by Judy Nunn
‘It’s me,’ she said, ‘Violetta. Answer if you can hear me.’
He spoke, and the voice sounded barely human. Through the clenched jaw, the leather strap and the foam of saliva, it was tortured and strange, and the word that he said was barely intelligible. But she recognised it as her name.
‘Violetta.’
‘Yes. Yes, it’s me, Pietro. It’s Violetta. I want you to see the house, Pietro. Can you see the house?’ She felt fearful, frantic, but she forced herself to say the words clearly and methodically, urging him on.
‘The house, Pietro. The house and the steps, and the door. Can you see the house?’
In the dim recesses of his brain, Pietro clung to her voice. And then he clung to the words as they started to make sense. He must see the house, Violetta wanted him to see the house. He willed it into his mind. And there it was. The house and the steps and the door. He had not seen the door before. Only the steps. He tried to tell Violetta.
She wasn’t sure of the words, but she knew she’d made contact. He could see the house, she was sure of it.
‘Go up the steps, Pietro. Open the door. Go inside the house.’
He tried to do as she asked, but he couldn’t. He was unable to go up the steps. He was unable to approach the door. He willed it to open before him but it remained shut, and the harder he focussed upon it, the more the door remained steadfastly closed.
Then suddenly he found himself beneath the house, looking up through the floorboards as he had been before. Violetta had called it a cubby. And to his side he could see the man’s shoes standing on the steps, and he could hear the man’s voice calling him. ‘Pietro! Pietro!’ But he didn’t want to hear the man’s voice, it was getting in the way of Violetta’s, and he tried to block it out, to hear only Violetta and to do as she said.
‘Open the door, Pietro. Go inside the house.’ Violet kept repeating. ‘Go inside, Pietro, go inside.’
There was no response, and she was frightened. He was shaking his head, his face tortured with the effort; perhaps she was doing more harm than good.
He focussed on the floorboards overhead. He could see the light shining through them and he tried to will his way into the room above. And then, as he concentrated on the floorboards, he realised that he was seeing them not from below at all. He was looking down at them now. He was in the room: he was in the house.
‘I am inside.’
The words were clearer this time, and Violet leaned in close.
‘What do you see, Pietro? Tell me what you see,’ she urged.
But he could see only the floorboards. He tried to look around the room, but his vision remained focussed on the floor, and he could hear the man again.
‘Pietro,’ the man said.
The man was not calling him this time. The voice was nearby, it was coming from directly above him. Then something else entered his vision. On the floorboards before him he saw the man’s shoes, and they were peering out from beneath the hem of a cassock. He was kneeling before a priest, he realised, and slowly he willed himself to look up, seeing the tassel of the cassock, the priest’s hands holding a Bible, then finally the priest’s face.
‘What do you see, Pietro? What do you see?’ Violet asked.
‘The priest.’
She wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly, it sounded like ‘priest’.
‘Tell me what it is that you see,’ she urged again.
He could see nothing but the priest’s eyes now, looking down into his, burning into his brain. The eyes of the priest frightened him.
‘I see the priest!’
The words were coherent. Distorted as they were, she heard them distinctly.
‘I see the priest!’ He said it again. Then the words became garbled, disappearing into animal sounds and he was once again convulsing. But the convulsions were brief this time. In a matter of seconds the seizure was over and Pietro lay semi-conscious beside her.
She fetched a warm flannel from the bathroom and cradled him in her lap, bathing his face just as she had the last time. But she didn’t cry as she had then; she was stronger now.
As he came to his senses, he knew immediately who was comforting him, and he did not even think of Sister Anna Maria.
‘Violetta,’ he said.
When he regained his strength they sat together on the sofa and discussed what had happened. At first Pietro’s recollection was hazy – he was still weak and his head ached.
‘I see the house, Violetta,’ he said, ‘but I cannot go inside.’
‘You did go inside, Pietro, you told me you did.’
‘Ah yes,’ he remembered now the floorboards. ‘I see the floor.’
‘And a priest,’ she reminded him. ‘You said that you saw a priest.’
The priest. It all came back. The man’s shoes, his voice, the hem of the cassock, and then the priest’s eyes, how frightening he’d found them.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the priest.’ Despite his headache, Pietro was excited; jagged pieces of memory were coming together. ‘It is the priest’s shoes I see on the steps, I know it, Violetta. And it is the priest who calls my name. I see him in the house, I am kneeling before him, I see his cassock.’
