The Animal Child peering into the darkness. And did not open the door when the doorbell had rung and stopped answering the phone.
Drank water, lived on water that flooded out of the faucet. And when she got hungry she ate cat food: there were two packs of unopened cans, 2 × 24 cans in each, still wrapped in plastic that she tore open, hacking the lids open with a knife—the rag scissors, rusty blood with white hairs, were lying on a shelf in the pantry, she got it on her hand when she was looking for a weapon to open the cans: could not be used, she put it in her bag, get rid of it.
Bent open the lids and ate with her fingers directly from the can. Tasted like shit, of course, but when hunger struck hunger struck. There was a hunger that could not be checked, the one that came in fits and needed to be silenced despite the fact that it turned into nausea right after. She had not thrown up. Strained in order to hold back the gagging, hold back the food in her. More water, that helped.
But: it had been surprising, this unruly seed of life that existed inside her, like an instinct. Had not really been able to relate to it. Though, naturally, that she had started reflecting on it at all was a sign—then some time had already passed.
The telephone rang. The pictures on the walls. A body of water reveals itself in the woods. The Winter Garden. The hacienda must be built. Kapu kai. Words that went inside her, meant nothing. A blue girl on a cliff. Hand over her mouth—a scream.
Sirens, ambulances, shouts, from outside.
Justice, according to the Law. She waited. Nothing happened. It did not come.
At some point she started cleaning a little, took the pictures down from the walls, placed them in her bag in the hall, just away. That getawaybag, it was as if she had discovered it again, properly. Put the pictures in her bag. Not for any particular reason, just not to have them there in front of her eyes. Because it was upsetting.
And when she saw the bag in the hall it hit her. That it had been there the whole time. It had just been a matter of opening the door, heading on her way.
Right then the doorbell had rung again, voices could be heard on the stairs, a key was in the lock, and she ran ran back into the apartment. Huddled in a corner of the sofa.
That was how the Manager found her. The Animal Child. The surprise, the disgust. But he had immediately come to his senses there out in the open, returned to the stairwell, she heard how he spoke calmly to some grumpy hag, everything was in order, shooshed the woman away—later he would tell Maj-Gun it was a neighbor who had complained about the noise in the bathroom. This week in particular the building’s super was on vacation and the Manager was filling in and when no one answered the telephone or opened the door when she rang the bell, the neighbor had gone to him.
The Manager had closed the front door, come back into the room and taken her away from there. Spoken to her calmly, carefully, and wordlessly, she allowed herself to be convinced, followed along.
To his apartment in another building, next door. And there he had gotten some real food into her, gotten clean clothes on her. Men’s boxers, men’s socks and washed-out overalls, green and wide, but made of jersey cotton, comfortable and soft. Her own clothes thrown in the washing machine.
But the very first thing had been to run a hot bath for her in the bathroom. And then she lay there in the tub and listened intently to all of the sounds outside. On the one hand, all of her senses on alert, the Manager’s low voice in the hall, he was talking on the telephone. The police? Lain there and imagined scenes, how she would give herself up. Just the handcuffs on. Guilty, guilty. On the other hand, nodded off in the warmth, the water. Woke again when the Manager knocked on the door and when she came out of the bathroom in the overalls he had made up a bed for her in the sofa bed in the small living room that had become hers.
In a sleeping bag, clean sheets beneath.
NAH. Tobacco, the balcony, the square in her head, “the square, the square”—this huddling in blankets on the floor of the balcony, suddenly she could not stand it.
When the Manager comes home from work that day she says she is thinking about quitting smoking. Marlboro, it is not even her brand. But does not matter. She has been thinking about quitting anyway. He becomes happy, he smiles.
“Senseless to ruin your health when you’re so young.” She shrugs. “It gives me a bad taste. And I’m not young. Soon it will be Holy Innocents’ Day. I’ll be thirty.”
These have been the first sensible words to come out of her mouth in that apartment, after days, maybe more than a week, a sentence with coherence. And “djeessu—” automatically following it, whistling it through her teeth, she stops herself. And grows silent.
A fraction of a second, how the Manager’s mouth twitches. As if in laughter, as if he actually, here and now, in this situation, a long way from the newsstand, likes what she has said.
“Now you’re starting to become yourself again.” As if he wanted to say it. Like in the newsstand, all of those times she had said something funny to him when he looked like he wanted to pinch her cheek. But naturally, he does not. Tousles her hair, lightly, when he walks by, turns on the TV. “The news is on.”
“I give up. Unconditionally.” She is on the verge of saying it to the Manager—
Police cars, sirens.
They watch TV, the news.
Two newscasts. The one a little past six, the one at eight thirty.
But the Manager, justice, the law, where is it? The Manager plays on his side of the wall, Carmen, Lucia di Lammermoor.
Current events, sirens. The waiting. More abstract. Weeks which pass; it has become Christmas.
A small plastic tree with plastic balls and glitter and electric lights in different colors. The Manager retrieves it from the basement where he keeps it stored and the two cardboard angels with hair made of yarn in a cardboard box marked CHRISTMAS THINGS.
Places the Christmas tree on the desk, the angels on the television set. Homemade angels, the work of kids, you can see that, not very nice at all.
“Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“Have you been married?”
“No.”
His “almost” goddaughters are the ones who have made these angels, he explains, and gave them to him for Christmas. When they were little, they are grown up now. And they have names as well, the angels, that is: Sister Blue, Sister Red, or if you want, the Astronaut, the Nuclear Physicist. “Which one do you think is which?” the Manager asks jokingly as if it were a particularly interesting thing to ponder and answer, it is neither, just idiotic. AND you cannot see a difference anyway. Both are just as ugly, the empty toilet paper rolls benevolently camouflaged in water color, but she does not say that, Maj-Gun shrugs her shoulders, says nothing.
They eat ham and turnip casserole for three days. And listen to music, the same opera, during the day too. She says that he can leave the door ajar, she likes music.
On the television, the news, the third day: a dictator and his wife have been shot. An old couple is lying dead under a wall on frosty ground—the image, black and white, opens the newscast. Thick winter clothes, fur, do not look peaceful, or wretched, just dead. Terrible people, terrible regime. And soon fresh earth and sandy earth, that serves-them-right-earth will soon be shoveled over them.
But “djeessus!” comes out of Maj-Gun’s mouth then, loud and clear, whistling between her teeth, it is also a surprise. From Carmen, Lucia, small electric lights to this. The first image from the first real newscast since the highlights on Christmas Eve.