Bruce Sterling - Holy Fire

The romance between Bruno and Therese had been very simple. He’d met her in Marseilles when she was twenty. Bruno was always beautifully dressed, reeking of mystery, and entirely menacing. For Therese this combination was catnip. Bruno liked her because she was young, and cute, and no trouble for him, and pretty much ready for anything, and grateful for favors. Sometimes he bought her nice presents: shoes, gowns, sexy underwear, little holidays on the Côte d’Azur. He gave her contact with a very, very vivid side of life.

Once she had gone into the rag trade, Bruno became even more useful. Sometimes she had trouble from buyers and suppliers. If he happened to feel like it, Bruno would show up from out of town and have a little word with the offending parties. This never failed to effect radical improvement.

Sometimes Bruno would slap her around a little. This was only to be expected from a man who was perfectly capable of putting her enemies into cement. Not that Bruno had actually murdered anyone for Therese. If he had, he wouldn’t have told her about it anyway. “It isn’t that he hits you,” Therese explained. “He hits you so you do what he wants. He’s the man, he’s the boss, he’s the top. Sometimes he makes you do what he wants. That’s what he is.”

“This is seriously bad,” Maya said.

Therese tossed her head irritably. “Did you think every criminal in Europe was like your loser boyfriend Jimmy the pickpocket? Bruno is a soldier! He’s a boss.”

“What happened to Jimmy?” Maya said. “I haven’t thought about him in such a long time.”

“Oh, they caught him,” Therese said. “Jimmy was always stupid. They arrested him. They did a laundry job on his head.”

“Oh, no,” Maya said. “Poor Ulrich. Did it change his behavior much?”

“Totally,” Therese said gloomily. “He used to steal purses from tourist women. Now he fills purses with useful goods and gives them to tourist women when they’re not looking.”

“Well, it’s a good sign that they let him keep his anarchist political convictions.”

“Oh, the polity, they fuss so much about behavior mod,” said Therese. “They catch some nasty creep like Jimmy who ought to be dropped off a bridge, and every civil libertarian in the world starts whining on the net. Really, bourgeois people have no sense at all.”

“So what’s the plan with Bruno?”

“We’re going to drive into the Black Forest tomorrow. He’s going to kill himself. I’m going to bury him in a secret place where no one will ever know. That’s our bargain. That’s our secret and private arrangement.”

“Young lady, you’re not supposed to bury any lovers until you are very, very old.”

“I’ve always been so precocious, it always gets me into trouble.” Therese sighed. “Will you come with me tomorrow? Please?”

“Look, you can’t ask that of me. If you think I can handle a sick and desperate man who’s bent on suicide, well—” She hesitated. “Well, actually, I’d probably be better at that than anyone else you know.”

“You’re so good to me, Maya. I knew you would help me. I knew somehow, the moment that I saw you, that you were someone very special.” Therese stood up. She was much happier now. “I have to go back and sleep with Bruno now. I promised I’d stay all night.”

“A promise is a promise, I guess.”

Therese looked around the deserted bar. “It’s late, it’s so strange and lonely here.… Do you want to come in and sleep with him with me?”

“I might not mind it all that much really,” Maya said, “but I hardly see how that’s going to help.”

She met Bruno for the first time at ten in the morning. She was astonished by Bruno’s uncanny resemblance to a twentieth-century matinee idol. The twentieth-century look mostly came from his bad health and the crudity of his makeup. Bruno had a broad wavy-haired rock-solid head with the greasy pores typical of heavy male steroid treatment. He wore a lacquered straw hat and a thin-lapelled dark suit and crisply creased tailored slacks and a shirt without a cellphone.

Bruno didn’t bluster or threaten. He swaggered a bit, but he lacked the smooth enormous muscle of people truly devoted to muscle. Bruno was terrifying because he truly looked willing and able to kill people, without hesitation and without regret afterward. Bruno looked truly feral. He looked old and beaten, too, like a very sick wolf. He looked as if he had chewed off his own leg and eaten it and enjoyed the flavor.

For a man driving to his own execution, Bruno was remarkably cheerful and philosophical. She’d never met anyone bent on death who seemed so truly pleased about the prospect. He kept making little wisecracks to Therese, in some criminal south-of-France argot that baffled Maya’s wig translator. Quite often he used obscenities. This was the sort of language no one used nowadays. Obscenity had simply gone out of use, vanished from human intercourse, gone like the common cold. But Bruno spoke obscenely and with relish. This verbal transgression would always upset Therese no end. She never failed to scold Bruno while showing unmistakable signs of arousal. It was like a table-tennis game between the two of them, and appeared to be their version of courting behavior.

The three of them ate in the car. The condemned man ate a hearty lunch. They finally drove up into some dense patch of forest north of the Czech border. This didn’t seem to be the actual Black Forest, but this seemed to matter not at all. The trees were leafing out and there was a warm spring breeze. The car—it belonged to Emil’s ex-wife—protested bitterly at being ordered into the shrubbery at the side of the road. But there they left it.

Bruno retrieved a folding shovel and a heavy valise from the boot of the car. Then they set out on foot. Bruno knew very well where he was going.

They emerged in a small hillside meadow. Bruno opened the sharp ceramic shovel, hung his hat and jacket neatly from a branch, and began digging. He removed a wide circle of sod and carefully set it aside. As he dug, he began reminiscing.

“He says this is an old secret resting place,” Therese translated. “Romany people used it a long time ago. Later, some other people put some troublemakers here.”

Bruno wiped sweat from his brow. Suddenly he spoke up in English. “A man,” he pronounced, “does his own work in this life.” He looked at Maya and smiled winningly.

Bruno dug until he hurt too much to dig anymore. He sat down ashen faced and puffed at a gunmetal inhaler. Therese dug for him. When she got too tired, Maya had a turn. She’d dressed in flats and pants and a light sweater, not too bad for gravedigging. The only fashion touch was the furoshiki. She’d set it for olive and khaki. Something not too alluring.

They followed Bruno’s direction. The result was not a normal grave. It was a conical pit with a round rim the size of a manhole cover. Bruno tossed out a few final wedges of dirt, and then explained to them the theory and craft of concealed burials.

The crux of the matter was rapid and complete decomposition. Truly high-speed decomposition caused the corpse to bloat rapidly. This side effect would disturb the surface of the grave. Therefore it was necessary to saw through the ribs up both sides, and to ventilate the intestines.

Bruno opened his valise. He had thoughtfully brought all the proper equipment. It had seen plenty of use. He had an old-fashioned ceramic bone saw, battery driven. He also had some kind of horse-doctoring veterinary hypodermic, with a great spike of a steel needle that could have stitched sheet aluminum.

Bruno now disrobed. He was covered from neck to groin in tattoos. Snakes. Roses. Handguns. Mottos in gutter Français. At least Therese had never lacked for things to read.