The Scream of the Butterfly (16 page)

37

THE LOUDSPEAKER VOICE
crackles metallically in the strange, convoluted language. The few phrases she learned as a child are long since forgotten. She has no idea what the voice is saying. Around her people hurry by, keeping their eyes on the floor. Two elderly women are eating their packed lunches on a bench by the wall, with their handbags and plastic bags stacked up around them to guard against strangers. But
they
are the strangers — Romanians, possibly, or Roma. Danes turn up their noses at the women as they rush by.

She sits on a tall stool by the counter with cigarettes and a latte macchiato, the closest she can get to a
Milchkaffee
in this country. How do they refer to Denmark in Germany? Oh yes,
Das Ferienland,
the “holiday country.” She still has nightmares from the last time she was here, but she has learned to take care of herself, learned to suffer losses. She knows she can rely only on herself. It's at times like this that self-pity creeps in. Some people have ways of channelling their burdens and can turn weakness into strength. But others go under — too many of her acquaintances from the Reeperbahn have committed suicide, adding to the statistics. It's been years since she decided she wasn't going to be one of them.

Instead, it is yet another night in the city's gay bars. In the last few weeks, since the money from Denmark stopped coming, she has had to get used to selling herself again. She was only thirteen when she learned what you have to do to survive, but that doesn't mean she has to like it. It's degrading and crude.

A man opens a newspaper next to her; a photograph of a smiling young woman takes up most of the front page. She can't read the headline, but she knows the woman with dark hair and broad features. She has seen her somewhere. She opens her mouth even before she remembers the tiny photo, yellow with age, in her makeup bag.

“
Sa-rah
?”

The man lowers his newspaper. He turns his head and stares at her. She looks down and away, stubbing out her cigarette. She takes the last sips of her macchiato before taking out the photograph.

Moo-genz's daughter. For a brief second she is back in the apartment, with Moo-genz lying on the floor, blood spurting from the cut to his throat and spreading across the kitchen.

She can't see; her eyes are filled with tears. She gets to her feet and pushes her way through the crowd, darting through a kiosk and around an elevator.

She runs and doesn't look back. Her shoes fly across the brown tiles. The uncles must be back now. They are the only family she has left and without her . . . without her they wouldn't be where they are now.

She has almost reached the stairs that lead down to the long street, which reminds her of home in Hamburg yet is so different, when she spots him — the big man with the merging eyebrows. He's coming up the stairs.
Valmir
. He has that dead expression in his eyes, seeing yet not seeing at the same time. She dries her tears and greets him.

Confusion and recognition flits across his face. Then he smiles. But just before he does she sees it, the predator gaze, extinguished almost as soon as it has been switched on. And she sees the movement of his right hand. Her adrenaline starts pumping and time stands still even before she sees the light reflected in the blade.

In one gliding movement she turns and swings herself around the man standing behind her by grabbing his shoulder. Valmir pushes people out of the way and chases her. An old woman is knocked over and falls down the steps. Her walking stick clatters, the noise insufferably loud in the narrow stairwell. People scream around them and retreat. One man drops his suitcase.

Then there is only the sound of her feet against the tiles and her heart pounding in her chest. Valmir's heavy breathing comes closer. She has another couple of seconds, no more, before he catches up with her. She doesn't try to work out why. There's no time, she has just one overriding thought: to get away.

Serafine runs past the elevator and the Forex currency bureau. The glass door to 7-Eleven is open and she tugs at a man standing in front of the coffee machine as she passes, hoping the obstruction might slow down Valmir. Boiling-hot coffee splashes over them, but she feels nothing and carries on. Inside the shop she tears down newspaper stands and shelves, anything that might delay her pursuer and give her a tiny advantage. But she has only just made it around the counter when his fingers close around her jacket. She stops. On impulse, she takes a step to the side. Valmir is too heavy and can't brake in time. He continues in forward motion and is forced to let go of her jacket. He swears as he crashes into a shelf of dairy products. A container of strawberry yogurt explodes, splashing across his face, jacket, and pants. She has no time to waste and sprints out of the store, across the narrow passage and into a McDonald's, crashing into the lineup in front of the register.

