and back to her own. Not to mention expensive. I hate to see all my good work ruined.”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded.
“What did you think you’d accomplish?”
I could hardly hear his reply: “Get my Svetla back.”
“But she didn’t want to come back, did she?”
He couldn’t answer that one.
“Tell me, Malik. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think, perhaps, that after all my hard work, I wouldn’t be a little angry about this? Or did you think that my anger wouldn’t matter?”
He had backed into the corner again, and his arms were crossed in front of him, as if he could ward off an attack.
“Look beneath you, Malik. See that stain? A man was brought here, his legs and arms broken, and set on fire. Right where you are.”
He looked down.
“How would you like it done?”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Really,” I said with a bright voice. “We both know you have this coming. There’s really nothing else you deserve. So how would you like it?”
“No.”
I stood up, reached through his fluttering hands, and pulled him by the collar into the water. A few loose pieces of mosaic-grapes and nipples-threw me momentarily off-balance, but I got him quickly to the center. I was starting to feel the cold up to where the water reached my knees. His feet splashed, his mouth finally producing shouts: “No! No! Help!” Then I shoved his face into the water to silence him.
He was easy to hold down. His hands pressed on the floor, his feet kicked water into my face, but all I had to do was look up at the ceiling and hold his neck and head down with my two hands. I’d never noticed the ceiling before. It was blackened by centuries and ribbed with arches that met in the center. I imagined there had been another image there at some time, more scenes of pleasure, but I really didn’t know.
I let go of him. He coughed, red-faced, slime spilling from his mouth and nose. The sound of his labor filled the room and echoed back down on us. He made a halfhearted attempt to run, falling into the water as I grabbed an ankle and dragged him back. He came up again, a mess of hands and feet splashing.
“You see,” I told him, “you might have gotten away with this, were it not for the rest of my life. Things have been very difficult for me lately-I don’t expect you to have known this-and right now, you…you’re the least of my worries.”
“I-” He coughed. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you, Malik.”
“No,” he said, finally finding sentences: “I can help you. Tell me what, I can help you. Don’t-just don’t kill me.”
I made a show of thinking about this. But I knew from the outset there was nothing he could do for me, and nothing I would ever want from him. It had all gone too far.
I looked around and noticed the dry well. I’d had no plans for it-I had no plans at all-but the sight of it seemed fateful. “Take off your coat.”
He hesitated.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
He got up on his knees and took off his trench coat and handed it to me. Underneath was a gray jacket and a white shirt grayed by water.
“Come on, let’s get out of this pool.”
I held on to his arm to help him up to the ledge, water pouring off of us.
“The jacket, too.”
He took it off. I used my teeth on the stitching of the shoulder until a few threads broke. Then I forced my fingers into the hole and tore off the arm. I did the same with the other arm as he watched, his imagination making the worst images he could come up with.
“Come here.”
I used one jacket arm to tie his wrists behind his back. The knot was awkward, but strong.
“Sit down.”
He hesitated again, because this was not what he had hoped for, but finally crouched and dropped back on his butt. I took off his shoes, then unbuckled his belt and took off his pants. “It’s pretty cold here,” he said as gaily as he could manage, but a quick hard look from me shut him up. I forced his underwear off. “Hey,” he said, squirming a little, so I punched him on the chin. He didn’t pass out, but he wavered a little between waking and sleep, waking more when I stuffed the underwear into his mouth. His eyes gaped, and he tried to yell something through the fabric. I took the other arm of his jacket and tied it around his mouth. He was completely awake now, his breaths harsh through his wide nostrils. His eyes rolled back and forth in panic.
Did I want to kill him? Yes. But I wasn’t ready to do that. What he’d done to Svetla was so much worse than simple murder, and my real impulse was to put him through a fraction of the hell he’d put that poor girl through. I wanted to skin him alive.
I picked him up again, the way one holds a bride when crossing the threshold. When his shirt rose, his hairy, shriveled member came into view. His legs kicked now and then, but he couldn’t see where I was taking him until we were right over the well. I sat him on the edge so his feet dangled inside. It was wide enough for him to fit, but just barely. He was screaming something through his gag, the veins in his head popping out beneath the welts, and then I pushed him forward.
At first he didn’t fall because his hands tied behind his back caught on the wall of the well, twisting upward, all his weight focused on his burning elbows. He screamed louder; this time it was only pain. I lifted him by his shoulders, centered him, and let him drop.
He scuffed the walls on the way down, and in the darkness I could barely see him when he settled, could just hear his muffled moaning.
72
It was after three when I left the Canal District and drove back to the southern shore, then crossed the Georgian Bridge, back over the Canal District and into town. I didn’t want to go home. The reason eluded me at first. It was Vera. I didn’t want to let her go just yet. I wanted to control, with precision, the moment of her release.
Georgi had just returned from lunch with some friends, with whom he had talked poetry and politics and the search for the new socialist man. I hardly heard a thing he said until I took off my jacket and he stopped abruptly: “Is that blood on the back of your shirt?”
“It’s nothing. Just a fight. Can I use your shower?”
“Going to tell me the details?”
“I don’t think so.”
Once the water was hot, I relaxed into it. Instead of Malik Woznica, I thought of Vera. She lay in my bed, probably terrified of what had become of me. Perhaps she thought I was never coming back. I wondered what that thought did to her and how she would react when I returned and made love to her.
Georgi opened the door as I was toweling off. “By the way, I finally got hold of Louis.”
“Tell me.”
“You’re not going to arrest him, are you?”
“I’ve no plans to.”
“Well, he’s coming into town tomorrow morning, the ten-twenty from Vienna.”
“Did he say why?”
“I didn’t ask. You be nice to him, all right?”
“I’m nice to everyone, Georgi.”
