He came with a furious rush, and almost leapt off her, as if she was suddenly contagious.
The second man was much the same, except for the fact that he didn’t utter a single word between entering the room and leaving it. Then there was a respite of ten minutes or so, before the group’s leader came in. He stripped from the waist down, grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted up her face to meet his own, as if determined to impress on her exactly who it was she was submitting to.
She let out an involuntary sob, and that seemed to satisfy him. He pushed inside her quickly, but then took his time, savouring the moment with slow, methodical strokes, stopping himself several times as he approached a climax, before finally letting himself slip over the edge.
The young one was last, and the other three brought him in like a bull being brought to a heifer. He couldn’t have been more than fourteen and he looked almost as nervous as he did excited. ‘Come on,’ the others said, ‘show her what you’ve got.’ He unveiled his penis almost shyly. It was already erect, quivering with anticipation.
‘I think he’s ready,’ the leader joked, and the other two grabbed hold of Nena and pushed her back across the mattress, legs hanging out across the floor. Then they pulled them wide. ‘That’s where you aim for, Sergei,’ one of them said, running a finger down her bloodied vulva. ‘We’ve got her nice and lubricated for you.’
He came when he was only halfway inside her, to the drunken jeers of his companions.
After that they retired to the room next door, leaving her lying, rolled up in a ball. She tried to ignore the pain, wondering how they could let her live after what they had done. Did they think the war would last for ever, that law and decency would never return, that they were immune to any retribution?
They probably did. She hoped they did, because what other reason could they have for leaving her alive to tell the story?
And if they did make that mistake…She lay there trying to fix all the details in her mind: the place, the faces, the tattoos, the names they had called each other, the individual smells…
She could hear them talking in the next room, and laughing too. She started to cry, silently at first, then in great, wracking sobs which seemed to go on and on and on.
Exhaustion must have driven her to sleep for a few moments, because she suddenly woke to find the group’s leader standing over her once more.
‘You’re in luck,’ he told her. ‘The rest of the lads haven’t come back, so you’ve had an easy night. But I thought I’d come for dessert.’
He pulled down his trousers and stood there, his cock hanging in front of her face. She could smell it, smell herself on it. ‘Make it grow,’ he said with a leer, and she took hold of it, trying to imagine she was back in the hospital, examining someone. And in his case, hoping to find something seriously wrong.
It swelled in her hand.
‘Now suck,’ he said, looking down at her.
She didn’t say no, but there must have been something in her eyes, because he abruptly changed his mind, pushing her back across the mattress, roughly pulling off her jeans, and rolling her over. ‘You’d bite it off, wouldn’t you?’ he hissed into her ear, and thrust himself into her anus. She cried out involuntarily, which seemed only to increase his ardour. After a minute of energetic pumping he pulled himself out rolled her back over, wedged her legs open with his own, and rammed himself into her vagina, this time coming almost instantly.
He exhaled noisily and lifted himself up, looking down at her. ‘You enjoy it really, don’t you. All you Muslim whores enjoy it.’
She said nothing, but she couldn’t control the look in her eyes, and he hit her once, as hard as she had ever imagined being hit, across the side of the face.
Perhaps she had blacked out for a few seconds, because her next conscious thought was of the door closing behind him. And then she had lain awake for what seemed like hours, feeling that a stain had been etched into her soul, and that nothing would ever be the same again. And when the morning light had appeared around the edge of the shutter it had seemed the greyest of lights.
Now she sat there, hugging herself around the knees, waiting to find out which fate awaited her – death or more nights like the last.
They were awake in the room next door, and this morning she could hear them talking, as the wind outside had died down.
‘I like blondes,’ one man was saying. ‘Fucking a blonde is…it’s sort of cleaner, know what I mean? Dark women feel dirtier somehow…’
‘Why can’t we keep her?’ a younger voice asked.
‘Listen to the kid. Thinks he’s a stud already.’
‘But why can’t we keep her?’ an older voice asked. ‘They expect us to look after the area, freeze our balls off on that road. We only get down to Stovic about once a month.’
There were a few moments of silence, moments in which Nena tried not to wonder what the alternative was to being kept.
‘We’re not keeping her,’ the group leader said. ‘Keep a woman here permanently and we have to feed her, watch her, keep her clean…’
‘What for?’
‘Because they don’t feel as nice if they’ve been rolling around in their own shit,’ the leader said.
‘She could do the cooking,’ someone objected.
‘Yeah? The moment you let her out of that room she needs a guard, right? Which means one of us will have to stay here. It’s not worth it. She’s not that great a fuck, anyway. All bones. She’s old enough to be Koca’s grandmother. She’s going to Vogosca.’
Those last four words caused Nena to almost gasp with relief. Vogosca was a small, predominantly Serb town about four miles north of Sarajevo, and though she didn’t know what awaited her there it had to be better than dying in this mountain village whose name she didn’t even know.
Hold on, she told herself, hold on. She put her coat on and waited.
One of the men came to get her an hour or so later – the one who had not said a word as he raped her. ‘You have to get washed,’ he said, and he prodded her out through the house’s back door. The clouds were almost touching the ground, the mountains completely obscured from view, but the snow still seemed dazzling to her eyes. ‘You can clean yourself with that,’ he said, pointing at the nearest snowdrift.
She looked at it. ‘What kind of men are you?’ she asked before she could stop herself.
He wasn’t offended by the question. ‘We are Serbs,’ he replied. ‘Your men are taking our women just the same way.’
She walked across to the snowdrift, took down the bloody jeans and squatted in such a way that she could wash between her legs. The snow made the abrasions sting, but somehow that seemed almost a blessing.
After she had finished he took her round the outside of the house to where the Fiat was parked and told her to get inside. She sat alone in the car for about ten minutes, and then he returned, climbed in and started the car.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Not far,’ he said. Once they were outside the village he lit a cigarette, and, after a moment’s hesitation, offered her one.
‘I don’t smoke,’ she said. ‘I’m a doctor,’ she added, without thinking.
‘Yeah?’ he said, interested. ‘I’ve got a pain in my chest right here,’ he said, tapping it with