‘He does not,’ Robert assured me. ‘He’s a good man and wants to help. He’s spent his whole life sending lepers to this hole. He’s probably got a guilty conscience. Perhaps he wants to atone for it, and I have no problem at all being the object of his atonement.’
I was not happy with the way things were developing. I was alarmed by Robert’s behaviour but equally appalled by my own indifference and acquiescence to his secret dealings. I cast him stern looks which meant that I would be at his throat again if he messed things up. But usually I was worn out by the day’s work and in the evenings I had no strength but to ask in an exhausted voice: ‘Everything ok?’
Yet, despite this fatigue, I felt strength returning to my arms. When I clenched my fists, clear lines of muscle stood out right down my forearms. The lesions had partly gone from my back, so I often sat in the courtyard naked to the waist. All that, combined with carefully dosed injections of medicine and large quantities of elm tea helped me feel almost healthy again. I had no trouble chopping large blocks of wood in half, and often felt the gaze of envious eyes that would withdraw behind curtains with a rustle and hide in the dark. If I was annoyed by the clumsiness of my helpers and yelled angrily, they would hang their heads and try even harder to fulfil the tasks I had asked them to do. Someone always came running up with a jug of cold water, and at dinner there was never any argument about who deserved the largest helping of potatoes or the biggest piece of meat. My tacitly approved leadership position had never been more pronounced. And I cannot deny that I enjoyed establishing order, diligence and discipline, and introducing new rules.
The other patients would be cleaning the fountain or raking the courtyard to remove small stones, and if I appeared at the window they would really lay into their work to demonstrate their loyalty. Along with all its advantages, this set-up was bound to have just as many shortcomings, as I found out when a cough and a temperature sent me to bed with a high fever. Robert sat by my bed massaging me with alcohol. When anyone tried to enter, he drove them away with ill-humoured grumbling and slammed the door. But some time around midnight he failed to close the door in time. Mstislaw wedged his big shoe in the opening, and the door was soon pushed open. ‘We have to talk with the boss,’ Mstislaw said.
‘The boss?’ Robert threw back at him.
‘That’s right, the boss. Now get out of the way and let us through,’ the faggot said, coming up to my bed with three others.
Robert kept talking behind their backs: he had known that my ambitions would boomerang on me one day, he knew these fools in all their vileness; you could see the hatred and envy in their eyes; it was no coincidence that God had rewarded them with the disease. He yelled louder and louder, and then his voice shifted out into the corridor.
‘Let me go, you shitheads!’ I heard him scream. ‘I’ll kill you, one and all. You too Cion! I’ll shove a chair up your arse!’
Then his voice was abruptly cut off. The corridor echoed to the sound of the heavy bolt of Room 42 down in the cellar.
The steps returned towards my room and stopped outside the door. Only then did I notice the group looking down at me. An anxious voice asked me how I felt and if I was better now. They were already missing me, they said. Today they had been unable to organise work properly. They had quarrelled unnecessarily about petty details, they said, their heads bowed as if fearing my censure. At that moment I forgot about Robert; what was going on in the room was pretty strange. One of them lowered his hand tenderly onto my forehead and then nodded to the others. That meant the situation was serious. They glanced at each other to try and agree who would do the talking, they nudged each other and whispered. One silhouette stepped forward.
‘You know... We thought that... err... How should I say...’ he stammered, before he was pulled back. Now a more resolute voice spoke.
‘In view of your health, we’ve decided that someone else should take over your role.’
My role, he said, and I wondered what that meant. At that instant I was overcome by the urge to vomit. I coughed and pressed my hand against my stomach. I raised my head with difficulty, and a malodorous mass spewed from my mouth straight onto their shoes. They scattered into the corners of the room and held their noses. No one came to offer me a glass of water or a rag. They stood with their backs pressed firmly against the wall as if they were holding up the whole world. I vomited and vomited until my stomach felt like it was trying to expel itself, causing unbearable pain. The acid ate at the skin on my face. I fought the urge to scratch myself, itching and stinging all over. My fever subsided a little, but everything around me was a mess. I had goose flesh and a chill coursed through my veins. My reserves of strength that had accumulated over the summer months of sweating and physical exertion had now vanished into thin air. I looked down at my arms and legs with curiosity as they lay flaccid beside my body. I tried to move them, but they only shifted slightly and my muscles hurt. No one stood against the walls any more. They had backed out while I was retching on the floor and had left the door ajar. Cion’s hairy arm later reached in and turned off the light. The leprosarium descended into darkness. But my thoughts arose like vampires heading for their nocturnal orgies.
