What is this moment

What was yesterday

What whirlwind runs

Like a beast through the field?

KONSTANTIN BALMONT

‘Billie Holiday, the greatest female singer in the world, died five days ago. Perhaps she’s making way for you. You’re looking good!’

These were the words with which Fred greeted Kitty after a long absence. She had turned up outside Kitty’s flat on Old Compton Street, in a white shirt and an expensive-looking leather jacket, and rung the bell. Kitty had moved in only a few weeks earlier. Now that she was earning her own money, she had, with Amy’s approval, finally taken a flat of her own, since, according to Amy, she would soon earn even more now that she had British citizenship. Almost nine years had passed since Kitty had left her homeland and, apart from the scant information from her anonymous friend, she’d had no other news of her family.

Fred Lieblich strode, uninvited, past the dumbfounded Kitty and into the brightly lit flat.

‘It’s the end of an era. The bastards didn’t want to admit her to hospital because she was black. I don’t want to live in a country like that.’

Kitty, caught completely unawares in the midst of preparing for her first television appearance, stood in the hallway staring after Fred, who marched straight into the kitchen.

‘How do you know where I live?’

‘Oh, come on, don’t be silly. I need a drink, I’ve come straight from the airport, I just dropped off my things with some friends.’ Fred lit herself a cigarette.

‘Amy will be picking me up any minute. I’ve got a show this evening.’

‘Excellent, then I can see her too. Good old Amy. I’d never have believed she’d go all out for you like that. And your English is exemplary. Excellent! That song of yours — sorry, I can’t remember the title — I liked that song very much. So I say let’s all have a nice evening together, the three of us.’

‘And how am I to explain your turning up at my flat?’

‘I don’t owe anyone any explanations. I wanted to see you, so here I am.’

‘You don’t, but I do. Because unlike you I have some principles, which I’m not prepared to throw overboard just because you suddenly reappear and think you can turn everything on its head again.’

Fred had found what she was looking for and was mixing two gin and tonics with practised ease.

‘I can’t drink anything. I’ve got a live performance!’

‘Nice place you’ve got here! Cheers!’ Fred took a large swig of the sparkling liquid with great relish and sat down at the kitchen table.

Outside, it had started to darken. The noises of the street grew quiet; an almost audible silence fell. A slight, rather tired scent tickled Kitty’s nose: her scent, the scent of this emotional tightrope-walker. Kitty reached for her glass. She had to get through this, it would be over soon, she wouldn’t give in, she would be strong.

She had been working non-stop. She and Amy had been shaping her new life; the foundations were still shaky, she had to keep going, battle on undeterred, she was on the right path. This person sitting in front of her, this brazen, egotistical person, was an obstacle, a threat, a catastrophe. She had to do something to stop her.

‘Please leave now.’

‘So Madame has changed, has she?’

That accent, that soft, cocky intonation — how intimately familiar it was to Kitty’s ears!

‘Please!’ Kitty rose and gestured towards the door. Fred stood, leaving her half-full glass of gin and tonic on the table. Kitty felt churlish. But that which had been forgotten should not be remembered, no, not under any circumstances. The main thing was not to look at her, then soon it would be over.

In the hallway, Kitty was aware again of that almost imperceptible scent in her nostrils. She tugged at the door handle, kept her face turned away: don’t look, don’t. Suddenly she felt a cool hand on her cheek. Fred was stroking her face. Kitty spun round and slapped her, so hard that Fred staggered back and slammed against the wall. Kitty’s palm was burning.

It wasn’t possible to forget.

She couldn’t see Fred’s face; she had one hand pressed to it as if trying to smother the pain. Then Fred seized Kitty’s wrist, gripping it so hard it hurt. Kitty cried out and tried to free herself from her grasp. Where did this diminutive person get such strength? The woman before her was quite a bit smaller than her, she’d never really been aware of it before. Fred’s other hand slipped under Kitty’s skirt, undid the suspender belt; one nylon stocking slid down to her ankle. Kitty felt shame. She watched her clothes fall to the floor.

The flame-haired woman pressed her against the wall so hard that she gasped for breath. Fred was still holding one of her wrists twisted behind her back, and it hurt. This time she wasn’t numb; this time she was conscious of this woman’s every movement, every impulse. It was a feeling somewhere between disgust and pleasure.

Suddenly, she felt the burning sun of the empty schoolyard on her face. She saw again the house on the Holy Mountain. The meticulously framed photos on the walls. The perfect couple. The ticking of the clock — had there really been a clock, or was it her imagination? And the knife: what had the knife been like, how big? She didn’t know any more. And Mariam, had she screamed at the end; or was that her own voice? And the curlers in the blonde woman’s hair, did they all fall out? Had she been smirking right at the end, too, as the knife cut into her throat? Did she in fact die instantly, or had there been a death rattle? And how could she have left Mariam there, with the dead woman in the empty apartment, without batting an eyelid? How had she got home, in someone else’s clothes — in her clothes? How could she have done that?

