The Book of Revelation (2 page)

He lay back, aware of the black rubber mat beneath his body. It reminded him of being in a gymnasium. It had the same smell. Hot-water bottles. Sweat. He stared up at the skylight. A white window-frame, a simple square of blue. It seemed only distantly related to the narrow strip of sky he had seen while walking down the alley.

The cigarettes,
he thought.
I never bought the cigarettes
.

He saw the women as he had seen them then, their faces concealed under conical black hoods, their black cloaks swirling round their bodies. The fabric flapped and rippled, making him think of rays, the way they move across the ocean floor, and he could hear their voices overlapping—
We saw you dance last week, we were in the second row, it was wonderful
—so much so that it was hard to tell exactly who was speaking. He was used to receiving praise from strangers, of course. He had learned to be patient, gracious. . . . Though he had the feeling that one of them had not talked at all. Instead, she had simply inclined her head, as if she was paying close attention. Or was she shy, perhaps? Even at the time, something about the encounter had struck him as being wrong—and yet he didn’t think it was the enthusiasm; the enthusiasm had seemed genuine, unfeigned. He had been about to excuse himself and turn away when he felt that sharp, cold pain in his right hand. He shivered as he remembered how the needle had left the vein, how smoothly it withdrew, how stealthily, like a snake that has just released its venom. . . .

A hypodermic, presumably.

A syringe.

He could still remember the sunlight falling across a steep roof at the far end of the alley, the tiles gleaming as if coated in gold leaf, but he could remember nothing after that—nothing until this white room with no windows, this imprisonment. . . .

Once again he raised his head to look around. This time he noticed that the walls were studded with unusual fixtures—all kinds of brackets, hooks and bolts; they did not set his mind at rest since he could think of no innocent explanation for their presence. To his right, and slightly behind him, was a shallow alcove. Inside it stood a washing-machine and a tumble-drier, both German-made. The sight ought to have reassured him—such appliances were familiar, domestic, part of everyday life—and yet, in the context of the rubber mat and the stainless-steel rings, in the context of the fixtures on the walls, they took on a threatening air, they became accomplices.

Fear surfaced on his skin like a sharp, hot scent.

He felt the sudden urge to urinate.

•

He had no memory of hearing the door open, and yet it must have done, for there they were, the women, moving towards him, the hems of their black cloaks snagging on splinters in the floorboards. They stood above him, peering down, as though he lay far below them, as though he was lying at the bottom of a well.

“You’re ours now.”

He could not tell which one of them had spoken. His gaze lifted beyond them, to the skylight. That square of blue, empty and indifferent.

The same woman spoke again. She was the tallest of the three. She had a slight accent, as if she had learned her English in America.

“You belong to us,” she said. “You’re ours.”

His first instinct was to ask her what she meant, but he fought against it. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of hearing his voice. Not yet, anyway. He wanted to deny her something. Perhaps it was the only thing he had that he could still withhold.

Though she seemed content simply to stare at him—to run her eyes down the length of his body, and then up again. . . .

A plane appeared behind her shoulder, a single speck of silver in the blue. It was strange to think of all the people up there, reading magazines, listening to music, drinking drinks. It was strange to think they didn’t know that he was lying in a room below them, held by chains. . . . He watched the plane cross the top right-hand corner of the skylight, its progress steady, smooth, impervious—

Then it was gone.

The women were murmuring to each other now, their voices lowered, intimate, distorted by their hoods. He couldn’t distinguish one voice from another, nor could he make out what any of them were saying, even though they were still standing over him.

At last, and without warning, they withdrew. He lay still. The air had a muffled quality to it, a deadness. He wondered whether the room was sound-proofed. It seemed likely. If so, the music he had heard when he came round must have been playing in his head, his blood making one thin sound as it ran through his veins, like fifty bows drawn slowly over fifty sets of strings. . . .

And now, in the same way, the woman’s words floated in the air above him, haunting, constant, the meaning just out of reach:

You’re ours now. You belong to us.

•

It was hard for him to work out exactly how much time had passed. The blue in the skylight had darkened, though it was not yet night. He was just beginning to feel the first stirrings of hunger when the door swung open and a woman walked into the room, a tray balanced between her hands. She moved towards him cautiously, so as not to spill anything, setting the tray down on the rubber mat. There was cold meat, salad, cheese, fresh fruit and bottled water. In the context of the room, which was so bare and colourless, the food looked exotic, almost absurd.

Kneeling beside him, the woman reached for the water. For a few moments she struggled to undo the plastic top. Either she had no strength in her hands, he thought, or else she was nervous, perhaps. The air gushed out of her as the seal broke and the top finally came free. She filled a glass and held it to his mouth. He gulped the water down. She had to do everything for him, dabbing his chin with a napkin when he drank too fast and almost choked.

By now, his head had cleared. He felt he should start to take things in, to gather information. He watched as the woman peeled an apple, green skin curling away from moist white flesh and dangling in the air below her thumb. Her hands were raw, he noticed—red, slightly swollen knuckles, bitten fingernails. Her head remained lowered, which made it difficult to see her eyes, though he sometimes caught a glimpse of them, a momentary glitter, as she helped him to a piece of lettuce or a slice of meat. Once, the faint, ticklish smell of mothballs lifted off the sleeve of her cloak as she reached towards him, making him think that it had only recently been taken out of storage. Where had the cloaks come from? Did the women own them?

Was this the first time they had attempted something like this?

All of a sudden he saw the theatre floodlit for the evening’s performance, with people crowding into the foyer, taxis drawing up outside—

“What’s the time?” he asked.

