Christien Boomsma

 

The Bones in Her Eyes

It’s commonly claimed – even by the Dutch – that the Netherlands has no real tradition of horror fiction, but Dutch literature does contain some hidden gems in the genre, like the often horror-tinged ‘fantastic’ tales of Ferdinand Bordewijk and Belcampo, Kathinka Lannoy’s volumes of ghost stories, and the bizarre and unsettling stories of Jacques Hamelink. And in more recent years, the Dutch horror scene has shown increasing signs of life. The works of Paul van Loon and Christien Boomsma have proven extremely popular with younger audiences, while Thomas Olde Heuvelt scored an international success with his 2016 novel Hex. Both Olde Heuvelt and Boomsma were featured alongside a number of other emerging horror writers in a pioneering 2016 anthology of new Dutch horror fiction, from which the following tale, ‘The Bones in Her Eyes’, is taken. The story came to Boomsma after she accidentally hit a cat with her car: the look in the animal’s eyes haunted her in her dreams, though we doubt those dreams were quite as nightmarish as this tale they inspired.

It’s the eyes I just can’t get out of my system, glowing yellow-­green in the darkness when they were caught in the glare of my headlights. Some people would call such a sight demonic, but they’re haters, and why should I pay any attention to what they say? No, to me they were mirrors that showed with an unsettling sharpness a truth that I didn’t seem to grasp. I knew it was important for me to see it, to understand it. But it eluded me, and it eludes me still.

Matt – my boyfriend – always said there was nothing you could do about it when it happens, but I never believed him. I considered those rural roads full of carelessly murdered hedgehogs, flattened frogs, squashed rabbits, and bleeding ducks to be a typical expression of human inability to treat the world with respect. Getting home in time to watch Farmer Wants a Wife is more important than a creature that breathes, that feels. That dies.

But that evening I discovered that things could be different. I had had a long day because I go – no, went – once a month to the drawing academy in Rotterdam. Quite a drive if you live as far north as I do. So when I drove back into the village I could already taste the night in the day. It was the time when animals leave their holes and lairs and slip into the world. A dangerous time.

So I drove slowly, scanning the roadside where the grass was already withered because autumn was on its way. And I saw them: a cat’s eyes, like small glowing lamps in the falling dusk.

What was perhaps more frustrating: the cat saw me too. It sat motionless waiting along the side of the road and watched as I approached.

And this is what’s so infinitely difficult to accept: I wasn’t careless and I wasn’t speeding, although naturally I wanted to get home, plop down on the couch, and close my eyes while Matt poured me a glass of port.

In the end, the animal did it itself. And there was nothing I could do.

One moment it was still there. I saw the ears – a little too short – and the tail, which looked as if it had once been longer and had an odd kink in it. I even imagine seeing the whiskers, a blend of black and white, although that is highly unlikely. But in my head, where I keep the memory, I do see them.

I don’t think I was going much faster than 50 km per hour. Maybe even 30. But in the split second it should have taken to pass the animal, it moved.

I saw it. A quick leap, perfectly timed as if the cat had chosen its own death – but animals can’t do that – and it stood right in front of me on the road.

I braked with everything I had. The wheels jammed, screeching over the cobblestones. There was a ‘thump’ that made me queasy. Then: silence.

‘Oh God,’ I whispered to the dashboard. ‘Oh shit.’

My hands were trembling when I switched off the ignition. They were shaking when I opened the door. The warning sound began to beep, but I left the lights on while I let my feet drop onto the deck of the tossing ship the road seemed to have turned into.

I stumbled to the front of my car and knelt down beside the cat. The short ears with a piece missing, the tattered fur and the half-­black, half-­white whiskers. Mouth open – was the lower jaw shorter than the upper? Blood was streaming out, and the head had been scraped by the pavement. And that was the good scenario because it could also have a skull fracture. Its paw lay at an odd angle, definitely broken. And still more blood, which looked brown rather than red in the glow of the headlights.

Its eyes were open, but those weren’t damaged. The pupils were enormous and hardly left room for the yellow-­green reflection around them. And then it looked at me. Bleeding and dying, the cat looked at me.

Was there reproach? They say animals can’t feel human emotions, but if elephants can mourn and dolphins can love, why couldn’t a cat blame you for what you’ve done?

‘Stupid cat. Why didn’t you just stay put?’ I whispered. I brought my trembling finger to its head and petted carefully between its ears. ‘I’m so sorry.’

Blood stuck to my fingers and while I tried to think of where to wipe it off, I noticed the thin yellow collar around the animal’s neck. The little silver address tag.

Of course. The accident hadn’t only affected the cat that was now lying here dying in the street. Somewhere there was an owner, maybe a whole family, who would be devastated by the loss of this animal. My fault.

But I’ve never walked away from my responsibilities. Not even now, with a stranger’s voice in my head and glass splinters from an attic window at my feet.

I reached for the collar to remove the tag. I must have been hurting the cat because it suddenly lashed out and drove sharp claws deep into my wrist.

‘Shit!’

Lightning fast I pulled my hand back. The cat had stuck its nails deep in my skin and thick drops of blood dripped down and mixed with the even thicker cat blood. Just what I needed, I thought. I brought my wrist to my mouth and sucked. It was just what I deserved.

Just pick it up, very carefully, and don’t look at the nauseating spots left behind on the road. There was a grocery box in the trunk of my car and I put the cat in it, after which I set it next to me on the passenger seat. I wished I could talk to it because it must be suffering horrible pain. Fortunately it didn’t scratch me again.

