‘I didn’t do nothing,’ Borka muttered with a surly curl of his lips.
‘Damn right. And you won’t either.’
‘What’s the big deal anyway? I was only going to fuck her mouth or her ass. Who’s gonna know?’
The look Timur leveled at Borka was fierce and poisonous. ‘If you want to fuck something, pick up a dirty whore tomorrow night.’
Borka clenched his jaw in mute anger.
Timur turned toward me. I was frightened of him. He had the eyes of a man who knows no limits. They glittered dangerously the way a sharp knife does. ‘Get in the car. Now,’ he snarled.
I obeyed immediately. I was sore all over as I stumbled to the car. When we were in and the doors were locked, Timur twisted around to face me. ‘I give you freedom and what do you do?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said through my swelling lip.
‘Do you want to be tied up and gagged from now on?’
I shook my head slowly.
‘Another stunt like that and you will be tied up and gagged and put in the boot of the car. Are we clear?’
I nodded.
He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to me. ‘Wipe your mouth.’
I took the handkerchief and wiped my mouth. He immediately grasped my chin with his fingers. His skin was extraordinarily soft. He turned my face to either side to assess the damage. Expressionlessly he released my chin. In the rear-view mirror Borka was watching me.
‘Show me your hands,’ he ordered.
I held my hands out. They were scraped and bleeding. He twisted my wrists and saw that my hands were scraped right down to my elbows.
Cursing, he reached down and pulled my skirt right up to my panties. I was so ashamed—no one had seen my thighs for as long as I could remember, and I wanted to cover them with my hands, but I didn’t. I knew he would be furious. One of my knees was bleeding and there were scratches and cuts on my shins. Timur cursed again and turned around. I pulled my dress back over my knees.
After that no more was said. Borka drove silently until we arrived at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. There were chickens in coops at the side of the house and a barn a few yards away. I could see a well, too.
‘Get out,’ Timur barked.
I got out and walked with them toward the house. The air was cold and I had a sick, horrible feeling in my stomach.
A woman opened the door to us. She was wearing a headscarf and a dirty apron. She looked like a farmer. She must have been about forty years old. She had big, muscular arms and grit-filled nails. Her face was broad, her complexion florid, and her eyes were the color of dirty dishwater. For a flash of a second they registered surprise and something else—something I had only ever encountered in men’s eyes. Then she concealed it and focused on my lip.
‘What the hell happened?’ she asked. Her accent was thick and unrefined.
‘Ask Borka,’ Timur snapped rudely, and brushing past her went into the darkened interior of the house.
She did not look at Borka who was standing behind me. Instead she turned her ruddy face toward me and smiled. It was an unpleasant smile. ‘Your sisters never gave so much trouble.’
‘My sisters?’ I gasped. In my chest my heart leapt at the possibility, no matter how remote, that I would see my lost family again. Hope swirled in my head making me feel almost dizzy.
She narrowed her eyes and folded her thick, manly arms around her midriff. ‘Yes, all your sisters passed through here.’
‘Where are they now?’
For a few seconds she did not answer me, simply looked at me speculatively. Finally, she moved aside and said, ‘Come in. We’ll talk inside.’
Immediately, eagerly, I stepped into her house. Inside it was gloomy and stank of grease and cooking and a heady mixture of herbs. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw that I was in an ordinary Russian farmhouse, one where life revolved around the stove. As my eyes swung around the poor furniture they fell upon a large metal cage with straw at the bottom of it.
Just as suddenly as I had seen it I was shoved roughly to the ground. Before I could react, I was pulled hard and pushed into the cage. It was only about four feet long by about five feet high so I could neither stand nor lie in it. I crouched against the bars while she padlocked the door. I did not scream or shout. I knew it was no use.
Timur sat at the rough wooden table eating bread and cheese. He ate quickly, his eyes resting on the woman.
‘You’ll have to clean up her wounds,’ he told her.
‘Don’t worry. They are superficial. They’ll heal on their own. I will keep her until she’s broken in.’
‘You know the rules,’ he said. There was warning in his eyes.
‘Yeah, she better be as good as new,’ Borka added threateningly, cutting himself a slice of cheese and stuffing it into a hunk of bread.
After they had eaten they left and the woman ignored my attempts to talk to her or ask her about my sisters.
When night fell, she lit the lamps and opened the door to what must have been her larder. A waft of cold air pungent with the smell of herbs drifted into the house. She came out again with some vegetables and made a stew. The smell of gristle frying made my mouth water. I had not eaten for a whole day. She passed a steaming bowl to me through a small door in the cage.
I was starving so I ate it quickly. She must have drugged my food for I started to feel so sleepy I could not keep my eyes open.
And then I remembered no more.
Chapter 6
I woke up groggy and still inside the cage, but I was naked. Some foul-smelling green medicine had been applied to my cuts and wounds. When I saw her watching me I instinctively tried to hide myself with my hands.
‘Do you think you have anything I haven’t seen before?’ she taunted and laughed so hard her whole body shook.
I knew she would not hurt me, at least, not physically. The men had seemed determined to keep me in as good a condition as they could. I was worth a lot of money to them. When I said I needed to go to the toilet she heaved herself off the table where she had been peeling onions, grabbed a bowl and was about to thrust it into the cage.
‘I can’t go in a bowl,’ I protested, shocked.
‘Then you will soil yo
urself.’ Her voice was hard. She pushed the bowl through the little door my food had come in through.
So I went in the bowl. It was the most humiliating thing that had happened to me. She stood over me with her arms folded and watched while I squatted over the bowl and pissed slowly in spurts. It was very difficult to do without wetting myself, or the straw that I would have to sleep on. Some urine splashed on my legs.
‘Can I have some toilet paper to clean myself with, please?’ I pleaded.
‘Toilet paper is only for when you shit,’ she said rudely, and carried the bowl out of the house.
Even though the stove was on I was so cold my fingers and toes were icy. I covered myself with some of the straw and waited for her to come back.
It was midday when her footsteps returned. She opened the door and came in. Her hands were red. She set a bucket of water on the floor. The galoshes gleamed in the dim interior of her house. She ladled a mug full of water from the pail, rinsed her mouth out and spat the water into the slop bucket. She ladled another mug of water and slowly poured it through the top of the cage. I caught it in my mouth. Like an animal.
‘Can I have some water to wash myself, please?’
‘I didn’t bring it to waste on you,’ she sneered.
Not only was I not allowed to wash, I was forced to defecate in a bowl and clean myself with a bit of newspaper while she stood watching. I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to humiliate me. She was trying to make me believe that I was no better than an animal. She was trying to break me. And maybe she did.
When it was dark she lit the lamps and began to cook. She made an omelet in the long-handled pan. After she had eaten she poured some of the leftover casserole into a bowl and brought it to me.
I stared at it in shock. Disgusting woman. It was the same bowl I had pissed in and shat in. I pushed it out of the cage, away from me. I was hungry, but I refused to eat it. She took it away wordlessly and poured it into the slop pail where I had seen her throw away last night’s vegetable peels.