Free Blood Price (Dark Places Of The Earth 1) by Jon Evans

wondered if I should turn around and go upstairs and pretend this encounter had never taken place. It seemed horribly rude to intrude on Saskia’s misery like this. But she would hear my retreat. She must have heard me coming downstairs.
   “Sorry,” Saskia managed to whisper through her silent sobs. “Sorry. Wait. Please wait.” Her eyes had at least flickered open, so she knew who stood before her.
   I waited, amazed at her noiseless weeping, at the discipline it takes to control an involuntary physical reaction like that. Easy, and terrible, to imagine how it had happened. Dragan liked beating her, but he didn’t like the way she sounded when she cried afterwards, so he punished her even more severely when she cried until she learned how to be silent. A kind of self-control that didn’t come easy. Hindu fakirs practiced for half their lives to have so much control. Years upon years of patient, methodical, endless abuse must have been inflicted on the woman before me before she had learned to cry silently. I shivered at the thought.
   “Sorry,” she whispered again, getting control of herself. “I am sorry, Paul, I am sorry.”
   “It’s okay,” I whispered back. “Saskia. It’s okay.”
   “I am think you are Talena,” she said. She frowned, trying to find the right words in her broken English. “But it is okay it is you. You are good man, Paul. Talena tell me. You are good man. She tell me. I tell her to stay with you. It is okay you see me.” She spread her arms wide to display her bruises, almost proudly. “But no tell Dragan. No tell. Please. No tell. You tell, is bad, is most bad for me, okay?”
   “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”
   “I am sorry. I not, I do not know English. Not good. In German I am good. In English I am so stupid. Please know, please know, I am not stupid. I am…what is word? Good, not stupid.”
   “Smart,” I said.
   “Yes. Smart. I am smart like Talena, I am, please know. But in English I am not say the words I want. It make me…” She shrugged with a frustration which required no translation. “I am not stupid. I have diploma, good school. In Croatian or German I am smart. Big smart. In my school I was most smart, girl or boy, I was most smart. I know you must think, stay with Dragan, must be stupid. But please, I am not.”
   “I don’t think that,” I said. “I don’t think you’re stupid.” And I didn’t. I had some idea how hard it was to flounder in a language you had only a bare and broken understanding of, and she was doing wonders to convey what she needed to with her hundred-word vocabulary, on the fly, without hesitation. I would never have done near as well in French.
   “Talena want me to go with you now. To Sarajevo. To go and stay.” She shook her head. “I no go. No now. Is not smart. I want to say what is not smart. I want to say big many things to you, Paul, but I not have words, I am sorry. You go back to Sarajevo. I stay here. I want to go to Sarajevo with you. I want it big, most big. If I go, then Dragan go. I go before. I know I have baby, so I go. Dragan want baby. Dragan want baby most big. I no want Dragan baby father, so I go. Dragon go. Dragan…” She hesitated, lost for words, then she formed a fist and mimed punching herself in the belly. “Many times. So no baby. Dragan want baby most big, but he want me know Dragan most big more.”
   I stared at her, speechless.
   “Talena want me to go with you. But if I go, Dragan go. Dragan go, Dragan kill me.” She shrugged. “I think, I kill Dragan. But is others. I kill Dragan, I go, they go, they kill me. I go Sarajevo, Banja Luka, I go Bosnia, they go, they kill me. So I no go with you. If I go America, I go with you. But Talena say, I no go America.”
   Which was true. It would take months to get a visa.
   “You and Talena, you go America now. I wait. You go do things so I go America, you go Bosnia, I go America. I stay