Hanina wonders to himself what the difference is between a choppy and a stormy sea. He has never been attracted to the sea, and in spite of Mona’s increasing expertise on matters concerning the sea and seamanship, Hanina is not well up on nautical terms, and he doesn’t even know the names of the parts of the sailing boat, never mind the type of the sail, not to mention its various components. As far as he is concerned there’s a boat, a prow and a stern, a helm, a mast and a sail. All the rest are poles and ropes without names or meanings. Mona shows no inclination to include him in the intimacy she has developed over the years with this mysterious entity. The sea is her territory, and she guards her exclusive sovereignty over her vast and rebellious realm jealously. When two or three times in the past he had brought up ideas for improving the protection of the exposed metal parts, or suggested up-to-the-minute survival kits, which he had come across in the guerilla warfare magazines he continued to receive in the mail, she dismissed his suggestions with utter contempt, and he had stopped showing an interest. He contemplates her skill and efficiency with balancing the boat with the help of her taut body, stretched like a powerful spring over the side. She holds strongly onto the pole to which the bottom of the sail is attached, responding to the slightest movements of the boat which slides with a faint swishing sound over the fathoms of water, and gaining the greatest amount of speed possible from the wind, sailing over the ducks heralding the approaching turbulence.
He looks at her pear shaped head, with its short, boyish crown of platinum bristles, and wonders what goes on in the depths of her mind. What submarine plants grow there? What drunken old ships are wrecked there? What deep water fish glide majestically between silent engine rooms,
whose metal parts are covered with plumes of sea weeds and algae? From one of the empty spaces rises the head of a little girl with short, boyish, wet hair, a head which is all water and whose eyes are a fount of tears.
Timberlake. Timber-lake. Timber.
With a tumbler of whiskey in her hand—
She lounges on the thick carpet, indifferently exposing her unfeminine body with its long skinny limbs. Holding a tumbler of whiskey in her left hand, and lightly brushing the calf of his left leg with the cobweb fingers of her infinitely long right arm. Her touch is not sensual, her fluttering fingers do not give rise to any desire, which is precisely what is so good and suits him so well in this strange strait of his life, rocking like a drunken boat whose engines died in the middle of the sea, borne along aimlessly by the waves.
You really don’t want to fuck me? she asks.
No, he says, I hope you’re not insulted.
Not in the least, she says. It’s the last thing I need now.
They lie supine side by side, and he listens to her quiet breathing.
You’re not just being considerate, she wants to make sure.
I’m lying next to you naked, he says. If I felt like fucking, would I be able to hide it?
You don’t suffer from impotence? she asks directly.
No, he says, and I don’t have any need to prove it.
Because if you have any problems performing, I can give you Viagra, she says.
I’ve got something much better in my coat pocket, he reassures her, and I don’t need it.
Something better than Viagra? She asks with interest. What is it?
A Midsummer Night’s Dream pill, says Shakespeare. Good for both sexes. Gives rise to emotional and sexual excitement, produces a terrific erection, shortens the recovery time and lengthens and thickens the male sexual organ. You want to try it?
Do you want to? she asks.
I don’t need it, he says.
That’s good, she says, I’m sick and tired of disturbed men.
So am I, he says.
Maybe you’re sick and tired of disturbed women, she suggests a correction.
That too, he says. But I’ve had more to do with disturbed men.
Are you gay? she asks.
I don’t know, he says. I never tried.
Then you’re not gay, she pronounces. A queer knows he’s a queer, just like a Jew knows he’s a Jew.
Are you a rabbi? he asks.
Why? Do rabbis turn you on? she laughs and covers his penis with her palm and stringy fingers. A deep sigh breaks from his chest.
Why are you sighing? she asks in surprise.
A Jewish reaction, he says.
I hope I’m not making you suffer, she says.
No, he sighs again, we sigh when we’re happy too.
I had a Jew once, she says.
A boyfriend? he asks.
A client, she says. A Hasid from Queens. I even remember his name: Bornstat. He looked like a plucked chicken, but when he took out his thing, I got a shock. It was something between a piano leg and a fireman’s hose. I didn’t want to insult him, so I said: Sorry, I’m done working for
the day. But he insisted: The rabbi sent him to a prostitute, because his wife refused to go to bed with him. I told him: Go to your rabbi, ask him to give you his wife.
