The Holy Machine

60

But even amid this mayhem, there were small islands of peace. I came to a remote valley in Macedonia, where people went about their lives as if the outside world did not exist.

And there a peasant named Zhavkov befriended me. He was a widower, living with his daughter Leta. He was getting old and finding it hard to maintain his small farm. He gave me a bed in his loft and a seat at the family table if I would work for him.

He was a slow man and turned out to be an easy master to please. When I was incompetent, he enjoyed the feeling of superiority that it gave him. Yet when my competence exceeded his, that pleased him too. Far from feeling put down, he congratulated himself on his own cunning in acquiring a farmhand from the legendary City where they could make machines talk and destroy their enemies with beams of light.

‘Perhaps we could plant the tomatoes over here?’ I’d say, ‘They’ll get more shelter and catch more rain when it falls.’

He would slowly consider. He knew only one way of doing anything and that was the way his father had done it and his father before that, even if that meant walking round three sides of a field instead of taking the direct line. So new ideas, derived from a fresh analysis of the problem, seemed almost magical to him.

Slowly he would smile.

‘Well, and why not? That’s not a bad idea, not a bad idea at all.’

And he’d beam at me, nodding slowly many, many times.

‘They say old Zhavkov is a fool,’ he’d chuckle, ‘but who else has a real Scientist from the City to help him? You tell me that!’

Leta too was pleased by me. Everything about me intrigued her, and what began with good-natured teasing, soon became knowing looks, accidental touchings, small treats set aside in the kitchen for when I came in.

This wasn’t discouraged by Zhavkov. He would nudge me knowingly when we were out in the fields together.

‘You seem to have made a good impression on my Leta,’ he would say, ‘not such a bad-looking girl is she? She’s turned away more than one young lover in her time I can tell you.’

It was true. She was pretty in a plump, cheerful way. And she was sweet-natured, though slow and unsophisticated like her father. I enjoyed her interest in me at first and didn’t discourage her flirtations.

One day, when we were alone in the house, she engineered a playfight with me over a sweet cake, which ended up with her in my arms. We kissed. We became aroused. Laughter became breathless.

Then Leta took my hand and led me up to her tiny room. She unbuttoned her dress. Out tumbled her big soft breasts. And then she smiled kindly, seeing me hesitate, and gently took my hands and placed them over her thick, dark nipples.

Quite suddenly, and with horrible vividness, the image came into my mind of Lucy tearing away her breasts and revealing the dead plastic shell beneath, with plastic tubes oozing yellowish liquids…

I pulled back abruptly from Leta. Her smile turned to dismay. Mumbling apologies I collected my few things from the loft…