This time she smiled, sly, secret, her Mona Lisa smile, and stood up. He saw her almost as shadow in front of the overhead light. She stood up straight and lifted her cream work smock up over her head like a dress. She stood taut for a moment, relishing her own tenseness. He could sense her using the cold of the room, bathing herself in it. She wore nothing beneath. Jan was momentarily thankful that at least she was a woman, of which he had never been positive. During the brief time when her dress had been hiked up over her head, when he could only see her body, he became instantly aroused. Something told him that this was some-thing he had better use, and by the time she had tossed her smock away he had lidded his eyes, not looking directly at her face. He knew that if he saw or thought of those chin hairs again he would vomit. He knew what kinds of horrors might follow such an episode.
She kept her taut ballet stance for an instant (her under-arms were shaved—why in God's name didn't she excise the hair from her chin!), then quietly, almost sweetly, she said, “Remove your clothes.”
Averting his eyes from her face, he removed his pants and pulled his prison top over his head and tossed it to the floor.
“Good.” In a lithe ballet-like movement she straddled and mounted him on the bed.
It was over in a moment. Holding him within her, she arched once and stayed there, straining every muscle in her body. Jan could hear her grunt with effort. Then there was a quick movement within her, and she had pulled from him what he had, nearly before he knew it. It was as if she had been a vacuum cleaner. Then she was off him, stretching, touching her toes, climbing quickly and efficiently back into her dress.
Without looking at him, she left the room.
She returned at eight o'clock. There was no change in her ordinary demeanor. It might have been her ghostly twin he had coupled with. They made their rounds of the corridors, as always ending eventually at the two doors.
“I'll choose for you today, Jan.” She smiled, her secret smile. “Right.”
The door opened, showing him the large attendant with the tight curls, the antiseptically white room.
“Pain,” she said.
They strapped him onto the gurney, and there was pain.
When she took him back to his room, when he was crying, she whispered into his ear, delicately holding it between her thumb and forefinger, “Later.”
And he saw what she meant, because she lifted the hem of her gown, showing him the long dried track of his seed on the inside of her thigh.
When she left him alone, he did vomit. There was only a bedpan in his room to contain it, and he barely pulled it out in time, noting with disgust that it had not been emptied while he was out. He heaved everything out of his stomach. It felt as though he was expunging everything he had ever eaten. He thought of the last meal his mother had made him, the cracked pot of oatmeal the police had left on the floor, and his retching became uncontrollable. He felt he might pull up his own guts and spit them out, his own soul, along with everything else in the bedpan.
He began to gasp; he could not gain his breath. His retching continued. But he was not breathing, only throwing little gasps of undigested food out of his mouth. He clutched his stomach and rolled onto the floor. He could not breathe. Ragged, convulsive heavings were coming out of him. He thought he might die. And then suddenly that was fine with him, because what was there but death, now that this creature, this vampire, had decided to victimize him. He had never had a woman, and now he had this. He had seen the full, mirrored look of satisfaction she had worn while sucking his seed from him. He had not given it. There had not been even a glimmer of mutuality. She had taken it, and would continue to take it
Even through his gasping agony, he could hear the screams of the other inmates. There was one less scream tonight—the shrill, high keen of the very young man was gone. That explained it: she had killed him with her cold self-passion, or the pain had killed him, or he had succeeded in killing himself, and now Jan was hers. If he died, so be it; the pain, or the chin-haired vampire would get him eventually anyway. Let death come to him now.
He heard himself fighting for breath from a very long way off. A dark curtain, a velvet buffer, began to descend on him, and he heard another sound, a peaceful sighing, a giving way of self, that also came from him. He began to see himself sleeping, putting his hands under his head like a babe and sleeping.
Someone called, “Jan?”
“No!” he shouted through his dropping sleep, fearing it was the vampire's voice.
“Jan! It's me! Bridget!”
