The Last Hiccup (10 page)

Vladimir watched Usurpet during the meal. The farmer was a messy eater — he stabbed his knife haphazardly, without precision, seemingly without forethought, into the bulk or length of the side of beef loin he intended to divide. He gnashed his teeth as well. Usurpet's yellow incisors exploded up and down; the muttony mixture of meat and carrots collided about in his open mouth like a small anguished creature trying to escape an ancient Romanian killing machine. All the while, as he poked furiously at his potatoes with a three-pronged trident of a fork, Usurpet's eyes gazed soft and serene at his daughter.

His only child, with lush copper hair and gray, almost silver-tinged eyes, Karadine had yet to turn sixteen. Usurpet watched her at all times. His eyes locked onto her, they melted into her, were drawn to her as though she were the only source of light in a darkened room. Vladimir paid close attention. Usurpet's left eye, the one without the lazy inclination of the pupil, and even the eye that at times refused to function — they claimed her for his very own. Vladimir could only imagine Usurpet's pain. If only he lived in a different time, an ancient time in which Electra carnality was lawful, expected, even encouraged, it would be Usurpet's paternal responsibility to bring his daughter into womanhood. He could do so safely, serenely, gently. But this was modern Russia and Usurpet was this girl's father. That was his curse. He could never seek more than but the most chaste kiss on her forehead, never unhinge her in the manner in which kings unhinged their daughters millennia ago, never truly bury himself in her warmth. Damn any unwashed lout who even tried.

Usurpet's eyes swung toward Vladimir. It was him they impaled, him they shot straight through.
You dare not touch her. You dare not approach her virginal womanhood, you hiccupping fiend!
Vladimir looked down at his thick, bloody cut of meat. He buried his head in his plate and shoveled his food in without complaint, secretly hoping for the evening to end and for the solace of the soft and crunchy bed of hay in the barn Usurpet had promised. He'd almost finished his carrots and a good portion of his beef — Vladimir could only speculate from the degree of fatty tissue, its stringiness and prevalence of veins strewn throughout, that this particular piece came from either a cow's lower shin or the creature's neck — when he felt a strange sensation under the table. Something was crawling up his pant leg. Vladimir twitched in his seat. It might have been a spider. Or perhaps even a mouse. Vladimir shook his foot. He shook it again, vigorously this time. He was about to stand up when he looked over and saw Usurpet's wife curl her mouth into an ophidian smile.

It was the farmer's wife, the mute woman with a slightly round face and a bawdy display of bosom. Her toe, the tip of her stocking, crawled up and down Vladimir's leg like a coiled finger. It slid ever so gently along his shin bone, stopped to cup itself around the side of his calf muscle and then relinquished its hold only to slither up and down again. Vladimir glanced over at Usurpet. That pointed fork remained menacingly in his grasp; his mouth continued to wreak havoc on anything thrust within its confines. His eyes locked on Karadine's chest and how it rose and fell with each breath, how her dress clung to her like a veil, the beauty in her face as the flickering candlelight revealed its absence of shadows. The wife's toe climbed up Vladimir's leg again. It lifted past his knee and traveled toward his inner thigh.

Vladimir finished his last bite.

He took a swift gulp from his tankard of ale.

“Finished,” he said.

Usurpet looked at him. His wife and daughter stared as well. Vladimir hiccupped. Three-point-seven seconds passed and he hiccupped again.

Usurpet stood up. He shoveled his last two bites into his mouth and then stomped away from the table. From an adjacent bedroom, Usurpet fetched a pillow and two blankets. He lumbered out the front door without a word. Vladimir looked at the two women — Karadine, whose eyes never drifted from her meal, and Usurpet's wife with her coy smile. The wife leaned back in her chair. Her plentiful bosom rose toward the rafters. Vladimir wasn't sure, but he could have sworn that as she looked at him — eyes locked like a serpent's — her legs drifted ever so slightly apart. She said nothing, this middle-aged muted minx, just stared as Vladimir backed toward the door.

“Good evening to you ladies,” he said and took his leave.

It was already night outside. Vladimir found Usurpet some thirty paces ahead of him, walking toward the small white barn behind the house. He jogged to catch up and joined Usurpet just as the farmer opened the barn door. Its hinges creaked loudly. The barn smelled exactly as Vladimir had anticipated. Not pleasant but not so disagreeable that he would be unable to get a full night's sleep. There was no livestock in attendance, no stray chickens or gaunt, unkempt goats milling about. Just a slight odor to remember their presence. Usurpet lit a lantern near the front and pointed to a ladder and a loft some four meters in the air.

“You'll find the straw up there. It's quite comfortable. There's enough room for six or seven men,” he said and handed Vladimir the pillow and blankets. “Tomorrow we wake at sunrise. The fields need work. Maybe there'll be time to slaughter a pig. We'll see what the day brings.”

Usurpet turned and left. He shut the door behind him.

“Good night,” Vladimir said.

He gazed around. The light from the lantern by the door had gone out and Vladimir had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the dark. In the roof, gaps had formed alongside the individual boards that didn't match up to their adjacent planks of wood, allowing the blue moonlight to trickle through. Stygian cobwebs dangled from the rafters like a chambermaid's abandoned lacework. The entire place looked haunted, like a devilish dwelling in a storybook from Vladimir's youth. Vladimir half expected some vile and deranged quadruped to lurch out of a nearby haystack and swipe at him with a crooked dagger, half expected voices to call up from the floorboards, trying to convince him that Usurpet kept a dozen victims down below, haggard and barely alive: not victims — slaves really.
You'll be next,
they would say.
Guard yourself, Vladimir, flee this place immediately. Not tomorrow, not the next day or an hour from now. Get out now while you're still a free man, unshackled, not one of Usurpet's captive chattel.

