Selected Stories Page 13

  “Boy, do your best,” I thought. “You’ve wasted thirty-seven years down here: you should already be in the second-stage for a long time. Why doesn’t your mind work faster, better?”

  It wasn’t my fault, nor my symbiont-wife’s; our genes matched perfectly. Our getting a retarded child was just one of those things, it happens sometimes.

  But now he HAD to succeed. He had left the nursery now, and was speeding towards the kindergarten. By then he would have figured it all out, he would have to! If he didn’t he would be considered a total failure. I would be allowed no more children, and he… he would be erased from existence. The committee didn’t lose its time with the unfit for the universe. They will be waiting for him, when he gets there, at Alpha Centauri, and I will be among them, unable to help him. He’ll have to make it on his own, my son. And, though retarded, he hasn’t been doing too badly after all. It was fortunate that they had at least let me work on the nursery years.

  He has made a few errors and misjudgments, of course. What infant doesn’t? He had drawn the wrong conclusion also when he had said that the world doesn’t exist. When I do something, I do it well. There IS a real world. Now I’m beginning to tear it down.

  The Taste of Your Love

  That night he decided to pick one up in Riccione. The last one he had had been in Bellariva, three weeks ago, and he'd had a hell of a job getting rid of the body. A pretty one, that girl had been, a small blonde German tourist with well-formed legs. Of course, she had been only a small parcel of selected items, after he'd finished making love to her, in his own way. It was not quite what he had expected. She was so soft, she had already fainted the first time, and she had been dead before he had been able to make five cuts; but he'd enjoyed it all the same.

  The night had been beautiful afterwards, after he had disposed of the parcel in the sea, and he had walked on the beach for a long time. He had looked up at the sky, and almost felt himself crushed by the coldness and depth of the eternity above him. He had felt very small, and thankful for the joys life and love had brought him.

  He had been very careful, and though he needed love very badly, he had kept away from it for three weeks. Then the hunger, the desperate need for love became too much to bear alone any longer. He was a man who needed people, as much as food and drink. He liked to walk among people, masses of people, unnoticed; a man in the crowd, wondering about the others, who they really were deep inside, the very insides of their narrow minds. Each one had another face; another world from which he was excluded. Sometimes he wished to be able to read their faces as if they were so many open books, not out of an unhealthy curiosity to pry into their tiny secrets, but to really feel like them, understand them.

  After those three weeks, he couldn't wait any longer. That afternoon he had been lying on the beach; the sand scratching his back, his mind a kaleidoscope of tumbling memories, like the first time he had caught an alley cat and cut its belly open with a piece of a broken bottle. He remembered the first girl he had, a tiny built brunette, who lived two blocks away. It had been a very fumbling attempt, but they both liked it very much, till she suddenly became frightened and tried to get away from him. He had been mad, and his hands were around her throat of their own accord. Orgasm came just as her eyes turned upwards and her swollen tongue came lolling out between her purple lips. He still heard the gurgling sounds she had made in his ears. Then somebody had come up behind him, just in time they later said, and he had been kept in another place for several years before they set him free again.

  He was of legal age then, his mind cured, and with some pocket money on him. With the money he bought a long butcher's knife, went to a brothel, and strangled the prostitute in her room. He possessed her, then hung her body on a strong clasp in the wall and made a work of art out of her body. He had to cut away several parts before she was the shape he desired. Then he painted a landscape on the walls with the red stickiness which was everywhere by the time he had finished, cleaned himself and left the country. He had been travelling all over Europe ever since, working here and there a bit. He had also perfected his love-making techniques during those years, and discovered quite a number of unusual enjoyments.

  He had been dozing on the sand, and when he opened his eyes, the sun burned deep into them. Through the coloured dots and circles he saw a pair of shapely legs walking by, and the burning hunger in his insides told him that he needed a woman's love, and badly.