Her voice was so pure, so beautiful, more beautiful even than his acquiring sleep, that he rose on his hands, pushed himself up on his unfolding hands, and listened to her. “Jan!” There was urgency in her voice as well as beauty. “Yes?” he answered, not knowing if she could hear him. “Jan! You can't go away!”
He loved Bridget, but he was nearing the other place and rest and sleep would be so good ...
“Jan! YOU MUST NOT DIE!”
“I must . . .” he said.
“No! I'll get you out! I'll get you out of that terrible place!”
He felt her reaching for him, pulling him back.
Her voice mixed with the sound of his own coughing breath.
“Yes, Jan! Yes!”
His lungs filled full with air. He choked it out and began to breathe.
He opened his eyes, gagged, threw himself away from the mass of putrefaction in the bedpan.
He heard her say his name distinctly, softly.
She sat angelic on his bed. She wore the dress she had worn at the inn in Kolno. He trembled, remembering her touch. Her red hair shone like a halo; the freckles on her skin stood out in beautiful translucence, tiny petals floating on milk. She looked pensive, disappointed.
“Jan, what did you almost do?” she said. She shuddered, her tiny body a single tremble.
“I . . . I'm sorry.”
“Didn't you believe me?” When she looked up at him, her eyes were filled with tears.
“That . . . vampire took me! I wanted you to be the first, the only. . .”
He looked at her again; silent tracks of tears marked her face, and then, in an instant, she seemed to collapse into herself, becoming as small as a girl, weeping into her hands.
“Oh, Jan, Jan, I want you so badly, the thought that you would go away from me. . .”
Jan reached out, desperate to touch her. But his fingers moved right through her.
“I'm sorry,” he said. He sat on the bed beside her and put his hands in his lap. “I'm so sorry.” Suddenly he put his fists to the side of his head and squeezed. “God, I'm so confused!”
“Jan, I love you so much. If only you'll listen to me.” She had stopped crying. Her eyes were large, puffy with tears. Her hair looked like spun red silk; framing her face, on the sides, where her tears had wet it, it glistened. Her hands had drying tears on them. Her face shone with a radiance Jan had only seen upon the moon at certain times, in its fullness, when it seemed, not dry dirt and blasted craters, but the shimmering face of Eve.
“Jan,” she said, in a small voice, but she was looking directly at him, the blue eyes of the angel lighting into him like lamps. He shuddered when she put her own hand over his and he felt the soft, tear-wet flesh of it. “Do you love me?”
Tears leapt into his eyes. “You're the only thing that matters. The only thing in my life. I want to be with you always.”
She held his hand over her breast, moving it down slightly so that he felt the swell and the rising hardness of her nipple. She smiled shyly and raised her other hand, putting a finger to her lips. “Then listen to me. I'm going to bring you to me. You're going to leave this place and come to me and be with me forever.”
When the woman with hair on her chin came for him again in the afternoon, Jan was waiting for her at the door. He smiled at her meekly, and she returned his smile, briefly, chillingly, knowingly. She closed the door and turned to Jan.
“The bed,” she said sim
ply.
Instead, Jan put his hands around her neck.
She stiffened. She looked into Jan's eyes with contempt and reached to activate the call button on her belt.
Jan pushed her against the wall, holding her neck tight with one hand while ripping the call beeper from her grasping hands. He dropped it, returned both hands to her neck and redoubled the pressure.
“Die,” he spat.
She hissed a loud silent scream, and her face turned bright red and then purple. Her eyes opened wide. The mottling of her face only made her look as ugly as she was—not the hidden deformity of the nun, but true ugliness. Jan's throttling hands lifted her off the ground. Her hanging was complete, free of gravity. A stain spread on her smock at her crotch as her face froze in place.
When Jan let go of her, the body collapsed to the floor and a hissing, her last breath, vented into the atmosphere.
Jan opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He closed the door behind him.
“Quickly,” Bridget's voice said close-by his ear. “As I told you.”
