The Book of Revelation (7 page)

“Well?” Gertrude said. “What do you think of it?”

He hadn’t been expecting anything quite so elaborate, and he told her so, which seemed to please her.

The day passed slowly. He had the strangest feeling that he was involved in the venture with them—that they were, all four of them, collaborating. . . . Towards nightfall he was taken to the bathroom. While he was there, they told him that this would be his last visit to the toilet until after the banquet. They could not afford to have any interruptions, they said. They wanted the evening to be seamless.

On his return to the room, they spread a length of gold material over the rubber mat, then asked him to lie down on his back with his arms by his sides and his legs together, like a soldier standing to attention. This created a long, narrow trough which they then began to fill with all kinds of
antipasti
. They placed artichoke hearts between his ankles, then piled a selection of olives, gherkins and pickled onions on to his calves, along with carrots, sticks of celery, cherry tomatoes and green beans. On either side of his knees they put a risotto of asparagus and prawns. Along his thighs lay salads of rocket and watercress, arugula and radicchio, already dressed with a light vinaigrette. Nestling close to his testicles were wedges of fried aubergine and seared red pepper, with crescents of white onion and thick half-moons of wild garlic. On the soft bed of his pubic hair they arranged the shellfish—mussels, clams, oysters and scallops—all bought fresh that morning, so they claimed. On his belly lay a whole baked salmon, garnished with lemon and parsley. On his solar plexus the sauces and relishes were to be found: mustard, horseradish, aioli, hollandaise. His chest was decorated with medals of cold meat—salami, prosciutto, bresaola. Roast quails nested in his armpits and his collarbones, and, on his shoulders, like armour, lay overlapping slices of turkey, duck and veal. It took more than an hour to arrange the meal, and, by the end, there was scarcely a square inch of his body that was not a receptacle for one delicacy or another. Though naked, he felt strangely clothed.

Maude left the room, returning with two candelabra, which she positioned carefully, one at his head, the other at his feet. His food-encrusted body glistened in the warm, gold light.

“A feast,” Gertrude said. “A real feast.”

“A work of art,” Astrid said.

“Remember,” Gertrude said, and she was addressing him directly now, “not a word from you. Not a sound. Not unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you have to move, move slowly. Nothing sudden or violent. Is that clear?”

He nodded.

At that moment, from somewhere deep in the house, came the clumsy jangle of a bell. Maude leaned down and gently drew a hood over his head, a cloth hood with a drawstring round the neck. One of his hands rose involuntarily towards his face.

“You will be able to breathe quite easily,” Gertrude said.

“Yes,” Maude said. “I have tried it myself.”

•

It was a long evening—seemingly endless, in fact. So far as he could tell, ten people attended the banquet, seven women and three men. Two of the men were American, and both spoke Dutch fluently. Somebody—a woman, presumably—was wearing bangles, which were tortoiseshell, he imagined, or amber; they clicked loudly as they slid up and down her forearm. Somebody else smoked throughout the meal. He could hear the brisk rasp of a lighter in his left ear.

At first he could feel people touching him in different places as they helped themselves to the food that was laid out in front of them. After that, it only happened sporadically, and often took him by surprise, making him jump. Oddly enough, about halfway through the banquet, he fell asleep. Maybe he was lulled by the darkness inside his hood, or maybe it was the effect of listening to three conversations at the same time, none of which he fully understood.

A smell woke him. The heavy, sickly scent of marijuana. One of the American men was talking—in English, this time.

“So tell me,” the American said. “What’s for dessert?”

Somebody chuckled. Glasses chinked.

Astrid spoke next. “It’s a surprise. Can you guess?”

“Well, as far as I can see,” the American said, “there’s only one thing left on the table. . . .”

This was obviously very witty because everybody burst out laughing. But, as soon as the laughter had died down, a silence descended, the silence of anticipation, soft and dense as velvet.

Inside the hood he could hear his blood humming.

A warm and slightly oily hand reached between his thighs. Was it the same person, or another, who then grasped his penis, which was already, for some reason, half erect, and put it in their mouth?

