Chapter II. Curfew
II
Curfew
Something moved inside her body. First slowly, almost softly, brushing against her entrails and compressing her organs.
Her initial discomfort turned into pain, pulling and twisting, and she covered her mouth, afraid to throw up.
A muffled noise startled her—a bubble bursting, a pop, the sound of dripping water.
Out, Ariadne thought, out.
Only then did she notice volume in her abdomen that should not have been there.
Her belly was large and round, her breasts swollen and heavy, her knees seared with pain.
No, she thought, horrified, scratching the stretched skin to remove whatever had invaded her gut.
Out, out, out, she screamed, or she thought she did, droplets of blood sprouting from her belly button.
It can’t be happening. Ariadne slapped herself one, two, three times on her stomach and face.
Not to me. The words blurred into tears while she pulled, pinched, cut.
It was unbearable, the feeling of being touched at all times, of having no control over what came and went inside her.
She wanted to be small, invisible, intangible, she wanted …
“Ariadne?”
Ariadne opened her eyes. Her entire body was sore, and she found it hard to breathe. Quaint waited for her outside of the taxi, holding the door open.
“I fell asleep,” she mumbled, accepting his hand to exit the car. He had his own suitcase in his other hand, a second bag with the journals they had taken from the storage room, and her duffel bag hung from his other arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” said Quaint, walking with long strides. He had picked her up at the clinic after Ariadne left the cat with Terebê, and they went together to Vitória Airport, passing by several police cars blasting their sirens. “The trip is short, but you can sleep during it as well.”
“Where are we going to stay in Rio?”
“I took the liberty of booking a hotel in Copacabana.”
“Must have cost an arm and a leg.”
It was challenging to follow Quaint, short as she was, but she tried her best to keep up with him.
Whenever they stopped at a queue, she glanced at travelers pushing their carts, mothers taking children by the hand, soldiers—human, apparently, flat-toothed and oblivious—with rifles standing in front of every gate.
“Money is not an issue,” replied Quaint. “Let me worry about that, yes?”
It was impressive how he moved with ease even in hostile environments, dodging bodies and taking the passport and the tickets from his jacket, both attentive and agile.
Ariadne didn’t even know if she had ever traveled by plane before.
She guessed she had, based on the questions asked by Erik when she woke up in his house, hurt and disoriented.
What’s your name? Where are your parents?
Any information can help: address, city, phone …
Ariadne walked through the metal detector after discreetly showing them her prosthesis card.
I don’t have a name, she had lied. I don’t have a family.
I don’t know where I was born. She had lied so many times that the real memories dissolved, and her lie became true.
That’s not my name, she repeated to herself every time the old one returned to her head. I’m no longer her.
“Ariadne?” Quaint’s voice distracted her from her thoughts. She looked up to meet his eyes, and her neck twitched in pain. “Are you nervous?”
“I’m fine.” She crumpled her identity card. The Ariadne in the picture was the same Ariadne who had fooled Erik so well: young, exhausted, with dark hair and unfocused eyes. “I’ve never been to the airport before.”
“I see.” Quaint began to walk more slowly, and offered his arm. “Hold me.”
“Quaint?”
“Indulge me, please.”
Ariadne held the sleeve of his mustard shirt, and Quaint covered her hand with his, gently forcing her to hold his arm.
Around them, the human traffic only increased as they walked from one gate to another, and she noticed there were more armed soldiers on the airfield runway.
She hid her face against him, drowned by the scent of his cologne, by the softness of the fabric and the warmth that, no matter how inhuman, was alive, alive like she was …
Ariadne only noticed they had reached the plane when she heard the flight attendants greeting them at the door— Good afternoon, sir, good afternoon, ma’am, good afternoon, good afternoon—and Quaint brushed her fingers slightly.
“Would you like the window seat?” he asked, standing in front of the two seats of the first row. “So you can enjoy the view when we get to Rio.”
Ariadne sat down. Quaint placed his suitcase in the overhead bin, and she closed her eyes one more time, consumed by the horrible sensation that insects were crawling from her shoulders to her neck, from her thighs to the middle of her legs, countless fingers skimming across her.