He turned right and walked purposefully to the end of the hallway. It was the beginning of a trip he had taken many times before. There followed a long, tense walk through the maze. Jan's heart seized as he recognized the turnoff for the hall with the two doors (“Pain!”). He heard the husky, deep, begging cries of the old woman, very close. He hurried on.
Soon he was in unfamiliar territory. There came to him the faint smell of cabbage, of other vegetables—carrots, potatoes, meat. These were smells he had not sampled in more than a month, and he stopped dead as if hypnotized, tasting them with his nostrils. “My God. . .” he said, beginning to tremble, a precursor to weeping.
“Jan! Go on!” Bridget urged.
He stumbled ahead, as if his roots had been pulled from the spot. The smells strengthened, and now there were voices—not cries of madness but laughter, true conversation. He passed a low wall, heard the clanking of silverware, the hiss of cooking steam. Two women's voices, arguing politics; one of them saying, “Walesa is a great man, a saint!” and the other grunting, giving in to the point, begrudgingly, “Well . . . maybe not a saint, though. . .”
Jan continued. There were office doors cut into the concrete walls now, painted a cheery blue, with smoked-glass windows set into them. He heard typing, the ring of a telephone.
“Turn left, Jan.”
He thought of the woman with hair on her chin making him turn right, turn left. He nearly laughed in his nervousness. “This one, Jan.”
He had walked by an entrance. He felt Bridget close-by. He backtracked to stand before a large wooden door with no window, no sign on it, a smooth polished aluminum doorknob.
“Turn the doorknob and go in.”
He rubbed his hands together, hesitating. Then down the hall he heard two voices, two men walking side by side, talking.
“Go,” Bridget said.
He turned the knob.
He entered a spacious office. There was an empty secretary's desk; behind her small partition, the room opened to luxurious dimensions. There was green, thick-piled carpeting on the floor. Plants in large pots bookended the filing cabinets. A deep red leather chair with a coat draped over it squatted in one corner. A long, polished wooden table abutted the far wall. Lit from above, it showed off models of several large sailing vessels. Against another wall, behind the partition, was a huge desk with chairs in front of it, and a tall leather swivel chair of the same wine-red color as the other.
“Walk,” Bridget whispered.
Jan stepped around the partition and all the way into the room. A stout man with his uniform tie loosened sat behind the desk. In front of him on the desk was a bottle of vodka and two glasses, which he was filling. The bottle was half empty. He handed the second glass to a man who now sat down in the wine-colored swivel chair. The man in uniform behind the desk stopped pouring his own vodka and looked up at Jan; when the man on the other side of the desk turned to look at him also, Jan was startled to see how much he resembled himself.
“Who are you?” the stout man behind the desk said, in a curt, hoarse voice.
“Go to the coat and reach inside the right pocket,” Bridget said. Jan strode across the room, lifted the coat from the leather chair and drew a pistol from its pocket. A fat silencer was screwed onto the barrel.
“Use it,” Bridget's voice said, urgently.
“What—” the stout official was saying, rising from his chair as Jan turned and shot him in the chest and throat. He sat down heavily, blood pouring copiously from his mouth and down over his uniform. He tried to gag the flow, to speak or scream. Jan shot him again, and his face erupted in blood. He fell forward to the desk.
Jan turned the gun to the other man, who stood and stepped back, away from the desk. He looked at Jan calmly and moved lithely into the center of the room. He was dressed impeccably, Italian tailoring, his thin red tie knotted to perfection.
“I'm sure this shooting is none of my business,” he said to Jan, beginning in Russian and then repeating and changing to Polish. “You're Polish Intelligence, I take it? I'm sure our friend Stefan here had his enemies.” He smiled, and now Jan saw how nervous he really was. “What I'm saying is,” he said, his cool demeanor beginning to crumble, his eyes darting left and right, back to Jan, searching for any kind of opening, “I hope we can work something out.”
