When the burgundy blood started to puddle on the sky-blue tiles, Cono said, “Look away.” He felt the persistence of Xiao Li’s gaze. “Look away!”
Xiao Li staggered to her feet and leaned against the wall beneath the window with her hands and forehead.
“Stay there.” Cono ripped the wire away from the neck, curling it back into his palm. Standing over the body, he yanked one of its arms with such force that the body flipped onto its back, the hairy legs splayed like a frog’s. The man seemed a mixture of Russian and Kazak. There were partly scabbed scratches on his heavy brow and over both of his cheekbones.
Xiao Li’s knees gave in and she slumped against the radiator. Her head turned.
“Keep your face against the wall.” Cono’s voice was steely. Xiao Li turned her eyes away.
He knelt down and looped the wire around the man’s genitalia. He squeezed and cut until the wrinkled mass gave way—scrotum and penis together. He lifted it all by pinching the foreskin and got to his feet. Reaching up, he grabbed the string hanging from the bathroom’s light bulb and tied it tightly around the penis. Cono ducked his shoulder to avoid the dripping blood, but still two drops hit his shirtsleeve. He spun the red-tinged wire into a tight coil and slipped it back into his vest. “Penis brothers,” he muttered.
Cono wiped his hands on his pants, reached above the suspended genitalia and pulled the string. The light went out. Coming from the other side of the bathroom door there was now only loud music, no yelling and laughter. “Let’s go,” Cono whispered. He stepped up on the radiator and shimmied out of the window. Xiao Li’s grip crushed his knuckles as he pulled her out. They hugged each other long enough for Cono to feel two thumps of her heart against his chest, then he pushed her away, and the two of them stepped softly down the staircase. Xiao Li gritted her teeth as the corrugated-metal steps bit into her bare feet.
The door of steel slats at ground level was locked with deadbolts, forcing them to go back up a floor. The balcony walkway adjacent to the stairwell on the second floor had no grillwork, only a railing of horizontal bars. Xiao Li immediately grasped the top bar and lifted herself up, placing both legs on the other side of it. By holding onto the stairwell’s grillwork, she climbed downward until she was stopped by barbed wire almost ten feet from the ground. She pushed off the grillwork into midair, cleared the barbed wire, and thudded onto hard dirt. She was in darkness except for her arm, illuminated by a faint bulb in the stairwell. With a frantic wave she beckoned to Cono.
Cono hopped over the railing and followed her path down. Just as his feet touched the ground, he felt it: Xiao Li’s blow against his Adam’s apple was first perceived by Cono as a tender brush of the skin. Immediately the sensation became an inviting pressure, then an energetic thrust, and finally a bewildering pain.
“What took you so long! Waiting for Buddha?”
Cono coughed and swallowed.
“Is Almaty such a big town?” Xiao Li punched Cono’s chest with both fists. He was relieved that she still had her strength and her attitude. At least they hadn’t managed to rape her, he thought.
“We’re not clear yet.” Cono grabbed Xiao Li’s hand and led her into a jerking trot, her feet mincing on the gravel. They dodged parked cars, making their way along the dark alley to a gap at the end of the row of buildings in which the General was embedded. The gap opened onto tree-lined Furmanov, a busy street by Almaty standards. Still hand in hand, Cono turned them north on the sidewalk, running faster with the downward tilt of the city. Xiao Li suddenly pulled away. “And now you want me to run? With no shoes?”
Cono continued running, aiming to cross over to a dark lane. When he no longer heard Xiao Li’s pitter-patting behind him, he turned and saw her facing back up the street, waving an arm, trying to flag a taxi. Taxis in Almaty were not taxis—taxis couldn’t compete with the fleet of local car owners who were happy to accept a passenger headed roughly in their own direction, or a different direction, if the fare was sufficient.
A car with a broken headlight was idling next to Xiao Li as Cono sprinted back to her. Xiao Li jerked on the door until it finally opened. “After you, Mr. Always Late.”
“Hotel Tsarina,” she snapped to the driver in remedial Russian.
“No, make that Zelyony Bazaar, where Pushkin Street runs into it,” Cono said as they tumbled into the back seat.
“After all that, you won’t take me to … ?”
