delga | fic: hard liquor. [8/14] (spooks)

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
viii. mother, may I?

She’ll never forget the way it felt to see Tja half-dead and bleeding from every pore. It’s an image that is unrepentant and unforgiving. At the time she was sick (violently so); now she cries.

(This is how the dream was ripped apart).

Sicily. A year before Damascus.

(Demitri came out of nowhere, she thinks. He materialised from thin air, hooves and horns attached).

She is starving— No. Being starved.

(Anouska? Myshka? Nouska, please—)

Tony Gutmann was a fucking entrée; just the goddamn starter.

Anouska had seen him and done what she did best – ran. She’d run across American soil, over the border to Mexico. She’d gone to Peru then back, across the Atlantic, to Dublin, made her way to Belgium, back to La Rochelle and south to Sicily.

She’d run so fast, she hadn’t looked behind (didn’t dare think of Tja and that zlamas¹) and stopped only when she couldn’t go any further.

(And then she was taken).

Third night, Palermo. She sits on the beach, watches the ocean rush in and sift out. The sound doesn’t soothe her – more so it irritates her, feeds her anger.

(Anger is the seed of survival. This she learnt from Tja).

The salt stings her face; the sand is soggy and damp beneath her toes. She’ll leave tomorrow, she decides, at sun up.

(Years later she will curse her complacency. Years later she will wonder how she managed to be so foolish. Tja had taught her the rules – had taught her better. How could she have been such a fool?)

Demitri Kalakos doesn’t hate women, per se. In fact, to rephrase, he doesn’t hate women at all. He loves women (the curve of their back, the scent of their skin, the aura of feminine power that dances around them in a haze of the indistinct).

No, Demitri doesn’t hate women.

(Only Tja).

The air is suffused with the stench of fish (so she knows, at least, that she is near some sort of market, if not far from the ground. She wonders how her capture will bring Tja in – they have not spoken since she fled New York). It is hot and sticky. Demitri leaves her tied to a water pipe for hours on end, returning to feed her stale bread and dirty water.

(Her arms aches from their backwards position. Her neck aches from the strain on her back. Demitri sits in front of her, cutting a deck of cards over and over and over—)

On occasion, he talks. Whistles. Sings, even. His favourite subject is not the fall of the Soviet Union (his mother was from the land of the Bear; she was the one to call him Mitya) but his fall from grace. With the pace of one accustomed to patience, he sits in front of Anouska, whittling a piece of wood with a penknife, and carefully unravels his many incursions with Tja.

(Anouska still doesn’t know how much of Demitri’s story is true and how much is subject to his imagination. She does know that everything she thought she knew has since come in for questioning. Yeh, like that’s anything new).

Tja came (eventually).

Anouska still can’t figure out how she knew.

It started in Thailand. Tja was on the market. Demitri’s mother bought her.

(Tja was a handmaid for a year and a half. Of course, she ran away after that. Stole money from her makers just to fund her journey).

This is how she was named and how she learned to adapt.

The knife glints in the light of the candle flame. Anouska sees it as an extension of her lover, sees it as another appendage that she uses to dissect skin from flesh with panache.

(At this moment it is perpendicular to Demitri’s jugular. Anouska finds this reassuring).

“This solves nothing.” His voice is hoarse; his neck is slick with sweat.

(Anouska knows that Tja can feel the beat of his pulse reverberating against the sharp of the blade).

Tja’s smile is cold. “Oh, I’d rather say it does, ¬myshka.”

How many ways are there to bleed a whore?

As many as you can think of (and then some).

There was a time, in Rome, when Tja used a man’s gun against himself. She’d let the shots ring out – two, three, four – then thrown the empty pistol away, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“Let’s go have lunch.”

Demitri laughs. He begins to hum a tune, a little off-key but discernible all the same.

Tja freezes.

(This is what Demitri claims to know. This is the story Anouska has been given).

When Tja was young, she lived in a village miles and miles from Beijing. Her father was dead, her mother lived alone and they worked in the Master’s paddy fields for food. There were, in the village, five other families and no other men. The mothers toiled, the children played and this was the idyll of Tja’s childhood.

(The day the raids came, Tja’s mother was shedding rice. The men stormed into the enclave, shouting at the women, lining them up against the wall, prodding them rifles as though they were oxen).

