Vodka

Alexei Andreyevich sat at his desk. It wasn’t a desk at all. It was a table. A table in a kitchen. He sat at the table, alone and unwilling. To his left sat a glass of vodka. Before him was a plate of bread and cheese. He sat at the table and remembered her.

He remembered the way he had held his hand across her eyes, like a blindfold. The notches of her spine had pressed into the knots of the carpet. He lay over her, his dick now hard, now soft as he battled his conscience and tried to convince himself that she was nothing more than a whore. Another prostitute in a long line.

Her hips were narrow; her hair was blonde and long. He had taken hold of it, moving his hand from where it blindfolded her eyes so that it stroked back the luxurious length of it, gripping it firmly at the nape of her neck. He had snapped her head back so that her throat was too taut to make a sound. He had held himself above her, his dick now hard, now soft.

“If I carry on drinking,” he said to his wife, now present in the room, “it will be the end.”

The glass of vodka sat just to his left.

“And if you stop?” she asked.

“I will remember her,” he thought but did not say.

He picked up the glass and threw the contents down his throat.

“Vodka,” he said, staring at the glass in his hand, but his wife was gone from the room again, as suddenly as she had appeared.

The bottle sat to his right, and he poured himself another glass, setting it down to his left. The table returned to its original pose. A still life, with a man in the middle, breathing alone.

He remembered his fingers, hard up within her. He remembered with determination the way in which he had bitten her nipples, trying to draw blood.

She had been angry. It spat from her, even when she did not speak. It was the thing which attracted him to her. The physicality of her anger, the way she seethed in public, the coldness of her indifference and the white heat of her fury. His pursuit had been inevitable.

He drank down the vodka. Its flame as it passed through his gullet reminded him of the searing heat of her ire.

Transgression is more appealing when desire has a purer goal. His lust for her wayward anger was as pure as refined gold. He had known her before he met her. Rumour and reportage were enough to seal his desire.

He had not stopped drinking; nor had he stopped remembering.

The room had been hot and stuffy. The crowds of people there to see the playwright had crammed themselves into the salon. His wife had been one of the throng, but he was there to see her.

The gold of her hair was like a beacon for him. It illuminated the room. He had taken two small glasses of vodka from a tray being carried through the room by a servant and crossed the salon to where she stood.

Rumours abounded that she was the playwright’s muse. He barely left her side at soirees such as this one, even though he was the one who was there to be celebrated. She stood, cool and aloof, letting the circus pass her by.

Every so often, she was known to speak her mind; anger and vitriol poured from her; scorn for her lover’s work, disgust with the establishment, hatred for the men and women crowded into salons across the land simply to fawn over the words of the man who called her Muse.

She was, he had decided, exactly like him. She drank vodka neat from a tumbler. She did not bind herself in the corsets and girdles that fashion dictated. She went her own way.

These were the ideas about her with which he comforted himself as he crossed the salon to deliver up the glass of vodka he carried in his left hand. He did not acknowledge the playwright, but instead handed the vodka to her, his eyes fixed upon her face.

She met his gaze and accepted the glass, then turned her face away from him. The boredom in her posture deepened the thrill that had already begun to build in him.

They did not speak. He kept his gazed fixed on her face as he sipped at his vodka; she kept her face turned away as she sipped on hers. It was enough.

The playwright moved away, the swell of the crowd carrying him to another part of the salon, leaving her behind, still in that awful pose of bored indifference. He did not change position either, but he could sense the playwright’s panic as the tide of people carried him further out to sea, his anchor and his shoreline receding into the distance.

“You should not have come tonight,” she said, her face still turned away.

“I had to,” he replied. “There was nothing else for it.”

“You have spoiled everything,” she said.

He sipped his vodka and did not reply.

Suddenly, she lifted the glass to her lips and tilted it; she tilted her head to the same angle. She swallowed the vodka in one fiery whole and threw the glass to the floor before stalking away from him.

He was left in the vacuum her absence created, soaking in the anger that negated all other matter. It was at that moment that he decided; he had to have her.

He threw back his own glass of vodka and left the room.

Sitting at his kitchen table, listening to the sounds his wife made in the rooms upstairs as she readied herself for sleep, he took up a different glass of vodka and tossed that one back as well. He took up a lump of cheese and broke it into smaller pieces. He ate one of the pieces. He left the bread on the plate. It was hard and grey and needed softening in milk or tea or something.

He chewed on the cheese and remembered not to chew hard on the left side of his mouth. His teeth were bad on that side. They were beginning to crumble and fragment; if he pressed one in particular too hard with his tongue, it released a foul taste and odour into his mouth.

