I Was Waiting for You

by Maxim Jakubowski

  “I know you were good friends, close friends, but tell me, if you will, was there ever more?”

  She lowered her eyes as she answered.

  “No…” then hesitated.

  “You wouldn’t have minded?”

  “Exactly. But she never responded if I say something in that direction, or touch her when we talk or walk…” Jack thought he saw her blushing, but the light of day was failing, and he couldn’t be certain.

  He placed a hand on her knee.

  Eleonora shuddered.

  “I don’t think she ever was into other women, you know,” she whispered.

  And began to cry.

  Jack rose from his chair and took her into his arms.

  They had become fools for lust, thrown together by their loneliness and the ever-present ghost of Giulia. They had come together by accident, bodies colliding quietly as their travels and this parody of an investigation they were conducting brought them closer to each other. But there were no deep emotions, just the mechanics of sex, the call of a warm body in the night, as if mere friendship was not enough.

  He couldn’t tell Eleonora that once he was inside her, thrusting, grasping, sweating, he could not help himself thinking of Giulia, and wishing it was her instead and sometimes closed his eyes and imagined her face, the soon to be forgotten texture of her skin, the different rhythm of her breath at the instant of orgasm. As if to conjure up her presence like a magician of the flesh using his darkest spells.

  And, in all likelihood, Eleonora opened herself to him, to his cock, all the time picturing Giulia’s plump lips wrapping themselves around it, welcoming Jack’s penis into the hot cavern of her mouth. Yes, she and Eleonora had kissed once, mouths open, tongues clashing, but it had been out of affection and both had been drunk anyway after a birthday party in the moat by the Colosseum organised by Giulia’s father for her nineteenth. A mad moment she had never been able to forget. Or the time they had instinctively held hands during an emotional moment at the opera together, although she now couldn’t recall any longer whether it had been a Verdi or a Puccini aria. Yes, the cock stirring inside her had known Giulia’s intimacy. It was what tenuously held them together. It was a terribly vulgar thought. It was inescapable.

  “We miss her.”

  “So much, yes.”

  Jack and Eleonora went to bed. That night they did not make love.

  Sitges emptied but they had nowhere else to go.

  Jack had a call from Franck in Paris, advising him that the trail left behind by Giulia had now grown cold. Something about some papers left behind at one of the main railway stations, indicatingshe had left the country. His contacts in officialdom had effectively closed the case. Jack has asked whether it was the train station from which passengers travelled to Italy? No, it wasn’t. No, Franck informed, him, you could only reach the south-west of France and Spain from there. He thanked him and bid him good-bye.

  So, their instincts had been right, to come here. But she could be anywhere or might have already moved on. Jack and Eleonora took heart from the information, but their hearts were no longer in it; deep down, they did not believe they would find Giulia any more.

  Skin against skin.

  Sharing the same bed but often worlds apart. Grazing softness, the mechanical comfort of remembered embraces.

  “Don’t think of her, please…”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Doesn’t it feel different with me?”

  “Yes… and no. It’s difficult to explain. I’m sorry.”

  “I know. Me too, I also think of Henry, you know. It’s not just you. You touch me nice, but he touch me differently. It doesn’t mean better. Just different.”

  “We think too much, Eleonora.”

  “Yes, but is not possible to switch brain off like a machine or an instrument, is it?”

  “Sadly no.”

  Memory persists.

  From week to week, the colony shrank or grew in size as the ebb and flow of arrivals and departures continued. Either dots in the sand or a small shantytown of tents and a handful of huts clumsily assembled from wooden planks and discarded roofs of corrugated iron. The only constants were the huts where food and basics could be purchased from local fishermen and budding Arab entrepreneurs and the souvenir stall held by Haroun and Jamel, who were also the principal source of dope for the motley group of Europeans. Supplies came in at night, whether by sea or across the dunes. No one had ever witnessed their actual arrival.

