Beauty and the Dark (22 page)

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Georgia Le Carre

They must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them.

—Alexander Pushkin,
Eugene Onegin

Once upon a time…

there lived a…

Hawke

Her eyes are a mutation. A beautiful mutation.

I
t was late when I finally stopped working and reached for the red envelope laid at the edge of the desk. I placed it in front of me, and simply stared at it, as if it held some great and frightening secret. In fact, its contents were prosaic and vulgar. 

Some months ago, late one night, I had become so unbearably lonely and unhappy that I had actually
craved
the forgiving curves of a woman—any woman. So I went on the dark net, a place where all depravity is catered for and anything one could possibly wish for is in ready supply. I found myself a procurement agency… And signed up. In that brief moment I became everything I had detested in other men.

The intolerable loneliness of that fateful night no longer possessed me, but ever since then a red envelope had arrived once every two weeks. I’ll admit, I did open the envelopes and look at the photos of those poor girls, modern day sex slaves. But even though each one was exquisitely beautiful, not once had I been even slightly tempted. I skimmed their fresh faces and nubile bodies without interest, sometimes with regret at my lapse in judgment, and other times marveling at the extent of my need. Never in my life had I paid for a woman and certainly not for an unwilling one.

I didn’t even know why I still looked. Curiosity? Compulsion? But each time I stuffed those photos back into the envelope and threw them away, I became the unforgivable beast who condemned them to a fate worse than death.

With a sigh I tore the envelope open and slid the photographs out. My eyes widened. What the fuck! I began to shake uncontrollably. The photographs fell from my nerveless hands and landed on my desk with a soft hiss. 

This girl had cast her eyes out and looked
back
at me.

In a daze I picked up the photo and stared at her…ravenously. At her enormous translucent gray eyes, the small, perfectly formed nose, the flawlessly pale skin, the long lustrous blonde hair that spilled out and lay in curves around her full lips and slender neck.

There was something clean and ‘new’ about her, as if she had just come out of tissue paper. I reached for the other photo. Wearing a black bikini and red high heels, her arms at her sides, she stood in a bare room, the same one all the other girls had stood in. Leggy. Shining. Unlucky.

I turned the photo over.

Lena Seagull.

The bitter irony of it did not escape me. The hawk’s prey is the seagull, after all. Her age and vital statistics were displayed in English, French, Arabic and Chinese. I let my eyes skim over them, although they were no longer of any importance. To my shock and horror I couldn’t walk away from this one. No. Not this one.

Age: 18

Status: Certified Virgin

Height: 5’9”

Dress Size: 6-8-10

Bust: 34”

Waist: 24”

Hips: 35.5”

Shoe Size: 7

Hair: Blonde

Eyes: Dove Gray

Languages: Russian and English

My hand shook as my fingers traced the unsmiling outline of her beautiful face. How strange, but I yearned for the smell of her skin, the taste of those plump lips. I had never known such irresistible desire before. I wanted her so bad it hurt. At that moment of longing I felt it, as if the photo was alive; I had an impression of a quiet, but terrible grief.

I snatched my hand away, as if burnt, and frowned at the photo. I must not fall under her spell. And yet, wasn’t it already too late? The connection was instantaneous, beyond my control. I felt desperate to acquire her, brand her with my body. And make her mine. I turned to my computer screen and tapped in the secret code. The encrypted message was only one word long.

YES.

Almost instantly my phone rang. I snatched it and pressed the receiver to my ear.

‘The auction will be held at two p.m. Friday,’ a man’s voice said in an Eastern European accent. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I must warn you. She will not be cheap. I believe there are already two Arab princes who are also interested. What’s your limit?’

‘None,’ I said instantly. In my mind she was already mine.

A pause. Then, ‘
Very
good.’

I terminated the call. There, it was done. I had sealed both our fates. My eyes seeking hers fell upon my own disfigured hand. Claw-like and ugly. And I heard again, as if it had happened yesterday, the sickeningly angry screech of metal against metal, the explosion that had strangely brought with it a blissful silence, and then the bitter smell of my own flesh burning, burning, burning: watching my skin bubble, crackle, glow and smoke. I had sizzled and cooked like a piece of steak on a fucking barbecue. I thought of the shimmering waves that rose from my flesh and shuddered.

My good hand moved upwards and stroked the raised scars on my face. The truth yawned like a black mouth: she would
never
come to love me. I was no longer fit for love. A beauty such as she was stardust. I was destined only for the part of the lovestruck fool clutching vainly for the hem of her skirt as she blazed past. My hand jerked with the sudden pain blooming in my chest. It ate like acid. It was so horrendous that tears filled my eyes and a howl escaped from my mouth. The sound vibrated and echoed around the cavernous room like the cry of a wounded beast.

The sound shocked and disgusted me. I had never been weak. And I was not about to start now. I hardened my heart. 

And so fucking what if she would never come to know my heart? I would have her, anyway. And think no more of it. She would be my pet. A human pet. To do with as I pleased. I laughed out loud. The sound rang out in the stillness. Unlike the sound of my anguish, which had throbbed with vital life, my laughter was empty and soulless. It disappeared into that deathly quiet castle and went to lie softly on my two secrets as they lay unconscious to the world.

Lena Seagull

M
y name is not really Lena Seagull. Seagull is the nickname my father was given by those who knew him. While you were alive he would steal everything from you, and when you were dead he would steal even your eyeballs.

My first vivid memory is one of violence.

