He made a careless movement with his shoulder.
‘If you hated me so much why did you sell me last?’
‘For Nikolai. He told me he would kill himself if I ever sold you.’ Even though he had tried to appear nonchalant, Nikolai’s death had affected him deeply.
‘But you still did it.’
‘I didn’t believe he had the guts to do it.’
For a moment neither of us spoke. I thought of Nikolai, gentle Nikolai. It was his job to skin the animals my father brought, but he could never do the head. He could never stomach their glassy eyes. It was always me who did the heads. And yet, he had had the courage to take his own life.
‘Why did you do it?’ I asked him. And in that one sentence was all my hurt and pain. It was about my brother. It was about my mother, my sisters, me. Why did he do what he did? Why did he destroy every single person who loved him? Why was he here alone in a cold, empty house? What good had the money done for him?
He shrugged carelessly and cracked open another seed.
I watched him put it into his mouth and chew it slowly. He did not intend to answer me. I stood slowly. As if I was an old woman. I turned away to leave and then I turned back to him.
‘What men?’
‘The men that the man who bought you sent.’
I frowned. Confused. Had Guy sent someone to get my brother for me? I turned fully toward my father.
‘When did they come?’
‘About a month after you left.’
My brain scrambled around trying to assimilate this information. Guy had sent someone and then lied about it, because he did not want me to know that my brother had hanged himself. And that day after I had given him the first envelope he had stroked my hair. There was a strange expression—a pity in his eyes. I remembered it clearly. No wonder he did not send my letters. He should have told me. It was worse like this.
I began to walk away.
‘Don’t come here again,’ my father called out to me. I heard the crack of another sunflower seed split in his mouth. The hiss as it hit the ground.
I had never intended to come back here and he knew that, but even that tiny victory he had to take away from me. He could not even allow me that small decision. I walked into the house and noticed all our chairs. My father had left them against the wall. On my brother’s chair was a pile of envelopes. I went and picked them up. The sight of them unopened and unread made me feel sick. It was too late to put things right. The two saddest words in the English dictionary. Too late. And it was too late. Death always made it too late.
Pressing my lips together I ran to the taxi. I could see Brian’s face turned in my direction. And then I heard the wind in the apple tree. It was like my mother’s whisper. And suddenly I felt as if my brother’s young body stood inside mine and ordered me to go back. To where he lay. I walked toward the side of the house. I could see another gravestone beside my mother’s grave. I went and sat beside it.
‘You should have waited for me,’ I whispered woodenly.
I took my shoes off and he was in the grass that tickled my feet. I dug a hole in the ground with my bare hands and buried the letters. Then I went back to the taxi.
‘Are you all right?’ the taxi driver asked me in Russian.
‘Take me back to the station,’ I said, too numb to cry. I sat and stared out of the window, my hands covered in the dirt from my brother’s grave. One fingernail was broken and bleeding. But I felt no pain.
Chapter 29
I changed after I went to Russia. The model’s job is essentially to encourage a lot of people to sleep with her. And the more successful she is, the more products she sells. While I posed and smiled and traveled the world pretending to be that fantasy woman—too young, too thin, too vulnerable—peddled by the fashion world to sell wonderland, I actually felt as if I was the creation of a being who had closed his eyes and dreamed up a woman who most closely resembled dust.
I had lost my entire family and both the people I loved most in my life—my brother and Guy. And the longer the desperate days went on, the more pathologically isolated and lost I felt. I knew I had to either forget Guy or die myself. It felt impossible to carry on with such intense sadness.
One day it got so bad that I found a dark scarf in the cupboard and tied it around my eyes. Immediately the feelings of loss and pain subsided. Suddenly I felt comforted in the darkness and the quiet. At peace I felt my way to my bed and sat on it. A soft contentment stole over me.
‘The best place for you is France,’ Geo said.
So I went to France.
Jacques came to the airport to meet me. He was a model too. Good-looking, charming, and gay. ‘You are to live with me and Helena,’ he said.
‘Great.’
The flat was small but cheerfully decorated. Helena turned out to be another model signed to the French arm of Models101. She was painfully thin with large, soulful brown eyes. I liked her instantly. I loved her accent and how easily she laughed.
‘We are having student food for our first meal together,’ she said with her charming accent. We sat down to spaghetti with butter and tomato purée followed by rabbit flambéed with nearly half a bottle of alcohol. I sat with them and for a while the dull ache that was Guy lay quiet.
‘Tomorrow I will take you to the Champs-Elysées,’ she said. ‘You will love it.’
And she was right: I did, until I thought I saw Guy’s broad shoulders, and leaving her, I dashed up to him and touched his arm. A stranger turned.
‘Excusez-moi, excusez-moi,’ I mumbled, and walked back to a surprised Helena.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, but the day was ruined.
*****
That Friday I was scheduled to leave for the south of France to do a bikini shot. Helena looked at me wistfully. ‘You are so lucky,’ she said.
‘Do you want to come with me? It’s a private plane so it won’t cost any more if you come with me and stay in my room,’ I offered.
> They sent a limo for us and we climbed in. There was champagne on ice. Helena opened it and we giggled all the way to the airport.
The photographer was a mischievous-looking Italian man. His eyes widened when he saw that I had brought a friend.
‘I am a playboy,’ he confessed. ‘But the word playboy means a different thing in Italy. A playboy is a charming man. Not a bastard who fucks girls and leaves them broken-hearted! No, no, the Italian playboy, he is not so rude or cruel. He falls in love with the girl. He is romantic. He can sleep with ten girls and be in love with all ten girls.’
‘Good,’ I told him, totally unimpressed.
On our first night, Helena stole out of our room, and slept with him. At breakfast he ordered an omelet with truffles for her, and after that she became invisible to him. When we were out to dinner it was sad. She was so beautiful and he was just a fat fuck. All that talk of falling in love with ten women… Just bullshit.
He breathed down my neck.
I smiled politely at him. Work the photographers, Lena.
When we went back to France, Helena was subdued. I didn’t know what to say.
*****
Another Christmas passed and I inhaled the crisp January air. I had just returned from an assignment working with Sascha Bourdin, a master photographer, in Seychelles. When I opened the door to the flat, Helena was lying on the couch. There was an empty bottle of red wine on the table. She looked wasted. Her eyes were red and swollen.
‘What’s the matter, Helena?’
‘I’m just so fucking sick of having to suck shriveled cock just to get a gig,’ she spat bitterly.
I sat beside her. ‘Helena, you are so beautiful. You don’t need to do that to get a job.’
‘Nobody told you what modeling really is, did they? Not that bitch Carangi. Here’s a free lesson for you. Modeling is very glamorous at the top, lucratively tedious at the middle, and unspeakably sleazy at the bottom. Guess where I am?’
She was so bitter and so different from how she usually was, I didn’t know how to react.
She looked at me sadly. ‘I was in Vogue once. Did you know that?’