He gasped.

Just then he felt a hand on his upper arm. It was one of the women, he was sure. Though her touch was subtle—perhaps it even went unnoticed by the others—he knew it was a reminder, a warning. At the same time she was telling him that he should relax. Let things take their course.

Remember, not a word from you. Not a sound
.

His chest expanded as he took air deep into his lungs. A pool of fluid slid out of a hollow where it had been resting and trickled sideways across his ribs.

Meanwhile the guests were taking turns with him, it seemed. Some were rough, almost greedy. The prickle of a beard, an unshaven chin. The grazing of a tooth. Others were reverential. Delicate. A touching that was on the edge of touching. He found himself thinking of a butterfly alighting on a leaf. That almost negligible weight.

And then, when it took off again, he followed it, past huge garish blurs of colour that were flowers, up into the air, where it was buffeted by the smallest gust of wind, its wings fluttering gamely. . . .

•

When the women finally removed his hood, the lighting in the tent was dim and intimate, just candles, most of which had burned down low. Even so, after the hours he had spent in total darkness, he found it difficult to see at first. Through half-closed eyes he stared down at himself. Blackened strands of salad clung to his legs, almost translucent, like seaweed, and empty clam shells tangled in his pubic hair. His whole body was stained with sauces, juices, traces of saliva. He looked like a piece of wreckage that had washed up on an unknown shore. Curiously, he ached too, as if he had been thrown about by waves.

Gertrude was leaning against the wall to his right, her arms folded beneath her breasts. Her head was covered with a conical black hood, and a bracelet of beaten silver gripped her upper arm. Otherwise she was naked. The candle-flames sent lascivious tongues of shadow flickering across her skin. It was the first time he had been allowed a glimpse of her. She was solid, but slim. Her shoulders were the same width as her hips. She had no waist. Though her breasts were oddly elongated, they did not interfere with the impression her body gave of spareness and economy. She reminded him of the Ancient Greek statues that hold up the roofs of temples—the caryatids—and this was something he could not have predicted. From the way she moved when she was wearing clothes, he had expected her to be much heavier, more fleshy. On his left was Astrid. She was lying on her side on a heap of lavish cushions, her head supported by one hand. She was also naked, her face concealed by a matt-black rubber mask that he recognised from the night of her assault on him. She was smoking a cigarette. On the middle finger of her left hand she was wearing a ring that had several inch-long spikes protruding from it. He wondered where Maude was. Downstairs, probably. Washing the dishes.

“A successful evening,” Astrid said, inhaling deeply.

“It was a triumph,” Gertrude said. “A real triumph.”

“The dessert was especially good. . . .”

Both women laughed.

He looked from one to the other. Though they were probably quite close in age—or, at least, much closer than he had originally imagined—Gertrude’s skin was anaemic, almost ghostly, while Astrid’s had a glow to it, like treasure. Astrid had a neat round head, with even features and hair that she kept cut short. Her tight-fitting rubber mask revealed as much. Was Gertrude secretly jealous of the way Astrid looked? Was that why Maude was there, to act as a foil, a distraction, something for them both to ridicule? He wished he knew how the women behaved when they were alone together. But the door that led out of the room was like a science fiction gateway. As soon as the women passed through it they seemed to dematerialise, to become invisible; they crossed into a different dimension.

“You behaved well,” Astrid said, studying the end of her cigarette.

“You behaved impeccably,” Gertrude agreed. “We’d like to reward you.”

She walked towards him, her breasts lolling complacently, the insides of her upper thighs rubbing lightly together. To his surprise, he felt his penis harden. She didn’t seem to notice, though—or, if she did, she took pleasure in pretending that she hadn’t. Up close, her eyes looked bloodshot. He thought she was probably drunk.

“What would you like?” she asked him.

“Within reason, of course,” came Astrid’s voice from behind her.