I was not yet five years old and I had disobeyed my father. I had refused to do something he wanted me to. I cannot remember what it was anymore, but it was something small and insignificant. Definitely unimportant. He did not get angry, he just nodded thoughtfully. He turned toward my mother. ‘Catherine,’ he said calmly. ‘Put a pot of water on to boil.’

I remember my mother’s white face and her frightened eyes clearly. She knew my father, you see. She hung a pot of water on the open fire of the stove.

He sat and smoked his pipe quietly. Behind me my sisters and brother huddled. There were seven of us then. I was the youngest. Two more would come after me. 

‘Has the water boiled yet?’ my father asked every so often.

‘No,’ she said, her voice trembling with fear, and he nodded and carried on puffing on his pipe.

Eventually, she said, ‘Yes. The water is ready.’

Two of my sisters began to sob quietly. My father carefully put his pipe down on the table and stood.

‘Come here,’ he called to my mother. There was no anger. Perhaps he even sighed.

But by now my mother’s fear had communicated itself to me and I had begun to fidget, fret and hop from foot to foot in abject terror. I sobbed and cried out, ‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I will never again do such a thing.’

My father ignored me.

‘Please, please, Papa,’ I begged.

‘Put the child on the chair,’ he instructed.

My mother, with tears streaming down her cheeks, put me on the chair. Even then I think she already knew exactly what was about to happen because she smiled at me sadly, but with such love that I remember it to this day.

I stood up and clung desperately to my mother’s legs. My father ordered my older sisters to hold me down. They obeyed him immediately.

Reluctantly, my mother dragged her feet back to my father.

With the dizzying speed of a striking snake he grabbed her hand and plunged it into the boiling water. My mother’s eyes bulged and she opened her mouth to scream, but the only sound that came out was the choke that someone makes when they are trying to vomit. While she writhed and twisted like a cut snake in his grip, my father turned his beautiful eyes toward me. My father was an extremely handsome man—laughing gray eyes and blond hair. 

The shock of witnessing my father’s savagery toward my beloved mother was so total and so all encompassing that it silenced my screams and weighted me to my chair. I froze. For what seemed like eternity I could not move a single muscle
. I could only sit, and stare, and breathe in and out, while the world inside my head spun violently out of control. And then I began to shriek. A single piercing wail of horror. My father pulled my mother’s hand out of the pot and rushing her outside, plunged her blistering, steaming hand into the snow.

I ran out and stood watching them, icy wind caught in my throat. My father was gently stroking my mother’s hair. Her face was ghostly white and her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Then she turned to look at me and snapped them shut like a trap. I was never the same after that day.

I obeyed my father in all things.

*****

Once there were eleven of us in my family—my father, my mother, my seven sisters, my beloved twin brother Nikolai and me.
We lived in a small log cabin at the edge of a forest in Russia. We had no electricity, no TV, no phones; water had to be fetched from a well; the local village store was miles away; and we had to use the outhouse even during the freezing winter months.

I didn’t know it while I was growing up but we were a strange family. We never went on holidays and we kept ourselves to ourselves. We hardly saw the other village folk. And when we did see them we were forbidden to talk to them. If ever they spoke to us we had to nod politely and move quickly away.

Growing up we had no friends. No one ever came around. I do not remember a single instance when even a doctor was called to the house. My mother said that she gave birth to all her children without even the assistance of a midwife. On one occasion when my father was not around she even had to cut the umbilical cord herself.

I have a very clear memory of when she went into labor with my youngest sister. How she was in agony for hours and how my oldest sister, Anastasia, dared to beg my father to call the doctor, and how he refused with cold anger. Only Anastasia and Sofia, my second oldest sister, were allowed in the room with Mama so the rest of us had to wait outside in abject fear.

Many horrifying hours later my father came out triumphantly holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. He showed us the baby, red from head to toe. When we were allowed to go into the room to see my mother, I was shocked by the heavy stench of blood and stale sweat. My eyes were drawn to a bundle of blood-soaked sheets pushed hurriedly into the corner of the bedroom. My mother lay on the bed ashen with pain. She was so exhausted she could barely smile at us. Her legs had been tied together roughly with rope.

‘Why are your legs bound, Mama?’ I asked in a frightened whisper.

‘The baby came out feet first,’ she murmured. Her voice was so faint I had to lean close to her lips to hear it.

Mother had had a breech birth and she was so torn and damaged internally that my father had tied her legs together to stop her moving and encourage her body to heal faster. Even as a small child I understood that he never called a doctor even though she could have died. It was agonizing to watch her in the following days, but two weeks later the ropes came off and she hobbled back to the endless chores that consumed her life.

Other than those two scary weeks I can’t remember any other time I saw my mother at rest. Ever. She was always flushed and slaving away over the open fire, cooking, baking, scrubbing, washing, ironing, canning fruit and vegetables for the winter, and in spring, summer and autumn tending to our garden.

My father did not work. He was a hunter. He often disappeared into the ghostly fir tree forest behind our home and came back with elk, faun, rabbits, chinchillas, beavers, wood grouse, geese and snow partridges. The liver and brains were always reserved for him—they were his favorite—some cheap cuts were kept for the family, and the rest of the meat and fur was sold.

When my father was at home he demanded absolute silence from us. No one cried, no one talked, no one laughed. We were like little silent robots going about our tasks. Come to think of it I never saw my sisters or brother cry. The first time I saw my oldest sister, Anastasia, cry was when I was seven years old.

My mother was holding my sister’s hands pressed within her own and whispering something to her and she was sobbing quietly.

‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.

But nobody would tell me.