"Where do you come from?" Without thinking I cast a glance over my shoulder: she is staring at nothing but empty wall. Her gaze has grown rigid. Already knowing the answer, I repeat my question. She meets it with silence.
I dismiss the soldier. We are alone.
"I know who you are," I say. "Will you please sit?" I take her sticks and help to seat her on a stool. Under the coat she wears wide linen drawers tucked into heavy-soled boots. She smells of smoke, of stale clothing, of fish. Her hands are horny.
"Do you make a living by begging?" I ask. "You know you are not supposed to be in town. We could expel you at any time and send you back to your people."
She sits staring eerily ahead of her.
"Look at me," I say.
"I am looking. This is how I look."
I wave a hand in front of her eyes. She blinks. I bring my face closer and stare into her eyes. She wheels her gaze from the wall on to me. The black irises are set off by milky whites as clear as a child's. I touch her cheek: she starts.
"I asked how you make a living."
She shrugs. "I do washing."
"Where do you live?"
"I live."
"We do not permit vagrants in the town. Winter is almost here. You must have somewhere to live. Otherwise you must go back to your own people."
She sits obdurately. I know I am beating about the bush.
"I can offer you work. I need someone to keep these rooms tidy, to see to my laundry. The woman who does it at present is not satisfactory."
She understands what I am offering. She sits very stiff, her hands in her lap.
"Are you alone? Please answer."
"Yes." Her voice comes in a whisper. She clears her throat. "Yes."
"I have offered that you should come and work here. You cannot beg in the streets. I cannot permit that. Also you must have a place of abode. If you work here you can share the cook's room."
"You do not understand. You do not want someone like me." She gropes for her sticks. I know that she cannot see. "I am…"-she holds up her forefinger, grips it, twists it. I have no idea what the gesture means. "Can I go?" She makes her own way to the head of the stairs, then has to wait for me to help her down.
A day passes. I stare out over the square where the wind chases flurries of dust. Two little boys are playing with a hoop. They bowl it into the wind. It rolls forward, slows, teeters, rides back, falls. The boys lift their faces and run after it, the hair whipped back from their clean brows.
I find the girl and stand before her. She sits with her back against the trunk of one of the great walnut trees: it is hard to see whether she is even awake. "Come," I say, and touch her shoulder. She shakes her head. "Come," I say, "everyone is indoors." I beat the dust from her cap and hand it to her, help her to her feet, walk slowly beside her across the square, empty now save for the gatekeeper, who shades his eyes to stare at us.
The fire is lit. I draw the curtains, light the lamp. She refuses the stool, but yields up her sticks and kneels in the centre of the carpet.
"This is not what you think it is," I say. The words come reluctantly. Can I really be about to excuse myself? Her lips are clenched shut, her ears too no doubt, she wants nothing of old men and their bleating consciences. I prowl around her, talking about our vagrancy ordinances, sick at myself. Her skin begins to glow in the warmth of the closed room. She tugs at her coat, opens her throat to the fire. The distance between myself and her torturers, I realize, is negligible; I shudder.
"Show me your feet," I say in the new thick voice that seems to be mine. "Show me what they have done to your feet."
She neither helps nor hinders me. I work at the thongs and eyelets of the coat, throw it open, pull the boots off. They are a man's boots, far too large for her. Inside them her feet are swaddled, shapeless.
"Let me see," I say.
She begins to unwrap the dirty bandages. I leave the room, go downstairs to the kitchen, come back with a basin and a pitcher of warm water. She sits waiting on the carpet, her feet bare. They are broad, the toes stubby, the nails crusted with dirt.
She runs a finger across the outside of her ankle. "That is where it was broken. The other one too." She leans back on her hands and stretches her legs.
"Does it hurt?" I say. I pass my finger along the line, feeling nothing.
"Not any more. It has healed. But perhaps when the cold comes."
"You should sit," I say. I help her off with the coat, seat her on the stool, pour the water into the basin, and begin to wash her feet. For a while her legs remain tense; then they relax.
I wash slowly, working up a lather, gripping her firm-fleshed calves, manipulating the bones and tendons of her feet, running my fingers between her toes. I change my position to kneel not in front of her but beside her, so that, holding a leg between elbow and side, I can caress the foot with both hands.
I lose myself in the rhythm of what I am doing. I lose awareness of the girl herself. There is a space of time which is blank to me: perhaps I am not even present. When I come to, my fingers have slackened, the foot rests in the basin, my head droops.
I dry the right foot, shuffle to the other side, lift the leg of the wide drawers above her knee, and, fighting against drowsiness, begin to wash the left foot. "Sometimes this room gets very hot," I say. The pressure of her leg against my side does not lessen. I go on. "I will find clean bandages for your feet," I say, "but not now." I push the basin aside and dry the foot. I am aware of the girl struggling to stand up; but now, I think, she must take care of herself. My eyes close. It becomes an intense pleasure to keep them closed, to savour the blissful giddiness. I stretch out on the carpet. In an instant I am asleep. In the middle of the night I wake up cold and stiff. The fire is out, the girl is gone.
I watch her eat. She eats like a blind person, gazing into the distance, working by touch. She has a good appetite, the appetite of a robust young countrywoman.
"I don't believe you can see," I say.
"Yes, I can see. When I look straight there is nothing, there is-" (she rubs the air in front of her like someone cleaning a window).
"A blur," I say.
"There is a blur. But I can see out of the sides of my eyes. The left eye is better than the right. How could I find my way if I didn't see?"
"Did they do it to you?"
"Yes."
"What did they do?"
She shrugs and is silent. Her plate is empty. I dish up more of the bean stew she seems to like so much. She eats too fast, belches behind a cupped hand, smiles. "Beans make you fart," she says. The room is warm, her coat hangs in a corner with the boots below it, she wears only the white smock and drawers. When she does not look at me I am a grey form moving about unpredictably on the periphery of her vision. When she looks at me I am a blur, a voice, a smell, a centre of energy that one day falls asleep washing her feet and the next day feeds her bean stew and the next day-she does not know.
I seat her, fill the basin, roll the drawers above her knees. Now that the two feet are together in the water I can see that the left is turned further inward than the right, that when she stands she must stand on the outer edges of her feet. Her ankles are large, puffy, shapeless, the skin scarred purple.
I begin to wash her. She raises her feet for me in turn. I knead and massage the lax toes through the soft milky soap. Soon my eyes close, my head droops. It is rapture, of a kind.
When I have washed her feet I begin to wash her legs. For this she has to stand in the basin and lean on my shoulder. My hands run up and down her legs from ankle to knee, back and forth, squeezing, stroking, moulding. Her legs are short and sturdy, her calves strong. Sometimes my fingers run behind her knees, tracing the tendons, pressing into the hollows between them. Light as feathers they stray up the backs of her thighs.