by Alen Mattich
“Was that the end of your relationship?”
“More or less. But it was one of the most memorable ones I’ve ever had. So what’s your story?”
She took a swallow of wine and put the glass down. The movement pulled her dress up, fully exposing her small black lace underwear and the bottom of her belly. Hard as he might try, he couldn’t pull his eyes away. So he just gave up trying.
“I hope you don’t think I always dress like this. Normally it’s just ordinary white smalls and tights.”
“I know. You hang them from the rail in my bathroom. You were about to tell me a story.”
“Yes, I was,” she said languidly. “After university and after I came back from teaching in New Guinea and moved to London, I used to do some art courses in the evenings. Drawing still lifes and nudes. At the end of the course we had a project. One still life and one nude. The bowl of fruit was easy enough, but I didn’t want to draw another one of those saggy middle-aged models or skinny art students.
“It was funny. Some of the boys we drew were all penis, a skinny little body and a huge penis. There was nothing sexy about that. A friend of mine at the time was heavily pregnant and I got the idea that I’d do a demure drawing of a pregnant female form. We used to have coffee on weekend mornings and she’d spend her whole while complaining about being pregnant, about how she couldn’t sleep at night and how her boobs hurt and her back hurt and how she didn’t even know whether she’d like the kid when it was born, never mind all the worries about labour.
“But she looked so beautiful. She glowed with it. Some women look terrible when they’re pregnant, their hair goes all lank and their skin goes bad, but she was just . . . well, I don’t know another word to describe it. Anyway, I suggested to her that she might like to be a model for me. It was sort of a joke, because I didn’t really think she’d agree. But she said yes, as if I’d asked her to bake me some cookies or something. No problem.
“No doubt I was nervous when she came over to my place. I had a futon on the floor and some cushions for her to recline on, and the apartment was nice and warm. We had a couple of glasses of wine and a little gossip, and then she said we’d better get down to it.
“I’d expected her to do as the other models did and get undressed in another room and come in a dressing gown. I guess she didn’t know the form, because she just got undressed right there. She took her socks off, her shirt, her bra, and her trousers — those things with a tent in front of them that pregnant women wear. Her belly was really tight and her breasts were big, really big; her nipples were like out of some men’s cartoon.
“She sat on the futon and reclined. I said, ‘It’s a nude, but if you want to keep your pants on that’s okay. She said she was doing it out of consideration for my futon rather than any sense of shyness. I told her not to worry, so she stripped down. I’d expected to draw her in profile, but she said, ‘Why? It’s not a nude that way.’ So she lay back on the cushions, with her legs a bit like this.” Harry pulled one knee back and opened her thighs.
Della Torre felt his heart beating in his throat.
“It was hard drawing her, because she wasn’t particularly still. She’d rub her belly because it itched or under her breasts or run her hand on her hip, or have another sip of wine.” Harry took another sip of wine.
“She was talking the whole while about what it was like to be pregnant. She ran through all the stuff she’d ever complained about. But then she said one of the funniest things was that the bigger she got, the more she thought about sex. Her boyfriend is a sweet soul, but he wanted it less and less because he thought he’d hurt the baby. She was lying there saying she always felt ravenous for it. And as I drew her, she swelled. I mean, between her legs. She swelled so that she started to open up. I’d never seen that in another woman.
“It was deeply sexy to see someone in such a sensuous mood. I’ve never been attracted to women, and I wasn’t to her either, but there was something so achingly delicious about her right then. She wasn’t at all embarrassed. She just let me look at her and draw her. In the end I couldn’t submit the drawing. I did one of her from memory in profile that wasn’t nearly as good. I’ve still got the original, though.”
“Could I see it?” asked della Torre.
The drawing was as she’d described the making of it. A strikingly featured woman with an insouciant gaze, her breasts and belly heavy, and then her voluptuousness. Harry knelt by him as he looked at it.
“You’re a very good artist. A very good artist. I’m — I don’t really know what to say.”
She kissed him, long and leisurely.
“Did you like it when we went to the coast? Did you like what we did? Or have you forgotten?” she asked.
He stood up with the intention of walking her to the bedroom, holding her hand, anticipating a long night. But the depth of his hunger was taken over by something else, first slowly and then more rapidly.
It started under his right ribcage and then spread into his back, gripping his side like a deep, unyielding cramp that came on hard and left an imprint on him. And then it came back with redoubled force.
It was all he could do to stop crying out.
“Marko? Are you all right? What’s happening? Marko? Gringo?”
But he was on his knees, breathing shallowly, the vise in his side squeezing ever harder.
HE’D WAITED IN the taxi queue at the airport for half an hour, and it wasn’t getting any shorter. Were there really no taxis in London? Somebody from the airport’s management said something about traffic problems on the motorway that Strumbić didn’t quite understand, and about frequent trains into town, which he did. So he turned around, went back through the terminal entrance, and followed the signs to the adjoining rail station.
He was thoroughly pissed off. Nothing had gone right about the trip since he’d picked up the pink Mercedes. But at least he’d got out of the country without any problems. Strumbić had been quiet for months, had kept his head down. He’d even stopped shouting at the Bosnians. Their last call had worried him, though; they said they were in Zagreb, and he believed them.
