The Considerate Killer

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  Perhaps Vadim could see it.

  “How sweet you look together,” he said. “Young love’s dream.”

  He was already halfway through his own drink, and Vincent suspected him of having had a few while he and Bea were at the beach. His narrow dark eyes wore the musing expression that usually showed up in the course of a sodden evening, and he spoke more and more like a character from an American movie. Even under normal circumstances Vadim spiced up his speech with more English expressions than most Filipinos, but it was especially noticeable when he was feeling emotional or drunk, which with him was often the same thing. Vadim was pure love when mixed with alcohol. Soft as a kitten.

  Diana and Victor were already sitting in a pair of broad, upholstered chairs, Victor with a collection of notes and a beer standing at his feet, Diana with a tattered English paperback. She was a year ahead of them, but Vadim had apparently known her as far back as high school, and their relationship seemed . . . complicated. Diana did not have Vadim’s lightness, but was beautiful and earnest and wore T-shirts with peace signs and political slogans like “Corruption Stinks,” “Fight Poverty” and “Health for All.” She had started a health clinic out in the slums in Las Pinas City together with a couple of older students. There was something dogged, and contagious about her rebellious frontal attack on the entire world, but when Vincent saw Vadim and Diana kiss and weave their fingers together on the stone wall in the university’s garden, it was like observing a wordless and chronically undecided power struggle. Diana’s gravity against Vadim’s constant attempts at lightness. Occasionally Vincent thought he could see a deep wonder in Diana’s gaze when she looked at Vadim. As if she had to search for the reason for the obvious attraction between them. But then Vadim would grab her ponytail, pull her head back and kiss her on the neck and collarbone until she, bursting with laughter, had to capitulate. Until next time.

  Vadim handed them each a drink.

  “Drink, my young friends,” he said and they all five raised their glasses. Bea drank carefully and with a small wrinkle on her nose. Vincent wasn’t sure if she had ever tasted alcohol before, except of course for the altar wine every Sunday at church, but that didn’t really count. Father Abuel had the reputation for diluting the blood of Jesus Christ quite a bit, out of consideration for the delicate souls of his congregation.

  Vincent bent down and kissed Bea’s delicately curved ear.

  “Be careful with that stuff,” he said. “It’s strong.”

  “I know,” she said and smiled. “But I’m with you—so what could happen?”

  • • •

  Afterward Vadim ordered takeaway from the restaurant a bit further down the beach. They had hauled some of the solid mahogany furniture from the living room almost all the way down to the water’s edge: the dining room table, five chairs, and a three-armed candelabra that might or might not be silver. Vadim had just shrugged when Bea asked him. He didn’t know and clearly didn’t care. Happy and indifferent.

  They ate butter-fried carp with sweet potatoes, and Vadim plucked out the small white pearls of the carp’s eyes and gave an enthusiastic lecture on ophthalmology before he plopped them in his white wine and emptied the glass with the triumphant expression of a magician. Diana had lit a cigarette and appeared to be far away in her own thoughts, but Bea was laughing, light-hearted and carefree, and leaned against Vincent with a bright smile.

  Her skin was burning hot against his bare arms, and in a glimpse he caught Vadim giving him a complicit I-told-you-she-would-like-it kind of smile, which he returned. The beach and the dark sea wobbled around him, but it was a pleasant inebriation, the kind that only expanded time and made you want to smile at everything.

  He placed a hand on Bea’s thigh and carefully moved his fingers toward the robin’s-egg blue fabric under the beach shawl, and she let him do it. Even spread her thighs a little. She wasn’t quite sober either.

  “The mosquitoes are coming to devour us,” said Vadim and got up. “I think it’s time to move inside.”

  He was right. In the gathering dusk, they could hear the whining hum of little wings.

  They walked barefooted across the sands to the house, Bea right in front of Vincent, so he couldn’t help staring at the swaying pertness of her ass. He suddenly felt dizzy and very far from home. It was the alcohol, perhaps, but also the sound of the ocean and the black starry sky above them.

