Performance Anomalies (15 page)

Cono heard the faint snapping of a twig in the blackness somewhere across the vacant street. He put his hand over Xiao Li’s mouth and whispered close to her ear. “Time to move.”

The couple was slowed by Xiao Li’s tender feet. As they neared Dimira’s building, Cono forced her into a crouch behind a prickly hedge. He listened, scanning the street. It was dead and motionless, not even a breeze.

“You go first, in that door, quietly, and up to the second floor landing. Wait there,” Cono whispered. Xiao Li slid through the door like a cat. Cono let two minutes pass, looking, listening, smelling, feeling the earth with his palm. Nothing. He glided swiftly through the entrance and up the stairs.

Cono’s light rapping on the door of Dimira’s apartment finally brought tentative footsteps from the other side. He spoke her name softly.

“Cono, is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me. I need your help.”

The locks clicked one by one. A vertical strip of orange candlelight wavered as the door cracked open. Cono put his hand through the gap. Dimira grasped it and pulled him in. Her arms wrapped around him before he could say in Russian, “I have a friend who needs your help even more than I do.”

Xiao Li recognized the word
droog
, “friend,” in Russian. “Friend—that is me,” she said in English, slamming the door behind her.

Dimira pulled away from Cono and looked at Xiao Li with shock—at the stunningly beautiful face, the fiery eyes, the cuts on the neck and the back of one hand, the slinky black dress, the cuffed bloody wrist, the dirty bare feet with bright-pink toenails. Dimira took a step backward as Xiao Li snarled at Cono in Mandarin: “You bring me to the home of one of your concubines? After we tried to make love? Tell her that—tell her your cock was in my hand a few minutes ago!”

Cono put his arm around Xiao Li’s shoulders. “Calm down. You have no reason to be angry with her. Let’s all speak in English so nothing is hidden. Dimira. Xiao Li.” He nodded to each of them in turn. Xiao Li glared at the sad-eyed woman.

“You are bleeding,” Dimira said, looking at Xiao Li’s wrist. “You are both bleeding.” She pointed at the glass cuts on Cono’s arms, and to the mud-colored slice through the fabric on his shoulder.

As she twisted the door locks shut, Dimira said she would get peroxide for their wounds and prepare tea. “Sit down. My home is yours.”

Cono and Xiao Li sat on overlapping thin carpets as Dimira stood in the tiny kitchen. Cono pulled out the blood-tinged wire saw and used it to cut through the handcuff to release Xiao Li’s wrist.

“What are we doing here, Cono?” she asked angrily in Mandarin.

Cono replied in English. “We are here because no other place in Almaty is safe for us. Dimira is a friend, a brave friend whose daughter was murdered six months ago.”

“Was the daughter yours?” Xiao Li stuck to Mandarin.

“She was a lovely child, as lively as a hummingbird. She was not mine. There are pictures of her on the wall.”

Xiao Li sprang up to examine the photos. As she quickly took in the dozens on the wall, Asel’s dark skin assured her that Cono was not the father. Xiao Li looked at each picture a second time and finally returned to sit cross-legged next to Cono. “She was a beautiful girl,” Xiao Li whispered. “Such a bright face. Such a happy smile.” Xiao Li bent her head. She was crying as Dimira took her wrist and daubed a wet cloth on the raw flesh.

“This will hurt a little. It looks like you struggled.” Dimira placed Xiao Li’s hand on her lap. The peroxide bubbled on the wounds and dripped onto Dimira’s flowered dress.

Xiao Li licked the tears that had fallen to her lips. “I am sorry. Your daughter.” The tears now fell in streams. Dimira stroked the length of Xiao Li’s bare arm.

“She was all that I am,” Dimira said. “Even now, I feel her arms around me. Even now, I hear her laughter.” Dimira rose to a kneeling position. “Here, Xiao Li, take these and clean Cono’s cuts. The tea is ready.”

