Pavel & I (44 page)

‘Behave.'

Then he turned his attention back to Sonia.

‘You must be pining to see Pavel,' he said. ‘Perhaps we can get to that later tonight.' His hand reached into his coat pocket and fished out the reel of microfilm. ‘Really, it's just a matter of finding an accommodation.'

He licked his fingertips, caught hold of the end of the film and slowly, methodically, began unreeling its first yard.

‘We are, after all, reasonable people, you and I.'

She long saw it coming. The moment the film would come apart in his hands and he'd realize it had been cut in half. For a second he was simply undone: puzzled, slack-jawed, ribbons of film trailing from each of his hands. All the colour drained from his face. He hunched as though in seizure, the mink riding him like a bitch. Sonia made a mistake then.

She smiled.

A proper smile, teeth and all. She imagined she even broke into dimples. He saw it, saw her happy, here upon the ashes of her defeat, and threw back his shoulders.

‘Where?' he barked. ‘Who?'

Her joy dissolved in fear. She swallowed the smile; cast off the dimples.

Shook her head.

Retreated.

‘I don't know.'

‘You don't know?
The film's in pieces and you don't bloody know?
Sonia,' he whispered. ‘One of these days you'll break my fucking heart.'

Said it and launched himself at her, a whale of a man, skin so pale you'd swear he'd died underwater.

She jumped to the side, desperate to avoid him, looking for shelter behind the ironing board's flimsy frame. He did not bother going round it. Instead he took hold of its wood and threw it to the side, ramming one corner into the wall. The iron went flying. She remembered watching it, following its arc with her eyes – a lifetime of fear of fire taking hold of her. Sonia stood paralysed. The fat man, he lunged again.

She almost felt him slamming into her; the hurt of her spine as it caught the windowpane. Fat fingers tight around her windpipe, a knee parting her crotch; his big mouth chewing her up, literally.

He never made it, though. Something caught him short. The monkey. It had watched their dance with mounting excitement and chose that moment to make a run for its master's boots; had a good mind to mate with them, in fact, judging by its erect manhood, a pink little worm that had screwed itself out of its fur. A twenty-pound monkey latching itself onto polished leather, a whale growing out of its shaft. It should hardly have been enough to slow him down.

It cost Fosko his balance, though. A fat man in motion, and a monkey on his boot; his arms missing the woman and running headlong for the window now, snow crystals livid upon its panes. Trying to avoid collision, he threw his weight to the left.

Slipped on a corner of carpet, fine Persian silk.

Overbalanced.

And fell.

For a fat man, he hardly made a sound at all.

It took her a while to realize he was not getting up again. She stood still and counted the seconds. The only movement in the room was the monkey, screwing Fosko's boot for all it was worth. Then, in the total icy quiet, there issued a moan. Sonia cast around, found a paperweight on the desk, and walked over to the fallen giant. Out of the side of his skull, a good inch above the ear, grew the pyramidal body of his clothes iron. The blood poured from the wound and congealed upon its steaming surface. It stank of sausage.

The fat man wasn't dead. His eyes stood open, his lips were moving, then one hand, searching his body for hurt.

‘Please,' he mumbled. ‘Please.'

Sonia retched and was violently sick down the front of the silk blouse the Colonel had bought for her the day she'd agreed to be his whore.

Pavel eavesdropped and heard precisely nothing. It was clear to him that whatever had happened, he'd arrived late. The knowledge of it sickened him. He reached for the doorknob and slowly swung open the door. All of a sudden, the gun in his hand felt out of place. It made as little sense as if he'd come carrying roses.

Behind the door, the Colonel's study. An icy draught issuing from an open window. On Pavel's right, a desk and chair; a projector set up to illuminate the wall; a reel of film unravelled across the ground. On his left, the Colonel. Lying prone on one side; his legs moving, slowly, sluggishly, walking his body in a circle around his head's pivot. It was as though it had been nailed to the floor. The floorboards slick with fast-cooling blood, and steaming. Crouching to one side, high heels planted in the Colonel's effluvia, jacket and blouse torn off, and greenish bile discolouring her skirt's chequered front: Sonia; crouching in a black lace bra, her hands and arms smeared with blood,tears in her mascara, and a rhythm to her body as though she was rocking it asleep. She, too, was steaming in the cold of the room. Steaming from her mouth and from the blood on her arms; from her armpits and the sweat upon her brow. It clung to her like a shroud.

‘Sonia,' he said.

She didn't seem to hear him. Instead she started screaming. He dropped the gun, sat down next to her, and shushed her like a frightened dog. Meanwhile, next to them, the Colonel kept on making his rounds.