  The house’s second floor lounge was enormous, the floor made of cool, smoothly polished stone. Aerosmith was playing from the hidden speakers, Aerosmith and fucking Usher with “Nice & Slow,” one long, rhythmic coupling. Vincent’s entire body buzzed with alcohol and the heat that emanated from Bea’s body. They sat next to each other in one of the deep sofas that faced the wall-to-wall picture windows. It was already getting so dark that the sea could only be made out as a slightly deeper blackness under the evening sky. Bea had pulled her slender and sun-browned feet up into the sofa and sat with her head on Vincent’s shoulder. With his fingertips, he stroked her black hair and her exposed neck and throat.

  Victor had gone to bed, and they could hear Vadim and Diana speaking quietly downstairs. Diana laughed, soft and low. Vincent imagined the battle that was unfolding between them. Vadim, dancing around Diana, trying to puncture her gravity. Diana rarely laughed for long or with all her heart, but when she did, Vadim looked like a poodle that had finally been rewarded after a furious round of prancing on its hind legs, playing dead, and wearing a tutu.

  Being addicted to Diana’s laughter was hard work.

  It was quiet for a while. They must be kissing, thought Vincent, but then Diana must have disappeared alone into one of the room’s downstairs, because a little later Vadim appeared by the stairs, a glass of rum in his left hand, and threw himself full length onto the sofa that stood kitty-corner to theirs. He saluted Vincent and Bea, and then looked out at the Pacific.

  He suddenly looked tired, thought Vincent, like an actor when the makeup was removed and the lights in the studio turned off. That classic movie scene in front of the dressing-room mirror when all the ugliness and sorrow appears.

  “I hope you’ll be very happy,” said Vadim and lifted his glass just precisely high enough that it turned into a toast. “Vincent, you’re my best friend. Perhaps the only one. And I hope you’ll be happy together. I envy you. You’re so damn . . . I love you.”

  He sounded so serious and had adopted such a sad hangdog look that Vincent couldn’t help laughing. The rum and white wine had not quite done him in yet. Besides, it was comical that Vadim would envy him anything at all. Here, of all places, where they were lying surrounded by the luxury that was Vadim’s life.

  “Stop laughing, cow face.”

  Vadim hurled a pillow at Vincent and hit him dead center so that the rum in Vincent’s glass spilled and made a dark spot on the couch, but at least Vadim looked like himself again. There was light and laughter in the crooked gaze. The exhaustion was erased.

  “I think I’m done for tonight,” he said and got up. “I’ll leave the house to you two lovebirds, if you think you can behave properly. No ruining the furniture.”

  He blinked at Bea, who smiled slowly and a bit absently. She had gotten some of the light sticky rum on her hands and unselfconsciously licked her fingers clean like a child.

  Once Vadim had closed the door to his room behind him, they gazed at each other for a long moment.

  “You should go to bed, Bea,” said Vincent, getting somewhat shakily to his feet. “It’s late.”

  She nodded, but remained sitting, looking up at him. Expectantly.

  “Don’t you want to kiss me at all?” she asked.

  He backed away.

  “Yes, are you crazy?” he said and again felt the burning sensation spread through his body. The half-erection, which had lurked all evening, the entire day with Bea, in fact, kicked off and became more insistent. />
  “But I think it’s best if we don’t. You know . . . We’ve had too much to drink.”

  “We’re getting married soon,” she said and took his hands. Pulled him down toward her. “I’d like to.”

  The last bit she whispered against his ear, and her scent broke something in him and made him sink down next to her. Let his hand slide up her thigh again. This time all the way up to the robin’s-egg blue and further still. She moaned faintly and spread her legs, so he could slip a finger into the moist heat of her while he kissed her. He touched her, and she moved softly under his hand. Everything swam around him and inside him. They were supposed to wait. They had promised each other that they would wait. That she would be a virgin on their wedding night. It meant something to her, and she was drunk now.

  Oh, God.

  More than he was.

