Every day she had to have twelve customers. Sometimes there were more, but never fewer, because then Dimitri would beat her up or rape her from behind, again and again, to make up for the missing gigs. Always up the arse.
She had her own ritual. Every evening.
She showered. The too-hot water washed away their hands. She took her tablets, four Rohypnol and one Valium, washed down with a little vodka. She put on large, baggy clothes that hung on her body, so she had no curves, no one could see, no one could touch her. Even so, sometimes the aching pain down there couldn’t be silenced.
Tonight she felt jabs of pain and knew why. There had been a couple of new customers and they were always a bit too harsh. She rarely complained; she understood now how important it was that they came back.
Lydia got bored with the lines on the wall and turned to look at the front door. It was ages since she had been outside. How long was it? She couldn’t say for sure, but she thought maybe four months. She had thought about it, breaking the kitchen window; you couldn’t open it, or any of the others. She had thought about smashing the glass and jumping. The flat was on the fifth floor, though. Looking down scared her too much; she couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to fall through the air towards the ground. She went to the door, touched it, sensing the cold, hard surface of the steel, closed her eyes and stood with her hand over the red light, breathing deeply and cursing herself for not understanding the electronic lock. She had tried to see what Dimitri did, but he knew she was spying and always made a point of standing in the way.
She left the hall, walked through the unfurnished room that was inexplicably known as the sitting room, past her own room with the large bed she despised but had to sleep in.
She walked to the end of the corridor, to Alena’s room. The door was closed, but Lydia knew that Alena was finished for the day and had showered and that she was alone.
She knocked.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s me.’
‘I’m trying to sleep.’
‘I know, but… can I come in?’
Silence, just for a few seconds. Lydia waited and then Alena made up her mind.
‘Of course you can. Come in.’
Alena was lying naked on the unmade bed. Her skin was darker than Lydia’s and her hair was still wet. If she left it like that it would be hard to brush tomorrow. At the end of the day Alena would often lie like this, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Janoz, that she had never told him she was going, that the years had passed, that she could still feel his arms and longed to be held again; it would only be for a few months, then she would come back to him, to Janoz, then they’d get married, later.
Lydia stood still. She looked at Alena’s nakedness and thought about her own body, the one she had to hide in baggy clothing afterwards – she knew that was what she was doing, hiding. She looked and she compared and she wondered how Alena could bear to lie in the same bed without clothes on, and she realised she was looking at her opposite, someone who somehow let things linger, who didn’t hide it, who almost clung to it.
Alena pointed at the bed, the side that was empty.
‘Sit down.’
The room was just like hers – same bed, same set of shelves and nothing else. She sat down on the rumpled sheets. Where someone else had just been. For a while Lydia stayed inside the red wallpaper, watching its swirling little velvety flowers. Then she reached out for Alena’s hand, squeezed it and spoke in a near whisper.
‘How are you?’
‘You know… as usual.’
‘Just the same?’
‘Yes.’
They had met on the boat, so they had known each other for more than three years. Back then, they had laughed together. They were on their way. The frothing white water in their wake. Neither of them had ever been at sea before.
Lydia pulled her friend’s hand closer, still holding it tight, caressing it, interlocking her own fingers with her friend’s.
‘I know. I know.’
Alena lay very still. Her eyes were closed.
Her body wasn’t bruised, not like Lydia’s, at least not in the same way.
Lydia lay down beside her, and in the shared silence their minds wandered, Alena’s thoughts drifting back to Janoz, and Lydia’s back to Lukuskele prison, to the shaven-headed men who coughed their lives away in the shabby prison hospital.
Then suddenly Alena sat up, pushed a pillow between the small of her back and the wall and pointed at the evening paper on the floor.
‘Look at that, Lydia.’
She let go of Alena’s hand, bent down and picked it up. She didn’t ask how Alena had got hold of a newspaper. She realised it was from one of the men who had been there today, one of the ones who took things with them, wanted something extra and got it. Lydia didn’t have many customers who gave her things. She wanted money. Cash was all Dimitri cared for, and she liked cheating him of it. Anyone who wanted extras had to pay, a hundred kronor each time.
‘Open it, look at page seven.’
The customers were charged five hundred kronor and she knew what five hundred times twelve per day came to. Dimitri took nearly everything; they were only allowed to keep two hundred and fifty. All the rest was taken from them for food and their room and to repay their debt. In the beginning she had said she wanted more money, but then Dimitri had sodomised her over and over, until she promised never to ask again. It was then that she had decided to keep an extra hundred when she could. Do it her own way, more for the sake of cheating Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp than for the money itself.
Some men wanted to beat her.
She let them. They paid an extra hundred and she took the blows. Most of them didn’t hit her that hard; it was their way to get in the mood before sex. She took six hundred, gave Dimitri his five and kept her mouth shut. This had been going on for quite a while. She had saved quite a bit and Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp was none the wiser.
Lydia didn’t speak Swedish and she certainly couldn’t read it. Whatever it said in the paper was lost on her, the bold headline as much as the small print. But she saw the picture. Alena held the paper up so she could see and her eyes stopped at the picture. Suddenly she screamed, burst into tears, ran from the room, then came back and stood there staring at the paper, hating it.
‘The swine!’
She threw herself on the bed, close to Alena’s nakedness, crying now more than screaming.
‘The stinking, rotten swine!’
Alena waited. There was no point in talking; she had to let Lydia cry, as she herself had cried not long before.
She held her friend tight.
‘I’ll read it for you.’ Alena knew Swedish quite well. Lydia couldn’t understand how she could bear to learn the language.
She and Alena had been in this country for just as long as each other and met just as many men, but that wasn’t the point. Lydia had decided to shut it out, never to listen, never to learn the language in which she was raped.
‘Do you want me to read?’
Lydia did not want her to. Didn’t. Didn’t.
‘Yes.’
She huddled closer to Alena’s naked skin, borrowing her warmth. She was always so warm. Lydia felt frozen most of the time.
The picture was dull. It showed a middle-aged man leaning against a wall. He was tall and slim, with blond, smooth hair and a moustache. He looked pleased with himself, like someone who has just been praised. Pointing to him, Alena read out the headline, first in Swedish and then in Russian. Lydia lay still, listening, not daring to move. The article was badly written, in a rush, a drama that had been resolved early that morning, just before the paper went to print. The man leaning against the wall was a policeman who had managed to get a small-time crook, who had in a panic taken five people hostage and held them locked up in a bank vault, to enter negotiations. In the end, the hostage-taker had been talked round by the policeman and all his captives were freed.