"Tanner’s Virgin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Block Lawrence)

Chapter 4

Afghanistan consists of a quarter of a million square miles of mountainous terrain bordered on the west by Iran, on the south and east by Pakistan, and on the north by the Turkmen, Uzbek and Tadzhik Soviet Socialist Republics. The population is slightly in excess of fifteen million, a thirtieth of whom live in greater Kabul. The monetary unit is the afghani. Major languages are Afghan and Persian. The chief religion is Islam. Camels and sheep constitute the most important livestock. There is some gold mined in the extreme northeast in the Hindu Kush, in which area is located the highest peak in the nation, which rises 24,556 feet above sea level. Substantial amounts of coal and iron are also to be found here and there. Major rivers include-

If you care, you might check out Hammond ’s Medallion Atlas, which was my own source for all of the above information. Nigel had a copy, and I divided my time that night between it and the coal fire, which was not throwing as much heat as I thought it should.

By midnight, both Nigel and Julia had gone off to bed. Our conversation until then was forced and uncomfortable. No one much wanted to discuss what had gone on at the Old Compton Street flat, and it was difficult to put one’s mind to anything else, but we did make a pretense of talking over the barbarous notion of white slavery and the possible course of action I might take.

The former topic was limited to lines like, “Imagine that sort of thing in the twentieth century,” and so on. I didn’t find it all that hard to imagine, but then I’m not all that thrilled with the twentieth century, which may explain my feelings. The latter subject, just what to do about it, kept running into conversational dead ends. As far as I could see, there was only one thing to do. I had to go to Afghanistan, find Phaedra, and lead her Mosaically out of the house of bondage. I didn’t imagine this would be a simple matter, but neither did I see how discussing it could render it a whit less difficult.

So they went to bed, and I read the atlas and poked at the fire and tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

I’d have saved a lot of time if it hadn’t been for the silly atlas. But the more I concentrated on the precise geographical location of Afghanistan, the more elaborate plans I devised for working my way into the country. The best route, I finally decided, would constitute a close approximation of the course the girls themselves had followed. I’d have to omit Turkey, of course, where I am as non grata as a persona can possibly be. But other than that it wouldn’t be too difficult to get into Iraq, then move on to Iran, then make the final crossing into Afghanistan.

Would Iraq be a problem? I wondered about this. The Kurds have been in armed rebellion against the Iraqi government for over twenty years, fighting incessantly and heroically for autonomy, and theirs is not the sort of struggle from which I am inclined to remain aloof. This might well limit my chances of obtaining an Iraqi visa. Still, that couldn’t be too hard a border to cross, could it?

I studied maps.

This sort of thing went on for hours. I brewed fresh tea, added more coal to the fire (without adding more heat to the room), and wasted more time. I prepared for a variety of unlikely contingencies, none of which I’ll bore you with now. My mind went on and on, never hitting upon the basic geometrical postulate that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Blame it on my past. When one is sufficiently experienced in the devious, one rejects the straightforward approach as a matter of course. It took me hours and hours before I realized that the easiest way to go to Afghanistan was to go to Afghanistan.

Quite so.

No one in Afghanistan had anything to fear from me. It was one country where I was as welcome as any other stranger. Nor was there anything at all clandestine or subversive in my purpose for going there. I wanted to repurchase a slave and take her home, and I intended to do this quietly and discreetly, thus constituting not the slightest threat to the peace and stability of the Afghan nation.

So why not fly to Kabul?

I closed the atlas and returned it to its place on the shelf. There was probably an Afghan embassy or consulate somewhere in London. I could go to it in the morning and find out what I would need in the way of visas and inoculations. Any of the travel bureaus I had previously haunted could find a way to book me straight through to Kabul. A direct flight seemed too much to hope for, but no doubt there was a way to make connections through Teheran or Karachi or something. I wouldn’t have any trouble flying out of England, either; my passport, with the entrance visa stamped at Dublin, was in good order. The British might have made it hard for me to enter their country, but my leaving it could only please them, if in fact, they took any particular note of it at all.

It was a few minutes past four when Julia screamed.

This wasn’t the first time that sounds had come from behind her door. Periodically I had heard moans and groans, and while these did nothing for my concentration, they came as no great surprise to me. She was a fine girl, strong and resolute and bright, an echo of those superb English girls who distinguished themselves during the blitz in movies of the Second World War. But it had been a hell of an evening, and the episodes of amateur surgery and murder were the sort that might disturb anyone’s sleep.

I thought the scream would wake Nigel. It didn’t. I walked slowly toward her door, listening for another cry. It didn’t come, and I stayed with my ear to her door for a few minutes, but she seemed to be sleeping again. I went back to my fireside chair and sat down.

An hour later there were more moans. Then, a few minutes after that, her door opened and she appeared. She was wearing a shapeless robe the color of an army helmet. Her feet were bare.

“I can’t sleep, Evan,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming like a small child with indigestion. I must look frightful.”

Her hair was snarled and her face drawn, but she looked remarkably fine in spite of this. I told her so, and she told me I lied superbly but she knew better. She went away and came back with her face washed and her hair combed and looked even better.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?”

