He tortured her nicely with dallying, took his time getting out of his clothes, folded them and hung them and even tucked his socks neatly into his loafers, which he paired and placed just so beside a chair. He was excited hard, which, of course, was a very visible contradiction to his unhurried disrobing. For him there was always a degree of self-consciousness, rather than the macho pride that might be imagined, in being hard and fully extended while standing, in having his arousal be so obvious. He assumed there were men who would strut around the room with their hardness sticking out and up, but that was not him. It wasn’t a matter of shame for him, merely a feeling of awkwardness, and that would leave him as soon as she came over and pressed herself against it or took it in her hand or into her mouth. But she wouldn’t this night. Nikolai hadn’t expected her to. He followed his erotic intuition, went to her large bed, and situated himself face up in the middle of it. He lay with his arms angled out from his body, his legs well spread.
She knelt up beside him on the bed. Nikolai could not see her eyes, silhouetted as she was against the ceiling, but he imagined them. She was determining her desire, he thought. Several other similar times she had been unable to put off the utmost sensation of his mouth and had gone right to it. Not tonight.
She began with his leg. Swung a leg over to straddle it without yet touching. After a moment she lowered her self exactly to his skin. She was distended, puffed apart, split and sopping from prolonged arousal. She moved slightly side to side to fit as entirely as possible on him. She rocked back and forth and then ran herself the length of his leg several times, lightly, slickly, never giving up contact, and then his other leg, and then, in the same manner, his arms one after another from his biceps to his fingers.
Nikolai had difficulty keeping his fingers still, they wanted so to grasp, invade, not merely allow. For control he tried to project his imaginary point of view to a reasonable vantage above the bed from where, like a nonparticipant, he might merely observe.
Vivian’s first coming was almost immediate. Nikolai knew by the quickening of her stroke on his leg and her crushing press. Her face descended suddenly, as though falling from a great height, upon his, unable to miss his mouth. There was the flavor and burn of the oil from the skin of the orange on her lips. When she was able, when she had convulsed every twinge of sensation from that coming, she knelt again, straddled, and continued.
She was like a cat distributing its pheromones, claiming her territory, which was all of him. The atmosphere of the bedroom became layered with her natural, personal fragrance. Nikolai luxuriated in it, breathed it deep, thought of it as particles of love that would remain in him forever.
Vivian helped herself to her fourth that night with her knees like a vise left and right of his head. What joy to be so used by her, Nikolai thought. What pleasure to comply! He became lost in it, as did she, and for them there was no longer a world or country or house or room. Only the environment of their sensations.
“Ya tebya lyublyu!” she gasped. It was the first time she’d said it in Russian. Saying it in Russian felt the same. She’d picked it up from the many times Nikolai had said it to her.
“Ya tebya lyublyu.” I love you.
CHAPTER
5
AT THAT INSTANT IN PRAGUE:
The killer placed his hand on the shoulder of the empty chair. He’d been sitting alone in the Café de l’Europa for almost an hour. He seemed to be waiting for someone, but he was being sure and patient about it. His back was to the entrance, and not once had he turned to look that way.
From his appearance he would most likely be taken for a farmer. Come into the city for a Friday night. He had the chest, shoulders, and neck of a farmer, thick from hauling and heaving. A grower of hops from Duba or Trsice? That would have been a close guess. The identification he was carrying this time, made to look old, gave his address as a rural one in Ustek, which was a town sixty kilometers to the north in the hops-growing region. Consistent with the impression was the way he had decided to dress. In a farmer’s Sunday wear, an only suit, not recently bought. A believable jacket that might have fit years ago but was now at least a size tight. The dark gray fabric strained to contain him and bit into his underarms. It wasn’t possible for him to have on a holster and gun beneath that jacket. Even the flattest small-caliber automatic would have shown.
