The Disappeared (7 page)

You have washed yourself in the sink, again and again. Your shirt is wet and clings to your collarbone. Your breasts are sore from those hateful hands, and you flinch as you fasten the bra. A wave of nausea sends you back to the bathroom, and then you finish dressing and sit for a long time on the bed, wishing to die.

You again recall your mother in her corner, fixing you with guilty eyes, as though it were her fault he died of a heart attack on your fourteenth birthday. Between that time and Cambridge you hardly grew. Life retreated to some recess deep inside you. You were not to be touched, not to be opened, like some present beneath the Christmas tree, waiting and waiting until Mick arrived and set the tree aflame. But you worked. Nobody worked as you did, at school, at Newnham College, at the College of Law, at the desk where you sat each evening studying accountancy. You would be the angel daughter, shining into the place of darkness where he lay. One after another the certificates came; one after another the promotions. And not even jealous Mick could put a stop to it. But now this! You go tight and hard inside. The tears slide from your cheeks and your hands tremble. Hatred twists and turns like a knife in your stomach.

You have been sitting on the bed in that posture for half an hour when the door opens, admitting a bent old man with pale skin, white hair and electric blue eyes. He is carrying a tray, which he puts down beside you on the berth. On it you see a roll of dark bread, some slices of sausage, an apple and a can of coca cola.

‘Can you take me to the captain?'

‘No speak English,' the man replies. ‘Sorry much.'

He looks at you. His bright blue eyes are prominent and staring, as though painted above his cheeks by Lucian Freud. But his manner is soft. You sense that he pities you, as he has pitied all the girls to whom he has come with food after their ordeal. You begin to cry again. That it has come to this! Now you have only one thing for which to live, and that is revenge.

You get up from the bed and duck quickly past him, seizing the handle of the door. He reaches out for you but he is not quick enough. You are in a tunnel between cabins. At the end is a flight of metal steps, twisting upwards out of sight. You hear voices somewhere above you, and the sound of seagulls. You are running towards the steps, but you slip on the wet floor beneath you and the old man is close behind. He is shouting in a language that sounds like Russian. Now you have a hand on the stair-rail, you are pulling yourself up, two steps at a time. He stretches out to you, he can reach your ankle, but he hesitates to touch and withdraws his hand. You turn to see him crumpled, almost penitent, at the foot of the stair.

You look around. You are on a white metal deck with capstans and hawsers. It is cold. The grey light of morning is stretched like a membrane across the motionless sea, and on the far horizon is land, your land, the home that made you and which you may never see again. You are on the stern of the ship: the propellers churn the sea beneath you and above is the white superstructure of the bridge.

From this angle the ship seems like a doll's house, with vistas into the secret life of adults, as imagined by a child. On each side of you, raised onto the deck by metal casings, are doors, which open and close as though at the touch of some giant finger. In one direction they reveal an officer in a white canvas uniform rigidly seated at a desk, in the other a neat workshop with tools fixed on brackets to the wall as though placed there on display. Above the first door is a wooden plaque with the words
Kabina Bosman
in plain black letters. Above the other door, written directly onto the white metal, are some scribbled words that look like Polish.

There are steps connecting the deck to the bridge, and two men have descended them, gripping the gunwale as they advance towards you. One is young, Asian looking, scantily dressed in jeans and cotton shirt and with short black hair. The other is more Russian in appearance, square faced and burly, with a smudged white sailor's uniform from which his shapeless pink hands emerge like glue from a tube. You back up against the central capstan shouting ‘keep away'.

Fastened to the deck beside you is a metal box, and on an impulse you kick open the lid. Inside are hooks, a hammer and an electric drill. You pick up the hammer and wave it before you. The young one frowns, while the other laughs and comes slowly forward. His face is large and sheer like a fortress, with arrow slits for eyes and a great wide drawbridge of a mouth. You decide to hit him between the eyes, but your hand trembles as you raise the hammer and he easily knocks it away. You scream as he grips your wrists, and your legs collapse beneath you. You lie crumpled and sobbing on the deck, the cold metal stinging your thighs as he holds your arms above your head.

