The Taker-Taker 1

by Alma Katsu

  “You would have married her?” I asked.

  “I don’t know … for the sake of the child, possibly.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “It was so long ago, I don’t remember my feelings, exactly.” He may have been telling the truth but didn’t realize he’d drive me mad with that sort of answer. I was sure he saw the women in his life in some kind of priority and I longed to know where I stood, who was on the step ahead of me, who fell below. I wanted our complicated history to be simplified: certainly things had been sorted out with the passage of so many years. Jonathan had to know how he felt by now.

  I sat, not touching Jonathan in any way, and that made me nervous. I needed the reassurance of his touch to know he didn’t hate me. Even if he didn’t blame me for Sophia’s death, he might be disgusted by all the terrible things I had done.

  “Are you cold?” I said to Jonathan.

  “A little. And you?”

  “No. But is it okay if I lie next to you?” I took off my jacket and spread it over both of us. Our frosty breaths hovered over us like a specter as we scanned the night sky.

  “Your hand is cold.” I lifted Jonathan’s hand and blew warm breath on it before kissing each finger.

  I cupped his cheek. “Your face is chilled.” There was no protest, either, as I nuzzled his stubbled face, his handsome nose and his paper-fine eyelids. There was no interruption from there as I peeled back Jonathan’s clothing until I’d tunneled a path to his chest and groin. Then I undressed and pressed myself on top of him, the flannel on the inside of my jacket brushing softly against my buttocks.

  We made love there on the blanket under the stars. We moved through the sexual act, but it had changed between us. It was slow and tender, almost ceremonial—but how could I complain? The whirlwind of our young passion was gone and in its place was something loving, but that left me sad nonetheless. It was like we were saying good-bye to each other.

  When it was over—me leaning over Jonathan like a jockey, Jonathan sighing in my ear, then pulling his trousers up to his waist—I reached into the pocket of my jacket for cigarettes. A contrail of smoke was expelled into the cold air, the warmth in my lungs calming. I continued to draw on the cigarette while Jonathan stroked the top of my head.

  I’d wondered what would happen at the end of the trip. Jonathan had never said and I wasn’t sure when it was supposed to end. The tickets were open ended and Jonathan had not mentioned when he was expected back at the refugee camp. Not that the trip could drag on much longer; it had been nothing but disappointment (with intermittent wild longings for happily-ever-after), reminders of loss with only the trees and the beautiful sky overhead to welcome us back.

  Nor could I throw off the niggling doubt that I was the cause of Jonathan’s melancholy. Had I disappointed him, or perhaps Jonathan had still not forgiven me? We hadn’t talked about why he’d left me and I assumed I knew the reason: that after years of frustration and recrimination, he had grown sick of disappointing me.

  But this time wasn’t about being together forever; this was about something else. I just wasn’t sure what that was. He wanted to be with me, that much was obvious; otherwise, he wouldn’t have asked me to make this trip with him. If he was still angry he never would have contacted me, sent the email, drunk champagne, kissed my face, let me cradle him in bed. I was insecure around him and always would be, the burden of my love like a stone manacled to my neck.

  “What would you like to do tomorrow?” I asked, feigning nonchalance, stubbing the cigarette out in the dirt. Jonathan tilted his chin up, toward the stars, and closed his eyes.

  “Well, then,” I drawled when he didn’t answer, “how much longer would you like to stay? Not to rush you, I’ll stay as long as you’d like.”

  He gave a slow smile, but still no answer. I rolled on my side toward Jonathan, propping my head on one hand.

  “Have you thought about what we’re going to do next? About—us?”

  Finally, his eyes opened and blinked up at the sky. “Lanny, I asked you here for a reason. You haven’t guessed—?”

  I shook my head.

  He reached out for the wine bottle, rose up on an elbow and drank, then passed the bottle to me, with just a scant inch or so left on the bottom. “Do you know why I suggested we come back here?” I shook my head. “I did it for you.”

