‘What’s that on your hand?’ I suddenly asked sharply as I noticed the thin streaks of scarlet trickling over her palm.
‘What?’ she asked, glancing up at me.
I looked down at the white tissue paper lying on the table in which the figurine had been wrapped. It was stained with red.
‘Can I see that for a minute?’ I asked, snatching it from her grasp.
Then I gazed at the thing in horror. The tiny statue was weeping. Scarlet tears of blood were soaking into and staining the soft wood, and trickling over my fingers as I held the figure.
‘What is it?’ Casey asked.
I glanced at her and then held up the statuette. ‘What do you think of this?’
‘I love her, Gabriel, really. She’s perfect.’
I felt my mouth twisting into a grimace as I realised she couldn’t see the bloody tears, and my mind raced for an excuse. I could not possibly leave this thing in Casey’s possession. It might be dangerous.
‘I’m really sorry, Casey, but they seem to have given me the wrong one,’ I said apologetically. ‘The one I picked out for you was much better than this. I’ll take it back to the shop as soon as it opens after Christmas and get them to exchange it.’
Casey protested that she really was delighted with the one I was holding in my hand, but I was firm. The fine lines and details of the carving’s face were virtually imperceptible now, so covered was the figure in its own scarlet tears. Then I made the mistake of looking up at the kitchen worktop and saw Casey’s hateful little Black Madonna standing there, also weeping tears of blood, and I knew I had to get out of the apartment fast. That same raw, desperate revulsion was rising up in me at the sight of the dripping blood, just as strong as the day I had sunk my knife into the rare steak, and it took everything I had not to leap to my feet with a cry of disgust and bolt from her apartment to the safety of my own.
I stood up abruptly, walked round behind Casey in the pretence of putting my mug in the sink, and snatched up the Black Madonna, stuffing it into my pocket without Casey noticing. Somehow I managed to thank my young neighbour for a lovely day and for the gift she had given me, before saying goodnight and returning to my apartment where I flung the Virgin Mary and her black counterpart onto the kitchen table and stared in trembling fear at the blood that was all over the palms of my hands. The sight stirred something inside me. It tugged at a memory that refused to come to the surface, for which I was grateful. But I knew in that moment that this was not the first time I had had blood on my hands. It wasn’t the first time. This had happened before. Something really, really terrible…
I didn’t realise I wasn’t alone until Stephomi spoke. ‘You’re late tonight, Gabriel. I’ve been here for hours.’
I spun round with a startled yell, making Stephomi jump himself. ‘How did you get in here?’ I asked hoarsely.
‘I hope you don’t mind. I just came to tell you, well, to warn you
… But I see you already know-’
‘Know what?’ I managed, willing my body to stop shaking. It was all the more disturbing because, even if something deep inside me remembered, I had no conscious recollection of what I was so scared of.
‘It’s begun,’ Stephomi said, with a nod towards the furthermost wall of the room. On it was hung a painting of Jesus, and I could see even from here that he was weeping. Tears of blood ran down the canvas, staining and marking the picture horribly. ‘Your neighbour will give birth this Sunday — six days from now. Every religious picture or statue in the city is weeping like that. Eerie, isn’t it?’ he said, with a glance of distaste at the carvings on my kitchen table, now floating in a pool of their own blood.
‘What is this?’ I asked, holding up my bloody hands.
Stephomi frowned at me. ‘I just told you. Every painting and-’
‘No, no, what is this? What is this?’ I asked again, gesturing with my hands. ‘Why do I remember this?’
‘What do you mean?’ Stephomi asked, looking puzzled. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Did I hurt someone?’ I asked, afraid of the answer. ‘I did something, didn’t I? I did something really, really awful to someone.’
Something was tugging at me. I needed to remember something that had only happened a few weeks ago. Something that had been wrong though I hadn’t realised it at the time… Something Stephomi had said to me that hadn’t been right… He had contradicted himself; he had lied to me… If I could just remember what it was, I could confront him with it and he could give me the logical explanation that I knew must exist. I glanced at the weeping statues and painting again, hating them. They were doing this to me! Along with those devils in my head. It wasn’t me, it was them!
‘Make them stop,’ I pleaded. ‘They hate me! They want me to be insane like them! Don’t you understand? They’re trying to destroy me! They want me to forget again!’
Calmly, Stephomi picked up a kitchen towel and handed it to me. ‘Clean that blood off your hands,’ he ordered.
I did as he said; glad to have someone telling me what to do. At the same time, Stephomi turned the painting of Jesus round to face the wall, then took the towel from me and dropped it over the bloody virgins on the table.
‘No more blood,’ he said. ‘All right? Do you feel better now?’
‘ The rest of your family were there…’ I said, remembering at last.
‘What?’
‘When I asked you if you came to Nicky and Luke’s funeral, you said yes.’
‘What of it?’
‘And then you said that the rest of my family went to support me.’
‘So?’
‘So I don’t have any other family. I said so in that letter I wrote my aunt before she died. There wasn’t anyone else apart from Nicky and Luke. You’re not still lying to me, are you, Stephomi?’ I was almost begging him.
I saw him hesitate and then I knew for sure, and it made me feel sick. With myself as much as with him… I was so tired of having to rely on other people to tell me who I was. How many times was I going to have to go through this miserable uncertainty? It was starting to make me feel like a shadow rather than a real person.
‘Why did you lie about the funeral?’ I demanded. ‘How much of what you told me about that day was true?’
Stephomi sighed. ‘None of it.’
‘ None of it?’
‘Gabriel, you have to understand; I lied only because I knew the truth would hurt you. You weren’t all that stable and I thought these stories might help you to become more grounded. Make you feel more normal.’
‘More normal?’ I almost whispered.
‘If I’d told you the truth, you might have done something stupid. You hated yourself for everything that’d happened.’
‘I killed them, didn’t I?’ I said, almost to myself, realising what Stephomi was going to say. ‘I killed my wife and son somehow. That car crash was my fault, wasn’t it?’
‘There never was any car crash,’ Stephomi said quietly.
I stared at him, felt my heart begin to lift. ‘You mean… Nicky and Luke… are alive?’
‘No. They, er… they never existed.’
Never existed…? After a moment I laughed, sure that he must be joking. But Stephomi didn’t laugh. For once, he wasn’t even smiling.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said, staring at him. ‘I have the documents that prove they existed. I have their death certificates and our marriage certificate and-’
‘Forgeries,’ Stephomi said.
‘Rubbish! If they never existed then why do I miss them so much?’
‘Because you love the idea of them,’ Stephomi said, with a shrug.
I shook my head, torn between amusement and irritation, ‘All right, humour me. Where is my real family?’
‘You don’t have one,’ Stephomi said simply. ‘You’ve never had one.’
‘Oh, I see. You mean, I was miraculously conceived as well?’
‘You were orphaned.’
I gazed at Stephomi — for the first time realising what a pathetic person he was. How could I ever have relied on him the way that I had? Well, I had Casey now. I didn’t need him any more.