In the Red (5 page)

T
he first time was difficult. She was nervous. He could feel it in her limbs. The waves of tremor that traveled down her body as he kissed her were too strong to be caused by pleasure alone. He hiked up her shirt and nibbled her belly. She arched her back and gasped. “Do you want to?” he asked.

She dropped her head back onto the pillow and sighed. “I want to,” she whispered at the ceiling. “I want to.”

He slipped her shirt over her head to uncover the breasts that he knew were not encased in a bra from the way they moved. They were so young and so pert, absolutely lovely handfuls that he kissed with great reverence. She let him unbutton her jeans and work her out of them, and then her socks, which he grasped at the toes and pulled off swiftly, both at the same time. She laughed. It was a bit like undressing a child. She
was
a child! She was wearing the sort of white cotton panties that come in a three-pack from one of those American stores where they sell everything. He would have to get her better underthings than that, teach her how to dress properly. He relished the smooth sound of her skin as he removed the panties from her, and felt great tenderness at her expectant nakedness. She looked as desirous as any woman he'd ever seen, but also frankly afraid.

“Don't worry,” he said. “I won't hurt you.”

She said nothing but let her legs fall open slightly wider, so he took off the last of his clothes and positioned himself above her. When he nudged his way inside, it was his turn to gasp, while she gave a cry of pain that also happened to be quite arousing.

“You are one snug little scabbard,” he said.

She was so tight it felt as if he were gashing the passage open himself. As if she were some fairy-tale nymph that he had summoned in order to split her into a woman, right then, with the insistent heat of him. He breathed to steady himself. He hovered there, halfway in. “Do you want me to go on?” he asked. Her glimmering eyes said yes.

He drove himself in. Her back arched and her body shuddered and fat tears began rolling down her red face. He paused again and was about to ask her if it hurt too much when she bucked her hips to urge him on. He made love to her smothering her cries with his kisses while she hung on to the strength in his upper arms with both hands as if she were afraid she might fall. After, he held her as a few stray tears dried on her cheeks. He expected blood on the sheets from taking such a stubborn, dense virginity, but there was none. Only a slight metallic tang on his tongue when he kissed her slit for being so good to him.

And she, not only despite the pain but also perhaps because of it, had finally discovered why she was born a girl. She would never forget what she had almost answered when he said he wouldn't hurt her. She almost answered, from some recessed place she didn't know was inside her, “You can hurt me if you want.”

It was probably something he already knew; it was probably part of what had made him pick her out of all the girls in the world.

O
nce upon a time something happened. Had it not happened, it would not be told. Far away, there dwelt a king and a queen who, to keep their only son at home with them, were always making him fine promises they never fulfilled. Among these promises was the hand of the young princess from the neighboring kingdom. One day, the prince grew tired of waiting, and decided to set off in search of her himself. He called for his horse and his retainers and rode away from the castle. Why had he not done this before? Truly there was nothing finer than this open prairie alive with delicate yellow flowers swaying in the sunny breeze. Nothing finer than this new freedom.

The prince came upon a large rose tree with outstretched branches by a silvery stream. He dismounted to stretch himself. As he cupped the glinting water from the brook in his hands to quench his thirst, he heard a small voice sing out from the tree,

The rose tree unfolded and its center parted to reveal a golden-haired maiden so beautiful that the prince was dazzled as if by the sun. She stepped out from the tree's dark gash to wash her delicate feet in the bracing flow of the cold stream. When the prince had recovered his speech, he approached her and said, Lovely maiden, if you will give me a flower from your girdle, I will give you rooms in my palace.

Impressed by the frankness of his manner and his ornate clothes, the maiden assented, giving him a tight white bud that augured an intoxicating fragrance in its full bloom. The prince asked for a kiss, promising that he would have her rose tree transplanted to his palace garden. When she gave him her darling pink mouth, he asked for the rest of her, swearing that he would make her a princess. Like most young maidens, the girl believed his flattery and gave him all that he asked for and desired. After, they fell asleep, entwined.

The prince woke before the girl, mounted his horse, and went on his way with his followers, leaving only a bunch of flowers in the lap of his sleeping conquest. Journeying on, he arrived at a golden palace studded with topazes. He asked the first man he met whether there dwelt a young princess in the palace. Yes, said the man, here dwells the Princess Lexandra, and I am the king, her father. The king was glad to extend an invitation to the prince with the view of his soliciting the hand of his daughter, for he'd heard of the prince's great wealth.

For some days, there was great merrymaking and pageantry in the palace. The prince found the princess as lovely as she was good, and willing to receive his attentions. His future father-in-law was pleased by the proceedings. The three of them set off in a chariot for the prince's kingdom, to present Lexandra to his expectant parents.