He sat, as on most nights now, alone and unwilling at his kitchen table, trying not to remember as his wife settled into sleep in a room somewhere above his head.

He poured more vodka into the glass. The night was growing darker. It was ink-like in its blackness. Not even the stars peeped out in the velvet sky that showed itself in the window. As night drew on, the shadowy trees that closed in around the house from twilight until dawn took on the same hue as the sky, until it was impossible to tell sky from trees or any other part of the garden.

On the only chair in the kitchen that was cushioned, positioned by the damped down range, a cat lay grumbling in its sleep. Its paws and muzzle, ears and eyes, even the skin along its spine, twitched as it dreamed, tiny electrical currents running through its body, forcing the muscles to spasm.

He thought of the ripple of the muscles around her abdomen when he ran his fingers gently over her flesh. He thought of her naked form, there on the carpet in the drawing room, and him above her, bearing down, his dick now hard, now soft. He thought of his fingers buried inside her, warm and moist and sticky. He thought of the way her head was turned away, so that she wouldn’t have to look at him, of his other hand holding on to her hair and pulling it back so that she couldn’t move her head if she wanted to.

He thought of her complicity, her submissiveness, her absence from the physicality of the present.

She had not turned out to be the woman he had thought she was.

He tried to cut the bread, but it was too hard. It needed to be soaked. He would not waste the vodka on it. He drank down the glass he had poured himself and then topped it up again. This could, and probably would, go on all night.

If he carried on, it would be the end. If he stopped, the memories would overwhelm him.

He had sent a card to her apartments, a few days after the soiree, inviting her to drinks with himself and a few of his acquaintances. The intimation was that his wife would also attend.

To his surprise, she had agreed. A card had been sent by return to his office in town bearing the name of a drinking hall, a time and a date. He made no arrangements with anyone else; that had never been his intention. He told his wife he was meeting friends for dinner at his club. There were no questions asked.

She sat with him in that drinking hall as the bar man brought over a carafe of vodka and some water in a jug. She was the one who poured the drinks.

“You don’t want water, do you?” she said, the question filled with derision.

He presented her with a book. “This is my favourite author,” he said.

She looked at it, then looked away.

“I’ve read it,” she said.

He withdrew it from the table and took up his glass of vodka. He sipped it at first, watching the elegant line of her neck and throat as she tilted her head back and swallowed the contents of her own glass in one. She refilled her glass and looked at him.

“Why are you with him?” he asked; blurted like a schoolboy ejaculating with excitement at the proximity of his first woman.

“Drink,” was her answer; a command delivered with a glance at his glass.

He obeyed.

“That isn’t the question,” she said.

“Then what is?” he asked her, trying to appear suave and knowing.

She laughed. It was a short laugh, brittle and full of scorn. She looked away from him again and an uncomfortable silence descended. He felt ashamed and searched his mind for the question he should have asked.

She drank more vodka and refilled both their glasses.

“You need to keep up,” she said.

“I don’t understand why it is that you are with him,” he replied, trying to work the question another way.

“You don’t understand anything,” she said, looking at him again briefly before finishing off her third glass. “Come on,” she laughed, tapping her glass against his. “You must keep up.”

He drank and felt afraid. It was as though she was possessed. It thrilled and scared him.

“The question,” she said, leaning towards him across the table, “is what he is doing with me?”

She filled their glasses.

“And what is the answer?” he asked.

She paused, smiling innocently. The innocence of her lips lent a new aspect to her face. Even her eyes had lost their cloud of anger, and she appeared almost bashful.

“He is not the playwright,” she said. “I am.”

He drank, she drank, and this time he was the one to refill the glasses. He did not comment on her revelation. He did not know how to.

“You don’t believe me,” she said, the smile changing from innocence to gently mockery. He saw the subtle alteration in the way her lips curved happen.

“Why should you?” she sighed, looking away from him again, one hand resting lightly on the glass that sat on the table in front of her, her opposite arm thrown behind her, over the chair back. Her posture was open. He drank while she disappeared, who knows where, into the hidden avenues of her mind.

Silent moments passed before she turned her attention back to him.

“Are we equal now?” she asked, indicating his empty vodka glass. He silently refilled it.

They drank again.

“I am the writer,” she said. “But who in this society would accept the words of a woman in the printed press? He was a struggling playwright whom my father thought it would be amusing to introduce to his ambitious daughter.” She paused and sipped from her glass. “I think he wanted to make the point that there were plenty of average writers, male writers, in the world, and that a woman had no place trying to compete with them.”