My eyes adjusted to the lack of light. I could make out certain objects and focussed on them as if I were rediscovering the world. There were no sounds to break the muffled silence. With a little imagination I could be a captain deposed by a mutiny on a ship of ghosts. A worn-out sea-wolf condemned to spend the rest of his days on a deserted Pacific island surviving on mango and wild turkey. But every glance at Robert’s bed with its white sheets crumpled up in the middle brought me to the verge of despair. The remnants of the map, still strewn under the bed, now fluttered around in the draught like fragments of a fey prophecy. Scattered European cities, parted seas and interrupted rivers rustled, and that murmur seemed to contain the caustic laughter of all the roads and paths, all the wondrous wilds of the East and the suave parks of the West, as they chorused: nevermore, nevermore, nevermore. We would get two lovely graves, one on either side of Zoltán’s. With time, mallow would sprout and grow from the mounds, nourished by our decaying flesh. Only the occasional humble bumblebee would descend to pay tribute to our mouldy bones, hallowed not by teardrops but by trickles of dog urine.
I opened my eyes. Several fat flies were buzzing around my head. Reality was no improvement on my dream. Now that the dark was receding, I would have felt better there, six feet under, than where I was. Birds announced daybreak. A distant rooster shrieked at the rising sun. My bones sighed in pain, and belated remnants of the previous evening still stuck to my head. I did not know if Robert had really been calling me, or if I had just dreamed it. The door was closed. Locked too, I imagined.
I looked around, desperately seeking a glass of water near the head of the bed or on the floor, but all I could see were large drops of dew on the window-pane. They shone like diamonds with a strange blue light that gradually faded as the sun rose. I waited for the first sounds in the leprosarium. There should have been steps echoing down the hall, going to the dining room or the bathrooms. I was surprised to hear a knock at the door, the creak of the handle and the sound of slippers scuffing over the floor.
It was Cion, carrying a large jug of water. He said he had forgotten to bring a glass. Did I have a glass? No, I didn’t. As soon as he came up to me I exerted all my remaining strength to grab his long linen robe and pull him closer. ‘Careful,’ he warned, ‘It’ll spill’.
I raised my head to the jug. My teeth knocked against the rim. Gulps of cold water ran down my throat. I felt them spread in my stomach, my heart beat faster, sweat covered my forehead. My free hand gathered strength. Gulping down the last of the water, I punched the bastard right in his grinning jaw. He staggered and fell down beside the bed. I thought that would have knocked him out for a while, but the blow was not so hard. He jumped onto the bed with all his force and grabbed me by the throat. I managed to hit him several more times before Mstislaw
stormed in and pulled Cion aside. At that moment I realised what the new hierarchy was. Mstislaw Kasiewicz was the new sheriff with his own rules and demands. Yet it would be an exaggeration to say that the leprosarium had a clear structure of control where everyone obediently obeyed the little dictator and complied with his every whim. In fact, it all looked like a bad film. The problem was that they actually seemed to enjoy their roles and abandon themselves to them with a repulsive obedience: typical subservient arseholes. Unfortunately I had been the high priest, the trailblazer who by coincidence had set up this type of order in the first place, not suspecting that it brought some other genre conventions with it, like elemental changes of power and the excommunication of the ousted leader and his associates.
Mstislaw nodded sternly towards the door. Cion wanted to protest but Mstislaw slowly raised his finger to his lips. Cion left the room with his head hung low. Mstislaw closed the door and sat down at the foot of the bed. He folded his stiff legs with an effort.
‘Are you feeling better?’ he asked, looking at my feet. My fingers writhed; I wanted to get away from those eyes. He was ogling my body with satisfaction, lingering on my muscular chest and bulging calves.
