The Collector of Names (22 page)

Luka blushed. Was it possible that the deaf old man could read the innermost thoughts that he had fought against so hard? He decided that attack was his best defense.

"BE QUIET, ADRIANO! WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO FORGET EVERYTHING? YOU SPEND ALL YOUR LIFE LEARNING NAMES OF THINGS. ALL YOUR LIFE! AND THEN YOU FORGET THEM ALL AND YOU’RE NO LONGER HUMAN! GO AND HAVE A LOOK AT MY PARENTS! IS THAT CLEAR? NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!"

"FUCK YOU, LUKA!"

"HEY, YOU TWO!" Miro interfered, laughingly. "What if we paid some attention to that guy on the road?"

"Yes, you’re right!" said Luka. "ADRIANO, THE DEAD BODY INSPECTION!"

"ARE YOU MAD? WE’VE SCATTERED HIM AROUND A RADIUS OF HALF A KILOMETRE, YOU CAN’T EXPECT ME TO WALK THAT FAR, I’M AN OLD MAN!"

So that was it, he was now starting to disobey orders! Luka knew that Adriano would spend at least ten minutes sulking and that he could not count on him.

"ADRIANO, COVER US! Miro, come with me and take the gun!"

*

Jesus, said Raf. If I show myself they’ll shoot me.

The dust was beginning to settle and he was worried that he would soon be able to see what was left of Max.

Two old men came carefully from behind the lights both wearing uniforms, one carrying a machine-gun, the other one a pistol, and slowly approached the mess on the road. They looked around cautiously and Raf ducked down instinctively.

"Hey," said the one with the machine gun, "there are no weapons. Just some strips of material"

"Well, I thought"

"Me too!"

"Why the hell was he running like that then! Serves him right! Did you understand what he was shouting?"

"Not quite, but it sounded to me as he was saying ‘father’."

"Yeah, I had that feeling too. There are some weird people around, don’t you think? He sees a tank, runs towards it, shouting ‘father’!"

"If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t have believed it!"

The one with the pistol added:

"Don’t say anything about this to Adriano!"

"I won’t."

"Still, we’d better be a bit more careful from now on! We should soon be catching up with that niece of Aco’s and I wouldn’t want to have her on my conscience."

"Yes, she’s a fast walker for somebody from the mainland!"

"She’s young."

"Yeah."

Raf bit his bottom lip. The girl from the ferry was not safely in the village but somewhere in the woods, on the way to the villa. He had to pluck up the courage to reveal himself to the pensioners, hoping they would not shoot him. Their eye-sight probably was not very good and they would probably think he was another terrorist. Maybe he should find a white flag somewhere?

"Hey," said the old man with the machine gun, "there’s somebody by the tank! Why doesn’t Adriano shoot?"

Raf saw the outline of a small figure between the bottom two lights.

*

Ana kept looking at the beast in front of her and could not stop trembling.

"Yes," she said, "I’m cold"

"Unfortunately," said Alfonz, "I haven’t got anything to put around you."

"I know, I know."

She nodded eagerly. The light did not reach below his naked shoulder and she had no desire to see the rest of him.

"I can put a hand on your shoulder, the good hand, the one that gave me crisps, if you want?"

The only thing Ana understood was that the monster wanted to touch her and she found it very hard to suppress a scream.

"No, thank you, I’m getting warmer. I’m not shivering any more."

"Yes, you really are shivering less. I’m glad."

They stopped talking. Ana knew she had to look at him, look into those crazy eyes in front of her, but at the same time she was trying to blur out what she saw as much as she could.

"I know you," he said. "You’re the girl from the ferry. The decent girl, the one I could introduce to my mum and dad and we could have a cup of tea together. Fresh tea, not the one brewed in advance for the guests."

"From the ferry?"

"Yes, we saw each other there, you probably didn’t notice me, because I was very different then. I was sadder, I wasn’t smiling yet."

He was one of the boys from the ferry? My God, not the bony one? His shoulder answered that question. It was either the muscular one or the one next to him, whose face she could not remember, but who was dressed like some boys she knew from Sunday school. And the one who was earlier shouting for his father on the road was probably one of them too? What was happening? Where was her uncle? And that boy?

"I remember," she said.

"And I remember you. You know, I divide feelings into three levels of love: to like somebody, to be fond of them and to love them. I liked you then on the ferry. Quietly – I didn’t dare say it out loud – I said: I like you."

"Thank you."

She tried to be friendly hoping that kind words might soften what she saw in front of her.

"But since a few minutes ago, when you looked in my eyes and smiled at me so nicely – the most beautiful smile I’ve ever seen in my whole life – I’ve been fond of you. Ever since you’ve joined me in here, I’ve been looking at you, not daring to speak to you. But your smile gave me the courage. Listen, I’m telling you, I’m very fond of you."

Ana did not quite comprehend what the creature was talking about:

"A smile?"

"I think soon I’ll love you," he said. "But don’t worry, I’ll warn you before it happens!"

Ana understood. She fell into the hollow, started thinking and smiled to herself, but the creature in front of her saw that smile and thought it was directed at him. She had to be careful and friendly. She had to lead the conversation away from rape. She remembered how all her schoolfriends lost their virginity by the sea, after long romantic talks in the dark. But she did not want to follow their example, at least not there and then, and not with him.

"What’s your name?" she asked him.

He moved and she nearly fainted with fear when he growled and gritted his teeth.

"It doesn’t matter!" he hissed. "What does a name mean to somebody who’s in love! Nothing! Real love pays no attention to names! Names are only important when it comes to inheritance, not to matters of the heart! This is love, not the law! We, the nameless, have a right to love too!"

