Only the Strongest Survive (16 page)

They chatted about this and that during
dinner and the atmosphere was pleasant. For dessert, they each had
two slices of caramel cake with marzipan icing. Emely’s elegant
poise slowly faded as her stomach got excessively full.

She asked,
“Where did you learn to cook so well?”

“
I don’t
really know. I told you that Mother didn’t give Ronald and me much
attention and father was never at home. So I spent a lot of time
with Peggy. She was our home help. She cleaned, ironed, and cooked
really well. She was one of a kind.”

Emely’s head was resting on her hands as she
became engrossed in his story. For the first time since she had
been incarcerated in this house she completely forgot that she was
his prisoner. “And do you ever see her now?”

John looked away. “Peggy died when I was
eighteen. From cancer, poor thing, nothing could be done.”

Emely felt
sorry for him for a moment, but immediately remembered why she was
there and her sympathy evaporated. “You know, John, I didn’t get
much love when I was little, growing up in a convent
orphanage.”

“
Really?”
John was genuinely surprised. “I always thought you must have been
a spoiled girl, growing up in a rich family.”

“Oh no, just the opposite. I was very
poor.”

“And your parents?”

“I don’t know anything about my father, but
my mother died giving birth to me. Immediately after, I was taken
to an orphanage.”

“
Hard to
believe. I would never have guessed it.”

“
Why?” she
asked, slightly upset. “Do I seem like such a spoiled person? I
worked really hard to get what I now have.” She sat up straight
again.

John got up and poured them more wine.

“I have to thank the nuns for that. They’re
very hardworking and don’t have any free time. Or, more precisely,
they spend their free time in prayer.”

“So are you a very religious person?”

“
Not as
religious as I should be. I haven’t been to church for ages and
I’ve shortened my prayers to the bare minimum. Often I had so much
work that I used to come home so tired. After a shower, I just went
to bed, began my prayers but fell asleep instantly. And so my
prayers got reduced to a few sentences.”

“I personally don’t believe in God,” he said
coldly.

“
What do you
think happens after death, then?”

“I don’t know. I think we should enjoy life
as it is because when you die, there’s nothing left.”

“
Aren’t you
afraid of dying?” Emely asked.

“I don’t know, sometimes. I sometimes dream
that I’ve been murdered and wake up soaking in sweat.”

Emely wanted
to say that she no longer knew what a good night’s sleep was, but
didn’t want to spoil the pleasant atmosphere.

John
said,
“Peggy, on the other hand, kept
praying. Sometimes it really got on my nerves.”

“How old was Peggy?”

“
She must
have been around fifty. She was as thin as a rake and when she got
mad she swore like a fishwife. I once said to her that she would
find it hard to get to Heaven if she didn’t stop
swearing.”

They both laughed.

“
It was a
nightmare where I was,” Emely said with a sigh. “Nuns never swear,
never argue, and any hint of perversity is totally out of the
question. A boy once dropped a condom into my bag without my
noticing. In the evening, one of the nuns examined my room. When
she touched the rubber with her fingers and screwed up her face, I
knew I was in trouble.”

“
So what
happened?” John asked with great interest.

“I was forced to pray for several hours. The
other nuns heard about it and they spent another month giving me
accusing looks.”

“Hard to believe.”

“
Yes, it is.
When I left the Catholic orphanage, I felt the happiest, freest
person on earth. I traveled on the subway, enjoying the thought
that I could do anything I wanted. It isn’t that I didn’t love the
sisters who took care of me, on the contrary. They gave me a lot of
love in their own special way and I’m very grateful for it. But
life in a Catholic boarding school is very limited and disciplined.
Unless you choose it voluntarily, it can be a bit of a nightmare.”
Emely smiled and John noticed her perfectly white teeth.

She’s so beautiful,
he thought,
and then he shook his head as if to try to get rid of such
thoughts.

They spent
another hour and a half in convivial conversation and then John
accompanied her to her room. Emely was slightly dizzy from the
wine, so she went straight to bed and closed her heavy eyelids.
After what felt like only five minutes
’
sleep, she was woken by the sharp sound of the alarm, signifying
that John was going out.

*

The delicious dinner in Emely’s pleasant
company had filled John with renewed energy. Sleep was the last
thing on his mind. He thought about Miriam, the redhead he had gone
with a week earlier. It was not often that he slept with the same
woman, but she was special, kissing him all over with her moist,
hot tongue and caressing him with her skillful fingers. The harder
he penetrated her, the louder she screamed with pleasure.

Still driving, he called her on his cell
phone, excitedly anticipating her voice. But the phone kept ringing
without an answer and he was about to cut the line.

“Hello.”

“Hi, it’s John.”

“
John … which
John?”

He was disappointed.

“Oh, John, we were together last week,
weren’t we?”

“Yes, I thought maybe we could get together
again in about half an hour.”

“Oh, sorry, I’m very busy. Got a client
coming in fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll pay three times the normal price.”

There was a short silence at the other
end.

“OK, but in an hour.”

“Great,” he said.

The tall
streetlights flew by him like sparks pointing the way into the
city. He was impatient; the belt on his pants was digging into his
stomach because of all the food and he had to undo it.

Half an hour
later he sat in one of the bars in town and ordered a double
whiskey with ice. He was thinking about the pleasant dinner with
Emely and decided to invite her again. In fact he had never had
such a relaxed and direct conversation with a woman. He felt truly
great and kept pouring the whiskey into his mouth to try and quench
the burning thirst. There were two girls there, chatting to each
other, and he kept looking toward them. What he really wanted to do
was throw a bunch of banknotes on the table and propose some sex
games, but chose to order another whiskey instead. He was feeling
so horny that if Miriam had said two hours, he wouldn’t have been
able to wait.