It lived on Appelstraat. Number 79.

How do you do that kind of thing? What do you say when you ring someone’s doorbell with their housemate dying in a cardboard box? And you’re the one responsible?

The garden path that would bring me to the front door of number 79 seemed endless. It was a rather small detached house that screamed ‘overdue maintenance’. Roof shingles that had slid into the gutter, chipping paint on the window frames, a break in the glass of a skylight high above, a wild confusion of bushes in the garden. A bramble caught its thorns in my jacket as if it wanted to prevent me from reaching the front door. And then there was the cat, motionless in its little cardboard box, looking at me with those reflecting eyes. The deep scratch on my wrist throbbed and ached as only cat scratches can.

What was I going to say in one minute,

fifty seconds,

thirty seconds,

ten . . . ?

‘Good evening. I’m terribly sorry, but . . .’

It was not a good evening, and it was about to get much worse.

‘Hello. I realize this comes as a shock, but I accidentally . . .’

What good would ‘accidentally’ do them?

‘Your cat suddenly jumped in front of my car and I didn’t have time to brake. I . . .’

That sounded as though I was blaming the cat.

When I had finally reached the end of the path and put my finger on the doorbell, my brain was nearly bursting with possible apologies and tears that I kept holding back in my weary head.

And then the door opened, and I suddenly realized there was an even worse possible scenario than the one about the inconsolable toddler who’d lost her dearest pet: that of a lonely old granny who had no one else but the cat, which she loved like a child.

And I had killed that child.

So when I saw the thin, gray tufts of hair on the skull of the woman who opened the door, the wrinkles like crinkled paper, the liver spots on her forehead, one of those synthetic beige skirts that no one under eighty dares to wear anymore, and the walker with which she had patiently made her way to the door, I could hardly get a word out. I began to sniffle helplessly and held the box out towards her. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

That was the moment when the woman should have broken out crying herself, or gotten angry. The moment when she should have chased me off with her cane or had a heart attack from the shock. But none of that happened.

She took the box from me calmly and looked inside with a kind of absent curiosity.

That was the moment when I really should have known that something wasn’t right. And I don’t mean because of the accident or the dying animal in the box. Something was off. But I was tired and shaken up and didn’t notice it.

She bent over the box, shaking her head, and stuck her hand inside. ‘What have you been up to, Dante? What on earth got into that silly cat head of yours!’

I sniffled. ‘I’m so terribly sorry, ma’am. I couldn’t avoid him and I hit him with my car. I’m well insured, we can call the vet. I want to take care of everything.’

She looked up. ‘Aw, what a nice girl you are. He does that sometimes, you know? He just takes off and does stupid things. I’m always telling him: don’t do that, be careful now, but he is so stubborn.’

She turned her attention back to the animal in the box. ‘Shame on you, Dante! Now look what you’ve done. You’ve made this nice girl cry. Shame, shame, shame.’

I tried again. ‘Shall we drive together to a vet’s office? I’ll gladly pay.’

But the woman shook her head resolutely. Maybe she wasn’t as fragile as I had initially thought. ‘Not necessary, dearie, not necessary. He’s a tough one, my Dante.’ A sharp look at me. ‘But you look a little peaked. I bet you’d like a cup of tea. For the fright.’

I didn’t want any tea. What I wanted was to go home and take a bath and forget all of this had happened. But how could I tell her no?

‘I never hear from my children, you see? And Dante here isn’t very talkative either. A nice cup of tea would do us both good,’ she went on.

I hesitated. My sense of guilt was huge, but so was my headache. And I wanted to say no, I wanted . . .

‘It’s just the two of us, my husband and I, you see. And Dante of course. Oh, and I mustn’t forget Frits. That’s our canary, but he doesn’t really sing anymore. Too old, I think. Just like my husband. He’s ninety-­four. He’s not so well anymore. We used to play little games, he and I. We would play Halma or Parcheesi on Sunday evenings. It’s the Parkinson’s. He knocks all the little pieces over. That’s how it goes, he can’t help it of course, but still . . .’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ I managed to say. ‘Matt, my boyfriend, will wonder where I am, so if you’re sure there’s nothing more I can do for you . . .’

It went totally quiet and I heard only the rasping sound of a dying cat from the box that she had placed on her walker.

She looked at me with an unspoken accusation in her eyes and nodded. ‘If you’d rather go home, dearie, then I’ll manage on my own. Alone.’

I know. I may have turned my back a million times on my parents’ faith and decided that whatever is up there ruling the universe, in any case it’s not the sexist, unimaginative, and vengeful old man my parents’ church made it out to be. But I’ll never be able to shake off that impression. Not entirely.

The church had gotten its claws of sin, duty, and an endless awareness of not-­enough in me when I was so small that I didn’t know the difference between the words ‘mercy’ and ‘jersey’. Now that I’m an adult, my only defense is my refusal to let myself be controlled by it.

And Matt.

I would go crazy if Matt weren’t there to scrape the burning coals off my head every so often.

‘I should have stayed,’ I told him later that evening. ‘I mean: why couldn’t I bring myself to drink a cup of tea with her? I killed her cat! And now she’s there all alone with her husband, who can’t do anything either. Did I already tell you that he’s 94, her husband? That means he must have fought in the war, that he saw the Wall go up and then fall again, that he saw radio and the newspaper make way for television and the internet. Everything!’