“What the . . .” A tall guy in a leather jacket swears, but then falls silent immediately. Valmir has arrived and is now brandishing the knife. He makes no attempt to hide it or his predatory eyes. Serafine throws a tall stool at him, runs out and to the right, around and down the narrow passage behind the shops, then back to the stairs with Valmir still on her heels. The pain in her chest almost causes her to black out. Her lungs are about to give up.

She zigzags in an attempt to dodge the knife dancing in the air behind her. Valmir grunts; his footsteps are heavier now. Serafine's shoe catches a tile and she trips. Valmir reaches her immediately. He grabs her T-shirt and flings her up against the wall, knocking the air out of her. Her back is burning. When she is finally able to open her eyes, all she can see are his eyes under the merged eyebrows and the knife coming toward her with incredible speed. This is the end — she is going to die. She is surprised at how calm she feels. But then something inside her rebels.

She takes a step toward the knife and Valmir, who is moving forward and off balance. He has no time to change direction. As the knife plunges into her T-shirt, stabbing the flesh between two ribs, she knees him in the groin. Valmir buckles with a strangled scream and the knife falls impotently to the ground.

Serafine ignores the burning pain in her side and runs past Valmir, who tries to get back on his feet to continue the chase.

At the end of the narrow passage, a group of seniors are pulling along their suitcases. Serafine musters her last remaining resources and sprints. She leaps as high as she can, over a wheeled suitcase. Valmir, lacking a clear sightline and still groggy from being kneed in the groin, carries on. He has no time to stop or jump, but crashes straight into a suitcase, knocking it and its owner over. He swears, and the case springs open. Pale blue shirts and underwear spill across the floor.

A door labelled POLICE is opened behind the seniors and several officers rush outside.

She can't hear Valmir anymore, so she risks looking over her shoulder for a brief second. He is snarling and trying to disentangle himself from the pile of seniors and suitcases. He has dropped the bloodstained knife, and the police officers are all over him now. A female officer chases after her. Serafine starts running down the stairs and disappears onto a side street.

Several blocks later she dodges into a basement, through the darkness, and up into the courtyard on the other side. She finally stops, pressing herself against a wall behind some garbage bins. She starts hyperventilating, and doesn't know if she is still being chased. She is too scared to examine the cut in her side. All she knows is that she has to hide and get away from the street. Out there, she'll die.

PUPA

[Pupa (from Lat.
puppa
, a variation on
pupa
, “little girl, doll”), last adolescent stage in insects with total transformation. At the pupa stage the adult insect's body is constructed after a major or minor breakdown of the larva body. See also insects and transformation.]

The Great Danish Encyclopedia

1999

COPENHAGEN—HAMBURG

SHE BITES, LASHES
out. Scratches and screams. Afërdita is gone. The uncles forced her to hold the lamp while they dug her sister's grave. Now Afërdita lies in the cold earth outside their room. Meriton holds her tight, whispering in her ear, and sings songs she has heard since she was born:
Dritë Kosovës,
Këmbana e paqes, Xixëllonja, Ëndërrova
. Songs that used to mean security, warmth, and love.

Now there is only emptiness, terror, and the stench of blood.

Serafine screams, “
Baba, mami
!” But no one answers. Nothing matters anymore. She stares into space and shuts down.

The following evening she arrives at Hamburg Hauptbahnhof. Five hours earlier Meriton put her on the train with a note around her neck. She doesn't know what it says, but the grown-ups on the train nod when they read it and smile at her. A sweaty ticket inspector with bad breath even pats her on the head.

Meriton promised that someone would meet her, but she has no idea who they are or what they look like. She stands alone in the darkness on the platform, clutching her small cardboard suitcase as the other passengers disappear.

