[audisingapore]

Chapter Four

In the morning Siri felt a little better and sat on the bed plucking up courage to leave the room. Her clothes waited on a chair, washed clean, panties and all. She remembered some flashes of last night and was uneasy to face the man again. She desperately wanted to wash. The not knowing of what he had or hadn’t done to her while she was out ate at her. Her cunt itched and wouldn’t let her mind rest. The doubt of having been soiled was unbearable. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Stop thinking about sex! She wondered if her mind was racing so because she had gone off her medicine or was it her instincts crying out to warn her.

She found him in the kitchen preparing what turned out to be a rather awkward breakfast. Choma, although trying hard to hide it, resented that Siri was still obviously afraid of him. He wanted to be understanding but her suspicion made him feel stupid for looking after her. Her memory, on the other hand, was coming back and she knew she was in Ukraine, but not getting any further answers was infuriating. She was grasping at straws trying every language she knew and a few she didn’t. She kept coming back to English and Russian but the man didn’t show any signs of recognition. Siri buried her face in her hands, hot tears burning in her eyes, and Choma took pity on the disheartened girl. “Larisa will be glad to see you up. Larisa is my friend.” Siri looked up. “She helped you too.” He felt stupid talking to her as if she was a lackwit, “Larisa will come visit.”

The woman Choma later led to the living room was in her fifties and emitted purposefulness that bordered on intimidating. Not bothering to slow down her speech, she greeted Siri kindly introducing herself as Larisa Ivasivna. She shooed Choma out of the room and prompted Siri to take off her shirt and bra. She was embarrassed but Larisa laughed it away and assured her in a no-nonsense voice. Gingerly Siri undressed and the older woman looked her over front and back. Feeling fragile and exposed with her breasts bare, Siri’s thoughts wandered to Choma and his visit during the night.

Siri couldn’t understand what Larisa was saying and her imagination conjured up one scary explanation after another. She was stiff with fear, sure that Larisa was a brothel keeper here to buy her. The thought of strange men looking at her nakedness burned and froze her simultaneously and her nipples hardened. She stared at the ceiling willing what ever was to come to be over soon.

Her breath caught in her throat when Larisa pressed an ear between Siri’s plump breasts. Siri held her breath, humiliated to be naked in front of a stranger and shocked to be touched. Larisa said something and exaggerated her breathing and Siri resumed to take in air. The woman straightened her back and turned Siri around. Her ear pressed against Siri’s back and she dutifully breathed for her. Larisa started chattering and though Siri didn’t understand the words she recognized the tone from a hundred check ups, after which followed the doctors statement of everything being ok.

Siri put her shirt back on in a hurry. Seeing that her patient was decent Larisa called Choma back in and explained him that Siri’s lungs were fine. Choma’s smile was relieved. He looked at Siri but she cast her eyes down, still uncomfortable to have been examined so brusquely.

Choma invited Larisa to stay but she declined, charging Choma with the care of Siri. He was glancing frequently at her, her meek eyes meeting with his. Larisa ended her speech in a cheeky joke embarrassing the both of them, though Siri had no grasp of the contents of it. Siri could tell it wasn’t the first time Larisa met her and she wondered which of them had stripped her and put her to bed.

The front door closed and Siri and her benefactor were alone. The floorboards creaked under his feet as Choma returned to the living room. Siri crossed her arms to hide her erect nipples poking through her shirt. It didn’t help her to relax that she was thinking the whole time if he had seen her naked. Does he know what I look like under my clothes? Is he thinking about it? Did he touch me when he undressed me? Siri’s pussy smouldered and she felt his phantom finger stroking her unconscious body. A shudder ripped through her and she was powerless to subdue it. Choma rushed to her, alarmed that she would suffer a relapse. Siri was thankful he’d never know of the real source of the shudder, of the throb between her legs.