‘Impressive,’ Matt said calmly. He bent over and refilled my glass with port. Tawny and fairly old, just the way I like it. He has always known exactly what I needed, and thus that tonight a cheapie from the supermarket wasn’t going to cut it.

‘She used to play games with him. But now his Parkinson’s is so bad that he always knocks the pieces over, she says. Is that our future? Together in a dilapidated little house on the edge of the inhabited world with a canary and a cat? And then I come along and destroy even that.’

Matt came and sat beside me, and through the soft fabric of my bathrobe I felt the warmth of his thigh against mine. Upon seeing the look in my eyes when I came home, he had first run a full bath and then guided me with a gentle hand towards the bathroom to relax in the warmth of the water. Now he listened to me as only he can: sweet, loving, clever, and above all without judgment.

His hand glided towards my leg, pushed the flap of the robe aside and caressed my warm skin. The sudden intimacy brought me almost to tears because I knew that she – that little old woman – that maybe she had also had it once, but no longer.

He saw it, stopped, and brought his hand to my face. He stroked my cheek with the back side of his ring finger. I felt the callus there and the hardness of his knuckle and sighed. ‘Sorry, I’m rattling on.’

‘And that’s exactly why I love you so much,’ he muttered. ‘Because things like that affect you. That makes you unique.’ He grinned. ‘Tender Tara.’

He always used that pet name when I got emotional over abandoned shelter dogs, refugees in trouble on the borders of Europe, or yet another cutback in social services under the guise of ‘efficiency’. I hate that no one calls it by its right name: economizing on the weakest.

‘I feel guilty,’ I whispered. ‘Dante . . .’ I saw the lack of understanding in his eyes and quickly added: ‘The cat. I hit him hard, Matt, really hard. All that blood! And she totally didn’t get what was really happening. She thought he’d just get better. That when she wakes up tomorrow and goes to the kitchen, then . . .’

‘A person can’t do everything,’ Matt said, and he kissed my forehead softly. ‘Not even my Tender Tara.’

His fingers stroked my hair. ‘Otherwise just go back later and check on how the beast is. Then you can still have a cup of tea with her and maybe even play a game. She’ll like that better than if you had stayed this evening.’

He was right, of course. That’s how Matt is. He always knows how to guide me so that it feels good and safe.

So when his lips touched mine, I finally dared to surrender myself. I kissed him back and welcomed the warmth. I had a plan. And everything would work out fine in the end.

Naive, right? To think you can make up for taking a life with a belated cup of tea?

I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy. Especially when the night, which had begun in a heated intoxication of oblivion, passed into something else.

I hadn’t yet slipped deep into the sleep I so desperately needed when it began. An endless falling as images flashed by: the dark cobblestone road, only lit up here and there by a single nostalgic streetlamp, the glowing eyes on the side of the road, the screeching brakes that drowned out the sound of my car stereo. The cat’s mirror eyes that wanted to tell me something I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear.

My eyes flew open. Sweat on my skin. I stared at the ceiling without seeing anything.

A dream. It was only a dream.

Soft scratching from the darkness. The cat? But . . .

I reached my hand towards the still figure beside me. I longed for the reassuring warmth of his sleeping body. His security.

But when my fingers stroked his skin, they felt not the rough hairs of a man’s arm but something plush, soft. And immediately afterwards . . . sticky, wet, as if . . .

‘Shh,’ Matt whispered in my hair. And I forced myself to relax.

You’re imagining things.

Only there was something sticking to my fingers when I woke up the following morning. Something I was certain I had washed away hours earlier in the hot water of the bath.

It couldn’t be blood.

It just couldn’t.

I was standing in front of the mirror when Matt gave me a quick good morning kiss. ‘Be a little kind to yourself,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Don’t make yourself crazy, promise me that?’

I nodded obediently while I washed my hands and watched as a thin stream of red was caught in the water and sucked down the drain.

‘For real, ok?’ he insisted. He pulled on his jacket in the hallway. I saw how he patted his pocket to check if he had his cell phone with him.

‘For real,’ I promised again.

The door shut behind him with a bang that sounded more definitive than usual and a shiver went down my spine.

Only then did I let go of my right wrist, which I had been holding in my left hand, and look at the deep scratch the cat had made. It was fiery red and the edges were open a little. In between yellowish-white pus glistened. I wiped it away carefully with a tissue, but immediately thereafter more blood and pus welled up. At around a centimeter distance from the wound, all around, I saw that small, shiny blisters were forming.

I frowned. Matt had bent over the spot the night before. He had disinfected it, but I was better off letting it air-­dry, he had said. Now it looked as though it were infected.

I put some new gauze on it – clumsily, with only my left hand – and got dressed. No matter what I’d promised Matt, I had no intention of sitting around the house all day. Not after that night.

The cat eyes pursued me, even now that my eyes were open and the morning sun was coming in through the high windows of our apartment. If I looked away from the mirror, they seemed to pop up in the corners of the glass, only to disappear again when I turned my gaze toward them. They wanted to tell me something, ask something perhaps, but I still didn’t know what.

The scratch on my wrist throbbed. Slower than my heartbeat and deep inside. I shut my eyes, shook off the unease, because that second promise – that I wouldn’t let myself go crazy – that one I intended to keep.

And so I ate a container of yogurt with granola and drank cappuccino from the far too expensive coffee machine Matt had given me last year for my birthday.