Why couldn't she stay with the uncles? She tries to cry, but there are no more tears left. She ran out of tears long ago.

“Ah. There you are.” She jumps and drops the suitcase. The small, bowed man with a flat cap and woollen coat speaks a strange kind of Albanian.

The man looks her up and down and glances briefly at the note around her neck, then tears it off.

“Shame about your sister. Come on.” He turns around and starts shuffling down the platform. He doesn't check to see if she follows him.

It has grown dark, the air is cold and damp. Halos of light surround the station's lamps. She tries to pretend that they are butterflies or angels, but she already knows there are no angels. No one is coming to her rescue. She has only herself.

The traffic roars past on the wide road that runs above the railway tracks. The man with the flat cap turns right and walks down a side street, then opens the door to a battered, light brown car. The seats reek of onion and sweat.

“In you get. We've a long way to go.”

She slumps inside the car, clinging to her suitcase. While the lamps pass by outside, the heat inside makes her drowsy. Her head lolls, her eyes keep closing, and . . .

Blood. Blood everywhere. A dark, sticky puddle that stretches from one wall to the other, running from the gashes in Afërdita's body, which is underneath the Dane on the bed.
Afërdita
. Her throat hurts when she shouts her name, but not a sound comes out. Her sister's teeth glisten in the redness of her mouth. Red and black flowers spring up across her small breasts, seeping out onto the filthy white bed linen. The window clatters against the frame on its rusty hinges.

Half-asleep, she lets out a small scream, and kicks out her feet.

“Easy, boy. Not long to go now.” The man doesn't look at her. He just concentrates on driving.

The car zooms through the night, rattling ominously every time they go over a pothole. They drive through dark streets, under iron bridges and scaffolding, past deserted industrial areas. There are no people on these streets, and the lamps are broken.

“Where are we going?” Her voice is shaking. She has to make an effort even to ask the question.

“Home,” is all he says.
Shtëpi
.

When the car stops, he nudges her out, shoving her in between two derelict houses. There is a small, crooked shed at the very back of the last courtyard. It presses up against the wooden fence around a scrapyard behind it. A light flickers behind the small windows. An old woman welcomes her and lifts her up, holding her tight for a long time. And, for a moment, she thinks that yes, this could be home.

But her dream bursts as early as the next morning. The couple's sons came back late at night, and they stare at her with distrust when she gets up from the mattress in the corner and splashes her face with water from the bowl. After a breakfast of tomatoes, olives, Turkish feta, and bread, it is time for her to get dressed. And it is when she takes her doll out of the suitcase that she receives the first slap across her face.

2004

HAMBURG

THEY HAVE TRIED
for five long, dark years: castigated, disciplined, abused, and punished her, both at home and at the Albanian school. The teachers, refugees like her, have scratched their heads, boxed her ears — and there was never any shortage of slaps. They have pointed their fingers at her, and tried taunting her when they can think of nothing else to do. The mere fact that she calls herself a
she
is a provocation. It is impossible to conform to their expectations when everything inside her cries out to do the opposite of what they want.

At home, Dora and Bekim and their big sons' contempt slowly turns into indifference and coldness, thrashings and daily humiliations. She is given the heaviest and filthiest work. Only the monthly payments from the uncles in Copenhagen stop them from throwing her out.

At the same time, the enemy within rises. Something is growing inside her, threatening to take control, thrusting itself to the front. She is on her way back from Penny Markt the first time it rears its ugly head. She has taken the bottles to the recycling centre and is clutching the few euros she got in exchange, when a German schoolgirl walks by on the opposite side of the street. The sun shines on her short, blonde hair. Tender breasts strain behind the girl's T-shirt and her gaze is downward.

