CHAPTER 11
The last few days had flown by. I scarcely even seemed to have time for eating. All day an irresistible urge towards physical activity shackled me to my workbench. I caught up on my many repairs. I even repaired the letter ‘I’ in The Book of Ibbur.
It was so comfortable to feel that life was running on a simple, natural course. When I took The Book of Ibbur out of the strongbox the day before yesterday, I found that there was nothing remarkable about it at all. It looked like any old parchment book with decorative initials, it seemed quite ordinary to me. I could not understand how it could ever have affected me as supernatural. It was written in Hebrew and therefore, completely incomprehensible to me.
As I returned the book to my strongbox, I noticed the packet of the photographs I had removed from the apartment next door. I shuffled through the photos again and immediately was drawn to their erotic nature. I realized my own sex life was seriously lacking in action.
Shuffling through the photographs, encouraging them to titillate my sexual interest, I saw one that I had not noticed before. Behind the couple was a full length mirror hanging on a door, and in that mirror I could make out another person, a photographer standing behind his camera facing the couple engaged in enthusiastic oral activities.
The image in the mirror was dark, but the features were easy to recognize. The photographer was Seven.
He appeared to be shirtless, and perhaps more as the torso faded into darkness. Stunned, I removed the photo from the stack. Obviously, Seven wasn’t searching for the photographs only to protect Dr. Savioli. I wondered how many photos he had removed that included his participation in the lovemaking before I caught him going through them. I thought it seemed unlike Seven, but then, I don't know him that well. People can be very complicated.
I opened the window and let the breeze warm my face. There was a scent of the coming spring. I studied the photo letting my imagination recreate the full scene of which this was only a momentary flash. My free hand found my zipper and released my penis into the air. I started unbuckling my belt when I heard a noise in the hall. Putting my erection away, I threw open my door and a man almost fell into the room.
Wasser!
He must have been spying through the keyhole.
"Were you looking for me, or should I say, at me?” I asked brusquely.
He stammered a few words of excuse.
As I slipped the photo into my pocket I noted that I must put tape over that keyhole.
I suggested he come in instead of spying on me. However much he tried to pretend otherwise, his face and his every movement betrayed a profound hostility. Until now I had never seen the man this close.
Involuntarily, I wiped the hand on my pants that had shaken his when he came in. He must have noticed.
“Nice place,” he said hesitantly, when he realized I was not going to do him the favor of opening the conversation.
I did not feel obliged to reply to this, and waited to see what he would say next.
In his embarrassment he put his hand out towards the utility knife which, god knows why, had been left lying on the table since Seven last visited, but immediately drew back involuntarily, as if he had been bitten by a snake. I felt a rush of astonishment at such subconscious sensitivity. He reached for the Rubik’s cube instead.
He finally spoke. “Of course, you need a nice place when you have fancy visitors.” He opened his eyes, to see what impression his words had on me, but evidently decided it was premature and quickly closed them again.
I tried to force him into a corner, “You mean the woman who came here?”
He hesitated for a moment, then, ignoring my question, held out a glittering object to me in his crooked fingers. “What do you think, Mr. Bobuck, can anything be done with it?”
It was a gold watch, the covers of which were so bent that it almost looked as if someone had damaged them deliberately. I opened my jeweler’s Lupe. The hinges were half torn off and the inside was engraved. It was scarcely legible, but for good measure someone had covered it with a lot of fresh scratches. Slowly I deciphered it:
Ca. . .rl Zott. . .mann Zottmann? Now where had I seen that name? I couldn’t remember. Zottmann.
Wasser almost knocked the magnifier out of my hand. "The mechanism’s all right, but the case is a mess.”
I told him, “It just needs hammering out again, perhaps a couple of welds. Any goldsmith could do that for you, Mr. Wasser.”
“But I’d like it done properly, artistic, you might say,” he put in hastily, almost anxiously.
"Very well then, if it’s that important to you. If you come back in an hour it’ll be ready for you.”
Wasser squirmed until he almost tied himself in knots. “No, no. I don’t want you to put yourself out. Three days, four days, next week’s soon enough. I’d never forgive myself, if I thought I was imposing on you.”
