that jewel-deep beautiful voice. Dorothea Sandoval was extraordinary, and I had to kill her.
You must understand about Dusseldorf. You must understand who and what I am, before you can understand why I must kill this extraordinary woman. Germany in the early fifties was chaos. My mother was sixteen when I was born. She’d been hiding out in Berlin somewhere, like a rat in the walls, she and half a dozen other Jewish children who had somehow escaped the drag-net, slipped under and discovered some way to survive in the very heart of that putrid Empire in the making.
Now anyone who tells you suffering refines, lies. It does not. It hardens and coarsens the human heart. As I said, my mother was sixteen when I was born, it was 1952. If you think sixteen was a sweet innocent age in that time and place, think again. She had been living on the streets since she was six, and kneeling in alleyways to earn a living since she was eight. Esther Markovitch was a hardened vicious bitch; a casual killer and a whore. How I came to be, is, to this day, a mystery to me. There were many old women with dirty hands and bent coat-hangers in post-war Berlin, and many pregnant whores to keep them busy. I can only surmise that when my mother realized I was alive inside her, it was too late to take the expedient way out of her predicament.
She was a survivor, my mother. She would not have risked death so as not to give birth. So Esther Markovitch, sixteen years old, grunted me out in some basement; pushed me out into the world in a rush of blood, and piss and amniotic water onto a pile of filthy rags. Her screams unheard, she tore at the cord binding us with dirty nails, severing the connection once and for all. Surprisingly, she did not kill or abandon me. It would have been easy. All she had to do was stagger away. The rats would have taken care of the evidence, and the next day nothing would have remained of me, and this story would not be told.
However, Esther Markovitch struggled out onto the street holding me awkwardly, walked up to an American Military Policeman and started to weep. She lifted me in her arms, and begged for help, tears coursing down her cheeks. That night, she slept snug and clean, stitched up and well fed for the first time in as long as she could remember. I was a good investment.
The Hospital that had taken her in looked through the fragmentary pre-war records for some relatives, anyone that could be traced, but to no avail. Esther Markovitch was alone in the world, except for me, of course. She called me Zoozie. That is what is written in my birth certificate: Zoozie Markovitch, father unknown.
By the time I was three we had moved to Dusseldorf, where she continued her career as a street whore with reasonable success. Her real talent, however, was death. She was a good killer: unencumbered by empathy, or any type of squeamishness, and there was no job she would not accept. The poor and derelict desire the death of their near-and-dear as passionately and as frequently as the rich; here was a business opportunity for a woman with a sharp blade, and Esther took it. She became the hit-woman of choice for the festering multitude of the destitute. She was cheap, and she was quick; and her skill brought us some material comfort.
We lived in an apartment near the river where she received her customers, both the men who more and more infrequently sought her out to fuck; and the women and men who knocked - hunched into their coats clutching money, or more often than not, modest treasures to trade for some-one’s death. I believe she drew some kind of pension for my sustenance, or some benefit must have accrued from my existence, or she would have discarded me.
I was often useful as a decoy, toddling up to some woman, distracting her; while Esther slid a stiletto into her rib-cage from behind. As I have said: the poor and the rich are all sentimental shits.
At seven it was demanded I start earning my keep. By then I had no less than six “brothers” and “sisters”, all whoring, thieving or learning to kill. Esther had taken in several war-orphans, and was running them from the apartment. She was becoming a mobster on a commendably modest scale. She was bright enough to feed on the scraps washed up from the tide of crime, and never ever poached on the big-fishes’ preserves. She was too small and mediocre to attract rivalry or Police attention, so she survived and thrived.
As I said, at seven I started earning my keep: first whoring, and stealing from the customers when I could; eventually killing. I won’t go into details. It was long ago, and there is no need to recollect, or resurrect the agony of those early years. Suffice it to say I hated her most passionately, that woman who was my mother.
At twelve I was a skilled operative, if we can call it that, and a very profitable one. At seventeen, I started free-lancing, branching out on my own. It was a mistake. I got caught, of course. Esther was quite ruthless, and she imposed discipline with an iron hand. I was to regret my straying bitterly.