The fire makes her blood flare up, fuelling fantasies. The useless little spout between her legs twitches. It is all alien, all wrong. She runs off, sobbing, overcome by shame. The next morning when she wakes up, there is a sticky patch on the sheet. Qendrim, the oldest of her new brothers, tears the blanket off her. It's time for her to empty the latrine bucket. When he sees the stain, he doubles up with laughter and dances back and forth between the two little rooms in the shed while waving the sheet in the air in triumph.

Even her own body has betrayed her.

She runs away that same night, weaving through the narrow streets of the suburbs. She rides the U-Bahn without buying a ticket and heads for the city centre. She has been to the main railway station on one occasion since she arrived — with Qendrim.

Once she reaches Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, she asks around. She knows now where she is heading: the Reeperbahn.

When she finally locates the street, it is a shock: women wearing practically nothing hang around outside with busloads of men and tourists. There are old and young people, even children. She finds them further down, on a street with the tantalizing name “Grosse Freiheit.” They are everything she can't articulate, but she instinctively knows that she is one of them. She walks up and down the street, too nervous to talk to anyone, hardly daring to look. She puts one foot down on the sidewalk, then the other. She sniffs their perfume and listens while they talk. They are wearing dresses and high heels, and have makeup on and hoarse, deep voices. Her heart flitters in her breast. She is not alone.

Later she finds a bar and goes inside. She has no money, but she knows she needs to get closer. The room is long and narrow, the walls red. The bar runs down one side. A giant mirror hangs behind the bartenders in tank tops, leather caps, elaborate wigs, and heavy makeup. The mood is moist and aroused. But she feels at home for the first time in years. For the first time since she lost Afërdita, she is able to be herself.

Serafine sits down by a table near the wall. A wild party is in progress around her: men kissing men, women kissing women, women kissing men. Everyone is kissing and embracing each other. A group of transvestites are singing cheesy pop songs near the bar. She needs something to drink, something strong. But she doesn't have any money.

A man sits down next to her and says hello. He is big and broad.

“Want a beer?”

He smells nice and freshly washed, not of smoke and sweat. She says yes. Soon he returns with two tall, slim, frothing beer glasses. Lothar is funny and nice, and his smile makes her forget about Dora and Bekim, and Qendrim and his brothers. He grabs more beer. Now she forgets that she is hungry, too. And when he asks if she wants to go for a walk, she forgets to be careful.

She walks with him back across the Reeperbahn, down to the river. Lothar puts his arm around her and squeezes her tight. It is comforting and lovely. The beer sloshes around her stomach, making her head spin.

They dash across the street, laughing as they dodge the few cars driving past much too fast, and reach the port. She is tingling all over. Lothar helps her over the wall, and explains that the smell of fish in the air is coming from the market to their left.

“It's nice here, isn't it?”

The sky is dyed purple from the city lights, except for a few inky spots where the stars peek out. Cranes are silhouetted against neon advertisements, and giant ships pass by on the way in. It smells of tar and oil.

“Yes.” She hugs him. She feels so safe and light. She looks up at Lothar. He bends down, kisses her carefully, and she kisses him back, letting him part her lips. His tongue forces its way in and explores, gliding along her teeth. His breathing gets heavier and quickens. The kiss is violent and becomes greedy. His hands are everywhere and hard, pressing into her groin. She tries to push him away, but Lothar — nice, gentle Lothar — holds on.

She pulls back her head.

“Stop.”

Lothar pants.

“Come on. You know you want it too. I'll give you fifty euros.” He rips off her pants and throws her over a garbage bin in the same quick movement. A cruise ship, a fairy-tale castle, passes silently through the harbour, all lights illuminated. A distant world radiates out into the night as he thrusts into her. Something tears inside her and the pain makes everything spin, disappear, while her screams are drowned out by the hooting of the boat's horn.

Once she can see again, she is alone. She is sitting on the cold ashphalt, her clothes in a pile next to her. The pain is indescribable; something is leaking out of her backside. Her hand squeezes a twenty-euro note.