The Quest

Chapter 7

Natalia reeled under her husband’s blow to her left cheek. His knuckles were bloodied. She stared up at him. She started to her feet, saw his hand coming for her again, and tried to raise her hand against the blow, but he knocked her right arm away with his left hand and his right fist crashed down against the side of her face. She sprawled back across the couch, somehow feeling indecent that her robe and nightgown had bunched up past her hips. She looked at Vladmir’s eyes, watched him watching her, felt the tears welling up in her eyes, then shrank back as she saw him undo his uniform belt and draw the heavy leather from the trouser loops. He picked up the vodka bottle.

“I have decided, Natalia,” he said, his voice low, edged with tension and trembling. “I will have you and that way I will know if someone else has had you.” He tilted the square bottle upward and she watched the colorless liquid pour from the narrow glass neck into his mouth and his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. She edged back along the couch, pulling down at the hem of her gown.

Karamatsov laughed, throwing the half-empty bottle across the room, then reached toward her. She tried to push away, edging back. Then his right hand clenching the belt, swung back past his left shoulder and slashed downward, and she screamed as the leather stung against her legs. She cringed, burrowing into the couch, feeling the sting of the leather on her bare behind, then feeling her husband’s hands pulling her up. She was on her feet but looked away from his eyes. He had been like a father, yet a lover, her leader as she grew into her womanhood, the only man to have her. Now she could not look into his eyes. She felt the belt swish lazily against her flesh and his hands at the neckline of her gown, the robe open now. There was a tearing sound, and her neck and shoulders ached. She realized her eyes were closed. She opened them as he stripped away the tatters of her nightclothes. Automatically, her right arm crossed the nipples of her breasts and her left hand cupped over the triangle of hair at her crotch.

“Vladmir, please,” she begged.

“No,” he answered so softly she could barely hear him.

She watched the belt starting up again and tried to move aside, but his left fist crashed into her stomach and she doubled over, dropping to her knees on the carpet. Then she felt the belt across her back, felt his hand in her hair as though it were being ripped out by the roots, her head drawn back and her neck bent back to where she could barely breathe.

She looked finally into Vladmir’s eyes. He said, “You won’t fight.” The belt, looped double in his right hand, lashed across her left cheek and the bridge of her nose and, as her left hand went to her face, it came away bloodied. She couldn’t open her left eye.

His left hand was still knotted in her hair and he hauled her to her feet, then shoved her back onto the couch. He stood over her, his hands dropping the belt to open his uniform trousers, pushing them down as he fell on top of her.

“No,” she whimpered. Then she turned her eyes away. She felt his hands on her, pulling at her breasts, his fingers knotting in the hair at her crotch, then his hands coming inside her.

“No,” she murmured, then felt the hardness stabbing into her. “No!” she screamed. She stared up at the ceiling until he finally sank against her. Tears streamed down her face, but she felt she wasn’t crying.

After a long while, she heard him mutter, “Bitch—unfeeling bitch.” His right hand cuffed her face, then his left, then his right. Her mouth was bleeding, and she tried to raise her head because she was choking on the blood.

He was standing, reeling, the vodka bottle was back in his hand, some of the clear liquid somehow still inside, then he tilted the bottle. A smile—something like she had never seen—crossed his lips as he picked up the belt, looked at the bottle in his other hand, then lashed out with the belt, the heavy leather almost instantly raising a dark red welt across her breasts. He knocked her back to the couch, the bottle still in his hand.

The neck of the bottle was pointed toward her, held low, and she stared at it with her good right eye through the tears.

Vladmir Karamatsov whispered, “If I do not please you, then perhaps this will.” And he laughed as he started toward her.

Natalia screamed, gagging on the salty taste of the blood in her mouth, her puffed and cracked lips drawn back in horror.