The Edit Page 27
“Now you will give me the key to the Land Rover and any money you might have. Also, that little popgun of yours.”
“It’s … upstairs.” My mouth and throat are dry. I can barely form words. This is obscene. I want to shout out, to tell her how unnecessary all this is. I am going to free you anyway.
“Where?”
I tell her. She is insane. No telling what she will do.
“And where’s your needle?”
I lie and tell her it is upstairs with the gun. A stupid lie.
“You wouldn’t dare come near me without some weapon.”
She wriggles the snake in my face and I jump back, tripping and tumbling on my back onto the bed. She runs at me, straddles me with the snake inches from my face.
“Where is it, pig?”
Water spurts from every pore and out my eyes. I am all but blinded by my fear of the snake. I motion my hand toward my hip pocket.
“Get it out, slowly. Unless you want to kiss Melinda here.”
The snake unwinds itself from her wrist and trails its tail over my chest. I can smell strong animal must, whether from the snake or Miss O’Brien or me, I cannot tell.
She rises a bit, and I move my hand slowly into my pants pockets and withdraw the syringe.
“Drop it on the bed,” she orders. “Just drop it.”
The snake whips its tail about madly.
“Melinda is impatient.”
I do as I am told. She gets off me, picking up the syringe.
“And now the keys,” she says.
I do not bother to bluff her about these; they are in my right hip pocket. I pull them out and put them on the bed, as well.
She orders me off the bed and to take off my clothes. I protest; this is humiliating. She gives a reason: She does not want me following her immediately. I am less likely to do so in the buff. It sounds almost reasonable. I do as I am told, removing even my socks and underwear. I stand naked in front of her, my hands trying to cover my genitals. It is a helpless, miserable feeling. She looks at me as if appraising a cut of meat.
She then gathers the keys and clothes in her left hand, the snake still in her right. I do not make an attempt to catch her off guard. The snake unmans me.
“Very nice.” She smiles coyly. “You look a ripe picture, you do. Be seeing you.”
She backs toward the door and I stand bathing in my own sweat, just wanting her to be gone, not caring about the consequences. Just wanting her and the snake to be gone. She throws the clothing outside the door, backs out herself, and then slams the door in back of her. I hear the bolts sliding shut. My whole body slumps in relief. Safe at last. A prisoner in my own house, but safe.
Then my eye catches movement at the door. It can’t be. I look again in the gloom—only the bedside light is on. I scream. It’s as if the snake zeroes in on the sound. It glides toward me, its tongue flicking over the rush matting. I hear the fuzzy sound of its movement on the mat. I am paralyzed with fear, but do manage to climb on top of the bed. The snake comes to a stop at the foot of the bed, its head darting this way and that. My heart races in my chest; my sternum feels as if it will burst open with the pounding. I cannot catch my breath. It is as if I am being gassed, gassed and asphyxiated. I scream once again. I appeal to I know not what agencies for deliverance. At one point, my bowels loosen. I soil the bed. I look for something to throw at the snake; there are only the pillows within reach, and the bedside light, but I dare not risk losing my only source of light. I am so terrified that I step in my own excrement on the bed; it oozes into the spaces between my toes.
I plead to her, to Miss O’Brien. She must still be outside the door. She could not leave; this would be too sweet for her to miss, getting her own back at me. She is the sort of vindictive whore who must listen to her victim’s agonies. I offer all sorts of assurances to her on the other side of the door, tell her of my plans to let her go, offer to share the wealth I have tucked away in my Swiss account, debase myself in all manner of ways, even to apologizing for what I did in the Hitler days. If only she will take away the snake. The animal remains at the foot of the bed, coiled as if to spring or sleep, I am not sure which. But my naked helpless state keeps me from leaving the relative security of the bed.
Minutes go by; I think they must be hours. My heart will not slow down; my breath becomes harsher and more strained. I feel light-headed and fear that I will faint. A vertigo overcomes me, such that I am sure I shall fall to certain death on the floor next to that horrid snake. I scream one last time, that God might save me.
The door bursts open; it is Cordoba, gun in hand. He takes in the situation at a glance, aims at the snake, then looks again at me and begins to laugh so uncontrollably at my predicament that it takes him three shots to dispatch the snake.
My deus ex machina was prompted by Cordoba’s desire to come early for our card evening and perhaps cadge an extra drink or two. I learn this once I calm down, which takes me over an hour and two brandies. I finally relate to Cordoba what has happened, how O’Brien has effected her escape.
