by Evie Blake
She shakes her head passionately.
‘If you love someone, you let them be who they want to be, Santos. That’s why I love you, because you let me be who I want to be. How could I not do the same for you? I love you so much that I know that one day I will have to let you go.’
Her voice cracks. She drops his hand and brings her silk dressing gown up to her face, to bury her sorrow inside it.
Santos moves towards her. He puts his arms around her, her legs inside the V of his.
‘Belle Blackbird, I may fly away one day, but I will come back to you.’
She looks up at him, her eyes glistening with new hope.
‘You will?’
‘How could I not, my sweet?’
He kisses her tenderly, and Belle feels almost delirious with joy. He said he would come back to her. One day. When that day might be, she neither knows nor cares. He has given her a reason to live.
They make love on her balcony, her sapphire dressing gown wrapped around them so that they are in a cocoon of passion. As Santos comes inside her, Belle watches the moonlight speckle the water like his seed drops speckled upon her flesh.
The next day it rains and Santos does not come. She waits by her window, sending wordless prayers to any God that might hear her. She pricks her fingers with one of their white roses, now yellow and crumbling, offering her blood in exchange for her wish. Yet the canal is empty, and the rain pelts down outside, splashing reflections across the sky. She waits for as long as she dares, and then she trails back to Louise’s house, not heeding the downpour that drenches her, her heart filled with dread. Surely Santos wouldn’t leave Venice without saying goodbye?
When she arrives at the Brzezinski house, she notices the lamp on in her husband’s study, and fears he is back already. He wasn’t due home until the following evening. She can’t bear to face his questions tonight. The rain has stopped, so she goes round to the back entrance of the house, walking carefully along the stone ledge just over the canal. A bit of stone crumbles under her feet and she nearly topples into the water as she swings herself through the back door. She sneaks into the passageway, and up the stairs through the kitchen. She is shivering now with wet and cold. She has nearly made it to her bedroom when her husband appears on the landing as if out of nowhere.
‘Where have you been?’ he asks, a nasty grimace on his face.
‘Walking.’
‘What respectable woman of Venice goes walking around in the pouring rain on her own after dark? Just look at you!’
She glances down at her black velvet coat, which is stuck to her with rain. She sighs wearily. She is so tired of all this.
‘Signor Brzezinski,’ she addresses him. ‘You must know by now that I am anything but a respectable woman.’
That is enough to set her husband off. He lashes out and slaps her hard across the neck and chest. She winces, but refuses to cry.
‘Go ahead,’ she taunts him. ‘Hit me again. You think you are such a big man, but you’re a joke. Everyone is laughing at you, because your wife is a WHORE!’
The words are out of her mouth before she can stop them. Her husband grabs her by her fringe and pulls her into her bedroom, slamming the door behind him. His anger is so intense he can’t speak to her, but he can hit her. He knocks her back on the bed, and pulls the belt out of his trousers. She sees the metal buckle sparkling in the dusky light. And then down it comes, again and again. So hard he hits her this night that by the time he is finished with her, her whole body is shattered. Yet she doesn’t care. She is happy to pay this price if she can have Santos.
Afterwards, when he has finished beating her, he screams into her face.
‘You shall give me a child, you barren bitch. Or I will kill you.’
He storms out of the room to go down to dinner, stuff his anger with beef and cream.
Louise is beyond food. She lies for an hour on her bed, unable to move. She is unable even to take her wet garments off, although she knows she should to avoid a chill. Eventually the door of her room opens. He is back, Louise thinks, to finish me off. Yet it is not Signor Brzezinski but Pina who appears, her face rigid with horror when she sees her mistress. She says nothing – she has no need to – before scurrying out of the room. A few moments later she returns with a bowl of warm water, some oils and cloths. She peels Louise’s wet garments off her, and gently cleans the blood off her bruised legs. She speaks in her Sicilian dialect words of tenderness that Louise finds hard to understand, but her tone soothes her, and although the girl is more than ten years younger than her, she feels as if she is caring for her like a mother might. She is not sure, for she knows her own mother never did such a thing for her.
