Blood Rules (21 page)

“Oh, let’s not get carried away. The only people who ever influenced you, darling, were Halib and Feisal.”

Until that moment she had kept her animosity in check, but the “darling” proved fatal. She swung back her hand and slapped him over the left eye, drawing blood with the nails. He raised his fingers to the wound and stared at the result. For a moment she expected him to retaliate, physically, and something about the prospect shifted her heartbeat into high gear. She wanted that. She wanted to fight with him on the floor, rolling over and over, scratching, biting, sending her fists into his neck, his chest, his stomach, slapping his cheeks back and forth, over and over….

Somewhere inside her a huge volcano of self-loathing whooshed up into consciousness, and she nearly cried aloud in vexation.

“Listen,” she said, and her voice was almost amicable. “Do not call me darling, all right? I am not your darling. I know I never was, in reality, your darling. And I have this plane, you see. I command it. People live and die; it’s my decision. Don’t make me angry, Colin. You don’t want anything on your conscience, when I’m done. Now, one way to make me angry is to call me darling. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” She might have been one of his lesser students who’d broken with tradition by stumbling onto a correct answer.

Leila’s mood was volatile; she went from rage to amusement in a flash. Colin’s condescending, studied reaction reminded her of evenings at home long ago; of things about that tiresome marriage that she would have liked to change, then, but now no longer need bother with.

“This operation is a business for me, Colin. I do it not for idealism but for money, or so the world will believe. But truly I mean to reclaim what is mine. I mean to take back my son.”

“Our son.”

She hesitated. “Yes, our son. You have had two good years. You stole his soul. You made him a Christian. This I can neither tolerate nor forgive.”

“I didn’t make him anything. It was his own choice. I was—”

“Liar, liar, liar! You encouraged him. Secretly! Like a serpent, with subtle words, to turn him against me,
his mother.”

“I wasn’t pleased. I’m not a Christian any more than I’m a Muslim. Do you seriously believe—”

“Yes! Yes, I
seriously believe.”
By now they were both shouting. “Don’t you understand anything?
I am a believer, a true believer!
And those who do not believe will burn in hell for all eternity
and our son will not be of their number.”

When Selim poked his head through the curtain, the hijacker whose job it was to guard Colin looked at him in mute appeal, but Leila screamed, “Get out, both of you, get out!”

She felt ill with the sheer effort of trying to control herself. To Colin, she looked like a vivid reminder of why he had fallen in love with her.

The notion struck him with such shocking force that he gasped aloud.

“What?” Her tone was venomous.

He shook his head, refusing to look at her.

“I said,
what?”
She gripped his chin and yanked his head around so that she could stare into his eyes. He did not resist. For a long moment they gazed at each other, each aware that one more twist of the screw would be fatal. So they did not twist the screw. They looked away, and they knew a communal moment of the most intense and extraordinary grief.

“’
I
learned to love despair …'”

Colin slowly turned to look at Leila, fighting the realization that she had indeed spoken. It was impossible. It could not happen. And yet … “ ‘The Prisoner of Chillon,'” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“You … you still remember…. ” “Yes.” A long sigh. “Yes.”

Colin put his right elbow on the armrest and allowed his head to fall forward onto his hand. “How did we get here?” he said quietly.

For a moment he thought she wouldn’t answer him. But then she said, “I don’t know.” And after that, there was silence.

L
EILA
looked at the pebbles between her feet. She raised her head, first just enough to take in the friendly little waves lapping the shoreline and then to the pure, pale aquamarine beyond, stretching as far as the cloud belt above a distant horizon. She glanced right and all she could see was the beach: a curving expanse of golden sand and shingle that ended in some black volcanic-looking rocks. She turned to her left and there was Colin, lying on his back stark naked, hands folded beneath his head, eyes closed, the tatty paperback Byron forming a steeple on his chest. They were the only people on the beach. She continued to gaze at Colin for a while. Then, very slowly and deliberately, she took a fold of her thigh between finger and thumb and pinched herself, hard.

It was 1969, it was July, this was a small island in the Cyclades, her name was Leila Hanif, she was twenty-one, and she was in love. Her name was Hanif but she thought of herself as Leila Raleigh, because it sounded beautiful and she was in love with the man who owned the name and now owned her too: body, brain, and soul.

Leila lay back on her left elbow, so that she need not take her eyes off the handsome hero who had ridden into her life, smashing down barrier after barrier, to rescue her from dreariness. She had enough memories now to last a lifetime.

They had gone out to dinner, to celebrate his decision to stay on for the higher degree. Over coffee and brandy, talk had turned to the coming summer. He’d told her that he was going to rent a car and tour Europe. Then it came, through the candlelight: the silver bullet that was to penetrate her heart and liberate her soul.

“Why not come with me?”

She laughed, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze but not bothering to reply, because the answer to his question was so obvious. She did not recognize it as a silver bullet then; she thought it was his way of having fun.

“No, seriously—why not come? Do come.”

She shook her head, laughing.

“But why?”

“Well-brought-up Lebanese girls don’t.”

“Why?”

“They just"—she shrugged—"don’t, that’s all.” “Why?”

