217 Babel Street | The Penthouse
Lulu was cursed with excellent health. Would they never, she wondered, discover some grotesque tumour or some implacable congestion of her heart? Would she go on forever like Pandora’s Box, which she ran on a loop, day and night, night and day, in her small, private cinema? Only occasionally did she change it for an old home-movie, for the flickering footage of her, Andreas, her mother and the Mendelsohns sporting newspaper sailor hats and running from the shadows of the beach hut into the dazzling waves.
The problem was, her memory flickered far less than the old films. It was alarmingly clear. But what good did it do to remember the agonies of that day; the day she’d reached out and shouted, “But Andreas, please, it’s mine!”
The last words her brother ever heard. The last words she ever spoke.
Not that Boris cared that she couldn’t speak. Boris didn’t stare at her as if she was dumb in every sense of the word. Boris didn’t think her silence made her the ideal mount, as men had so often thought in the past.
Boris was Borislav, her handsome Siberian husky. He laid his muzzle in her lap now, whimpering for his leg of lamb that roasted slowly in the oven, sizzling in its own juices. So tasty. Soon there would be other treats. Heston, her creature, was busy, busy.
All things considered, Heston was a good creature. An obedient creature. Slow to understand instructions but immensely biddable.