  Once the beach and endless vistas of waves and horizon had been a thing of beauty. Now it looked to most eyes more like a bleak field of dreams. If they had been living in a movie this is where there would have been music on the soundtrack by Erik Satie or the camera would have panned down the shore to the sound of melancholy of an American indie tune of woe.

  Giulia’s lost months began.

  She still shared the same tent as Stieg and Marta. The couple were becoming closer, and in the dark she could track the steady progress of their tenderness and affection as their lovemaking grew less noisy and more furtive, just as their moans grew deeper and the silences between each thrust lengthened. Giulia listened and touched herself inside the cocoon of the sleeping bag, her own frantic movements mimicking the rhythm of her friends, somehow attempting by thumb and index finger to reach her climax as they came in unison. But Giulia would studiously keep her lips closed and not a sound would escape when the moment came, so as not attract attention to her own climax.

  Although the nights were growing colder, there were still occasions when it felt too hot inside the exiguous tent or the waves of desire flying across from the embracing couple just made her dizzy with lust and longing and loneliness and she would discreetly slip out and walk a hundred metres or so down the beach to cool down, watching the sea, dipping her toes into the fresh nocturnal water, daydreaming, imagining, looking down at her body. Invariably she would not find herself alone on the sands and one or another would join her. Sometimes she would allow a man, or two, to shyly touch her and would not resist their advances. They would fuck her on the beach. Or she would follow them to their own tents. Some proved tender. Others were rough. But Giulia always remained silent. She had no wish to bond with them or know them better or even look at their faces. It was just some ritual in the dark that tempered her emptiness.

  She didn’t think of herself as some slut or a fallen woman. At the colony, sex felt natural. The casual intimacy came easy. Something that just happened. And required no emotional investment. Even though she was overcome with terrible waves of sadness after the act. Because, as pleasurable as it might have been, it was never enough.

  She took refuge in the dope.

  Spending days in a haze, lazing in the sand, catching up with her sleep inside the now empty tent vacated by the rutting couple, swimming, taking endless walks up and down the beach and into the vastness of the neighbouring dunes, gazing at the sea and imagining pirate stories full of blood and daring that reminded her of her own bookish youth when she had spent days buried inside the world of novels and exciting adventures.

  Briefly she recalled the whispered words of the bad man in Paris one night, as he had painfully taken her anal virginity on a violent whim and as he dug ever deeper inside her, and the burning sensation spread like wildfire through her body, he kept on threatening and cajoling her. How he would train her to become a sheer beast of pleasure, a wonderful whore; how he would sell her to pirates or was it slave traders, who would take her to sea, cage her, strip her of every last veneer of civilisation and turn her into an animal fit to service every single sailor on the ship before she was auctioned on the coast of Africa, displayed naked in some flea-ridden market, shaved, painted, examined into the deepest recess of her intimacy by potential buyers before disappearing into the desert for the rest of her life. At the time, the words, the prospect of such degradation had actually excited her in a perverse sort of way and the images had imprinted themselves indelibly on her mind. Again an
d again Giulia watched the sea.

  But most of all she would waste the hours smoking the powerful local grass the Arab boys in the shack dispensed.

  Soon the money she had stolen in Paris ran out.

  She could always cadge food, fruit from others in the colony. She wasn’t a big eater anyway. But she was now dependent on the grass. It kept the world at bay, offered her a form of serenity she could no longer do without. Following a couple of days in a mild, but increasing state of need which surprised her, she resolved to do something about it.

  One evening she finally nervously walked up to the shack where the two Arab boys traded their wares. She had actually never really looked at them closely before, and realised now that she was facing them that they were in fact fully grown men, probably in their mid-twenties she thought. Tall and lean, dark eyes buried deep into their sun-lined features. One had a thin beard obscuring his pockmarked cheeks. She had slipped on her bikini bottom. Feeling it would be more appropriate for the occasion, even though the majority of the women in the colony ventured all over the place in the nude throughout the day.