Pina does her best to help her mistress, applying poultices of aromatic herbs against Louise’s stinging skin, but her mistress’s body is racked with pain. All Louise wants is to be held in Santos’s arms. What if that never happens again? The thought of Santos sailing far away from her in his white schooner is worse than the pain from the lashes her husband has just given her. She would rather die than never see him again.
Valentina
SHE SITS UP IN THE FOUR-POSTER BED LIKE A FAIRY-TALE princess awoken from a hundred-year slumber. Her eyelids are heavy, and the dark air sparkles around her as if it is filled with fireflies. The drapes are closed around her and it feels as if she is on a velvet island. She draws them back, and the waves of the Velvet Underworld surge around her. She gets out of bed, unsteadily, as if she might be swallowed up by the plush carpet beneath her bare feet. She looks around for her clothes, but her stockings and corset have disappeared and her dress is no longer on the chair. She doesn’t care for her clothes now anyway. After her experience with Leonardo, she feels her most natural naked, pure and clean. She opens the leather door, and steps out into the dark hallway. The building seems to hum around her. She stands in the hall, shivering, staring at the cold, hard metal door of the Dark Room.
I am going to take you into the Dark Room inside yourself.
Leonardo’s words echo inside her head. She walks unsteadily towards the door, her heart in her mouth. Can she do it? Is she brave enough to go into the Dark Room? It is just a room, she tells herself. Four walls. A floor and a ceiling.
Nothing really bad could happen in there, could it? Like rape . . . or murder?
Although she knows there are some who get their kicks from taking extreme physical risks, she doesn’t think Leonardo would let that happen. She hardly knows the man and yet she trusts him. Even so, one of her mother’s sayings pops up in her head.
Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.
Georges Bataille wrote that. Her mother was always quoting him. She hailed him as a ground-breaking philosopher on sex. Valentina thought his ideas were rather sick. How can death be sexy?
She takes a breath and puts the palms of her hands against the door. It is so cold that it burns her, like ice. Yet she doesn’t remove her hands, and instead leans into the door, putting her head against it and listening. She can hear nothing. Just the rushed beat of her own heart. She looks down at the handle. It is a round metal doorknob, its soft contours in contrast to the hard steel door. Slowly she drags her hand down the length of the door and puts her hand on the knob. She twists, yet the door doesn’t yield. It is locked.
‘Valentina?’
She turns to see Leonardo standing behind her. He is fully clothed again, and on his arm is draped a white towelling dressing gown. She is suddenly aware of her nakedness. She blushes, feeling like a naughty child caught stealing from the candy jar.
‘I wanted to look inside,’ she says.
He raises his eyebrows.
‘It’s locked,’ he says.
‘I know.’
For a moment neither of them moves. She can see him thinking, as if he is trying to decide something. Finally he takes a step towards her.
‘You must be cold,’ he says, wrapping the dressing gown around her shoulders. She slips her arms inside it,
and he ties it tightly round her waist. It is incredibly soft and snug, and smells of lavender.
‘You’ve been out for quite a while,’ he tells her, taking her hand in his and leading her down to the end of the hall. Here there is another door. It is painted the same colour as the walls of the hallway, probably the reason why she never noticed it before.
‘I thought you might like to take a bath,’ he says, opening the door and ushering her into one of the most luxurious bathrooms she has ever seen. It is decorated in the style of a hammam, with mosaic floors, burning incense and candles flickering all around its circumference. She can hear Egyptian music playing softly in the background. There is a large circular bath in the centre, filled with fragrant water bubbling with little jets. She can see the steam rising off it, and she is overcome with a desire to sink her tired body into it. Yet what about their agreement?
‘The Dark Room,’ she whispers. ‘I thought I was going to go inside it.’
Leonardo looks pensive for a moment. He leans down and tucks her hair behind both her ears.
