Field of Blood by Wilson, Eric (pdf e book reader .TXT) 📕

“You awake?” His wife touched his calf muscle with her foot.

His back was to her. His heel still bothered him, and he pulled away.

“I hear something,” she said.

“Nothing but the wind, Dalia. Go back to sleep.”

At times, Benyamin thought of moving away from this weather. Perhaps somewhere north, someplace cooled by the breeze of a river and stands of deciduous trees.

“There it is again,” Dalia said. “It’s outside our window.”

“Don’t be silly. Your mind is playing tricks.”

Then he heard something else. It was the drone of a mosquito, and it unnerved him. Caused his ankle to throb. He thrust aside the sheet and padded to the bathroom, where he locked the door and leaned against the sink.

His mind traced outlines of the vodka hidden in the cabinet.

A few sips, maybe.

Just enough to blur the images from Ein Bokek.

A sudden gust toppled a shampoo bottle from the window ledge. It struck the tiled floor, rolled in a half circle till it pointed at him, and he kicked it away.

“Benyamin?”

“I’ll be out when I’m done,” he said.

Dalia Amit was a decent woman, if a bit tiresome. A clerk for the Israeli post office, she walked each day to her job in the city center. She came home, cooked, and cleaned. Brought in the laundry. She went to the synagogue on Shabbat, her head covered, silent and somber. She was a woman of routine.

With eleven years of marriage behind them, Benyamin saw only a plod-ding, predictable future. Today’s events, however, had knocked him off that path, and he welcomed the disruption. He liked the fear that’d rushed through him when he came upon the body. He liked the disgust, the dread.

His own needs also filled him with disgust. And he liked that too.

One swig was all he wanted. The wife couldn’t disapprove of what she didn’t know. Plus, it might relieve the itching of his ankle bite.

What was this venom anyway? The wound had been burning with ever-increasing heat since its infliction, and he wasn’t his usual self.

He reached beneath the sink, found the liquor tucked behind the cleaning supplies, and glugged down what he could—washing away the itch, for now.

“I hear it again,” Dalia called from the bedroom. “Someone’s out there.”

Would she give him no rest?

“Oh, very well.” He shoved the vodka back into its place. “I’ll take a look.”

He marched through the hall to the front door. Five-year-old Dov stirred in his bed, but that didn’t stop Benyamin from bellowing out: “Better steer clear of the Amit household, you gutless thieves. My wife sees what you’re up to.”

It was all for show. He knew there was nothing out there.

Just as he figured: each and every person, all alone.

Cuvin

Only after the prefect had wandered off, after Treia had celebrated with a strut of superiority, did Gina succumb again to her curiosity. The mark hadn’t faded away, as hoped. So where had it come from? It’d appeared soon after the Provocateur’s first visit. Was it the reason he had expressed a desire to see her?

Certain her mother must be hiding things from her, she was determined to know more.

From the top kitchen shelf, an earthen teapot beckoned.

More than once, unaware of her daughter’s spying eyes, Nicoleta had tucked treasures into this pot. It could very well provide insight.

Gina ignored the soiled dishes and climbed onto a chair. Her mother would be home any moment now, so if she was going to do this she needed to hurry. She could only imagine the fury that would be unleashed if she were caught snooping.

The very thought of the blade caused her mind to reel.

Hurry, she told herself.

With fingers stretched to their limits, she nabbed the narrow spout and lowered the object into her arms. She felt something shift within, but the weight was insignificant and gave no clue as to the contents.

Maybe it was best to do this another time.

No. Now that she’d proceeded this far, she would take a quick peek. What harm could there be in that?

She was turning to dismount when footsteps scraped along the path outside.

Mamica?

Oh no.

In her panic, Gina’s weight shifted, and the chair tilted suddenly onto two legs. Caught in space, she hovered for one agonizing second, then felt the entire thing give way. As if in slow motion, she fell.

The only real pain in the landing was the sight and sound of pottery shards bursting against the floor. Then even that was erased. Before her, freed from concealment, the pages of a small photo album opened like flower petals.

Her mother’s shoes stabbed into the room. “Child, what’ve you done?”

Gina couldn’t tear her gaze from the nearest photo. Hypnotic and vivid, Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock gleamed golden in the background. She’d studied this in school, heard her teachers rail against the dangers of Islam while praising the wisdom of socialism, but her eyes were drawn now to the photo’s foreground, where a body lay stretched flat across a boulder.

Clods of dirt and clay clung to the man’s crimson-stained T-shirt, as though he’d been dug from the ground. He was swarthy, solidly built. Sores dotted his arms. One eye socket was a gaping hole.

Across the image, an official-looking stamp read: HIV-positive.

Nicoleta stomped her heel down on the album. “Fetch the broom this instant, you hear me? Clean this up.”

“Da. Right away.”

“And enough with your snooping. I catch you at it again, and you’ll receive a beating to be heard throughout the whole of Cuvin.”

Gina set about removing the evidence of her wrongdoing—whiskk, whiskk—but the questions crept back in.

Who was the dead man in the picture? And how had her mother gotten hold of this photo, all the way from Israel? Had the Provocateur slipped it to her on a more recent visit? Maybe this was evidence of the evil he said was coming.

Enough of this.

She told herself she was done causing trouble, done for good. Nicoleta needed for her to carry her load instead of shirking it at every turn.

Whisk, whisk, whiskkk . . .

She applied