  “For me?”

  “I’d hoped it would make you happy if we came back here together, that it would make up in a small way for when I’d left. This trip hasn’t been for me—it’s been hell for me, coming back. I knew it would be. I’ve always wished I could have made it up to them, my family, the wife and daughter who thought I deserted them. I’d give anything to have it all back.”

  How could it shift so suddenly, become so bad? It felt like a cold, invisible barrier was descending between us. “It wasn’t your fault,” I said, as though we didn’t know whose fault it was. I had no stomach for more wine and gave the bottle back to Jonathan. “What’s the point of talking about it, Jonathan? There’s nothing you or I can do to bring that back. What’s past is past.”

  “What’s past is past,” he repeated before draining the bottle. He stared into the darkness, careful not to stare at me. “I’m so tired of this, Lanny. I can’t continue on this treadmill anymore, this never-ending succession of day after day … I’ve tried everything I could think of to carry on.”

  “Please, Jonathan, you’re drunk. And tired …”

  The wine bottle sank in the soft earth as Jonathan leaned forward on it. “I know what I’m saying. That’s why I asked you to come with me. You’re the only one who can help me.”

  I knew where this was leading: life was circular and even the worst parts of it were guaranteed to come around a second time, begging at your heels. It was the argument we’d had every night for months—years?—before he finally left. He’d hectored, pleaded, threatened. That was the real reason he’d left, it wasn’t because he couldn’t help disappointing me—it was because I wouldn’t give him the only thing he wanted. His one desire would hang in the air between us, the only way for him to escape from everything he wanted to forget: abandoned responsibility, a dead child, betrayal by the person who loved him the most. Only one thing could make it go away.

  “You can’t ask me to do this. We both agreed it was too terrible a thing to ask of me. You can’t leave me all alone with—that.”

  “Don’t you think I deserve release, Lanny? You must help me.”

  “No. I can’t.”

  “Do you want me to say that you owe it to me?” That stung because he had never, ever said that to me before. Somehow he had managed never to fling those words in my face, words that I fully deserved. You owe me this because you did this to me. You put this curse on my head.

  “How can you say that”—I wailed, intent on striking back, intent on making him feel as terrible as he had made me feel—“when you walked out and left me to wonder, all those years?”

  “But you weren’t alone. I was still with you, in a way. No matter where you were, you knew I was there, too, somewhere in the world.” Jonathan struggled upright, weary. “Things have changed for me. I have something to tell you. I didn’t want to, Lanny. I don’t want to hurt you, but you have to understand why I’m asking you again. Why it’s important to me now.” He took a deep breath. “You see, I fell in love.”

  He waited, expecting me to react badly to news of the best thing that had ever happened to him. I opened my mouth to congratulate him but, of course, no words came out.

  “A Czech woman, a nurse. We met in the camps. She worked for another aid organization. One day, she was called to Nairobi by her home office for a meeting. I got the news over the radio out in the bush that she’d been killed in a car accident in the city. It took me a day to be helicoptered out to recover her body. We’d only been together a few years. I couldn’t believe the injustice—here I’d waited so long, lifetimes, to find the one I was meant to be with and we had just
a short time together.” He spoke quietly, without too much grief, to spare me, I think. Nevertheless, as I listened my insides twisted tighter and tighter.

  “Do you see now? I can’t go on anymore.”

  I shook my head, determined to be tough, steely, in the face of his pain.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “And I know you know the pain I am going through. Do you want me to tell you how wonderful she was? How I couldn’t help but love her? How impossible it is to go on without her?”

  “People do it every day,” I managed to say. “Time passes, you forget. It gets easier.”

  “Don’t. Not to me. I know better. So do you.” Maybe he hated me at that moment. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t bear her loss; I can’t accept that there is nothing, nothing I can do to make this pain stop. I will go insane, insane and trapped forever inside this body. You can’t condemn me to that. I resisted for as long as I could because I know—I know—it is a terrible thing to ask. I didn’t mean to ask you like this. I didn’t mean to tell you about her, so abruptly. But you forced my hand, and now that I’ve told you … we can’t go back. Here it is, you know what I need from you. You must help me.”