What was he after, getting into such a state? I stepped into the next room and locked the watch in my safe box. On top was Angelina’s photographs and I redeposited the photo from my pocket. I locked the lid in case Wasser should be watching.
Turning back to him, I said, “That’s settled then, some time next week.”
But he seemed in no hurry to leave. He pulled up a chair and sat down. Contrary to his earlier behavior, he now kept his fish eyes wide open and fixed on the top button of my jacket.
“I bet that piece of shit told you to act like you don’t know anything, didn’t she?”
There was something frightening in the abrupt way he could shift from one tone to the other. I imagined it was quite likely that most people, especially women, would be in his power in no time at all, if there was the least thing he could use against them.
“I have really no idea what you mean, Mr. Wasser,” I said, looking as blank as possible. “Shit?”
“You can’t look me in the face and tell me that bitch from over there,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the next door apartment, “didn’t come running in here?”
That finally made me angry. “What happens in my house is none of your business!”
I felt too much of a bond with Angelina to let Wasser push me around.
Every muscle in his face was twitching, “Will you just listen. It’s that Dr. Savioli I want, the goddamned asshole.”
“Listen, Bobuck,” he forced himself to adopt the cool, calculating tone of a businessman, “you keep on talking about that lady. Fine! She’s married. Fine! She’s taken up with that young asshole. What has it to do with me?” He was waving his hands in front of my face, the tips of his fingers and thumbs pressed together, as if he were holding a pinch of salt in them. “That’s between her and her conscience, the little shit. I’m a man of the world and you’re a man of the world. We both know what’s what. All I want is to get Mary back. Now do you understand, Bobuck?”
I started in astonishment. "Mary? What are you talking about?”
"My wax mannequin, don’t act like you don’t know about it.” Wasser yelled. “I’ve things to settle with him and if I have to take down that shit to do it I will.”
I remembered seeing a mannequin in the photographs that was being sexually abused by Dr. Savoli. The doctor might be every bit the asshole Wasser was saying he was. I just wanted Wasser out of my apartment.
“I think we are done here.”
Slowly he picked up his hat, put it on and turned to leave. Then he stopped and said, with a calm I would never have thought him capable, “Right. If that’s how you want it. I wanted to leave you out of it. But now I’ll take out all three of you.”
There was an expression of such fiendish cruelty on his face, and he seemed so sure of himself, that a shiver ran in my veins. Obviously he must have something he could use against us, something I had no idea of, the existence of which even Seven did not suspect. I felt the ground sway under my feet.
The utility knife was on the table near me.
It was a whisper running through my brain. I gauged the distance: one step to the knife, two steps to reach Wasser. He had no idea what I was capable of.
I leapt for the knife just as Dr. Hill popped through the door. The room was swimming. I saw, as if through an angry mist, that Dr. Hill remained motionless, while Wasser shrank back in shock and hurried out.
I looked at Dr. Hill expectantly. He signaled me to stay silent for a moment, then he took the utility knife from my hand.
—-
I messaged Seven saying I had questions to ask, in fact the questions were piling up quickly since seeing him in that photo. He said he would be right over but he didn’t show up.
I hate waiting!
The mild spring air pouring in through the open window was making me sick with yearning to be outside. The drip of melting ice from the roofs! All those delicate filaments of water gleaming in the sun.
I was filled with a feeling of being in love without a precise person to point the feeling toward. I had felt it all night. Lying sleeplessly in bed, I fantasized Angelina’s body nestling against mine, then, unpredictably, I was in the middle of an innuendo filled conversation with Seven. That seemed wrong somehow, so Angelina returned and began to kiss me. I could smell the scent of her hair, and when her clothes slipped from her shoulders she was Rosina, dancing with drunken, closed eyes, wearing a tuxedo jacket, but otherwise naked. I seemed to be half asleep, yet at the same time I felt totally awake.
Towards morning another figure appeared at my bedside. It was me, a second me. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was in my power. The other me quietly lay by my side, naked, gently encircling my erect penis with his hand. He shrank and then grew again until he was the gigantic brazen colossus with a pulse like an earthquake that I had seen in The Book of Ibbur. She bent over me, and I was engulfed by her.