Choma broke the silence by taking her to have a look around his homestead. Most of the house she’d already seen, but outside a big yard was framed by a shed, a workshop, a sloping blackcurrant field of some 40 bushes and a small kitchen garden with fruit trees. The house was a bit run-down alike those she’d seen in pictures taken of Russian Carelian countryside. Where the slope ended flowed a little stream, a stretch of which Choma had widened into a bathable pool. In the middle of the yard stood a chicken coo with its cackling inhabitants and a greenhouse pieced together from old windowpanes. Siri was impressed for the farm was not unlike some of the more utopistic dreams of down to earth life she’d harboured back home.

Still, she wanted to know where she was, where was her backpack, her passport, her everything. In her honest believe that everyone everywhere had to know some English – if just a few latent words picked up from pop lyrics – she tried to reach him. Choma stared at her apologetically, feeling cruel for not answering, but as much as he wanted to he couldn’t.

With no helpful bystanders there to translate, after a series of unsuccessful attempts she fell into tears shouting at him in Finnish, desperate and frustrated not to get through to the only person she had to ask anything from. He got up and walked to her. More clumsy than the previous night he hugged her to him, and she was in such a state that this intimacy with a stranger didn’t throw her off, she just buried her face to his chest, mewing. He stroked her hair and tried to calm her down, speaking softly. The sofa wasn’t three meters away but he scooped her up and carried her to it.

He lay her down and she felt very vulnerable. Siri was afraid he’d take advantage of her but he fetched a blanket from one of the chairs and threw it over her. He said something to her she couldn’t understand and left the room. Soon after she heard him leave the house.

She went on sobbing for a long time, huddling in a foetal position beneath the blanket. When her body had no strength for sobs left, silent tears streamed down her face, welling in the hollow of her eye. The little quilt pillow under her head was wet as was the blanket she had dried her tears with. After an hour of regretting ever leaving home she fell asleep.

Siri woke up with Choma crouching beside her and his hand stroking her forehead. She sat up quickly, startled to wake up to a strange face looming over her. It took a while to remember who he was. According to the grandfather clock in the corner he’d left her for over four hours. His clothes were wet and behind him she saw her backpack. Seeing her smile, Choma looked like a daddy watching his little girl’s joy unwrapping a new doll on Christmas. He dragged the pack to her and she started unpacking, searching comfort from her familiar things. Everything was damp but undamaged except things made of paper. The brochures were a disgusting grey paste but her passport, notebook and map were safe each in their own ziplock bags.

Squinting over the map, she deduced she was on the opposite side of the lake than where the bus route ran. Choma reached his hand for her notebook, and she let him take a look at it for he wouldn’t be able to read her Finnish anyway. He studied the different tickets and poured over her drawings nodding apprecietatively. He turned the pages back to the title of the very first page. “Koti?” he asked. “Home,” she answered, “doma,” and took the book away from him. She needed no remainders that if she wasn’t happy at her old life, this new she had chosen, this vagrancy, was not making her glow with happiness either.

She showed him the calendar and the day she got off the bus and Choma pointed at six days from it. She felt uneasy, the man had had her in that room for three days, helpless and senseless. He lives here alone. Everyone has needs. Would he have used me? Her pussy prickled, and deep inside her vagina a burning sensation began where his imaginary semen would have settled.

The knot in her stomach didn’t leave her alone and she felt him inside her the whole evening. When ever he looked at her or came close she shuddered and winced as her cunt cramped. Her skin smouldered with goosebumps when she thought of how he’d hugged her, what it had felt like, her breasts pressing on his chest, his arms on her back pressing her gently against him.

Finally it was late enough to get up and say goodnight. Her walk was stiff as she made her way back to her room upstairs. Her whole body was tense after the wandering of her restless thoughts and, mind whirling, she couldn’t sleep. She wanted to touch herself but didn’t dare in this unfamiliar place. And what if he’ll catch me? She could subdue the moans almost completely but he might hear her heavy breathing. After a while she heard the stairs creek as Choma came up. His steps on the landing pierced her heart and she realized how wound up she was. He stopped outside her door for a moment and she could feel the beats of her heart as bulging pressure in her ears as she waited for him to turn the latch.

Then the floor creaked and he walked away and her body went limp. She breathed trying to catch the breath she’d been holding. It was not fear, not derision - her body wanted him.

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