by Annet Schaap
Silently, she changes the bed sheets. Does he ever actually lie in the bed?
From under the bed she can hear the boy eating, tearing off pieces of fish with his teeth and chewing away.
“Rule number one: my head must not go under the water. Rule number two: I have to stay in for one hundred and thirty-five seconds. Exactly one hundred and thirty-five seconds, no more, no less. And you have to count the seconds. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Lampie says with a sigh. “No problem. But why is it such a short time?”
“Short is good; shorter is better.” The boy is still lying halfway under the bed. He has taken off his shirt. He is white and thin, and his shoulder blades stick out.
“But isn’t it nicer to—”
“Can’t you just do as you’re told?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Good. And you have to count, because I’ll forget to do it.”
“Forget? But why?”
“And don’t look. When I’m in the bathtub, you’re not allowed to look. That’s rule number three. Is that clear? You turn around, with your face to the wall, and you count. Out loud.”
Lampie nods. She smiles at Lenny, who is waiting just outside the room.
“And when it’s time, you have to help me out of the bath. Even if I don’t want to get out. I still have to get out anyway. Is that clear?”
“Yes, it is.”
Then he comes out from under the bed and shuffles across the room, his dark tail—no, his deformity—twisting behind him. At the edge of the bathtub, he takes a deep breath and tries to pull himself up. It does not work. He tries again. And again.
“I can do this,” he pants. “I can always do this.”
“Shall I help you?”
“You’re looking.”
“So that’s a no.” Lampie turns around and listens to him struggling and quietly cursing himself.
“Come on, you weakling, you wimp. Come on.”
“You’ve been ill,” she says. “You almost died last night—remember?”
“So? That’s no reason to…” She hears him slipping from the bathtub and back onto the floor. “I have to be able to do this. No! Turn around! Don’t look!”
Lampie does not listen. She walks over to the boy and grabs him around the waist. He is so light that she lifts him into the bathtub without any difficulty. His tail brushes against her, as cool and smooth as a frog’s skin. Then he plunges into the water and surfaces, spluttering and shrieking.
“No! My. Head. Must. Not. Go. Under. The. Water! That’s what I said! Listen to me!”
“Oh yes. I forgot.”
“Or I’ll drown. I already told you that! Don’t you have a brain in your head?”
Lampie sighs. Stroke the rabbit. Sweet little rabbit.
“And look away! And count: seven, eight…”
“What? Already?”
“Yes, you stupid child. Ten, eleven…”
“But why? What’s the point? Fine, I’ll do it. I’m counting!” His dark eyes always make her shiver. “Um…thirteen, fourteen…” Counting slowly, Lampie walks to the door, where Lenny is watching from around the corner.
“Sixteen, seventeen…” she counts. “Thank you, Lenny. That was really kind of you. Eighteen, nineteen. I’ll be finished here soon. You can go back downstairs if you like. Twenty. Twenty-one.” She smiles at him, but then she sees that the big boy is not looking at her at all, but is staring past her and into the room, with his mouth wide open. Lampie turns around.
Edward is floating in the bath, his head half above and half under the water. His eyes are slowly opening and Lampie watches as they change color.
Black, brown, dark-green, ochre, orange, gold. Eyes full of gold. Gold flowing from them.
Her mouth falls open too. Beside her she hears Lenny sigh, and together they stare at the dark corner of the room, which has suddenly become much lighter. She forgets that she is not allowed to look. She forgets to count.
I’m falling, thinks Edward. I’m falling and no one will catch me.
He does not trust that child one bit. Joseph must have said it a thousand times: short is good, shorter is better. Don’t stay any longer in the water, lad. Never. Longer is dangerous.
She probably can’t count. She is sure to make a mistake. There is no one to take care of him. He will have to do it all himself. He needs to keep his wits about him. He clings onto the edge of the bathtub. How long has it been? How far has he gone?
Finally he can feel water on his skin again. So cool, so soft. It’s been such a long time, maybe he could stay a little longer, just this once? Forget her, that stupid child. Forget the counting, forget everything, forget who you are…Feel how cool, feel how soft…
No! That’s it, that’s why! That is not allowed! He strains to hear how many seconds have gone by. Surely it must be time, so why isn’t she getting him out?
He can feel himself falling—falling, and no one is going to catch him.
I’ll catch you, the water whispers. Just let yourself fall. Go on.
It is only as the boy’s head slowly sinks under the water, chin, mouth, nose, only when the golden eyes are about to be extinguished with a hiss, that Lampie comes back to her senses. How many seconds has it been? She has no idea, but it must be more than…
“Um…a hundred and thirty-five!” she cries. “You can get out now!” The boy does not move, just sinks a little deeper, his hands sliding down the side of the bathtub. Lampie hurries over to him, reaches her arms into the cold water and tries to lift him out. She can’t do it; he seems much heavier than before. “Help me, Lenny!”
