He tried to cling to reality. He forced himself to think. Reason and the ability to remain calm might give him some possible explanation for what had happened. Why can’t I move? Where am I? And why?
For the longest time he had fought against the panic and madness by forcing himself to keep track of time. He counted minutes and hours, trying to keep to an impossible, endless routine. The darkness never changed, and he had woken up where he lay, fettered on his back. He had no memory of being moved, so there was no beginning. He could have been born right where he lay. For the brief moments when he succeeded in keeping the panic at bay and thinking clearly, he tried to cling to anything that seemed related to reality.
What could he start from? What he was lying on. That wasn’t his imagination. He was on his back and what he was lying on was hard. His shirt had ridden up just over his left hip and his skin lay against the hard, rough surface. He could feel that he had scraped his skin when he tried to move. He was lying on a cement floor.
He thought back to the last moment of normality before the darkness had fallen over him, but even that was beginning to seem vague. He knew what had happened, and yet he didn’t. It was when he started to doubt what was his imagination, and what had actually happened, that panic would seize him. Then he would begin to sob. A brief outburst that stopped as quickly as it began, since no-one could hear him anyway. There are people who cry only when they’re out of earshot of others, but he wasn’t one of them.
Actually that was the one thing he was sure of. That no-one could hear him. Wherever he was, wherever this cement floor of terror had been poured, even if it was floating freely in a universe totally unknown to him, there was no-one close by. Nobody could hear him.
Beyond the growing madness, these were the only things he had left to hold on to. Everything else had been taken from him, not merely his identity but also his trousers.
It was the evening before he was supposed to leave for Nairobi. It was almost midnight, he had closed his suitcase and sat down at his desk to go over his travel plans one last time. He could see it all quite clearly. Without knowing it, he was waiting in death’s anteroom, which some unknown person had prepared for him. His passport lay on the left side of his desk, and he held his plane tickets in his hand. The plastic pouch with the dollar notes, credit cards, and traveller’s cheques was on his lap, waiting for him to check them too. Then the telephone rang. He put everything to one side, lifted the receiver, and answered.
Since that was the last living voice he had heard, he clung to it. It was his only link to the reality that held madness at bay. It was a lovely voice, soft and pleasant, and he knew at once that he was speaking to a stranger — a woman he had never met. She asked if she could buy some roses. She apologised for calling him at home and disturbing him so late, but she was in desperate need of those roses. She didn’t say why. But he trusted her at once. Who would lie about needing roses? He couldn’t remember whether he actually asked her or even wondered why she had discovered she didn’t have the roses she needed so late at night, when there were no florists open. But he hadn’t hesitated. He lived close to his shop, and he wasn’t going to bed yet. It would take him no more than ten minutes to solve her problem.
Now as he lay in the dark and thought back, he realised that here was one thing he couldn’t explain. He was convinced that the woman who called was somewhere close by. There was some reason, which wasn’t clear to him, why she had called him instead of someone else. Who was she? What happened after that?
He had put on his coat and gone down to the street. He had the keys to the shop in his hand. There was no wind, and a cool scent wafted up towards him as he walked down the wet street. It had rained earlier that evening, a cloudburst that had passed as quickly as it began. He stopped outside the front door of the shop. He could remember that he unlocked the door and went inside. Then the world exploded.
He had walked down that street countless times in his mind, whenever the panic subsided for a moment. It was a fixed point in the constant, throbbing pain. There must have been someone there. I expected a woman to be standing outside the door. But there was no-one. I could have waited and then gone back home. I could have been angry because someone had played a joke on me, but I unlocked the shop because I knew she would come. She said that she really needed those roses. Nobody lies about roses.
The street had been deserted, he was sure of that. But one detail of the scene bothered him. There was a car parked, with its lights on. When he turned towards the door, searching for the keyhole to unlock it, the headlights were on him. And then the world ended in a sharp white glare.
The only possible explanation made him hysterical with fright. He must have been attacked. Behind him in the shadows was someone he hadn’t seen. But a woman who telephones up at night, pleading for roses? He never got further than that. That’s where everything rational ended. With a tremendous effort, he had managed to wrench his bound hands up to his mouth so he could gnaw on the rope. At first he ripped and tore at it like a beast of prey gorging on a kill. Almost at once he broke a tooth on the lower left side of his mouth. The pain was intense at first, but quickly subsided. When he began chewing on the rope again — he thought of himself as an animal in a trap who had to gnaw off its own leg to escape — he did it slowly.
Gnawing on the hard, dry rope was consoling. Even if he couldn’t free himself, chewing on it kept him sane, and he could think relatively clearly. He had been attacked. He was being held captive, lying on a floor. Twice a day, or maybe it was twice a night, he could hear a scraping sound next to him. A gloved hand would prise open his mouth and pour water into it. Never anything else. The hand that gripped his jaw seemed more determined than brutal. Afterwards a straw was stuck into his mouth. He sucked up a little lukewarm soup and then he was again left alone in the dark and the silence.
He had been attacked and tied up. Beneath him was a cement floor. Someone was keeping him alive. He worked out that he had been lying here for a week. He had tried to understand why. It must be a mistake. But what kind of mistake? Why would a person be kept tied up in the dark? Somehow he sensed that the madness was based on an insight he didn’t dare allow to surface. It was no mistake. This terrible thing had been planned specifically for him. But how would it end? Perhaps the nightmare would go on for ever, and he would never know why.
Twice each day or night he was given water and food. Twice he was also dragged along the floor by his feet until he came to a hole in the floor. He had no underpants on either, they had disappeared. There was only his shirt, and he was dragged back to his original position when he was finished. He had nothing to wipe himself with. Besides, his hands were tied. He noticed the smell around him.
Filth. But also perfume.
Was there someone near him? The woman who wanted to buy roses? Or just a pair of hands with gloves on? Hands that dragged him to the hole in the floor. And an almost imperceptible smell of perfume that lingered after the visits. The hands and perfume must come from somewhere.
Of course he had tried to speak to the hands. Somewhere there had to be ears and a mouth. Every time he felt the hands near his face and his shoulders, he tried another approach. He had pleaded, he had raged, he had tried to be his own defence counsel and speak calmly and soberly. Everyone has rights, he had claimed, sometimes sobbing, sometimes enraged. Even a fettered man has rights. The right to know why I’ve lost all my rights. He hadn’t even asked to be set free. To start with, he just wanted to know why he was being held captive. That was all.