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 mou
th.
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.
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories Page 20