The Hasid was insulted, made a scene, Tony came and beat me up: Because of you we’ll lose the whole Yeshiva.
I hope it didn’t turn you into an anti-Semite, he says.
I don’t hate people more than they deserve, she reassures him.
He laughs, and she plays with his pubic hair and asks:
How do you learn to sigh?
It’s simple, he says. You need to be chased out of a few countries, be the victim of pogroms, have your house burned down, your grandmother and grandfather and all your aunts and uncles murdered, and after a few hundred years of treatments along those lines, it comes of its own accord, without any effort.
I understand, she laughs. I guess I won’t learn to sigh in this incarnation.
They lie there relaxed, without wanting to do anything. The noise of the city beyond the window, a cacophony of screaming tires, screeching brakes, the groans of the tortured iron of the subway, sounds like a chorus of howling wild animals in a distant jungle.
It feels so good to be able to hold your cock without it starting to stiffen, it’s really nice to hold a soft dick, she confesses, and after a minute she adds: But maybe it’s not so nice for you.
If it didn’t feel nice I would remove your hand, he says. You can leave it there if it feels good to you. It feels good to me.
What kind of business did you have with disturbed men? she asks.
I killed a few of them, he says. There are still too many left.
Did you do it for fun?
No, he says, I performed a mission.
Who for? she inquires.
For the human race, he says.
After a further silence, during which the only sound is that of their breathing, his deep and slow and hers quick and light, she asks:
Can I come closer to you?
As close as you like, he says.
She turns onto her left side, and the skinny string of her body clings to his. The unripe peaches of her breasts brush against the sides of his ribs, the taut skin of the drum of her belly touches his waist, her pubic hair tickles the edge of his buttocks, and when she lifts her thigh and lays the stalk of her long leg on his leg, and tucks her sharp knee between his knees, he feels the lips of her open pussy licking the skin of his thigh like a blind puppy groping with its wet nose for its mother’s teats and greedily fastening onto the nipple—and all this time his penis stays still in the web of her fingers weaving it a nest. For a while they lie like this, profoundly at rest, far from all the labors of the flesh, and then her voice begins to trickle softly between her warm lips into his ear.
I’m so tired, she whispers, I’m so glad you don’t want to fuck me and I can just lie next to you and rest, rest for one night like a normal human being. You don’t have to pay me for tonight.
I spend the night in expensive hotels, he says, and enjoy myself less. I’ll pay you what it would have cost me to go to a hotel.
There’s no need, she says. I have the money to cover tonight.
You mean to pay that slimebag Tino?
Tony, she corrects him, and adds: Every profession has its own code of ethics.
You have a strange way of speaking, he says.
What’s wrong with the way I speak?
Nothing, he hastens to reassure her, it’s only that sometimes you use high-flown language, sometimes you even quote Shakespeare.
I’m writing a doctoral dissertation, she says.
What’s the subject?
The Samson family.
Who were they? he asks.
Hangmen, she says, a family of hangmen. The profession passed form father to son.
That’s interesting, he says. How did you get onto it?
My grandfather was a hangman’s assistant, she says. He helped to hang eleven war criminals at Nuremberg.
Good for him, he says. He did a good job, your grandfather.
Not really, she demurs. They hanged them on an improvised gallows, and he sawed the holes in the floor for the trapdoors.
So what wasn’t good about it?
The holes were a bit too small, and when the hanged men fell through them, they bumped against the sides. The fall was arrested, and instead of breaking their necks and dying instantly, they hung on the noose for ten to fifteen minutes until they choked to death.
Even better, he says.
You’re a cruel man, she remarks.
No I’m not, he protests, but there are bastards who deserve to die slowly and in great agony. I’d be glad to shake your grandfather’s hand.
That would be difficult, she laughs. He died in a work accident, on the electric chair. He sat on it to give a demonstration to apprentice executioners. It’s not clear how it happened, but the electric current was connected, and by the time they switched it off, he was already fried like a fish.
So that’s your specialization, the family history of executioners?
You know that these people had a sense of mission and great professional pride?
I’m not surprised, he says, and I’m sure that they were happy people too.