My car still smelled of a strange mixture of wet fur, blood, and panic from the night before. I saw the wet place where the animal had lain; the blood had leaked through the cardboard box. Under the trees too, just before the turnoff onto Appelstraat, I saw the evidence of the previous night’s events: black tracks that my car tires had left on the cobblestones.

I braked and drove slowly on towards number 79. Stepped out. Lead in my shoes. Repeated the greeting I had thought up: ‘Hello ma’am! I just wanted to see if you were doing all right. And if you still needed help with Dante.’ Saw the movement of the crocheted curtains behind the window next to the front door. The hint of dark fur between the folds. A cat that popped up behind the grimy glass.

My heart skipped a beat.

It couldn’t be him. Not that cat, not those too-­short ears, that kink in the tail and that bloody crust over his eye where the cobblestones had scraped away his skin and fur. Even if he had in some miraculous way or other survived the accident, he couldn’t just be there . . . sitting.

And yet he was.

The animal came a little closer to the windowpane until the black hairs on its flanks splayed out against the glass like little spiders. He turned his head in my direction and looked at me. I looked back and I shouted at him wordlessly: What?!

He squeezed his eyes shut against the bright light.

What do you want from me?

No answer, of course. In a cat’s eyes you can read every­thing. Love, arrogance, affection, egoism. Hope. Accusation. You find what you need, or perhaps what you fear.

The scratch on my wrist had resumed its slow throbbing. I took a step back, stumbled a little when the heel of my shoe landed in the space between two tiles. And saw the door open.

I couldn’t remember pressing the bell – in fact I was certain I hadn’t – but clearly the old woman had no intention of letting the chance of a visitor slip away and kept a lookout on the street. ‘Dearie! You again? How nice!’ she greeted me.

Hastily I stuck my hand out. ‘Hello, ma’am!’ I said, and the words I had practiced rolled out of my mouth. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you. And Dante. Is that him, behind the window? I thought . . .’

‘You’ve got that right, young lady,’ the old woman said. ‘Just as I was saying. He’s a tough rascal! He won’t get away from me so easily.’

My glance glided back to the window. The cat had not moved.

‘Now, child. Come inside. I take it that today you have time for tea?’

That wasn’t a rebuke, I decided. This was an open, friendly invitation.

‘Of course I have time,’ I answered. ‘Mrs. . . .’

‘Gottlieb,’ she said. And then, in a confidential tone: ‘My family comes from Germany, but after our marriage we lived for a long time in India. Lovely country, you know.’

‘Pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am,’ I said politely as I followed her over the threshold. ‘I’m Tara. And once again, I’m terribly sorry about yesterday.’

Was that the moment the trap snapped shut? Or had that already happened when I ran the cat over?

Was it really I who made the choice to go in?

‘Go on into the living room, dearie. I’ll be right in with the tea,’ Mrs. Gottlieb said kindly.

‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier if I helped?’

‘Not necessary,’ she waved me off. ‘But nice of you to offer. I’ll let you know when I need your help.’

And so I did what she asked and opened the door to the living room. On a chest against the wall there stood little statues of Indian gods: I recognized Ganesha with the elephant head, Brahma with the four faces, and a little one I wasn’t sure about: a chubby type with a pot of gold in one hand and a bludgeon in the other. Something to do with wealth? Even Kali was there with her blood-­dripping tongue.

Not my taste in room decorations, I decided, but the old lady was naturally devoted to her past.

The sagging green wingback chairs by the window fit better with the image of an elderly woman, just like the sanseverrias on the window ledge. The thick leaves stuck up sharply and I couldn’t help but touch them. They’re obstinate plants that refuse to die, however hard you try to forget them.

The cat was still sitting beside the plants. ‘Hey,’ I said, as I stuck my hand out to pet him. ‘Hi Dante. How are you?’

Never stick your hand out to a cat you barely know. And definitely not when that cat probably has dubious memories of you. Of your car. Dante hissed, fiercely and vindictively, and lashed out.

‘Damn!’

I reached for my wrist and pushed the sleeve a little further up. The discharge from the first wound was already penetrating the gauze, but this second lash had torn open some itching blisters and there too the yellowish-­white liquid was coming out. It smelled sweetish, but not in a good way.

‘Gross,’ I mumbled, while I irritatedly began dabbing my arm dry with a rumpled paper tissue I dug out of my pocket. It was clearly not enough. I needed a new bandage, or in any case Band-­Aids.

I went to go look for the old woman in the kitchen. She must have a first ­aid kit or something? After all, Band-­Aids don’t expire, so I didn’t have to worry about that, and . . .

I heard something.

Maybe it was there earlier and I just hadn’t noticed. It was a soft rasping that sometimes stopped, only to start again tremblingly a few seconds later.

I held my breath. I didn’t know precisely what I was hearing, but it sounded unreal, almost unearthly.

The cat, who had watched me suspiciously for a little while from the windowsill, leapt onto the ground. With his tail in the air like a tour guide’s umbrella, he walked towards the sliding doors that separated the living room from another room behind it.

The sound was coming from there, I realized. And with a queasy feeling in my stomach I recognized it now too.

It was the sound my grandmother had made in the final moments before she died. When she was gasping for the air that her body could no longer process. When she’d had it. Finished. But not quite, because no one wanted to help her go.

On the other side of the sliding doors was the sound of death.

Why did I go to look?

I was in a stranger’s house, a guest. It wasn’t my place to go investigating, to open doors. I could have waited until Mrs. Gottlieb came back with the tea. I could have gone to her and asked her for a Band-­Aid. But I didn’t.

