Talking to the Dead (31 page)

“Hey, Fi,” he says, light pouring outward to the street from the hall and his eyes already checking the space behind me.

“Lev. Hi. Come on in.”

We don’t kiss or shake hands. I don’t know why not. But it’s hard to know what social rules to apply when you’re in his presence. I don’t think he knows.

I let him stalk around the house for a bit without saying anything. His normal procedure when he visits. Doors, windows, exits. Hiding places. Blind spots. Potential weapons. My kitchen morphs into a kind of conservatory area at the back, which means a large area of glass opening onto the dark garden beyond. Lev fiddles around till he finds the switch for the security light, which bathes the back garden in 150 watts of halogen brightness. He leaves it on.

Finally he’s happy. He takes a chair and sits down. His inspection is of me now.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing much. Just wanted to see you.”

“Sure.”

“Do you want something? Tea? Coffee? Alcohol?”

“Are you still growing?”

“Yes.”

“Then I don’t want tea, coffee, or alcohol.”

I laugh, stand up, and get the keys. I unlock the French doors and we go outside. Lev steps into the garden and instantly starts assessing the air and peering over fences. I fiddle around with the padlock on the shed and get it open.

There isn’t much inside, because I don’t like gardening. A lawn mower and a hoe, and I’ve never used the hoe. And there’s the bench with the grow lamps and my marijuana plants. The poor dears have been much too hot recently, but they’re doing all right despite it. I brought the seeds home from India when I was there on holiday once as a student, and these plants are their daughters and granddaughters. I check the plants for water, but otherwise leave them be. I’ve more or less given up smoking resin, but I dry the leaves out in my oven and then keep bags of them in under lock and key in the shed. I take one good-size bag, then lock up again.

I roll a joint in my kitchen but decide I want tea as well so get Lev to put the kettle on. He does so, then wanders into the living room, to flick through my CDs, making clucking sounds of disapproval before finding something by Shostakovich, which was a gift from a very temporary ex-lover, I think, and before too long the air fills with dark-toned Russian pessimism, played out on the bassoon and a sea of violins.

“In 1948, did you know, Shostakovich used to sleep outside his apartment by the lift shaft.”

“No, Lev. Amazingly enough I didn’t know that.”

“His work had been denounced. Denounced for the second time. First time was in the nineteen thirties.”

“Well, I can see why that would drive anyone to sleep by the lift shaft.”

“He thinks he is going to be arrested, and he doesn’t want the police to disturb his family.”

“For fuck’s sake, Lev, come and get stoned.”

The joint is ready. It’ll be my second of the day, but social smoking is excluded from my normal rules, which let me smoke a joint two or three times a week, in my garden usually. Four or five times if I feel my head is under pressure and needs the relief. I never smoke tobacco.

I make peppermint tea for me and dig out some chocolates. Lev, I don’t even bother with, because I know that he’ll sort himself out, and he does. He makes black tea, noxiously strong, finds a little jug of hot water, and some Bonne Maman raspberry jam from the cupboard. Slightly moldy jam, to judge from the way he scowls and dollops a few blobs down the sink before coming over to the table. Then, I sit there, smoking, drinking tea, and eating chocolate, while Lev smokes, mixes jam, tea, and hot water in his cup, and drinks that.

“So. What’s up?”

I shake my head. Not because there isn’t anything to say but because I don’t know what order to say anything in. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I start randomly.

“I’ve got a gun.”

“Here? In the house?”

I get my bag and give him the gun.

Lev gets all Lev-like with it, as I knew he would. He pulls back the slide to see if there’s a bullet chambered, which there isn’t. He pulls out the magazine, to see if it’s loaded, which it is. Checks the safety. Checks the sights. Checks the feel and heft of it. With the magazine out, and no bullet in the chamber, he takes aim and fires. First statically, still seated and at a fictive, motionless target. Then, moving. Him, the gun, the imaginary target.

“It’s a good gun. Have you fired it?”

“Yes. On a shooting range. I learned to keep my shoulders down and soft hands.”

I show him.

“Good. The grip is okay? You’ve got small hands.”

“It’s fine, I think. It’s a small gun, isn’t it?”

“Tak.”

