasn’t a normal hawk, either, but an albino with snow-white feathers and eerie, amber-colored eyes.