We Mate in the Dark Read online

  Flowers and books on the Ramblas on San Jordi’s day, tapas, her smoking a joint, and her suitcase emptied across the floor, clothes spread akimbo. She walked with a manly gait, which made me laugh a little and just served to annoy her as she accused me of similar ungainliness. Falling in love as we argued about small, petty things, unable to talk about the future.

  Taking separate cabs to separate destinations in early morning and time, again, to part and go our own ways.

  London.

  She had been threatening to cut her hair, shorten her unwieldy mass of medusa-like curls and I had protested.

  “It’s done.”

  A text message as I waited for her flight to arrive.

  She walked down the arrivals hall with a head full of hair, with a mischievous smile across her lips, enjoying the joke she’d played on me.

  Wearing a long, white billowing skirt all the way down to her ankles. Raising the skirt as I drove down the motorway from the airport and slipping her panties down so I could finger her. My hand soaking wet from her secretions.

  Wanting to fuck her to death as the only way to keep her, to split her open with my love -or was it my unchecked lust - , to iinvade her with such force we would be forever embedded within each other. Feeling harder than ever when inside her, so much at home.

  Again, counting the hours to the inevitable separation. Beginning to think the unthinkable and envisage another world in which we could be together. Despite the obstacles. Age. Country. Past and present lives. The world and what it might say and think.

  A beach, where we basked in the sun and she was the only woman who would not go topless.

  My hand collecting her pee as she squatted over the toilet seat and the heat from her innards marked me forever. Wishing the day would come when she tied me down and scarred me with her showers in an indelible fashion, aching to receive her unholy offering in such shocking fashion. Memories are made of this.

  The last time: by a well-known lake, as she told me of her childhood. Coming up against the local marathon on our way to the airport and diverting onto unknown roads and not even having the proper time to say good-bye, to kiss her, to smell her, touch her.

  A final night during which our bodies were ever in contact, seeking each other’s warmth and contact. A mosquito in the room keeping us awake.

  Flowers for her birthday.

  More flowers for Valentine’s day.

  Telephone calls after telephone calls, as if there was always something more to say. The endless, anguished e-mails. The not knowing. Realising that words are never enough. Feeling her slowly, inexorably move away, changing wavelength, tempted by new adventures, undermined by the days we could not spend together, the nights we could not share, the lives we would not have.

  The train will soon reach the Mongolian border. It’s been a long journey for which I never had a map, and I feel nauseous. In a shower of smoke, we draw into the station. There are soldiers on both sides of the track, in grey uniforms, patrolling the bleak no man’s land, weapons against their flanks.

  There is a dim light.

  I make my way down the empty wagon, leaving my useless baggage in the compartment; they wouldn’t let keep it anyway: just warm clothes, her letters, a CD she’d burned with photos of her, punctuating our story.

  I walk down the platform.

  They are ready for the exchange.

  A man in uniform nods as he sees me approach. I stop. Wait. There is movement behind him in the fog, and shapes emerge. She is escorted by two tall, stiff soldiers. She looks gaunt and tired, dark lines under her eyes, her long curls tangled. But as beautiful as ever. My heart skips a beat. My gut tightens. Everything comes back and I find it difficult to stop the tears.

  The trio stand to attention.

  I begin my steps towards them. One of them taps on her shoulder and Giulia raises her face and begins her journey towards freedom. She sees me but doesn’t allow herself to react. She passes me, ever so closely; I am tempted to say something but I know it would be pointless, and even attempting to touch her, brush her cheek gently with a final act of infinite tenderness might provoke some trigger happy soldier. The distance between us widens with every step I make towards Mongolia proper and the end of the no man’s land.

  The exchange is over.

  Now my winter begins.

  A Price To Pay

  I was looking for a missing girl and the trail was growing cold.

  Drunks ambled up and down the wide pavements of O’Connell Street clutching cans of beer or empty bottles of cheap whatever as the curtain of night fell slowly over the autumnal Dublin weather. Only, it wasn’t autumn.