  He was the one who needed to stop. He was the man who had to live up to his responsibility—everything his family and Bea expected from him. He should stop right now, but instead he pulled the ridiculous beach shawl off her and loosened the bikini top so he could look at her beautiful breasts, slightly lighter than her stomach and shoulders after the afternoon at the beach. Her nipples were large and dark against the light skin.

  How could he stop now? Aerosmith had begun again, an urgent wail telling him not to fall asleep, not to close his eyes.

  He pressed her down on to the couch with his entire weight and pulled off his swimming trunks; removed the robin’s-egg blue scraps while Bea arched her back and turned her face into the shadow, so the tendons on her slender neck were taut and exposed. A slight almost inaudible sound escaped her. She drew him down and pushed his face against her shoulder and neck while he penetrated her with slow and infinite caution.

  A door was opened somewhere in the huge house. Vincent heard and didn’t hear. His body had taken over. Could not be stopped.

  Bea had closed her eyes, but Vincent saw it. Saw him. Vadim, who for a brief moment stood in the half-open door. Then he slid away again, disappearing in the very instant that Vincent himself came in a long and painful shudder.

  It was afternoon and really too hot to be in the sun when Vincent, Victor and Vadim sailed out from the beach in Vadim’s little flat-bottomed speedboat the next day. The wind had freshened once they were clear of the cove, and the boat leaped and slapped against the waves like an animal squirming beneath them.

  Vincent had never been a keen sailor, and after his complete and utter failure to master a surfboard that morning, he would have preferred to stay in the house with Bea. They had not talked about what had happened in the night. They had merely gotten up, searching awkwardly for their clothing, neither looking at the other. Later, there had been an almost equally awkward breakfast, and then the disastrous surf lesson on the beach in claustrophobically tight wet suits.

  Victor had gone shopping at the market in the morning and had returned with chili, rice, garlic, mung beans, and coconut milk. He prepared lunch, which he served on the porch. He didn’t like restaurant food, he said. It was too expensive and not good enough. Victor was in fact an excellent cook. They drank a couple of beers with the food, and Vincent finally managed to catch Bea’s gaze and hold it until they both blushed and had to look down.

  Afterward Diana had invited Bea along for a bit of sightseeing in the little resort town, which clearly bothered Vadim. He had been looking forward to seeing her pull on her wet suit again, he complained. Diana just laughed and teasingly tweaked the elastic on his white swim trunks.

  “You’ll have to manage without us,” she said. “We need to buy glass beads and cockleshells. Bracelets. You know—girl things.”

  “Dear God,” groaned Vadim dramatically and pulled her hard toward him. “You’re killing me, girl. Stay here.”

  Diana kissed him and pulled free, and she and Bea went into the house to change. Shortly afterward, the front door clicked, and they could see the girls walking side by side along the beach toward town, Diana with a cigarette in one slender hand. Their long hair fluttered in the wind.

  “Then let’s go diving,” said Vadim definitively. “Hunting. Like real men do.”

  The diving equipment was stowed in a couple of boxes in the bottom of the boat. No oxygen or anything like that. That was too complicated, said Vadim. What they needed was some weights, a mask, flippers, and a harpoon. With a bit of luck they’d be able to spear their dinner down in the deep.

  Vincent doubted that. He was a decent swimmer as a result of the many afternoons by the river at home, but he did not like to dive. He didn’t like the water’s pressure against his body and eardrums. It made him feel trapped.

  Vadim steered the boat along the coast until they reached the shelter of the steep, forested slope. High above their heads dark green treetops leaned out across the water, and a couple of monkeys rustled among the branches, appearing and disappearing with an insulted cackling. The water was turquoise under the boat.

  “How deep do you think it is?” asked Vadim.

  He chucked the anchor overboard, and with a faint whir the chain began to disappear into the deep.

  Vincent leaned over the railing and looked down. Despite the deepening blue under the fragmented surface he could clearly see the sandy bottom, with small tufts of coral and vegetation. A black-and-white sea snake swam past in perfect S-curves and disappeared in the deeper shadows underneath the cliff.