  He rented a new room in Rimini, and took the bus to Riccione. The driver took his one hundred lira, and he found a place for himself among the packed mass of humanity. It was only a short drive, in fact he could have walked the distance in less than half an hour, but he just didn't feel like walking. It was an evening for driving, with the sound of the big motor a steady roar, the ground drumming under his feet like the membrane of a heavy drum, a strong beating heart. In fact there were too many people, and he could hardly see the numbers of the stops, very inconveniently placed between trees beside the road. He went too far, and had to return one stop by foot.

  After walking through some of the small streets, he decided on one of the lesser known clubs. He paid his entrance fee, and stepped from the lamp-lit darkness outside into the soft- red and blue miniature world inside. The loud music bombarded him at the entrance, deafening his ears for a few seconds. The dancing floor was small and filled with a mass of humanity, slowly moving like a lazy dinosaur on the moors, to the sound of hard rock. Funny, he thought, how Italians dance slowly to every damn kind of music; it was in strange contrast with their hurried movements and speech to see them dancing, never leaving the square stone on which they're standing.

  He found a table beside the dancing floor and ordered a bottle of cheap white wine, experience having taught him the horrible prices they considered normal for a glass of beer. Slowly he adjusted to the music, letting the rhythm build up inside his blood together with the crawling need in him. He adapted his senses to the hard electronic sounds and tried without success to hear the voice of the singer amid the music. He liked discotheques, they had a special atmosphere of intimacy. They were apart from the outside world, small worlds by themselves in which people and love affairs are born and die, in the space of one evening. They also were ideal hunting grounds.

  He danced a few times, but didn't find what he was looking for. Most Italian girls were with their steady boy friends, and most of the foreign girls were with tourist groups or holiday lovers. He danced with a young French girl with a delicious accent and long legs, and then with a smaller German woman whose breasts were too large for her figure and too hard to be real. But both left him cold. They were not his type.

  Then he noticed her. He couldn't have seen her before, because she was like a painting on the wall. One sees it but somehow doesn't really notice it. She moved shadow-like, slowly, observing yet unobserved herself. He first noticed her hair, long and dark, neither brown nor black, which lay flat against her shoulders. Then she passed under one of the few lights, her face turning into a black and white ink sketch, finely drawn features and dark lonely eyes.

  She attracted him immediately, there was something in her way of walking, something in her whole posture, not exciting or inviting but rather the opposite, a coldness. He knew that he needed that girl tonight. He took note of where she sat down, then simply went over and asked her for the next dance.

  She accepted without words. She had a very small waist, his arms almost completely circling her. He said a few things, unimportant small talk one says to a stranger. When she didn't answer, he tried a few other languages. Finally she responded in a weird combination of broken English and a few snatches of an unknown language. It could have been Greek, but he wasn't sure. He tried to find out where she was from, but she only answered with a slight smile, more a lifting of her lips, half-sad and half-mocking. He was strongly aware of her apartness, which surrounded her like a cloak. The dancing couples around them formed a fog of chaotic lights, swimming among colour waves,
their heads and shoulders submerged in the flowing waves of music and movement.

  They were dancing apart at first, his one arm around her shoulders. There was the faintest touch of her hair against his face, and a soft smell of perfume, sweet and unoffending. He felt the desire, the burning need for her love growing in him. Deliberately he pulled her closer, and they danced cheek to cheek, her flesh a warm and soothing softness next to his face. They had exactly the same time-sense and rhythm. They rode the music, something which rarely happens, two complete strangers adapting to each other's way of dancing fully.

  After the dance, he brought her back to her table and joined her. She didn't protest, but there was not much to talk about except senseless small things. He noticed the way her hair fell half over her left cheek, and saw to his surprise that her hair was fastened to her dress, so it always covered that cheek. She had hollows under her eyes, he also noticed, as if she'd been awake for a long time. Maybe he wouldn't use the scalpel right away this time. Why not start with the pins? It was years since he had used them.