  It was New Year’s Eve.

  I crossed the river and made my way towards Trinity College.

  The University grounds were only partly open, of course, but an acquaintance of an acquaintance had hinted I might touch base there with Declan Connolly, a local snitch who might have some useful information. The Book of Kells exhibition was closed for the holidays, but earlier in the day I’d managed a visit to the Writers’ Museum and paid my mental tribute to Irish literature. But now it was time for business again. In my business, there was no such thing as holidays.

  Connolly was standing on the corner, close to the spot where the tourist buses disgorged their hordes of digital camera-waving visitors on the obligatory stop on the see Dublin in 20 stops circuit. Most were still sober as the Guinness Brewery came later in the itinerary.

  Slung over his shoulder was a cavernous Strand Bookshop tote bag. I somehow guessed there were no books in it. Call it gut instinct. Under his black leather ankle-length coat, he was similarly dressed in black slacks and black cashmere long-armed sweater.

  We nodded to each other, acknowledging recognition and walked on to the nearest pub.

  Money changed hands. We drank.

  Within minutes I knew the trail I had been following for the past weeks had grown cold as ice. The Italian girl he’d caught a sight of the month before - a student hard up on her luck who was stripping to meet ends meet in the top rooms of local disreputable clubs, and was on the slippery, druggy slide to oblivion - was not the one I sought. Connolly’s blonde was called Grazia, or at any rate that’s the name he had been given, but more importantly she was blonde.

  “Maybe she’s dyed her hair?” I suggested to him, “and is using another name?” I was clutching at straws.

  Connolly roared with laughter, and thin pearls of beer spluttered in a falling arc from his open mouth all the way across to the shoulder of my jacket. He was a fair few inches taller than me.

  “The gal was stripping, man. I can assure you she was a natural blonde.” He winked at me, mischief illuminating his ruddy face. “This Italian wench stood out, you know. Most working girls like to shave down there, you see. She didn’t. She was different...”

  I was about to interject, but he silenced me.

  “Nah, I can tell when a woman colours her pubes, man. Looks damn unnatural, if you see what I mean.” He gulped down another sip of beer. “And I had a front seat view. Real blonde. You can tell. No doubt about it. Absolutely.”

  He put his glass down on the bar counter and smiled. No doubt recalling the proximity of Grazia’s pudenda. Waxing rhapsodic as he attempted to explain his certainty. “The colour of the skin around, the inner folds of the cunt a touch darker, the curls, the hair, it all sort of conjugates, you just sort of know when part of it is not real...”

  A thin veil of hopelessness began rippling down my mind. I was getting nowhere fast.

  “Hmmm” I muttered under my breath. My glass of orange juice was empty.

  Connolly jettisoned his obscene memories and gave me a sharp look.

  “Sorry, man.”

  “So?” I said.

  “Maybe, just maybe...”

  “Yes?”

  His eyes swept the bar area, checking out the other punters. He lowered his voice.

  “Maybe you could go and see the Morgan...”
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br />   “Morgan? Who’s he when he’s at home?” I asked.

  “It’s a she,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  “If anyone knows anything that’s going on, she would.”

  “Sounds good enough to me,” I said.

  “But there could be a price to pay...”

  “My client is wealthy,” I answered. “How do I find her?”

  There was this restaurant on Temple Bar. Maybe one of the waitresses on the nightshift there in the downstairs room might know. She was Morgan’s sister, it seemed. There was another sister but she hadn’t been seen for some weeks. Three sisters in all, it appeared. Morgan, Bab and Macha. Almost sounded like a trio out of a Russian play.

  I paid for the drinks and crossed the road and made my way towards Temple Bar. It would be midnight in an hour or so, and the streets were fat with crowds, milling shiftlessly, ambling, parading up and down with drinks in tow as the New Year approached. It was getting colder and I turned my coat’s collar up.