As Xiao Li took the bottle and the cloth, she raised her head and was taken aback by the sudden sight of the ear Dimira revealed when she flicked her hair away from her face. The ear looked like a crumpled cabbage leaf. The strange sight made Xiao Li’s stomach turn, and she closed her eyes and breathed deeply until the nausea passed.

From the kitchen Dimira glanced at Cono’s naked upper body while Xiao Li daubed his wounds, her exhaustion making her movements slow. Dimira busied herself with the food longer than necessary, arranging piles of biscuits, apple wedges, and sausage slices on a tin tray. She added a gardenia blossom from a vase next to the refrigerator.

Cono was buttoning his shirt as Dimira delivered the tray and sat down. Her guests had no hunger at first, but soon all of the food was gone, with little said. Dimira knew from Cono’s earlier visit to Almaty that he would give only sparse details of his reasons for coming to her homeland, this land of her hardships.

Dimira asked no questions but searched Cono’s eyes as he explained that Xiao Li had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and now was threatened by dangerous people who couldn’t ever see the beauty or smell the fragrance of a flower like the gardenia on the tray, who were tools of the gods of money and power. Xiao Li would have to leave Almaty in the morning by taking a bus across the border to Bishkek and flying from there to Urumqi in China. From Urumqi she would travel on to join relatives. If Dimira had some spare pants and a shirt and sneakers Xiao Li could wear, of course it would be an imposition, but he would be grateful. He would leave Almaty in the morning as well, because he had done what he needed to do, and it wouldn’t be safe to stay longer. Cono thanked Dimira, and regretted that despite their stealth in coming to her home, he had exposed her to some degree of risk. He thanked her again.

Xiao Li was sprawled across Cono’s lap, one bat of an eyelid away from sleep.

“Cono, thanking me … there is no need,” Dimira said. “I feel Asel when you are here. Your presence is a gift.” Dimira saw that Xiao Li’s eyes were closed, her breathing deep. Dimira whispered to Cono, “If only my daughter had a father like you.”

Like me?
Cono thought.
Like me?
He saw in his mind the hairy legs of the man he had just killed and castrated.
There had been no choice,
he told himself.

“We must sleep,” Cono said. He laid Xiao Li on the mattress that had been Asel’s. He said he would lie on the floor, it was his preference, and that he hoped it wouldn’t disturb Dimira if he did his exercises in the dark before sleeping.

Dimira lingered in the far corner of the room, standing next to her mattress, observing Cono’s movements. She unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall from her shoulders, then stood for another minute, watching, until she blew out the last candle.

An hour later Cono’s disrobed body cooled with the evaporation of his sweat. Lying on his back, he inhaled through his nostrils, his arms outstretched on the floor. He inhaled again, smelling the tea, the carbon of the extinguished candles, the sausage grease, the gardenia, the mustiness of the wool carpets, the scents of two different women. All was dark. And silent, except for the rhythmic breathing of Xiao Li and Dimira, faint whooshings that were out of sync, but which together formed a constant, slow beat. Sleep fell upon him like a blanket made of lead.

8

“Cono, wake up.” Xiao Li’s lips were brushing his cheek. The pungent aroma of frying onions was teasing his nose; the sputtering of eggs in a hot pan danced in his ears. Xiao Li was wearing a loose T-shirt with silk-screened latex that rubbed against his nipples as she wiggled on top of him, kissing him again and again. His hand fell to her hip and felt the slippery synthetic fabric of running pants. He reflexively squeezed her there, feeling the beginnings of his arousal.

She slipped off him. Something sharp whacked against his semi-erect member, snapping him to alertness. “Not now, Cono,” Xiao Li said, waving an envelope over his startled eyes. “What’s this? It’s in Russian. I opened it. It was under the door. What does it say? Wake up, Cono!”

Cono felt pain in his wounded shoulder when he rolled onto his side and pulled the note from the stiff envelope. His kept his face expressionless as he read it.