‘You look healthy,’ he said. I pulled the sheet up to my chin. ‘You needn’t be ashamed, we’re all glad,’ he continued. ‘It looks as if your illness, I mean the real one, is going. But you and I know that’s virtually impossible. The beast in us is merciless. It goes to sleep for a while like a snake, but then it will lash out of its hole again, won’t it?’ He drew back the sleeves from his forearms to reveal deep scars and half-healed lesions that had eaten away at the skin and deep down to the bone. ‘See? That’s the sorcery of it. The wounds always look like they’re going to disappear the next day. Eternal hope: it kills us as much as Hansen does.’
Yes, that hope, I thought. He stared up at the ceiling as if he were looking for cobwebs. Or for God. He straightened his robe. His right hand went deep into its folds, he lowered his gaze, and his crooked, hairy fingers came out with my passport. He exulted like an amateur magician who had just pulled off a successful trick. ‘We were looking for cigarettes in the drawer,’ he said, returning the passport to its hiding place close to his body. He got up painfully and limped to the window. I did not make the same mistake a second time; I knew Mstislaw could easily overpower me in my current state, so all I did was give a vacuous look of disappointment like I imagine you see on the faces of people who are dying. ‘It will be in my safe-keeping until you get better,’ he said. Then he asked me if I wanted any more water, shambled to the door and was gone. His unsteady steps echoed down the hall and he whistled Albinoni’s tedious Adagio. He could not reach the high notes, so he returned to the beginning over and over again. His whistling went out into the courtyard, and the melody wandered idly beneath the window. Albinoni was accompanied by the sound of urine splashing down the wall. The refrain quivered as he shook off the last drops. He did not stop whistling until the bell rang for breakfast. Then the creak of doorknobs was heard and the first conversations about last night’s travails began: about pains in the back and bleeding from the anus.
I had enough strength to get up. The fever was gone and I no longer felt the debilitating pain in my bones. Yet I stayed in bed and asked myself if there was any point getting up. Last night’s turn of events had robbed many things of their meaning, and I had yet to adjust. The thing for which I had been prepared to throttle my friend Robert had now happened. Now he sat humiliated on the damp floor of Room 42. He was re-experiencing the harsh captivity which this time could drive him mad. It had been a mistake to ignore old Zoltán’s words and wave dismissively when he said they were all closet criminals, corrupted beings with the souls of ravens.
Now one could easily imagine them circling and driving out all the good and human kindness that remained in these walls, in the graves and the earth. But before I let my mind wander off in that direction, I heard someone calling for Robert down beneath the window, at first quietly, then louder and louder.
I didn’t recognise the voice, as it was hushed and distorted. When the man had called out my friend’s name for the fourth time, he paused and lit a cigarette. I heard the metallic sound of the cigarette lighter and his first deep drag on the cigarette; ‘Robert?!’ he called again; then rapid steps receded. I knocked over the jug as I jumped up. My feet met a round puddle of water and several shards of the ceramic handle which stuck into the sole of my foot. I strode to the window in pain, leaving a trail of blood. Mstislaw now stood down below, and beside him Cion, with the others crowded at the entrance. Mr Smooth stopped at the fence, crushed the cigarette with his heel, and looked at us for several seconds. No one dared to speak or go towards him. Mr Smooth wore a wide-brimmed hat which shadowed his face, but I recognised him by the way he held his cigarette, wedged deep between his middle and ring finger. I waved to him, but he jumped the fence and disappeared into the bushes without looking back. Mstislaw shrugged his shoulders as if he regretted not having given the uninvited guest a more courteous reception. ‘If your friend comes back again, you might suggest he stay the night. There’s plenty of space in Room 42. A whole continent!’ he said, heading back inside with Cion’s arm over his shoulder. The silence was soon replaced by the clank of cutlery. I hoped Robert would barge in through the door any minute, swear a few times and go off to have breakfast. That would be the end of the nightmare, the bursting of the soap bubble that the wind carries surprisingly far; to the unknown and dark realms of human behaviour. I felt betrayed because these were no longer the same people, those tormented characters concealed in crippled bodies. Now they had become something else again. But what? Perhaps Margareta Yosipovich knew the answer.