Already Pavel had begun to ask himself what they should do with his corpse.

Of course, she'd taken notice of his entrance. Taken notice of his greeting, too, and the idiotic cooing that issued from his lips. She wasn't ready to acknowledge him yet. Fosko was still alive. Just now, he had pulled his skull out of the iron, and begun to drag himself
towards what he had to be mistaking for the door. He disgusted her. Vomit caked the inside of her mouth.

Slowly, Sonia reached over to where Pavel had dropped his gun; wrapped her hand around its butt. She stood up, walked stiffly over to the Colonel, the floorboards dark with blood. Pulling the trigger was a small thing.

She wondered what stayed her hand. Was it that killing was wrong? Of all the men in the world, surely this one deserved it. The gun in her hand would not stop shaking. She looked up and found herself in Fosko's gilt-framed mirror, a slip of a girl, half-naked and freezing. Her body was shivering so hard that her breasts jiggled, white against the black lace bra. Behind her, Pavel looked on with distracted disapproval. It was impossible to love him just then. She slung her arms around her frame and sought to suppress her shivers.

In the mirror, all one could see of the Colonel was one shiny boot. The monkey clung to it as though it were its long-lost twin.

She pointed the gun again, this time in earnest. Steadied it, with the palm of her left hand.

‘Don't,' said Pavel.

‘Why not?'

‘I need to think it through first.'

He sat down behind Fosko's desk and threw his brow in creases. God damn him, this Pavel. He sat and thought like he was Newton, inventing gravity. All this, just to figure out whether or not to kill a man who was already dead.

‘What do you want me to do?'

‘Give me the gun. Go to his wardrobe and find us some coats. We are both freezing to death. And some cigarettes.'

She nodded yes and left the room, wondering where it had come from, his ability to treat her like a servant, or a wife.

While Sonia was away, Pavel picked up the gun fromwhere she had placed it on the desk and walked over to the Colonel. He bent down to him, searched out his eye, placed the muzzle to his neck. They fell into each other's rhythmof breathing. The Colonel whispered something.

Perhaps he was just trying to breathe.

Pavel reached down and wiped off blood to better see the Colonel's wound. It was a messy crater of viscous matter. There was no way of telling how much time he had left.

When he heard her return, Pavel straightened up and hurried back to the desk. Sonia passed him a woolly sweater and a tweed jacket, both much too large. She was wearing a double-breasted fox-fur coat, knee-length, and a cotton scarf in the colours of an Oxford college, complete with crest.

‘Did you kill him yet?' she asked. Her nonchalance was skin-deep. One could see the quiver underneath.

‘No,' he said. ‘I'm still thinking.'

‘What's there to think about? Put a bullet in him.'

‘And have him found here, with your number in his pocket book? What do you think will happen when the police show up? I doubt they will rule it an accident.'

She frowned, ran a hand over her cheek. The hand was beautiful. It struck him that he hadn't touched her yet.

‘So what are we going to do?'

But he just shook his head and sat, unmoving. Behind them, amongst the clutter of knocked-over furniture, the monkey clambered over to squat on the Colonel's face, and drilled a leathery finger into his skull, the Colonel watching it out of the corner of one fatty eye.

And thus they sat idle while the minutes ticked away. I would not have thought he had it in him, this cold rationality in the face of
another man's suffering. Sonia, too, could not make head nor tail of it. She thought it unworthy of him, the man she had built up in her dreams. That, and he was filthy: a beard on his face, the stink of prison. She had waited for this moment. Now she felt cheated.

One can relate to her frustration. Pavel had returned from the dead and walked in five minutes too late, dressed like a bum. Came to save her, no doubt, but came late nonetheless, the gun drooping in his hand. He did not touch her, kiss her, stroke her cheek. Stank. Sat puzzling. The same old voice, gentle like a girl's, awkward in his bearded face. The beard obscuring the cast of his mouth; his cheeks and forehead covered with grime.

She will have clutched at straws.
Maybe,
she will have thought,
maybe all he needs is a good wash. One good scrub, and he'll go back to being soulful
. Dribbled spit on one finger and ran it down his mucky temple. Trying to find the man underneath.

They should have been heading for the road. Left the house, no matter where. Pavel's indecision struck her as crazy. Worse than crazy. Constipated. Hamlet whispering to graveyard skulls.

‘Let's go,' she urged, and ran a toe over the reel of microfilm on the floor. He didn't seem to hear her. She wondered briefly would he react if she crushed it with her heel.