Violet was equally excited. ‘It’s a breakthrough, isn’t it?’ she said.
‘Yes, yes,’ he agreed. He hadn’t heard the term before, but he liked it. ‘It is what you say, a breakthrough. This priest, I know him, I have seen him. And I do not know why, but I fear him.’
As Pietro spoke, he saw the eyes again, staring down at him as if they could see into his very soul.
‘There is evil in the priest’s eyes,’ he said.
But he had seen these eyes somewhere else, he thought. He had seen them not long ago. Where? He struggled to remember.
… you will get headaches and feel tired. Do you understand me?
The doctor, warning him of the dangers if he ceased his medication, the stern eyes peering over the spectacle rims. He’d found the doctor’s eyes alarming.
‘The doctor, Violetta.’
‘What doctor?’ Violet was confused.
‘The doctor when we see him.’
‘Who? You mean Doctor Vanpoucke?’
‘Yes. The doctor, he has the eyes of the priest.’
She was nonplussed. What a strange thing to say, she thought. ‘But the doctor doesn’t have evil eyes.’
‘No,’ he said. She was right, he told himself, it was foolishness of his own imagining. ‘No, no, the doctor he does not have evil eyes.’
Pietro dismissed the image of the doctor from his mind, but the eyes of the priest stayed with him. He must not forget the priest, he told himself: the priest held the key. The priest could unlock his past.
‘Pietro?’ Violet queried anxiously. He’d gone very quiet all of a sudden.
He had worried her, he realised. It was not good for Violetta to worry. He stood and pulled her to her feet.
‘I am hungry,’ he said, although he wasn’t. He kissed her. ‘I would like very much to have brunch now.’
‘It’s half-past one,’ she said as they walked back into the kitchen. ‘It’s way past brunch.’
The eggs were cold and the bacon congealed, but when Violet said that she’d cook some more, Pietro had a better idea.
‘We will go into town,’ he said, ‘to a restaurant, and we will celebrate.’
‘Celebrate what?’ He was still weak from the seizure, and there were shadows under his eyes, but he seemed extraordinarily happy.
‘Our breakthrough, Violetta.’ Pietro liked the new word. ‘I remember, is good, yes?’
‘Very good.’
‘Soon I remember who is Pietro Toscanini, and one day I tell our child. One day I say to this child who I am. This breakthrough is good, Violetta. So we will celebrate.’
‘Yes, we will.’ Infected by his excitement, Violet decided she would celebrate her own breakthrough. ‘We’ll go somewhere very public, and I’ll wear my wedding ring and tell everyone I
see that I’m married. And I’ll introduce you as my husband and all the girls’ll be madly jealous that I’m married to a man who looks like a film star.’
‘But your father …?’
‘Dad knows now. He’s just got to like it or lump it. That’s his problem, I don’t care.’
She kissed him, then raced off to the bedroom to change and get her wedding ring from the top drawer of the bedside table.
Lucky and Peggy stepped out of Prouds Jewellers shop into the Saturday bustle of Sydney’s Pitt Street, but Peggy didn’t notice the passers-by.
‘Look, Lucky,’ she said as she held out the splayed fingers of her left hand. ‘It’s even more beautiful in the sunlight.’
‘You should have let me buy you something flashier. People will think I’m a miser.’
‘No, they won’t,’ she smiled. ‘This is perfect. It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen.’
It was a very pretty engagement ring – the diamond flawless, the setting delicate – but he’d wanted to buy her something more expensive.
‘I can afford it,’ he’d insisted. ‘Go on, Peggy, get something you can really show off,’ he urged.
She laughed at his boyishness, but she’d chosen the ring she’d genuinely wanted, and had not been dictated by thrift as he’d imagined.
‘I will not wear something gaudy in order for you to show off, my darling,’ she’d said, and he’d had to give in. Peggy Minchin was not one to be dictated to.
‘Well, I’ll have to find some other way to show off then,’ he said as they walked hand in hand down Pitt Street. ‘Let’s go shopping and I’ll buy you a whole new wardrobe.’
‘Why don’t we go down to the Quay and look at the harbour first?’ she said. She didn’t want a whole new wardrobe, she just wanted to walk through the streets of Sydney with her fiancé.
Pietro and Violet didn’t go to the pictures that night. Pietro was tired, and even Violet felt that the drama of the day outweighed whatever From Here to Eternity might have had to offer.