I said she wasn’t, that I’d run out of things to read and had made all the necessary plans. She wanted to know about these, and I explained that I intended to go to Kabul by going to Kabul, which struck her as good sense all around. She drew up a chair and sat beside me near the fire. It wasn’t doing very well. She studied it for a few moments, then rearranged a few coals with the poker. Flames leaped almost instantly.

“When I do that,” I said, “nothing happens.”

“You want practice. Tell me about her, Evan.”

“Phaedra?”

“Yes. You must love her very much.”

“I did.”

“And don’t you now?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Were you lovers for very long?”

“We weren’t lovers at all,” I said. She looked at me oddly, and I went on to explain the particular relationship Phaedra and I had shared. She found this revelation quite extraordinary. Then her face went positively gray.

“A virgin,” she said. “And her first time must have been-”

“Yes. In Afghanistan.”

“That’s absolutely horrid. Defloration is dreadful under the best conditions, isn’t it? My own first time-” she colored very slightly, then suddenly grinned. “Hear the girl go on and on! And see her blush with echoes of the old Victorianism. I don’t really suppose you suspected I was a virgin, and it would be shameful if I were, wouldn’t it? Yet one feels reluctant to abandon that little charade unless one is married. Do you know that I’ve never even discussed my affairs with Nigel?”

“That’s not surprising.”

“Then the surprise is that there’s no surprise, because it is absurd, don’t you think? We’re closer than the average sister and brother, and I’m sure he knows I’ve had lovers, and neither of us has any moral objection to that sort of thing, God knows, and still I couldn’t possibly discuss it with him. We sort of assume that I’m intact, and if I married we’d assume that I weren’t. I don’t want to be, actually.”

“Intact? Or married?”

“Either. You’ve never married, have you, Evan?”

“No.”

She looked into the fire. “Of course men marry later. I’m getting on to thirty, though, and one does feel one is missing something by not having children, and one can’t very well have them without being married. I suppose one could, but-”

“I have two,” I said. And then I found myself telling her about Todor and Jano, my two magnificent sons who live in the Macedonian hills with their mother, Annalya. I have seen Todor once; I bounced him upon my knee at the time that Jano was conceived. (Not the precise time, that would have been indecent, but that week.) I have not yet seen Jano, except in a charcoal sketch which some IMRO patriots smuggled out of Yugoslavia and mailed to me. Todor looks like me. Jano thus far just looks like a baby.

“How remarkable,” Julia said.

“Not really. Most babies-”

“No, no. That you compartmentalize your life the way you do.”

I had never thought of it that way. The fire had died down again, and Julia crossed her arms over her breasts and gripped each elbow with the opposite hand. She had clutched herself thus in the bedroom on Old Compton Street, but there the chill had been emotional.

“It’s so damned cold,” she said. “I ought to be in bed but I can’t sleep. When will you go to Kabul?”

I turned. “I don’t know. As soon as I can. A day or two, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

“Depending on visas and-”

She stood up abruptly. “Could we make love, do you think?”

“Uh-”

“I hate being so awkward about it, but there’s so little time.” She was facing away from me. I looked at the khaki robe and imagined the body beneath it. “This ought to be romantic, and instead it’s a damp morning with a dying fire and a memory of nightmares and death.”

“Julia.”

She turned to face me. “And I feel neither passionate nor in love, which is an awful thing to admit at such a moment, and I look a fright-”

“You’re beautiful.”

“-and perhaps it’s obscene to use sex as therapy, but I do want to be in bed and I don’t want to be alone, and I’m not saying this at all well, I know that. When I close my eyes I see that wretched man’s finger. I never actually saw it, I rushed through there without looking at him, but with my eyes closed I see it dismembered and flapping about on the floor like a bisected angle-worm. I shouldn’t talk about this, it’s as romantic as a stomach pump-”

I took her arm. “Be still,” I said.

“Evan-”

I kissed her lips. She said, “I wish we were on a hill in Macedonia. In a little hut in the middle of nowhere eating charred lamb and drinking whatever they drink. I wish-”

“Don’t talk.”

“I wish I were ten years younger. Children take this sort of thing so much more casually. I wish I were either more or less emancipated. I-”

“Be quiet.”

“All right.”

Her room was small and dark, her bed narrow. We kissed with more love than passion. I felt the warmth of her flesh through her robe. I touched the belt of the robe and she stiffened. “Oh, damn,” she said. “You mustn’t look.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh it’s so bloody unromantic. If you laugh I shan’t blame you, but I’ll never forgive you.” With a defiant flourish she opened the robe. Beneath it she was wearing a one-piece suit of red flannel underwear. I didn’t laugh. I just asked if the outfit had a drop seat.

“Damn you,” she said.

I told her she would look pretty whatever she wore. She said it was bad enough that I was seeing her like this but that she couldn’t let me watch her remove the garment. I turned around and got out of my clothes. By the time I had finished she was in bed beneath a mountain of quilts and blankets. I joined her, and we huddled together for warmth and love.

