Nineveh. Henrietta Rose-Innes

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СКАЧАТЬ through, they scatter instinctively. Katya and Toby are like people in hazmat suits, their catch pulsing radioactive in their hands. If Katya could rattle like a snake, she would.

      Their employer is a foursquare, handsome lady, with short frosted hair. Her dress – waist cinched between broad hips and bosom – matches eyes so blue they look almost blind. Those eyes are fixed on Toby and Katya with open hostility, as if they really are going to rip open the boxes and strew worms around.

      “You were supposed to be done by three,” she hisses.

      Katya matches her stare with a blank one of her own. “Sorry. Coming through.”

      This job. It brings it out in her.

      Specifically, it’s the uniform. When Katya puts on her greens, something changes in her. She becomes cockier, more aggressive, but in the passive way of a servant. Also more stylized in her movements and her words: acting out the role of a working man. It’s heady. But peel off her boiler suit and she’s soft again, a lamb, a girl.

      The house has a large parking area, at the end of a shaded driveway, which has started to fill up with luxury cars. Katya opens the back of the minivan, her pride and joy. The van’s not exactly new, but she likes the fact that it’s knocked and dinged and gritty, carrying traces of its previous owner. You can tell it was ridden half to death by some mean old bugger with a bony ass – the driver’s seat is so hollowed out, Katya needs two cushions to see over the steering wheel. She’s fitted the vehicle with bars, turning the rear into a cage like a dog-catcher’s, and given it a bright-green paint job. It now bears the legend Painless Pest Relocations, with neat line-drawings of her own design: rat, pigeon and spider.

      While Toby loads the carry-cases into the back of the van, Katya takes a wooden cigar box from the glove compartment and transfers four or five caterpillars into it.

      “What’s that you’ve got there?”

      She snaps the box shut and spins around. The voice comes from the flowerbed – no, it’s a rock garden, with an ivy-covered alcove behind it on a small rise. Katya makes out a figure sitting in its shady depths. Drinking. He raises his glass in a cheery salute and beckons her closer.

      “Just a sec,” she says to Toby. A paved path winds up to the grotto.

      Closer, Katya sees he’s a large man, sitting on a throne-like wrought-iron bench with armrests in the shape of dragons’ heads. His legs are thrust out in front of him and a tendril of ivy tickles his brow. Shirt loose at the collar, a whisky tumbler askew in his fist.

      She stands in front of him, waiting. This is another thing this uniform achieves. As it had eased her interaction with the gardener, so too it helps her do business with what is, clearly, a boss. Usually, standing in front of someone like this – evidently a rich man, powerful, older – Katya would feel awkward. She’d wonder how to stand, what to do with her hands, what to say. But here, now, her posture and her role are clear. He can talk to her if he wants. Or she can walk away. All part of the job.

      It’s also his evident inebriation that puts her at her ease. He seems to be a benevolent drunk, squinting up at her from behind the ivy.

      Katya doesn’t find drunken people difficult. Unless they are threatening or loud, they can be quite soothing company. She feels less observed around them; and there is something touching in the way they allow themselves to be seen, in this foolish, almost infantile state. And although they are in one sense blurred by the liquor, there is also a film peeled back, an occlusion lifted.

      Right now, she feels free to pass her eyes over this man’s suit, his watch, his hair, his fittings and fixtures. He is solid, meaty. His mouth and nose are strong, large enough to balance the broad face, and finely cut. The face of a Roman emperor, past his prime and in his cups. When he smiles he shows one grayed-out canine, the same color as his hair. In his fifties, maybe.

      “Let’s have a look at the merchandise,” he says.

      Katya opens the lid of the box, tilting it to show him the brownish caterpillars.

      Most people would recoil, exclaim at least. But in his face there is nothing: no revulsion, no interest either. He sips his drink, and then, with a casual flick of the wrist, dribbles a splash of the liquor into the box.

      Katya snatches it away. “What’s that for?”

      He shrugs. “They can’t feel much, surely? Stuff’s nutritious.”

      She scowls and closes the lid carefully on the squirming creatures.

      “So,” he says. “Caterpillar wrangling. Nice job for a girl. What else can you do?” He has a pleasant voice, smoother and more musical than his bulk would suggest.

      “Caterpillars, snakes, frogs, slugs, cockroaches, baboons, rats, mice, snails, pigeons, ticks, geckos, flies, fleas.” Katya observes his face for reaction. Men are generally more squeamish about these things. “Bats. And spiders.”

      He laughs – a laugh like the bark of a sizeable dog – and swirls his drink, as if her recitation has made him happy, has confirmed something for him. “I see. The whole gang. The unlovely. The unloved!”

      He’s not as drunk as she’d thought. His layers are shifting: filming and folding. One has just pulled back to reveal something hard and clear. Whisky sloshing back in the glass to show the ice.

      “Would you like a business card?” Katya asks.

      He’s hugely amused by her, slapping a splayed thigh. “Sure, why not? Cards are good. A card would be fantastic.”

      There’s a gold signet ring on his right hand. He looks at her with his eyes half closed in the late afternoon sun, wells of gray liquid glinting between the lids. Behind her, Katya senses Toby fidgeting with the car keys. The shadows are lengthening.

      “In my top pocket,” Katya says, leaning forward to him. It’s a move that would show cleavage, normally, but as she is all buttoned up in froggy green, it’s more of an aggressive gesture. What it does is tip her breast pocket open, enough to show him a pack of business cards.

      He does not hesitate. Smiling still in that slit-eyed way that reveals little, he reaches up and tweezes a single card from her pocket. His hands are thick, nails broad but manicured. He taps the card across the open mouth of his tumbler, examining it seriously.

      She’s proud of the card: PPR: Painless Pest Relocations, it says. Plain font. Nothing cute, just the facts. Rat, pigeon, spider. Simple, accurate line drawings. It bothers her slightly that they are not to scale, but there is only so much you can achieve on a business card. Underneath it, her name: Katya Grubbs.

      “Grubbs,” he says, and she waits for the laugh. Most people make a comment, something about the name fitting the work, etcetera. But he’s looking at it with a frown, holding it too long. “This is not you.”

      “Yes it is.”

      He looks up at her, sharp now. “I thought I told my wife not to hire you lot.”

      “Sir?”

      “Grubbs, I wouldn’t forget the name. Last year. Nineveh.”

      Nineveh? Katya shakes her head, mystified.

      “Grubbs, Grubbs ...” He clicks СКАЧАТЬ