‘Richter, more,’ said Keb, meaning give Stella more to drink.
Richter was the last person Stella wanted feeding her.
Keb took her chin and turned her head to touch Tomasin’s knee. Her nose and lips lightly pressed against it. The knee was bare except for the finest blond hairs. The knee was also faintly sweet-smelling, Stella found, how chocolate smells through its wrapper.
Keb could have been brocading his name, so pleased yet so slowly he worked with his big hands.
Stella tried to feel only the girl’s knee as the barbs were pushed through her cheek and clipped with loud pops of the tool.
Barbless, the hooks slipped back out like earrings, leaving two red holes each: the hole of entry and the hole Keb had punched to bring the barb to surface.
‘That’s the carnage,’ Keb said, showing the others by pointing to the dots: six total. Her skin was swollen grey-pink around them.
‘Is there a mirror?’ asked Richter. ‘Emiel, find a mirror.’
‘There isn’t a mirror,’ said Emiel, who liked to look in a mirror and knew there were no mirrors in these cabins.
‘I said find one,’ Richter said.
‘No,’ said Stella, opening her eyes to tell him. ‘Richter, leave me alone.’
‘You can get down,’ Keb told Tomasin.
But didn’t he see Stella’s hand on top of her knee? Tomasin wasn’t going to move.
‘Help her get into dry clothes and get clean sheets. Put them on the bed.’
She didn’t want the hand to come off.
‘Are you hearing me?’
‘Am I a cabin girl now?’ said Tomasin.
‘Am I a doctor?’ said Keb.
‘Do you know Emiel? He’ll help you,’ said Richter, interrupting them. Stella had become Emiel’s responsibility, not his. He wanted the flashlight and took it from the girl.
Keb didn’t leave with Richter, but stood at the door until the beam of the flashlight disappeared.
With Keb gone, Tomasin suddenly remembered Tristan. She hadn’t noticed him leave from his hiding place behind the door.
Stella lay in a ruined bed, the sheets and her clothes soaked from rain and sweat. She’d knocked her pillow on the floor. Emiel picked it up, but it was too wet to put back.
‘I’ve never seen this,’ said Emiel, putting his hand on the bed and crouching down. He pulled Stella up. ‘I think you’re drunk,’ he said.
Stella, though half-conscious, seemed sure of him. He said, ‘Up,’ and she let him lift her.
Tomasin might have been used to the way jealousy overtook her, but she was not. She wanted to lift Stella up. He had a face with no colour. Maybe he was sickly – maybe she didn’t have anything to worry about. He would lift her, tire, and let go.
‘She needs to sit up so we can change her clothes.’
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ said Tomasin. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘I shouldn’t do what?’
‘You can’t undress her.’
‘Of course,’ he answered, putting his hands on the bottom of Stella’s shirt, ready to pull up.
‘Are you making fun of me?’ asked Tomasin.
‘I don’t know why I would.’
‘It feels like you’re making fun of me. Leave her shirt down.’
‘I don’t even know you.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘That’s what I just said. I agree.’
‘Good.’
‘I could guess,’ said Emiel.
‘Guess what?’
‘I could guess about you.’
‘Don’t do that.’
‘While I’m doing this, would you get the bedsheets?’
Tomasin wanted to do the shirt. She wanted to lift it over Stella’s head.
‘How old are you?’ she asked him. ‘Just so I know.’
‘I’m twenty-three years old.’ Only teenagers asked people how old they were, he thought. He would not have to guess what she was like; she was so young she would reveal herself to him.
‘I think you should let me do that.’ He was taking off Stella’s bracelets now.
‘Tomasin is your name?’
‘I want to do that part,’ she said.
Stella loved listening to them talk. Maybe Emiel was doing this for her – she would ask him later.
‘It’s useless.’
‘What’s useless?’ asked Tomasin.
‘Your protest.’
‘My what?’
‘I’ve seen her undressed,’ he said.
This was supposed to end the conversation, but Tomasin didn’t understand.
‘When?’ she demanded.
Emiel surprised himself by laughing. Maybe he liked this girl. She was proud but didn’t know anything, and he had always been charmed by that.
‘When?’ she persisted. ‘And what are you laughing at?’
He was laughing at a lot. ‘Many times,’ he told her.
She didn’t understand.
They pulled Stella’s pants off one leg at a time.
Stella pretended to be unconscious.
Tomasin cupped her hands over Stella’s knees to cover their appeal, then slid her hands to her shins.
Emiel watched and let it happen. ‘You’re a doubting Thomas,’ he said.
‘What does that mean?’ She would pretend to understand almost anything but didn’t like being called a man’s name.
‘It means you don’t believe in anything unless you can get your hands on it. Thomas wanted to stick his fingers into the wound of Christ.’
She had no idea what he was talking about.
‘It’s a story I’ve always liked.’
‘That’s nice.’ She kept her hands on Stella’s shins.
‘You’re doing it, look!’
‘Maybe.’
‘You know what, you can touch her, I don’t care. I don’t think she cares either. You just can’t touch everything all the time.’
