Shohreh paused. Then she asked, Would you kill your brother-in-law if you had the chance to do it again?
I stayed silent. I did not know. What if I could not pull the trigger again? What if I turned and left again? What if I walked away and grew a beard and stayed silent for years and disappeared, took a plane, left and never came back?
Shohreh said, You understand why I think about killing?
Yes.
Why do you say yes?
I just understand because I wanted to kill someone myself.
My torturer and your brother-in-law are the same kind.
You and my sister are the same kind.
Will you help me? Shohreh asked again.
Yes.
Majeed is useless, she said. He gives up on everything. He is content with so little of life. He wants to expose that man to the media, he said. How naive! Bring him to justice. Can you imagine? What would that do? How could we prove what he did after all these years? And did you see his big car and all those men around him? He obviously has money. He has power. He probably has some kind of diplomatic immunity. He is connected here. I saw the car plate. I need a gun. Can you get me a gun?
Yes.
When?
Soon.
How much? I will pay for it.
No need. I will get it, I said.
Shohreh smiled, kissed my forehead, took a long look at me. Then we lay on our backs and we both looked up and pretended to fall sleep under the wooden ceiling and above the mattress, enveloped by smoke and the haze of our breathing.
AROUND FOUR IN THE MORNING, Shohreh woke me up. Could you take a taxi back home? I need to be alone, she said. I will pay for it. I am sorry, I am so sorry. I need to be alone, she whispered, and she cried and turned her head away because she couldn’t face my sleepy eyes, my thick eyebrows, my flat nose, my uncombed hair, my sealed lips, my interrupted nightmares.
I went to the bathroom. In the bowl there was one small piece of toilet paper that had floated and marinated all night in Shohreh’s yellow piss. I stood above it and aimed at it. I made holes in its middle and drove it down to drown, and then I flushed, making sure that the whole building would hear it in their dreams like apocalyptic rain.
I put on my clothes. Shohreh kept apologizing. She gave me my woollen hat and helped me with my jacket and walked me to the door, touching my back. I walked home. I wanted to walk. I refused to take a cab. I wanted to walk and hear crushing sounds under my feet again. Night is the only time when one can impose one’s own sound on the world. In the absence of wolves’ howls, hyenas’ laughs, nightbirds’ songs, and a full moon, it was up to a human to make noises, to fill the void.
But the snow was soft. My steps were muffled. It was quiet, so quiet that I felt as if I did not walk but instead crawled in silence. The snow covered everything and I walked above cotton, on silent carpets, on beach sand. Softness is temporary and deceiving. It gently receives you and gently expels you. I saw no one, no one. No being at all, not even a rabbit, not even the trace of a cougar, crow, or deer, nothing in this northern terrain. I thought: I will tell every tourist I encounter, every sister who has ever received a postcard, that nothing here exists; there is no queen, there are no seals, no dancing bears, moose, cabins, high trees, bonfires. Descriptions of these are all a ploy, an illusion, a conspiracy. There is nothing but that which freezes, and the only way to escape it is to dig deep holes, dig and sail under it. There, my friend, you can encounter rivers of steam, tropical paradises with noisy crickets, crocodiles, muddy rivers, green fungus arching like wallpaper over trees, and expert scuba-diving rats, and troops of roaches receiving signals, conspiring to take over the world. All that exists, all that will ever exist, shall pass through this passageway under the ice, the dead corpses when they turn to dust, the big happy meals, the wine, the tears, the dead plants, the quiet settling storms, the ink of written words, all that falls from above, all that ascends, all that is killed, beaten, misused, abused, all that have legs, all that crawl, all that is erected, all that climbs, flies, sits, wears glasses, laughs, dances, and smokes, all shall disappear into the underground like a broken cloud.
My fingers were frozen, my house keys cold and painful to touch. The lock on the front door of my building was cold, too, and the keys would not twist in the door. I walked back to the street and tied a knot in the key chain. Like a spider, a fisher with a rope, I pulled a thin thread from my sweater and dangled the key down into the sewer, where the temperature was reasonable. I let the metal warm up from the underground steam, then I brought it back up and put it in my mouth, and it quivered like a fish. I ran back to the lock before the key slipped through my lips, before I lifted my neck and swallowed it like a fresh cod in a seal’s throat. I opened the door and took the stairs up to my home. There I took off my shoes, lay down in bed, covered myself, and slept with my clothes on, wishing I was a pony or a tiger.
THE NEXT DAY, the janitor’s wife, the Russian lady from the basement, came up to my door and knocked. She is asleep, she told me. The old lady is asleep. We can take the trunk now.
I rushed to the corner of my bedroom, looking for my socks. I found them. They were damp in the toes, but not wet. I put them on. Then the shoes, which I found under the bed. I pulled the laces and felt pressure on the arches of my feet. I made delicate, perfect knots on both shoes. If I can’t wear a bowtie for a Victorian encounter like this, I thought, a bowtie knot on both feet might compensate. And tidiness, for the occasion. When in Rome do as the Romans, et cetera. And now a light jacket, and I am ready for counter-imperial looting. Excitement was lingering in the corridors, excitement manifested by the rushing of our feet and the smirks on our faces.
We entered the old lady’s apartment. Many of her photographs had turned yellow, and the sepia faces of colonels and waves of desert dunes covered the walls.
Aha! Here it is. The infamous trunk. Yes here, here! The janitor’s wife pointed her finger.
A small dog came up to me and started to sniff around me. Then he started to growl at me.
Give him your hand, the janitor’s wife hissed at me. Give him your hand to sniff.
But before I had the chance, the dog started to bark, calling me names such as “pest” and “intruder” and “thief.”
The lady will wake up, the janitor’s wife said. Hurry up.
The dog was yelping and twisting and blocking the way.
We carried the trunk and started to move towards the door, but at that moment the lady shouted from her bed, Natasha, is that you?
Yes, yes, I am here to take Elvis for a walk. Stay asleep.
Is my husband back? the old lady asked.
He is feeding the horses. Go back to sleep, Natasha said.
But the dog kept on yelping. Put the trunk down. Put it down, Natasha said.
We laid the trunk on the floor. Natasha opened it, grabbed the dog and threw him in, and closed the lid. The barking was now muffled, but the dog must have gone crazy banging his head against the wood inside.
We took the stairs down to the basement. When we arrived at the janitor’s apartment, Natasha opened the trunk. She grabbed the dog, who was whimpering by now, and let him loose in the apartment.
The dog was partly blinded by the sudden light. He sniffed the carpet and the legs of the coffee table. Nothing like darkness to calm an animal down, I said with a wise glance at the creature.
Okay, Natasha said. What do you want to take? You can take only one thing.
There were books and clothes, including a military jacket, letters, and thick leather boots. I tried on the boots. They were a little loose, but that could be fixed with thicker socks, I thought. I flipped through the trunk again and found two pairs of thick socks.