Lenny does not really want to—oh, he really, really doesn’t want to!—but when the girl asks him a second time, he very nervously ventures back into the room and lifts the dripping boy out of the water. Lenny keeps his head as far back as possible, squeezing his eyes shut as if he were holding a pile of venomous snakes in his arms. With a thud, he throws Edward onto the bed and dashes back onto the safe landing.
The golden eyes have shut, and the boy lies on the sheet, his chest calmly going up and down. His tail is so obviously a tail, thinks Lampie, now that she can see it properly. A thin white scar winds along it, from top to bottom, as if someone once tried to cut him open. She lays the clean white sheet over him.
“That was longer.” His voice seems to come from a long way off.
“No, it was—”
“It was longer.”
“I forgot to count for a moment, just for a moment. I was looking at—”
“You can’t even do that.”
“Next time I’ll…Tomorrow I’ll…”
He throws off the sheet and slides under the bed, into the darkness. “Just go away,” he whispers. “Leave me alone.”
how it works
So this is how it works from then on.
She brings breakfast every morning, waits for him to finish, and takes the tray back downstairs.
She is still as friendly and cheerful as possible, even though she has almost given up any hope of taming him. She tries to give him whatever he wants to have, but usually it turns out to be the wrong thing. The wrong book, the wrong map. Africa when it should be Japan. Greenland instead of Indonesia. What does she know? “You’re not the brightest of lights, are you, Lampie?” her father always used to say. Well, she seems to be proving him right again.
“Shall I just teach you how to read?” the boy has already asked irritably a few times. “It’s the easiest thing in the world.”
“No, thank you.”
“Unless you’re stupid, of course.”
Yes, unless you’re stupid.
Whenever she gets the chance, she slips behind the curtain and peers into the distance, at her old house and at the sliver of sea, which is a different color every day, green, gray, gray-green, blue-g
ray, and she longs to feel the wind blow around her head, the cool steps of the lighthouse under her feet.
“Are you still here? What are you doing? What are you looking at?”
She does not tell him.
In the afternoon, she goes upstairs to put him in the bathtub. Lenny helps, taking dirty water downstairs, bringing clean water upstairs, and lifting the boy in and out of the bathtub when needed. It is always needed. Edward announces every day that there is no longer any need, that his muscles are getting stronger and he can do it himself, but every day it is still needed.
Lenny does not mind though. He waits obediently outside the room, looking around the corner of the door at the girl, for as long as he can.
Lampie counts properly to one hundred and thirty-five, without making any mistakes. She remembers to call his deformity a deformity and not a tail. She calls the boy Edward and not Fish. She blows the dust off the books on the shelves, and puts them back—in the wrong place, of course. She picks flowers in the garden, puts them in a vase beside his plate. And then takes them away, because he thinks it is ridiculous. He is not a cow. She washes the dirty windows, very slowly and carefully, particularly that one window. She thinks about her father and worries about him. Sometimes she walks into the garden and looks for a while at the tree, the tree with the branch that grows up close to the fence.
So this is how it works from then on.
She comes upstairs every morning, that child, and every morning he has to get used to the fact that she is there, and not Joseph. And to the fact that she is not calm and quiet and does not know exactly what he needs, but that he always has to explain everything to her, and still she usually does not understand. And to the fact that she is stupid and can’t even read and wanders around his room until it drives him crazy, and she refuses to leave, but goes behind the curtain to look out of the window or whatever it is that she does. Until he shouts at her, and then she generally goes.
When she has gone, he practices. He does not want her to see.
He practices until he turns blue in the face, strapping himself into the harness, hoisting himself onto his walking bars and galvanizing his muscles into action, shouting at them that they need to be stronger, that they should stop complaining, that all they have to do is carry him! But it all happens so, so slowly—in fact, it does not happen at all.
Before Joseph…When Joseph was there, Edward could take five steps in a row. Sometimes even six. And now? Two, three at most. They are clumsy hops that do not even look like steps. And then she comes back, skipping around with those legs and those feet of hers, as if it is nothing special, as if she is mocking him.
When she does that, he just wants to bite her and bully her and to make her cry.
He does not actually make her cry until he says she is no longer allowed to look out of that window. He has decided that the curtain is to stay closed from now on. And when she has finished her work, she has to go straight back downstairs. She can look out of another window, a window that is somewhere else.
“I can look at whatever I want to look at,” she shouts. But he can already see the tears—ha ha.
“No, you can’t,” he says. “You have to do whatever I say.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes, really. I’m your boss.” And it’s true. The house does belong to his father after all.
“Well, a fine boss you are!” she yells. “Locked up in a little room! A fine boss, hiding away under the bed!”
He shrieks and comes after her, his teeth seeking her feet, and she jumps back and out of the room.
“Monster!”
Yes! That’s right. That’s what he is! He’s a fearsome monster! His chest swells triumphantly. Who does she think she is? Such a stupid child. So stupid.
The next morning, for the first time, she does not come. All day long. And not in the evening either.
fence
Lampie has been wandering around the garden for an hour now. Everyone thinks she is upstairs, but she is not. Not today. Not tomorrow either.