The last few days had flown by. I scarcely even seemed to have time for eating. All day an irresistible urge towards physical activity shackled me to my workbench. I caught up on my many repairs. I even repaired the letter ‘I’ in The Book of Ibbur.
It was so comfortable to feel that life was running on a simple, natural course. When I took The Book of Ibbur out of the strongbox the day before yesterday, I found that there was nothing remarkable about it at all. It looked like any old parchment book with decorative initials, it seemed quite ordinary to me. I could not understand how it could ever have affected me as supernatural. It was written in Hebrew and therefore, completely incomprehensible to me.
As I returned the book to my strongbox, I noticed the packet of the photographs I had removed from the apartment next door. I shuffled through the photos again and immediately was drawn to their erotic nature. I realized my own sex life was seriously lacking in action.
Shuffling through the photographs, encouraging them to titillate my sexual interest, I saw one that I had not noticed before. Behind the couple was a full length mirror hanging on a door, and in that mirror I could make out another person, a photographer standing behind his camera facing the couple engaged in enthusiastic oral activities.
The image in the mirror was dark, but the features were easy to recognize. The photographer was Seven.
He appeared to be shirtless, and perhaps more as the torso faded into darkness. Stunned, I removed the photo from the stack. Obviously, Seven wasn’t searching for the photographs only to protect Dr. Savioli. I wondered how many photos he had removed that included his participation in the lovemaking before I caught him going through them. I thought it seemed unlike Seven, but then, I don't know him that well. People can be very complicated.
I opened the window and let the breeze warm my face. There was a scent of the coming spring. I studied the photo letting my imagination recreate the full scene of which this was only a momentary flash. My free hand found my zipper and released my penis into the air. I started unbuckling my belt when I heard a noise in the hall. Putting my erection away, I threw open my door and a man almost fell into the room.
Wasser!
He must have been spying through the keyhole.
"Were you looking for me, or should I say, at me?” I asked brusquely.
He stammered a few words of excuse.
As I slipped the photo into my pocket I noted that I must put tape over that keyhole.
I suggested he come in instead of spying on me. However much he tried to pretend otherwise, his face and his every movement betrayed a profound hostility. Until now I had never seen the man this close.
Involuntarily, I wiped the hand on my pants that had shaken his when he came in. He must have noticed.
“Nice place,” he said hesitantly, when he realized I was not going to do him the favor of opening the conversation.
I did not feel obliged to reply to this, and waited to see what he would say next.
In his embarrassment he put his hand out towards the utility knife which, god knows why, had been left lying on the table since Seven last visited, but immediately drew back involuntarily, as if he had been bitten by a snake. I felt a rush of astonishment at such subconscious sensitivity. He reached for the Rubik’s cube instead.
He finally spoke. “Of course, you need a nice place when you have fancy visitors.” He opened his eyes, to see what impression his words had on me, but evidently decided it was premature and quickly closed them again.
I tried to force him into a corner, “You mean the woman who came here?”
He hesitated for a moment, then, ignoring my question, held out a glittering object to me in his crooked fingers. “What do you think, Mr. Bobuck, can anything be done with it?”
It was a gold watch, the covers of which were so bent that it almost looked as if someone had damaged them deliberately. I opened my jeweler’s Lupe. The hinges were half torn off and the inside was engraved. It was scarcely legible, but for good measure someone had covered it with a lot of fresh scratches. Slowly I deciphered it:
Ca. . .rl Zott. . .mann Zottmann? Now where had I seen that name? I couldn’t remember. Zottmann.
Wasser almost knocked the magnifier out of my hand. "The mechanism’s all right, but the case is a mess.”
I told him, “It just needs hammering out again, perhaps a couple of welds. Any goldsmith could do that for you, Mr. Wasser.”
“But I’d like it done properly, artistic, you might say,” he put in hastily, almost anxiously.
"Very well then, if it’s that important to you. If you come back in an hour it’ll be ready for you.”
Wasser squirmed until he almost tied himself in knots. “No, no. I don’t want you to put yourself out. Three days, four days, next week’s soon enough. I’d never forgive myself, if I thought I was imposing on you.”