I think it was because of what I had experienced with my grandma. A woman who had tried her whole life to fulfill the requirements God had imposed on her – although she didn’t know exactly what those were, the instruction manual is after all subject to debate. A woman who always fell short because of that, just like my mother after her. Just like me. And who was crushingly forsaken in the very moment when she most needed help.

I closed my eyes and once more saw that fragile body in the hospital room, chilly despite the bright colors on the wall, flowers on the windowsill, and the cheerful voices of the nursing staff. Heard how her lungs compulsively filled with air, while less and less oxygen reached her blood and all that time the sickness festered in her bones and organs.

No one who wanted to help her during that endless waiting for a cruel death which, with every step closer it crept, took half a one back. They mustn’t, they couldn’t, it wasn’t their place . . .

And because of that, I couldn’t bear for anyone, even a stranger, to suffer without someone holding his hand and making it clear that he wasn’t alone.

The sliding doors were stiff – the mechanism had seen better days – but finally they lurched open and I landed in the back room.

A heavy, waxy, sweet odor struck me – an odor that I recognized from the wound in my arm, although that was much less pervasive. Thick curtains of dirty yellow velour let only a small strip of daylight in. The wheezy rasping had stopped, and I looked around hesitantly.

And then . . . Rustling. Fluttering.

I turned to the left and saw a round birdcage on an old-­fashioned stand. Vintage, hipsters would call it, but a hell for the bird, who was condemned to lifelong solitary confinement in a far too cramped cell.

The canary’s feathers must have been yellow once, but now they were faded to an off-­white. They stuck up in all directions as though they had fallen out and were subsequently stuck back in at random. The head was crooked, as if a taxidermist had missed the mark in his attempt to model a dead animal into a live one.

Only the eyes sparkled: black pinheads that glistened in the dusky light. The animal – Frits, she had called it Frits – opened its beak and I almost expected it to start singing. Instead I heard a sort of ticking that sounded wrong and distorted.

I stepped back. Hand over my mouth.

It was a reflex, perhaps. An instinctive attempt to protect myself. As if the evil – did it already feel that way then? – would force its way through my mouth into my body.

But I forgot even that when I saw the bed in the corner and the pitiful figure in it. The hospital bed – one with those white metal bars – was slightly elevated, so that whoever was lying in it had a view of the crack in the curtains. He was covered by nothing more than a grayish-white sheet, but under it I saw the sharp outline of a decrepit body.

Thin legs, gnarled joints. A sunken pelvis and a hollow under the rib cage as if he consisted of nothing but bones.

My glance slid upwards, towards the arms on top of the sheet. I saw scabs and sores and a sickly color. His throat was sunken, the flesh around the mouth rotted away, and I saw far too many teeth, like the grin of a skeleton.

And once more it was the eyes that frightened me the most. They were almost nothing but pupil, with hardly any white, and they shone in the semi-­darkness.

My grandmother’s eyes, my grandmother’s body, my grandmother’s death, but times a hundred. I stared at the ruined body that breathed, kept breathing. At the mouth that opened and then spoke.

‘Please.’

How long had that wreck of a man lain here in the twilight of the back room? Weeks, months?

Deep down I knew that it must have been years. The way in which the skin was corroded to a leathery membrane draped over the bones, the gums that were receded to past the bare roots, even the way the sores had become ensconced until they formed part of his being, was a long-­term process.

I swallowed with difficulty. However much I wanted to, I couldn’t seem to take my eyes off the figure before me. Or away from the hand which lay palm upwards on the sheet and whose index finger moved, as if he were gesturing to me.

The movement was minimal, but a cloud of cloying sweetness broke from his body and stuck in my nose. I retched.

This man was dead, I realized, or he should have been. Just like the bird, which I only now realized was as undead as the man. Her husband.

Just as undead as Dante.

Dante, who had tried to kill himself by throwing himself in front of my car, after which I had brought him back to this house where death is stretched out to a never­ending dying.

Again that almost imperceptible finger movement. Again a blast of poisonous sweetness in my nose, while the bird fluttered with lifeless wings against the bars of its cage.

‘Help . . .’

He fell silent, tormentedly gasping for air, while I could see that he wanted nothing so much as to stop breathing.

How long? My God . . . how long?

‘Oh! You’ve met my husband!’ Mrs. Gottlieb’s voice.

I turned around. She stood on the threshold of the back room, just between the sliding doors. On the walker stood a pot of tea with two cups beside it. The liquid was brewed so strong that it was almost black.

‘Yes,’ I managed to utter. ‘But . . . he needs help.’

Home care, a hospital, a hospice. Gentle hands, a place – any place – that wasn’t here, where his pain could be stilled and he could go in peace.

‘Is there someone who helps you?’ I asked, after an uncomfortable silence. And when she gave me no answer but just kept looking at me with a look that was somewhere between mildly critical and – I can’t call it anything else – eager, I went on talking. Though only because I didn’t want to hear the rasping sound of death. ‘Shall I call someone? The doctor maybe?’

My words felt laughably practical, an echo of the equally laughable words of the previous day. But what else could I say to keep the doom that threatened to close in on me at bay?

Because she smiled.

‘You’re still here, aren’t you, sweetie?’ she said. ‘Didn’t you say you wanted to help?’

I swallowed down a new wave of nausea. ‘Yes, but this . . . I can’t do this.’

