Chapter V. A Mouse in a Trap
V
A Mouse in a Trap
The colors of the dream were muted, but the rope around her neck was tight.
Not her neck, no, another person’s neck: taller, bonier, with an Adam’s apple going up and down.
Her fidgety fingers adjusted the knot, the stool under her feet trembled, and she breathed heavily, sweat dripping from her pointy chin.
It all had been too much. Since her—his—desertion, since before, even, since he was conceived, and he couldn’t even focus on the phantoms of good news coming from the Allied troops.
I should’ve been saving lives, he thought, and everything in that sad, impersonal room felt laconic and gray.
It was evident now how little he was, how little all of them were, how even survival was pointless—nothing could fix what he had already lost. How did he go from being on the run to landing in a tiny boardinghouse in France? France, of all places …
He was about to kick the stool when a stranger opened the door.
“Oh, my,” said the man. “You’re not German, are you?”
Erik blinked. The man scratched his own chin, thoughtful, his tattooed hand appearing under the sleeve of a gabardine topcoat.
“I don’t understand,” Erik mumbled, hand still grabbing the rope. “I don’t understand a single thing you say.”
The man smiled and shifted to a functional Russian, eyeing the red cross satchel on the bed.
“Soviet? Lucky you. Now, take that thing off of your neck! The Allies have just reached Paris, haven’t you heard?”
The room changed to a car. A Bentley Mark VI, in fact, information Ariadne would never have known otherwise. Her chest fluttered, flat under a comfortable shirt tucked inside her pants. His pants.
“I think he’s nervous,” said Quaint by his side, playing with the suspenders on Erik’s shoulder. “We’re not going to devour you, Doctor. Yet.”
“That’s what you say,” Erik replied with an anxious little laugh. The woman on the other side laughed as well, and the hairs on his neck bristled, feeling her breath. “I’m not entirely certain about…”
“It’s so sweet that you’ve been pure all this time…” Genebra’s hand slipped to his stomach, and Quaint undid his tie. Heat twisted his underbelly, and Erik shifted in his seat. “Not even a brothel? Not even once? Twenty-six is not that young, is it? By human standards.”
“No, I guess it’s not very young.” Erik gulped when the man by his side kissed his bare neck, tongue and teeth tracing the line of his hyoid bone and feeling blood pumping inside his jugular, threatening to sink in. “Careful with the teeth, yes?”
Genebra laughed heartily, leaving lipstick marks on his chin. “You were right, Quaint, he’s very amusing…”
Now they were in the middle of a ballroom, and his heart was drumming inside his chest. Erik adjusted the tortoiseshell glasses on his thin nose and took a deep breath, facing a large gul.
“Listen, we’re not accusing you of anything. It was just an honest question.”
“I am accusing,” Quaint added sharply, and Erik had to control an irritated sigh.
“I’m trying to talk here, Quaint. Let’s all be calm and polite, yes?”
“And what are you accusing me of?” Minotauro cracked the knuckles of his right hand, fist against palm. The hand alone could crush his skull, maybe even Quaint’s. “Say it to my face.”
“I’ll break it down for you.” Erik took a sip of wine and met Minotauro’s dark brown eyes.
“What do you mean, exactly, when you claim veal is best? Because, well, I was thinking, see, unlike you, I have tried veal, and I have tried regular beef, but you can’t possibly know the difference, because your body only turns the protein found in human meat into amino acids. Which implies—”
“I’m sure he understood what it implies,” Quaint interrupted him.
Minotauro twisted his lips, the severe prognathism caused by his lower canines turning his smile into a grimace.
“Quaint takes everything too seriously, don’t you think, Erik?” Minotauro poured more wine into Erik’s glass.
“Sometimes, yes,” replied Erik, oblivious to the irony. He glanced at Quaint, at the vein popping under the collar of his shirt, at the stiffness of his strong jaw. “But I think his concern is valid.”
“Quaint thinks I hate humans. Too bad, because I think we all have much to learn from him. Lately, I’ve even been thinking of doing the same thing he did, get myself a nice human wife, although the one I’m thinking of is not quite ripe yet.
Do you recommend it, Quaint? A litter full of half-breeds? ”
Their reactions were too fast. Quaint and Minotauro roared, and someone yelped, urging them to stop from the other side of the ballroom.
