Leave Your Sleep

by R. B. Russell

  He sat back. Self-satisfied, but he was almost too arrogant to need to look smug.

  ‘And they trust me,’ he added. ‘They all realise that I won’t be rough, or ask them to do anything too strange. I won’t beat them up. I have a reputation as something of a guardian angel to them. You see, a few months ago while I was down by the docks, making my choice for the evening, a couple of drunks appeared and started behaving deplorably. The girls working there were worried for their own safety so I told the two of them to leave. When they started to get violent…’

  At this von Tripps jumped up and with a flourish he withdrew a long blade from his cane. ‘Voila! My sword-stick!’

  ‘And the girl you’re in love with?’

  ‘She calls herself “La Bella”. It’s a silly name, but she’s never admitted to any other. She’s the sweetest, prettiest girl. A rose, and not quite twenty. I’d do anything for her.’

  ‘You love her so much that you let her go back out onto the street when you’ve done with her?’

  He winced: ‘It pains me, it does. And I do get jealous, thinking about her with other men. And I get worried about her.’

  ‘But you do nothing to help her?’

  ‘I see her once a week. I pay her well. But I don’t have enough money to keep her as my mistress, just for myself.’

  ‘If you lived together?’

  He shook his head sadly: ‘As I said, it would never work.’

  The conversation was effectively at an end. Komenský was trying to understand the attitude of the man but failed to do so. He did not believe that von Tripps could be truly in love with this girl with the ludicrous name; not when he continued to act as he did.

  Relations between Komenský and von Tripps became strained after that conversation. The engineer could not quite think of him in the same way because the man seemed such a hypocrite, believing himself somehow better than the other men who used prostitutes. Komenský supposed that he was indeed something of a prude, but the man’s belief that he was the ‘patron’ of those poor women annoyed him. That evening his antipathy towards von Tripps deepened as the man dressed himself in all of his finery and took such a time about it. When Komenský went to bed he lay awake, expecting von Tripps to return at any moment with yet another woman.

  And he did return, of course, with company. Even with his earplugs in Komenský could hear them, despite an earnest desire not to; he longed for sleep to overcome him too desperately for it to happen.

  When the morning came around Komenský lay in bed, listening, and could hear somebody moving about in the apartment, and perhaps quiet voices from time to time. When he was finally certain that von Tripps was on his own Komenský got up, put on his dressing gown and walked out to make himself breakfast.

  He had been wrong. At the table there sat a young woman sullenly eating toast.

  ‘Good morning,’ von Tripps greeted Komenský, walking in from the kitchen with a pot of coffee. ‘My dear,’ he said to the woman, ‘this is Mr Komenský, the gentleman I was talking to you about last night. He shares these rooms with me.’

  She looked over and smiled a professional smile.

  ‘This,’ he said to Komenský, ‘is the lovely La Bella.’

  ‘Good morning,’ the engineer said simply, and continued on through to the kitchen. He put water on the stove and tried to repress his anger. Was von Tripps trying to provoke him? Were they both trying? She was astoundingly pretty, as he had said, and she was dressed in a most provocative manner. It was not lost on Komenský that she was wearing a garment like a bodice or basque that seemed to support her breasts at the same time as it revealed most of them.

  He was not a prude, he insisted to himself, and he admired her beauty, but to be presented thus with this young woman by von Tripps had to have been a calculated act on his part. What did he want? How did he expect Komenský to react? Was the actor expecting him to avail himself of the young woman’s services as well?

  Von Tripps put his head around the door and bid Komenský ‘Adieu,’ receiving the barest acknowledgement. Komenský added sugar to his coffee and walked out into the living room as he heard the front door slam. To his surprise La Bella was still sitting at the table.

  ‘Is he returning?’ Komenský asked.

  ‘Him? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, let yourself out when you’re ready,’ he said, and continued on to his room. He didn’t like the idea of having a common prostitute left in the apartment. What was to stop her from stealing from them? Von Tripps might be in love with her but how could he trust her? And then Komenský considered again that von Tripps might have been expecting Komenský to sleep with her! He picked up his clothes and took them, with his coffee, through to the bathroom. He locked the door after him, then shaved and showered. He tried not to think about her.

  It was as Komenský was dressing that he heard the front door open and he assumed that La Bella was leaving. There were raised voices and he distinctly heard the woman asking, ‘Why are you back here? That wasn’t the arrangement.’

  The reply was indistinct, which raised Komenský’s suspicions all the more. There were some unidentifiable noises and then he heard a cry from her, followed by an almighty crash. The man shouted, she screamed, there was a thud and nothing more. Komenský felt that he had no choice but to go out and see what had happened. He buttoned his shirt hastily and went out into the hall. The door to von Tripps’ bedroom was open and the young woman was standing there.

  La Bella was covered in blood. Komenský could see that it was not her own. She was looking in shock and disbelief at her hands, and then down at where it was splashed over her chest and stomach and ran down her legs. It was also over her face.

  There was a hammering at the front door and shouts demanding an explanation.