He shook out Stella’s nightgown.
‘How come the clothes are so crisp here?’ he asked.
‘We dry them on the line.’
Tomasin undid the back of Stella’s bra, slipped the straps over her shoulders, and lifted it away from her body.
Stella relaxed her arms and let the straps fall down and off her wrists.
Emiel was careful to pull the nightgown over Stella’s head without touching her face. ‘We need a bag of ice,’ he said.
Tomasin was in and out of the kitchen for the ice before Marie could grab her by the waist.
‘Oh, breathe!’ Marie called at her back as she ran out and down the steps.
Tomasin didn’t turn to answer. ‘I’m breathing!’ she cried out at the night.
Marie didn’t understand anything and never would, thought Tomasin, landing on the ground and stretching her legs as she ran, showing them off to herself but also hoping that Marie was watching her getaway.
Tomasin is a beautiful runner, Marie thought. She is a beautiful walker. ‘But breathe more,’ she said. She was too far and would never hear.
Marie envied how Tomasin made things hard for herself. It was stupid but persuasive – the way the kitchen door sighed as she opened it wider than necessary every time. When she let go, it banged and was still banging as she took off into the dark turns of the path.
Stella told Emiel, ‘You like her.’
‘I do not.’ It was hateful for Stella to say that. She knew he didn’t like other women.
‘You do.’
‘I do not.’ She wasn’t even a woman but a girl.
‘You do, I can tell.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know, but if you’re so sure, maybe I do like her.’
‘I told you so.’
He put the ice against Stella’s cheek, then lifted her hand to show her where to hold it. She was supposed to be asleep but held it.
‘Shouldn’t we stay?’ asked Tomasin.
‘She wants to be alon
e.’
‘Did she say so?’
‘She didn’t say, but, Thomas, I just know.’
They left Stella’s cabin, and it occurred to Tomasin that if she kept walking, they would split up. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked Emiel.
‘Why?’
‘I’m just wondering.’
‘I’m going to get dry clothes.’
‘Really?’
‘You should too. You’ve forgotten you’re soaked.’
‘No.’ She hated it when people told her to change her clothes if she hadn’t thought of it herself.
‘No?’
‘I’m not supposed to wear wet clothes, but I don’t mind them.’
‘Who says you’re not supposed to?’ he asked. Her father and mother? She was probably younger than she looked.
‘I like it.’
‘In the city, where I’m from, wet clothes are gross.’
‘They make me feel like I’m on an adventure, and I am.’
Emiel was not attracted to Tomasin but was moved to kiss her because she looked lost. Her confusion was general; something particular had to be done. So he kissed her on the side of the face. ‘I really need dry clothes,’ he said, standing back. ‘If you want to come with me, you can.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
They walked to his cabin without touching hands. Tomasin walked ahead. He could see the shape of her body through her wet shirt and pants. She acted like she knew what she was doing, never turning to look back at him. People usually acted like they didn’t know what was going on, but knew exactly what they were trying for, he thought. Walking along like this could be like breaking code. Only here there was no code.
Emiel grew up in his father’s theatre, camping out in the dressing rooms and sleeping on couches. Some of the actors kept house there too, and he kept them company. He liked a woman or man alone, not needing to acknowledge him. He liked morning time, when there were only two or three actors or workers talking and smoking in the hallway, wanting nothing but to feel more awake. He also liked the night, when a group might stay to dance to the radio in a tight space. He was adored as a boy. They all came to him when they could, lifted, carried, passed him, and gave him things to hold. He did nothing, but the way a prince does nothing: he represented something. Something like youth before youth – the actors were young but Emiel was younger. He also represented something like innocence. But since he represented these things, he could never casually have them, and by fourteen he was neither young nor innocent at all, holding a kind of clandestine court where people came to hang out. Stella came there, that’s how they’d met.
By the time Emiel was sixteen, he was promiscuous and it was admired. He seemed ambitious, but he wasn’t; he had nothing else to do but take lovers. He didn’t often go to school and never worked. He decorated his father’s apartment, taping theatre posters up to cover the walls. The fridge door was like a cold skin, and he put nothing there because he didn’t want to touch it. When his mother had left them, she had taken all the books. That’s why the bookshelves stood empty. His father considered what she’d done theft, and such a violence against them that they would remember it forever. They would keep the shelves bare in monument. Their new books and knickknacks, accumulated over years now, were in piles on the floor, circled by dust and hair, their covers curled. They were less like piles of books and more like mounds of leaves raked and slowly rotting. No lovers visited their apartment. Sometimes Emiel slept on the floor beside his bed. When he was in his bed alone, he couldn’t stop thinking his bed was empty.
He put his hand on Tomasin’s lower back as she climbed the few steps to his cabin. When he took his hand away to light the lamp, she wanted him to put his hand back.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said.
‘Sure.’
‘Stella.’
‘Is that a question?’
‘Yeah.’
‘She doesn’t exist,’ he said.