  He reached out and struck the wine bottle against a rock. The cascade of notes, high and harsh, went through and around us. He clutched the neck and shoulder of the bottle in his fist, serrated peaks of green glass, held in his hand like a bouquet. It was the only weapon at hand; it was crude and violent, and he wanted me to use it on him. He wanted to bleed to death.

  You can’t leave me all alone, by myself, without you.

  I wanted to say that to him, but I couldn’t. He had brought me an inarguable reason: he had lost his love and couldn’t go on. The time had finally come to let him go.

  I couldn’t speak and only knew I was crying from the cold ignited on my cheeks by the wind, cold like biting fire. He reached up and touched my tears. “Forgive me, Lanny. Forgive me that it’s come to this. I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what you wanted. I tried—you don’t know how badly I wanted to make you happy, but I couldn’t make it work. You deserve to be loved in the way you have always hoped for. I pray that you will find that love.”

  Slowly, I took the broken bottle from him. Jonathan took his shirt off and offered himself, and I looked from my hand to that pale chest, glowing blue in the moonlight.

  We should have had a life of great love.

  I couldn’t look at him; I simply pushed against him, knowing the edge of the glass would do the rest. The teeth of green sank into his flesh, a perfect circle of a bite, soft and yielding. The broken bottle sank deep and Jonathan’s blood welled up to my fingers. He let the quietest gasp escape.

  And then a swipe of my hand, and three lines were drawn across the white blankness of his skin. Deep, the wounds split open, letting more blood escape. Jonathan crumpled, falling on his chest and then rolling on his back, hands held limply against the wound, blood gurgling out of him. What stood out to me was that the flesh had given way so easily. I kept expecting the edges of the wound to knit back together but they didn’t. I must’ve said the words “by my hand and intent” in my head. There was no denying that deed had been done by my hand, but surely this was not my intent. I had made a mistake—this had not been my intent. Wake up, I heard my own voice say from far away; I must wake up.

  And then I did, waking up in the woods with the one I loved rocking, convulsing, in the dirt before me, choking and sputtering, but smiling. His chest rose and fell with deliberation, and I realized I’d seen Jonathan do this once already, in Daughtery’s barn. And in an instant I was next to him, pressing his shirt against the wounds, foolishly trying to hold back the flow of blood. And Jonathan shook his head and tried to push the shirt from my hands. In the end, all I could do was hold him.

  That was when it hit me, what I had lost. Jonathan had always been there, even during the years when we were apart, and the resonant hum had always been in the back of my mind, a comfort. Now all I had was a great, sucking void. I had lost the only important thing in my life. I had nothing, I was alone, the weight of the world crushing down on me with no one to help me. I’d made a mistake. I wanted Jonathan back. Better to be selfish. Better for him to resent me to the end of time than to feel like this. To feel like this and have no way to make it right or make it go away.

  I held his body a very long time, until the blood had gone cold and I was covered with a film of wet slickness. I don’t remember letting go of Jonathan. I don’t remember leaving the body and running through the woods, screaming to the heavens to take pity on me and let me die. Let it be over for me, too. I could not go on without him. I don’t remember ending up at the highway, limping along the logging road to be found by the sheriff and his deputy. It wasn’t until I’d been locked in the car with my hands cuffed that it all came back to me, that I realized all I wanted was to be back in the woods with him, to die with him so we could stay together forever.