  “Five meters, maybe a little more?” he volunteered.

  Vadim began to rummage around in the diving gear in the boxes.

  “It’s almost nine meters deep,” he said and smiled. “I’ve gone diving here a couple of times. It’s a cool place. Lots of fish both close to the cliff and a little further out.”

  He pointed to a dark blue shadow which revealed the presence of a sandbank with yet more coral. Then he threw diving goggles and flippers into Victor’s arms.

  The big man smiled broadly and pulled a Coke out of the ice chest.

  “I’ll stay up here and watch the boat. That suits me.”

  “Wimps won’t get any fish tonight,” said Vadim and slapped his shoulder casually. “Why the hell won’t you dive? It’s against nature for a Filipino.”

  Victor shrugged. He was from Angeles, a few hundred kilometers north of Manila and far from the coast.

  “I grew up in a rice paddy,” he said with not even a tiny sign of apology, and as if that was a sufficient explanation. Then he moved to sit next to outboard of the little powerboat. His weight made the boat tip dangerously.

  “Then it’ll be you and me, Vincent,” said Vadim and handed Vincent his equipment. Diving goggles, flippers and a belt with lead weights.

  “Is this really necessary?” Victor had picked up one of the lead belts and weighed it in his hand.

  Vadim looked at him with irritation.

  “Yes, unless you have huge balls of steel. Who’s the expert here, you or me? I wasn’t aware you had done a lot of diving courses in that rice paddy if yours.”

  “No, but . . .”

  “It gives you better balance in the water. And Vincent will descend faster. He’ll need the extra time, he doesn’t have as much experience as me.”

  A warm wind swept across the boat and ruffled the surface of the water faintly. Vincent had started to sweat a lot. The T-shirt he had pulled on to shield his already sunburned shoulders was almost soaked through with sweat.

  “I can’t dive nine meters,” he said then. “I can barely hold my breath for nine seconds. If I can get down there at all, I won’t have time to get up again.”

  “Don’t worry.” Vadim put an arm around Vincent’s shoulder and smiled encouragingly. “I’ll be down there, and I’ve done it lots of times. You don’t even smoke. You’ll be fine. Just two quick dives down to the bottom here and then we’ll snorkel the reefs afterward. Catch a little dinner.”

  Vincent he
sitated.

  He didn’t know much about diving, but nine meters couldn’t be entirely without danger. He seemed to have heard that you didn’t get the bends when you dived without oxygen, but a fast ascent from so great a depth could cause other problems. Blackouts. Or in his case, running out of time and air. God, he really hated diving.

  “Come on. Do it for me.” Vadim slapped him teasingly across the neck. “Have I ever asked you for anything before?”

  There was a smile in his voice but deeper down Vincent thought he could hear something else, a kind of . . . desperation. The same desperation he heard in his mother’s voice when she begged him to visit more often. Come on, do it for me, for us. Show that you love me. And your father. And Mimi, who misses you. I’ll make kare-kare. You never get that in Manila.

  He shook his head lightly and looked at Vadim, who was putting on the big, clumsy flippers with practiced moves. He himself sat stiffly and without moving, his bare feet immersed in the shallow water at the bottom of the motorboat.

  “Can’t we just snorkel?” he asked, but could immediately tell that Vadim thought he had said the wrong thing. His friend’s eyes were narrow and focused on what he was doing, but the jaw muscles worked in his sun-browned face.

  “You’ll love it,” he said. “It’s the wildest high when you get down there. Better than drugs. Better than sex.”

  For a second he looked directly at Vincent and called forth an unwelcome flashback from the night before. The sensation in his body as he came, and saw Vadim standing like a shadow in the doorway.

  Vincent lowered his gaze. Had the odd thought that this was the price that had to be paid because he had slept with Bea while Vadim had gone to bed alone. He had to prove his loyalty, just like those times when Vadim remained sitting in Cabana Club until five o’clock in the morning and Vincent had to stay there with him and match him drink for drink, though it made his innards heave.