Cono squeezed Xiao Li’s thigh so hard that there was sure to be a bruise in the morning.
“Zelyony at Pushkin,” Cono repeated in Russian.
Xiao Li turned toward Cono and scowled. Then her gaze softened and she leaned toward him. Her eyes were improbably elongated upward curves; the perfect oval of her mouth was misshapen by the leftovers of smudged lipstick. Cono put a finger to his lips to signal quiet, then tried to clean off the lipstick with the cuff of his sleeve. The wayward pink gloss was erased, but a streak of deep red was left on her chin—blood from the man in the bathroom. Cono rubbed it away with his fingers and wiped it on the seat in front of him.
“Move down with me so our heads don’t show,” he said in Mandarin. “They’ll be hunting us nonstop. You’re not safe in this city anymore.” He slid his long frame down and placed Xiao Li’s head on his shoulder. He stroked her arm until her hand met his in a tight squeeze. She let go, tapped two fingers on his wrist, and interlaced her fingers in his.
Cono thanked the driver for picking them up; the man responded in Russian that was almost as bad as Xiao Li’s. “No problem, and it’s not for free.”
Cono switched to English and asked the driver if he was from Pakistan. “Somewhere north. Islamabad or Lahore?” he asked.
“But I was talking in Russian. How do you know?”
Cono was silent. The driver answered. It was Lahore.
Cono asked what had brought him to the gracious city of Almaty. First it was to trade textiles, the driver explained, but the Chinese competition sank prices to levels that were unbeatable. Then he tried dealing in raw leather and tanned hides. The Chinese traders could do better at that, too. “Now they’re even building a railroad from China to Kazakhstan. I think I’ll move the family to Tajikistan,” the driver said. “It hasn’t been invaded by China yet.”
The car seemed to have no shock absorbers. The deep dips at several intersections tossed the back-seat couple into the air and landed them in a closer nestling. The car jerked right to avoid two Mercedes speeding up the middle of the street.
“Must be top government police, maybe raket,” the driver said, apologizing for the jarring swerve. “What brings you to my fine city?”
“The women, of course.”
Xiao Li jabbed a thumbnail into Cono’s ribs and twisted it like a knife. Cono felt pain, then pleasure.
“And I’m here for the oil, of course,” Cono said as he stroked the inside of Xiao Li’s thigh and felt the envelope of money he had slipped into her purse the first night; it was strapped to her leg with rubber bands, further reassurance that she hadn’t been raped.
“They’re all after the oil. But you don’t look like a business type.” The driver was trying to catch a glimpse of Cono through the rear-view mirror.
“After hours, you know; time for entertainment.” The thumb-knife again dug into Cono’s ribs.
Cono had the driver stop just before they reached the bazaar. They were now six blocks from Dimira’s apartment. He paid the driver twice what he asked, saying, “See you in Tajikistan.”
Cono led Xiao Li on a shadowy route behind bushes, below drooping boughs of oak, and along walls of flaking paint that they could feel but barely see.
“Not even a kiss?” Xiao Li whispered from behind.
Cono turned and enveloped her with his arms. He kissed her—a long, slow, lingering kiss. The mingled scents of her perfume and her unwashed body seeped in, as did the memories of their giddy days and nights together during simpler, naïve times. As their kissing became more aggressive, Cono�
��s hand rode firmly over the sinewy muscles of her back, across the little scar lying near her sacral dimple, and on to the utter smoothness of her thigh. Xiao Li clamped her arms around his neck and pulled herself up, wrapping her legs around him. Her mouth was at his ear. “Please, Cono,” she breathed. “Please. Now.”
Cono grasped her bottom and took one step to place her back against a tree. The pad of money strapped to her thigh pressed against his hip. He raised a hand to caress her face. She started humming softly the song they had sung when they’d first met, as if she were trying to further distance herself from what she had endured, to obliterate it through melody and fond remembrance. Cono hummed along with her while kissing her neck and shoulder, and reached down to free himself from his trousers. His other hand held her up and plucked away her thong. He prodded gently, and then pulled back.
“Cono, please.”
Xiao Li’s humming grew slightly louder as their eyes joined in the faint light from the street. She guided his hand to her ear, to make him graze it with a fingernail in the manner she had taught him, her secret for arousal and intimacy while she engaged in a career that precluded both. Humming faster, she reached down to bring him inside her, clasping his neck even more tightly. Her heels pressed against his buttocks. “Please.”