I understand that you’re in favor of the death penalty, because you yourself carried out—
Yes, he interrupts her, there are people who don’t deserve to live. There are people I’d be happy to kill.
People who harmed your parents? she asks.
How do you know? he exclaims.
I have a third eye, she says, like Shiva and like you.
You know something about Indian mythology too?
I had a lot of spare time, she says, and noting to do except read.
Were you in jail?
Eight years, she says. Two years in a juvenile facility, the rest in a lifers’ wing.
It wasn’t for soliciting or vagrancy, I imagine.
No, she confirms, I was barely sixteen when I was sentenced to life in prison.
Who did you kill? he asks.
Patrice Terramagi.
She pronounces the name Patrice Terramagi as if it was John Kennedy or the Prince of Wales at least.
Patrice Terramagi? He pages through his memory and fails to connect the name with any well known personality. Was he some prince or African president?
Neither a prince nor a president, she replies. Just a piece of dogshit my mother scraped off the street.
So what are you doing free, he asks, did you escape from jail?
No, she says, after eight years inside my lawyer got me a retrial, and the sentence set a precedent. Thanks to my case continuous abuse is now recognized as cumulative aggression, and a woman who kills someone who abused her for years can claim that she acted in legitimate self-defense, even if there was no immediate threat to her life, but only one more act of abuse, even a small one, in a long series of cumulative abuse.
How long did he abuse you? He asks. For months? Years?
For ever, she says. For ever. My parents separated when I was five. They were both alcoholics. My father moved to another continent and disappeared from my life. I stayed with my mother, who would come home late at night. Always drunk. Ever time with a different man. They would screw her for two or three days, and bugger off. If anyone stayed with her a little longer, it was a sign that he was completely down and out, that he had nowhere to put his stinking bum at night. But even the most fucked-up homeless only stuck it out for a week at most before they ran for their lives from her attacks of rage and fits of weeping and craziness and threats of suicide. Now try to imagine what kind of a lowlife this Patrice was, if he stayed with her for three years, until the night I stuck a barbecue skewer into his heart.
He stayed with her because of you, he states.
Good guess, she confirms. The first night she brought him, after he fucked her, he got into my bed and raped me.
You were only thirteen, he calculates.
Twelve and a bit, but far from innocent, she laughs her bitter laugh.
I already had a history of running away, vagrancy, drugs, prostitution, arrests, committal to a psychiatric ward for observation, removal from home by order of a judge in juvenile court to an institution for minors, which I couldn’t stand, because it was like a prison, and being a vampire, I found a crack in the dark and ran back home, to my alcoholic mother. And when two policemen come to look for me, to take me back to the institution, I shut myself in the bathroom and slash my veins, so they’ll return me to the hospital, to the psychiatric ward, and maybe this time I’ll be able to persuade them to recommend to the court to let me stay with my mother. But the social worker testifies that my mother is drunk twenty-four hours a day, and she does me nothing but harm. And I tell the judge that my mother drinks because she wants me at home, and the judge asks me, why does she want you at home, and I say, because she’s my mother, but this judge wasn’t born yesterday, she’s seen all kinds already, and she says to me, tell me the truth, Pipa, your mother wants you at home so much that she drinks twenty-four hours a day because she misses you so much? And I say, yes, your honor, I swear on my life that I’m telling you the truth! And she says to me: Why does she miss you so much, Pipa? Tell me why she needs you so much? And for a minute I want to tell her the truth: Because my mother knows that Patrice only stays with her because of me, because he’s dying to fuck me, and my mother knows it, and she doesn’t care that this is the price I have to pay so that this maniac will stay with her and fuck her too even though she disgusts him with the crazy scenes she makes whenever she gets drunk, in other words, at least twice a day, but I know that I can’t tell the judge the truth, because then she’ll remove me from home forever, so I keep quiet, and the judge understands my silence, and she says, Pipa, for your own good I’m sending you back to Mulberry Woods,