When the girl woke alone with a bunch of flowers as her only companions, she sighed and said, Dear little flowers, why did you make me sleep so long? Why is my beloved gone?

She stood up and went to the rose tree, singing out,

But the tree would not unfold itself. It shrank away from her with a hiss, answering only, Go away, undone girl, for you have sinned and can no more enter here.

The girl wept and screamed and kicked away chunks of bark from the trunk, but was met with only a hermetic silence. She thought of drowning herself in the stream. Instead she set off on the same road the prince had taken. After some distance, she came across a monk. She talked him into exchanging his rough frock and cowl for her fine robes. The girl went on her way, bundled in her new coarse brown garments. At the edge of a forest, she was sitting under a sprawling elm, taking a rest, when she saw a magnificent chariot drawn by eight white horses fast approaching. As it drew near, she recognized her faithless lover.

Good morning, young monk, the prince hailed.

Thank you, your highness.

Whence come you?

From the valley, your highness.

And what did you see there?

Nothing very extraordinary. A pretty girl weeping at the foot of a rose tree. When I asked her what pained her, she told me her story.

Repeat it to us, said the prince, attempting to hide his disquiet.

She said her home had been inside the tree, where she was loved and nurtured. Venturing out one day, she met a young man who begged for a flower from her waist, which she gave him.

The monk grew quiet, but the prince bade him to continue the story, which he did with reluctance: Then he asked for the flower of her kiss, which she granted—then the flower of her body, which she gave him also. He made many grand promises, but when the girl awoke from a long sleep, she found that the lad had deserted her. The tree would no longer admit her inside itself, saying she had sinned. For this, the young girl was weeping alone in misery.

Is that all? asked the prince.

As far as I know, for I left her crying there in the field.

To what town are you going, my young monk?

The same as your highness.

Jump into our carriage, then, said the prince, opening the door and making a place for the monk. During the whole of their journey, the prince queried for more news of the maiden, but could get nothing further out of the monk.

Arrived at the capital, the prince invited the monk to stay in the palace for the royal wedding celebration. The prince neglected the feasting, singing, and dancing in the great rooms of the palace in order to visit the monk in his chamber and speak of the rose maiden. He could not forget her, and stayed mute when the princess Lexandra asked him what was making him so melancholy and dreamy-eyed. The night before the wedding, the prince stopped off as usual at the monk's door, but when he knocked, he was answered by only a heartrending sigh. Breaking down the door, he found the poor monk swaying from the rafters, having fashioned a noose from the sheets on his bed. The prince rushed to cut him down. When the body fell heavily into his arms, he seemed to recognize its shape. He tore away at the rough cowl, and the girl's golden hair came tumbling out. He screamed when he saw her pale face, empty now of all its former bloom. He called his parents, the king and queen, crying, This is my princess! Do what you will with the other!

So the princess Lexandra was sent home with her father, with enough riches for a handsome dowry should some other prince happen along.

I
n the early morning hours between asleep and awake, Irina had flashes of what might have been memory from the time before memory, back in Romania. But these images might have also just been stories she'd been told. Or simply dreams from nowhere. The further she attempted to recess into the past, the more it was impossible to distinguish something that might have happened from something she might have been told. The further she went back, the more memory and myth were the same thing.

In the story her parents had told Irina of her adoption, her father was less enthusiastic about bringing a strange foreign child into the house than her mother was. He was a bit unsure, looking through all the portfolios of orphans. Then there she was, looking up at him from the grimy floor of some harrowing institution. The photo was in black and white so that he could see that the child's hair was dark and wavy but could not tell what color her eyes were. What struck him was how serious and intelligent she looked for such a young slip of a thing, like an adult soul trapped in a child body.

“What's her name?” he'd asked, without being able to help himself.

Her mother wasn't sure about it; she'd wanted a younger one, a baby. Irina might be more difficult. She already had a native language. She'd remember things. God knows what she might remember from that awful place. Low, narrow spaces. Running from a grasping hand. A closet. Footsteps outside the door. Waiting for the door to open, eyes wide open into pitch black, expecting the shock of light, but there was only the sound of the lock being turned from the outside. How long was she crouching among brooms and buckets in total darkness before someone let the light back in? There was a terrible thirst. But it's quite possible she doesn't remember, she is only dreaming, her eyelids fluttering without opening in the gray light of dawn.

After coming to America, she remembers things for real. For instance, being in the backseat of her American mother's trembling little car, idling while picking up her father from his job in the city. It was drizzling. She must have been eight years old. The rhythmic sound of the windshield wipers was interrupted by a definitive slam of the door, and then there was a smile for Irina as her father turned around to put his briefcase behind his seat. “Hi, honey, how was your day?” her mother asked.

Her father shrugged. “The usual.” His suit was navy that day, pin-striped. Irina inhaled the slight scent of humid wool when he asked her, making eye contact with her through the rearview mirror, “And how was school today, Irina?”