He tried once more. And pulled back once more. “I’m hurting you.”
“I don’t care.”
Cono lifted her away from the tree and held her until she finally put her feet on the ground. She grabbed his organ roughly.
“Try again, Cono. Come on.”
“It’s not our time.”
“Come inside me, Cono. Why won’t you give me a baby, and be with me? You saved me. You love me.”
Cono sighed. He willed the mast to tilt down under her harsh grip, but it would not. He freed it from her hand and wedged it back into his pants.
“You told me we already had a child, a boy,” he said gently.
Xiao Li adjusted her dress, pulling it down over the bands holding the money to her thigh.
“But we do have a son. And he looks like you. Isn’t that why you came to save me?” Her voice had in it the same tremulousness in the higher frequencies that had always signaled to Cono that the son was an invention. An invention to seal a compact with him, to assure herself of an anchor in a sea roiling with uncertainty and degradation. He had never challenged her. After all, he reflected, the whole of humanity was anchored by inventions, contrivances, unrealities. Xiao Li lived on dreams, as most people do. She herself had told him on the telephone that by knowing she had a son, she had greater strength.
“You saved me. You love me. Say it.”
Cono sat down with her next to the tree. He told her he had come to Almaty to help her because of the respect he had for her and her fearless passion for living. He had never known such unpredictability and beautiful fury and tenderness. She was unique, and part of him, a part that would not fade, no matter the distance or time.
Xiao Li was silent and brooding as he pulled her toward him. “Tough man can’t say three little words? Never mind. I don’t love you, either.”
Cono held her close and wondered what to say. “What is love, Xiao Li? Is it words, or is it the soaring we feel inside when we see each other? Is it my coming here to Almaty when you call?”
Xiao Li turned her head away.
“Tell me what else happened at the Svezda,” Cono said. “I’m sorry to ask you now, just after … being locked up like that.” Cono thought of her chained and crouching next to the radiator. “I should have killed them all,” he said.
He stroked her hair and the back of her neck. “On the phone you told me about the Beijing men, and Timur. Is there anything more? And why is Timur a snake?”
Xiao Li punched Cono in the chest. “And you called him your friend, your brother!”
Cono touched a finger to his lips and whispered. “What happened at the Svezda?”
“Your brother was nice to the Beijing men, after they almost had a fight. He said he would get rid of the body, my client. They said they would get rid of me. He laughed and told them he had done the same with girls he didn’t like. When the Beijing men tried to take me with them, Mr. Timur said no. He had more men with him than they did, and the Beijing men left. Mr. Timur ordered his men out of the room. He hit me. He opened his pants. He had a gun. He made me put my mouth on him. I didn’t want to. He hit me again, with the gun; it cut my neck. The whole time the alarms were going off. A hotel worker opened the door …”
Cono heard the faint snapping of a twig in the blackness somewhere across the vacant street. He put his hand over Xiao Li’s mouth and whispered close to her ear. “Time to move.”
The couple was slowed by Xiao Li’s tender feet. As they neared Dimira’s building, Cono forced her into a crouch behind a prickly hedge. He listened, scanning the street. It was dead and motionless, not even a breeze.
“You go first, in that door, quietly, and up to the second floor landing. Wait there,” Cono whispered. Xiao Li slid through the door like a cat. Cono let two minutes pass, looking, listening, smelling, feeling the earth with his palm. Nothing. He glided swiftly through the entrance and up the stairs.
Cono’s light rapping on the door of Dimira’s apartment finally brought tentative footsteps from the other side. He spoke her name softly.
“Cono, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. I need your help.”
The locks clicked one by one. A vertical strip of orange candlelight wavered as the door cracked open. Cono put his hand through the gap. Dimira grasped it and pulled him in. Her arms wrapped around him before he could say in Russian, “I have a friend who needs your help even more than I do.”
Xiao Li recognized the word droog, “friend,” in Russian. “Friend—that is me,” she said in English, slamming the door behind her.