“Oh, stop saying ‘Why?’ You know why.”

“I don’t.”

Now was the time to talk about her fiancé, Yusif. It was on the tip of her tongue, the perfect excuse to get her out of a conversation that was becoming uncomfortable.

She opened her mouth and then he said, “We’re lovers, after all. How many nights have you spent with me?”

And she giggled, because his words summoned up a picture of his single bed, positioned so that moonbeams filtered onto it through a high window, silvering their moist bodies as they languidly coiled and writhed in simulation of a mobile work of art. And because she giggled, Yusif faded from her mind, retreated from the tip of that tongue which only hours before had been exploring Colin’s foreskin with delicate probing flicks.

“That’s different,” she protested. “All well-brought-up Lebanese daughters do
that.”

But her smile faded before his did. She was, she knew, in deep trouble. Officially they, the family, expected her to be a virgin on her wedding day. Off the record, it was accepted that she might have had the odd one-night fling with strictly the right kind of boy as long as she kept it to herself and nobody gossiped: the right kind of boy in this context meaning an unmarried male born somewhere between Casablanca on the west and Teheran on the east. Colin’s geography was all wrong.

“Well, think about it,” Colin said. “We can spend the next couple of months copulating here, in extreme discomfort, or we could grab some rays and fuck the way God intended. I’m going to take off for a few weeks anyway.”

“Without me?” She stared at him, aghast. “For a while. Need a break.”

“A break from
me?”
Her horror was growing by the second.

“No, of course not. But if you won’t come, well…. ” He shrugged. “Another cognac?”

She meant to say no but heard herself accepting. Poker. Maybe he was bluffing about a holiday in Europe, and maybe he held four aces after all. One thing she knew: just as she needed food, water, enough sleep to fuel their lovemaking, so she needed the man who made the love. If she turned down Colin’s invitation, she could see the rest of the summer stretching out in front of her like a basement session with the interrogators: guarded by unsubtle minders, obliged to wait on the men while they ranted their politics into the small hours, shopping in the West End, followed by more shopping, rounding off the day with a bit of shopping....

She wanted to go to Europe, she
must
go. But darling Halib would kill her if he knew, and he would undoubtedly find out.

First her family, now Colin: everybody she’d ever cared about wanted to steal her life, convert it to their own purposes. Europe would be madness, sheer madness, a wild, spectacular burning of whole armadas. It was, in short, impossible.

“When do we leave?” she blurted out, and was at once engulfed by a crippling fit of hiccups.

Now, looking down on his wiry body, tanned evenly all over and covered with tiny hairs bleached blond by the sun, it still seemed to her like folly, but folly of the most superior kind. She lowered herself a little, to get a better view. He smelled of salt and clean living. His flesh was well compacted over the muscles of a lean frame. When, as now, he lay flat, his stomach turned concave and the outline of his ribs showed above the hollow. There were enticing ridges and caves, best explored by moonlight and tongue tip; everywhere tasted good, even, especially, the bits you weren’t supposed to lick, ever. He was so clean. His sweat was clean. There were beads of it, now, on his neck. She watched, fascinated, as moisture welled up along the rolls of skin beneath his jaw. His pores had enlarged in the heat; she felt that, given time, she might be able to count them all. The prospect made her feel ridiculously happy. One tiny little hole, two, three….

After a while she tired of her game and rested her head on his chest. When his right hand began to stroke her hair she moaned contentedly, like a dog settling on its rug. Out of the corner of her eye she was just aware of something stirring beyond the fluffy mound of hair above the place where his legs joined. His hand had descended to the strap of her bikini top. It was untying the ribbon …

“Stop that.” She gave him first a little slap, then a big kiss on the cheek. “Lie down. Go to sleep.”

He smiled, but his eyes remained closed and he said nothing. He continued his exploration of her bikini top, working around to the front with a slowness she suddenly found maddening. She slapped him again, giving his nipple a brisk tweak for good measure.

“You’re interested in law,” he said drowsily, “aren’t you?”

“Of course.” She settled more cosily into the hollow of his stomach. “It’s your subject.”

“In law, we have something we call ‘the contributory negligence rape.'”

“What?”

“It’s where the woman says no … and means …
yes!

On the last word he folded up his body like a penknife snapping shut, catching her head between his thighs and darting both hands down to her bikini bottom. She fought hard, but he held her tightly by the wrists and dodged her jabs of the feet, until at last she didn’t know how she could survive the laughter, tears, embarrassment, fear of someone coming along, rising panic, and sheer excitement at the sight of his huge erection.

At last they collapsed in a tangled heap of arms and legs, gasping for breath. She sat up, after a while, and threw a towel over his already detumescing penis, before casting anxious glances up and down the beach.

“Behave yourself,” she gasped. “You’ll have us deported.”

But she wanted him to take her, pin her to the beach, so that while they made love she could feel the sand beneath her back and the water lapping her ankles. The previous night they had made love in the sea, their bodies writhing in phosphorescence, and she had thought she would die with love of the one who made these things happen. Of the sorcerer.

He must have seen the desire in her eyes, in the slackness of her mouth, for he said, “Let’s go back now.”