‘It's OK, man, leave her.'

It is the young one who speaks. He has a Yorkshire accent and he moves towards you with an air of concern. The other loosens his grip and your hands fall to cover your face. The sobbing will not stop, but comes from deep inside you, from a place beyond the reach of your will. The young man reaches down to touch your arm, and you start away from him.

‘Don't touch me,' you say, and between your fingers you see him hesitate. His face is regular, with nut-coloured skin, clear brown narrow eyes and prominent cheekbones. From such a face the Yorkshire accent seems like the work of a ventriloquist.

‘We inna going to hurt you,' he says. ‘We just need you back below. Sod it, man, you'll catch cold up here.'

‘Leave me alone,' you say, and he looks at his companion, who laughs, a contemptuous, grating sound that is clearly his only conversation.

For a long time you stay where you have fallen, your skirt ruffled onto your thighs, which are raw from the cold metal of the deck. You are propped against a capstan, your head sunk and your arms beside you, like a broken doll. The men have withdrawn a little, and are looking at you. You try to believe that this is not happening to you, that you will soon wake to your bedroom in Camden Town, with the view of chimney pots and old slate roofs, and
The Wind in the Willows
on the bedside table.

As a child you often prayed, not just ‘Our Father' and ‘Hail Mary', but the lists of your daily needs for God's perusal. In Church, side by side with Father, you had decanted your soul into the care of angels, and you knew that he did the same. God must be true if Father believed in him, and so you believed in him too. But Father died regardless, and all prayers died along with him. You think of the unanswered prayers of recent times – prayers from people rattling to their deaths in cattle trucks, from peasants starved in their villages, from the emaciated slaves in the labour camps. Dr Goldmark, a wizened Hungarian Jew who was your history tutor, had asked you to study these things, always ending his tutorials with the words ‘you see, Miss Markham, that there is no God. But concerning the Devil I am not so sure.' What purpose, after the futile prayers of a million dying children, to report to the Almighty a mere case of rape? You shudder and lie still.

The air is damp; there is a smell of diesel oil. You hear the ostinato throb of the propellers, dragging the shrieking seagulls with the ship. In the distance a spring mist has arisen, hiding the land. Your world is slipping inexorably away from you, and like the slaves on the slave-ships, as they lost sight of Africa, you cry aloud in desolation. You do not resist the men as they lift you. You drag your feet along the deck and down the steps to your prison cell, and when they push you through the door you grasp weakly for the berth and pull yourself on to it. The tray of food is still there. The trapped air smells of paint and grease and vomit. The large man turns his armoured face in your direction, smiles horribly, and leaves with a chuckle. The young man stands by your berth. You try to meet his stare, but are overcome by shame, and hide your face from him. He pulls your hands away and looks at you.

‘What's your name?' he asks.

You shake your head in silence.

‘Look, I inna gonna hurt you, man. You be nice to me and I'll be nice to you, OK? Like, is there anything you want right now? Frinstance.'

You open your eyes and look at his face. You want to hate him as you hated the others, but something – a stirring of dependence, perhaps, a longing for protection at all costs, maybe just that little flicker of vulnerability that you read in his blinking eyes – stands in the way.

‘Yes, you can go away. But first please open that porthole.'

He is still holding your hands away from your face. But with a sudden movement of recoil he drops them and goes quickly through the door into the corridor. After a moment he returns with a monkey wrench, and applies it to the batten of the porthole. It comes open with a crack, and flakes of white paint fall onto the berth. He brushes them away, and puts the wrench on the floor. Sea air rushes in around you, and the sound of seagulls.

‘So what's your name?' he asks again.

‘Why do you want my name? Are you going to steal that too?'

‘Listen, we gotta be friends, see? Otherwise you're in trouble.'

‘I am in trouble.'

‘Not real trouble, not yet.'