Erik grasped Quaint by the arm before he was too unreasonable, and the gul’s sheer strength threw them both to the floor.
Augusto held Quaint in a headlock, and Dami?o and Friedrich jumped to contain Minotauro.
The larger man fought under them, a boar struggling against his captors.
“Don’t listen to him,” Erik whispered as they hurried back to their feet. Quaint growled at him as well, wild, feral, so unlike the Quaint he knew.
“What if I do, human-fucker?” Minotauro shoved Friedrich aside and bared his fangs. His roar reverberated in the ballroom, and Erik felt himself shaking at the sound, paralyzed, no more than weak, helpless prey. “What can you do about it?”
His words mingled with the sound of a maid knocking on the door.
Ariadne opened her eyes. The images of the dream dissolved, a blur of crumpled ties, bared fangs, and animal growls.
I often have dreams of lives that are not even mine, Erik had said once.
She wondered if she, too, was more sensitive with guls around her, or if it was all a projection, her head patching pieces of the journal together even in her sleep.
The faint smell of cigarettes clung to the sheets, and Ariadne remembered where she was.
Not with the noose around her neck, not with Minotauro, but lying in Quaint’s arms. She touched his chest, her index finger following the lines of the birds drawn on his skin, the blackness of it turned into a greenish hue.
“Good morning.” Quaint put his phone aside, and Ariadne caught a glimpse of the news on the screen: The president made an official statement during a video conference to his followers, but he has not been seen in public since … “You looked like you were having the most disquieted dream.”
“I think you were in it.” Ariadne kissed his chest, trying to memorize the lines of the wings, his collarbone, the prominence of his neck. “What’s this one supposed to represent?”
“Not much,” said Quaint. “Two friends once drew it for me in a letter. It was not my favorite artwork of either, or their best, but it was the only one that I owned after their deaths.”
“Artist friends?”
“One was a most gifted sculptor and painter from a prominent local family. Met him on my first journey to Europe, when I stopped by Florence.” His hand guided hers through the tattoos, holding her index finger from image to image.
“The other was his model, apprentice, servant, lover. The lines blurred at the time. A sweet thing, but what a temper! Drew very prettily, too, though his art is all but gone.”
“Except in you,” said Ariadne.
“Except in me,” Quaint agreed. “I’m a walking memorial.”
“You seem to have had a very busy life.” Ariadne crawled over him to sit on his lap, still feeling the past night inside of her.
Now, she could see where the tattoos covered him: his neck, his arms, his chest, the fronts of his thighs.
She had seen glimpses of the ones on his back, but his stomach, feet, and lower legs were clean. “The opposite of me.”
“Only sometimes. Then, I was young and discovering many things about the world and myself. What I liked, what I disliked, what my beliefs were…” Quaint buried his fingers in the folded skin of her hips, keeping her close with a strong grip.
“I learned plenty, but the agitation of youth was a little too much for me. I, too, prefer a quiet life.”
They stayed in bed for a long while, and she wished they never had to leave.
It was pointless: Erik and Genebra were still missing, Rafaela was out of their range, and Quaint …
Ariadne shook her head. Right now, she could pretend there was no past or future, only the Ariadne who smiled when he brought her lunch, or the Ariadne who kissed him again when she was finished, or the Ariadne who pressed against him in the shower.
Later in the evening, they tried to go to Cabaré again, but neither Dami?o nor Rafaela were around.
The same happened the following day, but this time they questioned other guls.
I think it’s because of last time, drawled Ubirajara, pointing at the ceiling with a bored look.
You were quite the animal, Quaint, what did you expect?
Rosa tittered from the sofa: I’m sort of glad that Minotauro is gone, he gave me chills.
Then, the German couple in the smoking room: Yes, Dami?o talked to me, Friedrich conceded.
I don’t think he’ll show his face again unless you’re out of town, boy.
His wife, Lena, had another opinion, claiming they would certainly appear at the ball.
Rafaela loves to parade her pregnancy, Dami?o will stupidly agree, thinking you won’t be there, and they’re both vain enough to think it’s safe, she said, looking insistently at Ariadne.
A thin smile appeared on Lena’s face. Now, Quaint, I’m expecting that if you decide to appear, you won’t behave like you did last time …
“We have to go to the ball.”
“I don’t feel comfortable taking you there,” said Quaint. “Not after the things you told me.”
“Will they eat me?”