I can’t see the road at all. We are driving fast and it frightens me. I keep my hand on the hard place which every so often moves upwards.
I could easily have gone back to school a good five times over…
Walt walks further into the house and opens a door. I can hear him drawing curtains somewhere. There is a desk with a row of drawers down one side in the corner of the room, and under one window a sagging brown settee, a small round table and two wooden chairs with grotesquely bulging seats. A calendar is hanging behind the desk and several sheets of paper have been stuck to the wall with drawing pins. The ashtray on the small table is full of cigarette ends. Does that mean there are people about? I listen.
An imprisoned brown butterfly flutters against one of the windows, its wings rustling across the glass. The soldier comes back into the room and pulls the shutters at the front of the house across the windows; there is a rattling noise and it is dark. Then he shoots the bolt of the door with a loud click and it suddenly dawns on me: I am a captive, I shall never get away from here.
A narrow staircase at the back leads up to a landing with three doors. We go into a small room which has a mattress on the floor and some blankets flung down on to it rather untidily. Walt sits on a chair, pulls me towards him and kisses me. I allow it to happen, unyielding and resentfuclass="underline" I have been locked up, there is no one here but the two of us.
I can watch the slight movement of the leafy branches through a small window. I shall never see anybody again, this is the end. Yet somewhere among the shaded leaves the same bird is still singing, clearly and challengingly.
The soldier has gone out of the room. I am alone. What is he up to, is he going to leave me all on my own? I prick up my ears for any sound. It is like being kept in after school, being aware of the silence and emptiness in your body, the injustice of being the only one left behind in a deserted room. A tap is running somewhere, making a gushing sound through the house. ‘Hey, where are you?’ His voice sounds normal, he hasn’t sneaked out of the house after all, hasn’t left me behind, hasn’t gone for his rifle to threaten me with but is standing in the room next door, his back towards me. He has put his clothes in a pile in a corner of the little passageway and he is washing himself at a basin, the water running down his body on to the floor.
From his hips to halfway down his thighs his body is as white as chalk, the dividing line running straight and clear-cut across his skin. His movements are quick and nimble, his arms slipping over his body, sliding from his back across his knees to the half-raised foot. The foaming white soap on his belly smells sweet. He rinses himself clean with quick handfuls of water, then he takes off my clothes without saying a word and hangs them on the door-knob.
I catch my breath as he runs a cold, soapy hand over my shoulder-blades and ribs. His knowing fingers handle my terrified sex deliberately, then slide across my belly and my buttocks.
When he touches my injured arm I can see that he is startled. ‘Me?’ He points to himself.
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head, I am afraid to accuse him.
He examines the wound and touches it with anxious fingers. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I am so sorry.’ He feels around the sore spot carefully as he brings his head close to my ear. ‘Jerome?’ He shakes me as if he wants to wake me up. ‘I love you.’
I know what that means, the soldiers call it out sometimes to the girls in the village, whistling and smiling, and the girls walk grimly ahead without looking at them.
He sits down on a chair and dries himself with his shirt. It looks strange, a naked man sitting on a chair. I stare at the lino on the floor and move my foot: in a moment he will get dressed, then we’ll go back to Warns. I take a look through the door to where my clothes are hanging.
‘Come here.’ He wipes the wet shirt along my back, gripping me tightly between his legs so that I can feel his little wet hairs tickling my belly. ‘I love you.’ Again he shakes me gently from side to side. What should I say back, what does he want from me? I look at him: he is an unknown person, a stranger of whom I am afraid, to whom I can say nothing, of whom I can ask nothing. Thin and miserable I continue to stand between his rock-like limbs until he pulls my head backwards and forces me to look up at him… ‘No problem,’ he says, ‘no problem.’
He has stood up and is holding that soft thing, from which I have scrupulously averted my gaze, right in front of my face. I feel him push it carefully against my tightly compressed lips and turn my head away. When I start to make for the door, he grabs hold of me and pulls me back. It’s okay, Jerome. Okay.’
We fall onto the mattress. His body is hostile and hurts me. It is nothing but parts that stick out and that burrow and thrust and force themselves upon me. We are having a gigantic wrestling match, a painful performance accompanied with jerkings, twitchings and torrents of low, panted whispers.
He rolls me over him, kneels above me, turns me on to my stomach and licks my body like an animal. Then all of a sudden he interrupts the wrestling, lifting up a corner of the mattress and feeling about with his hand. A small metal lid falls to the floor; I sit up and look at it. He rubs a smooth, cool finger between my buttocks as he says unintelligible words in a gentle, soothing voice. He strokes and cuddles me, he caresses me, but all the while one hand continues to hold me tight in an iron grip. With my forehead pushed into the mattress I let him do what he wants, afraid to make the least sound.
‘Baby.’ It sounds like a husky, warm laugh in my ears. ‘Give me a kiss.’ He twists my head to one side and in his hurry drives his teeth hard against mine. I cry out with pain.
‘Is okay, is good. No problem.’ His tongue moves greedily between my lips as his weight gradually squeezes the breath out of me. I try to swallow his spittle but his tongue, a ramrod inserted in my mouth, prevents me. I clench my fingers around the mattress. In the other room the tap is dripping, an imperturbable sound of falling drops, as if nothing were happening in here.
I arch my back and tense my legs, his thing prodding my body impatiently, insistently, an unimaginably coarse and blunt instrument trying to make an opening into my body.
…We are sitting in a small circle at the corner of the street. It is evening and already dark. ‘When we go to the country tomorrow,’ one of the boys says inscrutably, ‘we must catch a frog. If you stick a straw up its arse you can blow it up.’ I have never seen anyone do that, the whole thing has remained a gruesome, unsolved mystery, but now I see the frog, transfixed and grotesque, blown up like a balloon, a cruel and horrible picture…
As soon as the pressure of his body lessens a little, I wrench myself frantically from under him and crawl to the furthest corner.
‘Sorry, baby,’ he says and gives me a lop-sided smile. A flaming sensation is shooting spasmodically through me, paralysing me. Walt moves up close and runs his finger over the spot where he hurt me, tilting his head to one side and thoughtfully scratching the corner of his mouth with his other hand. Why is he smiling at me so compassionately, does he think I’m stupid or that I’m babyish? I hold my hands to my face, ashamed. The pain is like a knife slicing me in two.
‘Easy,’ I hear him say. ‘Easy, baby.’ When he pulls my hands away I see that he looks serious. He blinks his eyes and clears his throat. ‘Come over,’ he says and pouts his lips at me.