He went on and on. Ana did not understand anything anymore. Maybe he was not all that dangerous and would let her leave?

He stopped suddenly and remained still.

"I’ll give you my heart, that’ll make you believe me!"

"I believe you!"

"You’re just trying to calm me down. How can you believe me when we’ve only just met? And to top it all I’m very sad. I lost a friend."

"You lost a friend? One of your friends from the ferry?"

"Yes, I wanted to separate the good parts of my friend from the bad ones, so that I could keep just the good ones. And then I went for a walk and I realised that friendship is not just about looking at all the good things. You look at a good thing, get hurt by a bad thing and then take comfort in another good thing. Have you ever lost a friend?"

"No."

"Well, there you go. That’s why I have to explain it better to you. A friendship is like a yo-yo, it goes up and down, up and down. Yes, I can see you do understand me, that’s why I’ll give you my heart."

He moved so that she could see him down to his waist, pulled an axe out of the darkness and put the blade to his chest. He pressed on it and Ana could see blood trickling from the wound.

"NO! Don’t give me your heart!"

He sounded terribly disappointed:

"You don’t want my heart?"

The axe was lifted and directed towards her.

"I do! I do! But you still need it!"

He started thinking hard. Ana felt sweat running down her back and into her pants, she felt an itch in the middle of her back but she did not dare to scratch it. A stench of rotting flesh was coming from the boy and his breath smelt sour.

"You reject it just because of me?"

"Yes! Yes!"

"Then I’ll give you the only other heart I’ve got."

He reached towards her with his hand and there really was something dark on it.

"Take it, it’s a friendly heart, it comes from a friend."

"I don’t know"

That look again.

"Oh, I’ll gladly take it."

She touched the thing on his hand, trying very hard not to come anywhere near to the hand offering her the gift. She prepared herself for something slimy but it was not too bad. Warmish and dry, a bit sticky in places. A lump of meat, obviously.

"Don’t be offended, there’s only half of it. You know, that friend was only half good."

With outstretched fingers she took the lump of meat he was offering her and held it away from her, at the same time pretending to be very happy with the gift. She looked down at her hand and it took her a few seconds to realise that he was speaking the truth. She was holding half of a heart. A very large heart, much larger than the model they had looked at in her biology class and she hoped dearly that it was a cow’s organ.

"Treat it as if it were mine: press it close to your heart," he said. "Heart next to heart."

She looked at the axe, at the eyes above it and tried to smile when she held the thing next to her own heart.

"You’re happy, I can see that," he said. "I’ll give you a friendly hand. I’ve still got that. As I told you, I’d lost a friend, but not all at once. I was walking through the woods, loosing my friend piece by piece, just as it always happens when you lose a friend. Bit by bit. I’m sad about that too."

*

Too late, he was too late again!

The name collector was standing in front of the tank, the two old men walked back and stood next to him. The end.

Raf felt like crying again. He had fucked up earlier with Aco, destroyed the campsite and now he had allowed the rescuers to meet up with their death. There was just one person left to save and he was not going to make another mistake.

"You said that ten minutes ago, when you came to warn the rescuers!" said a cynical voice inside him.

No, there would not be another mistake. The girl from the ferry was on her way to the villa. He would catch up with her and save her. He slowly crept out of the reach of the tank lights and ran off as fast as he could.

*

Adriano was over the moon. They kept going on about how deaf he was and now he heard the boy’s quietly spoken question very clearly, without looking at his lips.

*

Ana was holding the friendly hand in her left hand, pressing the heart to her chest with her right hand and praying to God to save her and allow her to become unconscious. How much more could she take? She would never had thought that she would be able to endure talking to a butcher, a monster from the very centre of hell for such a long time.

"You must tell me," said Alfonz, "what you feel for me. And don’t lie to me, I’ll know if you’re not telling the truth."

Ana wanted to scream, cry, shout, but knew that talking was her only chance of survival.

"Do you feel anything at all for me?"

"Eeeehm would I be here if I didn’t?"

He calmed down visibly.

"Indeed," he said, "you did come of your own accord. You did. But which level are you at? Do you like me, are you fond of me or do you love me?"

"Eeeehm I can’t how shall I say it you know"

His voice was soft and gentle, a complete opposite to his eyes and the axe.

"I don’t know. You’ve got to tell me. I don’t know."

"Why don’t we just say we’re friends?"

Even before she had finished the sentence she could see by the flexing of his fingers on the handle of the axe that she had made a mistake.

"NO! Friendship is something completely different! It’s not suitable for men and women. Friendship is a poor substitute when all three levels of love have failed. How can we be friends when I’m so fond of you and soon I’ll love you?"

Say something that will break the anger and the tension, echoed around her head.

"I’m not worthy of you," she breathed. "You deserve someone better. I’m such a boring person, without any imagination or talents."

He shook his head and the bare teeth cut a horizontal line through the moonlight.

"No. That’s not true. You mustn’t think about yourself like that!"

He reached for her knee with his hand, with his dark, sticky fingers.

"He’s going to touch me!" screamed Ana inside. I won’t be able to take it. I’ll throw up with disgust, right onto his hand and then he’ll cut me into pieces with his axe, just like he did with his friend.

She would manage. It was not all that bad. The thick material of her jeans protected her and he only touched her for a second with the tip of his finger.

"You’re beautiful!" he said.

"I’m not, I’m not, I hate seeing my image in the mirror!"

"I’ve never met a woman as critical about herself as you. I value that. In my eyes you appear different to what you see in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with you."

"I have ugly legs. My calves are too big. I have to wear trousers all the time."