*

When he
appeared at the door of her apartment, she threw herself into his
arms and stuck her moist tongue into his mouth. He lifted her long
legs and wrapped them around his waist while she put her arms
around his neck. He carried her to the bedroom with ease and laid
her on the red water bed. Like a wild dog he bit into her
loose silky top, next to her navel, and pulled
it up to her neck so that her full breasts could sway freely. He
attacked them with his tongue while taking off her panties with a
single pull of his left hand.

“
You seem
very impatient today,” she whispered, and bit his ear.

He was too busy undoing his pants to be able
to answer.

“The damn button,” he said.

“Slow down, there’s no rush.”

When he
finally penetrated her, he felt great relief and groaned with
pleasure. Miriam also exclaimed, turning him on even more. Their
movements increased in pace and intensity. The sounds of the water
sloshing in the bed reverberated around the room. It seemed as if
they were on a ship in a storm. She was screaming and he was the
captain saving the ship. Unless he used all his strength, they
would sink. He moved faster and was about to save them.
Only a little bit longer.

She, on the other hand, felt nothing. John
was her fourth client that day, but she knew that she had to do her
best with every one of them if she wanted them to come back.

“You’ll become an actress,” her mother told
her once.

In a sense,
she did become an actress, she thought with bitterness while
glancing to her right, at the clock. He’d been at it for over half
an hour, whereas last time he had come much sooner. She screamed
louder and stroked his neck and shoulders in the hope that he’d
soon get off her.

But for
John
, things were not going as smoothly
as usual. Covered in sweat, he was struggling with that big storm
and was continually about to climax.
Just a little longer. Hang on in there for just a little
longer.
His thoughts began to wander.
Never before had he experienced anything like this. If he closed
his eyes, the horrible pictures of Emely in that coffin appeared in
his head. For a moment he thought that her dead body, covered in
soil, lay beneath him. He opened his eyes and drove away those dark
thoughts. He dug his fingers into Miriam’s thick red hair and
kissed her on the mouth. When he closed his eyes again, he saw
Emely with soil in her mouth and it was her he was
kissing.

Resigned to
defeat, he finally gave up and wiped the sweat off his forehead,
lying helplessly on his back. But Miriam didn
’t want to waste any time, grabbed his penis, and set out
to bring him to a climax with her mouth. She struggled for more
than half an hour, meanwhile looking at the clock at least four
times, when he finally began to writhe spasmodically.

“You seemed very horny at first, but it’s
clear you came here with your head full of problems.”

John buttoned
up his pants, still breathing deeply. “I must have had too much to
drink.” He looked around the room, thinking he must have forgotten
something, and then said, “Well, it’s best if I go
home.”

He kissed her
goodbye and threw a bunch of
fifty-dollar
bills on the bed. On the way home he berated himself.
How humiliating. It must never happen
again.

When he got back home, he quickly downed
another three whiskeys before going to bed. As he was falling
asleep, he thought once more about the nice evening with Emely and
then he was gone.

*

The following
day was successful
, businesswise. Share
prices were fluctuating like never before. John was exceptionally
excited while Emely carefully studied the various graphs. She
explained why she thought that the price of certain securities
would either rise or fall and John listened with great interest.
She also told him that the fluctuations in the price could not be
predicted.

“
The person
able to do that would be the richest person in the world. However,
there are certain rules of probability that have proved useful
through the years. There are over fifty of these rules, but they’re
only used on the stock markets in developed, democratic countries.
If you wanted to trade in the shares of
an Indian company, the rules would not apply.”

Emely showed him the charts and told him her
forecasts for some prices. John wrote it all down in a notebook in
the hope of being able to use the knowledge sometime.

“But of course you must also follow all the
current developments,” she instructed him.

Every day they first looked in various
newspapers and some specialized financial weeklies. If an article
referred to Emely’s disappearance or her company, John filtered it
out in time.

“
Every
positive report on a specific company raises the value of its
shares. Finding infected meat means a fall in the price of the
shares of all meat factories. And then a rise when the situation
settles down again. There are various financial instruments with
which one can benefit from both the falls and rises of specific
securities. So we can turn a profit by making use of options even
when the share price is falling. There are what’s known as put
options and call options ….” she told him.

John had to
take deep breaths, realizing he was overwhelmed by all the
information. He suggested they take a short break and have a
coffee, and he rushed to the kitchen, made coffee, and brought some
cookies.

They were
eating cookies and sipping coffee when the alarm went off,
announcing someone’s arrival. John got so scared that his plate of
cookies fell on the floor and the coffee spilled all over his
pants.

“Ronald!” he said through his teeth and ran
out, only to return and look at Emely with a finger to his
lips.

When she
nodded, he quickly shut the door and double
-locked it. He ran to the living room and lay on the couch
in front of the television.

“How are you?” Ronald asked him excitedly as
he walked in.

John stretched out lazily on the wide sofa as
if to indicate he had just woken up.

“Can’t complain. And you, what’s brought you
here?”

Ronald smiled and sat on the sofa
opposite.

“
Well, I got
a bit worried. You never call these days, I can’t get you at home,
and they told me at work that you quit.”

John thought
about what to say. He kept listening, hoping that Emely wouldn’t do
something stupid.