Anders Roslund: Box 21 aka The Vault

Mum turned to her while she said this and she looked stern, as she always did when she was serious. Lydia wanted to ask why, but held back, as it was clear that her mum didn’t want to say any more.

They were led out of the main building and on to a path running alongside a high fence with barbed wire on top. Behind it white dogs were barking and throwing themselves against the wire mesh. She saw two faces watching them from a barred window and they waved and called out to her.

‘Hey, sweetie! Up here, darling!’

She marched on, looking straight ahead. It wasn’t far to the next building.

Mum was carrying the bag in her arms and Lydia reached out for her hand. It wasn’t there. Another jab in her tummy, like on the bus when it bumped over the edges of potholes. They went up a staircase with harsh green walls; the colour almost hurt her eyes, so she kept looking at Mum’s back instead, putting her hand on it as they walked upstairs.

They stopped on the third-floor landing, followed the guard who pointed down a long, dark corridor that smelt stale and of bleach at the same time. Every door they passed had a bin with TBC written on it. She looked in one that wasn’t properly closed and saw tissues with blood clots.

This place was called the hospital wing, and the room they entered had eight beds in a row along one wall. The men’s heads had been shaved, and they all looked pale and tired. Some were lying down. Some were wrapped in a sheet and had been propped up in a chair and a few were standing talking by a window. Dad was sitting on the bed at the far end.

Lydia stole a look at him and thought that he looked smaller than before.

He hadn’t spotted her. Not yet.

She had to wait for quite a long time.

Mum went to him first. And they spoke to each other, argued about something, not that she could hear what they said. Lydia kept watching him, and after a while she realised that she didn’t feel ashamed, not any more. She thought about the last year, about her schoolmates’ taunts that didn’t hurt any more, not when she stood here, so close to him. That sick feeling inside her and the pain in her tummy had gone away too.

Later, when she hugged him, he coughed, but she didn’t leave the room like she had promised her mum. She just held him tighter and wouldn’t let go.

She hated him; he should be coming home with them.

The flat was silent.

She hadn’t thought of him for a long time, or indeed of anything that belonged to that time back then. And now she was sitting there thinking about it. She thought about that last hug in the Lukuskele prison ward when she was ten years old and he had looked so small and coughed so his whole body rattled and Mum had given him a tissue, which filled with blood clots before he scrunched it up and put it in one of the big bins in the corridor.

It was the last time, but she hadn’t realised it then. Perhaps she still hadn’t taken it in.

Lydia took a deep breath.

She shook off the feeling of sadness, smiled at the large mirror in the hall. It was still early in the morning.

A knock on the door. She still had the hairbrush in her hand. How long had she been standing there? She glanced in the mirror again, her head a little to the side. Another smile, she wanted to look good. She was wearing the black dress; the dark material contrasted with her pale skin. She looked at her body. It was still a young woman’s. She hadn’t changed much since she came here, not on the outside.

She waited.

Another knock, harder this time. She should answer it. She put the hairbrush on the shelf by the mirror and took a few steps towards the door.

Her name was Lydia Grajauskas and she used to sing her name; she sang it now to the tune of a children’s song she remembered from school in Klaipeda. The chorus had three repeated lines and she sang Lydia Grajauskas for each line. She had always done this when she felt nervous.

Lydia Grajauskas

Lydia Grajauskas

Lydia Grajauskas

She stopped singing when she reached the door. He was there on the other side. If she put her ear to the door, she could quickly pick up the sound of his breathing. She knew its rhythm so well. It was him. They had met often, was it eight or maybe nine times? His smell was special. She could sense it already, the smell of him, like one of her dad’s workmates from that filthy room with the big sofa where she had hidden when she was a girl. Almost like them, a mixture of tobacco and aftershave and sweat that seeped through the closely woven material of his jacket.

He knocked for the third time.

She let the door swing open. There he was. Dark suit, light blue shirt, gold tiepin. His fair hair was short and he was suntanned. It had been raining steadily since the middle of May, but he still had a late-summer glow, as he always did. She smiled at him, the same smile as at the mirror a moment earlier; she knew he liked her to smile.

They didn’t touch each other.

Not yet.

He came in from the stairs, into the flat. She looked quickly at the hallstand and nodded at one of the coat hangers, as if to say let me take your jacket and hang it up for you. He shook his head. She guessed he was about ten years older than herself, maybe thirty-something, but it was only a guess.

She felt like singing again.

Lydia Grajauskas. Lydia Grajauskas. Lydia Grajauskas .

He raised his hand, as he always did, touched her black dress lightly, slowly sliding his fingers along the shoulder straps, across her breasts, always on top of the material.

She kept very still.

His hand traced a wide circle over one breast, then towards the other. She hardly breathed. Her chest had to be still, she must smile, must stay still and smile.

She kept smiling when he spat.

They were standing close together then; it was more like he let it go rather than spat. He didn’t usually spit in her face, instead the spittle landed in front of her feet in their high-heeled black shoes.

He thought that she was too slow.

He pointed.

One straight finger, pointing down.

Lydia knelt, still smiling – she knew he liked that. Sometimes he smiled as well. Her knees clicked a little as she pressed her legs together and went down on all fours, her face looking ahead. She asked him to forgive her. That was what he wanted. He had learnt how to say it in Russian and insisted on her getting it right, making sure she used the right words. She lowered herself in stages by bending her arms until she was almost folded double and her nose touched the floor. It was cold against her tongue as she licked the gob into her mouth, swallowed it.

Then she got up, like he wanted her to, closed her eyes and, as usual, tried to guess which cheek.

Right, probably the right one this time.

Left.

He hit her with the flat of his hand, which covered her whole cheek. It didn’t hurt that much. His arm came right round and the slap left a pink mark, but mostly it just burned. It stung only if you wanted it to sting.

He pointed again.

Lydia knew what she had to do, so the pointing wasn’t necessary, but he did it anyway, just waved his finger in her direction, wanted her to walk into the bedroom, to stand in front of the red bedspread. She went in front of him. Her movements had to be slow, and as she walked she had to absently stroke her bottom and breathe heavily. That was what he wanted. She could feel his eyes on her back, burning, his eyes already abusing her body.

She stopped by the bed.

She undid the dress, three buttons at the back, rolled it down over her hips and let it fall to the floor.

Her bra and panties were black lace, just as he wanted and he had brought them personally, making her promise to use them only for him. Only him.