I dreamt of an entanglement of limbs in brown soupish water. Hair like green weeds drifting over my face. A woman naked under a pink ski mask, the open black O of her mouth, into which I was sinking. She was bound to a shower rail by a golden cord and the water whipped down on her from the silver spigot.
It was mid-afternoon when I awoke. Or so the band of sunlight pouring through the window told me. There were tiny fragments of dust wheeling in the sunlight, and a buzzing mosquito. I reached out to grab it, but it arced away from my hand as if it already knew my intention.
I heard the sound of falling water, like the last breath of the dream I had come out of, but it didn’t go away, it persisted. I turned my head to the bathroom door and saw the glass of the shower fogged up with steam, the shape of a woman behind it. The shape moved and a hand grabbed a towel and the towel was pink and she emerged, her head bound in this pink towel like an unruly turban. She was naked underneath it and everything was suddenly real, too real. She knelt down on the sheet that covered me and unwrapped the weight of her body around me, underneath it.
You felt free enough to let yourself in.
I did. I’m sorry.
Why sorry? It was good to find you here. Asleep, midday. Like you were home.
Home?
And it was even better to lie down beside you. And, you know.
So, I had not been dreaming. But it would have been impolite to mention that. So I said what anyone would say.
Yes.
She pulled the towel off and turned her head.
Help me dry.
And I rubbed her hair between two bands of pink towel.
They look good together, she said.
And I remembered she had said that before. But I repeated, almost ritually: What?
Our clothes.
They were lying on the bare wooden boards. Mine, and above them hers. A thin yellow summer dress, like the Pussy Rioters wore.
I was taking the last few steps from the stairs to the fanciful courtyard when the cello started up again from above. A summery baroque dance, which I later came to recognise as the gigue from suite four. It was precise and light, exact as a piece of lacework, and I was imagining her fingers stopping on the strings when my mobile rang and the office number showed up. I heard Istvan on the line.
Where have you been? he asked. I have news.
Well, come round, he said. You have an office, remember? And what used to be a business.
So I continued on through the arch where the summery gigue was drowned out by the sound of a distant riot.
It was another demonstration on the boulevard. The coloured balaclavas bounced up and down behind masses of police helmets, which separated them from a baying crowd in camouflage and combat clothing. It was like an unruly gymnastic display, and I was amazed at their level of fitness. Thin, muscular arms, dressed in pink and yellow tank tops, under the bobbing, pastel-coloured ski masks. Maybe they sold them in Benetton.
I found Istvan at his desk, with his back turned towards me. He swivelled his chair around when I entered.
It is strange, he said, how battle lines take shape. We always thought it would be Russophiles and nationalists, the old pre-war divisions making space for themselves again. The Jew on one side, the Christian on the other, Catholic, Orthodox, atheist, Muslim, anarchist all falling into line, on one side or the other. But who could have foreseen the coloured balaclava? It spreads like its own virus, creating new fault lines altogether, new orthodoxies, throwing church into the arms of a state it used to hate, internationalist and nationalist band together against this degendered neutered thing that believes in nothing but street sex and boomboxes in public places and wants to turn this place we know into some Strasbourgian Nordic version of permanent disco night.
You won’t be wearing the coloured one, I gather.
And now, he went on, with a kind of worldly Slavic sadness, there are rumours, that they have found the grave of St Panteleimon.
And that’s significant?
Martyr. Roman times. Patron saint of the church of Constantine. A discovery that could have united us all.
And will it?
He blew through his closed lips.
There are no more brothels to be found in the twelfth, by the way. Of all the districts in the city, it is quite unusually chaste.
And that was your news?
No. My news was this.
He turned his laptop towards me.
There was a small, unremarkable building on the screen, with lettering above the door.
What does it read? I asked.
Morga, he said. City morgue.
Of course, it would come down to that. One knows without admitting it; one looks from the Polaroid of little Petra to the enduring faces of her parents and thinks what one cannot say. Save your money, she’s already dead.
You think she’s inside there? I asked him. And there was a dead feeling inside me.
What did the psychic tell you?
That she was in a small room that she cannot leave.
Well. It has many small rooms. That the residents cannot leave.
He was really going for the Yorick thing today. But it suited him somehow, those Slavic jowls and the moonlike glasses. Maybe he had found his voice.
Can we go there?
Not without appointment. It is a morgue, after all. And Jonathan?
He pronounced it the Gertrude way. Three syllables. Jo-na-than.
Yes?
Frank called.
I sat at my desk with my back to him. Of course he would call. One day.
He thinks you two should talk.
Perhaps we should, I thought. A have-a-drink kind of talk.
He’s in a bar around the corner.
I opened my desk drawer and saw the Glock sitting there. Like all guns, it seemed to want to be put to use. Some day.
And what would Frank be? A coloured balaclava or a black?
Balaclava is not Frank’s style.
I slipped it into my waistband and stood, and found a jacket on the wall. I put that on, even though it was too hot.
Which bar?
He mentioned a name. An unfamiliar one.
I walked out and the gun walked with me. I remembered the feeling very well.