Mikhail and Devora kiss and bite and cling to each other as they thrust together, and the wolf and leopard are both very interested in this performance.
At last, when the spasms have shaken both of them and Devora has squeezed her eyes shut and cried out and Mikhail has pulled out of her and left his white signature upon the damp hair between her thighs, she rests her head against his shoulder and in the golden light he listens to her speak.
She tells him that Octavius Zloy has vowed he is going to kill her when he awakens. She tells him that her husband may be insane, and that he cannot be stopped.
Mikhail listens. The wolf is pacing again.
She tells him that if she was free from Octavius Zloy she would find a way back to her village. But how to be free from him? How to be free from such a mad whirlwind as that?
Mikhail is silent for awhile. Then he says he will go to the trailer and talk to Octavius Zloy.
Devora shakes her head and tells him that talking will not do. She tells him that Octavius Zloy only understands violence, and so if Mikhail wants to help her he must go into that trailer where the bad man is sleeping and knock his brains out with whatever is at hand.
Then, she says, she can be rid of him. The world can be rid of him. And she will be free. But, she says, he has vowed to kill her when he wakes up…so what shall happen next?
And she presses her head against Mikhail’s shoulder and cries a little bit, until Mikhail stands up, his face grim and his lips tight. He puts on his clothes and says he will go and talk to Octavius Zloy.
This time, Devora does not speak.
Mikhail says he will return and, without a weapon but his own slim frame and fists, he strides out of the tent on his urgent mission.
Devora waits for awhile.
Then she puts on her drab gray dress, made ugly with the patches that hold it together, and she looks with contempt at the blue dress the traitor has brought her.
He will learn a lesson tonight, she thinks. The lesson will be: do not stand and let Zolli take your hand, when you belong to me. Do not smile and laugh and talk with Zolli, the little bitch, and think that I don’t see what you’re doing. I could put a knife into Zolli’s heart and twist it a hundred times, but instead I will stab you in the heart with a blade called Octavius Zloy.
Yes, she thinks. Her eyes are slitted, her face crimped with ugly rage because her jealousy is and always has been a crippling disease. Go talk to him. He will be awake by now. Go talk to his fists, because I have told him you steal things and beware that you come to steal the moneybox in the dark of night.
I will survive as I always have, she thinks. I will take my blows from him, because I know that when he beats me it is out of the purest love and sweetest possession.
She knows that the boy and Zolli have been here, right here, in this same place. She knows that they must have laughed at her stupidity, for letting herself believe that the boy cared only for her.
No one cares for her but Octavius Zloy.
He has told her so himself.
Devora stands up and leaves the tent, and she walks slowly and gracefully, as if in a dream, back the way she has come, back along the dark and moonshadowed Great White Way, back to the gypsy trailer where by now her husband has delivered justice to a very evil boy.
As the saying goes: A stranger’s soul is like a dark forest.
And Devora is very certain the strange boy carries within him an unknown wilderness. But it is not one that any other woman in this circus will share, and for sure it will not be the simpering and smiling and oh-so-pretty Zolli.
The trailer’s door is open. Wide open. There is only blackness within.
Devora goes up the steps and then inside. She speaks softly, calling for her husband. She hears breathing in the dark. It is a harsh rushing of breath. She smells the caged wolf on her skin. She spends a few seconds fumbling for matches and the candle on the table near the door, as she continues to call for her husband. He should be right there, the bed is right in front of her. The match flares and the candle’s wick is lighted and she holds the flame out and then she sees the blood.
Well, she thinks, justice has been delivered. Perhaps too harshly, but still…
And she smiles a little, not thinking yet of what she’s going to say to her husband to explain where she’s been, except out walking in the moonlight as she sometimes tells him when he is contrite and weeps like a little child after he awakens.
Then by the candlelight she sees the red mass on the floor at her feet and in it is something that might be a beefy arm torn from its socket, and there a leg with a massive thigh clawed to the crimson muscle and white bone.
On the floor are blood-spattered clothes. She has seen those clothes tonight. She has removed those clothes tonight.
She calls in a weak and trembling whisper for Octavius Zloy, her husband and her protector, the tyrant of her heart.
The candlelight finds a head upon the bloody planks. It has a slab of a chin and small eyes and bears an expression of open-mouthed wonder and horror. On the end of an arm that has an elbow but no shoulder is a clenched fist, the scarred knuckles already turning blue.
Devora is about to scream when something shifts just beyond the range of the light.
He speaks from the dark. What he says she can’t understand, because it sounds like a growl. It sounds like an animal’s rage put to nearly-human voice. Then he speaks again and this time his voice is almost his own.
“You’re free,” he says.
And he repeats it: “You’re free.”
Devora shakes her head and spittle drools from her mouth. Because she doesn’t want to be free. She doesn’t know how to be free. She knows only that he beats her because he loves loves loves her so very much. He wants her to be the perfect wife for a great man like himself. And the film that is to be based on his life…she was to star in it also, and they would be stars together on the cinema screen, and both of them so uncommon the dolts and whores in her village couldn’t stand to look upon the savage sun of their faces. He had promised about the film. Just as soon as he raised enough money.
Then all life would be pleasure, and so many people would be jealous. But now…now…
A hand moves into the light, reaching for her. It is not quite human, and seems alive with moving, shifting bands of hair.
“I love you,” the boy whispers.
A word comes from Devora’s bruised lips.
That word is Murder.
She speaks it again, louder: Murder.
And now her eyes widen into terrified circles and she lets the scream go that will awaken the entire village of the circus and have the first of them here within seconds: Murder.
A figure leaps from the darkness. It is strangely-shaped, glimpsed from a nightmare. As Devora staggers backward, the figure throws itself into the bolted window shutter and crashes through. Devora screams Murder again but now she is alone in the trailer with the torn meat, broken bones and smeared guts of a wrestler.
They take her away to a place to sleep, but she cannot sleep and they cannot get the extinguished candle out of her hand. She lies in the bed with her eyes open and stares at the ceiling, and she doesn’t respond when Lady Tatiana and her daughter Zolli, both of them so kind to everyone, come to sit at her bedside. It is soon clear to all that Devora has embarked on a journey that has no destination.
The hunt for a murderer goes out across the countryside, but the boy has vanished. How the boy did what he did, to a formidable man like Octavius Zloy, is a mystery with no solution. Why did the boy take off his clothes? And another very odd thing: why did the boy leave a puddle of piss on the trailer’s floor? It would be talked about in the village of the circus, and under the glowing bulbs of the Great White Way, for the rest of this dwindling season and surely into the next, as well.