City of Night

Chapter 73

Erika Helios had finished her dinner and had been for some time drinking cognac in the formal living room, enjoying the ambience and trying not to think about the thing in the glass case, when Victor arrived home from the Hands of Mercy, evidently having decided not to work through the night, after all.

When he found her in the living room, she said, “Good evening, dear. What a lovely surprise, when I thought I wouldn’t see you until tomorrow.”

Surveying the dirty dishes, he said, “You’re having dinner in the living room?”

“I wanted to have dinner somewhere that I could have cognac, and Christine said I could have cognac anywhere I pleased, and so here I am. It was very nice. We should invite guests and have a dinner party in the living room some night soon.”

“No one eats dinner in a formal living room,” he said sharply.

Erika could see now that he was in a mood, but part of the function of a good wife was to elevate her husband’s mood, so she pointed to a nearby chair and said cheerily, “Why don’t you pull that up and sit with me and have some cognac. You’ll see it’s really a charming place for dinner.”

Looming, glowering, he said, “You’re having dinner in a formal living room at a three-hundred-thousand-dollar, eighteenth-century French escritoire!” The bad mood abruptly had become something worse.

Frightened and confused but hopeful of explaining herself in a way that might yet win his heart, she said, “Oh, I know the history of the piece, dear. I’m quite well-programmed on antiques. If we —”

He seized her by her hair, jerked her to her feet, and slapped her across the face once, twice, three times, very hard.

“As stupid and useless as the other four,” he declared, speaking with such force that he sprayed spittle in her face.

When he threw her aside, Erika staggered against a small table and knocked over a chinoiserie vase, which fell on the Persian carpet, yet shattered.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t understand about not eating in the living room. I see now it was foolish of me. I’ll think more seriously about etiquette before I —”

The ferocity with which he came at her was much greater than anything he had exhibited before, than anything she had imagined she might have to endure.

He backhanded her, chopped at her with the edges of his hands, hammered her with his fists, even bit her, and of course she could not defend herself, and of course he forbade her to switch off the pain. And the pain was great.

He was fierce and cruel. She knew he would not be cruel to her unless she deserved it. Almost worse than the pain was the shame of having failed him.

When at last he left her on the floor and walked out of the room, she lay there for a long time, breathing shallowly, cautiously, because it hurt so much to breathe deeply.

Eventually, she got up far enough to sit on the floor with her back against the sofa. From this perspective she noted with shock how many fine and expensive things were spotted with her blood.

Erika realized that her brilliant husband had invented the miraculous spot remover not solely for those rare occasions when a butler chewed off his fingers.

If she were to be the final Erika, she would need to learn from this experience. She must meditate on all that he had said and on the precise nature of the punishment he had administered. If she applied herself to a thoughtful analysis of the incident, she would surely be a better wife.

Clearly, however, the challenge before her was far greater than she had at first understood.