Feelings of Fear Read online

  “I rolled over and forced her face-down on to the bedcover, with her bottom lifted into the air. She was wide open to me, and she reached between her legs and tugged herself even wider apart. I pushed myself into her, and I pushed myself into her so hard that she was gasping and screaming. When I was finished, I lay back for a moment to get my breath back. Then I got up, picked up her coat, and threw it at her.”

  Another sketch, with Anaïs lying back on the bed, her face streaked with eye-liner. He had never drawn so well. He touched Anaïs’ cheeks with a little pastel blusher, and touched in the laurel-green of her eyes. “Anaïs,” he whispered, out loud. He was still finishing off the detail of her hair when the phone rang and made him jump.

  “George? It’s ten after midnight. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you to call.”

  “Oh … I’m sorry. I’ve been busy working on some drawings. Guess I got carried away.”

  “George, are you all right? You sound different.”

  “I’m fine. What do you mean, ‘different’?”

  “I don’t know, distracted.”

  “I’m tired is all. It’s been one of those days.”

  A pause. Then, “George … if something was wrong, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  Goddamn woman’s intuition. “What do you mean by ‘wrong’?”

  “Well, if something was wrong between you and me.”

  “Sweetheart, you know there’s nothing wrong between you and me.

  “You keep forgetting to call and you never say I love you.”

  “Well, I love you, OK?” He couldn’t help looking at Anaïs’ eyes, Anaïs’ lips. The lips said, “kiss me.” The eyes said “have me.”

  He talked to Helen for a few more minutes and then he hung up. He covered his drawing-block with a sheaf of architectural schematics and switched off his angle lamp. He went to bed without taking a shower, and he slept very deeply, without any memorable dreams.

  “George, you’re not listening to me.”

  George blinked. He was having lunch in a heavy-duty French restaurant on the Rue de la Montagne with his partner Ken Safdie and two directors of Hôtelleries Québécoises. One of the directors had gone to take a phone call; the other had taken the opportunity to go to the bathroom. Ken had tried to take advantage of their momentary absence by asking George what he thought about their finance package, but George was staring out through the window into the street.

  “George, you’ve been acting weird all morning. Are you pining for something?”

  “Pining for something? Pining for something like what?”

  “The ’flu, maybe. You haven’t even touched your food.”

  George looked down at his gold-rimmed plate, and the large piece of poached salmon that lay on it, in a brandy sauce. He had only broken off one flake of fish, and then he hadn’t eaten it.

  “I don’t know, Ken. I guess I’m not too hungry. I’ve had enough of French cuisine to last me a lifetime.”

  Ken looked at him with slitted ginger-eyelashed eyes. He and George had been friends for years, ever since architectural college. Ken was four years older than George – sandy-complexioned, big, with sandy-freckled hands more like a boxer than an architect. “Come on, George. It isn’t the food, is it? You can tell me. What is it? You’re homesick? You’re missing Helen and Charlie? Come on, pal, I’m missing Yolande, but there’s nothing I can do about it. You and me, we’ve got ourselves a job to do, and when we’ve done it, we’ll be ludicrously famous and insanely wealthy.”

  “It’s nothing,” said George. “Really, it’s nothing.”

  “Well then, cheer up for Christ’s sake. Listen – what’s the difference between a wife and a hurricane?”

  “Ken, please.”

  “There isn’t any difference between a wife and a hurricane. When they come, they’re both wet and noisy, and when they go they take half your house with them.”

  “Yeah, good,” said George. But then he saw a young girl with swinging brunette hair walk past the window and he couldn’t help lifting himself out of his chair a little to make sure that it wasn’t her.

  Ken glanced at the girl and then turned back again. “Play it straight with me, George. What’s going on here? You and me, we’ve never had secrets before.”

  George took a breath. He drummed his fingertips on the tablecloth. At last he looked up at Ken and said, “I’ve met someone,”

  “You mean a girl? You mean here, in Montreal?”