Just as well the UDBA had relaxed their grip on him, what with all the other stuff they had to think about. It made it easy for him to slip out of the country. He’d always meant to be gone before the war came, and the war was coming damn fast.
He’d had to find Branko in hospital and then had to bribe the old crone to get his own mail. She refused to believe he was the Mr. Smirnoff to whom the letters were addressed, and he didn’t have photo identification to prove it. They were a poor likeness, but the pictures on the banknotes finally convinced her. When she’d seen enough of them.
It’d have been more satisfying to have called on Mr. Beretta. He felt the solidity of the shoulder holster under his jacket. He hadn’t liked being without the gun; having to take it apart for the flight and hide it in his modest check-in bag made him uncomfortable. There were anxious minutes as he watched the luggage carousel go round, other travellers picking up their bags, before he saw his own solidly locked case. But he didn’t relax until he’d reassembled the gun in the privacy of a toilet cubicle, not caring that others might have heard the hard, metallic clicks. Let them think what they liked.
Ever since della Torre had shot him and the Bosnians had started harassing him about the money, he’d kept a bullet in the chamber. If only he’d managed to find those bloody hicks, he’d have rid himself of most of his troubles. And maybe got a medal to boot. Delivering a couple of corpses identified as the Karlovac killers, with a probable Slavonski Brod witness confirmation and who knew what else, would have made him untouchable. The UDBA would certainly have eased off. As for della Torre, well, who cared.
Unfortunately, they weren’t quite as stupid as Bosnian hillbillies ought to be. Either they had better connections than he had thought possible or they we
re both sly and lucky. It didn’t help him that his moves were circumscribed by Messar. If Messar got wind that Strumbić was hunting the Bosnians, those UDBA bloodsuckers wouldn’t leave him to fart in private. If they got hold of della Torre or the Bosnians before he did, or at least before he’d done a runner, he’d be breaking rocks on Goli Otok for the rest of his miserable life. Or whatever new corner of hell they were using to replace it. And then they’d probably hang him.
Life was a pain in the ass sometimes, he thought, boarding a rickety carriage that had a door by every pair of seats. He was disgusted. What kind of country was this? Even Yugoslavia had more modern trains. The ones that weren’t were at least clean. He popped his suitcase in the overhead rack, taking care where he sat. It smelled of spilled beer, and black discs of dried chewing gum mottled the ancient blue and orange patterned seats.
Still, at least those crowds waiting for taxis hadn’t shifted to the train en masse. As far as he could tell, the carriage was mostly empty, meaning he wouldn’t have to deal with any of those endless brown, yellow, or black people London seemed so full of. True, pretty girls of all colours fascinated him; the more exotic, the more they intrigued him, made him wonder if they fit together the same way as the girls back home. But the rest of them — the kids, the middle-aged and old folks, and especially the men — all looked like they belonged in zoos.
The train lurched forward. A wash of evening light showed him a bland, rubbish-strewn route towards central London. These people really live like pigs. Thank god I found somewhere nice in the city, even if I had to pay through the nose for it, he thought. That reminded him. Another thing to be pissed off about. The mail at Branko’s confirmed his worst fears. The agents had taken another ten thousand pounds out of his account. He was going to have to discuss things with them. Forcefully. He’d see how they liked staring into Mr. Beretta’s unblinking eye.
He was looking out the window when he saw, in his peripheral vision, four adolescent boys suddenly appear over him. They couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen, but they were bullet-headed and big. Two black boys, one brown, and a skinny white one with red hair. Two were holding knives. One punched him, a short, flat blow to the temple.
“Money. Give us your money or you get hurt. Understand?”
“Money,” said another one, parroting the first.
“Quick, or we cut you, man.”
“Giss yo money.”
They were pulsating with aggression, crowding over him, the kitchen knives pointing at him. The one who’d punched him hit him again, knocking his head against the window.
Strumbić reached into his jacket. He clicked off the safety with his thumb and pulled the Beretta out if its holster. Most cops have a philosophy of showing the criminals they’re armed, to let them know what they’re dealing with, and then giving a verbal warning, and only then firing off a warning shot.
Strumbić belonged to the other school of thought. Every time he pulled the trigger, he made sure it counted.
He caught the nearest black boy twice in the middle, knocking him back across the aisle into the other set of bench seats. The brown boy got it in the ribs and the red-headed boy in the neck or jaw — Strumbić couldn’t quite tell, because he more or less flipped over backwards.
They were all screaming like skewered pigs, especially the black boy who’d got away. There seemed to be more of them farther along the carriage. It was just a nine-millimetre gun, but it did a good job of spreading blood. He vaguely wondered whether the railway people would clean it off or just let it soak in with all the rest of the disgusting effluvia coating the train.
Somebody pulled the emergency cord and the train slammed to a stop in a section of line that had a dozen sets of parallel tracks. The carriage emptied of kids, all more or less like the ones he’d plugged, the doors left hanging open. How he could have not noticed them bewildered him, though he reasoned it probably had to do with the carriage’s layout of mini-compartments and high-backed seats. They streamed across the lines, heedless of the possibility of being pulverized by any passing train, and ran up the embankment and then through a chain-link fence.
