by David Thomas
It had been sent by a Mr Timothy Reede. His notepaper proclaimed him to be a Consultant Gynaecologist and Fellow of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
‘Dear Mrs Crookham,’ he began, ‘I am writing to let you know that I have received the results of the tests taken during your consultation last week and I am pleased to report that they confirm my initial impression that the Essure procedure which you underwent two years ago continues to be completely effective, without any significant side effects to your health. Occasional heavy periods, spotting and discharges are to be expected with any form of tubal ligation, of which Essure is one. But they are nothing to be alarmed about. I hope this news will reassure you that all is well, Yours … etc.’ A bill for the consultation and tests was attached. It came to £287.50.
My first reaction was puzzlement. I knew Mariana saw a gynae from time to time like any other woman. She’d once described what it was like to have a cervical smear. After that I had no interest at all in knowing what went on once she stuck her legs in the stirrups. But I was pretty certain that if she’d undergone some kind of hospital procedure I’d have heard about it. Wouldn’t I?
I opened my own computer and searched for ‘Essure tubal ligation’. Up popped the first ten of 640,000 possible results. And then the phrases hit me: ‘permanent birth control’ … ‘sterilization procedure’ … ‘hysteroscopy sterilization’.
Children had never been a huge priority in our lives. Mariana was still young, her body clock had barely started to tick, let alone set off any alarms. I certainly wasn’t in any hurry. Whenever I bothered to think about it, which wasn’t often, I assumed that when Mariana was ready, she’d come off the pill, we’d keep on doing whatever we were doing already, and babies would follow as a matter of course.
Now I discovered how wrong I had been.
Mariana had gone to hospital and had two little nickel-coated springs placed in the ostia, the openings to her Fallopian tubes. These springs caused inflammation in the tubes. That in turn blocked the way between my sperm and her eggs, making it impossible for us to conceive children. Ever. Without telling me, my wife had sneaked off to have the quickest, most discreet, least invasive form of permanent sterilization currently available. Essure, I discovered, is the only form of tubal ligation – that’s tying your tubes in plain English – that can be carried out as an outpatient procedure under light anaesthetic, without any incisions anywhere. She really didn’t want me to know what she’d done.
What happened next began as a sickly, gut-wrenching feeling in the pit of my stomach, moved up my body to grab my throat then exploded in a wordless bellow of frustration, humiliation and wrath. I hurled my coffee cup across the room and it shattered on the far wall, splashing the remaining dregs of the cappuccino across the wall in a pathetically diminished facsimile of the spatter-pattern of Andrew’s blood.
I’d been had. I’d tried to pretend that Mariana could not have killed my brother, despite all the evidence to the contrary, until she herself had shouted out her own guilt. I’d tried to find excuses for her behaviour on the assumption that there must be a reason for it all, one that would somehow exonerate her. Now I realized that the destruction she had wrought was not just a matter of one mindless, psychotic, uncontrollable act of violence. She hadn’t just robbed me of my brother. She had cold-bloodedly, calculatedly, robbed me of my children as well.
I had to face the facts. I’d been married for six years to a woman who could decide to have herself sterilized and snuff out the life inside herself without saying a single word to me before, during or after the procedure. The woman I had adored had been a figment of my imagination. The woman I had actually married now looked suspiciously like a monster.
MINISTRY OF STATE SECURITY HEADQUARTERS,
NORMANNENSTRASSE, BERLIN: 1984
The Stasi liked to take their time when interviewing suspects. Yet Hans-Peter Tretow’s interrogation was remarkably swift.
Whether by coincidence or deliberate planning, it was conducted by the very officer who had first questioned Tretow on the day he defected from the West. He had been promoted to the rank of major. His hair was thinner, though somewhat better cut, and his skin more lined, but the watery pale-blue eyes hadn’t changed: this was the same man all right. It seemed that the major had photographs that he wished to discuss: surveillance shots, acquired by the Stasi using hidden cameras. He placed them one by one, directly in front of Tretow, on the table that sat between the two men.