‘Of course you can help. Especially you. You brought Dante back to us. You have power, life. You’re as good as immortal! Don’t you see how desperate he is? How much we need you? And you’ll hardly miss it.’

‘But . . .’

‘Come on! It’s no big deal.’

She stepped forward, away from her walker. It seemed as though she was less wobbly than earlier. More energetic. Her right hand closed around the edge of the hospital bed. The man’s eyes bulged in pure panic.

‘Come on, Antonie. Don’t be silly,’ she said.

She came closer. Took my hand. Her skin was dry and wrinkle-­smooth, the grip many times stronger than I had expected. She turned my arm over with a quick movement, so that my wounded wrist was visible. The yellowish moisture from the new wound had formed into a fine layer over the thin veins that lay just under my skin.

He, her husband, Antonie, whimpered soundlessly.

‘Just look what you can do! See your own power!’

She pulled, and I stumbled forward. Two steps closer to the bed. A third. And then she had pressed my wrist against his rotten lips and I felt fierce stabs, like dozens of little syringe needles.

‘There now,’ she said. She sounded content, like a cat who has just licked a saucer of milk clean. ‘There now, my husband. My beloved.’

The rasping breath became more regular. The dilated pupils shrank again and – was it possible? – a fraction more flesh seemed to sit on his meager bones. But his facial expression was no less desperate, and I saw something else in it, something new, that I couldn’t immediately place.

Only when he turned his head and fixed his gaze on mine did I recognize it.

Remorse.

‘Drink a little tea, sweetie,’ she said.

I did. It was as if my conscious brain was disabled, for I drank the tea with mechanical obedience, just as I had unprotestingly allowed my essence – exposed by the nails of a cat – to be administered to her husband.

The bitter liquid, with a hint of ginger, flowed through my mouth, rounded my tongue, and glided down my throat. The heat burned in my intestine and spread toward my stomach, throbbing and rippling through the capillaries of my system. I felt how my heartbeat slowed, how the diffuse light suddenly became bright as my pupils opened wide.

My muscles gave up the fight, my knees went weak. And as I fell and my cheek chafed against the rough carpet, I saw Dante’s dented head in the door opening, behind the woman.

He looked at me with green-­gold mirror eyes.

There was something in my mouth.

It was thick and slimy, as if I’d been to the dentist and the gel from the fluoride treatment was still stuck between my cheeks and jaws. And this tasted sweet, but not with the reassuring hint of mint or strawberry. This was instead sickly and warm. Mucky.

I moved my tongue, smacked my lips to get the substance away, but it seeped back in my mouth, slid down my throat. I coughed, retched in order to get my airways clear again. A breath filled my lungs but at the same time that sickly stuff filled my whole mouth and dripped down from the corners of my lips.

I tried to come upright, but the muscles in my arms, legs, and rear refused service. I heard a sound – soft squeaking like from a young kitten. It took a while before I realized that I was the one producing the sound.

Above me I discerned the bare rafters, as if I was in an attic. Beneath me irregular bulges like on an old mattress. My fingers lay on rough fabric. I felt tiny grains underneath my fingertips. The cat scratches on my arm throbbed slowly. Something warm dripped over my arm, while that . . . that something slipped back in my throat and immediately again rose from my bowels. I retched again in a reflex not to choke.

I squeaked, fought against muscles that didn’t obey me. I gasped for breath while that foul sweetness oozed from my mouth, slimy tears dripped from my eyes, and my nose sniffled unpleasantly. I couldn’t get any air, I could no longer see, I . . .

Felt hesitating hands being placed against my temples and gently pushing my head to the side. I saw the edge of the mattress now – gray-­white with brown stripes – and a stainless steel bowl beside it.

With a dull plop a drop landed in the bowl and I experienced a bit of relief. Only a very little, for immediately a new wave of slime worked its way into my mouth.

Plop.

‘Better now?’ A thin voice. Man or woman? Boy or girl?

Movement. The figure walked around the mattress and squatted by the bowl. I saw sandals – not large. A child’s size? Filthy socks, the edge of a sky-­blue skirt. A girl then. I strained my blurry eyes to the utmost to be able to see her face.

Then the girl leaned farther forward and I would have recoiled had I been able. White blond hair, like only very young children have, was loosely stuck to a balding skull. The skin of her face was dark and rough, like willow bark. Fine veins crept through the off-­white of her eyes, but they were grayish-­black instead of red. A child, but no child. Not for a long time.

Along her narrow lips ran a yellowish-­white trail that was almost dried up. Under her eyes were smears of the same.

‘Crying or struggling makes it worse,’ said the child. And then, her head tilted: ‘But it gets better. Quickly.’

She took a piece of wood from her dress pocket. It was around ten centimeters long and spatula-­shaped. The edges were smooth. Sanded or worn?

She brought it to my face and began to carefully scrape away the slush under my eyes and nose. She tossed it into the bowl with a vigorous motion. Then she repeated the movement over my cheeks and chin.

I opened my mouth. I had to ask it. ‘Who are you? Where am I? What’s going on?’

But I didn’t get any further than a scratchy ‘who’ because once more my mouth filled with slime. The girl laid a hand on my head and her stick-­like fingers pushed it a little lower.

Plop.

‘I can’t do any more,’ said the girl. ‘I’m used up.’

She seemed to contemplate.

‘Her husband is really sick, you know? I help, and then he’s better. But it’s nice if someone else is going to do it. There’s not much left.’