As he looked up at Gertrude, the air seemed to warp suddenly, to shudder. At first he didn’t realise what it was. Then he saw it. A single hair had fallen from beneath her hood. A single hair had come loose and floated downwards through the air between them. It had fallen past his face, too close for him to focus on, and landed on the gold fabric of the tablecloth, just inches from his right elbow. He could see it lying there, about the length of a finger, with a slight curve to it. It was red.

Gertrude seemed quite oblivious to what had happened. “Tell me what you’d like,” she was saying, breathing wine fumes over him, “what you’d like for a reward. . . .”

“You could let me go,” he said.

She turned away. “No. That’s not an option.”

“Within reason,” Astrid reminded him, crushing out her cigarette.

He looked down at the red hair again—a give-away, a clue, a piece of evidence. How long had he spent imprisoned in this room? Five days? Six? He was beginning to lose count. He had been taken on a Monday afternoon. Could it be Saturday already? His eyes shifted to his body, which he no longer felt as if he owned. He could almost see the weakness spreading through him. His body was his only clock, he realised, and he had no way of measuring time except in terms of wastage, atrophy, decay. Disgust collected like a kind of bile in his throat.

“There must be something you would like,” Gertrude was saying.

His lungs had filled with dust. He could hardly breathe.

“I need to move,” he said. “I need some air.”

•

He thought he sensed tension as the women walked into the room the next morning, the tension that follows an argument that has yet to be resolved. He had the feeling that there might have been some disagreement over the granting of his request. There was a certain stiffness in their body language. He saw hips and elbows. Thumbs. Watching them arrange themselves in front of him, he realised that this was a sequence he could have choreographed. What kind of music would he have chosen for a piece like this? Would it have been full of jarring dissonance, in keeping with the mood, or would it have flowed sweetly, providing an ironic counterpoint?

Once both his hands and feet were shackled, the women helped him to stand up. Maude slipped a hood over his head. It was the same hood that he had worn the night before; he could smell meat on it, and wine, and smoke. The women led him towards the door. He must have looked like a man being taken to the scaffold.

“So this is my reward,” he said.

He felt unaccountably light and skittish; he could not resist making jokes, but there was no reaction from any of the women.

They passed out of the white room and into the passageway. The toilet, he knew, would be on the left, and there would be a second door ahead of him, about fifteen feet away, but that was where his knowledge ended. He could see nothing, of course, and anything he might have heard was drowned by the sound his chains made as he moved. His sense of smell was complicated by the hood. He had to try and ignore what was left over from the banquet. He had to filter all that out. Smell beyond it, somehow. Through the second door they went and out into what felt like a larger space. A landing, perhaps. This was new ground now.

They turned to the left, took a dozen steps, then turned to the right and stopped. There are stairs here, one of the women told him. He reached out cautiously with one foot, as if testing the temperature of water. The air that brushed against his bare forearms was cool, reminding him of the air in a cellar. He thought he could smell plaster, a smell he usually associated with new buildings, but the staircase was wide and steep, which led him to believe that he was in an old house. Though there were women on either side of him, he found it easiest to climb down sideways, like somebody on skis. He reached the bottom of one flight, and then embarked upon another, one of the women holding him by the upper arm as a precaution.

At last they reached ground level. The surface beneath his feet was no longer carpeted. Tile, he guessed. Or concrete. Down one step, along, down another step, along again. One of the women turned a key in a lock and pushed at the door, which seemed to resist her for a moment, then they walked out into the air. . . .

Even through the hood his first breath was exhilarating. He had forgotten air could be so intricate. He could smell the wind and rain in it, and earth, dark earth, and the bitter milk that leaked from the stems of plants. He could also smell the mildewed panes of a glass-house and the rusting screws on the handle of a watering-can. Then the warm, slightly gritty smell of a red-brick wall. Beyond that, he could smell the city, faintly, but in all its richness and variety: bicycle tyres, canal water, pickled herrings, a tram’s electric cables, spilled beer in the entrance to a bar—and, in the distance, at the very limit of his sense of smell, the pungent salty spray that lifted off the North Sea as it hurled itself repeatedly against the land. He stood outside the door and breathed. Just breathed.