‘We have film footage, too,’ said the major. ‘Both pictures and sound. It’s quite a movie. You are filth, Tretow. I hope you know that.’
‘I know that this is illegal, yes.’
The major frowned in incredulity at what he had just heard. ‘Illegal? You make it sound like a traffic offence. This is not some minor technicality. This is a crime that disgraces the good name of the German Democratic Republic. Our society has no room for this kind of decadence. You should have left it behind when you left the West. Indeed, you promised to do so.’
Tretow looked puzzled: ‘Sorry?’
Several cardboard document-holders were piled by the major’s right hand. He reached for one of the files, flicked through its content and then removed a number of typed sheets. ‘Let me see …’ he murmured, running a finger down one of the pages of text. ‘Yes, here we are … From an interview between yourself and Herr Direktor Wolf, dated the 19 April 1978. Wolf: “Should you produce information that assists the defence of democratic socialism against its capitalist enemies, then you will be suitably rewarded. But if you fail me in any way, I will make it my personal business to see that you receive the maximum punishment that your crimes merit. Are we clear?” … And your response … Tretow: “Completely.”’
The major lifted his eyes from the file and looked directly at Tretow. ‘So, do you feel that you provided the information that you promised us?’
‘Er … yes, I believe I have done that. I hope so, anyway.’
‘I agree,’ said the major affably. ‘You gave us the means to exert considerable influence upon certain key individuals in Western nations, notably the Federal Republic. This information continues to be of use and you are still available to assist with the operation when required. Is that not so?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘So, let us agree that you kept your side of the bargain, in that respect at least. But what about Herr Direktor Wolf, would you say that he did as he promised?’
‘Of course!’ Tretow hoped that his response, however brief, conveyed bottomless quantities of enthusiastic gratitude.
The major smiled. ‘Again, I agree. You have a respectable job, a magnificent apartment, a delightful family. You and your wife have been allowed on numerous occasions to buy goods, including fresh fruit, prime meat and the latest Western clothes and electrical equipment from the supermarket reserved for senior officers at our ministerial headquarters. Your life is good, is it not?’
‘Oh yes, very good, very good indeed!’
‘So one of the most important, well-respected men in our entire nation has been extraordinarily generous towards you. He has granted you privileges that many decent, hard-working citizens can only dream of, and this,’ the major slammed his hand down onto the photos, hitting the tabletop with a crack that sounded as threatening as a gunshot to Tretow’s terrified ears, ‘this is how you repay him. Are … you … MAD?’
The major leaned forward across the table, putting all his weight on his left hand. He peered at Tretow like a scientist examining a particularly repellent virus. Then, without the slightest warning, he slapped him very hard on the side of the face. Tretow’s head jerked to the side with the force of the blow, and the stinging pain brought tears to his eyes.
The major hit him again. ‘I asked you a question. Answer it!’
Tretow was dazed. ‘What question?’
The major hit him a third time and then, barely a second later, a fourth, backhanded to the other side of his face.
‘Answer the question!’ he shouted. ‘Are you mad?’
‘No!’ cried Tretow, and then shrieked in alarm as the major raised his hand. Unable to shield himself with his manacled hands, he cowered helplessly, his head down, shoulders hunched, quivering. A stain spread across the front of his trousers. Returned to the status of a powerless child, recoiling from a violent father-figure, he had acted like a child. He had wet himself.
The major gave a contemptuous sniff at the urine’s acidic odour. Then he continued his questioning: ‘So when you parade your criminality in front of Herr Direktor Wolf, this is the action of a man who is fully in control of his mind, who knows what the penalties for misbehaviour are, yet still deliberately flaunts his contempt and ingratitude … is that what you are saying?’
‘No, no – I mean, yes. I … I don’t know.’