I had foolishly grown fond of a girl. Another orphan: Marguerite, she was called. We’d spend many hours hidden away sharing a bottle of harsh liquor and whatever comfort we could take from each other’s adolescent bodies. The usual happened, and Marguerite had given birth to a tiny scrap of pink, astonishingly resilient life. A girl. A tiny little girl. We loved her. In the midst of that horrendous, vicious life, something amazingly fragile somehow awoke in us a dormant tenderness, love, humanity; call it what you will. We called her Pearl.
One night I got home, and Esther called me in. She was sitting in her favourite arm-chair, with Pearl on her knee. Jaap, her “enforcer” was with her, and Elsa, and Horst. Marguerite was no-where to be seen.
“Zoozie…come here.” Her voice was sweet. Funny that such a poisonous creature had such a gentle tone. I came, of course. I never disobeyed Esther. Ever. “Herr Heimlich tells me you did some small jobs on the East River. Some little things you didn’t share with me.”
I was young, I was fearful, yes; but infected with the cocksure arrogance of liquor and bravado.
“That’s right. I did.”
“Zoozie…You owe me your life. Everything. How am I to live with such ingratitude?” and she smiled.
I cannot tell you how that smile of hers terrified. She moved a hand, and Jaap dragged Marguerite in from the next room. She was alive. I remember she was alive when Jaap started. Then she wasn’t. It took a long time, and all the while, Esther sat with Pearl. Pearl was in her arms. When it was all done Esther got up, took my child, and walked to the next room, away from the blood.
I left, walked out. I was cold sober that night, as I had never been before. When I came back the house was dead quiet. I went from room to room and I did what I do best. I started with Jaap, then Karl, Elsa, Horst, Rosa. I left Esther for last.
Her room was empty. She wasn’t there. Neither was Pearl. There was a box on her dressing table. Cloisonné. Under it was a sheet of paper. It simply said: “Next time the box may not be empty. You owe me, you owe me a life.”
I ran that night. I left Dusseldorf behind, I left Zoozie Markovitch, too, or so I believed.I came to America to start a new life, and found my skills in high demand. My new life and my old life were in some ways similar; but now that I had straightened that out, the ghosts of Dusseldorf threatened to destroy it. The bitch in Dusseldorf still holds my daughter, my Pearl. I know her well enough not to risk disobedience ever again. And so, Dorothea Sandoval must die.
I got myself together, got myself organized. It was simple really; all I had to do was follow her home. She had a lamentable habit of standing too close to the curb, so all it took was one hard push. So I did it, and I went home, and if I wasn’t exactly at peace that night, well…It was a small price to pay for the rest of my life.
The next morning it was in the papers. "Florist tragically killed in subway accident...memorial service...donations welcomed in lieu of flowers, to be made out to the Children’s Choir in the name of Pearl Dorothea Sandoval."
The End
If you enjoyed this story look for
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by
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"All women - from the most exquisite beauty to the plainest drab - want to believe in the
Cinderella myth. Even the harsh-faced and sour-hearted, somewhere deep in their night-time struggles with their bitterest reality, dare to dream some Prince could still see past the dense veil of unkind nature and time, to the delicate, frail-hearted beauty within."
But Clara wasn't Cinderella, waiting for her Prince, she was Sleeping Beauty poisoned by a deadly kiss. After 24 years Clara awakens from a living nightmare of abuse and discovers her life unfolding miraculously; but the true miracle is her own blossoming: the maturing of a frightened abused girl into a strong woman capable of love, laughter and joy. In Tahiti's exotic landscape Clara finds her way from darkness to incandescent light, embracing in herself the strength of choice, and the power of decision. MANscapes is a powerful parable of hope and renewal, a story of one woman's discovery of herself and her journey into love.
Read the Excerpt
Excerpt from “MANscapes Journey into Light”
Sylvine carefully inserted the eye-dropper in the struggling bird’s tiny beak. Her whole attention apparently focused on the fragile scrap of life trembling in her fist. “Do you