What was he after, getting into such a state? I stepped into the next room and locked the watch in my safe box. On top was Angelina’s photographs and I redeposited the photo from my pocket. I locked the lid in case Wasser should be watching.
Turning back to him, I said, “That’s settled then, some time next week.”
But he seemed in no hurry to leave. He pulled up a chair and sat down. Contrary to his earlier behavior, he now kept his fish eyes wide open and fixed on the top button of my jacket.
“I bet that piece of shit told you to act like you don’t know anything, didn’t she?”
There was something frightening in the abrupt way he could shift from one tone to the other. I imagined it was quite likely that most people, especially women, would be in his power in no time at all, if there was the least thing he could use against them.
“I have really no idea what you mean, Mr. Wasser,” I said, looking as blank as possible. “Shit?”
“You can’t look me in the face and tell me that bitch from over there,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of the next door apartment, “didn’t come running in here?”
That finally made me angry. “What happens in my house is none of your business!”
I felt too much of a bond with Angelina to let Wasser push me around.
Every muscle in his face was twitching, “Will you just listen. It’s that Dr. Savioli I want, the goddamned asshole.”
“Listen, Bobuck,” he forced himself to adopt the cool, calculating tone of a businessman, “you keep on talking about that lady. Fine! She’s married. Fine! She’s taken up with that young asshole. What has it to do with me?” He was waving his hands in front of my face, the tips of his fingers and thumbs pressed together, as if he were holding a pinch of salt in them. “That’s between her and her conscience, the little shit. I’m a man of the world and you’re a man of the world. We both know what’s what. All I want is to get Mary back. Now do you understand, Bobuck?”
I started in astonishment. "Mary? What are you talking about?”
"My wax mannequin, don’t act like you don’t know about it.” Wasser yelled. “I’ve things to settle with him and if I have to take down that shit to do it I will.”
I remembered seeing a mannequin in the photographs that was being sexually abused by Dr. Savoli. The doctor might be every bit the asshole Wasser was saying he was. I just wanted Wasser out of my apartment.
“I think we are done here.”
Slowly he picked up his hat, put it on and turned to leave. Then he stopped and said, with a calm I would never have thought him capable, “Right. If that’s how you want it. I wanted to leave you out of it. But now I’ll take out all three of you.”
There was an expression of such fiendish cruelty on his face, and he seemed so sure of himself, that a shiver ran in my veins. Obviously he must have something he could use against us, something I had no idea of, the existence of which even Seven did not suspect. I felt the ground sway under my feet.
The utility knife was on the table near me.
It was a whisper running through my brain. I gauged the distance: one step to the knife, two steps to reach Wasser. He had no idea what I was capable of.
I leapt for the knife just as Dr. Hill popped through the door. The room was swimming. I saw, as if through an angry mist, that Dr. Hill remained motionless, while Wasser shrank back in shock and hurried out.
I looked at Dr. Hill expectantly. He signaled me to stay silent for a moment, then he took the utility knife from my hand.
—-
I messaged Seven saying I had questions to ask, in fact the questions were piling up quickly since seeing him in that photo. He said he would be right over but he didn’t show up.
I hate waiting!
The mild spring air pouring in through the open window was making me sick with yearning to be outside. The drip of melting ice from the roofs! All those delicate filaments of water gleaming in the sun.
I was filled with a feeling of being in love without a precise person to point the feeling toward. I had felt it all night. Lying sleeplessly in bed, I fantasized Angelina’s body nestling against mine, then, unpredictably, I was in the middle of an innuendo filled conversation with Seven. That seemed wrong somehow, so Angelina returned and began to kiss me. I could smell the scent of her hair, and when her clothes slipped from her shoulders she was Rosina, dancing with drunken, closed eyes, wearing a tuxedo jacket, but otherwise naked. I seemed to be half asleep, yet at the same time I felt totally awake.
Towards morning another figure appeared at my bedside. It was me, a second me. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he was in my power. The other me quietly lay by my side, naked, gently encircling my erect penis with his hand. He shrank and then grew again until he was the gigantic brazen colossus with a pulse like an earthquake that I had seen in The Book of Ibbur. She bent over me, and I was engulfed by her.