THE INCIDENT WITH the black-cloaked watchers has brought me to a realisation.
I once promised myself to never go back to Enid Lazzari but she is the only chance I have of understanding what is going on in my daughter’s head. The red-haired midget warned me about them, told me that they were coming and that I should be prepared.
The truth is Simone has been behaving badly for a long time. It is easy to blame myself, but I’ve come to think of it as something much more than hating me because I love her and won’t leave her alone, won’t let her go – something more like delayed trauma that has never been properly tackled and broken down into something manageable.
The neurologist had suggested a psychologist and Esmeralda had also passed on the name of someone who was used to working with troubled girls and could be relied on not to pass information to the media. But Simone had flatly refused to see anybody. What was the point? They were so stupid; she could say whatever she liked and they’d think it was true.
The Lazzari woman, in her professional guise of psychotherapist, had experience of kids who had been through an unusual upbringing and the kind of unnameable horror Simone had endured. And there was just the faintest chance that Simone would be intrigued enough by the eccentric little woman to go along with whatever treatment Enid proposed.
‘You’re calling about the girl.’ Her voice was flat, almost disinterested, if you didn’t know better. This was the same Enid, the one who relished telling you why you called.
‘Hello, Paola. How have you been? I’m brilliant thank you, Enid, now that you ask.’
‘Ms Dante, shall we stop playing games? What is the problem?’
‘Simone has started sleepwalking. The other night she walked out the flat in her pyjamas and fell asleep at the bus stop. What if she jumps off the balcony? The next morning she didn’t know anything about it.’
I had no intention of telling her about the knife. There were things I would trust Enid with and others I would not.
‘Sleepwalking?’ Her voice perked up. ‘Then she’s ready. Suppressed anxiety, stress, anger, they can all cause a sleeper to walk.’
‘Do you have to act as if you know everything? Ready for what?’
‘Bring her to me.’
She acted as if we’d talked yesterday about more mundane matters, as if we’d kept in touch all these long months. The truth was I hadn’t contacted her since the adoption went through. There was some part of me that couldn’t forgive her knowledge of Daniel that went beyond mine. Her call about the strangers had been a curious break in protocol.
‘Didn’t you once call her the Devil’s daughter? Why on earth would I bring her to you?’
The theatrical sigh of old came down the line, half hiss, half exasperation.
‘Why else have you disturbed my sleep? Or have you forgotten, Ms Dante? My field of specialty is Sleep Disorders. And Sleep Walking certainly qualifies. Call it professional curiosity.’
I could hear the capital letters and italics in her sharp insinuating voice. What did I care if she’d treated some extremely rich and famous people at a sleep clinic in Switzerland? Suddenly I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing in calling her.
‘You made Daniel crazy. Everybody has bad dreams – you had to turn it into something weird, something to do with his past. What if he didn’t want to be reminded of his childhood in the cult? Why couldn’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?’
She laughed mirthlessly at my schmaltzy choice of metaphor.
‘Correction. Some people are born inherently alone. I call them Independents; they can’t moderate their emotions or operate as the society they live in expects them to. Your Daniel is an Independent. He was already crazy – in your terms – when I met him. I simply helped him to live in the real world.’
‘What does that mean – they can’t moderate their emotions?’
‘There’s only an on or an off switch. If they like you, they like you forever. If they don’t, it’s never going to change. The funny thing is they’re often proved right. It’s as if they have an instinct for what most of us can’t see. They don’t know how to compromise. That puts them on a warpath with the world.’
She paused, then broke the silence between us.
‘Well, are you going to bring her or not? I have a long day tomorrow.’
‘What will you do to her?’
‘Unfortunately electrotherapy is no longer legal so I shall have to resort to hypnosis, which doesn’t produce quite as satisfactory results–’
‘Ha ha, okay I get it. Very funny …’ But my laugh was an unnatural high-pitched cry. I couldn’t bear to hear her talk of electrotherapy. ‘She’s not crazy.’
‘The past is never as far from the future as we’d like to think,’ she repeated in that sing-song wind-up-clock voice that seemed to emanate from a different realm.
‘I want to know what she’s telling you.’