‘I talk to her. She talks to me. I touched her. You saw me.’
‘What did it feel like?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I bet you can’t remember what it felt like today. Your hands on her shins.’
‘Yes, I can still feel it.’
‘No, you can’t.’
He thought she should leave him now and keep her ideas. But when he opened his mouth, he said, ‘I don’t want you to leave yet.’
‘I won’t leave.’ She hadn’t thought of leaving.
‘Stay here,’ he said.
He went back to the lamp and turned it off.
‘Are you there?’ she asked. ‘You turned the light off.’
It was too dark for them to see each other, but by her words he found her mouth.
Tomasin didn’t say wait. She didn’t say anything because she was too busy following.
‘Tell me what you don’t like.’
She didn’t know what she didn’t like.
He knelt down to face her waist, lifting her shirt and pressing his fingers into her stomach. When her shirt fell back over his wrists, he kissed through it. She could feel his tongue moving against her stomach, across her shirt and skin.
She tried to kneel too but he held her standing. She tried again, now by bending her knees abruptly, collapsing them. If she couldn’t kneel, or even crouch, she would fall.
She kept trying to fall. He lifted her as she fell.
‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Stand.’ And he said it again, ‘Stay,’ pulling her shorts off without undoing the top button, and he kept pulling until they were at the floor. He had to put his hands on her feet, one at a time, to guide them to step out.
And as she stepped, he started to kiss her thighs, with his hands held behind, and he reached in to touch her, but barely, with the back of one hand. Then he was sucking on her right hip, the bone high and pointed, moving his tongue around and under its ridge. And he put spit on his hand and rubbed her hip, then over to her low stomach. When he put his mouth between her legs, it was so wet that he had to take small swallows.
Tomasin didn’t know what to do with her hands. She tried holding his head, but it was moving around and in a way she couldn’t shadow: here, her hands lagged; here, interfered. She tried his shoulders but they were too low. She put her hands on her hips, but it felt fixed like a pose, and this wasn’t a time for poses. All poses were obliterated by what he was doing. Her body was losing its symmetry, its sides, and maybe she was finally falling, or maybe he was sitting her down on the edge of the bed, now the ground. She let her hands fall, grabbed at her own thighs and scratched them, and tried for his shoulders again, but they were too low down. She crossed her arms, they uncrossed themselves.
When she woke the dark was unwavering. She was wavering hard. She tried to take pride in what she’d done, but this feeling: like her own blood was scratching against the walls of her veins, long scratches trying to tell her something: I’m trying to tell you, her blood was saying. I’m telling you, it said. But it wouldn’t say more than that. Or maybe it would, but messages she couldn’t read.
Why did she think of Tristan? He was in the dark too, she was sure. There was a boy beside her sleeping. It was not Tristan. If she wanted to find Tristan, then she had to go into the dark and be a part of it. Could she leave out the window? The lake was full beyond the sill. She might slip through the window into the water and swim away from here.
She fell back asleep on the edge of the mattress, trying not to touch Emiel. She didn’t want to make him touch her if he didn’t want to anymore, and how could she know? She couldn’t follow anymore, she was alone.
Stella was asleep as Emiel came in, sat down in the chair beside her, and lit a candle on the side table to see her face. Her cheek glistened with swelling around the punctures under her eye. It would have been bad if the hooks had hit her eye and sunk into its oil, he thought. The cheekbone had saved her. For once, he thought, her cheekbones had done something practical.
‘Wh
o are you?’ Stella asked, waking from the smell of the match.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘It’s you.’
‘You didn’t have any supper.’
‘Hunger’s for the weak, Emiel. What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you. I didn’t mean to wake you up, that’s not what I meant,’ he said, leaning away from the candle. ‘You might have kept sleeping.’
‘You haven’t come to tell me you love me, I hope. At this hour?’
‘No, I didn’t come for that.’
‘I can’t see you. Do you have that look?’
‘What look?’
‘The one you get when you’re about to tell me you love me. Your face gets hard and a bit ghastly, I don’t know, like frozen meat. I could bang it on a counter, and nothing. Do you know what I mean?’
‘No, I don’t have that look.’
‘The look of death, Emiel.’
‘The ice pack we gave you is in the bed. I think it melted. Do you want me to change the sheets again?’
‘I can’t be bothered. How’s my face?’
‘You don’t look yourself.’
‘I look bad.’
‘No.’
‘Let me enjoy it. I have always wanted to be unattractive.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I’ve always wanted it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘People don’t look at you then. They know you’re there, but they let you pass.’
‘You can’t have that, I guess. So sorry.’
‘What do you want, Emiel? Why did you wake me up? What time is it?’
‘I don’t want anything.’ He wanted his hand back. It was in hers.
‘You don’t know what you want.’
The floor of his cabin was swept. He’d left her asleep and had been gone less than an hour. His floor was supposed to be awash in clothes and books. His clothes were folded on the dresser; beside them, his books were stacked in a tight column. His books, in fact, formed a pedestal: headless, but it stared him down.
Shot-Blue Page 16