  Komenský pushed past her and went into the bedroom. He could immediately see the cause of the original crashing sound: the dressing table was overturned and everything on it was scattered; the mirror smashed. And there was blood up the wall. He looked around the side of the bed and von Tripps lay slumped in the corner. His sword-stick was protruding stupidly, and somewhat limply, from his neck. Blood had burst from the artery that must have been severed. The man’s eyes stared sightlessly forward and his mouth gaped bloodily open. There was also a smell that suggested that his bowels and bladder had been evacuated.

  Komenský’s reaction was to kneel at the man’s side. He did not want to touch him, though, to check for a pulse or any other signs of life. The lack of any movement and the glassy eyes were enough to confirm that von Tripps was beyond help.

  He had never been into the man’s room before and he was surprised by the incongruity of the simple gold crucifix above the bed.

  Komenský stood up and immediately felt dizzy and nauseous. The whole room seemed to move around him. La Bella was standing behind him and he fell against her, steadied himself and leant against the wall. Her eyes were now fixed on him.

  The demands from the other side of the front door continued.

  He didn’t think that he really believed what he was seeing, or fully understood it. He was scared and shocked, but had no idea how to react. He made himself ask the girl, as calmly as he could, what had happened. She, however, could only open her mouth and keep repeating ‘I, I,’ as though about to tell him, but unable to do so.

  ‘It was an accident?’ he asked, scarcely believing that it could be, but wanting to reassure her. ‘I’ve got to call for the police.’

  She looked at him blankly.

  ‘The police,’ he repeated. ‘It’s too late for an ambulance.’

  Komenský walked back past her and into the hall. There was more hammering on the door and he called out that there had been an accident; he was calling the police. He watched La Bella lean back against the wall and slowly slide down it until she was sitting on her haunches. She was a pathetic sight, half-naked and covered in blood. Komenský shouted that he couldn’t let anybody inside for a few moments.
He would have to cover her up.

  He put his hand out towards the telephone and noticed that there was blood on it. He went to wipe it on his white shirt and saw that it, too, was smeared in blood. It was already turning brown as it dried.

  ‘Do you have to call them?’ she asked quietly from where she was sitting.

  ‘I’ve no choice,’ he said quietly, surprised that she had spoken.

  ‘But, I murdered him.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  She shook her head: ‘No, I murdered him.’

  ‘There was an argument. It will’ve been manslaughter…Mitigating circumstances…’

  ‘No. I thought about it. I knew he had that ridiculous sword-stick. I thought about it last night. I planned it.’

  Suddenly she was shivering uncontrollably.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because I hated him so much,’ she said weakly, her voice quivering. ‘And because he hated me.’

  ‘He told me he loved you.’

  ‘Ha!’ she said, but without enthusiasm, casting her eyes wildly this way and that. ‘If that were true then he’d have left me alone, like I asked him to…like I pleaded with him to do.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I had no choice but to go with him,’ she said, looking up at Komenský directly, trying to control her shaking by wrapping her arms tightly around herself. ‘I needed the money. But the touch of him, his horrible breath, his slimy words. I know women like me don’t have much choice, that we have to put up with whatever we can. But the things he asked me to do…’

  ‘If you explain all this to the police…’

  ‘But then they’ll have their motive. And I did plan it. And I am glad he’s dead…I am a murderer.’

  Komenský couldn’t say anything. There was knocking at the door again, but calmer this time. He wondered if whoever was outside the door could hear their conversation.

  ‘They’ll lock me away forever,’ she said. ‘There’s no point any more, to anything.’

  She slowly and deliberately stood up and then walked into the living room. She was walking towards the glazed doors to the balcony and he initially wondered why she was going there. It was as she opened them that he realised she intended to throw herself out of them.

  ‘Stop!’ he cried, and ran across the room. She pulled the doors open and was already half-over the wrought-iron balcony before he reached her. He grabbed at her waist and with all of his weight against the ironwork he pulled her around so that she fell back towards the room. As he did so the balcony moved as something snapped but didn’t quite give way. He made a grab at the frame of the door and at the edge of his vision he saw La Bella’s head hit the stone sill with a sickening crack. Then the wrought iron moved again and Komenský leapt back inside, over La Bella’s unmoving body.

  When he turned he saw the whole structure of the balcony swing away from the building, with La Bella on it. He grabbed at the young woman and was able to pull her back inside in one rough movement.

  He was still holding her, watching as the blood pulsed from the gash on her head, ran over his own feet and pooled on the parquet floor. He bent down close, looking for signs of life, but her eyes were closed and when he put his hand on her chest she wasn’t breathing. He had no idea of how to administer first aid. He didn’t even know whether she was still alive.

  He hardly noticed the next sound, that of the front door being forced open. Two neighbours rushed in and stopped when they saw him. He could imagine how it would all look to them. Could he explain what had happened? Would anyone believe him? He could hear that another neighbour had already discovered the body of von Tripps.

  This was the point from which Komenský later decided he could not trust his memory. He was in a state of shock; he accepted that. He was upset and afraid, and what then happened took place so quietly and efficiently that he became an observer rather than an active participant.

