Tom Knox: The Babylon rite

Monroy kissed Jessica’s neck once more; his hand was inside her shirt. She sighed voluptuously.

Adam closed his eyes to the burning images, the image of a white naked body opened and bloody. He wanted to kill something. Drink the blood. Drink it all up. He was glad he was shackled to the chair. Monroy’s voice was a mellifluous bass tone.

‘McLintock fooled me. He unearthed the drug, said he’d found it somewhere in the Andes. He gave me a considerable supply which I in turn gave to my men — as an incitement. We planted seeds to grow bushes, but they all failed: this is a very delicate plant. Of course Archibald promised more in time, and I believed him. I planned my exportation to America, I planned how I would market this marvellous drug to all the fat greedy stoner American kids. I would get them hooked first, then introduce stronger supplies.’ His hand stroked Jessica’s cheek, tenderly. ‘You see, as I say, at the right subdued dose, ulluchu merely induces extreme and blissful sadism, and of course intense addiction. Perfect for creating junkies — and perfect for creating loyal cartelistas, loyally violent foot-soldiers. I tried it on my men first. It worked. My cartel flourished; we began to threaten the Zetas, because with the ulluchu we were even crueller than them, and so the Zetas grew scared. But then, one of my closest men betrayed me, for money: he told the Zetas of McLintock, the man in Scotland, they went after him — stole his notebooks, and, I presume, most of the ulluchu he had kept for his own purposes. Since then they have been trying to prevent me retracing the McLintock trail, following the death of Archibald himself. Though clever old Archibald must have hidden a truly secret stash, to smooth the path of his own death, at Rosslyn Chapel…’

Nina was moaning, writhing. Monroy smiled.

‘But then again, we all want to die, don’t we? Isn’t this the beauty of what you are feeling, Adam, Nina? To give in at last, to succumb to that dark, voluptuous urge, to throw yourself under the subway train, to drive into the oncoming truck.’

He was groping Jessica, she opened her legs, letting him touch her, her eyes were shut and she was sighing heavily, her throat pulsing, and then she spoke:

‘-me-’

‘Of course.’

‘Untie me.’

He knelt and unshackled her. She reached for him. Monroy motioned to the guards: leave. The sentries nodded and quit the room.

Nina said, ‘Me too.’

Monroy laughed. ‘Please. You can drown in each other’s blood when I am done. Here. Jessica. Beautiful, dying American blonde, Jessica Silverton, strip.’

She was pulling off her clothes.

‘And show me.’

She pulled down her jeans. She was naked. Desperate. Shivering. He laughed. ‘You are so very blonde — even here.’ He pulled her to the sofa, ‘Let them watch. I can cut you up as we fuck, like the Moche. Do you want that? Do you want me to cut you up, Jessie? It will make you come, you will have no face, it will be ribbons, it will be good, you will be beautiful, you are dying, it doesn’t matter, you want to die, don’t you? You want me to cut you, to shred your pale American skin, to-‘

He was smiling. His neck was smiling. Adam stared. The blur of images in his mind was bewildering. El Santo was smiling twice.

Then he saw. Adam realized what had happened through the leering and erotic desolation in his mind. Jessica had produced a razor from her mouth and she had cut Carlos Chicomeca Monroy clean across the throat.

Tepito

Monroy was dying. The blood erupted from the vivid grin in his neck, spurting, joyous and plentiful. He barely had time to moan, to whisper; he clutched his fingers to the gaping wound but the blood kept spraying between them in merry little fountains: quite irrepressible.

Seconds later he slumped forward, like a post-coital lover, on to Jessica, she was naked and drenched in his blood. She stared at him with a languish of affection or desire; then she pushed his twitching, trembling body on to the floor.

Adam fought his own arousal; he couldn’t work out whether it was Monroy’s death or Jessica’s nudity that made him so desirous; it was both, they were blurring. He needed an end to this: his own end.

An enormous crashing noise came from beyond the room. Jessica was standing, and rifling Monroy’s pockets, taking the gun from his holster; but Adam was looking through the noble windows at the large courtyard: the noise came from the steel gates — they appeared to have been crushed by an armoured car.

Men were vaulting from the vehicle, crouching, firing rifles and revolvers in all directions. Military yet criminal: the Zetas, for sure. Again Adam swooned at the eroticism of the idea: he could walk into those bullets, he could just do it, pirouetting like a dancer as the bullets impacted his body, spinning him…

‘Adam — wake up! Adam!’

Blooded, wearing Monroy’s jacket, and nothing else, Jessica was standing over him, holding his handcuffs in her hand, and the keys in the other. ‘I unlocked you. Get up, get up.’

He looked at the soft hair at the top of her legs, the red blood that had caught in her pubic hair, tiny red berries in a golden bramble. He wanted to lick the hair, lick her flesh where the blood was, taste it Nina pulled him to his feet. Jessica handed him a gun, Monroy’s gun, and slapped him twice on the face. Very hard. ‘You have about five hours to last, then I believe the ulluchu will wear off, you just need to get through the next five hours- ’

Nina seemed more self-possessed than Adam. Why? Because she had attempted suicide a year ago? Was her thanatos, her death wish, already exhausted? His mind spun into turmoil once more.

Nina grabbed Jessica. ‘Tell us!’

Jessica smiled and frowned. White-skinned and almost nude and smeared with blood, her eyes were resigned and bright, obscurely serene. A marble statue scrawled with red graffiti, in the misty dawn. Still standing.

‘I am dying. I thought if I could kill Monroy I would do one single good thing, something very good at the end of my life. That’s why I didn’t bargain with the Zetas: I wanted access to Monroy. El Santo. Something that would make my death worthwhile. He was too clever, he was going to use this drug to destroy my country, he had to be stopped. Your lives are just two lives… I am sorry, he was going to kill so many, if I could kill him first then my short life would mean something — I wouldn’t die flailing, and futile, like my father; but the time is coming anyway, I am dying, it is good, not sad, not sad at all, it is good…’ She was laughing. Yet not hysterical. But laughing.

‘But-’

‘I condemned you both! Your deaths were inevitable, no? Yet now here you are alive! So what are you waiting for? Run — go now — you have a chance, remember the Moche, they took this drug all their lives, at enormous doses, yet they lived on.’

‘How?’

The noise of shooting in the courtyard was intense. The unnerving jangle of shattered glass, and the cackling rattle of automatic gunfire, men shouting, coming nearer.

‘There is a chance. Eros and thanatos.’ Jessica closed her eyes, and swayed, ‘Eros and thanatos are entwined, that’s what Freud said. The libido and the death wish cannot exist without the other, even though they are in opposition. And maybe sometimes love defeats death, maybe God is death plus love. I do not know. Maybe. But why not try? Go now. Go now and make love…’

Adam watched: stunned and intoxicated. Jessica went to the sofa and lay down in the red puddles of Monroy’s blood. A door slammed open: he swivelled. It was the guard, Monroy’s bodyguard, saying ‘Senor Monroy, capitano’ — then the guard gazed in bewilderment at the scene.