  A doorway beckoned. Peering through semidarkness a flight of wooden stairs. On the first floor to the right, a pub’s saloon. Quiet noises of glasses clinking on counters and serious drinkers mumbling against a background of muffled traditional music. A welcoming night shrouded the deep room. And the prevalent smell of stale beer. Not my favourite fragrance.

  Beyond the landing, the stairs continued. Further upwards, cushioned on either side by yellowing posters advertising Guinness or forgotten Irish beaches that even desperate tourists might have abandoned. Finally, I reached the top.

  A sliver of light beneath a closed door. I moved towards it. Listened. Utter silence on the other side of the door. I knocked. There was no response. Standing there, I felt a deep chill in the air. Knocked again.

  This time there was a rustle of fabric beyond the closed door, then steps. The door opened.

  “Yes?”

  It was a woman’s voice, not that I could see a damn thing in the heavy penumbra beyond the threshold. There was a soft country lilt in her voice.

  “I’m seeking Morgan,” I said.

  At first she didn’t react to my question.

  I waited. There was no point repeating myself.

  The darkness lifted in part. I began to see her eyes. Green. Catlike. Piercing.

  “Which one?” she finally answered.

  “Just Morgan,” I said.

  ‘There are three of us,” she answered, as if surprised I was not aware of the fact.

  “I don’t know,” I indicated. “I was sent here. I was only given her name, as the sister who could assist me. I have some questions I need answered.”

  “Ah...” She paused. “In that case it’s my other sister you need.”

  Her eyes backed off towards the furthest end of the dark room.

  And another set of eyes neared. As green and piercing. It might as well have been the same woman.

  “And what is it you wished to know?” Her voice was sharper, sustained by quiet anger.

  By now I was becoming used to the darkness inside the dank room. I could distinguish her shape. Tall, wild-haired, a velvet robe of indeterminate colour ending at her feet.

  “There’s a young girl. Italian. She’s been seen around here. I seek her.”

  The woman sighed.

  “Then you need our other sister,” she said.

  Ah, I was now getting the whole deck of sister cards! But she did not retreat, standing her ground. I waited for her to say more. But she failed to do so. Just quizzically peering at me through the silence.

  “So, is your third sister here?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she replied.

  “Should I wait for her?” I enquired.

  “That’s entirely up to you,” the first sister said, her green eyes now shining at me, beside her sister, like parallel sets of beacons in the Dublin night.

  “In that case, I will wait,” I said to them.

  A set of eyes moved sideways and quiet steps soft shuffled across the room, and a pale light came on as she flipped a switch on the wall to our left. A meagre 30 watt bulb illuminated the room. It was larger than I imagined.

  An anemic light revealed the room in which we all stood, there was a sudden movement in the corner of my eye. I just caught the swift movement of a small black bird racing across the room just below the ceiling. A crow. But when I looked for it again, it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe a trick of the pale light.

  The two sisters were clothed in identical garb. Heavy, green cloaks almost like monks’ habits? . Tall, slender but what stood out most was the burning fire of their red hair, myriads of untamed curls clustered together as well as exploding like a galaxy of circular stars in every possible direction, as if neither head had ever felt the caress or the pull of a comb or a hairbrush. For a brief moment, I thought of Medusa and the representations of the twisted divinity I had come across in books and paintings. And indeed, standing there in sepulchral silence, gazing at me, they were truly in the image of goddesses. Imperious. Come back to Earth. Or banished from the heavens.

  Their gaze was unstinting. Full of anger. Like goddesses of war.

  One of them spoke.

  “There will be a price to pay,” she said. I no longer knew which one had uttered the words.

  There was a strange coldness, almost indifference in her tone of voice.

  “I know,” I replied. “It’s OK with me, absolutely.”

  They both smiled.

  The sounds of bacchanalian oceans of drunkards parading up and down Temple Bar outside began to fade in the distance, as if banished in time.