Fingers that grabbed, groped, seized; punched, hit, slapped; fingers that curled around her throat and choked.
Fingers that were part of a hand, a large and sturdy hand that kept her immobile under a heavy body that breathed over her, panting the name that she stubbornly believed no longer belonged to her.
He had said it so many times that she had started to dread that hideous word, and begged others to call her by any other name …
“You can hold on to me again,” whispered Quaint. Ariadne touched his shirt, staring at the sleeves he had just rolled up. Her eyes stopped at one of his tattoos. A woman’s hairpin, carefully adorned with delicate flowers, resting forever on the skin of his inner arm.
She traced the tattoo, and Quaint smiled.
“What is it?”
“The hairpin of my first love.” Quaint looked at the dark screen in front of him. “She broke it in half and left one of the parts with me, but I never had the chance to give it back.”
“One of your wives?”
“In our hearts, yes. Unfortunately, it’s not what life had in store.” Quaint tapped one of the flowers with a finger. “I don’t know how many times I’ve redone this tattoo since.”
Ariadne imagined what the pin must have looked like in real life: thin, jade inlay, and gold wire, with a ruby as the centerpiece, carefully arranged in someone’s long hair.
“Every time you get one, your immune system breaks it down and removes the metal of the ink.” Ariadne flipped his hand to see the other images.
“I’d say the only reason you’re able to keep them for even a few years is because your regeneration process accelerates when you’re in danger, and a tattoo is just a minor wound.
Essentially, you’re torturing yourself.”
“Everyone deals with their memories the way they can.”
Quaint offered a reassuring smile, as if saying those exhausting pain sessions were something he could take, and Ariadne spent the following thirty minutes in a state of near sleep.
Her mind wandered, imagining what it would be like to live for centuries like they did.
Guls believed that everyone, human and nonhuman, was part of a reincarnation cycle that involved different places, bodies, and times.
Erik believed it, too, and said he had made the same friends in many lives: in the Soviet Union, England, Morocco, Italy, China.
Their presence made me more sensitive, spiritually speaking, Erik had claimed.
I often have dreams of the past, sometimes with lives that are not even mine …
Maybe some of them are yours, don’t you think?
“We’re almost there.”
Gale?o Airport was already crammed with people when they arrived, but most were part of a tactical unit lined up for a flight to S?o Paulo.
Quaint headed straight to the queue of yellow taxis outside, ignoring the large number of police officers, and sat in the passenger seat after helping the driver with the luggage.
The radio was on, but she absorbed only a few fragments of the news:
“… trails of blood in the avenue, and the police are now investigating … Nongovernmental organizations have alleged that the number of missing sex workers and homeless people in large cities has increased again, but the president argues that this is a ploy invented by the opposition to…”
“Can you please turn off the radio?” Quaint pulled down the sun visor as news of the amputation of the arm of a minister after a supposed accident began.
Ariadne had the impression that he was looking at her through the reflection.
Quaint seemed to tense up every time he heard the news, reminding her of the anger bristling in Boniface after the visit of a death squad.
The driver lowered the volume to a minimum. “Thank you.”
Ariadne relaxed, grateful. Just to be sure, she checked the inside of her purse.
Besides her documents, money, and medication, she had brought a case with carfentanil vials and several syringes.
It’s, um, an old party trick, Erik had said when he taught her how to falsify the labels and store the tranquilizer in the most discreet way possible.
We might be weaker than them, but even a gul will go down for a few days with this.
She thought again of all those humans who, by all means, seemed like they were being eaten alive, but by whom, really? Why would a gul choose such public victims? Don’t think of it, she thought, glancing at Quaint. Not here.
Outside, the sky was growing darker, and the evening blue was spotted with a few gray clouds.
The palm trees cast shadows on the pavement, and the taxi stopped in front of a sizable hotel facing the beach.
It was a sumptuous building, and the white facade must have been lovely during the day, but at 7:40 p.m. the lights in the windows were almost all on, and all she could see was the large frame of the sober construction.
“Come,” called Ariadne. “We need to go before curfew.”