“You bitch! After all that I have tolerated from you, all your transgressions that I’ve excused ...” he roared and raised his hands, balled into fists.
Not allowing myself to hesitate for a minute longer, I let the arrow fly.
Albert collapsed to the ground, twitching for a few long seconds before lying still. My breathing was ragged, my heart beating fast in panic, but I did not dare take a moment to calm myself down. Every minute spent there was a minute more when somebody could catch me. And I absolutely couldn’t allow that to happen. Not for fear of consequences to me. Never that. But because Einar would find out what I did if I were caught.
Convincing myself resolutely not to vomit in doing so, I walked over to Albert’s body and pried the arrow out of his eye socket, dislodging the eye from its tip before returning it to my quiver.
There was a cloth on the ground, already strongly redolent of petrol, and I put it in my pocket. I searched Albert’s pockets for the packet of cigarettes I knew he always carried on him and I took the lighter out.
Then I uncorked one of the canisters and lifted it up with effort. Albert had been right; it was too heavy for me. I poured petrol over the body and then all around it. I strode outside, leaving the door open, pouring more gasoline on the ground as I went. I threw the empty canister back inside. I grabbed a piece of wood from the collapsed roof, wrapped the soaked cloth around it and lit it. It inflamed instantly with a whoosh, and I set it to the ground upon the flammable trail that I had created. It caught fire, and the flames then raced inside.
Turning on my heel, I ran, passing the canisters that Albert had managed to carry out, wondering if they would be spared from the fire. I hoped so; they were valuable, and I had already robbed us of whatever had still been left in the shed.
A loud explosion behind hastened me, and I pumped my arms and lengthened my step until my lungs seared with exertion as well as with hot smoke.
I didn’t stop until I reached the centre of the peninsula, which had grown loud with celebration in my absence.
Unnoticed by anyone, I threw up violently into a trash can overflowing with pre-pandemic rubbish.
35
BE MY REDEMPTION
Despite my constant worry that the truth could be seen written on my face, Albert’s death was attributed to nothing but a freak accident. His remains were sparse and so badly charred that they were only identified by the powers of deduction; since he went missing and was not in the pile of infected bodies that we had burned the day after conquering Bonifacio, it was everyone’s logical conclusion that the carbonised corpse must have been his. I alone knew for certain.
We all drove back to Vizzavona to bury his and Lena’s remains underneath the serene Pierre Castel birches. The warm air smelled of freshly dug earth as the melancholy trees whispered above our heads. The sheet in which Albert’s corpse was wrapped was stained brown, the essence of the burnt flesh seeping through the fabric. I made a loud choking noise at the sight of it being lowered into the ground.
Einar shot a suspicious glance in my direction. The first of many.
Not a night went by that I wouldn’t wake up screaming because of a nightmare. My clothes hung loose on my diminished frame, the result of my complete lack of appetitefor food. My other appetites dwindled too, much to Einar’s frustration and my own. Even if he had no suspicions of my involvement right after Albert’s death, he was sure to have gained them as I gradually fell into pieces while giving him vague and wholly implausible justifications for my lack of composure. I knew that confrontation was coming, that it was inevitable, and that knowledge only drove me further over the edge.
“Right,” Einar finally said one day, with the unmistakable air of readying himself, and I understood that the dreaded moment had come.
We lay wrapped in blue silk sheets in the affluent Bonifacio townhouse we temporarily resided in. It had a freestanding bar with various cocktail glasses, a marble fireplace, and tiles made to strongly resemble the same material. On the mantelpiece, there were photos of a couple in their late forties, each holding a groomed miniature poodle. The skin in the woman’s face was taut with Botox.
“I’m sorry,” I said as Einar rolled away from me after yet another frustrated attempt at intimacy. “I just can’t stay in the moment,” I tried to explain in a last-ditch effort to save us from being broken apart by what I had done. “I guess I’m thinking too much about the swarm and what we’ll have to do,” I lied.
“I don’t care.” Einar hoisted himself up on his elbow and looked at me coldly over the crooked bridge of his nose. “You need to snap out of whatever this is.”
He leaned away from me and was already collecting his clothes off the ground. He yanked his trousers on, the tendons and muscles in his arms and back straining against his skin. Under more favourable circumstances, that sight alone would have made me burn.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry!” He whipped around.
There were bags under his eyes, and his jaw seemed permanently clenched in those days. Losing a second close friend in the space of a year must have been hard on him, much as he tried not to show it.
“It doesn’t help to say you’re sorry, does it?! I don’t need you apologetic, I need you back to normal!”
His face was flushed with anger. I shifted my weight uncomfortably and gulped.
“And just what do you expect me to do, Renata, pretend I haven’t noticed anything? Act as if you weren’t behaving like someone with a severe case of black conscience? Eh?”
Wrath contorted his features as the volume of his voice rose higher. I bit my lower lip to stop pressure from building behind my eyes.
“I’m so?—”
His eyes flashed darkly and threateningly at me, and the words froze on my lips.