‘I have always done what I believe is best for my patients, Ms Dante, and I shall continue to do so. The girl is a mess – she has learnt to internalise all the secrets of the adults around her. It will not be easy to help her. I either do it my way, or you take her to some high-society therapist that will take your gold card and do it your way … Now, would you like an appointment?’
She could be very persuasive and almost charming.
Pages were turning in the background, as if a light wind was blowing very far away. The large appointment book that lived next to the phone was being checked.
‘No.’ My voice was resigned, numbly hysterical.
‘Then we have said everything−’ The appointment book snapped shut. Silence enveloped me. Not a moth stirred. The image of Simone huddled fast asleep in a corner, her skin washed blue by the artificial bus-stop light, had preoccupied my mind for days. She was found and yet she was lost. It was not over. I had to accept that.
‘Wait … When …?’
‘Thursday at 5:30. I will need an hour with her to begin with. Will that suit?’
I had no idea how I was going to convince Simone to see Enid Lazzari.
She had steadfastly refused to cooperate in all therapy sessions, only agreeing on one occasion when it became necessary for the adoption process to go ahead. Two different court-appointed psychologists who specialised in sexual abuse cases concluded she was a remarkably well-balanced child who had not been overly affected by her experiences, and mention was made of her willingness to cooperate. They didn’t know her as well as I did; the demure dress she’d selected, those big innocent blue eyes … she hadn’t told them a thing that she hadn’t meant them to know. When my mind was overwhelmed by visual images that became too graphic to bear, I put on my running shoes and ran until I was exhausted, shedding sweat for tears. But she had showed them nothing, her cheeks so rosy and plump with the light dusting of freckles, and her smile so terrifyingly unconcerned that she had sometimes not looked real, as if she were a robot who had been ordered to experience the very worst of what a young human might experience as part of some bizarre experiment.
Enid was right. The sleepwalking was almost a relief; it was the first real sign that all was not right with Simone. At night she was no longer in control – as if, when it grew dark, her terrible experiences were able to overpower her, the emotions that she had withheld for so long were surging out. They drove her to wander as sleepless as a ghost.
‘Tell her I’m someone Daniel confided in and that I’ve asked to meet her. She’ll come then.’
The odious midget had read my mind again. Daniel had wanted me to seek her out, or he wouldn’t have sent the extract from his new book, but the insoluble air of mystery she surrounded herself with drove me into a rage.
‘I didn’t say I’d bring her.’
There was the sound of moth wings brushing against a lampshade. I imagined her artificial wig of red hair shining like a crown of burnished copper in the gloom of her empress palace, fierce night moths fluttering protectively around her.
‘Enid? Are you there?’
Click.
Now she wasn’t.
Enid has the force field of a shiny coin in the sand that draws you into its sphere. Whichever side is facing up, there’s the other unrevealed side to consider.
I’d taken the afternoon off to speak to Enid, and there was nothing particular that required my attention, so I took a walk to the beach to think things through.
The beach was almost deserted. It was out of season and most of the local regulars were at work. From afar I saw a man in a white robe sitting on the largest of the prominent group of granite rocks that characterised Camps Bay beach, looking out to the turbulent sea. The wind was pushing against him so that his long black hair flowed backward, making him look like something that an old-time cartographer might have drawn on a map showing the wind direction. There was something biblical about the way he sat, like Job on his own mountain, contemplating the nature of God from his rocky pinnacle and waiting to be tested. The bikini-clad girl sitting next to him had a mass of curly sun-bleached hair. A surfboard lay on the sand below them, propped against a rock. My heart lurched. The young man was the de facto leader of the small band on the corner; the flowing black locks made him unmistakable. But could that be Roxy? How would she know him? I made my way towards them along the shoreline, my feet heavy, sinking objects, unable to move faster in case I broke the spell. All of a sudden the distant girl leapt up and stretched and then clambered down to her board and backpack. By the time I got to where the tidal water came up to the beach, she had made it up the grass incline and was out of sight.
I decided I was mistaken. Roxy’s home turf was Surfers Corner in Muizenberg. Hitching a ride with a surfboard was not easy. Besides, it was a school day, so it couldn’t be Roxy. I wondered, though, at the power of that young man sitting on his lofty citadel, contemplating the infinite vista before him.