What had been Mariam’s last thought?

As the warm, intense, overpowering feeling took possession of her and she forgot the world around her — her flat and the night outside, the pot plants, her little room in Tbilisi with the old, narrow bed, which she had loved so much, Andro’s eyes when she saw him again for the first time after the war, the green hills of her hometown, the little blue veins on her mother’s arms, her brother’s uniform — as she forgot the classroom, in that hot summer of sutured wounds, as she forgot Amy and the voice on the telephone to which she was still unable to put a name, she screamed so loudly she thought her eardrums would burst.

Fred stroked the hair out of her face. Kitty was sweating. Her body was trembling. She sank to the floor. Fred sat down beside her and pushed down her skirt, so innocent, so abashed, as if she hadn’t ripped off Kitty’s clothes just moments earlier.

‘Why are you doing this to me?’ whispered Kitty. She lay in the hallway on the cold, hard floor.

‘May I ask you something?’ Fred responded.

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Where did you get this scar?’

Fred went to put her hand on Kitty’s belly, but Kitty shrank away.

‘From an operation.’

‘What operation?’

‘They removed my womb.’

Kitty didn’t know why she hadn’t lied.

‘Why?’

For the first time Kitty heard something akin to fear in Fred’s voice.

‘Before they did that, they aborted my child.’

Kitty heard her voice coming from far, far away. It felt strange, after so many years, simply to speak the truth.

‘What happened?’

Fred’s voice remained quiet, tentative, but it wasn’t pitying. That made it more bearable. And Kitty told her, in an almost matter-of-fact tone, about her old life, the life that had led to the classroom and the blonde woman and Mariam.

*

‘Where’s your mother now?’ Kitty eventually asked, when she had finished her confession.

‘In the Jewish cemetery in Vienna. At least, there’s a plaque there with her name on. As to whether her remains are there as well: I wouldn’t swear to it. In all the chaos back then they weren’t keeping too close an eye on who went where, with so many Jewish corpses …’

‘But why? You’d —’

‘She hanged herself the night we were supposed to flee Mödling. With Martin’s belt. A good, strong leather belt. German workmanship, you know; it does what it says it’ll do.’

*

The nights that followed were sticky and clung to the skin, even during the day. They couldn’t be washed off; their languorous, salty taste could not be discarded. They were wordless and gentle, then urgent again, full of words that refused to run dry.

And during the day they had to be painted over with falsehoods; Kitty had to be ready with excuses to evade Amy’s watchful eyes. Until one day Amy informed her that her lover had returned, and she had no intention of ever leaving her side again, and Kitty was filled with bilious anger towards Amy, a vicious jealousy, and became painfully aware of her own unfortunate situation. She congratulated her manager, then retreated, and refrained from making any comment at all in the days and weeks that followed, as she sat with Amy in her house in King’s Cross, or in one of the many Soho cafés, discussing their work plans.

But then Fred started turning up at her flat in the night; she would throw a little pebble up at her window, as if to emphasise her role as secret concubine, and would stumble up the stairs in the dark. It was rare for all three women to meet: at Amy’s welcoming party for her returned friend, or a picnic together in Hyde Park. Then Kitty and Fred would exchange stolen glances, secret messages; their shoulders would brush accidentally, there would be almost imperceptible touches, words whispered furtively in passing.

Kitty was surprised by how easy it was for her to lie. She was surprised by how quickly she had become a part of Fred’s world, despite her constant resistance, her pride in refusing to allow that to happen. How carelessly she deceived her friend and patroness; how effortlessly she forgot Amy the minute Fred appeared beneath her window. What had happened to her resolutions and principles? Why was she jeopardising her relationship with Amy?

Kitty knew that the coming months would be full of splinters, that she would have to learn to walk on them so that they didn’t leave scars. Secretly she longed for the moment when this edifice of lies, these false promises, this wordless, deceitful arrangement would collapse and implode. Because Fred never mentioned Amy; she didn’t feel the need, as if this divided life were normal, as if this dreadful situation were a logical consequence of her character, her thoughtlessness, the egocentric blindness that sometimes drove Kitty mad. But they talked a lot, and for Kitty these conversations with Fred became a necessity; she needed them as she needed air to breathe, needed them even more than she needed the sense of abandonment as they overstepped the boundaries together. For so many years she had been mute, and now, at last, she could speak again. Without false pity, without false expectations. She could exhale: for a few hours she could break free of the shadow world inside her head and return to life, to the here and now. Completely.