by Adam Vine
The bundled tip of #41’s shinai slashed toward me in my mind’s eye. The memory replayed in slow motion, like the memory of a car crash, highlighting all the things I’d done wrong. I was too close, too slow not to fall for my opponent’s feint. The crowd roared as the final men’s match of the tournament burst into action, the point of his shinai flashing forward to tap me on the wrist, then the nose of my mask. I barely saw it coming.
“This was taken at my last Kendo tournament,” I said, leaving out, I didn’t win.
“You look strange. Why did you wear these clothes?” Kashka said.
“That’s what you wear in a Kendo match. The clothes are padded to protect your body. You wear a mask, too, but we’d already taken our masks off by the time this picture was taken,” I said.
“Your father, he does this sport, too?”
“Yes. He owned the school I used to train at. He was a champion when he was my age,” I said.
Kashka pointed to Carly, her voice frying a little as she tried to control her jealousy. “And who is she?”
“That’s my ex-girlfriend.”
“What is her name?”
“C-Carly.” It had been a long time since I’d said it aloud. I quickly added, “Don’t worry. She’s not a part of my life anymore.”
Folding her arms over her chest, Kashka said, “So, why keep a picture of her next to your bed, if she’s no longer part of your life?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. I took the picture out of her hands and set it down.
“Do you still think about her?”
“Of course I do.”
“Why?”
“Because she died.”
“Oh. Dan, I’m sorry. I didn’t know about it,” Kashka said, with remarkably artificial sympathy.
“I’m fine. You’re fine. Everything’s… fine. Listen, how about we go for that beer?” I said.
We walked through the Jewish Quarter toward the river, stopping at Kashka’s favorite beer garden on the way, a place called Fabryka. We sat at a table in a courtyard patio covered by trees, under a giant, ancient oak garbed in swathes of bronze and gold and ruddy autumn brown. Most of the other tables and chairs were folded up to be put away for winter, but the tables that were still open were packed.
I got us beers and a piece of crusty apple cheesecake from the little hut next to the gate. I always thought America had the best cheesecake on Earth, until I tried the cheesecake in Country. I ended up wolfing the whole thing down in two or three bites, and had to get up to get another piece so Kashka could have some.
She giggled and stroked my hand when I set it down in front of her. “You like Countryish cake?” she said.
“It’s phenomenal. What do they make it with?” I said.
“You call it… white cheese? No. Cottage cheese. I used to make it with my mom,” Kashka said.
I couldn’t believe it. “This is made with cottage cheese?”
Kashka nodded vigorously. “Yes. This is the style in the Old World. I think in the States, you use cream cheese, but it’s not popular here. We like the old-fashioned way. I will bake you one.”
“I wouldn’t say no,” I said.
The light in her eyes fell to an inquisitorial glow, though the smile remained firm on her lips. “Dan, tell me about Carly. Were you with her for many years?”
I wiped my mouth on a corner of the tablecloth – they didn’t give us napkins – and said, “We were together for about ten years before she passed away.”
“How did she… you say pass away?” Kashka said.
“Yes, that’s the nice way of putting it. She died in a car crash. The person driving the car was drunk, and swerved to avoid another car going the opposite direction.” I left out, I was the person driving.
Kashka nodded. “Thank you for telling me about it, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
Despite the gnashing pain inside me, I made a show of casually waving away her condolences. “It was a long time ago.”
Kashka sipped her beer. “What was she like?”
“You really want to spend our time together talking about my ex? Isn’t that a little… weird?” I said.
Kashka shrugged and then nodded. “Tak. It is.”
“Suit yourself,” I said, and took a swig of beer. “Carly was a very sweet girl. She had a big heart. She was beautiful, extremely intelligent, and an amazingly talented martial artist. She held black belts in Judo and Jujutsu, and was the women’s champion in Kendo for all of California. She won that title the night of the crash.” I left out, I was jealous she won and I didn’t, so I got wasted at the after party. We got in a screaming fight, and she was too devoted – or perhaps willfully naïve is a better way of putting it - to let me drive home alone. All I remember after that is flashing lights, the sound of crashing steel and crunching glass, and patches of blood-soaked, strawberry blonde hair on the dashboard...