When Cion went into her room that morning with a hot cup of tea, he was struck by a horrible stench that almost knocked him off his feet. He drank a mouthful of the tea and summoned up the courage to go up to the bed. It was then that he noticed Margareta had blue eyes and very long eyelashes. He noticed because her eyes were still wide open, as if in leaving this world she had caught sight of what we all hope for. I had last visited her room three or four days previously. She had been sleeping when I entered, and when she awoke she acknowledged my presence with several barely perceptible twitches in the region of the lips, reminiscent of attempts to smile. I sat down for a few minutes, just long enough for the old lady to go back to sleep, and then turned to tiptoe out again. What happened next, there in the semidarkness, all went so quickly; I think I glimpsed the theme of my future nightmares, or perhaps it was just a trick of the glaucoma in my left eye: as I wheeled around and opened the door, the draught caused the heavy window next to Margareta’s bed to fall shut; there was a mighty bang and the window-pane shuddered. It sounded like something broke, but when I looked back it was not the closed window that drew my attention and etched itself into my memory. I did not even tell Robert about this, but Margareta’s head was raised up high off the pillow. Her thin neck, leathery like a turtle’s, held up her small jaws and the tangle of grey hair, while her large blue eyes glistened maliciously above a smile which revealed her rotten teeth. In the blinking of an eye everything returned to its former appearance, and an instant later I fled the room.
Margareta Yosipovich’s death was a relief to me. However much I tried to rationalise, my primitive alter ego told me that an old demon dwelt in that twilight room, not a tormented old lady who longed for the last guest. Yet another, much deeper and more significant doubt began to grow in me that night. I was increasingly convinced that there were things in the leprosarium that I knew nothing about: a hidden side of things, an inversion of the existing order concealed in the rat-sewers of functional reality.
With these thoughts in my head I groped along the wall down the main corridor. Margareta was already in her coffin, which was on the dining table. I peered in from the doorway. I was glad the lid was on and the body concealed; I was afraid my imagination might prepare me another episode of hallucinations.
I went up to the table and intentionally sat on Robert’s chair. ‘Is he still in the cellar?’ I asked. Everyone except Mstislaw was holding a handkerchief over their nose because the coffin was emitting the old lady’s last statement.
I ignored the unbearable stench and repeated my question. ‘Where else could he be?’ Mstislaw replied, ‘Off on a business trip, perhaps?’, and several handkerchiefs fluttered to creaky laughs. I got up to fill a jug of water in the kitchen and then went to see Robert. The bolt on the door could be opened from the outside. If no one prevented me from going down, that meant Robert’s captivity had only been an innocent game of a conceited little dictator and his subjects. They all looked at me as I went past with the water.
‘The burial is at noon. We still need to dig the grave. It would be much appreciated, my dear...’ Mstislaw said.
I nodded and calmly kept walking. They watched me in silence as I left the kitchen. I stopped for several seconds in the hall and waited, but no one got up. I assumed this meant Robert’s imminent freedom, his release from the prison within this prison. I walked as quickly as I could. Putting the jug down on the steps, I went up to the door of the cell. There I saw two things: Robert’s head pressed hard against the bars just above the number 42, and a large padlock hanging from the bolt. I do not know what horrified me most – the purple bruises on Robert’s face or the brassy shine of that fist-shaped lock.
When Robert saw me he began to sob and wiped away the tears with his palm. I did not know what to say. I grabbed the padlock and jerked it this way and that, which only produced metallic screeching. Robert pounded furiously at the door and pressed his forehead even harder against the bars. I went back for the water, moistened my handkerchief with it and reached in as far as I could to dab his face. I told him to open his mouth, then I poured some water from the jug, trying to spill as little as possible. Finally I asked who had beaten him. He said he did not know who else had been involved, but he was sure about Cion and Mstislaw. Mstislaw had hit him in the head. They had sneaked in while he was asleep. He had been woken by a hard blow to the stomach. Cion brought up a chair so that Mstislaw could sit, and then they questioned him about our plans for leaving. He had not told them anything.
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