  George nodded. “For Christ’s sake, Ken, it was an accident. If I’d known she was there, I would have walked the other way, and never met her at all. I mean, I wish to God that I hadn’t”

  “George, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “It was yesterday … I went for a walk in Vieux Montreal and there she was.”

  “And what?”

  “She’s incredible. I mean you never saw a girl so beautiful. Dark hair, green eyes. The kind of figure you only dream about.”

  “Yes? So? And?”

  “And nothing. I’m in love with her, that’s all.”

  “You met her just yesterday and already you’re in love?”

  “I can’t explain it, Ken. It’s one of those things that happens just once in a lifetime, and most of the time it never happens at all. We never get to meet the girl of our dreams so we end up making a compromise and marrying the least-offensive girl we know.”

  “Is that all that Helen is to you? The least-offensive girl you know? Have you told her that? Jesus, talk about a sweet nothing.”

  “Ken, believe me. I have no intention of hurting Helen. But Anaïs—”

  “That’s her name? Anaïs? What’s that, French?”

  At that moment, however, the two hotel directors returned, one huge and well-fed, in a voluminous blue suit, the other small and highly polished, with a clipped moustache. The huge one clapped George on the shoulder and said, “You haven’t eaten your salmon, George. It’s wild, it’s the best. Don’t tell me that it struggled all the way up-rivair for nozzing.”

  George said, “We all do, Monsieur Truchaud. Salmon and people both. We all struggle ‘up-rivair’ for ‘nozzing’.”

  Monsieur Truchaud frowned at Ken in bewilderment. But it was just at that moment that another brunette passed the window of the restaurant, in the company of a tall dark-haired man. George pushed back his chair. He could see her only from the back, but it was her. He was sure it was her.

  “George?” said Ken; but George was already walking quickly toward reception, and pushing his way through the revolving door out into the street.

  She had almost reached the end of the block. George jogged after her, still clutching his table-napkin. He dodged a taxi, and almost collided with a bicycle. The cyclist shouted, “Bazar!” George caught up with her on the other side of the street, outside a brightly lit couturier’s window. He touched her sleeve and said, “Hey! Hey, wait up a second!”

  It really was her. Same hooded eyelids, same green eyes. Her companion was tall, at least six feet two inches, with oiled-back hair. He was handsome but his cheeks were pitted with acne scars. He was wearing an expensive black overcoat and a yellow spotted cravat.

  “Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he wanted to know. His voice was thick, with a strong Joual accent, like shingle in a concrete-mixer.

  “It’s nothing. It’s just that this lady and I met briefly yesterday, and I asked her to join me for a coffee and she couldn’t. I mean she obviously didn’t have the time. So all I’m saying is that the offer still stands, and in fact I’d like to invite her out for dinner if she’d care to.”

  The girl didn’t look at George once. All the time her eyes were fixed on her companion. Her companion stared at George as if he had a slight headache. George said, “There’s no strings attached. It was just that she was kind enough to direct me to the Rue … well, she was kind enough to direct me, that’s all. And dinner was just a way of saying thanks. You know, stranger in a strange city. One of those litt
le acts of kindness.”

  The girl’s companion stepped up so close that George could smell his lavender aftershave. His chest was like a wall. Very quietly, he said, “Va-t-en, étron – off you go, asshole.”

  George backed away. “Listen, I’m just trying to show my gratitude, that’s all.”

  “Don’t you speak English?” said the girl’s companion. “I’m telling you real polite to go away and to leave this lady alone. Otherwise I’ll cut your head off and stuff it up your ass.”

  George said, “Now look, now, I was only trying to—”

  But at that moment Ken came up and put his arm around him and said, “Come on, George, let’s get back to our meeting, shall we?”

  “You want to keep your friend indoors,” said the girl’s companion. “Il est fou comme la merde”

  “Please!” said George. He tried to take hold of the girl’s hand, but her companion pushed him away. “Why don’t you let her answer?”

  “If she wanted to answer, she’d answer,” her companion said. “Now leave her alone. She don’t want nothing to do with you. Not tonight. Not never.”