He looks at you. There is a hesitancy in his manner that suggests he is not really part of the gang that has kidnapped you. You are too desolate to exploit this fact. But you notice it all the same.

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘Normally they hand the girls to an agent in Kaliningrad – a real dump of a place. But you wunna stay there for long. Actually they hanna decided what to do with you. I mean, there was a mistake, see.'

The young man has pushed the tray of food aside and sat down on the berth. The monkey wrench is just out of reach on the floor, and you concentrate all your thoughts on how to get hold of it. But he has made no move, and you must keep him talking.

‘Yes,' you say, ‘there was a mistake. And you'll pay for it.'

‘I mean Zdenko let himself into the flat, and there was the girl on her own, doing her homework just like we told him, because she is a bit of a swot see, and they bring her to Hull as normal and out on to the boat and it's not the right girl.'

He tells the story in a matter-of-fact tone, as though it does not concern you. But it twists the knife in your stomach and you cry for revenge.

‘Then you had better get me back to England. Now.'

He looks at you with an air of assessment.

‘No, we canna do that. The other girl, see, we done her over. I mean she was ready, and we'd put her off in Kaliningrad and that would be the last we heard of her. You though, you're different. If we dunna do things right you'll make trouble.'

You are trembling now and huddling away from him. But he still has made no move.

‘See, the others, they say we'll give her the treatment, she'll be that scared in a day or two she'll just go along with the Russian bit like they all do. I say no, I'll look after her.'

He reaches for the Coca-Cola can and snaps it open. He holds it out in your direction, nodding at you to drink. You shake your head and retreat from him. He takes a sip, returns the can to the tray and suddenly stands up. You reach for the monkey wrench but he quickly kicks it away from the berth.

‘What are you doing?' you cry.

‘Just be nice, OK?'

He has taken a packet of condoms from his pocket.

‘I'll use one of these, see. Then you dunna have to worry afterwards. No bother.'

‘No!' you shout, ‘no!'

And a sudden blackness falls like a shutter across your eyes.

Justin's first thought was to ring the police. They had given Muhibbah a number to call in case of threats, and he had written the number in his pocket book. He stared at the corner where she had sat. He recalled her curious glances, fleeting touches and enigmatic words. But it was as though Muhibbah were sealed, offering no place from which to peel away the membrane that protected her. Her path through life had been charted on some other planet, and she received instructions for her future in a language that he could not understand. She had gone out of his life as she had entered it, without an explanation.

But the thought of it made him sick. She would be drugged, gagged, kicked and beaten, maybe even raped, then bundled through that dark doorway in Waziristan, the fourth wife of some bigoted slave-master, who would smother her dear face in his stinking beard, and fill her sweet body with his children.

‘Impossible,' he said aloud.

He took the phone from his pocket, scrolled down to the number of the mobile he had given her, and pressed the key. As he held the device to his ear another phone began ringing in the office, and his heart missed a beat.

‘What the hell…'

He located it in the sleeveless grey coat that hung from the door. He reached into the pocket: the first time he had his hands in her clothing and her clothing in his hands. Pushed down alongside the phone were two pieces of paper. One seemed to be a letter in Arabic. The other, neatly copied out, was a poem. He recognized it as Yeats:

Wine comes in at the mouth

And love comes in at the eye;

That's all we shall know for truth

Before we grow old and die
.

I lift the glass to my mouth
,

I look at you, and I sigh
.

He knew the handwriting, and it was hers. How was it that Muhibbah, who allowed neither wine nor love to cross her boundaries, had found meaning in those words? Was there such a ‘you' in her life? He doubted it; indeed he insisted that it could not be true. He replaced the pieces of paper in the pocket with a puzzled shake of the head.

The screen of the phone read ‘15 missed calls'. The latest showed his number. The others were all from a landline in Yorkshire. He thought for a moment, and then wrote the number down: he would call it from a public phone box, so as not to be traced. He packed his briefcase quickly, adding Muhibbah's phone to his sheaf of papers. Then he locked the office, and hurried into the street.