‘I am not sure you would be up for that tonight, Valentina. You look exhausted.’
She cannot help but feel relief sweeping through her. She feels turned inside out by her hot-wax experience. He is right. She is not sure she could take any more erotic discoveries tonight. She feels weak, and insubstantial. Her head is in a fog.
‘There is no rush,’ he says, smiling slowly. ‘Believe me, I will take you inside the Dark Room. Next time . . .’
Her breath quickens with the thought of it. Part of her wants to question him: what will he do to her there? Yet part of her doesn’t want to know. Besides, she is sure he wouldn’t tell her anyway.
‘Will you take a bath with me?’ she asks suddenly, surprised at her offer. She thinks of Theo. How he often gets into the bath, tucking her between his legs as he washes her breasts, her stomach, all of her. Leonardo smiles at her benignly, like the teacher he is.
‘No, Valentina,’ he says. ‘I think you need to be alone.’
She submerges herself under the aromatic water, and stares open eyed at the ceiling of the hammam through the dusky, dappled light. A memory comes to her unwanted, and she imagines herself within it again. She is in their bath in the flat. Theo is leaning over her, reaching for her hands and pulling her up so that she emerges spluttering and naked in his arms. He grabs a towel and wraps her in it. She feels swaddled, trapped, yet safe in his embrace. It was only six weeks ago, less even, and yet this memory feels like it comes from a faraway place in time. She struggles to forget it. Yet it is still so close to her. She can smell her own body on that day. Its failing, and its loss.
‘What happened?’ he is asking her. ‘Why is the water full of blood? Are you hurt?’
She squeezes her eyes tight, pushes her chin into his chest, her mouth a rigid line of non-communication.
‘Speak to me,’ he cajoles her. ‘Valentina, please . . . what has happened?’
But she can’t. It hurts too much. She wriggles to free herself from his embrace. She wants to run away from him into the bedroom, to lock the door and wait for him to go away. Yet even if he goes, Theo always comes back.
‘Oh Valentina.’ She hears his shocked whisper as he registers the reason for the blood. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
So many reasons why. She didn’t want the baby . . . she did want the baby. She didn’t want to love Theo. She did. She didn’t want him to be trapped with her. It was too humiliating a thought. She wanted to face it on her own. And yet she didn’t. She wanted it all to go away . . . and now it had, and for some reason she wished it were not so. She had been unable to answer him.
And now, as Valentina bathes in the cleansing waters of the hammam pool, she looks down at her belly. In there . . . in there was Theo’s child.
She places her hands just below and on either side of her belly button and presses down gently. She wished their baby away. That’s what she did. She felt it fluttering inside her, and she panicked, not at the idea of having a child, but at the commitment it would mean between her and Theo. She prayed for that baby to go. She asked it to leave, and it did. She gives a little gasp of grief, yet still she bites the tears back. She sinks back under the warm water, pulsing with tiny jets, and twists her body around and around so that she is in a whirlpool of sensation. She shouldn’t be maudlin and dwell on such things. Logically she knows that the miscarriage was a blessing. And yet she will never forget the look on Theo’s face as he tried to comfort her. It was the look of love. He was feeling her pain, for her. How it terrified her. Far worse than indifference, or kindly concern even.
She emerges from the water again, shakes her head, spraying droplets of water around her. Stop thinking about it, Valentina, she commands. You live a certain kind of life, with no room for babies. Look where you are now. In a sex club, for God’s sake. You are not mother material.
Belle
DESPITE HER HARSH BEATING, LOUISE WAKES EARLY THE next morning. The sun is only just nudging above the horizon, and her room is full of gloaming shadows. Her sleep has been besieged by uneasy dreams of Warsaw in her youth. The night her father died, and the torture of getting her mother to leave him. Begging her to come with her and Signor Brezinski, to Venice, where she would be safe. Her mother was so frightened. She remembers her fear, her constant shaking, which intensified every time she or Signor Brzezinski tried to reassure her.
