Chapter VI. Dr. Erik Yurkov #2
Quaint caught her tears with his lower lip, tracing her face with his fingers like she had done with his.
Eyelashes, nose, mouth, tongue, chin. Her dress was lifted to her waist, and his hand caressed her slowly, almost asking if he could, if he should, if she really wanted this.
Yes. Ariadne nodded. Yes, please. She didn’t know how to explain that she would never ask for something she didn’t want ever again in her life, not anymore, not with him.
Quaint pulled down the straps of her bra and buried his face in her chest, kissing the skin between prosthesis and arm, her breasts, her belly, her inner legs.
“Be happy, Ariadne mine,” he quoted, and she swore she had heard the same poem many years ago, recited from another mouth.
His visible eye reflected the little light coming from outside, the glow in the pupil caused by the tapetum lucidum behind his retina giving him an unreal aura, half human, half beast.
After they finished, Quaint curled behind her, making her feel small between his arms. She closed her eyes, lulled by his steady breathing, and slipped a hand under his.
“Quaint.” Her legs were trembling, and the skin of her thighs was wet and sticky, but she didn’t move away from him. “Have you ever seen a hybrid?”
Quaint nuzzled the back of her head. “Are you worried?”
“Minotauro used to threaten me with it,” whispered Ariadne, about to drift away.
“Once, I met a little girl who needed human flesh, but couldn’t digest it.
She died at a very young age of what is now known as kuru.
” Quaint squeezed her, every centimeter of him against her, like he, too, needed the safety, warmth, comfort.
“Her teeth were too brittle, her skin too thin, her limbs malformed.” He showed her his open palm, then closed his fist around Ariadne’s hand, covering her completely.
“No bigger than my hand when she was born.”
“How did she eat?”
“Infants usually eat their mother’s food, much like your own breastmilk, but her gul father had to feed her.” Quaint closed his eyes. “If he could, he would have given her the food from his mouth, like birds do, if that had made her live just a little longer…”
Ariadne understood, turning around, the tip of her finger brushing against the ring with the braid.
The retroreflector layer of tissue behind his retina had a greenish tinge, and it should have scared her, but didn’t, and she brought him to her chest. Let’s talk about this later, his expression seemed to say, and Ariadne had no dreams in the few hours she spent in bed.
It reminded her of the day she woke up in Erik’s house for the first time, her mind floating aimlessly in an endless darkness, and only a vague command keeping her from going astray: follow the thread, Ariadne, follow the thread.
When she opened her eyes, she realized that Quaint was gone, and there were people talking in the living room of the suite.
“Can’t you just call her?”
“She needs to sleep. The night was long enough.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re all banned from Cabaré after this, anyway…”
Blinking, Ariadne recognized the voices.
Quaint, calm and stable; Rafaela, a little nervous but not aggressive; Augusto, finishing with an ironic chuckle.
She staggered to her feet and entered the bathroom to take a fast shower.
Her left arm had deep holes where Dami?o had bitten her, and she was sometimes assaulted by glitches of feeling, but most of the sensors had been shattered by the bite.
I should have bought a condom, she thought blankly, remembering what they had talked about and watching as the water ran down the drain. Sometimes, she could still feel the taste of the pill Minotauro used to give her dissolving under her tongue, but she pushed the thought away.
Ariadne put the dress on again and opened the door, and the three guls turned around to see her. Quaint was on the other seat of the sofa, with a cigarette between his fingers, the living room smelling strongly of smoke.
“What is this, the after party?” Ariadne took the cigarette from his hand and put it out on a tray. I thought you were stopping, she mouthed, and Quaint smiled: I guess I overestimated myself.
“Rafaela harassed me until I agreed to bring her here,” explained Augusto with a tired hand wave.
He was still wearing his tuxedo, or part of it: the midnight-blue jacket was missing, the white shirt had brown bloodstains and the sleeves had been rolled up, the tie was crooked, and the shoes were caked with mud.
The other woman opened her mouth to speak, then lowered her head.
Rafaela had managed to change from her evening gown into a casual jumpsuit, but she had lines of mascara streaking her cheeks, her hair tied into a lousy ponytail.
Ariadne felt a wicked satisfaction in knowing she had not been the only one crying, but she kept her expression unreadable.