Strumbić grabbed his suitcase and followed them out, leaving the whimpering messes behind him. The drop from the carriage onto the tracks was longer than he’d expected. He was about to head in the direction the kids had taken when another train rumbled along on a parallel track, coming from where his train had been heading to. It stopped, cutting him off from the embankment. But that was no bad thing.
The train was exactly like the one he’d got off: a series of doors in a carriage that had probably seen wartime service. He shrugged, got his shoe onto a little foothold under one of the doors, opened it, pushed his suitcase in, and then clambered after it, slamming the door behind him.
The carriage, as far as he could tell, was full of Japanese. Row upon row of yellow faces and identical blue suitcases, each with a round red label stuck to it. They looked at him, startled, and looked away when he returned their gaze. He walked down the aisle until he found a free seat in a block of four, the three Japanese smiling and bobbing their heads as he sat down. They were so polite, he smiled and bobbed his head in return. The train moved off, the intercom crackling with a barely decipherable apology from the driver about signalling problems.
He got off at the next stop. Gatwick Airport. The taxi queue was marginally shorter than it had been when he’d left, but at least the cabs were once again flowing. He finally got in one but was then stuck for what to tell the driver.
“London.”
“Big town, London. Anywhere specific?”
Strumbić mulled for a second as the car pulled away. He didn’t have keys to the flat. His intention had been to get into town early enough to call in at the estate agency and get their set of spares, along the way maybe having a preliminary discussion about why they were looting his account. He didn’t buy their story about the building sliding down Hampstead Hill. But they’d be shut this time of evening.
Still, it’d be no hardship to put up for a night in the hotel he’d stayed at before, on the recommendation of an Albanian he knew who did good business in London. There were always entertaining girls to be found at the bar and, failing that, it wasn’t far to Soho.
“Piccadilly,” he said.
“Bright lights. Big city. Piccadilly is a fine place to go for a good time.”
Strumbić decided that taxi-driver patter in a language he barely understood was bad enough ordinarily, but with the loss of at least thirty thousand pounds hanging over his head, not to mention the railway slaughter, he felt entitled to slide the driver’s little window shut, pull out a cigarette, and ignore the no-smoking sticker on the glass facing him.
“CAN YOU PUSH your belly up to touch my hand? That’s good. When I touch you here, does it hurt? Good. I’m putting this needle in your arm. You’ll feel a little prick. We’ll leave the needle in because we can give you some painkillers through it. Some morphine. It’ll work quickly. And then we’ll put you on a drip; that way you won’t get dehydrated. We’d rather you didn’t drink now, in case we need to operate. I don’t think we will. It doesn’t seem to be appendicitis. We’ll take some X-rays just to be sure.”
Della Torre’s contribution to the conversation with the unfeasibly young emergency room doctor was an occasional moan. Harry had flagged a passing taxi down to the hospital, though it was only a few hundred metres away from the flat.
The hospital was a bunker of a building at the bottom of the hill. The emergency room was full of drunks and Friday night revellers with bashed faces. Normally he’d have waited most of the night to be seen. But fainting out of his seat onto the floor seemed to speed things up.
The doctor turned to Harry. “Has he been drinking heavily or taking any drugs this evening?”
“No. We had a few glasses of wine, but that was it. W
e’d been out for dinner and then came home, and everything seemed fine until suddenly he just collapsed. He could barely talk with the pain,” she said.
“It doesn’t seem to be appendicitis. It doesn’t usually come on that quickly, and the pains he has and the feel of his abdomen suggest it’s not likely. I won’t be able to tell until he’s given us a urine sample and we’ve done an X-ray, but I think from the general location and type of pain, it’s a kidney stone.”
“A kidney stone?”
“Yes. The pain can come on dramatically. It’s said to be on par with going into labour, but it’s not usually dangerous. Normally it passes by itself in a day or two, but if it’s a big one it might need an operation. Are you his next of kin?”
“We live together.”
“Oh,” he said, no clearer on the relationship. “I’m sure there really isn’t any need to worry about him. Do you mind taking his wallet and any other valuables he has? Things have a habit of disappearing from this part of the hospital. You’re welcome to come back in a bit, but I’d like to do more of an examination once I’ve given him some painkillers.”
The conversation going on around him was as meaningful to della Torre as elevator music. Harry was still in her black dress. Through his pain he could still see how beautiful she was. It was comforting to be in her presence as he died so excruciatingly. Maybe martyred saints had similar visions.
The morphine didn’t work, so they gave him another dose. And then another one. Only then was he in a reasonable enough state to go through with the rest of the physical exam and to urinate in the pot they gave him.
He lay there in the examination room, curled up on his side, controlling his breathing as best he could, an occasional spasm working its way through him, though now it was just bearable. He was alone for at most a few minutes at a time, a nurse routinely popping her head in to tell him the doctor would be back shortly. He didn’t mind, as long as the pain stayed away.