Louise drags herself out of these dark dreams. They give her a strange taste in her mouth, and an uneasy feeling, as if she is a player in a drama she doesn’t know the story of. When she sits up stiffly in bed, she is surprised to see Pina, still in her uniform, asleep on the chair beside her. What could the girl still be doing in here?
‘Pina,’ she whispers, but the child is in a deep sleep. Louise looks at her face in repose, free from fear or worry. She looks like an angel. And then it hits her. She is an angel. This girl she has barely considered before is asleep on the chair next to her bed because she is protecting her. A woman nearly twice her age.
‘Pina.’ She leans over and shakes her gently by the arm. Pina wakes with a jolt. She looks confused for a moment, and then embarrassed when she realises where she is.
‘Oh, madam, I’m sorry . . .’ she stutters, her cheeks flaming red.
Louise clasps the girl’s hands.
‘No need to be sorry, Pina. No need.’
‘How are you feeling, madam?’ asks the girl, her bright cheeks beginning to calm down.
‘Sore.’
Louise takes a breath, pulls back the covers and swings her legs out of the bed. She gasps with pain as she stands up. She is not sure where it hurts the most. Her ribs, or her legs, or her head. There is a deep throbbing in the small of her back, where Signor Brzezinski punched her. Stupid man, she thinks. If he wants a baby so badly, why is he damaging its potential bearer?
‘Madam, I think you should get back into bed. I will bring you more poultices to take the pain away.’ Pina’s eyes are wide with concern.
‘I have to go, Pina.’ It is hard even to talk, and each word is forced out of her stiff mouth. The bastard slapped her on the chin as well.
Pina opens her mouth, dumbfounded, and Louise waits for her protest. Then the girl snaps her mouth shut again. Her next words surprise Louise greatly.
‘You must love him very much,’ she whispers.
Louise turns to Pina, leans on her shoulder and takes another breath.
‘I do, my dear. Will you help me?’
It takes them a while to dress Louise, so slowly, so painfully. By the time she is hobbling through the narrow alleyways of Venice, the sun has risen, yet it is still early enough for it to be safe for her to leave the house. It was Pina who came up with the idea of pretending to be Louise and getting into her bed, in the unlikely event of her husband looking in on her. Usually after beating her so severely he avoids facing her, and the marks he has made on her, for at least a day or two. Louise is sure he will not want t
o look at her for several days at least this time. It makes her pleased to think of her lowly maid fast asleep in her silk sheets, tasting a little luxury for once.
She pulls her cloche hat as low as possible over her forehead. Her husband forgot to be careful last night, and despite Pina doing her best with make-up, Louise has a black eye. She has decided she will wait for Santos for one hour, and if he has not come by then, she will disguise herself as a sailor boy and look for him down by the boats. If his schooner is gone . . . well then she doesn’t know what she will do.
She sits in her apartment, waiting. She is in the old rocking chair by the bed, a blanket wrapped around her. She is still shivering from the beating she took, and feels as if the dampness from the rain yesterday has taken a hold in her bones. She closes her eyes and begins to drift, the sound of the lapping water like a lullaby. She imagines Pina singing to her, the only other soul apart from Santos who seems to have a care for her heart.
‘Belle . . . Belle . . .’ She hears his voice first, whispering. It is him, and yet he sounds different. Shocked.
‘Oh Belle.’
She opens her eyes, the lids heavy, and her vision is blurred for a few seconds. In the fog of her room she begins to make out Santos crouched down in front her. A look on his face she has never seen before. No more gaiety. Just horror.
‘My darling girl!’ he exclaims.
What’s wrong? she thinks. Why is he looking at me like this?
And she realises. He has never seen me beaten so badly, she thinks, her head pounding dully. This is the first time since she met Santos that Signor Brzezinski has laid into her with such force. She had always been able to explain away the other minor bruises. She didn’t want Santos to know about Louise. But how will she explain all this? She wasn’t thinking this morning about how Santos might respond to her beating; she just wanted to see him.