“Shoot him, Jan,” Bridget said.
Jan aimed. The man looked at Jan imploringly, and Jan hesitated. “Damn it, man, call Roskolov in Moscow! He's KGB like me! He knew about the smuggling—it was all so innocent! A few cases a month! One of them went to Roskolov for his Kremlin buddies. Hell, two can go to you if you want!”
“Shoot him,” Bridget repeated.
Jan fired a single shot into the man's forehead. “You . . . can . . .” the man choked out, before he collapsed and was silent.
“Quickly, Jan—take his clothes.”
Jan went to the man, trying not to look at his contorted face as he removed his clothing. Everything was nearly a perfect fit, even his shoes, which were of fine leather and looked English.
“Under the desk, take the briefcase,” Bridget said. “Button the jacket and put on the topcoat.”
Jan did as he was told, putting the gun into the coat's right-hand pocket. There was even a scarf, bright red, which he wrapped around his neck.
“Go.”
Jan put his hand to the doorknob, and after drawing a breath, he turned it and opened the door.
He stepped confidently out into the hall.
Bridget guided him back the way they had come, until he turned abruptly into an offshoot of the main passage. He passed more offices. There were more sounds of typing and paper shuffling. He kept his head down, looking thoughtful, his briefcase swinging easily at his side. Two more turns. Suddenly he was in a large hallway.
He was hit with a sense of deja vu. He had seen this place once before—and then he knew it. His eyes registered the huge steel doors in front of the elevator.
“Step up to the elevator,” Bridget said, “and wait for it to open.”
Jan did as he was told, holding his briefcase in both hands before him until the doors slid back. “In,” Bridget said. “Tell the operator to take you all the way up.”
Jan did so, noting the gray uniformed man in the comer who eyed him with boredom. He waved his finger at the man, indicating that they should go up.
“Ground level?”
Jan glared at him, and suddenly the operator went rigid and pale.
“I'm sorry,” the man stuttered. “I didn't recognize you for a moment, sir. It's ... it's been a long day.”
Jan broke off his glare to regard the doors in front of him. The elevator man fumbled to bring the elevator into service.
There was a bump and then a jerk upward. The elevator rose.
It seemed a half hour went by. Jan had the feeling the elevator was moving slowly, but there was also the impression of rising t
hrough a great amount of earth. Jan could feel the' pressure lessen in his ears. He nearly became light-headed.
The elevator jerked to a stop. The operator fumbled with the door mechanism, giving short glances at Jan, who remained impassive.
The doors opened.
Jan squinted and put a hand up before his eyes at the brightness that hit him. He hadn't realized just how dark the underground world had been, how few light bulbs there had been, strung far apart and of dim wattage.
The smells of the earth assaulted him. He must have swooned, for the elevator operator was at his side, blubbering, giving aid. Jan stood straight and pulled away from the man, who immediately scrambled back into his doorway and closed the doors.
Jan could faintly hear the slow machine returning to the bowels of the earth.
It was late afternoon. Jan smelled wet leaves, cut grass, maple trees. He smelled pine sap. His nose was assaulted with the odors of mown hay, far off, and apples and pears. It was as if his nose had never been used before. He smelled motor oil, and rain, though the ground was dry. There were thickly stacked white-gray clouds overhead, moving toward twilight, and the sun was orange and tinged the edges of the clouds orange. He smelled winter coming, far off, beginning to gain strength and stretch its limbs and think about its season.
He stood on a spot of tarmac; behind him, the, elevator doors were set back in a barnlike building that looked for all the world like a farmer's storage area. He had a feeling he was in the extreme north of the country. Empty, harvested fields stretched off to a strong-looking chain-link fence about a quarter mile away. To Jan's left was parked a Soviet limousine, angled away from neatly painted parking spots that held three Polish automobiles.
The car door opened on the limo, and a man got out. He stood up next to his open door and regarded Jan.
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