“I’ll get on the phone to the capital. We’ll set roadblocks.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.” By now, I have dressed, we are sitting upstairs in the leather armchairs by the fireplace, and I once again have control of the situation.
“But she’ll get away.”
“She already has. You think I want the generals to know the bird has flown? They are most vindictive people. Worse enemies than the Irish.”
“Then what are you going to do? She’ll set the Israelis on you.”
I sip my third brandy. “Perhaps.” For I have my backup plan in full operation by now. “I may just drift into the night once again.”
“At your age!”
Cordoba is not one for sucking up. One of his more endearing qualities.
“Yes, at my age.”
Suddenly, I remember my memoirs. If she has stolen them … I rush into the kitchen where I have taken to storing them after the daily writing. The lump in my throat subsides when I find the papers still in place behind sacks of rice in the top cupboard. Thank providence for that, at least. Miss O’Brien must have been in too great a hurry to bother searching for them.
I return to the living room, papers in hand, and Cordoba nods, raising his eyebrows.
“Get rid of that damned thing,” he says, but I ignore him and instead make preparations to leave my home of over fifty years.
This is accomplished rather smoothly, in point of fact. As I reported earlier, I already have a new passport, and I always keep enough hard cash in dollars about the place to be able to survive several months. Long enough to get to my funds in Switzerland. I pack only a small valise. Large enough for two changes of clothes. After all, I won’t need my tropical wear where I am going. A few mementoes: the jaguar and my Kreuzberg Venus. The snow globe of Stephansdom I leave for Cordoba. I shall have the real thing soon enough. I also fetch the Mauthausen diaries as well as this sheaf of papers.
“Burn them,” Cordoba insists again. “Haven’t they caused you enough trouble already?”
But I shake my head, stuffing the papers in under my shirts. I am strangely calm. I even take time to transcribe the awful scene with the snake, so to purge it. Meanwhile, Cordoba paces the room, throwing back gin. But I am peaceful, sure of myself as my hand traces the pen over fresh pages. It is as if the scene writes itself, and I am quickly done.
My way is mapped out now. I did not lock the door of the house as we left. It is not a fungible property; it can rot in the jungle for all I care.
Writing these final pages, in Cordoba’s taxi on the way to the airport at the capital, I think of Miss O’Brien. If only she had waited just those few more minutes, I would have set her free without the need for violence. The eternal female, Miss O’Brien was out of synch with me to the very last, proving my th
eory of the eternal imbalance between man and woman.
But would I actually have set her free? Wasn’t I, even as Miss O’Brien produced her snake, already having doubts? Already seeing her resemblance to Frau Wotruba once again rather than to my mother?
Perhaps I should get rid of these memoirs as Cordoba advises. But what could be the harm in taking them along? Once I have altered my appearance and taken up my new life in Europe, I will be safe.
Europe. The word is an elixir to me, bracing me as Cordoba’s taxi jolts over potholes in the barbaric tarmac.
Know this, gentle reader. If you have read the pages of this text, one of two things has transpired: either I have determined, nearing the end of my days, to publish or the Irish, that vexatious female, has somehow managed to track me down.
But the latter option is quite impossible. She will never be able to find me.
Bouncing along in the dark, I’ve noticed twin beams in the side mirror. They are approaching rapidly. My heart is racing. Nonsense. It cannot be her.
Will I never be free of O’Brien?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, a note of gratitude to both Otto Penzler, founder of MysteriousPress.com, and to his able associate publisher, Rob Hart, for taking on this novel. A big thanks also to freelance editor Heather Boak, who embraced the spirit of this book in every sentence and helped to make it a much stronger novel.
The folks at Open Road Media have, as always, been professional and savvy in their editing and production. Thanks particularly to Lauren Chomiuk, senior production editor; Laurie McGee, copyeditor extraordinaire; and proofreader Anna Stevenson for their work on The Edit.
And lastly, but in no way perfunctorily, a tip of a loving hat to my family—you make it all worthwhile.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J. Sydney Jones (b. 1948) is an American author of fiction and nonfiction. Born in the United States, he studied abroad in Vienna in 1968 and later returned to Austria to live there for nearly two decades. In the late 1970s, he began writing travel books, many of which concern Central Europe, and published his first thriller, Time Of The Wolf, in 1990. In 2009, he published The Empty Mirror, a mystery set in late-nineteenth-century Vienna that would become the first book in his Viennese Mystery series, of which the most recent installment is The Keeper of Hands (2013). Jones lives with his wife and son in California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronicor mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the expresswritten permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblanceto actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by J. Sydney Jones
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
978-1-5040-3872-0
Published in 2016 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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