I held her close. She pressed her face to my throat while my hands stroked the smooth taut skin of her back and bottom. This, I knew, was what mattered – the warmth, the closeness. Whether or not we consummated the morning’s entertainment was immaterial. There was no urgency to it, and might not be, and it hardly mattered.

“I won’t be able to bear you a bonnie English bastard,” she whispered. “I take the pill.”

“Good.”

“Wouldn’t you care for an English bastard?”

“You talk too much.”

“Silence me with a kiss.”

And it was slow and thoughtful, a sweet sharing with little love and less passion and worlds of warmth and tenderness. Kisses both long and slow, and bits of whispered nonsense, and the comfortable touching of secret flesh.

A little at a time the world went away. The horror of Old Compton Street, the ice-eyed man in the chair, the wire wound round his finger, the sound of the cleaver parting flesh and bone. And the long knife, and his blenched face, and the knife going in and out and in again. All of this faded slowly, as did all the burden of time and place.

Until, in the manner of a surprise guest, passion came.

I touched and kissed her, and her breathing deepened and she clutched me with sweet urgency. A pulse pounded in my temples. She beamed, wide-eyed, and said, “How nice!” and closed her eyes and sighed. I kissed her. I felt her firm little breasts against my chest and her legs, the muscles now taut, against my own. I touched the moist warmth of her loins. She opened for me, and I rolled hungrily atop her, and she said, “Yes, yes,” and we kissed again, and-

And a querulous voice said, “Julia! Evan! Where in hell is everyone?”

A few moments later, when our hearts started again, she whispered that it was Nigel. I knew this. She added that he was awake and in the kitchen. I knew that, too.

“We can’t,” she added.

Again she had put words to the obvious. Our mutual desire was like a tree that had spent a hundred years growing only to be cut down in its prime in an instant. I was still lying on top of her, and I ached with want for her, but-

He called our names again.

“Maybe he’ll go back to sleep,” I suggested.

“No. He sleeps like the dead, but once he’s up he’s up. Oh, it’s light out.”

“Wonderful.”

“Damn,” she said. I rolled reluctantly off her. We looked soulfully at each other. It occurs to me now that it was the sort of moment at which we might both have started laughing. This did not happen. For some reason neither of us could appreciate the basic humor of the situation.

“He mustn’t know about us,” she said.

“Shall I hide under the bed?”

“No, don’t be silly. Oh, hell. Let me think. He won’t come in now, not while he thinks I’m sleeping, but how on earth can you get from here to the kitchen without going through the door? Evan, I can’t even think-”

We heard him stumbling around in the kitchen. He had given off calling us, evidently having decided that his sister was sleeping and that I had gone off somewhere. Julia jabbed a finger into my shoulder, then pointed at the window.

“There’s an alley leading to the street behind,” she whispered. “You could go through it and come round in front again. Say you’d gone for a walk.”

“Without any clothes on?”

“Put them on first, silly head.” I wondered why that hadn’t occurred to me. I climbed over Julia, trying to touch her as little as possible, and sat on the edge of the bed putting clothes on. I couldn’t find my undershorts. They were obviously there somewhere, but I couldn’t find them.

“We’ll get them later,” Julia assured me. “When he’s gone. There’s a matinee today and an evening performance as well. We’ll have some time together, Evan.”

I was tying a shoe. I turned to ask a wordless question, and she grinned impishly. “Time to finish what we’ve started,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll never forgive Nigel for this, but you will forgive me, won’t you, darling?”

I brushed her lips with mine, finished tying the shoe, crossed to the window. The damn thing was stuck, and I was convinced I was making a hellish amount of noise. Just as I yanked it open the doorbell sounded.

I looked at Julia. She shrugged. “It’s me,” I said. “I raced around the block in excess of the speed of light and got back before I started.”

She told me I was daft. The flat was on the first floor, which would have been a blessing if we were in the States. We weren’t, though. I crouched on the sill, tensed myself to avoid a flowerbed, and dropped ten or twelve feet to the ground. I landed on my feet, which was not surprising, and I stayed on them, which was. Then I headed down the narrow alley to the street behind.

It was still raining. I made my way around the block, solemnly cursing Nigel for not having had the common decency to sleep another half hour. Of course, I thought, the doorbell would have awakened him in any event, but by then we might have at least finished.

I plodded dutifully through the rain. All things come round to him who will wait, I comforted myself. Nigel Stokes was going to give a matinee performance that afternoon, and so would his sister and I, and this time we wouldn’t have an audience.

At the final corner, I stopped and drew a long breath. I needed some sort of story, obviously. I couldn’t very well say I’d been out to get a morning paper, or Nigel might well ask why I hadn’t brought it back with me. He might also wonder why I’d gone off without my jacket or umbrella. I thought for a moment and decided to tell him I’d spent the past few hours at an all-night café in Piccadilly. It had been clear when I left, I would say, and he could chide me for being a foolish American who didn’t know that one had to carry a brollie rain or shine, since rain was always a danger, and I could laugh along with him, and-

And I rounded the corner, and the street was cluttered with police cars, and half the policemen in London were beating a path to Nigel’s door.