‘I thought you might like it. You look the type.’
I stared at her in surprise. She was courting me. ‘Thank you, for thinking of me.’
‘So don’t waste it. There is no one else here to drink it.’
I drank it slowly. I had a plan and it did not involve getting drunk and passing out. But as the meal wore on I began to feel more and more sleepy. Eventually, I looked at her. ‘You’ve drugged me, haven’t you?’
‘Of course. I couldn’t take the chance you would go wandering off on your own. Tomorrow the men will come for you and it will be more than my life’s worth if they do not find you here.’
She came around my side in time to catch my falling body.
Chapter 8
The next day Timur and Borka came for me. When we were seated in the car I turned back to look at her standing in the doorway of her farmhouse. She did not wave, and I watched her get smaller and smaller. I would never forget her, or the humiliation she had put me through.
‘How come she gets to have her ugly cunt sucked and I don’t get anything?’ Borka asked. He sounded like a child, petulant and whiny.
‘There’s more chance of you getting me to suck your stinking dick than there is of it getting in her mouth. Now can you shut the fuck up and drive? I want to get to Helga’s before dark.’
Timur switched on the radio and I turned my face toward the window and watched the white landscape zoom by.
Hours later we arrived at another farmhouse. It was much bigger than Zara’s. There were trucks and cars outside and lights in the windows. Another peasant woman opened the door to us and led me to a room. The windows were barred. There was a bed with a dirty sheet pulled across it. I sat on it and waited. It wasn’t long before a man came. He had greasy hair.
‘I am a doctor,’ he announced.
He was not what I imagined a doctor to look like. Nevertheless he carried a little black bag with him.
‘Take off your underwear and lie on the bed.’
I did as I was told. I bent my knees and opened my legs when he told me to and I closed my eyes at the feel of his cold instruments.
‘Good,’ he pronounced. ‘You may dress again.’
I pulled my underwear on without meeting his eyes.
He brought an instrument that looked like a gun toward me. ‘Lift your left arm.’ When I lifted my left arm he held the instrument toward my skin and pressed the lever. Something shot into my arm.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a contraceptive that’s good for two years and it’s also a chip.’
‘A chip?’
‘If you run they will always be able to locate your exact position.’
‘I won’t run,’ I said. My voice was dull with despair.
‘Yeah,’ he said tiredly.
I ran my finger along the almost unnoticeable bump under my skin.
‘Don’t worry, it will be all right.’
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t say anything. What did he expect? That I would forgive him? That I would think he was a nice guy doing an awful job? No, I didn’t absolve him. Give me Timur any day. At least he didn’t pretend. At least with him it was like meeting a tiger in a jungle. Your bad luck. He is hungry; you’re meat. I set my eyes strongly once on his weak, greedy face and then I looked to the dirty concrete floor.
His hand came out and squeezed my shoulder. ‘Well, I’ll be off then,’ he said uncomfortably, and he was gone.
Afterwards I was taken to a bare room with a camera. I was told to wear a black bikini and a pair of red high heels. A girl about my age came and put cosmetics on me and did my hair. She took it out of its plaits, wet it and blow-dried it into large waves that she artfully arranged around my shoulders.
‘Your hair is beautiful,’ she said.
I already knew that. Zara used to run her fingers through it. ‘Gold,’ she used to whisper. ‘Gold.’
‘Do you want to see yourself?’ she asked.
I nodded dumbly. She held out a small oval mirror.
I looked different.
‘Why am I wearing make-up?’ I asked her.
‘Because you are going to be photographed.’
‘Why do they need my photo?’
She looked at me strangely, curiously. ‘For the auction.’
‘Auction? What auction?’
She glanced at the door. ‘The photo will be sent to very rich men all over the world, and they will use it to decide whether they want to bid on you,’ she said in a lowered voice.
I was told to stand on an X marked on the floor. I stood where I was told to and stared at the camera. The camera flashed about twenty times and then I was led back to the room with the dirty sheet.