  She took a sip of her drink, and he noticed with pleasure that she wore no ornaments, no rings, no watch, only a very small silver bracelet which seemed very old. It was best that way. Once he had made love to an older Belgian woman who had refused to part with her ornaments, and he had broken one of his best knives on her wrist watch during love play. He drank in the dark wine of her presence, fondly making comparisons with his earlier loves. Her breasts would be small and pointed, he thought. Yes, he would start with the breasts and use a small scalpel after all, the one he had used for detail work. He would have to truss her up well, of course, and gag her strongly, so that she would only be able to make the little throaty sounds which excited him so strongly. He would start at the nipples, slowly working in circles around her breasts, going downwards, drawing red patterns towards her navel. Only then he would start using the pins, the wooden ones which he could drive into her sides, slowly.

  They danced again and again, sometimes staying on the dance floor for many minutes, pressing closer to each other, her hair against his hot cheek. He nibbled her ear and tried to kiss the corners of her mouth, but she turned away. "Not here, not now," she said. "Later." "Why not?" he asked mockingly. "I want you. I need your love." She smiled, that, half-mocking drawing of her lips. "I will taste your love tonight," she answered. Indeed you will, my dear, he thought, you'll never forget how my love tastes. Not in the short time you have left in this world. Maybe he could mix pleasures tonight? First the knives and the pins, and then conclude with the cord? If she was weak enough after his love making, and there was a hook in the wall strong enough to hold her, he could even watch her dangling, her body arching itself in spasmodic movements, her legs jerking like a spider's. Yes, he would have a wonderful night. He felt sure of that.

  The band broke up at closing time, and he got her coat from the checkroom. She wanted to wait for one of the late buses at first, but he convinced her that it was only a short walk. She followed him into his room without questions, and he locked the door carefully behind him. "Please wait here," she whispered, and went into the bathroom. He put on the bedside lamp, and put his love instruments into the pockets of his pajamas, and the strong cord to tie her with. There was a hook in the wall, he noticed, quite high enough. Then the bathroom door opened and she came in.

  The soft light played as a lover's hands over her youthful body, well-built and yet fragile looking, with slightly sagging breasts and a dark-shadowed navel. Her long hair hung loose now, still covering half of her face. She came over to him hurriedly, and pressed her body strongly against his. There was a look of fierce hunger in her eyes as their tongues met, and he felt desire rising in him, pumping in his blood. He tried to bring his left hand up along her spine, while the other searched for the cord, and suddenly found that he couldn't. Her arms were like steel, pinning down his own against his sides, unable to move. Her eyes smiled at him, and for the first time he noticed their glow. "Now, my dear," she whispered, "I will taste your love", and with a sharp movement of her head, she tossed her hair away and uncovered the left part of her face. The scream bubbled up in his throat, but was never voiced, because her tongue erupted like a burning volcano in his mouth. Unable to move, unable to shriek, he saw the slimy, dark-haired, proboscis-like thing which covered half of her face uncoil itself as a tentacle, the many teethless mouths on it opening and closing. It moved along her lips, and then it was in his mouth, wet, slimy and sickly, moving and sucking, while blood-red pain tore his mind apart into a million silently screaming shards.

  The landlady had seen the girl leaving the room in the middle of the night, and she had decided to throw her lodger out. After all, this was a respectable house, and she wanted nothing to do with things like that happening under her roof. She was very surprised that she didn't find her tenant in his rooms. The only things she saw were his clothes, lying in disorder on the floor, and a big plastic bag on the bed. Angrily she picked up the bag, and it felt wet and sticky and had red spots on it. The bag rattled, and she peered more closely and saw the bones through the plastic. But she definitely started to scream when she saw that part of the bag had the flattened form of a man's face.

  The Way Back Home

  Marc Dolan fell in love with 'Spring Cottage' at first sight. The small and refreshingly white-painted country house with the big open windows stood upon one of the highest dunes, forming a sharply designed sky painting. The housekeeper, old Mrs. Berens, didn't give him much trouble when he was bargaining over the rent of one of her best rooms. The tourist season hadn't begun yet. There would be a few weeks still before the real season started and the first strangers began arriving from the neighboring countries, so she was only too glad to find someone for that period. Marc rented the room, and paid two month's remittance.