‘Pathetic,’ the major sighed. Almost as an afterthought he added, ‘We know you beat your wife, by the way. An innocent, defenceless woman, who has given you beautiful children … what kind of a man do you think you are, to abuse your own wife so?’
Tretow stammered wordlessly, but the major interrupted his attempts to formulate a response. ‘There is no need to answer. We have just established that you are a snivelling coward, a pants-wetter, an antisocial deviant. What do you think we should do with a man like that?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘How about this?’ The major removed his pistol from its leather holster, walked round the table and held the muzzle to Tretow’s head. ‘Shall I tell you how we rid the world of vermin? With a single shot, without warning, to the back of the head. Are you vermin, Hans-Peter Tretow?’
Unable to speak, Tretow gave a single miserable nod of the head. He had abandoned all hope.
‘Yes, that would be a perfectly reasonable course of action,’ said the major. ‘It would be quite consistent with the terms of your agreement with Herr Direktor Wolf. He certainly thought so. His first instinct on seeing these pictures was to order your immediate trial and execution. That would still be his preferred choice. Yet even a man as mighty as the director of our nation’s entire foreign intelligence operations cannot afford to let self-indulgence cloud his judgement. There are times when he must force himself to hold his nose and, however distasteful it may be, continue to take advantage of filth and scum. Do you follow me?’
‘I think so,’ said Tretow, his voice betraying the first faint scintilla of hope.
‘You are still of use to the ministry, so you will not be getting the bullet you so richly deserve. Not today, anyway. You will lose your job, of course, and your nice apartment. You will have to tell your poor wife that she will not be able to shop at our special store again. I feel for her, I must say, being reduced to life in the two rooms allocated to the caretaker at a state institution, a mere dogsbody and handyman, which is how you will serve our nation in future. I would not blame her in the very slightest if she left you and took your children with her. She will be rehoused much more comfortably by an understanding state as and when she chooses that option – a fact of which she will be informed in due course. You, however, will remain exactly where we have put you and you will be grateful, pathetically grateful, for that. We have allowed you to live, Tretow. And, when you get to your new place of employment, you will see that we have even provided you with activities to amuse you. But one word of warning – you may do what you wish within certain very strictly controlled limits. But if you step outside those limits by even a single millimetre, you will die. And be sure of this, your death will not be as merciful as a bullet to the head.’
The major reached down and cradled Tretow’s battered face in his hand. He examined Tretow’s bloodied nose, half-closed right eye and a bruise on his cheek that was already acquiring an aubergine depth of purple and black. He lowered his own face so that it was level with Tretow’s.
‘Do we understand each other?’
Tretow nodded, feeling his chin rub up and down against the palm of the major’s hand.
‘Excellent.’
The major returned to his side of the table and pressed a button on his office intercom. ‘Remove the prisoner and take him to his new place of employment. No, I will not be here. I feel a pressing need to take a shower.’
And so, as he not only relived the violence he had suffered at his father’s hands but understood, for the first time, the toxic effects of total defeat that the old man had lived with since his own surrender in 1945, another chapter in Hans-Peter Tretow’s life came to an end and a new, very different one began …
23
SUNDAY
That night I lay in bed, once again wracking my mind for memories. But this time I was not searching for clues to Mariana’s psychosis. Instead I tried to find something, anything, that I could trust to give me some kind of reassurance. I’d brought Andy’s laptop upstairs and opened up the school picture of Mariana full-screen, as though the sight of her at a time of innocence might somehow restore the innocence, or more likely naïvety, with which I had once looked on her. But now even my happiest memories were compromised. I wondered whether her fingers had been crossed when she made those vows at the altar, pledging herself to me. I thought of her one night on our honeymoon, lying stark naked on the rim of the deserted hotel swimming pool, daring me to strip off and join her. I could still recall every sweeping line of her body, every play of light upon her limbs. But now it seemed to me that some poisonous evil had been festering beneath her lovely skin.