*****
The next day we were back in the car. The Volga sped through country lanes. On either side were snowy fields and spare dwellings. There was no further conversation between the men, although Borka occasionally looked in the rear-view mirror at me. The dullness was unremitting. I slept and awoke to the same scenery.
Until the road signs indicated that we had reached Moscow.
Timur turned to me. ‘You have a twin brother?’ he asked emotionlessly.
‘Yes,’ I said, nodding eagerly. Hoping for any scraps of information or news.
‘You love him?’
My nod was a lot more measured and slower. I knew what was coming.
‘You try to run or do anything, and when I say anything, I mean actually anything at all that causes your owner to raise a complaint, and…’ He slid his index finger across his throat. ‘You will never see your brother alive again.’ He paused to let his words and menacing gesture sink in. ‘Do you understand?’
I looked into his cold, cold eyes and I knew that he was not lying. Fear pierced my heart like a shard of glass. He really would get into his car and drive all the way to my village and slice my brother’s throat just to keep his word. I nodded vigorously. He moved close to my ear. ‘And just for fun I’ll let Borka rape him first.’
I swallowed hard. ‘You won’t have any trouble from me,’ I promised.
He carried on staring at me.
‘Ever.’
‘Good. Now get into the boot.’
The rest of the journey I remember the way you remember a dream. Haphazard. Smells, sounds, a glimpse of something foreign. Half the time my head was covered, but always I could feel my mother’s lace against my skin and it comforted me.
I heard them mention Germany and Holland, but I never saw anything. Always I was inside covered vehicles. Inside car boots, inside covered lorries. I knew I was crossing borders. Sometimes I was drugged. I went in and out of consciousness. We might have crossed the sea, I don’t know, but I remember being very sick, vomiting. Someone cursing at me. A woman helping me clean up. Another girl with large, frightened eyes looking at me. She had long dark hair. Maybe I was always drugged.
I think I even flew once. And then finally I woke up in the back seat of a car. Timur and Borka were long gone. The man driving had narrow shoulders and brown hair. It was dark outside, but I could see that the scenery was very different. I knew I was in a different country.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
The man met my eyes in the rear-view mirror. ‘It’s a surprise,’ he said.
Chapter 9
He had answered me in Eng
lish! I was in an English speaking country. Only my mother had ever spoken to us in English. And only when my father was not around. It was already dark, with a full moon low in the sky.
‘What’s the time, please?’ I asked.
‘Six p.m.’
We traveled in silence for about another hour before the car arrived at a set of huge ornate black iron gates. I had never seen anything so magnificent. They must have stood ten feet tall. The driver got out of the car and pushed the gates open. He drove through them and we traveled on a long dark road through what seemed like fields and woodland. Though there were lampposts on either side of the road, none of them were lit. The road, too¸ was full of potholes and made for a bumpy ride. We passed through a half-ruined stone archgate. Moss clung to it like a straggly beard. Suddenly the front of the castle came into view.
It was the kind of castle that could have been the inspiration for the darkest fairy tales my mother had read to me. It lay like an old man of the hill, moonlight shining on its craggy, gray face. The once proud turrets were crumbling and the ancient walls were almost totally overgrown with creepers, the windows dark and gaping. The heavy grandeur, the massiveness of the structure and its general air of disrepair made it appear gloomy and forbidding.
Surrounding it were tall, ancient trees that seemed to guard the ragged outline like an army defending its citadels. The dark green coverage enhanced the castle’s sense of eeriness. Even the stones seemed to echo with terrible sadness. It looked…haunted. I felt a shiver run up my spine.
Finally we arrived at the entrance. Creepers curled around the top of it.
The driver opened his door and, locking me inside, walked up the stone steps to the great door made of ancient oak, studded with metal and held with heavy black scrolled hinges. He lifted the rusty doorknocker and rapped it hard. For a while there was no response but just as he was about to lift the doorknocker again, there was the sound of someone unlatching the door from the inside. One half of the door creaked and groaned like a banshee as it swung open.