  Communication with the locals was unusually in a halting mixture of English and French, but lengthy dialogues had seldom proven necessary before.

  As she approached, Jamel held up a straw hat with a long band of silk circling its diameter, trailing well beyond the hem, waving it at her with exaggerated theatricality, indicating with a smile that it might suit her. Giulia noticed for the first time the long pink scar that bisected his left cheek.

  “No, no,” she shook her head. “I’m not looking for a hat…”

  There was a rictus of disappointment on his face at her reaction.

  “You want something else?” he said. Haroun kept silent, looking her up and down, his eyes visibly lingering over her uncovered breasts. “More food deliveries they come tomorrow. Is too late already today.”

  Giulia was now facing the two young men, noticing how one was her height but the other one only reached her cheeks. She hadn’t noted their disparity in height previously. Their musky smell reached her nose.

  “I want herbe… grass…” she said. Then hesitantly continued, “but no money right now. Soon. Is it possible to have a few day’s credit?”

  “You not pay, can’t pay” Haroun sought confirmation.

  “Money is coming, From home. From my parents. It’s OK,” Giulia lied.

  “Maybe not money,” Jamel suggested. “Something else you give us, no?”

  She knew others had traded for watches or jewellery. But her watch was just an old battered Swatch, and the only jewellery she had was worthless. Her leather ankle chain and the cherry and leaf necklace Jack had bought for her just before she had decided to leave him, which he had given her on the occasion of their last time together. She didn’t even wear any rings on her fingers.

  “What?”

  “What have you got?” the taller Arab asked.

  “I don’t know,” Giulia answered. “I don’t want that much grass. Just a little.”

  “Just a little?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do?” one of them asked.

  A veil of weariness fell over Giulia. One part of her knew all too well what the men had in mind while the other half of her brain struggled to accept the fact she had reached such a low of emptiness that the prospect of agreeing to their demands could be dismissed as just another necessary chore.

  They were observing her. She lowered her eyes. In lassitude or in shame.

  Haroun and Jamel took this as a sign of acceptance.

  “You come inside, to the back,” one of them said, pulling up the improvised hinged wooden counter top that normally separated sellers and buyers.

  In a daze, Giulia walked into the shack and was guided to the back where their sparse merchandise was stored.

  “You French or Algerian?” Jamel asked, his hand rudely grabbing one her buttocks, feeling for firmness,

  “No. Italian.”

  “Ah, I know you are from south. Dark hair and eyes.”

  Haroun’s breath smelled of pungent spices as he breathed down her neck and weighed her breasts in the cup of his hands.

  “Is small, but nice.”

  “Thank you,” Giulia couldn’t help herself responding, as if the past year of wandering and bad mistakes could not totally erase the politeness bred by her upbringing.

  “You do everything?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, guiding her mind away from her body, attempting to detach herself from the situation.

  “Show us your body,” Haroun ordered.

  Giulia straightened her back and pushed her chest forward.

  “No. Completely naked,” he pointed at her off-grey bikini bottom.

  She obeyed. After all, everyone in the colony past and present had witnessed her nude, and so had the two Arab merchants, albeit from a distance inside their shack with an open view across the beach.

  She stood there, exposed.

  “You not like lots of other European girls. You not shave there?”

  He was referring to her unkempt bush, the pubic hair she had never enjoyed trimming, let alone thinning or carving into all sorts of shapes on the borderlines of smoothness.

  “No,” she replied. There was no point explaining why to them.

  “You dirty girl?”

  She wanted to protest, but quickly realised he was not referring to personal hygiene.

  “I think you be very dirty girl with us, if you want good herbe. You work hard to earn it, Italian girl, no?”

  Giulia kept her silence. Her breath shortened. Images of sea pirates, violators, torturers, despoilers racing through her imagination.

  “Open legs and bend,” Haroun said, moving behind her while Jamel placed himself in front of Giulia and began loosening his belt.