Yet the bitterness and resentment I now felt were no less toxic. And still a hope remained in me that, even now, some explanation could be given that would explain it all and give me reassurance that my love had not been in vain.
I must have dropped off to sleep some time around two in the morning.
I came to with a start. The numbers on my digital alarm clock read 3.27. I propped myself up on one elbow, blinking as I tried to get my bearings. What had woken me? I listened hard but could not detect any sound of movement within the house. My immediate instinct was to lie down again and try to go back to sleep, but I was awake now, my nerves on red alert and demanding answers. Muttering swear words to myself, I got out of bed and went to the window.
I looked out across a back garden lit by a full moon strong enough to cast shadows across the frostbitten lawn. There was no one there. To my left were the outbuildings in which I had my studio. My eye was caught by the brief glimmer of a moving, flickering light against the studio window. Was it coming from inside? Or was it just the twinkle of reflected moonlight? The light vanished. I watched the window for a couple more minutes. The light did not reappear. I told myself it must have been the moonlight playing tricks on my senses and went back to bed, rolled onto my right side, drew the blankets up over my shoulder and waited for unconsciousness to rescue me again.
No such luck. My mind resolutely refused to switch off. The words of the anonymous email went round and round in my brain: ‘Consider your personal safety … bad things can happen …’ My skin continued to crawl with the prickle of undischarged adrenalin. Then I heard a very faint, muffled ‘chunk’ from downstairs: just once, then silence again. It sounded very much as though the front door had been unlocked and opened. I lay there, trying to find reasons not to gather up the courage to investigate, my previous nervous tension now transformed into full-blown fear. Someone was in my house. I was sure of it. What was I going to do?
I got out of bed a second time. If I was going to confront an intruder, I wanted to be partially dressed, at the very least, and as well armed as possible. But with what? I wasn’t an American. There was no loaded pistol in my bedside drawer. I’d have to make do with something all too English.
I pulled on the jeans I’d discarded on the bedroom floor and padded across to the wardrobe, my ears straining for any sound suggesting that someone was coming upstairs. On the top shelf of the wardrobe, right at the back, was an old leather cricket bag filled with gear I’d barely touched since I
left school. I reached up, stretching towards it, leaving my back totally exposed to any attack.
My fingers groped in the near total darkness, feeling their way past Mariana’s old hatboxes and a pair of my cowboy boots until, at the absolute furthest extent of my reach, they touched the soft, cracked leather of the cricket bag. I stopped and cast my eyes back into the room, searching through the gloom for any sign of the intruder. I could see nothing, but that did not mean he was not there, lurking, waiting for his moment to strike.
I told myself not to be so melodramatic. All I was doing was making myself even more scared than before. I stretched up again, grabbed the cricket bag and very carefully pulled it out, making sure that I did not bring an avalanche of boxes and boots down with it. The bat was in there. It seemed absurd to be setting out to confront a burglar who might have a knife or even a gun gripping an ancient Gray-Nicolls, but it was a great deal better than nothing, and a full-force blow could do some serious damage. I knew the layout of the house better than any intruder and there was a very strong likelihood that I’d be bigger than him. ‘Come on,’ I told myself. ‘You can do this.’
I pulled back my arms so that the bat was over my right shoulder, ready to strike, and made my way out of the bedroom. I stopped as I reached the landing, which ran across the house with rooms on one side and a gallery, looking down onto the living room, on the other. The visibility was a little better now, the interior of the house cast in a palette of greys, blues and black by the moonlight coming in through the glass wall. I could see at once that I was alone on the landing and all the doors to the other rooms were closed. Very slowly, cautiously, I edged out onto the landing, forcing myself to step into the open. I had to get close enough to the gallery edge to see down into the living room itself.
There was still no sound of anyone else in the house; no footsteps on the stairs; no onrushing attacker; nothing to stop me getting to the handrail and looking over it.