The killer was drinking slivovitz and drafts of Prazdroj lager, limiting the potent slivovitz to one regular pour every quarter hour, taking gulps of the excellent lager in the time between. Nothing would be off-register tonight; every edge would be reality, distinct. The lager was for the belly. The slivovitz was for the heart. He’d have the belly for the killing and the necessary condition of heart, hard and pushed. But what for the head? Nothing for the head. Much earlier in his life he had learned that what made the human brain most distinctive was its capacity to reflect upon itself. It could think about what it had thought, what it was thinking, what it might think. Prior to each killing this conjugation of the brain came up. As it did now. He went over it and it went over him. Defiantly, he tried to promise himself that he would piss in the eye of his conscience, blind it before, during, and after.
Not knowing the victim was a help. On the opposite, weightier end of the seesaw was the fact that he, although hired, had the responsibility of choosing the victim. This time, as usual, there were certain stipulations; however, the most important aspect of it was left up to him. He didn’t understand how that could be. It had perplexed him from the first, but he’d given up trying to figure it out and knew better than to ask.
He had arrived in Prague Tuesday night and registered at a modest hotel in the Radlice district close by the Konvarka railway station. He wanted to do what he was being well paid to do and get out of Prague as soon as possible. He’d never liked the city. He saw it as grimy, its buildings coated with soot from the burning of so much coal. Carapaces of scaffoldings were everywhere to facilitate the cleaning of the buildings, but, the killer noticed, there were seldom any workers on them. He thought the scaffolds probably only stood for intent.
It had taken him four days to make his choice. He’d spent most of the time in and around the better hotels, their lobbies and bars. The Jalta Hotel on Vaclavske Square had been a source twice before. The arrangement of its lobby was right. It provided him with a sofa chair from which he could hear what went on at both the registration desk and the concierge’s counter. There he sat, not really reading the Czech newspaper with such interest nor so intent on composing postcard messages on the reverse side of views of Prague, but listening. Listening for the speaking of French. Merely that. By Thursday he had his prospects. All were undoubtedly visitors from France, as stipulated. Two were women, and if they had been the only two he would have been forced to choose between them. Fortunately among the prospects there were three men. By Friday he had settled on one and decided he would wait another night. Most of the people of Prague escaped from the city on weekends, and that might be to his advantage.
Now, seated at a table in the Café de l’Europa, the killer looked aside to his left, apparently admiring something of the Art Nouveau decor. Then he let his eyes drift to the right, phlegmatically scanning those persons standing at the bar. At just past midpoint he made his eyes almost indiscernibly catch the gaze of the man, the victim, in the navy-blue flannel suit. Simultaneously with that eye-catch his fingers drummed the shoulder of the empty chair.
Less than a minute later the victim, whiskey sour in hand, came to the killer’s table. He was sure of the situation, sat as if the chair had been kept empty for him, and started the conversation as though it had been in progress. “I visited Franz Kafka’s studio today,” he said in rapid French. “I was the only one there. Why should a genius such as Kafka go so unadmired? It’s ridiculous.”
The killer looked puzzled, although he spoke fluent French and had understood every word. With stumbling grammar and an impeding middle European accent he asked in French if the victim
spoke Czech.
The victim said he didn’t.
The killer did an indifferent shrug and said they could try talking in French, but the other should please speak slowly.
The victim was used to making spontaneous assessments. In fact, they were an important part of his pleasure. He was excited by his quick decision that he was very much attracted to this Czech with the hard, chunky body. He liked the boyish shag of the Czech’s light brown hair, the way his nose appeared to have been broken and never properly put straight, probably broken in a village brawl. What luck, the victim thought, that he’d taken the concierge’s advice and come here to the Europa rather than to the Three Ostriches as he’d planned. Such sideroad instincts had frequently led him to good things. From the bar he had spotted and considered this Czech right off and concluded there was no chance. That he’d misjudged multiplied the stir in him. He felt his entire sexual apparatus spasm once, as though separately it were signaling its approval. He smiled at the Czech, the insinuating smile that he’d perfected years ago and had rehearsed briefly in his hotel-room mirror when he was getting ready for this night. Within that smile he told the Czech that of course he would speak slowly in French, but they wouldn’t have to talk much. Talk was not the essential thing, was it?