  When those two months had passed, peace would be over for him, he knew. Sweating plump feet would tear the beach asunder, and it would again become covered with fat bleached and ugly bodies, moving with difficulty through the warm sand as if lazy crabs. The noise of ice-cream sellers, the blaring of portable radios and the yelling of children would again rape the silence and solitude he loved so much. Not for him, the high season; as an artist he needed rest and quiet, unspoiled colors. High season was for those who only thought they were alive, while in reality their minds were all dead.

  He ordered a taxi to get his bags, which he had left at the station upon arriving, and then made himself comfortable in the room. It was on the first floor, a big room whose window was almost as high and wide as a full wall. A colossal seat stood in front of the window, its high back turned toward the door opposite it, so that Marc during the first short moment of noticing its presence almost had the impression that the chair would suddenly turn around and someone would suddenly stand up and say "Hello."

  Mrs. Berens told him that the seat had always been kept in the attic, but the previous tenant had appreciated the splendid view on the beach and the sea so much that he had moved the clumsy chair into his room. Marc could only agree with his taste: on looking out of the window, it seemed as if one stood on the dunes themselves, with the white chalky sand before his*feet, and the pure foam. And beyond the foam stretched the sea, an enormous mass of grey water, seemingly lifeless, but slowly moving as if breathing laboriously, with a few solitary triangular white walkers, softly drifting away on the far horizon.

  Marc replaced the heavy clock and the two empty candle-holders on the mantelpiece with his own books of reproductions. He took away a 19th century engraving and hung one of his self-painted copies of Turner on one of the walls, and then put his few belongings in the cupboard. Marc wasn't very wealthy. Now and then he sold a painting or two, and he had held two exhibitions of his work, one in Ghent and one in Brussels, but usually luck was against him. Or maybe it was just his own work; he just wasn't modern enough, and he knew it. He couldn't appreciate pop art, and even less their ways of painting with hands and feet and their bodies th
emselves, rolling in paint and then on the canvas. He liked to paint what he really saw, to look upon a finished painting and be able to see what it was, and not something resembling the imagined results of an LSD-freak-out. The result of this obstinate pursuit of an outmoded style was a chest full of unsold paintings. Soft shaded faces, dreaming landscapes in autumn colors, roaring stormy seas, and silver lakes by moonlight unwanted. But he kept on, with iron determination; one day he'd reap the success he merited.

  He always came to spend a few weeks by the sea, in that period between late winter and early spring, when the stormwinds howled and the sun-loving tourists stayed shivering in their own countries. In that in-between season, the sea was fresh and free, the beach waiting, full of expectations. Then he was able to taste the purity he liked so much to bring to his canvas.

  The first day he didn't do anything special. He took a short walk through the dunes, his eyes half closed against the sand raised by a playful wind. When evening stretched its arms over the beach, he went into the nearest town and bought a few drinks, but soon returned through the deserted streets. The shops were still almost all closed; only three 'cafes' were open. He put the fire on in his room, and took his favorite collection of Poe's poetry down from the shelves for some bedtime reading with "The Raven." The next morning, he put up his easel, sat down in the big chair, and looked out over the sea. There was a very special atmosphere of serenity in the slow-moving greyness, which he let sink down in him. He relaxed fully and completely, for the first time in months, letting the calm and peace enter through his pores into his skin, as if it were the first warmth of an early morning sun, with still a small taste of night coldness in it. He didn't paint that day, but rested, searching for the right atmosphere. The next morning he went for a walk on the beach, before the sun was up, tasting the night chill on his face and the sting of a cold wind in his eyes, his feet marking the wet sand on the shoreline. After dinner, he sat back in his chair, letting the quietness of the scene roll over him in lazy waves of silence.