Before, when we were on the highway, and afterward, I clearly realized what could happen. But in that split second, which remained the most real moment of the whole incident — in the darkness underground, in that darkened, hollow crypt with a flat ceiling — there the horror of it all suddenly came together in one place. It thickened up as if in a syringe and gushed into all the corners of my body, right down to the core of my bones. Instead of fear and panic, however, I felt something impossible. It couldn’t be stopped, at that second I wasn’t afraid that I was crushing her violently in my arms. And she pulled my hair so hard I could hear the roots creaking inside my skull as if they were being torn out of the skin. I think that no matter how hard she bit my neck and shoulders, even if she had done it harder, I still wouldn’t have felt pain, only the dizzying rocking we were locked into. She slapped me across the face, for an instant her nails scratched me — and between every slap she kissed me. She whispered in fits and starts, barely pausing for breath: “My darling!. My darling!” And her teeth bit into lips, mine or hers.
“He also made off with a lot of money, right?” The question was posed voicelessly, but she had heard it before, from my very self, from inside. She shuddered, but the jerk with which her body suddenly pushed me away didn’t let on to what she had felt.
New gangsters had now seized K-shev’s cars, they had taken control of the entire black automotive fleet. Today they enjoy the luxuries we all railed against in unison on the cold nights of the protests. With a husky blow of its horn, a somber sedan passes by the frost-covered cars of the fugitive wretches, the secret lovers who have snuck out of the city, incognito.
I won’t deny that the thought of K-shev sometimes also transformed into the idea of money. But that wasn’t the main thing. Truth be told, there was no main thing. If you’re expecting me — and rightfully so — to talk about a crime, it’s still very difficult to clarify the basic motive.
Interrogation/Lexicon
1.) What’s your favorite color?
Red.
2.) Whom do you love?
Blood.
3.) Not what, but whom.
Don’t you get it? — I love, down to the blood.
I toss a few more scraps of paper into the fire, pages torn out of lined notebooks. The light blazes on her face, like a smile.
I tell her: “We’ve had a fun, easy time lately, haven’t we?”
She nods. That smile on her lips. I really could swear that she is the most ordinary girl in the world, simply sitting there, motionless, enjoying the sun made of flames. We’re out basking in the sunshine.
I tell her: “The only thing I have any regrets about is that there’s no way for us to reach the very end, there, together.”
“Where? The sea?”
“Not the sea, the sky,” I reply after a short pause.
This isn’t love, I know, and words have begun to take on far too much significance.
“You know what?” she says, “I want to go home.”
Fine. I stand up. I pick up the backpack and sling it onto my back. I’ve got a long descent ahead of me. “Don’t leave me now,” she says, “don’t go.”
“Where would I go? Just listen to yourself.” I stroke her neck. I trace the curve of her ear with my fingers. She leans her head to the side and squeezes my hand between her shoulder and cheek.
“What’s wrong? Did I upset you?” I whisper, while trying to catch her face between my palms, but she keeps turning her head from side to side. As if she’s playing, she’s smiling, but I can see tears flowing from her eyes. From under her motionless eyelids, sealed shut with Band-Aids, these droplets are creeping out — when I lick them, they taste like a camp drugstore, like a bandage.
Now that’s it, today I can finally say that I’ve perfected my notion of the face of a girl who is suffering and who is beautiful because of it. In its pristine whiteness, her hidden gaze cannot reflect me, this angel can’t see me, I’m not here, for a moment at least I don’t deserve my well-deserved punishment. And for that reason her perfect body attracts me twice as strongly. I slide my hands under her shirt, she hiccups and sobs in a choked voice. But the rope wound around her body digs into the skin beneath her breasts, I can’t reach any farther down.
This isn’t love, of course, and it’s starting to get out of hand. Nevertheless, something always has to be done about desire. The rope is wrapped around the tree trunk, a few loops and a firmly tied knot at the end. Only her legs are free. “Goodbye,” I tell her, as if wanting to escape my own presence. Then I jerk apart her ankles, her heels, which had been planted on the ground on rubber soles.
I sink into her, just as I am, backpack and all, we collapse into each other, but this time I don’t sense the stalking that always trips me up before the end — the gaze, the eyes from the portrait on the wall. When we had tiptoed in, without knowing, however, that we’d have to break the silence even if we didn’t want to.
Her eyes are sealed shut, her hands are tied, she can scream if she wants, I purposely left her mouth free. But she doesn’t even make a sound now, she’ll only scream at the very end. For the first time since I’ve made love out in the open and consciously, it happens: everything in me manages to focus itself straight ahead and to the end. We come inside each other, fused, numb. She screamed at the end after all, simultaneously in despair and ecstasy.
The idea of bringing her to the final control point, CP 0, was not, in fact, new; it had crossed my mind before. I’d thought about it — as I had with most of the others, by the way. But I had never done it with any of them until now — never, not since I had discovered the zero point within the system of coordinates. The place where everything begins and ends.
Time, during which we’re sufficiently free to be able to play K-shev. With no qualms, at that. But now, at this age, games have become dangerous.
Interrogation/Game
1.) What’s your name?
You know it.
2.) What do your parents do?
C’mon, cut it out.
3.) How old are you?
How old am I? — I’ve reached the age when girls become a threat. You afraid?
“No,” I reply after a pause.
Hopefully she won’t be able to figure out whether I’m afraid that she started on her own, that she started first. Or whether I’m happy about it.
“C’mon, ask, I know you want to.”
“Fine. Why did they send us there? That time, back then.”
“Where?”
“You know where. For the tests.”
“They were preventative measures.”
“But why didn’t everyone go, why only me?”
“We couldn’t send everyone. We didn’t want to stir up mass panic.”
“So why me in that case, since it wasn’t dangerous? And what about the others, tell me about the other people’s kids.”
“I did it for my personal reassurance, I had to be sure.”
“I remember how they would bring us food, only milk and bread for a whole month — from a village, from somewhere really far away, right? ‘Clean food,’ that’s what you called it. But what about the others? What about their children? Was their food clean?”
“I had to make an important decision, I had to be sure. I needed to know that everything was okay with you.”
“They ran through the grass, they walked in the rain, they were all out at the May Day demonstrations — couldn’t you have at least spared them that, was it really necessary?”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”