Dimira pulled away from Cono and looked at Xiao Li with shock—at the stunningly beautiful face, the fiery eyes, the cuts on the neck and the back of one hand, the slinky black dress, the cuffed bloody wrist, the dirty bare feet with bright-pink toenails. Dimira took a step backward as Xiao Li snarled at Cono in Mandarin: “You bring me to the home of one of your concubines? After we tried to make love? Tell her that—tell her your cock was in my hand a few minutes ago!”
Cono put his arm around Xiao Li’s shoulders. “Calm down. You have no reason to be angry with her. Let’s all speak in English so nothing is hidden. Dimira. Xiao Li.” He nodded to each of them in turn. Xiao Li glared at the sad-eyed woman.
“You are bleeding,” Dimira said, looking at Xiao Li’s wrist. “You are both bleeding.” She pointed at the glass cuts on Cono’s arms, and to the mud-colored slice through the fabric on his shoulder.
As she twisted the door locks shut, Dimira said she would get peroxide for their wounds and prepare tea. “Sit down. My home is yours.”
Cono and Xiao Li sat on overlapping thin carpets as Dimira stood in the tiny kitchen. Cono pulled out the blood-tinged wire saw and used it to cut through the handcuff to release Xiao Li’s wrist.
“What are we doing here, Cono?” she asked angrily in Mandarin.
Cono replied in English. “We are here because no other place in Almaty is safe for us. Dimira is a friend, a brave friend whose daughter was murdered six months ago.”
“Was the daughter yours?” Xiao Li stuck to Mandarin.
“She was a lovely child, as lively as a hummingbird. She was not mine. There are pictures of her on the wall.”
Xiao Li sprang up to examine the photos. As she quickly took in the dozens on the wall, Asel’s dark skin assured her that Cono was not the father. Xiao Li looked at each picture a second time and finally returned to sit cross-legged next to Cono. “She was a beautiful girl,” Xiao Li whispered. “Such a bright face. Such a happy smile.” Xiao Li bent her head. She was crying as Dimira took her wrist and daubed a wet cloth on the raw flesh.
“This will hurt a little. It looks like you struggled.” Dimira pl
aced Xiao Li’s hand on her lap. The peroxide bubbled on the wounds and dripped onto Dimira’s flowered dress.
Xiao Li licked the tears that had fallen to her lips. “I am sorry. Your daughter.” The tears now fell in streams. Dimira stroked the length of Xiao Li’s bare arm.
“She was all that I am,” Dimira said. “Even now, I feel her arms around me. Even now, I hear her laughter.” Dimira rose to a kneeling position. “Here, Xiao Li, take these and clean Cono’s cuts. The tea is ready.”
As Xiao Li took the bottle and the cloth, she raised her head and was taken aback by the sudden sight of the ear Dimira revealed when she flicked her hair away from her face. The ear looked like a crumpled cabbage leaf. The strange sight made Xiao Li’s stomach turn, and she closed her eyes and breathed deeply until the nausea passed.
From the kitchen Dimira glanced at Cono’s naked upper body while Xiao Li daubed his wounds, her exhaustion making her movements slow. Dimira busied herself with the food longer than necessary, arranging piles of biscuits, apple wedges, and sausage slices on a tin tray. She added a gardenia blossom from a vase next to the refrigerator.
Cono was buttoning his shirt as Dimira delivered the tray and sat down. Her guests had no hunger at first, but soon all of the food was gone, with little said. Dimira knew from Cono’s earlier visit to Almaty that he would give only sparse details of his reasons for coming to her homeland, this land of her hardships.
Dimira asked no questions but searched Cono’s eyes as he explained that Xiao Li had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and now was threatened by dangerous people who couldn’t ever see the beauty or smell the fragrance of a flower like the gardenia on the tray, who were tools of the gods of money and power. Xiao Li would have to leave Almaty in the morning by taking a bus across the border to Bishkek and flying from there to Urumqi in China. From Urumqi she would travel on to join relatives. If Dimira had some spare pants and a shirt and sneakers Xiao Li could wear, of course it would be an imposition, but he would be grateful. He would leave Almaty in the morning as well, because he had done what he needed to do, and it wouldn’t be safe to stay longer. Cono thanked Dimira, and regretted that despite their stealth in coming to her home, he had exposed her to some degree of risk. He thanked her again.
Performance Anomalies Page 10