Vladimir shook his head. The dark was playing tricks on his mind. Usurpet was a farmer, a simple workingman. Nothing more. Vladimir climbed the wooden ladder and found the bed of hay above. There was a window up in the loft. He could have closed it. He could have shut out the cold of night. But as he lay in bed and wrapped both blankets around his torso, Vladimir enjoyed looking out into the stars. The evening sky was clear. Vladimir thought of his mother to the north, his doctors Alexander Afiniganov and Sergei Namestikov to the west. Ileana, that angelic young creature from his village's schoolhouse. As he'd done so many nights while in the company of Gog, Vladimir gazed up into the stars and imagined them looking into the same night sky. He leaned back and let the hay envelop him, closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. It took no more than three minutes for Vladimir to fade peacefully into sleep.

Hours later — or was it minutes? The night sky betrayed no hint of the time — Vladimir was awoken by a sudden loud creak. Down below, moonlight shone through a crack in the barn doors. Someone had entered. Vladimir heard footsteps shuffle soft and quiet below. The floorboards shifted. Vladimir knew before he even saw her who it was. Usurpet's wife. That mute woman with the beckoning eyes. He swallowed a deep breath. She was climbing the ladder now, only a few steps away. Vladimir sat upright. He thought of the woman's plentiful cleavage, how her toes toyed with him, the pout in her eyes. How angry Usurpet would be. How his rage would boil over if he came upon them. Vladimir made up his mind before she even finished climbing the ladder. He would send her away. There were other conquests to be had in this world, notwithstanding the wife of a muscular farmer, particularly a man who owned and often vigorously operated a pitchfork.

Then a strange sight appeared. In the outline of moonlight from below popped the head of Usurpet's daughter, Karadine. Beautiful and pale in the faint moonlight, she put a single finger to her lips. “Shhh,” she said. Vladimir hiccupped. He closed his mouth to hold them at bay. Surely she couldn't expect him to suppress them entirely. Karadine climbed up onto the loft. She sat beside him, that thin finger still pressed to her mouth. Her transparent nightdress revealed tight, small nipples pointing upward on her pert breasts. Vladimir felt flush. His blood turned warm. She edged closer, brought her hand from her mouth to his.

“Shhh,” she said again. Karadine slid her fingers to the base of his jaw and slipped her warm wet tongue inside Vladimir's parted lips. She pulled her nightdress off her shoulder. Vladimir reached out and, for the first time since infanthood, he cupped a breast in his hand. It was softer than he expected, yet somehow much firmer as well. He never wanted to let go. Karadine was still kissing him — her lips sodden with wine and the taste of mint — when Vladimir hiccupped straight into her mouth. He half expected her to recoil in horror. Karadine smiled instead. She pulled herself up and slipped out of the nightdress. It descended her body slowly, as though the very fabric knew how fortunate it was to be wrapped around her unvarnished beauty; it clung to her stomach, and Karadine had to reach down, shift her hips and slip out of the nightdress entirely to reveal the taut, ivory flesh of her naked body. She fell gently to her knees and smiled again, locked eyes with Vladimir and released a girlish giggle, then leaned forward to undo his belt. Karadine pulled his pants down to his knees and prepared to climb atop him.

At that very moment, the barn door creaked again.

A look of terror shot through Karadine's eyes.

“Father!” she whispered and scrambled about in frantic search of her nightdress. In her panic, Karadine couldn't find it in the moonlight. She went to stand up when Vladimir grabbed her wrist.

“Usurpet will see you.” He motioned her down.

“He owns a shotgun,” she said. Then she scurried into the corner on her hands and knees and began burying herself in the straw. Vladimir pleaded with her. He whispered over and over again, “This isn't a good plan. You have to get down from here, you have to flee.” But the girl wouldn't listen. She kept tossing straw on top of her naked body until she was entirely concealed. Vladimir heard footsteps below, heavier this time, not like Karadine's. He looked out the window. The loft was situated too far up, the hillside next to the barn too steep to risk the jump. His pants were still down around his knees. The wood shifted on the ladder. Usurpet was climbing up, undoubtedly with his shotgun. Vladimir panicked. He reached forward, grabbed the girl's nightdress and tossed it into the center of the barn. Only as the sheer fabric sailed through the air did he realize it would have been much wiser to hurl the evidence out the open window. Vladimir reached down to pull up his pants when a face appeared at the top of the ladder.

It wasn't the farmer Usurpet.

It was his wife.

The farmer's wife sashayed up the last few steps and climbed toward Vladimir just as her daughter had done a minute ago. Only this time Vladimir was stark naked from the waist down. The wife's mouth opened in shock. She looked at Vladimir's erect penis and then up at his eyes and back down again. Vladimir glanced to his side. The haystack hadn't moved. It refused to even shift with the girl's breath. He looked back at the farmer's wife. Her expression of shock had been replaced by one of warm-blooded glee. She was wearing a nightdress as well, this one short and red. It dangled around her hips to reveal nothing on her bottom. She crawled forward and put her finger to her mouth just as Karadine had done. Only this time, Vladimir wasn't sure whether to propel a scream of joy or bellow in revolt. The wife launched herself upon him. Vladimir hiccupped. The haystack remained motionless. The farmer's wife was positioning herself. She squatted, her hips wide, the mass of her buttocks double the size of Vladimir's own. He put his hands up to push her away, but his resistance came too late.