Marek Huberath - Nest of Worlds

“You thought we would jump into bed, you poor idiot?”

“Something like that.”

“I’ve forgotten how. So many years. I’m so old…”

“You’re my contemporary now,” he chided. “And I don’t feel old.”

He threw what remained of her blouse and panties into the garbage bag.

“The panties we can save. It’s only piss; it’ll wash out. My own piss, that’s all right.”

“The bra is fairly clean, only full of sweat.” He put it on the kitchen counter.

“My hands hurt so much. As if they’re breaking. I can’t take it.”

“Can you stand up?”

“No. I lay on cold metal for more than a day, and that was after Anabel was finished with me.”

“The eye, she did that too?” he asked, putting his arms around her. She was tall, had always been slim but now was skinny. It felt good to hold her.

“That too. Before she knocked me down.”

Ra Mahleiné was covered with bruises and scrapes. When he set her in the tub, she began to hiss with pain.

“It burns. Aah… The water’s good… My hands… Over there, is that a mirror?” She squinted, like a nearsighted person trying to focus. “No, it’s a good thing I can’t see myself. I must look like a starving nag.”

“I’ll buy you glasses.”

“The black bitch stepped on them. I told her you would buy me glasses better than the ones she had on her nose.”

“That’s when she hit you?”

“That was during. I hope I didn’t get an infection from all the filth in that damned cell,” she said, changing the subject. “On the floor there was a layer of it… diarrhea.”

“Those scum.”

“They call this the final stage of resocialization. So the whites will understand they have no social category here. I never saw my passport.”

“How is that?”

“The passports of whites are kept by the police, so they won’t lose them. In Davabel the whites are like children.”

He stopped listening to her chatter. Perhaps she was nervous because of her nakedness. He hadn’t seen her for a month, but she hadn’t seen him—for four years. He ran a careful eye over her skin. Bruises everywhere, but there seemed to be no bones broken.

“I’ve aged, haven’t I?”

“A little…” He couldn’t say she hadn’t. Ra Mahleiné looked dreadful, but it was the quarantine that had done that. Women like her aged slowly and kept their looks.

“You’re lying. Tell the truth,” she insisted. “Though… you won’t. This was the stupidest idea in my life.”

“Traveling with compensation?”

“Of course. I had no idea. Brainless nanny goat.”

She lay in the water, her head rested on an edge, her legs stuck out at the other end—too long for the tub. He had washed her hair; it was darker when wet. The water was brown, the suds disappearing.

“My smelly little pigsty. I’ll let out the water and fill the tub again, all right?” he said with a smile, pulling the stopper. “As ripe as a zoo animal in its cage. A little furry zoo creature sitting in a hole of a dead tree and looking out at me, while I can hardly breathe the air. That’s you now. And you have the look, too, of a frightened animal.”

“They kept me there like an animal, so I stink like one. They figured you wouldn’t want such a pigsty.”

“Not want my little pigsty? You must be joking. But two tubs of water may not be enough for her.”

The water made an energetic whirlpool as it drained.

“I droop, don’t I?” she said, looking at him with suspicion. “Like spaniel ears. They were always too small.”

“Those?” He looked at her breasts. “No, they look as they did a month ago.”

“You bastard.” She laughed, for the first time, and splashed water at him.

“Four years is not such a long time,” he protested, wiping his face. His eyes burned.

“But I’m a skeleton. They didn’t feed us.”

“You lost weight,” he admitted. “The main thing is not to stoop. Then you’ll be all right. You didn’t stoop before. Fortunately one shoulder is higher. I’ll tie a broomstick to your shoulders if you don’t obey.”

“The stoop is because of my scoliosis.”

“The compensation was an idea of genius. We’ll be together now, forever.”

“We’ll see.”

The water began to fill the tub.

“And have I changed?” he asked.

“A little. You’ve become strange, Gavein. You look too young. I forgot what you were like. But I’ll get accustomed to you again.”

“And that’s good, isn’t it? You should be happy.”

“And you? Your wife got old. Now you’ll start running after young women…”

“Me? That’s absurd.”

“Oh, Gavein, Gavein, how I regretted my decision. You have no conception of how hard those years were.”

She stopped, and in Gavein’s mind arose the hated image of the pilot of the seaplane stretching in the warm rays of the setting sun. As the ocean’s lazy waves lapped at the ship, the pilot looked seductively down on Ra Mahleiné, whose resistance was weakening, weakening. Gavein’s imaginary rival was about to give a horrible cry of triumph over chastity undone, when Ra Mahleiné said:

“I need to sleep.”

She was extremely weak. She lay motionless. He had to towel her, massage her. Many of the scabs came off. That was good; it meant her cuts were not infected. He cleaned away the pus.

“As long as I didn’t get an infection on my bottom. That would have been the worst. I had to lie in it. I wet my pants but couldn’t do the other.”

He nodded. “In a week, you’ll be able to move your bowels.”

The second round of bathwater was enough. It didn’t look like muddy slop with suds.

Suddenly Ra Mahleiné dropped her head, closed her eyes. Frightened, he put an ear to her chest: her heart was beating. She had fainted. He let the water out of the tub and spread a shower curtain on the mattress where he slept. He wrapped her hair in a small towel and lifted her from the tub. An unconscious body is heavier. It slips in your arms, is difficult to hold.

He brought her around, rubbing and drying her with the towel. When she opened her eyes, he gave her some drops for her heart. That medicine was Ra Mahleiné’s first meal in freedom. He dried her hair thoroughly.

“After this I won’t comb myself, for the rest of my life,” she said. “I’ll shave my head to the skull. The bastards did that to me once. Gavein, cover me up, please. It shames me to lie like this in front of you.”

“I love looking at you like this,” he said. “Surely you can remember that.” He added, with a twinkle, “But really, you’ve become such a witch. Maybe you always were.” Which was a complete lie. An angel can’t be a witch.

He removed the plastic and tucked her gently in, under the blanket and counterpane. He saw a row of scars on her upper back, mostly small.

“They whipped you?” he asked.

“No. That was something else. At one point they removed… you know, I had things on my shoulders and neck. There was too much ultraviolet, they said, a danger of cancer. It doesn’t look too bad. But many of the women were carved up worse. As punishment. They overlooked me somehow. A white woman doctor removed all my moles. She did a good job, cosmetically.”

She looked around.

“There’s no furniture!”

“On the other hand, we have a telephone, and I’ll be buying a car soon.”

“I used to dream of our home in Davabel. There would be a big cupboard in the kitchen, with doors that had little windows, and a spice cabinet. When I still dreamed.”

“For the time being you’ll have to make do with a rug and an inflatable mattress for two. And we’ll have a problem getting clothes for you. I threw out those filthy rags, and there’s nothing else.”