It was only three o’clock, but she was on her feet before he could sit up. She liked the simplicity of sex with Colin. If she didn’t have him inside her soon she’d go berserk.

They hadn’t meant to stay as long as this. Island hopping, they’d agreed, in Athens, one day here, another there … but they’d already been on Ios for two weeks, with no plans to move on. There was one tiny hotel, with accommodation consisting of bare stone huts that turned pleasantly damp in the evenings, a terrace bar, and simple barbecued food, served along with feta cheese, olives, and salad, bread, wine. Half a dozen other people were staying there, mostly couples like themselves, and a few more travelers were dotted around the town, renting rooms from the locals. There was no tourism here, just the adventurous young crowd, well stocked with hash and LSD. “Do your own thing” was their motto; the locals affected horror and loved it.

Colin and Leila discussed endlessly how they might find a way of living here: they could open a hotel, buy a bar, sell artifacts. This was play talk and they knew it, but it was also the stuff of dreams hence, and a vital part of growing ever closer.

Not all the dreams were good.

She knew Colin had nightmares sometimes, because he would thrash around the bed, grinding his teeth, but she never mentioned it to him when he awoke the next day. It seemed silly, in the sunlight; also, she had a superstitious horror of being thought superstitious, and paying undue attention to dreams might be so construed. But she knew she could not ignore his demons forever.

They finally confronted her the night after the tussle on the beach.

The weather had turned bad around four o’clock, with a heavy blanket of cloud drawing itself over the island like a shroud. Ios was a peaceful place, but the silence now seemed threatening: the silence of a court awaiting the judge’s decision. Far away, over a sea turned the color and texture of rough-hewn granite, forks of lightning pointed up other islands in the chain with moody carelessness, as if undecided where to vent their wrath. Leila and Colin, mounting toward a climax of their own in a snarl of sweat-moist sheets, saw none of this. Only when the first peal of thunder burst overhead like all the heralds of doom sounding at once did they sense the change in the air.

They tried, halfheartedly, to resume where they’d left off, but too big a part of them was listening too intently for the next thunder, so after a while they lay back, puzzled and upset. Sex did not normally tire them, it revitalized them. This evening was different.

Colin said. “God, I feel drained.”

She felt the touch of the vampire, as he spoke those words, and shivered.

“Leila, are you okay?”

She knew he was using solicitousness to cover his shame at not being able to come, and thought how endearing he could be. The perfect lover, from the first kiss to the last gentle cleansing of her body with a warm face cloth, he was the one she had waited and longed for. She loved him.

“I love you,” she blurted out, and was rewarded by one of his brilliant smiles.

“I love you too,” he said softly. “You
are
all right, aren’t you? Only you shivered…. ”

“Somebody walking over my grave, don’t worry about it.”

But it wasn’t just the sensuality that had vanished. She felt foolish, sitting there naked on the edge of the rickety bed. Earlier the warmth of the sun had irradiated her body, but now she was conscious only of sunburn, of soreness where her legs rubbed against the sheet. She got up quickly and went to shower in the dim cubbyhole at the back of the room, taking refuge in water made tepid from its stay in the exposed pipes leading down from the tank on the hillside.

The wash did nothing to refresh her. As she dabbed herself dry she caught sight of a gecko high on the wall. Normally she would have spoken to it, one healthy young animal to another. Today its unwinking eye looked ominously upon her, like a presage of evil.

Colin stayed a long time in the shower, long enough to propagate her seed of panic into genuine fear. Something had happened; the atmosphere was changing. She wanted the afternoon, with its stimulating, dangerous sexuality and warmth,
back.

They spoke little over dinner but drank too much, trying to dispel the grim aura with artificial jollity. Flashes of lightning continued to fork overhead at intervals, but there was no more thunder. Above the island, the atmosphere slowly thickened like soup left to simmer too long. As they walked back to the room a few spots of warm rain speckled the exposed parts of their skin. They showered again, together this time. Colin put his arms around Leila and held her underneath the tap, rocking to and fro while brackish warm water drizzled down their bodies. They were so tired, all of a sudden. Tired and depressed.

The room contained twin beds, designed for small children. He kissed her good night but did not offer to climb onto her bed, and although this was the first time he hadn’t wanted to make love, part of her felt glad. What’s happening? she silently asked the ceiling. What’s wrong with us? Is it just the weather? What else could it be? He loves me.

“I love you,” she said to the darkness above her face. No answer came.

The hours unwound slowly. She never quite lost consciousness of the room, with its ingrained heat, faintly gleaming white walls, and dripping tap. But at some point she must have gone under, because when Colin screamed she shot up off the bed with her heart on the verge of an attack.

He was rolling around, shouting like a madman. Leila fumbled for the flashlight, knocking it off the bedside table. Her shaking fingers somehow managed to find the light and switch it on. Colin sat bolt upright, staring ahead of him. His eyeballs looked as though they were going to pop out of their sockets. A trickle of blood ran down his chin. Every muscle, every tendon in his body stood out rigid. When she stroked his face he let out a gasp, his eyes returned to their normal size, and he moved his head slightly. She wiped away the blood with a tissue. He licked his lips, mumbling something.