She was about to say, “The usual,” when her mother tapped her father on the side of the arm and pointed to a woman walking hurriedly across the street, shielding her hair from the light rain with a manila folder. She was pretty, though Irina could not tell you now what her face looked like—but she recognized female beauty in that brief flash of her. She had on high-heeled shoes and had a short quick stride limited by the snugness of her skirt, the vent in the back opening and closing with every step. Later in life, when she spent a lot of time buying clothes to please Andrei, Irina learned that what the woman had on was called a pencil skirt.

“Is that your new secretary?” her mother asked.

“Yes.”

“What's her name again?”

“Hannah. Hannah Love.”

When Irina's father uttered the secretary's name, her mother turned to look at him. “Really? That's really her last name?”

“Yes. Love, of all things,” he answered wistfully, with a timid relish, even—while refusing to look at his wife. Irina did not understand the texture of the silence between them at the time, but it did make her pay attention. Her mother said nothing, and clicked on her turn signal to merge back into traffic.

When Irina told Andrei this memory, she also told him that later that year, her mother had wanted to adopt another child. With enough passive resistance her father eventually dislodged this idea. Andrei made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Well, yes,” he said, “a mistress will do that.”

Irina had not meant to draw an explicit connection between the two memories, and felt a cold shock at the speed of Andrei's conclusion. “I didn't say the secretary was his mistress,” she said, gathering the sheet to cover her naked body.

“One body for another,” he said placidly. “That is the way it works. There might have been a mistress before you too.”

How did Andrei do this? This relentless disdain for people, this ability to carve them up until all that was good in them was gone. How did he have this talent for making the world ugly when he was so handsome himself, sitting naked there in the tangled bed, all golden skin and lithe musculature and iron-gray eyes? He stripped and peeled and sliced everything until loneliness bled out of every cut, and Irina could not help but watch.

“Andrei,” she said, “you're disgusting.”

He gave a small laugh then, as if she'd told a clever joke. He was impossible to offend, as if he knew everything there was to know about himself and did not mind even the muddiest parts. “What is the point of pretending that most people are not empty in the middle? I embrace my emptiness—that is how fucking honest I am,” he said.

The intensity of his gaze made Irina's sheet feel useless, as if he were looking right through it. Was that why she was with Andrei? His honesty?

“And you?” he said. “It must be you have no desire to be a good girl, else you would not be neglecting the shiny future promised by your postcard-pretty university to degrade yourself with me.”

“Sometimes that future feels like a mistake, like I've been given all that I have by mistake.”

It was not a feeling she'd told anyone about before, but she realized as soon as the words came out of her mouth that it was true, that it was something that had been following her around as long as she could remember, like her own shadow.

“If they'd left you in the orphanage, I can tell you what would have become of you,” Andrei said. “There are many such children. You would have taken everything they gave you at that place until one day you couldn't. Say, maybe when you grew some sweet little breast buds, one day they would have added a good rape to your usual beating. That day something would have broken open in you and you would have said, Fuck this. You would have run away. You would have had nowhere to go. So you would have found your way to a metro station in Bucharest. You would have slept there on the floor on pieces of cardboard with other dirty children with no place to go. Sometimes you would have all been rounded up and had your heads shaved by the charitable organizations. To rid you of lice, you see. They would have given you clothes that you would have worn to tatters until they gave you some other clothes. But even with all the grime and the baggy sweater and the short, greasy hair, you would have been too pretty to pretend you were a boy. It's that plush mouth of yours, you see; it gives you away.”

Irina looked at Andrei's face then, to see if there was mockery there. She could see none. He wasn't telling this story to torture her. He was doing something else.

There was a silence. Then Irina nodded. She wanted him to go on.

“It's hard being a girl on the street. Sometimes all being pretty gets you in life is more rape. You would have done the same thing all these children do to forget. You would have huffed paint from a plastic bag to dissolve your brain. You would have been one of the little ghost faces begging for pocket change at the hot mouth of the underground. With just a few coins, you would have had to choose between eating something and getting high.”

“By now I would be dead,” Irina said calmly.

“Maybe. Or you would have been rescued by nuns who would have taken you to a shelter to learn a trade so you could work in a factory—who knows. Or you would be a street whore with only two teeth in your head. It wouldn't matter. You would be one of those people who just don't matter.”

The cruelty in Andrei was a hummingbird. It never stopped; it had to spend all its waking time feeding or it would die. It was a fast but vulnerable meanness that Irina wanted to touch to feel its small, frenetic pulse. It was as if she had to use Andrei, the way he treated her, to work her way back down to where she really belonged, down to the darkness that could swallow her and turn her into itself without her having to do a thing. All she had to do was not fight. Darkness was easy that way.