in other words, the institution, and as soon as they take me back there I stick my fist through the window, and cut my hand to pieces, and I’m back in the hospital again, and I plead with the social worker, that if they don’t want to send me back to my mother, then let them look for my father in Australia, and send me to him, but the social worker says to me, face up to reality, and I pick up a vase that’s standing next to my bed and throw it right in her face, and two orderlies come running and strap me to the bed, and while I’m lying there strapped to the bed like a person sentenced to death waiting for a lethal injection, I ask myself what’s wrong with me, what, am I so different from everybody else? Am I mad? Am I going to spend the rest of my life in closed wards in mental hospitals? Or in jail as a murderer? Or maybe one day I too will find someone who cares about me, and who’ll want to live with me and set up a family with me, and we’ll have children who I’ll bring up the way you’re supposed to bring up children, and not the way I was brought up by my mother, who never related to me like a mother to a daughter, and even when they let me go home for a visit, on Christmas, Patrice fucked me and slapped me around, because he came quickly and he hated me for it, as if it was my fault, until I stabbed myself in the stomach because I was so sick of him, and they took me back to the hospital, and afterwards I told my mother that a gynecologist there said I’d done myself so much damage that I probably wouldn’t be able to get pregnant—so what did she say, my mother? You’re better off this way, otherwise you would have had at least ten abortions before you turn seventeen, ooh, you hug me so good, she suddenly says in the middle of all this outpouring, hug me tight and don’t let go now, and she twines herself around him, and her whole thin body quivers in the too strong hands of the man whose penis is sleeping like a soft warm baby in her hand, and
her matchstick legs wind round his hairy grizzly-bear leg, and he says to her, don’t talk if it makes you feel bad, but it makes me feel good, she says, it makes me feel so good, but if it’s hard for you to hear, it isn’t hard for me, he says, on the contrary, it does me good, how does it do you good, the terrible story of my lost youth, how can it do you good? I don’t know, he says to her, but it does me good, maybe because I went through a few things that weren’t so nice in my own life too, not nice things, she laughs her bitter laugh, yes, he says, not nice things, that were put into deep freeze and left for years covered in a thick layer of ice, which is apparently beginning to crack. And after that time for some reason they sent me home, the words start to gush out of the gaping wound in her childish face again, and for a few days Patrice was careful and didn’t dare to touch me, he was apparently frightened by what I had done to myself with the scissors, and perhaps he felt that what I had done to myself I was capable of doing to him too one day, if he went on torturing me, and he loved his own skin too much, that piece of shit, but after a few days his need overcame his fear, something about me turned him on, I don’t know what, what does it matter anyway, I began working the streets on a regular basis, I did quite well, there are perverts out there that need little girls to turn them on, and that gave him a good reason to slap me around, all of a sudden he turned into my moral guardian, whenever I came back from work he would grab hold of me and hit me again and again, until I cried, and that gave him a hard-on, my crying, and when I caught on I began to fake it, I would begin to howl at the first slap, to cut it short, but it didn’t solve the problem, because the minute he came, always too quickly, he would begin to blame me and say that it happened to him because of me, and that I did it on purpose, moving and making him come, and it wasn’t true, because I didn’t even move
a muscle, because I don’t feel a thing when the creeps are fucking me, not pleasure or pain, nothing, because I’m not there at all when they press up against my body and shove it into me—but it didn’t help me, straightaway yelling: Why did you move? You whore! And straightaway blows. One night I came home finished. Three stinking homeless guys threatened me with a box-cutter and raped me and robbed me of all the money I’d made, and when I got home, Patrice was waiting for me with two friends of his, and I begged him, Patrice, leave me alone tonight, but he said, tonight I’m gonna to stick it to you, and then I’m gonna give you to my friends, and I said to him, not tonight, and he began slapping me around, and I began to cry, and as usual it gave him a hard-on, and he pushed me up against the kitchen sink and bent me over the sink and pulled down my panties and shoved it into me from behind, and as usual he came right away, and he started to curse me and hit me, and bending like that over the sink which was full of dirty dishes, I grabbed hold of a steel barbecue skewer, and I turned round to face him and I stuck it between his neck and his collarbone, and it sunk in as if it was slipping into butter, and suddenly he looked at me in great surprise, and there was such a sorrowful look in his eyes that I almost took pity on him, but it was already too late, he collapsed and crumpled onto the floor like a rag, and suddenly he jerked and kicked and hit the garbage pail that was standing there, and the pail overturned and the garbage spilled onto the floor, and that’s it.