She kicks at the nettles as she walks through them. Never again. She is so tired of this place. There is the tree she was looking for.
She is abandoning everyone, of course. And Martha is not going to like it. Lenny…Lenny certainly isn’t. Oh well. They’ll find someone else. Someone who is better suited to that horrible boy upstairs. Someone who does not mind being yelled at. Someone who can read and write, not an idiot like her.
The tree has lots of handy side branches. She perches on one of them before carefully climbing up to the branch that grows close to the fence, almost up to the high metal points at the top. If she is careful, she should be able to get over it without hurting herself.
Lampie slides to the point where the branch is almost too thin, and then takes a deep breath, grips the fence, and tries to swing herself over it.
She can tell right away that it is not going well. Instead of swinging over the top of the fence, she finds herself hanging down on the inside, and all she can do is hold on tightly to the flaking iron rails beneath the points. She kicks her feet, but finds nothing to stand on.
So she just hangs there. If she lets go, she will fall. If she does not let go, she will dangle here for a while—and then she will fall. She does not need to look to know how big the drop is and how spiky and thorny the bushes on the ground far below are. And she is still not even on the right side of the fence.
She tries again, uttering a furious cry to give herself strength and reaching her foot up as high as she can, but it is not high enough, nowhere near.
“Emilia? Emilia Waterman! For goodness’ sake! What are you doing up there?”
Lampie can’t believe her ears. She recognizes that voice, doesn’t she? Surely it can’t be? But then she hears rapidly approaching footsteps and she sees, far below, the tall figure of Miss Amalia, who is running up to the other side of the fence.
“Have you gone insane? Come down here! At once!” she shouts. “Wait, no! Stay there! You’re going to break something!”
Lampie really has no other choice than to stay hanging.
“Hello, Miss Amalia,” she mutters. Her fingers are cramping. She will not be able to keep this up for much longer.
With her long arms, Miss Amalia attempts to grab Lampie’s foot through the bars. The girl yelps as she feels herself being pulled down. Miss Amalia quickly lets go.
“Hello!” She anxiously rattles the gate. “Can someone come and help? Can anyone hear me? You stupid, ungrateful child. And I was coming to bring you something too. I should really take it straight back home.” She is pacing up and down on the other side of the bars, like a tiger in a cage. “What is the matter with the staff here? Appalling! So lax! As I have previously noted. Oh, I would really like to give you a good hiding—do you know that, Emilia? Why is no one coming? Hello?”
Lampie’s fingers are hurting so much that she cannot hold on any longer. She looks down. There is nothing to break her fall.
Well, here I go, she thinks. Catch me, Mother! She squeezes her eyes shut.
“Just let go.” says a voice, just behind her.
She falls, just a little way, before her feet land on the shoulders of a big brown leather coat. Nick takes hold of her ankles and, when she lowers herself, her arms shaking and her hands now painful red claws, he takes hold of her, climbs down the ladder that has suddenly appeared against the fence, and gently sets her on her feet. Lampie looks in surprise at Nick and then at the ladder. Where did he appear from?
“Well, that wasn’t a minute too soon!” Miss Amalia says, rattling the gate impatiently. “I’ve been calling for half an hour. Were you asleep?”
“Are you all right?” asks Nick quietly.
Lampie nods, wiping her hands on her dress. They leave behind rust and flakes of paint—and even some blood.
“You have been luckier
than you deserve, Emilia. Perhaps it would have been a better lesson if you had indeed broken something. You have thanked the man nicely, haven’t you?”
“Thank you,” mumbles Lampie, as she is indeed very happy to be in one piece.
“Oh, don’t mention it,” says Nick. Then he takes a bunch of keys from his pocket and dangles it in front of Lampie’s face. “If you ever want to leave again,” he says quietly in her ear, “just come and get these from the carpenter’s hut.”
From the what? thinks Lampie.
“Hello?” Miss Amalia is shaking the gate again. “So are you actually going to come and open this gate or not?”
dresses
It is as if no time has passed at all: Lampie is once again walking along the path between the hedges, with Miss Amalia’s cool hand on the back of her neck. There they are again, together on the doorstep of the Black House and, again, there is the sound of barking and shouting from the corridor, before footsteps approach the door and a surprised Martha, her hair oddly flattened from her afternoon nap, opens up.
Lampie can see that she is thinking the same thing too: Again?
“You obviously have absolutely no idea,” Miss Amalia says, immediately launching into a lecture, “what is going on behind your back.” She pushes Lampie past Martha and into the house.
“I was asleep,” says Martha. “I take a nap at around this time every afternoon.”
“As Emilia clearly knows very well. Is this the kitchen? Good.”
Martha follows the two of them. “What is going on? Lampie?”
Lampie suddenly feels ashamed. She likes Martha. She should just have stayed here.
“Emilia was attempting to break out,” declares Miss Amalia. “At least I assume it was not her Wednesday afternoon off. And she clearly had not finished her work.” She looks around the kitchen, where the dishes are still unwashed, the table has not yet been cleared, and the smell of wet dog fills the air.