The boys were trusting, learning to read and trying to please. While he watched, licking his moist red lips and telling them to come to him with their secrets, their dreams, their fears and their worries. He was their teacher and friend, the one to trust in a world where they had no parents to turn to and the teachers were strict – telling them all this as he began to touch a little more and sit a little closer.
Do not push my hand away. It is a caring thing to do, to stroke a friend, to comfort them.
No, no, I don’t like it, please, don’t… please… stop…
“Lenka!” Uncle Guido’s voice snapped her out of the vision. “I asked you a question.” He was chewing methodically, his eyes trained on her face.
Every nerve ending popped as if there was no barrier between them, as if she had no skin, no protection. Her fingers shook. “I am not aware of there being anything wrong with my eye, Uncle.”
“Then you should have it looked at. I will make arrangements for you to see a specialist, for spectacles to be fitted.”
Spectacles? So she was to be dressed like a nun, hair braided into two ridiculous coils, and now spectacles, too? Not two weeks ago, she had been running free, barefoot in a pretty dress of white cotton, her red hair streaming behind her in the sun. The thought was a kick in the gut. He was deliberately deconstructing her identity. Look at Heide… there was nothing of her true self left… just ash… a head of ash…
“Thank you, Uncle, but I can see perfectly well. There is no need for all this trouble to be taken.”
“Do not argue with me, Lenka. It is my responsibility that you are well cared for while you are here. And as such, we will have you examined. Heide, will you make sure to organise this? I do not want to send her back to Wolfsheule blind.”
How had she survived the rest of that meal without stabbing him with a fork? Even so, she lay on the bed worrying about it. What could he have meant about her eye? As far as she was aware, there was nothing whatsoever wrong with it.
She wandered over to the dresser. This room overlooked the street, and the dresser mirror faced into the room. With the light behind it, her reflection was shady, but the moon shone over the top, directly into her eyes. She stared hard. No, there was nothing wrong, really nothing.
Puzzled, she picked up a hairbrush and began the nightly routine of one hundred strokes, the silky feeling pleasurable, as was the sight of her own beauty in the mirror. In the high-necked white nightdress and braids, she felt like a child, but now with the buttons undone and her hair shimmering under the moonlight, she was once again a woman. She was a woman. Illusion or not, she had known what it felt like to lie with a man and to feel love, had encouraged it, wanted, desired… demanded more…
Leaning into the mirror, she examined her face, the cut of the high cheekbones, the sharp angle of the jaw, the fullness of her lips. Then back to the eyes. Deep grey, there was a ring around the pupils, flecked with gold. First she focused on the left eye. The pupil dilated a little, but there was no sign of a defect, nothing different at all. Now she focused on the right one, the eye he had intimated had something wrong with it. No, nothing. She stared and stared until it seemed she would go mad…
Then suddenly there was something – a tiny flicker in the pupil. Alarmed, she leaned closer and closer towards the mirror, watching intently. There! She had not been wrong. And look there… it came again… a shape shifting inside the pupil. Instead of it dilating or constricting in the normal way, it looked as if there was something inside it. Inside of her! Her heart squeezed, and a fresh wave of sweat broke out.
Reeling back, she stared aghast.
At that moment the moon, which had been shining almost as brightly as the sun, was eclipsed by a mass of cloud, plunging the room into darkness. The candle by the bed flattened as if in a high wind, despite the stillness of the room, and she caught her breath. Swinging round, she stared into the unlit room, determined to face this down, to defy the fear even though her heart was hammering. Face this, face it!
Something was coming…
There can be no shadows if there is no light, her mother had said. Look again… what do you see?
There were no shadows on the walls now. No light at all.
Then into her mind, clear and sharp, came the face of her bearded uncle chewing the cud. She frowned and banished the thought. Then, whoosh, she was inside his head, experiencing the rush he had cornering a tearful child, as he thrust himself on him, feeding off the terror and the shame, pulling down the young boy’s shorts while the child sobbed with shame…
Her mind blacked with hatred. And in that instant, everything in her stomach vaulted up to her mouth. Flying over to the bed, she pulled out the chamber pot and projectile vomited, heaving until there was nothing left but acid before slumping to the floor in a cold sweat. Visions and sickness. This was taking hold exactly as her mother had forecast. Waves of colic gripped her intestines, and bile rose in her throat. Head pounding, she reached for a handkerchief and dabbed at her face, swiping away the tears.
Give us work… give us work…
Moonlight now streamed once more into the room, and this time there were visible movements from within the furniture-shaped shadows. They rose like oil slicks, oozing over the walls and across the floor like giant garden slugs.
Lenka, give us work… Lenka… Lenka…
She sank onto the bed, whimpering as the slithers congealed around her feet in a tar-black pool… Perhaps she was mad after all?
Give us work… give us work…
Wave after wave of sickly colic seized her stomach, and a feverish damp glistened on her skin. Shivering, she slapped her arm as something stung, sharp as a red-hot thumbtack. A fiery pox mark had appeared, followed by another and another. Tears smarted behind her eyes.
Lenka, Lenka, I can take all of this away from you…
“I don’t want this. I don’t want it.”
I am all about you, am part of you already or else how would I know your thoughts – your most intimate thoughts?
Into her mind flashed the explosively passionate moments with Oskar, and despite her fear and her pain, heat rose inside, flaming her cheeks.
We are inseparable, you and I. Do you know how long I have been with you? For a thousand years or more… I can take away all your grief, terror and pain… all you have to do is say yes!
An almighty contraction gripped her intestines; nerve pain screamed down one side of her head. It was getting worse – a dozen more pox marks had broken out all over her arms…
“Yes! I will give you work,” she gasped, panicking. “Let Uncle Guido suffer instead of me if that is what you are saying… but please, make this fever stop!”
Immediately the pain siphoned away, the marks vanished and the black shapes receded in a hiss of recoil.
“Show me, then,” she whispered. “Show me what to do. I am ready.”
Chapter Nineteen