Tja was hiding. Her mother approved.

(It was the crucifix around her mother’s neck that gave them away).

“I’ve got you…under my skin…”²

Anouska sees Tja tense.

“I’ve got you…deep in the heart of me…”

“How many children are there in this village?” The leader, a tall brute, yellow skinned and stale mouthed, holds the Master by the collar of his shirt. He looks unwell, as one would once beaten about. His wife’s corpse is swinging from a tree in her yard.

“Twelve.”

(Tja can feel her mother cursing).

The brute counts the children and then counts them again. Looks at one of his fellow thugs. (He shoots the first woman.)

“Where is the last child?”

Tja’s mother does not speak. (Their neighbour weeps, afraid. Tja hates her for being so weak). Tja’s mother says nothing. She stares past the raiders to the village where more of them tear apart the houses (their homes).

“Tell me!”

Now the children begin to cry, one at a time, until the wailing becomes a demented choir. Each of them is scared and hurting and unable to control their terror. Tja’s mother makes no indication that she even remotely senses their presence.

The leader lifts one of the children – a boy. Pushes his gun to the child’s skull. “Tell. Me.”

(The neighbour breaks).

“There! There!” she points to where Tja hides. “She runs, look! There!”

The boy is dropped. The brute points his rifle, cocks the gun. Pulls the trigger.

(The neighbour falls to the ground, dead).

It was a fabulous coincidence that years later, the boy who escaped death would be working for minimum wage in an American bar. Even more of a coincidence was that one day Tja strolled in – stilettos, short skirt and ample amounts of sass, her head held up high with conceit and pride.

(Tony liked to play music to Tja. Liked best the Rat Pack – Sinatra et al. At the end of his shift he’d play the piano and Tja would sing along, bourbon in hand, laughing when she forgot the words).

Demitri’s eyes are malicious, glinting in the low light.

“So deep in my heart…”

And now Anouska is afraid because she sees in Tja something she has never seen before. She looks at her lover (looks into those rich, chocolate eyes) and feels terror because Tja is strong, and Tja is brave, and Tja has fear in her eyes.

(This is wrong, she thinks, something here is very, very wrong).

“…that you’re really a part…”

(Anouska knows Tja is thinking, rapidly pulling together everything that she knows, every clue she has been given. She is adding the numbers, calculating the totals and coming up with a number she will never ever like. Her face – normally so impassive, so apathetic – falls as she comes to a conclusion. Her grip on the blade loosens).

“…of me. ”

There’s an elbow in Tja’s stomach; a hand in her hair and she is flipped, so suddenly, to the floor. Demitri holds her wrist, twists her arm, forcing her to release the blade from her grip. A fist to her face. A kick to her side. He pulls up her head by her hair (draws his face in close, pulls Tja’s dagger up under her chin).

“Did you know he begged? Begged. ‘No, no, oh please, don’t hurt me!’” He laughs. Tja stays immobile, her lips pulled back over her teeth in a snarl. (Her skirt has ridden up; Anouska notices a deep scar up the outside of her leg, tracing from her ankle, all the way past her knee and beyond the hem). “You taught me the beauty of the deranged.” Demitri grins, “He looked magnificent, sprawled out, wrists bleeding.”

Tja bolts, tries to evade his hold, roars at him, screaming her grief. He slams her head against the wall. She slumps to the floor.

(How many ways are there to bleed a whore? Anouska does not profess to know but this, she thinks, must be one).

They tied her mother to a tree, hammered a nail through her feet in a vicious re-enactment of crucifixion.

Tja never recovered from the sight and never, ever forgave God.

“We are our mothers’ children, are we not, Tja?”

(Anouska sees madness in his eyes).

“Grown at the hip and fed from the breast. How can we deny them our love? How can we deny them our need? Isn’t that what you said to me? Tja?”

(Tja does not speak. Never speaks).

The morning Tja ran away, Demitri found his mother in the bath, the water a burnt orange, her body limp.

The authorities found a kitchen knife in the tub and matched it to the scars on her wrists.

(The lack of hesitation marks suggested to the police homicide).

end. [8/14]

[1] Polish, meaning ‘moron’
[2] Frank Sinatra, ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’.