The metal tool in the girl’s hand looks cold. Like something a gynecologist would use. Surgical steel. I fumble for the word. What is it, it’s on the tip of my tongue. She’s lying on her back on an unmade bed, slowly spreading her legs while she smiles at the camera.
I don’t think I know her. It’s not Maria, definitely not. Though I can’t help thinking I’ve seen her before. Maybe on a bus or sometime in town. Maybe I’ve seen her in another film like this one. But she doesn’t have the look of a pro. Her movements are clumsy. It could very well be her first time in front of a camera.
She parts her labia with her first and middle fingers. When the point of the surgical instrument enters, it’s hard for her to keep smiling.
Then I remember. A speculum.
That’s what it’s called, the instrument in the girl’s hands.
I know this because I’ve been in prison. While others inside were getting an education or learning a trade-if nothing else, they got better at stealing cars or breaking into summer houses-I acquired a vast knowledge of pornography.
I shared a cell with a long-term inmate who had kicked his wife down a stairway while they’d both been drunk. A long stairway. When he wasn’t crying and looking at photos of her, he was going through his collection of pornography, a library in alphabetical order. The entire back wall of the cell was filled with VHS cassettes and DVDs. We sat on his cot. He educated me. From the first films in the ’70s, when Linda Lovelace gagged on Harry Reems, who later married a deeply religious woman and became a realtor in Utah, to the first ass-to-mouth scene, which my cellmate was reasonably confident came from the early ’90s. He paused the tapes and explained.
The metal instrument goes farther up inside the girl on the bed.
The technical term for her position is spread eagle.
This style of recording, the private setting, the shaky picture, would sell under the label gonzo or amateur.
She’s still smiling.
A rehearsed smile, copied from similar films.
This is what horny looks like.
She’s opened the speculum all the way now. Smile, smile. Horny.
Even with the shaky home recording and the old television we’re watching on, a good gynecologist would be able to make a fairly complete diagnosis.
The word I’m thinking of now is the color salmon. She’s not smiling anymore.
A few lines over the screen. A break in the sound. Then flickering. The first few minutes with the girl on the bed was just an old shot that had been recorded over. The tape has been used again and again. DV tapes are expensive. Another girl in the same bed, this one has strawberry-blond hair gathered in a ponytail, she reaches for something off screen. Then she’s gone too. More flickering on the screen. The tape recorded over again. A new room, maybe the living room in the same apartment. The girl on the screen wears black net stockings. Hair is dark brown and hangs on her shoulders. She wears a short dress of a red, shiny material. She walks awkwardly, her heels must be unusually high. She wears more makeup than I’ve ever seen her wear. Painted like a whore or an ice-skating queen.
The voice behind the camera says: “Show me your ass.” She turns around. Slowly hikes up her dress.
I look over at Christian, he’s fumbling around in his pocket for his cigarettes. He looks strained and focused. On the screen in front of us, his sister shows her G-string.
There’s no doubt about it, it’s Maria.
We’re in the back room of the TV and radio shop I work in. I’ve been here close to two years. Landed the job a few months after I got out.
I stand there praying that the only reason we’re here-the only reason Christian called me, not somebody else-is that he needed to see a videotape. A DV tape. Digital video. Nothing else.
It’s ten-thirty at night. It’s November and black as coal outside. Nabil is the third person in the room. He’s a constant talker. All the time. Now he’s quiet.
But of course this isn’t where it begins, either.
I’ve just stepped out of Erkan’s Diner, Frederikssundsvej in Northwest, the outer edge of the city. You get any further out and it’s the suburbs, human storage and residential districts. I’m holding a kebab wrapped in foil and I already regret buying it. They always give me a stomachache. Erkan only sells to schoolkids at noon, to drunks at night, and to idiots like me. They let the meat sit on the stick way too long, sweating fat and whirling around and around several thousand times before the last scraps are sliced off.
I think about renting a film on the way home, but I don’t feel like going all the way to Blockbuster and I can’t find a parking spot anyway. Or I could double-park, like the ex-Yugoslavians do in front of the place right beside it, Café Montenegro. The place called Palermo until a man got shot there. I debate myself, back and forth. Then the phone rings. I don’t recognize the number and I don’t answer. I sit in the car and I’m about to stick the key in the ignition when it rings again. It’s Christian.
I drive one-handed, eat with the other. Feel dressing on my chin, down my hand, on the way to Bispebjerg Hospital.
My stomach doesn’t complain yet, but it won’t be long.
I open the door to room 18. Christian is standing at the foot of the bed, he looks up, nods.
Nabil can’t have been here more than a few minutes. He’s still wearing his overcoat and hasn’t recovered from the shock yet. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He repeats it slowly, to himself. Only when I’m all the way in the room can I follow his eyes, down to the girl in bed. Maria. Christian’s sister. Her eyes are closed, but her sleep seems more drug-induced than peaceful. Her head is held motionless by a big white collar. Her nostrils are filled with dried blood. One of her cheeks is swollen, almost twice as big as the other. The hospital gown gaps and I see red and purple marks on the small patch of skin visible.
At first I think, traffic accident. A bad one. But something isn’t right. I haven’t seen Christian for several years. Well, once after I got out. At a bar in town, we said hello and agreed to get together soon. Which of course didn’t happen. But why would he call me after a traffic accident? He has new friends now. People who understand him better.
Christian breaks the silence.
“They found her down by Fuglebakken Station. She was just sitting there, bleeding from her nose and mouth. Didn’t have… all her clothes on. Head hanging down on her chest. Then somebody called an ambulance.”
“What happened to her?” Nabil asks. Christian doesn’t answer at first, walks over to his sister and smoothes a lock of hair behind her ear.
“The police were here a few hours ago. I couldn’t help them. I don’t have any idea…” He turns toward me, pulls me in, hugs me. His eyes, dead and distant until now, turn moist. “It’s so damn good to see you guys,” he says. “She had this in her pocket.” He opens his hand, holds out a small DV tape, a videotape from a camera. “The police can have it tomorrow. I want to see it first.”
We take the car, my car, an old Peugeot. Down Hovmestervej, Tomsgårdsvej toward Borups Allé. A ride through our old neighborhood. I could slow down and say, There’s where we smashed a few windows, there’s where we broke into a car. There’s where I beat somebody up, there’s where I got beat up. There’s where we wrote our names on the wall.
The rest of the kebab sits on the dashboard, the greasy wax paper flutters above the air vent. None of us speak. I roll down the window and throw it out, watch in the rearview mirror how it hits the street and explodes into small pieces of lettuce and meat. Someone honks behind us. There was a time when that would have been enough for us to stomp on the brakes.