  FIFTY

  PARIS, PRESENT DAY

  The narrow front hall of the town house is filled with crates, the wood fresh and prickled with splinters. A hammer, nails, and a pair of work gloves rest on a pedestal table along with a pile of unopened mail. Luke carries a marble bust down the stairs, his face reddening from the exertion. The bust is the second in a pair going to the Bargello, in Florence—one of Italy’s many museums, chosen over the Uffizi for its superior collection of Renaissance sculpture—the first piece already packed in its own crate. From the wall, watching the activity, is the one piece of artwork that will never leave the house, the charcoal sketch of Jonathan that Lanny took from Adair’s house. The portrait was moved from its original spot—at the foot of Lanny’s bed—to the front hall, though Luke had no particular objection to leaving it in place. He is no more capable of being jealous of the man in the picture than he is of hating the golden sunrise or the Notre Dame cathedral.

  Lanny comes out from the study with a sealed envelope in her hand. Inside the envelope is a note of apology for having kept the piece of art from its rightful owners, whoever they might be after all this time. The note—which has accompanied every piece shipped so far—is contrite but vague, devoid of any facts relating to how the piece was appropriated, or when, or by whom. Lanny worked on it for days, read several versions aloud to Luke before the two settled on the final wording. They wear latex gloves as they work, so they’ll leave no fingerprints. Lanny has arranged for the shipping and the donation of the anonymous gifts to be done through her Parisian lawyer, whom she picked especially for his devotion to his clients and his flexible attitude toward aspects of the legal code. She has no concern that the shipments will be traced back to her, no matter how insistent the various museums and other recipients may become.

  As for Luke, he’s a little sorry to see all these marvels go so soon after his arrival. He’d like more time to make sense of what must be the most expansive private collection of art and artifacts in the world. Lanny hadn’t exaggerated when she told him her house was more amazing than any museum. The upper floors were stuffed with treasures, stored with no rhyme or reason. Each time he dislodges one item to ship, he uncovers eight or ten more. And it’s not just paintings and sculpture; there are mountains of books, undoubtedly including many first editions; Oriental carpets made of silk so fine they can pass through a woman’s bracelet; Japanese kimonos and Turkish caftans of embroidered silks; all manner of swords and firearms. Grecian vases, Russian samovars, bowls carved from jade, made of beaten gold, chiseled from stone. Several chests filled with fists of crumpled silk and velvet, each one housing a piece of gem-studded jewelry. Then there are the complete surprises: for instance, inside a fan box, he found a note to Lanny written by Lord Byron. Luke can’t make out most of the words, but he manages to find “Jonathan” written among the scrawl. Lanny claims she can’t remember what the letter was about, but how do you forget a note from one of the world’s great poets? It’s the house of a mad collector, trying to compensate for
an unarticulated, undisclosed lack in her life, a slave to a compulsion to amass beauty. Still, she has generously set aside some pieces to be placed in a trust for Luke’s daughters, enough to pay for tuition at a good college when they are older.

  Luke discovers that, aside from the collection of ancient Chinese ceramics, no attempt was ever made at an accounting, so he makes Lanny catalog the pieces as they go out: a description, a guess at where she’d acquired it, the name of the person or place that will receive it. He thinks it will be a comfort to her one day; it will give her the ability to remember her distant adventures without being weighed down by the objects themselves.

  It’s good for her to divest herself of these things, he thinks. It takes her mind off Jonathan, though not entirely; Luke has caught Lanny crying, in a bathroom or in the kitchen while waiting for water to boil for tea. Still, the crying has tapered off of late and their current project, shipping out the contents of her house, has made her visibly happier. She says she feels more at peace, that she’s atoning for some of the bad things she’s done. Once, she even said she also hoped that if she tried very hard to make amends, she’ll be forgiven and the spell will be broken. She’ll be able to grow old with Luke, to leave this earth at the same time, more or less. To never suffer that profound loneliness again. That sort of talk—dependency on a magical intervention—makes Luke uncomfortable. Given the circumstances, though, he knows not to doubt (entirely) in improbable interventions.

  Lanny tucks the note under the bust and Luke hammers the lid on the wooden box. The courier is coming at two o’clock for the day’s delivery and Luke has gotten only the two busts packed up. He’d hoped to have at least a half dozen pieces ready. He’ll have to work faster.