  A stray finger rudely forced its way past her sphincter, followed by a gob of spit pearling down her rump to lubricate her dry opening. Jamel’s cock stood to attention in front of her eyes, uncut, a long thin envelope of brown, protective skin dangling past his hidden glans.

  Giulia closed her eyes.

  In darkness there is no sin, just shadows.

  The finger in her rear was joined by another as the Arab man stretched her in readiness for his assault.

  “Giulia! Giulia! Where are you? Are you inside?”

  It was Stieg, loudly calling out for her.

  The finger roughly withdrew from her anus, a long nail scratching her deep as it did so.

  “Hell! What’s happening here?”

  The dreadlocked Swedish backpacker had suddenly rushed into the shack’s storage room and surprised them.

  Jamel, almost out of shyness, quickly pulled his trousers up to his waist and tucked his semi-hard cock inside. Haroun drew back behind Giulia, and turned to the unbelieving Stieg.

  “Is OK,” he protested. “The girl she come here happily. We agree. Is deal. We give her herbe, she offer herself to us. Is not wrong.”

  “The fuck it’s wrong,” Stieg exclaimed in anger. “Giulia, you cannot do this. It’s so wrong. You should have talked to Marta or me. You mustn’t do this.”

  Giulia was still bent over in the degrading position she had been assigned when he had rushed in. Stieg placed his hand on her shoulders. “Come with me. Now.”

  Giulia rose to her feet and followed him out the souvenir and provisions shack. She realised she had left her bikini bottom on the ground. He took hold of her hand and pulled her away from the area of the huts.

  “You come back anytime, Signorina. We always have herbe. Is the strongest and the best,” Haroun shouted out behind her. “I know you come back,” he sneered.

  * * *

  Both Stieg and Marta were unmercifully angry at her. How could she do what she had done? Or been prepared to do, as Giulia feebly pointed out. Nothing had yet happened.

  “I don’t know. I was in a daze,” she tried to explain to them.

  “You must never do it again,�
�� Marta pointed out. “Go to the Arab men. They will give you disease.”

  “You smoke too much, Giulia. You must stop, cut down. It’s just not good for you so much,” Stieg added.

  Giulia nodded in agreement.

  “I will. I promise.”

  Like adrenaline in steep overdrive, the realisation of what she had just done overwhelmed Giulia. It was madness, there was no other way to describe it. Her shoulders slumped. They were inside the tent where Giulia sat cross-legged on top of her crumpled sleeping bag. She had slipped on a T-shirt and panties.

  “The others have set up a big new campfire down the beach,” Marta said. “It seems it’s Halloween. I’d lost all track of time being down here. The German girls have brought their guitars. Come with us. We’ll sing, drink a little, dance, relax. It will do you good, Giulia,” she suggested. “Take your mind off things.”

  “No,” Giulia said. “I feel tired now. I’ll sleep instead.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she crawled into the sleeping bag. Marta tucked her in with care.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. The earlier scene she had been involved in flashing like a movie behind her eyes. In slow motion. Speeded up. Every word said, every single gesture captured in the amber of memory. Giulia couldn’t help herself crying. What had become of her? How could she have stooped so low?

  Distant sounds of laughter reached her from the campfire down the beach where the winter stragglers of the colony were enjoying themselves but it felt like a world away.

  One hour or so later, or maybe it had been longer, Stieg unhooked the tent’s flap and looked in.

  “You’re crying?” he queried.

  “Hmmm…” Giulia sniffed.

  “I thought I’d just come and check how you were. Not feeling better, are you?”

  “No.”

  “What is it?” Stieg asked.

  “I feel abandoned, lonely.”

  “There’s no need. We love you, you know, all of us. You’re our little girl lost…”

  Giulia tried to regain her composure. She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand, raised herself halfway out of the sleeping bag and sat up. The night was cold and she felt a chill fly across the thin material of her T-shirt.