  They walked back to the restaurant. Ken said, “Was that her? Was that Anaïs?”

  George nodded. He had a catch in his throat and he could hardly speak.

  “Monsieur Truchaud saw the guy she was with. Apparently he knows him. He’s what they call a maudit – a real bad dude. He couldn’t believe it when you went running after him.”

  Just before he pushed his way back into the revolving door, however, George turned to Ken with tears in his eyes and said, “Did you see her, though, Ken? Did you see her? Can you understand what’s happened to me here?”

  Ken said nothing, but shook his head. Ken never looked at really beautiful girls. He had learned to be content with Yolande.

  “Tonight I caught her out on the town with her older brother Guillaume. Hadn’t I given her firm instructions to stay in my hotel room and wait for me, naked, kneeling on the floor? But there she was on the Rue de Montagne strutting along as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “How many times have I warned her about going back to her family? The Royers are one of the heaviest mobs of organized gangsters in Quebec. Her father was shot last year and his body found floating in the St Lawrence, wrapped up in razor-wire. Since then Guillaume and her younger brother Francois have taken over. Both are criminal psychopaths but they don’t worry me. Anaïs is better off with me. At least she’ll be well-disciplined.

  “I confronted Guillaume and told him that if he ever came near Anaïs again I would personally make sure that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. I dragged Anaïs back to my room and told her to strip completely naked and to kneel down in front of me. I told her that she had embarrassed me in front of Guillaume and that she would have to be punished for her own good. I had my leather belt looped in my hand and I kept snapping her with it, little sharp snaps on her shoulders and her back and her thighs. She wept and begged my forgiveness. She said she would do anything for me, so long as I forgave her. And I said, yes, you will.”

  Next to his sloping, handwritten words, there were thumbnail sketches of Guillaume and Anaïs together, and then a larger picture of himself and Anaïs in the hotel room. Anaïs’ back and shoulders were already criss-crossed with red marks.

  She was so beautiful, so subservient. But so she should be, after the way that she had treated him this afternoon.

  He popped open another can of Molson and circled around the room. Then he returned to his drawing-board. “What do you think you deserve, Anaïs?” he whispered. “What do you think you deserve, for humiliating me like that?”

  “I tied her face-down to the bed, fastening her wrists with ropes, and knotting her hair to the bedhead so that she couldn’t move her head without hurting herself.

  “I took my belt and lashed it across her bare bottom. She gasped, and her whole body tensed. I lashed her bottom again, leaving another crimson stripe. I lashed her six or seven times, but after the six lashes she stopped begging for mercy and started to beg for more.

  “I lashed her until she suddenly clenched her fists and gritted her teeth and started to shake in the throes of a huge convulsive orgasm.

  “At once I threw aside my belt, climbed on to the bed and forced myself into her. I knew that I was hurting her, but I loved her, and she needed punishment, she needed to be hurt, just like every beautiful girl who condemns a man to live with a woman he doesn’t really love.

  “I dressed and left her for more than an hour in total darkness, while I went down to the hotel bar for a drink with one of my partners. When I eventually came back I switched on the bedside light and angled it into her eyes. I asked her if she had learned her lesson and she swore that she had. I untied her and let her get off the bed. But after she had put on her coat, she turned around and said, ‘My brother will kill you for this.’ I snatched hold of her hair and banged her face-first into a framed picture on the wall. I was beginning to believe that she was humiliating me on purpose, so that I would beat her some more.”

  He drew an elaborate full-page picture of Anaïs’ punishment. He wrote the date, and then the time. Tomorrow he would punish her some more. A whip, perhaps, or a cat-o’-nine-tails, and some nipple clamps. Perhaps it was time he branded her with his own branding-iron, the initials GR, intertwined.

  He called Helen and they had a fragmentary conversation about Charlie’s progress at school. “He doesn’t like football. He says it’s too rough.”

  “Hey – I hope I haven’t fathered a wimp.” He was only half-joking.