“I can see this topic is still upsetting you. Maybe we should talk about something else,” Kashka said.
Her lack of compassion made me angry. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” I said.
Silently, Kashka finished her beer and rose, hoisting her purse over one shoulder. “I’m going for a walk,” she said.
“Sit down. We’re not finished yet.” It came out harsher than I meant it to, but once the words left my mouth I was happy I’d said them. I was hurt, and furious she’d been so cold. I wanted to make her hurt, too, if only to show her I wasn’t a man whose wounds she could poke just to poke them. I wondered if Ink would’ve approved. I thought he would.
Kashka ignored me and started walking toward the gate. Louder, I said, “Kashka, sit down.” She halted. “I’m not asking,” I added, shoving the last bite of cake into my mouth.
Kashka spun slowly on her heels and marched back to our table, taking her seat again as an impish smile curled up the corners of her mouth. A test. It was a goddamned test. That only made me angrier. But it was hard to stay mad at her when she blew me a kiss and started giggling playfully, as if she’d won some game where the objective was to make the other person angry. While part of me was on the cusp of flying into a rage over the frivolity of her game playing, another part chose to accept it, because that’s just who Kashka was.
Carly never would’ve done this, I thought. What happened to you to make you this way, Kashka? Was it the men who came before me, men like Ink, who taught you to wound other people’s hearts so that your own could feel full again? Was it your family? Your culture? What happens if I choose not to play? Do we stand a chance at all?
My questions were long forgotten by the time we reached the river. The sun was out, and the day was warm. We strolled for miles along the grassy promenade of the riverside, all resplendent with the moving neon flowers of joggers and packs of tourists riding rented bicycles. The buildings lining the banks were modern, communist-era abominations of concrete and glass, the water an ugly shade of toilet brown with a thick film of pollution and debris gathered where the river met stone.
Not a place you’d want to swim, I thought, watching clouds of white swans drifting in their arrowhead islands. It’s lovely, though, in its own, decayed fashion. There is always some decay in beauty. But there is always some beauty in decay.
Kashka squeezed my hand, pulling me to a bench, where I sat and she laid her head on my lap, squinting against the brightness of the sun. The harsh afternoon light smoldered on her pale skin, erasing the lines I had found so detestable that same morning when I’d awoken.
I cradled her head, brushed her crow-black hair behind her ears, and kissed her, tasting the beer and her hesitant openness. I kissed her until she finally submitted, slid her fingers through my hair to close around the back of my skull, and pulled me down, down, into her ample, eager lips. A memory resurfaced of rusty blades scraping against my scalp, of fire scorching my skin, and an unfrozen girl screaming my name in fear as her fingers tried desperately to grab the bars of my cell. I shivered and pulled
away.
Cupping my cheek in the palm of her hand, Kashka said, “I love you.”
I froze, dumbfounded. “What?” I said.
“I love you.”
“You love me?” I said, straightening my posture. “You barely know me.”
“And what?” Kashka said. “I don’t need a reason to know it. In Country we say: we love for nothing.”
She doesn’t mean it. She’s a pretty girl from a poor country, her best years are behind her. She’s spent the last decade hopping from one foreign penis to another, and now her biological clock is ticking. She doesn’t love me - she sees me as a parachute.
No. Look in her eyes, Dan. She loves you as much as Carly did. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. It never made sense with Carly, either.
“I love you, too,” I said.
We kissed again, for a long time, until a man said something to us in Countryish from the bike path and we both sat up to look. Two cops were standing next to our bench, staring daggers at us. I hadn’t even heard them approach.