The woman shook her head, her way of signalling that he shouldn’t talk. But he wanted to. He had to.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve got a performance tonight.”

She gave no sign that she had even heard him.

“I’m due on stage at seven-thirty.” Then, though he felt stupid saying it, he added, “I’m a
dancer
.”

She might as well have been deaf.

“So I can’t ask you anything?” he said.

When the woman saw that he had eaten and drunk enough, she rose to her feet, picked up the tray and moved towards the door. He watched her go, his head lifting off the rubber mat, his neck muscles at full stretch. She had not spoken to him, he realised. Not even once.

Lying back, he wondered if he was being held to ransom. The thought of his father receiving a ransom note—his father who had always been so careful with money!—was almost enough to make him laugh out loud.

•

Later on that first day, when night had fallen and the overhead lights had been switched on, all three women returned. This time they stood by the door at the far end of the room. They seemed to be conferring.

At last they turned and swept towards him. They gathered round him, as before. Disturbed by their approach, tiny complex galaxies of dust floated away from him, across the floor. . . .

He had decided to hide anything he might be feeling, in much the same way that the women were concealing their identities. He would reveal as little of himself as possible. At the same time, there were things he needed to know. He had to try and find out who the women were, where they had taken him, and what they had in mind.

“What do you want?” he said.

The women glanced at each other.

“Do you want money? Is that it?”

“Money?” one of the women said. “No, we don’t want money.”

This was not the woman who had spoken to him earlier. This woman’s voice was lower, huskier, as if she smoked. She had almost no accent.

“So what
do
you want?” he said.

The woman reached up with one hand to ease the hood away from her neck. Though the material did not look particularly coarse, it appeared to be chafing her. Her skin must be sensitive, he thought. She had white hands, with short, tapering fingers, and her nail-varnish was a dark purple-black, the colour of dried blood or cheap wine. He was noticing hands; hands were all that he was being shown.

“We already have what we want,” the woman said. Then, turning to her two accomplices, she said, “Don’t you agree?”

They nodded.

Yes, this was a different woman. She seemed to have more authority. Maybe she was even the leader. In any group of three, there would have to be a leader.

“We have some rules. . . .”

The woman turned away and walked towards the alcove that housed the washing-machine and the tumble-drier. She moved slowly, and with a certain gravity, a sense of self-importance, like a judge. She told him that he should not, under any circumstances, try to escape. There was no point, actually. They had taken all the necessary precautions. They had thought of everything. She also warned him against any attempts at violence. She was sure, in any case, that it was not in his nature. If he behaved well, she said, he would be treated well. She paused, waiting for him to speak, perhaps, but when he chose to say nothing, she continued. There was a device close to his right hand. If he was hungry or thirsty, or if he needed to go to the bathroom, then all he had to do was press—

“Actually,” he said, “I need it now.”

“The bathroom?”

He nodded.

From where she was standing, the woman signalled to her two accomplices—a simple lowering of her head, a granting of permission. They turned and left the room. While they were gone, he examined the “device.” A square piece of metal—aluminium, by the look of it—had been screwed into the floor next to the mat. In the middle of this metal plate was a round white button. It looked like a light-switch or a door-bell. He pressed it once, but heard nothing.

“Only when you need something,” the woman warned him.

Her two accomplices returned, carrying handcuffs and leg-irons. One sat by his feet, the other by his head. For the first time, he noticed how each individual rail doubled back on itself, resembling the handle of a traditional umbrella. When he looked at two of the rails together, the two that held his feet, for instance, he saw they had been laid out in such a way that they formed a kind of fractured S:

The woman sitting by his feet released the two smaller stainless-steel rings so they could run freely along their rails, then she brought his ankles close together and secured them with the irons. Only then did she unlock the larger stainless-steel rings. Once his legs were securely shackled, the second woman performed an almost identical manoeuvre on his hands, using the cuffs to fasten them behind his back. The two women worked in unison, in silence. At no point was any part of his body free. The routine was so efficient that it had to have been worked out in advance.

They helped him slowly to his feet. Though he had only been lying down for a few hours, he felt an impatience in his muscles. Something fidgety. His body had been denied its afternoon’s exercise. He stood between the two women, moving his arms and legs, moving his head on his neck, as if he was going to give his performance after all. . . .

The chains that bound him chinked and rattled.

Taking one arm each, the women led him towards the door. With his hands cuffed tightly behind his back and his ankles shackled, it was hard to do more than shuffle.

He had been wondering what lay beyond the room. This proved a disappointment to him. All he could see was a passageway, its walls and ceiling painted white, its carpet a hard-wearing, industrial shade of grey. There were two white doors, one to his left, the other at the far end of the passageway. There were no windows. The only sound he could hear was the steady, drowsy murmur of the fluorescent lighting overhead. The building felt as if it might have been refurbished recently, but he couldn’t imagine what it would look like from the outside, let alone where in Amsterdam it might be—if indeed it was in Amsterdam.

The door to the bathroom was the door on the left. One of the women remained in the passageway, like a guard, while the other guided him inside. The room was no more than eight feet long and four feet wide. In front of him was a toilet with a black seat and a white cistern. A small hand-basin jutted from the wall to his right. The brand-name on both the toilet and the hand-basin was
Sphinx,
one of the most common makes in Holland. He smiled grimly when he saw the name and said, “That’s perfect,” but the woman standing behind him did not react. Like the passageway, the bathroom had no windows. There was no mirror either.