The killer nodded and did the sort of responsive smile that he knew was wanted from him, confirming the mutuality.
Now they got to names. The victim said his first was François and his last did not matter.
The killer lied his entire name and extended his hand.
François pretended not to notice. He wanted to put off the pleasure of touching the Czech, and when he did touch him it would certainly not be his hand. He had long ago found that social niceties and drawn-out buildups were diluting. More could be felt from sudden physical candor. François summoned the waiter and asked for the check.
The killer wanted another slivovitz and told the waiter so. While it was being brought, he took in this François seated diagonally opposite and saw again why him rather than one of the others. The man’s sexual preference had not entered into it. His homosexuality was obvious in his gestures and walk and speech, but to have chosen him for that reason would have been narrow-minded and unfair, the killer believed. No, the decisive thing, that which had swayed the choice, was the way this François presented himself. His immaculateness. He seemed to be asking to be chosen, standing out. The perfectly pinched Cardin suit, the pointed-toed, lightweight shoes that looked as though they would shriek at a scuff, and, above the fresh white shirt collar, a complexion pampered and lotioned and shaved at least twice a day. Both amusing and annoying to the killer was the possibility that François also shaved his legs, chest, and underarms, and probably tweezered his ass the same as he plucked his brows.
The slivovitz arrived. François gave the killer hardly time to swallow it. They left the cafe at forty minutes past nine. Outside on the wide major street called Wenceslas, François said, “I’m staying at the Intercontinental,” assuming that would be their immediate destination.
Before François could hail a taxi, the killer said, “I want to see the clock. When I come to Prague I always see the clock.”
“Tomorrow,” François said dismissively, not knowing or caring what clock the Czech had in mind.
“It is better at night,” the killer said, and without another word he made off up Wenceslas Street in the direction of the river. François mentally stomped his foot but wasn’t going to be left standing there. He caught up with the Czech at the corner. They crossed and entered Melantrichova Street. At once the quality of the atmosphere was changed. This was Old Town Prague with its mazed chasms of narrow, barely lighted passageways. The Gothic structures on each side loomed so close above the illusion was that they were precarious, about to tumble and crash with their stony tops.
“You know where you’re going, I hope,” François said, irritated. He loathed the feel of the cobblestones through his thin-soled shoes. Normally he avoided adventures such as this.
Soon they arrived at a square and a large fourteenth-century building. It was Prague’s Old Town Hall. The killer stood before it, gazing up at its illuminated clock. François paced impatiently around him. A number of other persons, evidently tourists, were there to see the striking of the hour. From out of the ornate fretwork above the clock came the carved life-sized figures of Christ and his disciples. In procession they made their forever-fixed appearances. Following along was the figure of death—robed, bony-faced, toothy death, with his inevitable scythe in hand. Death came rather jerkily to center position, bowed once, and made his exit.
“Macabre,” remarked François, scringing up his nose.
“This is your first time in Prague?” the killer asked.
François said it was.
Prague because it was in these times sexually less dangerous than, for example, Rome or Paris, the killer concluded. Otherwise this François wouldn’t have given the place a second thought. “You will enjoy Prague,” the killer promised.
“I’m sure,” François said. “Now, which way is the hotel?”
There were no taxis. The square had quickly emptied. The killer led the way back into the confusion of medieval passageways. François reacted to the press of the darkness, the black angles, the sparse and transient geometrics of lights. It pushed talk out of him. In rapid French he told the killer that he was a hair stylist for a well-known salon on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. He’d done many famous heads. They requested him, demanded him. The price the salon was now charging its clients for his services was outrageous. Photographs of some of his coiffures had been featured in the last collection issue of Paris Vogue, he said.
All lies. François worked for a travel agency located on rue Tronchet near the Madeleine. He spent most of his salary on his wardrobe. This trip to Prague was, for promotional reasons, free.
