It was the young one. The one who seemed to have too many teeth crammed into his mean-looking mouth. The one whose face was ravaged by the after-effects of severe acne. The one who was always chewing gum.
‘Are you happy with us, Jana? Are you happy to be here?’
Why are you asking this, she thought. You know the answer only too well. But his tone had been mocking, and she wondered whether he realised how well she understood English. Quite possibly, he taunted all the women like this, knowing full well that they could understand only a fraction, if anything, of what he was saying.
‘I happy.’ She tried hard not to reveal how well she understood and spoke their language. She wasn’t fluent, but she could hold a conversation and she could understand most of what they were saying. She had decided early on that it would be to her advantage if they weren’t aware of that. She had occasionally been able to pick up snippets of useful information from overhearing their conversations, even if they tended to be relatively discreet in the women’s presence.
She had nearly slipped up when the fat man had addressed her the previous evening. This one would probably have noticed, registered the significance of her being able to understand and respond to his question. The fat man had been too self-obsessed to register more than a moment’s unease.
‘You’re one of the lucky ones,’ the young man continued. ‘Wonder if you even realise that? We’re the good guys. Well, better than some, anyway.’
She had her back to him, scrubbing away at the wash basin in the room’s en-suite bathroom. She turned to him, her face blank, her expression feigning incomprehension. ‘Sir?’
He was leaning against the bathroom door, watching her as she worked. ‘You don’t understand at all, Jana? You haven’t a clue what I’m talking about.’
‘Sir?’
‘You just clean, Jana. Clean.’ He pointed to the basin and mimed her scrubbing actions. ‘Ignore me.’
She blinked, trying to look confused, then turned back to her work. She was conscious the young one was still standing close behind her. She wanted to show him she did a good job, that she cleaned the rooms thoroughly, though she wasn’t sure if he cared.
‘You’re not a bad looking woman, you know that, Jana? Pretty fit for your age, I’d say. Bit old for me, though you never know your luck.’ He laughed in a manner than seemed devoid of any humour.
They were all like this. Their individual motives were different, of course. The fat one, and maybe a couple of the others, were genuinely lustful, even for an older woman like Jana. The others just wanted to demonstrate that the women were their property. Mostly, they did nothing bad, but they wanted you to know that, if they wished, they could do anything.
And sometimes, she thought, they did do bad things.
She had no real evidence of that. But there were stories the women whispered to each other, recounted in the languages the men couldn’t follow. Stories about the women, sometimes little more than girls, who had gone missing. The ones who, one morning, had simply not been there. The ones who were never mentioned.
She had witnessed one instance of this herself, a month or two previously. A woman, much younger than herself, who had already been here when Jana arrived. She and the woman had had no language in common, and had done little more than acknowledge each other’s presence. Jana had thought the young woman pretty, and had been distressed to see how the hard work and conditions here were gradually wearing away at that youthful bloom. She had wanted to find some way to talk to her, find out how she had come here, what life she had been fleeing.
But it had never happened. One day, Jana had noticed the young woman was no longer around. At first, Jana had optimistically thought the young woman might have somehow succeeded in getting away from this place. Perhaps she had somehow managed to make her escape, found her way back into the world out there.
But then Jana had realised that, if the woman had absconded, the men would have made more fuss. Even if they had not wanted the other women to realise what had happened, they would have panicked among themselves. There would have been blame, recriminations. She had seen enough of the men’s behaviour to know that, whenever anything went wrong, however trivial, there was always an argument.
But that time there was nothing. No sense anything was amiss.
Jana had tried asking one or two of the other women what might have happened, but no one had wanted to talk about it. Some had mentioned bad luck and turned away from her. Others had simply ignored her questions. Whatever had happened to the young woman, Jana knew that it was nothing good.
‘I wonder what’s going to happen to you, Jana?’ the young one said from behind her, almost voicing the thought in her own head. ‘You’re a fine woman but you’re getting on a bit, aren’t you? You can’t stay here for ever.’
She could sense he had moved even closer to her, crowding the tiny bathroom. She had finished cleaning the basin, so she turned to face him. He was standing only a few centimetres from her, and she could smell his sour breath.
‘Do shower,’ she said, gesturing with the damp cloth in her hand.
He took a step back. ‘You’re doing a good job, Jana. You’re a hard worker. Not that any of us really gives a fuck.’ He gave another mirthless laugh. ‘I wonder what will happen to you, Jana. When you’re no longer any use to us.’
She had wondered that herself sometimes. She had never slept well here, uncomfortable on the hard mattress, struggling to keep warm under the thin blankets, the only heat coming from the presence of the other women in the room. Often, she found herself lying awake for hours in the thick darkness, unable to move for fear of disturbing her roommates. This was the kind of thought that crowded into her brain. What will happen next? What comes after this?
She tried to envisage life somehow becoming better, but she couldn’t conceive how that might happen. She could only imagine it getting worse in some ill-defined and unknown way.
She told herself that, really, she was still young. Older than many of the women here, but not the oldest. She had plenty of work left in her. Plenty more years of doing this.
But eventually that would come to an end. Either because she was incapable of doing it or, much more likely and much sooner, because the men no longer needed or wanted her here. That could happen at any time, and what would follow that?
As if responding to her thoughts, the young one said, ‘We’ll find some way of dealing with you, Jana. When that moment comes. We’ll take care of you.’
Take care. She knew that phrase in English. She knew what it meant, and she knew it was ambiguous. We’ll take care of you. We’ll look after you. She was on her knees, scrubbing at the shower, and didn’t look up at him. He was just talking at her, she assured herself. Just amusing himself by pretending to chat with her, even though he thought she wouldn’t understand what he was saying. Or, more likely, she thought, he assumed she would recognise the gently threatening tone, without even knowing what she was being threatened with.
The truth was that she didn’t. Even though she could understand most of the words, she had no idea about their implications. She didn’t understand this place. She couldn’t fathom how it really worked or what they really wanted from her and the other women.
They worked them hard, of course. And they gave them nothing but the most basic subsistence. Jana had been threatened with violence or worse by the men, although for her, so far, there had been nothing more than threats. She knew it could be worse. No one ever spoke of it, but she knew that some of the women had been assaulted here, physically, sexually or often both. She didn’t know which of the men were responsible, but she imagined they were all capable of it. Perhaps, despite her age, her turn would come.
She glanced up uneasily, trying not to catch the young one’s eye. He had retreated from the bathroom, and was wandering round the bedroom, peering into the wardrobe and dressing table drawers, as if hoping that last night’s guests might have left something of value.
‘You get on with your work, Jana,’ he called. ‘Do a good thorough job. You’ll get your reward in heaven.’ That same humourless laugh.
I know I won’t get it here, she thought. But I don’t know what I will get. It just feels like a holding pen. A battery farm where they work you every waking hour and give you just enough to survive. While they wait to move you on.
Like cattle to slaughter.
The thought had entered her mind unbidden, and she had no idea where it had come from. It was an image she had never thought of before, but suddenly it seemed right.
Cattle to slaughter.
She dipped her head down into the shower, not looking back at the young one, and continued to scrub, scrub, scrub.