I closed my eyes while I tried to understand what she was saying. What did she mean by ‘used up’? Who was she?

‘Do you think mommy was angry?’ the little girl asked. ‘When I didn’t come home, I mean?’

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. My glance rested on the dried smears around her mouth. Then slid down to the bony hand that held the little piece of wood with which she had cleaned my face. A deep cat scratch on her arm. The edges of the wound were open, but there was no red bleeding through. Everything I saw was gray, dried-­out flesh that the life had seeped out of.

Used up.

And then I understood it. My feverish brain made connections in the swirling stream of images and associations, of fear and of knowledge. It was . . . It must be . . .

I hadn’t heard the door open, but I did feel the movement in the wood floor when she entered the room, and I heard her voice. ‘That’s the life streaming out of you, dearie. Your prana, your essence. The child is almost used up, but you . . . All that compassion, all that empathy . . . It drips out of you. Wouldn’t it be a waste if someone didn’t do something with it? A sin, almost?’

I wrestled the words out of my mouth. ‘Let me go. Please . . .’

Movement beside me. The girl? She picked up the metal bowl. Gave it to her. Gottlieb . . . was that even really her name?

And then once more I felt her thin hands and the cool porcelain against my skin. ‘It doesn’t last long,’ the girl’s voice whispered.

Liquid between my lips. Black, bitter tea with a hint of ginger. I swallowed. Panted.

‘Why?’ I asked again.

Her voice, far away: ‘Because I want to.’

This time it indeed didn’t last as long. The panic, I mean. Once again I awakened with the feeling I was choking, but I realized after a few seconds what was happening.

I managed to spit the slime out and air rattled into my lungs. There was no emaciated child beside me. No hollow, black eyes searching my face.

I tried to tell myself that this was progress, because the kid had scared me half to death. And I seemed now in any event to be able to use some muscles.

Where was the woman?

I lifted my head a little as I tried to move my fingers. My hand began to tremble and my index finger and middle finger came a little way off the ground.

My head slammed heavily back on the mattress. A new mouthful sought an outlet between my lips and dropped on the gray-­striped cover. A yellow-­gray puddle formed on the fabric. Transparent like a dead jellyfish on the beach.

I looked at it, my blurry eyes straining painfully as I tried to see it. I smelled it. Grim, poisonous, sweet. I . . .

. . . heard the footsteps on the stairs. The door of the room – it creaked a little – opening. I saw Mrs. Gottlieb – warm, old. But I smelled ash in her graying hair. I saw bones in her eyes. And I felt, knew suddenly, that she was more than just herself.

‘Ah, good girl. Just a bit more.’

Despair spread through my body when I felt the cup against my lips.

Black tea.

I didn’t choke any more when I woke for the third time.

The slime no longer forced its way out in great quantities from my mouth but oozed out the corners like drool at the dentist’s office. I commanded my hand to wipe my mouth and it obeyed.

Now I tested my neck and back and buttocks. I fought my way upright.

The movement brought wafts of heavy sweat and stale tea and the room swayed around me. I waited till it was over and then looked carefully around the room, which I was finally able to really see.

It was an attic room, that was now certain. I felt cool air on my face: wind that was coming in through openings in the rafters. I saw two small, square attic windows, soiled by dust and spiderwebs. But in the middle the filth had been wiped away by thin fingers.

I managed to stand up and tottered in the direction of the little window. Looked out.

Below me I saw the neglected garden; behind that, between the branches and shrubs, the cobblestones of Appelstraat. A red Volkswagen Polo was making its way and I perked up.

Matt?

I stretched my neck, followed the car until it reached the bend where Dante had sat waiting, and felt my heart clench when he disappeared from view.

Dizzy, I let myself sink down along the wall. I wiped slime from the corners of my mouth and tried not to give in to the intense feeling of loss that washed over me. Maybe it hadn’t even been Matt. Maybe not.

But I need you.

And then I saw the dark form in the nook by the rough shape of the chimney. I swallowed, spat, panted. I told myself that it couldn’t be her, that it wasn’t possible, couldn’t be.

I crawled to the corner on all fours. I wiped my eyes, which kept clouding up, groped and left a little layer of sludge behind on the child’s knee-­high socks.

She hadn’t gone home and her mother hadn’t gotten angry. There would no longer be any home, not after all the many years that she must have been here.

Her skin was colored black and had become as stiff as parchment. Her flesh – hadn’t it still been there when she’d sat beside me? – was rotted away until it looked like scraped asphalt. The black eyes stared upwards but no longer saw anything.

Used up.

I looked at my hands and the dried slime on my fingertips. Was my skin dryer than before? I wiped my knuckles along my slippery mouth. Were my lips thinner?

His voice in my head. ‘Be a little kind to yourself.’

I had to get out of there.

My trembling hands on the door handle. I fumbled at it, tried to pull it, but there was hardly any strength left in my body. It seeped out like a snail excreting slime to propel itself. But the door opened – had she forgotten to lock it? – and I saw the staircase, although it spun before my weary eyes.

I stepped. Stumbled. Fell.

My body crashed, thumped, clattered, knocked against the steps. My muscles screamed. I remained lying at the bottom of the stairs, fighting to get myself under control. Get up, Tara. Run!

But then she was there.

Had she always been so tall? And hadn’t her eyes been cloudy blue instead of filled with dark fire? The woman who was approaching from the hall, who stood before me and towered over me, was Mrs. Gottlieb, but at the same time I felt someone else.

