Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

Well, but when you jumped up suddenly, Gavein thought, the blood left your head…

Gavein received no job offers in the mail that morning, so he went to the Office of Labor. There they told him that he needed to go looking himself. They suggested that as a black he could obtain a managerial position. At the moment, however, there were no openings, so his choice was between unemployment payments—twenty-five packets a day—and temporary work. He decided on the first alternative, since he was not short of money yet and wanted to have plenty of free time when Ra Mahleiné arrived.

With great care he cleaned the apartment, preparing it for that moment.

They brought her in the middle of the night, in a prison van without windows. A few minutes before it arrived, a laconic telephone call notified him. Gavein went outside.

Two women guards led her from the van. A sack, with the black numbers 077-12-747, had been put over her head. The reek of urine came from inside the dark van, where there were other shapes, lying down or bent over. Gavein, shocked, began to run to her, but one of the guards, a thickset woman with a broad, freckled face, stopped him with a baton.

“Don’t make things difficult,” she said. “We have to follow procedure.”

“What is it, Ross? The guy’s pining for her?” Another guard leaned out from the driver’s seat. He had an enormous round head, a brutal face, and ham hands covered with red hair. “You need help?”

“No,” answered Ross. “He’s quieted down.”

Gavein was speechless: this was beyond imagining.

“The quarters where she’ll be kept?” Ross asked.

Gavein pointed at the entrance.

“That’s the main entrance,” she said. “Whites have to take the back door.”

“We have no other entrance here.”

At the sound of his voice, the form in the sack began to tremble.

“You!” shouted the woman guard, seizing Ra Mahleiné by the shoulder. “Stand still, or I’ll give you something to remember us by! She had to have a black man, didn’t she, the whore…”

“Touch her one more time, and I file a written complaint,” Gavein roared. “That is my property, and I won’t have it damaged!” He had managed to clear his head. And he calculated right—his threat calmed the redheaded woman guard, and the big head of the driver withdrew without a word into the van. The wrapped figure shook and made hollow sounds that were more like giggling than crying.

They took her up the stairs, gripping her arms but not twisting them. In Gavein’s apartment it was quite warm, and only now did he realize how bad his new possession smelled. The guards wore rubber gloves; they held her tightly, as if reluctant to release her.

“Please sign here,” Ross said, holding out a blue form and a pen.

“I’ll sign after I see,” he said evenly. “I need to make sure that the contents agree with the writing on the package.”

“How can it not agree? It agrees.” Ross made a gesture of impatience.

“You always transport them in such conditions?”

“The conditions? Better than they deserve.”

“They aren’t allowed to use the toilet at stops?” The room stank.

“No point. They’re always going. If it’s not one, it’s another. No point in making stops. We used to have a bucket, but even then they would shit and piss all over the floor.”

It made no sense to argue.

“And what about the hood?” he asked.

“We’re not supposed to take it off.”

“Very well…” He pretended to hesitate. “I’ll call the port, talk to Anabel. She’s your superior, yes? I’ll tell her there was trouble with the delivery, with the guards.” He fully intended to do this.

Ross sighed and turned to the other one. “Linda, do what he says.”

Linda removed the sack from the head of the woman. Gavein froze. Ra Mahleiné had a split and puffy lip. There was a crust of dried blood below her nose. She had a black eye. He hardly recognized her.

“Ah,” he gasped. “What did you do to her?!”

“She gave us trouble,” explained Ross. “We had to put her in line, more than once.”

“I’ll see that you lose your jobs,” he fumed. “I’ll call Anabel.” Though he doubted he would have that much influence.

The guards said nothing, but Ra Mahleiné herself intervened: “There’s no need for that, Gavein. They treated me all right. This was the procedure, nothing more. They didn’t torture me. They didn’t knock out any teeth.”

The faces of the guards relaxed. They knew their power. They still held Ra Mahleiné by the arms, and she was shaking more than ever.

“I can’t stand,” she said. “Please, put me on the ground.”

They let her down on the cold floor.

“So? Do you take her as she is?” Ross was arrogant again.

Again she held out the blue form.

Gavein signed, confirming that he had received one Magdalena Throzz. The guards saluted, and before long he could hear the grumble of the departing van.

Ra Mahleiné didn’t have the strength to sit up. He tried to lift her, wanting to hold her.

“No, not now… Not this way,” she said. “First get these foul rags off me, then unwrap… I know how I smell. Do that first.”

“I’ll give you a bath. A bath will be good.”

“Get this filth off me. Everything hurts.”

“I can pull it over your head.” She wore a dress without sleeves, made of coarse gray denim.

“No.” She was losing her temper. “It hurts too much, and the dress is worthless anyway smeared with shit.”

Gavein found scissors and delicately, along a seam, cut the reeking fabric. He went slowly, so as not to cut her.

“Quickly, damn it! I can’t take this.” She was peremptory, so unlike the woman he remembered.

He stuffed the dress into a plastic garbage bag. Ra Mahleiné had on gray underwear and a quarantine shirt. Her arms were twisted, tied together behind her back, above the elbows. He put her down and cut the knots. It wasn’t easy; the straps had sunken into swollen flesh. “The swine! What did they do to you? Why?”

“The guards were all right. They only smacked me a few times when I shouted. It was the supervisor, that bitch… She was the one who had me braided.”

“What?”

“Tied.”

“Which supervisor?”

“The black one, in glasses, Anabel.”

“I know her.”

“She tortured me, mentally. Several times a day she would call me to the interrogation room and order me to strip, saying that you were sitting there and wanted that. But you were there the first time—only then, yes?—and didn’t want me to strip.” She became anxious. She tried to rub her numb hands. He helped her.

“On the twenty-fifth.”

“That’s right. I knew at once that it was you. Later it was just her, and I kept saying it was against the rules, so she gave up about the stripping. But in revenge for that she put me in the cell. I protested, I screamed. Then they beat me, that Ross and some others. Out of the whole transport, only you came for your white wife. She had me tied as a farewell present and kicked me and kicked me. She had it in for me, that black bitch. The shirt and panties too, tear them off.” She said all this in a toneless monologue as Gavein tried to free her elbows from the disgusting cloth.

In the bathroom, the water roared in the tub. The stink was overpowering.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t make a complaint about the guards beating me. That was a trap. They would have carried me back, for medical treatment, and I wouldn’t have got out of there alive.”

“I never imagined our meeting like this,” he said, massaging her nerveless hands. She twisted and hissed when the circulation returned to them.