  “So be it,” the two sisters whispered in unison.

  They moved towards me.

  A different sort of music replaced the confused, modern sounds of New Year’s Eve. Ancient, hypnotic, eternal, curiously faraway in time and space.

  They were now so close to me that I could smell their breath.

  Sweet, strong, intoxicating.

  In one rapid movement, they both shed their cloaks and stood naked, facing me.

  I drank in the regal pallor of their skin, the jutting angles of their breasts, the way their lower deltas shared the same shade of fire that adorned their heads.

  It was beauty untamed. Consuming. Dangerous.

  “Pay the price’” one of them said.

  I undressed.

  They converged toward me in unison and smothered me in their embrace.

  When I awoke in the bleak cold morning of New Year’s Day, the memories of the past night made me retch, as if the abominable obscenities of what we had all done had literally sucked my soul out and spat it back into my body forever deformed, tainted.

  As we had fiercely fucked, as they shared me between themselves, they had feasted on my flesh, my secretions, my emotions and left me empty, an abandoned shell of a man.

  Goose bumps spread across my naked flesh. My penis looked even more shrivelled than ever, the surface of my skin a terrible shade of grey. I looked around for the clothes I has shed and dressed quickly, as if ashamed of my pitiful nudity, as if I had been used.

  I remembered little of our lovemaking, save the tangle of limbs, the gaping of openings, the hunger of their kisses, but what I did clearly recall were the strange dreams I had travelled through shortly after between the repeated fucks, images of bloody battlefields, of despair and pestilence, war and pain. And surveying our intimate pornography in motion was the bird, the crow, flying high above the battleground as if giving us his blessing, his damnation, his approval.

  I shook the torpor out of my limbs as I tied my shoelaces and straightened my crumpled trousers.

  Checked my wallet. Everything was there; nothing had been taken from me. So why did I feel I was now less of a man?

  And I remembered about the Italian girl I was seeking.

  Paused for a moment’s thought.

  Looked around the now empty room as a thin sliver of daytime peered hesitantly through the crack of a shuttered window in the far corner
. There was a sheet of paper lying on the dirty wooden floor. The same filthy floor I had spent hours writhing on, rolling around, thrusting, being spread and flayed by the women’s sexual greed.

  I walked over.

  It was just a crumpled sheet with rough drawings of an eel, a wolf and a cow. A curious trinity of animals. A child’s bestiary? I peered at the page again. Turned it round.

  On the back of the sketch, just a few words.

  A name, an address.

  The gift of Morgan.

  I made my way to the door and the stairs and holding unsteadily on to the rail stepped hesitantly down the stairs to the Temple Bar pavement.

  The smell of booze lingered in the air. Here and there, men with bloodshot eyes stumbled along the road, sometimes accompanied by hiccuping young women with short skirts hiked even higher, vulgar, hungover. This was the landscape after the bacchanalia. But did I look any better, I wondered.

  I finally found an available cab near the river. Negotiated a rate, as the address I had been given was way out of town.

  He dropped me off just a hundred yards away.

  The actual farmhouse was empty, but steps in the mud led to an outer building, a sort of barn.

  The two men were still sleeping. Snoring loudly, empty bottles strewn across the ground, their attire in disarray.

  In one corner, a a naked woman, hands cuffed to a low beam, hung like a puppet. As if crucified.

  I tiptoed silently towards her.

  Dark blood still dripped down to the straw-covered floor of the barn from between her legs.

  I pushed her chin up gently so that I could see her face.

  Her eyes were open.

  She was dead.

  Her blonde hair hung limply, the ebony roots clearly showing through her parting.

  It was the Italian girl.

  I had no need to check her genitalia to confirm Connolly’s lies. Not that I would have seen much due to the horrendous mutilations she had suffered there.

  I felt sick to the core.

  I closed her eyes as delicately as I could. There were dried tears on her cheeks, like tiny diamonds now shining in the emerging light of the day through the open door of the barn.