“Were you telling the truth?” asked Rafaela with a faltering voice. “That you would help me no matter what?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Help?” Quaint’s eye was white and glassy, but he could already open it. Ariadne took one of the bags from the drugstore and knelt on the sofa as she spoke, cleaning his face and applying another disposable patch onto his eye.
“She’ll take us to Erik in exchange for medical help.” Ariadne brushed the hair from his brow. “Right, Rafaela?”
“Right,” Rafaela answered bitterly. “And Dami?o…”
“He’ll wake up in a few days, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Sacrifices must be made for our agreement.”
“So you knew where Erik was all along.” Quaint was also far from his meticulous self, although he didn’t look as battered as the night before.
He wore only the burgundy pants and his hair was down, but his skin had regained some of its color after the blood loss and his voice was stronger. “Care to tell us what is going on?”
Rafaela turned on the television. The anchorwoman spoke for her:
“… analyzing the last footage of the president, we can see him from the window of his house in the rural area of Rio de Janeiro, accompanied by a nurse. When contacted, she refused to speak to our reporters, and…”
“I bet Quaint can imagine why they were searching for Erik,” said Rafaela. “Why he would perform a botched gulification on the goddamn president is what I want to know.”
His shoulder blades stiffened. “He promised me he wouldn’t do it.”
Augusto clicked his tongue. “Can we trust Erik’s word?”
“Keep going, Rafaela,” said Ariadne.
“I talked to Erik on the phone before they went to the club. I knew when they would come for him because Lena told me, and that made him decide to hide in Genebra’s house. I helped … for a price.” Rafaela chewed the corner of her thumb. “He never paid me back.”
“Friedrich once said that the president had terminal cancer and they were covering it up,” said Augusto. “I thought they wanted Erik to do something about it.”
“The same thing he did with himself, but Erik refused, and I needed him around because of the pregnancy.” A cynical smile appeared on Rafaela’s wide lips. “At first, he promised he would think about it, then he started to ignore my letters. Said he didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Then you ratted him out.” Augusto sighed. “Why did they take Genebra?”
Quaint pressed his ring, and his fingertips became white. “Because he needs a living gul to do it. What about the eaten advisers?”
The pregnant gul smirked. “Genebra needs to eat.”
“More importantly, where are they?” asked Ariadne.
According to Rafaela, Erik and Genebra were being kept in a house in Petrópolis, a historical town in the Fluminense Mountains.
If we leave now, we can arrive in an hour or two, the gul said, caressing her belly distractedly.
But only after curfew. Quaint and Ariadne exchanged a look.
I say we all go, suggested Augusto. I’m worried about Genebra, and if I’m there, it’s three against one.
After another hour discussing the plan, they agreed to leave at ten. Rafaela and Augusto waited in the reception area as they dressed and made the final preparations, and Quaint closed the door behind them.
“I haven’t been completely honest about Erik.”
“I’m listening,” said Ariadne, leaving her purse next to a pile of journals.
Since the others had left, she had acted as clinically as possible, finding everything she would need, changing clothes, charging her phone and limbs.
Quaint grabbed one of the leather notebooks and leafed through the pages.
The journal he had in his hands was the same one she had been reading, and a small note fell from inside of it.
Maybe we will love each other better in another life, Erik had written. If we don’t, and we’re always like this, in this constant cycle of affection and disdain, I hope we can at least remain—as we always have been, in this and other lives—the greatest of friends.
“What is your opinion of him right now?”
“It’s hard to say.” Ariadne put the note back, keeping it safe between two pages.
“I don’t know how to reconcile the things he did to you with the man who took care of me.
I feel like I should be grateful that he even believed me worthy of living, or I won’t deserve these limbs.
” She opened and closed her hand, looking at the fine machinery of the fingers without the synthetic skin.
“At the same time, I don’t want to make little of your pain. ”
“Then we feel the same.” Except for the eye patch, Quaint looked just like he did on the day they met: hair slicked back, mustard-yellow shirt, suspenders, pants, brogues.
He took an extra pair of glasses from his suitcase, and his eyes were hidden again.
“Erik and I were romantically involved from 1949 to 1971. I didn’t know how to tell you before, mostly because I don’t like to think of it myself.
It’s shameful to admit that someone hurt you so profoundly, and you still care about their well-being. ”