“I know you will help. You are addicted to the thrill of it. The public swimming pool on Abay, 10:00 this morning. You will know me by the scar on my shoulder. Freedom is so hard to come by. For us all.”

“What does it say?” Xiao Li asked again, more urgently.

“We’ve been discovered. You must fly, like a falcon. Go to your apartment, get your passport and only the things you absolutely need and don’t waste time. Fly home.”

Cono checked his watch. 9:40 a.m. If he hurried, there was just enough time to get to the swimming pool.

“And Dimira?” Xiao Li demanded. “We just leave her?”

“If I help them, Dimira will be safe.”

The note was from his friend Katerina or someone pretending to be Katerina, that much was clear. Xiao Li had nothing to fear from Katerina, and neither did Dimira. But if Katerina had been able to track them, surely the Chinese or Timur’s thugs at the General could have done the same.

Cono stood up and strode quickly to the kitchen. “After we leave, Dimira, take your passport and money and go straight to the school. Stay there all day. I will get word to you if you are not to return here tonight. If you don’t hear from me, it’s safe to come home.”

Dimira nodded, a wooden spatula in her hand. “I gave Asel’s sneakers to Xiao Li,” she said. “Asel had big feet for her age.”

As Xiao Li wolfed down breakfast, Cono reviewed the escape route he had described the night before—Xiao Li would hide among the crowd on the bus to Bishkek, then take a plane to Urumqi, and continue on to the village of some distant relatives.

“You must leave immediately, Xiao Li,” Cono said. “Promise me.”

“I promise, Cono. I promise.”

“And I must go too.” He opened the three locks on the door. Xiao Li smothered him with kisses and pressed against him, whispering that he must find her soon and hold her in his arms over a high balcony with the moon in the sky. “And you must come visit your son,” she added in Mandarin. She watched with jealousy as Cono said goodbye to Dimira and pecked her on both cheeks. Then he was gone.

Eight minutes later, while Xiao Li was lacing up Asel’s sneakers and Cono was two miles away, gulping blood-red pomegranate juice that had just been pressed by a boy with a pushcart off Avenue Abay, there was a gentle knock on the apartment door.

Xiao Li looked with alarm at Dimira.

“Maybe someone came from the school,” Dimira said quietly in English, “to ask why I’m late.” She set down the tray she was holding.

Xiao Li grabbed Dimira’s arm. “No,” she whispered, plucking a knife from the tray. “Don’t open.”

There was another knock, a little louder.

“Other door?” Xiao Li whispered. “Way to go out?” She pointed the knife around the apartment, examining the windows; the only two in the apartment looked out on the front of the building. Xiao Li tried to recall if the bathroom had a window. “Toilet?”

Dimira shook her head no.

“Don’t say nothing, no one home.” Xiao Li whispered. She reached to hand another knife to Dimira; it clinked against a teacup on the tray, tipping it over.

“You have gun?”

Dimira shook her head again.

There was another knock, more insistent. And a voice from the other side of the door, too quiet to understand.

Dimira edged softly to the door. She put her ear near it.

“Mr. Cono sent me.” The man spoke in English with a heavy Kazak accent. “Mr. Cono said to come help you.”

Xiao Li touched Dimira’s shoulder and shook her head violently, holding her knife in a dagger grip. Memories of the two days in chains swept like a cyclone through her mind.

“Mr. Cono said this place is not safe anymore. He says you need to leave now, go home.”

The two women exchanged glances. Xiao Li’s dagger hand gradually fell to her side. Dimira put her fingers on one of the locks.

“Mr. Cono said there is not much time. He wants you to be safe.”

Dimira unlocked one of the bolts. Xiao Li stifled a short gasp. Dimira’s hand reached for the second lock and clicked it open. Xiao Li looked down at Dimira’s quavering fingers on the third lock. She forced Dimira’s hand away from it.