Mahabhaya, a voice whispered within me. It was a name, I knew; I recognized it with that deep human instinct with which we can fathom the unknowable.

‘Get up, dearie,’ she said.

It was as if the sound alone was enough to lift me up, and I rose until my face was the same height as hers. I saw the liver spots on her cheekbones and her forehead, the deep wrinkles that creased and folded every inch of her skin. The drooping eyelids, the fuzzy gray of her hair. And yet . . . yet there was power in this body, life in her eyes.

Prana.

‘Kiss me,’ she said.

She stretched her wrinkled hands out and I allowed her to place them on my cheeks. I smelled her breath and allowed it to fill my lungs. And then her lips closed over mine and licked the slime from my mouth. I let my life flow into hers, so that her body would not die.

She took my free will.

No . . . that’s not right. My will is intact, but the ability to act on it is gone. How she did it still isn’t clear to me. Maybe it’s the figure that lives behind her eyes, that makes use of her voice: Mahabhaya, the Fearsome One.

She told me, after my prana had brought the light back in her eyes, after I had bent over her husband – Antonie – and he had drunk my life with unwilling gulps.

That as the wife of a missionary she had followed her beloved to a little village in the heart of India. That she’d had to watch as the devastating cholera took him within the span of a month. How his body rotted away and his piss turned black from the blood.

That was the moment she had turned away from the god who had chosen to take away her beloved before he had celebrated his thirtieth birthday. That was also the moment when the villagers introduced her to their divinity, which until then had lain hidden in the folds of her reality.

And there, concealed from the eyes of Westerners who think they know everything, she found Mahabhaya, the Fearsome One, who protects against old age, liberates from fear, and knows the secret of eternal life.

She had done what was necessary. She had recited Her name – Mahabhaya – ten thousand times, sitting on a mountain of bones and with the ash of countless cremations strewn on her head. And when She came, after hours and days, and granted mercy, she had greedily accepted.

But mercy has a price.

I am that price, the child was that price. Even Matt, who will never see me again, is part of that price. And in the end her beloved Antonie is too.

He too has been deprived of his will. In his eyes lives despair, in his hands a fatigue that is deeper than I can comprehend. His voice is regret.

I can’t get him out of my head, that faltering supplication when I still had the strength to walk away, or to refuse. The desperate flutter of the dried-­out wings against the bars of the cage.

The cat’s eyes.

I turned back towards the attic room, obedient to a single look, a word. She is mighty, the Fearsome One, even if she looks through the eyes of an old woman.

Suddenly I wondered whether that was really her name, whether even for her eternity had already lasted longer than she had wanted.

Once out of her presence, my strength returned. I rattled on the shutters of the roof windows that were too narrow for a child to get through, let alone an adult, and I peered out, where I could see the road.

A car with the logo of the home care service. A tractor.

I fumbled at the door, banged on the wood. I pulled at the paneling around the fireplace in the hope of discovering an opening that would offer me a way out, any way whatsoever, onto the roof.

I shouted to the rafters and kicked at the walls. I was Tender Tara. I was the one who did volunteer work, who was socially minded, who fought to do what was good until my dying breath.

I sat motionless beside the desiccated remains that had once been a young girl and which now foretold my future. A future that I had to face alone.

I petted Dante, who had slipped upstairs with me. His aggressiveness had vanished. The bloody scab above his eye was nearly healed, but the look in his eyes was unchanged.

And then I heard the rumbling of a car on the road. A rattle that slowly grew louder and suddenly stopped.

I knew that rumble, that familiar rattling. Matt? Had he figured out where I was? Come to get me?

‘Matt!’

At the beginning of the garden path stood Matt’s red Volkswagen Polo. I heard his voice – urgent, though I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

And I heard her voice, with the innocent tenacity of a very elderly person who has nothing left to lose.

Again I shrieked at the top of my lungs, but the sound died against the wall of silence that surrounded me. I cried, sobbed, when I heard the door shut, when I saw Matt, my Matt, walking down the path to his car.

I pounded on the window, banged with my fist. I . . .

Broke the window.

Shards on the ground. Sharp cuts on my hands. Blood on my fist. And again I screamed. ‘Matt!’

I heard a little sound by my feet and saw Dante and those large, golden-­green mirrors.

What are you trying to say?

Did he know how scared I was? Of loneliness? Silence? Judgment?

What do you mean?

In a cat’s eyes you can read whatever you want. Compassion. Understanding.

I lifted him up to the window, which even he couldn’t easily reach. I pressed him against me for a moment as I loosened the collar from his neck. I pushed him through the hole in the glass and it didn’t matter that the glass cut into his fur. He wormed his way further, through the hole and up onto the roof.

By the road the car door slammed shut. An engine started.

A black bolt flashed down over the shingles, leapt into the tall alder by the house. Disappeared in the bushes underneath.

The Polo began to drive. Slowly. Then faster.

The black spot shot out from under the bushes and then towards the bend in the road.

Matt sped up. Dante did the same.

Then the sound. Screaming brakes. Dull thud.

And the outline of Matt, who hurried out of the car, knelt down on the cobblestones.

He remained sitting motionless for at least twenty heartbeats. Then he lifted the limp body from the cobblestones and laid it in the grass on the side of the road. Carefully. Lovingly.

He stepped back into his car, started the engine.

I closed my eyes, just for a moment. But I didn’t see Dante’s eyes anymore.

 

 

Translated from the Dutch by James D. Jenkins