The Unlucky Lottery

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I sometimes find it a bit hard to keep my thoughts in check. Let’s go.’

42

Elaine Vorgus stared first at the tarot cards, and then at her lover.

‘It’s remarkable,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s ever happened to me before. All sixteen cards the wrong way round – no, I’ve never seen the likes of it before. I’ll have to look it up in the books.’

‘What does it mean?’ asked Ruth Leverkuhn, sipping her wine at the same time as she leaned forward over the table and stroked her girlfriend’s bare arm. ‘What does it mean when they’re back to front?’

It was not the first time they’d been sitting there like this, and even if it was Ruth’s fate lying on the table in front of them, she knew that it meant more to her girlfriend than it did to herself. Elaine responded to her caress and looked up from the cards.

‘The significance is the opposite of what the cards say,’ she said. ‘The message is reversed. Wealth means poverty, strength means weakness, love means hatred . . . It’s as simple as that. But all sixteen cards, that must mean something very special. As if . . .’

‘As if what?’ said Ruth, with loving patience.

‘As if it referred to somebody quite different from you, for instance. As if the whole of you were back to front in some way . . . But I’m only guessing. I’ve never come across sixteen cards the wrong way round before.’

‘Let’s write it all down and leave it until later,’ said Ruth. ‘I want to drink more wine and then make love instead.’

Elaine smiled and thought for a while. Then she raised her glass and ran her tongue over her lips a few times.

‘Your wish is my command,’ she said with a smile. ‘Where would you like to start? In the bath, perhaps? I think I’d like that. I must just make that phone call first.’

‘The bath’s a good idea,’ Ruth decided. ‘Yes, I’d like to have you with me in the bath. Write down what’s on the cards and then make that call. I’ll get in the bath first, and be waiting for you.’

Once in the bathroom she stood and contemplated her sizeable body in the mirror. Lifted up her heavy breasts and sucked at each nipple for a few seconds. Stroked herself carefully between her legs with a finger in order to get confirmation of her desire.

Then her brother cropped up in her thoughts again, and she moved her hands to more neutral regions.

Poor Mauritz, she thought. Silly bugger! She sighed and wrapped a bath towel round her. Continued thinking while she somewhat mechanically and absent-mindedly rearranged the perfume bottles on the shelf under the mirror, and selected her favourite foam bath scents.

What is the point of confessing to something you haven’t done?

The question had been buzzing around in her mind for some days now. Nagging at her, making her worry. Why couldn’t Mauritz simply have admitted to being a weakling instead? A cowardly and confused person who would never have been able to carry off anything like that? Not in any circumstances.

Twenty-eight stabs! Mauritz?

It was ridiculous. Anybody who knew anything at all about him could have explained that it was absolutely impossible.

But of course there wasn’t anybody who knew anything about him. Apart from her.

So perhaps it wasn’t all that odd after all. She had begun to understand that was the case after a few days. That he wanted to take the blame, and that people believed him. There was a sort of logic. A twisted and back-to-front logic, but it made sense even so.

But why had he gone to the trouble of buying an identical knife when they had already disposed of the real one? That was a genuine mystery. When she thought about it, she realized that this was the only thing she didn’t understand. Couldn’t make head nor tail of it. He could never have planned to use it. To stab that police officer? The fact that he actually did so could hardly be explained in any other way than his being possessed for a sudden second of an ability to act. Sudden and unexpected. Like a will o’ the wisp. Nothing else.

That was presumably how things were. The knife was an idée fixe. The stabbing of the police officer a coincidence: an act on the spur of the moment. Something to show her – or Irene, in some obscure way – that he did have it inside him . . . But no, it was too far-fetched. Too logical. Mauritz could never plan and carry out anything like that. He could work something similar out with hindsight, perhaps, but he could never decide it in advance and then do it. He had never been able to think and act like that. That was the root of his weakness.