Tak,
I happen to know from my mate, Tomasz Kowalczyk, the king of all things papery, is Polish for yes. I’m also fairly sure that Lev isn’t Polish. Then again, I’m not exactly sure what he is, and when he inserts foreign words into his English, I’m pretty certain that they come from at least half a dozen different languages, maybe more.

“You have done any real shooting?”

“No.”

“That’s why you called me?”

“I suppose. I don’t know.”

“You are under threat?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.”

“That’s not very logical answer for a Cambridge girl.”

“No one has threatened me. Not exactly. One guy hit me, but that was a whole different thing.”

“Hit you? How? What happened?”

I tell him. Not the edited highlights, the full version. Lev needs us to act it out, so he can visualize where I was standing, where Penry was standing, where I landed, what happened next.

“You didn’t strike him?”

“No.”

“But you’re on the steps, there, in that position?”

Lev has got me to adopt the exact position that I was in after Penry hit me. Arse on the bottom step. Legs out. Head and torso slumped against the wall. It’s freaky being here. Frightening. Lev isn’t Penry. Not as tall or powerful. But from down here on the floor, any man looks two miles high.

“Yes. This position. I told you already.”

“And the guy. What was his name?”

“Penry. Brian Penry. He’s not such a bad person really. I might even like him.”

“So Penry. I’m Penry. I’m in the right place?”

“Yes. No. A bit closer and nearer to the wall. Yes, there. About there.”

I’m really uneasy now. Penry is dark. Lev is dark. Same place. Same posture. Because the hall light is behind Lev’s head, he could almost be Penry.

“Okay. I’m Penry. I’ve just hit you. You’re wearing what?”

“What? A skirt. It was a fucking summer’s day, Lev. I was wearing a skirt, okay?”

“No. I don’t care about that. Your shoes. What kind of shoes?”

“Flats.”

“I don’t know what that is, flats. Did they have a sole, anything heavy?”

“No, Lev. I don’t live in a war zone. I’m a girl. And it was a summer’s day.”

“Okay, so no shoes. You can still strike the knee. Do it.”

“Lev. I’ve got a gun now. Penry hit me once and buggered off. I didn’t need to strike him. He just let himself out of the front door and drove away.”

“So it was tactical, you are saying? You chose not to strike?”

“No, it wasn’t like that.”

“I’m Penry. I hit you once. I’m going to hit you again. Maybe I’m going to kill you. Maybe fuck you, then kill you. Probably that. Fuck you first.”

He makes the tiniest movement toward me. There’s something menacing in him, the light behind his head, the way his voice tightens, the way he’s holding himself. I’m in terror now. Maybe that’s the marijuana making itself felt, but I don’t think so. I don’t get paranoid on weed. I get calmer. That’s why I started smoking it in the first place. Why I still do. Self-medication. But the drug can’t do anything for the terror I’m feeling now. I feel just like I did back on the step with Penry. A body memory, perhaps, but no less terrifying for that.

“Fuck you, then kill you.”

Lev moves fractionally farther toward me.

And then some instinct takes over in me. A fighting one. A killing one.

I lash out with my topmost leg, my right one. I aim for Lev’s kneecap, and catch it cleanly. Lev spills over backward, and I follow through with a hard stamp down on his testicles, mashing them twice with my heel, then get poised to start kicking him in the windpipe until I’ve shattered his larynx and his windpipe and the poor fucker will be on his knees choking for breath and pleading for mercy and ready to feel the smash of my kneecap in his face.

“Good, good. Really good.”

Lev never lets me really hurt him. He lifted his knee at the last possible second, so I caught him on the upper calf. As for the testicle stamp, he caught my leg with both hands and took the weight off it as it came down, shifting it sideways onto his thigh.

But I’m not there. I’m not in the world that Lev is in. Unarmed combat practice. Everything a series of moves and countermoves. I’m panting, partly from the exertion, but mostly because of a flood of feelings that I don’t recognize. I don’t even really feel them as feelings at all. I just feel spacey and out of my body and like I want to kick Lev’s windpipe until he’s breathing out through the toe of my shoe.

I know he’s talking to me, and I have trouble focusing on his words. I do my best. He repeats himself.

“You were scared? At the time it happened, you were scared?”

“No. It was beyond that. Terrified. I felt helpless.”

“But you weren’t helpless. You could have disabled him. Like just now.”

“I know. But I wasn’t in that headspace then.”