  Two tall men of aristocratic bearing wearing expensive suits came in and, without showing any identification to the neighbours, persuaded them all to leave the apartment. One man walked over to where Komenský sat with the bloody body of La Bella and said simply, ‘A Red Rose.’

  A minute later the other walked in to join his companion, presumably having seen the body of von Tripps in his room. He said: ‘So much blood.’

  ‘And so much noise,’ replied the first man. ‘And too much anger, and hatred. There should have been more love: I am concerned.’

  ‘The surfaces can all be washed down,’ said the second contemplatively. ‘But the air in here is too full of violence.’

  Komenský laid La Bella down and was helped to stand up.

  ‘I do so hope that you are not hurt?’ asked one of the men.

  ‘No,’ he replied simply, and the man took his arm and walked with him to the bathroom.

  ‘She’s dead?’ Komenský asked.

  ‘You’ll need to shower,’ he replied with patience and compassion.

  ‘And my friend?’

  ‘The process has begun,’ he said solemly. ‘You wash, and I’ll find you some fresh clothes from your room.’

  Komenský did as he was told, his mind refusing to consider what he had just witnessed. He stripped off and showered, the water at his feet first red, becoming pink, and then running clear. He dried himself mechanically and put on a dressing gown. When he felt able to open the door, one of the men, he wasn’t sure which of them, was waiting outside with a set of clean clothes.

  Komenský dressed in the bathroom, and when he walked out the man was waiting for him. Komenský was ready to submit himself to the authorities, and their calmness reassured him.

  ‘You’ll be late for work,’ the man smiled. ‘But it will be all right; we will take you there. It will soon be as if nothing has happened.’

  And his day did pass as if nothing had happened. He arrived on site where he was greeted by members of the city engineering team and was expected to get straight to work. He numbly acquiesced. Not surprisingly he was distracted, at times distressed even. He was surprised that his colleagues made allowances for him without asking any questions. The Chief Engineer even deigned to make an appearance at the end of the day, as though Komenský was an employee of such importance that he felt honour-bound to discuss the progress of their work with him. When it was time to leave a junior member of the team was told to drive him home.

  They travelled back across the city without any words and he was able to contain his nerves only because of his confusion. When the car pulled up outside Komenský’s building the young chauffeur asked if he was all right going inside on his own.

  Komenský took a deep breath, nodded, and got out of the car. The street looked exactly as it had done when he’d returned home the previous evening, before anything had happened. How could everything be going on just as before?

  He climbed the stairs slowly, with leaden legs, and took several moments when outside his own door before he could find the courage to fit the key in the lock. The door had been forced open that morning but now it looked absolutely fine. There was no damage to be seen; it looked to be a new door and frame.

  Komenský turned the key and it unlocked the door.

  The lights were already on inside. Komenský did not cross the threshold. Von Tripps walked into the hallway from the living room with a sad smile. He tapped his nose conspiratorially: ‘Let us not speak of this morning, my dear fellow. It will be as though nothing untoward ever occurred. Come in,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  ‘But you…how? And La Bella…?’

  ‘My lovely rose is no more. The price we pay for perfection.’

  Leave Your Sleep

  A few months ago I mentioned to my mother and father how, as a child, I had lived with my grandparents for a year. My mother frowned, and so I explained:

  ‘When our house in Lewes was being rebuilt.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she laughed. ‘You only lived with them in Brighton for two or three weeks at most
.’

  ‘But I was made to go to another school while I stayed there!’

  ‘You were, but only to keep you out from under your grandmother’s feet.’

  ‘It was certainly for less than a term,’ my father agreed. ‘…three or four weeks at most. I expect it felt like an eternity because you were away from home and all your friends. And it might’ve seemed as if we were rebuilding that house, but it was mostly superficial. The roof was re-tiled and the external walls re-rendered.’

  ‘It needed a lot of interior redecoration as well,’ my mother reminded him.

  ‘But I’ve so many memories of staying with my grandparents,’ I said. ‘And they’re so clear; the house was on Upperton Crescent, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, but they moved to Church Road not long afterwards.’

  ‘I remember that tapestry in the hall, and the stuffed white owl. My grandfather never seemed to complete a huge jigsaw puzzle that was all over the dining room table.’

  ‘I’m sure it would be the house at Church Road you remember,’ insisted my mother. ‘We used to visit every couple of weeks. We’d go there when your father went to the football.’

  ‘But I remember the living room at the back of the house, with big windows looking out over the garden. And I can still picture my bedroom very clearly. I’d never slept in a double bed before, and there was a paisley-patterned eiderdown.’

  ‘Oh, well, that probably would’ve been at Upperton Crescent; you’re right.’

  ‘And, at some time in the past, the house had been linked to the one next to it; there were locked doors between the two.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said my mother, but my father remembered the details:

  ‘Yes, it was originally a big old place owned by some industrialist, but it’d been divided into two houses. There was a curtain over the doorways between them. My mother used to say you could hear the neighbours through the doors, singing hymns of an evening; they were terribly religious. They belonged to some Christian sect that didn’t believe in procreation. They thought it wrong to bring yet more sinners into the world.’