The killer stopped on the pretense of retying his shoelace. A glance in both directions told him the dark passageway was deserted. He reached down and removed the knife from the sheath strapped to his left ankle. Both edges of the knife’s six-inch blade were finely honed. An inch from its sharp point was a series of alternately angled serations. It was a military night fighter’s knife.
François never saw it. As the killer straightened up, François stepped to him. He couldn’t have been more accommodating. As a woman might do, he placed his forearms on the killer’s shoulders, left and right, twined his fingers, and drew the killer’s head to his own for a kiss, an aggressive tonguing kiss that might also help offset his nervousness. His lips were open and anticipating the soft strength of the killer’s mouth when the knife went into him. With a powerful upward thrust it penetrated just below the rib cage. The blade was so sharp and its entry so right that any resistance was barely felt as it went in to its hilt. The killer worked the blade from side to side, trying for the heart. Somehow it didn’t find the heart; however, it easily sliced through numerous blood vessels, including the left pulmonary artery. The killer, making sure, withdrew two-thirds of the blade and shoved it in again at a different angle, severing the inferior vena cava.
There had been no struggle or sound. With the entry of the blade François had gone up on his toes, stiffly. He hadn’t screamed, although he probably felt he had. His head snapped back and his eyes opened wide, as though his eyes realized that the sliver of sky between the rooftops above would be their final sight.
The killer removed the knife and let François drop. He quickly wiped the blade and his hand on François’s jacket and walked away at a normal pace. When he reached Dvorakova Street he went into a bar. Not for a drink. He didn’t need a drink. He used the telephone, dialed the number he had memorized, the same number as before. The same anonymous voice answered. The killer did not know what was meant when he said only what he had been told to say: “It is now up to you.”
Milan Sikma was the supervising medical examiner for the city of Prague. It was an appointed position which Sikma
had held for nineteen years. At age seventy-two he was a bureaucratic fixture who only considered retiring each winter when the weather turned bad and another year was in its throes. Winter, of course, was symbolic to him and psychologically affecting. Each year, despite his dislike for having to wrap himself up and waterproof his feet whenever he went out, Sikma pushed through the days, and spring eventually came to his rescue.
He was a short, portly man with a wheeze and did not move about quickly. Once, a few years ago, his reflexes had surprised him when, while trying to cross slushy, busy Husitska Street, he’d darted back to the curb to keep from being struck by a van. The incident caused him to wonder if there wasn’t a whole other repressed self within him, a self quite agile, able to scurry and bound about. The possibility was entertaining, but it did not motivate him. He continued on at his usual velocity. Accept it, he was a type, he thought, an old type so solidified by repetition and habitual perspective that even the most radical chopping away wouldn’t bring about a change. What could he do about all those folds of chin that made it so difficult to shave each morning? What could he do about the red and yellow in the whites of his eyes? His nose and ears that had become larger? His white hair that was distributed around his skull skin like some ancient awarded wreath? He no longer went to the dentist to have his teeth looked at. When his wife reminded him that he should, he mumbled affirmatively and remained faithful to the belief that his teeth would outlast him. Who should know the human body and all its parts better than he, especially his own very human body?
Sikma was a qualified doctor, a graduate of the University of Prague Medical School. During his training days he’d wanted to be at various times a cardiologist, a radiologist, a dermatologist, and a surgeon. He knew that to make the most of his career he should specialize, but, try as he did, he couldn’t keep his mind made up. He’d set his aim only to be distracted by a different direction. As a result he got a rather scattered medical education and ended up as what he deprecatingly considered a catch-all doctor, one who merely examined and examined and referred and referred. Sikma was too disappointed in himself to start a private practice. The municipal job as one of the assistants to the medical examiner was as much dividend as he deserved, he felt. That he had always excelled at anatomy would help. When in 1969 the supervising medical examiner died of alcoholism and barbiturates, it was Sikma who had the seniority, who got the appointment, who got the raise that went along with it, and the authority.
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