She sat silently for a moment, not talking, not drinking, not looking anywhere but straight ahead, studying the grain of the wood that made up the table’s form. As he was not about to break that silence, she raised her eyes to the ceiling and continued, her voice low and lovely, sending thrills through him.

“The playwright read my work and was astounded. He literally threw himself at my feet.” She looked down at her lap with a cruel expression on her face. “It was pathetic.” Another pause and then she looked up at her companion again. “You’re not drinking,” she said.

He spoke, at last. “I’m listening,” he said.

“Do you believe me?” she asked him, her eyes burning like coals, her anger with the injustice of the world rising again.

“Yes,” he said.

She dampened the coals slightly. “Good,” she said. “It’s important that you believe me.”

She did not need to continue with her story. He was able to work it out for himself; the plot hatched that her writing would be presented under his name; the success that followed; the reason he was so lost in public without her by his side; the reason she was so disdainful of the people who fawned over him.

She kept him out until three in the morning. He was too drunk to walk straight, while she somehow retained her composure. She hailed a cab and took him to his house. He tried to give her money, but she refused.

“Go home,” she said. “Sleep it off.”

He stood on the street and watched the cab carry her away, wishing he had had the courage to go with her.

He had lost track of the number of glasses of vodka he had drunk while remembering that first meeting. The bottle was almost empty, and he rose from the table to find another. The cat stirred in its sleep.

His wife was sleeping upstairs, just as she had been on that night, when he had returned at three in the morning. He wondered what the time was now, but did not check his pocket watch.

“Alexei Andreyevich, you are an old fool,” he said to himself. The cat opened one eye at the sound of his voice, then, seeing that it was only him, quickly settled back into sleep.

He found more vodka in one of the cupboards and took it back to the table. He poured himself another glass but did not drink it.

He was remembering again the night she had lain naked on his drawing room floor, the harsh weave of the carpet biting into the flesh of her back, rubbing raw the skin that barely covered the notches of her spine. His hand over her eyes like blindfold so that he would not have to witness their emptiness. The stillness of her body. Her absence from the physical moment.

He had taken her to dinner with some friends. His wife was away, visiting some cousin or aunt or friend in the country. These were the times when he socialised with the people she did not approve, or did not understand his liking for. Intellectuals, musicians, poets and performers.

He had announced, as they were eating, although he had noticed that she did not eat very much, preferring to drink instead, that he knew a secret about one of the company around the table.

She had flashed him a warning glance, full of ice and fire and steel and sapphires. He had disregarded this warning, choosing to believe that she would forgive him once her secret had been accepted by this enlightened group of bohemians.

“One of us here is the secret power behind our celebrated playwright Sergey Mikhailovitch Drozny!” he proclaimed, his cheeks red with food and wine and the excitement of knowing this fact and revealing it to the others.

She downed a glass of vodka and pushed her food around the plate.

The other diners looked at each other with amusement.

“Well, I know that it isn’t me,” said a poet. “I would keep those words for myself, damn his talent!”

“No, no!” Alexei Andreyevich said. “It isn’t you.”

“Then who?” asked one of the dancers from the vaudeville theatre.

“It is our silent and mysterious friend who does not eat, just silently and angrily drinks vodka in our midst!” he exclaimed.

The others were silent and turned as one to stare at her.

“His muse?” said the poet. “His muse writes his plays for him?”

His tone was one of incredulity. She sat rigidly in her seat, eyes blazing, looking straight ahead of her as the poet led the laughter that could be their only response to something they did not understand.

“No, don’t laugh,” Alexei Andreyevich said. “It’s the truth. Don’t laugh, I tell you.”

It was too late. Laughter had taken hold of the gathering to the extent that tears were falling from their eyes.

She, meanwhile, with an angry grace, had risen from the table and left the room.

He pulled some roubles from his pocket and flung them onto the table. He followed her hurriedly from the room, almost colliding with a waiter as he tried to catch her up.

He caught her in the vestibule, fastening her wrap.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Her answer was to slap him. Twice.

He fell upon her then, taking her into his arms and kissing her passionately. She struggled in his arms for a moment and then went dead.

He released her.

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

“What?” he answered, drunk and confused.

“To have your friends mock me and then to fuck me? Is that how you mean to subjugate me?”

He tried to kiss her again, but she pushed him away.

“You’re drunk and you stink,” she said, and stepped out into the street.

He followed her and got into the cab with her. He gave the driver directions to his own home, not hers.

Within the darkened confines of the cab, she could not escape from his amorous attentions. He took her in his arms and kissed her, again with passion. Again, she did not respond; nor did she struggle. He stopped.