The cop who had spoken repeated himself, louder and angrier than before. Kashka anxiously dug her arms under mine and said something in Countryish. The cop argued with her for a minute before tucking his nightstick back in his belt and departing back down the path, his partner lagging a few paces behind with an eye roll and a sigh.
When they were gone, I said, “What was that about?”
Kashka broke into laughter, hiding her face in her hand. “They said we can’t do that here. They said we were being very naughty.”
“What?” I said.
“They said these benches are not for laying down and kissing,” Kashka said.
“You’re kidding, right?”
“No. I’m serious,” Kashka said. “They are strict here. They said it’s against the law, and if they see us again, they will fine us one hundred crowns.”
“I guess that makes us criminals, then,” I said.
Kashka pulled me down on top of her by the collar of my shirt, buried her tongue in my mouth, grinned, and said, “Tak. Take me to jail.”
THE CITY
KASHKA HAD to go home to get ready for work around six PM. I went to bed as soon as she left, trying to shake the feeling of nausea that had been growing in my belly ever since we’d left the riverside. My brain was ragged with the telltale headache that precedes a fever, and my intestines wound like a snake eating its own tail.
By seven I was sure Kashka had given me something. I talked to my parents briefly on Skype while I was huddled under the covers.
“Danny, you look so beat down and tired. You’re not doing the up all night thing again, are ya?” my mom said.
“I didn’t sleep much last night, but no. I’ve been trying to get eight hours a night. I’m just not feeling so hot right now,” I said.
“Must have been a good party, man,” my dad said.
“No, dad. I think that girl got me sick.”
My dad’s brow furrowed. “Oh, yeah. Sada? Karen? Kiki? No… Kasha?”
“Kashka,” I said.
My mom adjusted their iPad on its stand, sending a crackling boom through the speakers of my laptop. I cringed. “Do you have a fever?” she said.
I held the back of my hand to my face. “No, but my head hurts. Stuffy nose. Weak and tired. So I can feel one coming on. It’s crazy, though. I only started feeling like this in the past two hours. I was fine all day.”
“Might be one of those twenty-four hour bugs. If your fever goes over 104, you need to go to the doctor,” my mom said.
“Jeannie. He knows,” my dad said.
“I’m not nagging him, Tim. I don’t want to have another emergency while he’s in a foreign country.”
“Guys. Can you stop for five minutes, please? I’ll go tomorrow. Besides, they use Celsius here, mom,” I said.
“Well… we miss you,” my mom said.
“Miss you, too. I’ll talk to you guys later.”
“Later, man.”
By nine I was shivering so bad I thought my teeth would shatter. I pulled the blankets up to my ears and convulsed while tidal bores of magma and liquid nitrogen poured through my body, born on thoughts of falling into frozen rivers and the scorching pain of blue-white flames. I didn’t have a thermometer to check my temperature with, but I knew in the back of my brain the mild delirium I was experiencing meant it was at least a hundred and three. It felt a lot higher.
My fever broke around midnight, and I woke up from my scattered watches of shallow, restless sleep in a pool of old sweat. I stumbled to the bathroom to vomit, but nothing came up. I didn’t have the strength to stand again. I leaned against the toilet bowl with my face in my forearms and prayed for the sickness to pass. I stayed that way for a good forty minutes before I was collected enough to climb to my feet and prop myself up against the wall to take a piss.
When I looked down to aim, there was a black mark on my penis.
A lump rose in my throat. It looked like a little blot of black ink. I tried to rub it off with my fingers, but the flat, circular spot wasn’t something I’d spilled on myself by accident. It was part of me. It didn’t hurt or itch when I touched it, but hadn’t been there a few hours ago, when I’d started feeling sick.
“No, no, no.”
My first thought was that it was genital warts. But genital warts weren’t pitch-black, were they? Neither were herpes, as far as I knew. Maybe it’s skin cancer, I thought. Dammit. No. Kashka gave me an STD. The Blot. This is the Blot. That's why I had that crazy dream. Holy shit. Ink wasn't kidding. This thing actually exists, and I caught it, all because I didn’t wrap it up, because I didn’t stick to my guns and stay away.