  “He’s a very quiet, boy, George. He bottles things up, just like you do.”

  “Me, quiet?”

  “You used to be, anyway.”

  He looked across the room at his drawings of Anaïs. He wondered why it was almost impossible to find a woman you really wanted. He wondered why it was that when you did – by a hundred-million-to-one chance – she didn’t want to know you, she didn’t even want to open her mouth and waste her breath by saying no to you. It was wrong. It was all very wrong. The planets spinning all the wrong ways, the horoscopes all talking gibberish.

  He couldn’t sleep and so he went for a walk through Vieux Montreal. It was well after two o’clock in the morning. The streets were empty and echoing. He returned to the Pointe-à-Callière and sat on the bench where Anaïs had sat, his head tilted back, his legs outstretched. The wind was still fresh, and he could see the ghostly clouds racing over the rooftops of the renovated houses. He felt a deep sense of time and place.

  He felt more rested, and relaxed. Maybe his crisis was over. He looked around the windy square, which had once been a fort surrounded by a wooden palisade. He thought of Helen, and Charlie, and for the first time he missed them. It was time for him to finish his work here in Montreal and accept his responsibilities at home. After all, hadn’t he punished Anaïs enough?

  He stood up to leave, but as he did so three men entered the square and began to walk toward him, directly toward him, with obvious purpose. They wore hats and long black coats and their shoes rapped on the brickwork. George walked away from them, at a sharp diagonal, but one of them cut him off. He stopped, and stood where he was, and all three of them approached him.

  “George?” asked one of them. His voice sounded very harsh and very familiar. “George, I warned you, n’est-ce pas? I warned you to leave her alone.”

  George said, unsteadily “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t tell me that you’re going to lie to me, George! I would have thought better of you. You’re such un grand-jack after all, aren’t you? Such a he-man! But I warned you to leave her alone and you didn’t, did you? I saw her tonight. I saw what you did.”

  “Listen – écoutez – I didn’t do anything to anyone.”

  The man took off his hat and the lamplight revealed the acne-pitted face of the girl’s companion.

  “You hurt Anaïs, you écu. Y
ou hurt her so bad.”

  “Anaïs? But there isn’t any Anaïs! Anaïs is just a story … not even half a story, just a few pictures and some fantasy stuff. It’s all a fantasy!”

  The man came up close. His eyes were as pale and expressionless as agates. “What you did to her, that didn’t look like any fantasy to me.”

  George looked around him, desperately, but there was nobody else in the square. “Listen,” he said, “I don’t understand this at all. I don’t know how you know that I called her Anaïs, how you know about those things I wrote, those pictures I drew – they were only a fantasy, you know? They were just a way of – I don’t know – they were just a way of expressing my frustrations, that’s all.”

  The man said, “Eh bien, we all have different ways of expressing our frustrations, don’t we? First of all, when I saw what you did to Anaïs, I thought vais Vcrisser un coup de poing – you know, I thought that I’d beat the shit out of you.”

  He put his arm around George’s shoulders, and George’s heart began to palpitate, quite painfully. “Then I thought, no, fuck dat, I’m not going to beat him. Me – Guillaume Royer – one of the most notorious gangsters in Montreal – bruise his knuckles with a beating?”

  George said, “Listen to me, listen to me. I don’t know how you managed to see those drawings and read all that stuff, but it was all a fantasy, all of it. It never happened. I just made it up, you know what I mean? I invented it. Maybe you think it’s sick. Maybe it is. But I swear to God that none of it’s real.”

  Guillaume Royer gave George a reassuring pat on the shoulders. Then, with his right hand, he reached around and stuck a long kitchen knife into George’s stomach, just above his waistband. George gasped. Every nerve in his stomach cringed in pain. It was so cold, so intense, so intrusive. He had never imagined that anything could hurt so much. His abdominal muscles cramped up, his knees buckled. But Guillaume and one of his companions gripped the back of his raincoat and held him up, so that he was still standing.

  George stared at him and said, “Christ, you’ve stabbed me!”