“No one ever is when it happens. You have to find a way to be there like this.” Lev snaps his fingers. Then, because Shostakovich is doing something that makes Lev happy, he raises a finger for a moment’s silent appreciation and we listen to violins and oboes for a while.

We go back to the kitchen. I need to finish the joint, and Lev needs more jam in tea.

“The other situation you were in. Not recently. Last year or whenever. When you hurt the guy.”

“We’ve been through that.”

“So we go through it again. You’ve only been in two situations, right? We need to understand how you react.”

“Okay, in one situation, I beat the guy up. In the other situation, I let him knock me over and then I was so terrified I didn’t know what to do next.”

“Fine. So we go back to the first situation. We play it out again.”

I draw down hard on the joint, until I get to the little bit of cardboard I use as the filter, and the very last of the weed has disappeared into my lungs. I don’t know why I get Lev involved in things sometimes. He never lets go of them. Then again, that’s exactly why I get him involved. I drop the stub of the joint into the remains of my tea and shift my chair, so it’s in the right relation to the table.

“I’m here. T.D.C. Griffiths, wet behind the ears, writing in her notebook. You’re standing up, wandering around. I’m not feeling anything weird going on. Then you step behind me. Not that side. This side. You reach down and fondle my breast.”

Lev reaches down and puts his hand on my breast. There’s nothing tentative about his touch. There’s no apology and nothing seedy. For Lev, it’s just about realism.

“Ready?” I say.

Needlessly. Lev is always ready. He still has his hand on my breast.

“Ready,” he says.

Then I move. As near as possible to the way it happened. Chair back. Slam my hand upward to catch his jaw. I feel Lev jerk back in an imitation of pain and surprise. That pulls his fondling hand away from my breast, giving me room to grab his fingers and yank back against his line of motion. That’s what broke the guy’s fingers when it happened for real. I’m standing now, and able to kick out at the kneecap. Lev is big on kneecaps, where I’m involved at least. If I’m in a fight with anyone, then I’m going to lose if it lasts more than a few seconds. Likewise, if anyone can get ahold of me, they’ll be far too powerful for me. Kneecaps and, to a lesser extent, testicles represent my principal means of immobilizing my counterpart. For that reason, most of the instruction that I’ve done with Lev has focused on those fine body parts.

This time, once I’ve caught his kneecap in a nice, clean blow, he stops.

“I fall now, right?”

“Yes. Kind of sideways and down. That way. Yes.”

“But there was more, no?”

“The guy was rolling as he fell. I shoved him against the table. An instinct thing. But I pushed quite hard, and the corner penetrated his cheek. There was a lot of blood.”

“And then?”

“The fight was over. He had three broken fingers and a dislocated kneecap. Plus he was whimpering like a six-year-old and there was blood bubbling out through a hole in his cheek.”

“Okay, but then he’s on the floor here. How had he fallen? This way? Like this?”

“Yes, like that. No, legs apart a bit more. Yes. Exactly like that.”

“And then?”

“Lev, this was the very first time it had happened, okay? I wasn’t in an ordinary state of mind.”

“Of course you weren’t. This was fight.”

That’s a big theme of Lev’s. The reason why he teaches Krav Maga. The reason why the Israeli Special Forces developed the technique in the first place. Fights—real fights—don’t happen on tatami mats. They don’t start with people bowing to each other and sprinkling water from brass bowls. They start in pubs, in alleyways, in places you don’t want to fight. They make use of whatever weapons come to hand. They don’t have rules. They don’t let you submit gracefully and make a respectful bow to the person who felled you.

Krav Maga is strictly real-world. Functional. In Krav Maga, you don’t get instructors saying things like “And if your assailant comes at you with a sword …” It’s all about making use of what you’ve got. Low-risk, efficient maneuvers. Proceeding as rapidly as possible from defense to attack. Maximum violence, maximum disablement. Fast, nasty, decisive.

At Hendon, when I was undergoing police training, we learned a set of techniques that were more jujitsu-based. Useful enough and quite pretty. But I was way ahead of them. I’d been working on Krav Maga with Lev since Cambridge, and my own aim in training at Hendon was to avoid revealing how much I really knew. I passed that course with the lowest grade possible. Petite, bookish, geeky Fiona. No one expected anything else.