She turned to him, her face full of hate and mockery.

“So this really is what you want,” she said, her lips curling into a sneer that bruised the prettiness of her face.

“Yes,” he said. “This is what I want.”

The cab drew up alongside his house.

“Well, then,” she said.

Exiting the cab, she led the way to his front door. They were barely inside and he had just closed the door against the prying eyes of the cab driver and any people who were passing on the street, when she fell upon him, wrenching his coat from his body, pulling her own clothing awry so that her breasts were exposed, pulling his head down towards her so that he could take one breast with its rosy pink nipple into his mouth like a suckling child.

As he sucked on her breast, she continued to remove as much of his clothing as she could manage. At the back of his drink addled mind he was aware that she was being too clinical in the way she was masterminding this encounter, but her breasts were warm and soft and distracting.

She slipped the loose gown from her body, stepping out of it. He saw that she wore no undergarments at all. Her body was lithe like that of a young girl and the sight of it made his passions rise even further.

“Where?” she asked him.

He began to walk her into the drawing room, removing more of his own clothing as they went.

This, to him, was more exciting than being with a prostitute. This had the edge of spontaneity to it and, for all that she was the muse of a famous playwright, she was a respectable woman.

He grew stiff and when they had finally conspired, sitting on the floor of the drawing room, to remove his boots and trousers, she had taken his hardness into her mouth. He closed his eyes the better to enjoy the sensation of her tongue against his shaft. She rolled her tongue around it like an expert, or like a child sucking on an ice. Her tongue flattened over the head of his penis, then the tip pushed into it, and he groaned with the painful ecstasy of it. He pushed her away, not wanting to come too soon, and he laid her back on the floor. He entered her, hard, and she bucked against the floor. He held her around her back, his fingers stroking the exposed notches of her spine.

He looked at her and saw that her face was turned away from him. He realised that it was only her body that was reacting to his presence; her mind was far away.

He stopped, his penis softening. He told himself it was his conscience reminding him that he was married and that this was a betrayal. He knew that it was wounded pride, that she could not bring herself to pretend; that he was nothing to her but another man who wanted to reduce her to an object of lust.

To punish her, he bent his head to her breast and took the nipple between his teeth. He bit down. She did not even wince. Not a flicker of reaction came. Her face was still turned away from him. He held himself above her, his dick now hard, now soft, and placed one hand over her eyes, blindfolding her; although he knew that whatever she was looking at was not in the room with them, he needed to try to prevent her from seeing it. He pulled her head so that she was looking up at him, her eyes still hidden behind his hand. Her hair had fallen loose as they had struggled together in the hallway of the house, and now lay like cloth of gold on the carpet. He moved his hand up from her eyes, across the crown of her head and down to the nape of her neck, where he gripped the length of her hair and used it to snap her neck back.

He was hard again, and she was silent and remote. He did not enter her again, however. He rolled onto his side, next to her on the floor, and entered her with his fingers instead. He placed them inside her like the bud of a flower, then unfurled them like petals, pulling against her flesh, expanding the entrance to her fecundity, wanting to hurt her, wanting to draw blood. He continued to pull back her head so that her throat was too taut to make a sound, so that her face was forced to look straight ahead.

There was no reaction in her eyes. She had withdrawn deep inside herself, to a place where he could not touch her.

He bent forward and kissed her. He tasted vodka on her lips.

“You’re not who I thought you were,” he whispered into her ear.

Somehow, her lack of response to his brutality had helped to keep him stiff. He changed position again, releasing her hair, removing his fingers, so warm and sticky and moist with her. He entered her and they fucked for a while, all physical checks and balances correct.

He felt himself about to come. He placed his hands around her neck. His thumbs pressed against her throat, against the hardness of her trachea, protruding as it did. As he came his grip around her neck tightened. She did not fight it, she did not claw at his hands, trying to remove them.

The light in her eyes was snuffed out like a candle. Her emotional deadness was married to her physical death.

He dressed and bundled up her clothes, throwing them over her body. He rang for his valet and explained the situation.

Alexei Andreyevich was a powerful man in the city. When the strangled body of the playwright’s muse was found in the drawing room of the playwright’s house, there was no suspicion that Alexei Andreyevich had had a hand in her death.

And now, months later, he sat at his kitchen table, his desk, the place he did his thinking and his work, with a bottle of vodka to his right and a glass to his left. He sat like this every night, with his wife sleeping in a room above his head, and he knew that if he continued drinking, it would be the end.

But to stop would bring disaster.

© J R Hargreaves May 2007