I was suddenly disgusted at myself for the bitterness and anger I felt toward Kashka. I’d chosen to sleep with her, hadn’t I? Weren’t the consequences of that decision my own fault?
Ink’s words echoed in my mind’s ear: “You don’t want to catch the Blot, Boy Scout. You don't want to catch the Blot...”
My memory filled with cascading visions of Snowmen, giant Lice, frost princesses, and a city buried in ice. The Night Country. Hadn’t I really been there? It couldn’t just be a dream, could it? If it was, why was there still a nagging phantom pain in my shoulder?
I fell asleep on my arm. I couldn’t even feel it when I woke up, remember? It’s that shitty IKEA bed. The fever is making me delusional.
Don’t catch the Blot, Dan. You don’t want to catch the Blot.
“The Blot.” I said it aloud, the words soiling my mouth like rotten food. “The Blot. The Blot. The. Blot. Goddammit. No. This is not happening. Why? Why.”
I stared at the black lump on my penis. My knees began to shake. I tried to catch my balance, but with my pants down around my thighs, I couldn’t, and tripped and fell backwards into the shower. I burped up something foul, burped again, got to my knees and crawled over to the toilet seat, where I vomited until the cold light of dawn broke through my window.
THE CITY
I SPENT the next three days at home, taking turns puking and shitting my brains out as my fever came and went. When I wasn’t hugging the toilet, I was in bed, not doing much of anything but staring at the ceiling or reading poetry and trying not to think of the black, alien spot quietly festering on my junk.
I emailed my boss, who said I was probably still adjusting to my move, and my body wasn’t used to Country’s bacteria and viruses yet. I replied sure, that was probably it.
I texted Evan again, hoping he’d be able to pull himself away from his pregnant wife or his video games or whatever the hell else he was doing for five minutes to talk to me, and ask how I was doing, so I could tell him I was fine, and how much I loved it here. He didn’t answer. When I saw how many messages were on my side of the thread without a single response from his, I decided not to message Evan again.
I emailed Kashka, too, but her response was cold. She demanded to know why I hadn’t visited her at work that day by the river. I’d fo
rgotten that I told her I would before she left my house.
You did not come visit me, her message said.
Sorry. I got sick, I replied.
Why did you not come to my work, Dan?
I already told you. I came down with a fever. You gave me something.
Dan, I think you are not honest person. I keep thinking about this picture by your bed. Why have a picture of your ex-girlfriend at all? Do you still think of her often? We have a saying here: let the past be the past. But you don’t. I don’t trust you.
You never did, I thought, but the response I actually wrote was, Why not?
I don’t think you really love me. Maybe you still love her. I don’t know. But it is strange you have that picture next to your bed. I think you still have a girlfriend back home, and you are hiding it from me. You said she died, but maybe you were lying. Maybe she is still alive, Kashka replied.
No. You gave me an STD. There is a black spot on my penis because of you. Thanks for the mistrust, but fu-
My hand hovered, shaking violently as I argued with myself if I should hit send.
In the end, my conscience won. I couldn’t say something so cruel, not to her, and especially not over email. I deleted the message and replied, She’s dead, Kashka. She died in a car crash, like I told you. Also, I think you gave me some sort of sexually transmitted infection. You’re the only girl I’ve slept with for the past two years, so please do not give me any more accusations. When I feel better, we both need to go to the doctor.
Kashka responded: Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t. But I don’t know, and I don’t trust you now.
Another message from Kashka popped up in my inbox. She wrote: And it’s not my fault you got some disease. You probably got it from some other girl. You are a bad person. Please don’t ever talk to me again.
I sat up in my sweat-stained pillows and read that message six more times. Who the hell was this person? I’d fooled myself into believing we were anything more than desperate strangers.