They ate dinner with Maureen instead, gathered around the kitchen table, and Violet chatted endlessly, her lamb chops sitting untouched on her plate.
‘I wore it all over town, Auntie Maureen,’ she said, waving her wedding ring under Maureen’s nose, ‘and I showed everyone I saw. The whole of Cooma knows I’m married now.’
‘Well, that’s one way to go about things, I suppose,’ Maureen said dryly. She knew about Cam’s visit to the house and the confrontation with Pietro. Her brother had stormed into the hospital.
She’d recognised his anger instantly and had refused to see him in private. She’d taken him to the canteen instead, knowing that Cam would never make a spectacle of himself with others around.
‘I hold you responsible for this, Maureen,’ he’d hissed while they’d sat in a corner away from the several nurses present. ‘How could you stand by and let her marry the boy?’
‘Better she have some family support rather than run off and marry him on her own.’ Maureen had kept calm, as she always did, and as always it had infuriated him further.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, for God’s sake!’
‘It was up to Violet to tell you. I urged her to, but she refused.’ He’d been on the verge of explosion and about to interrupt, but she hadn’t allowed him to. ‘I suggest you welcome the boy into the fold, Cam. You have no alternative. Either that or lose your daughter. And your grandchild,’ she’d added. ‘Don’t forget she’s two and a half months pregnant.’
‘The Dago’s a bloody lunatic! He attacked me!’
‘No doubt he had some provocation,’ she’d coolly replied. ‘He’s a very gentle young man under normal circumstances.’ Then she’d risen from the table; it was time to get back to work. ‘I think you should go home now, Cam. Go home and cool off.’ And she’d left him, fuming and helpless, the nurses at the other tables casting curious glances in his direction.
Maureen hadn’t told Violet the details of what had transpired at the hospital.
‘Yes, I know,’ she’d simply said when her niece had started to recount the events of the morning, ‘your dad popped in to see me.’ And then she’d sat quietly eating her chops while Violet, still exuberant from the excitement of the afternoon, chatted on about the whole of Cooma now knowing she was married to a man with movie-star looks.
When her niece had finally run out of steam, Maureen returned to the topic of the morning’s confrontation, and as she listened to Violet’s version, she looked now and then to Pietro for verification.
He stayed silent for the most part, nodding occasionally, but Violet was unable to resist a little dramatic embellishment and eventually he interjected.
‘Dad was going to kill Pietro!’ It was a direct accusation and Violet made it with force.
‘Is not so, Violetta,’ he corrected her. ‘I attack Violetta’s father,’ he said to Maureen. ‘Violetta’s father, he defend himself. He is not going to kill me.’
‘Well, I thought he was,’ Violet insisted, ‘he looked mad enough. And then Pietro had a fit, Auntie Maureen. And I reckon that’d be Dad’s fault, getting him all steamed up like he did.’
Maureen knew about Pietro’s epilepsy – they had talked openly of it, the three of them. And they talked openly now as Pietro and Violet told her everything that had happened.
‘Is breakthrough, Maureen,’ Pietro said. ‘The priest, he frightens me. But is good I remember, yes?’
‘Perhaps,’ she replied cautiously.
Maureen was concerned. She could tell that Pietro was pleased with his progress, and she didn’t wish to alarm him, but it seemed to her that he and Violet were treading a dangerous path. Any delving into the boy’s traumatised past should be handled strictly professionally. Pietro was epileptic and he suffered long-term amnesia; their amateur meddling could have disastrous results.
‘But I really do think you should talk this over with your doctor, Pietro,’ she said. ‘It is essential you seek professional advice.’
‘Yes,’ Pietro obediently promised. Maureen was looking at him very seriously, and he respected her opinion. ‘Yes, I will do this.’
He would go to the doctor as Maureen advised, but not just yet, he decided. He must focus more on the priest first. If he could discover why it was he so feared the priest, then he was convinced he could discover his past.
Pietro and Violet retired early that night, and they did not make love as they usually did. Violet would very much have liked to, but she was sensitive to Pietro’s physical state – he was exhausted. She cuddled up behind him instead, her body contoured to his, loving the curve of his back against her breasts, and the feel of their legs tucked together as one.
Pietro lay staring at the wall, still with the dull headache that had remained with him since his seizure. The priest was still heavily on his mind as he drifted into an uneasy sleep.
The dreams were not long in coming. At first the images were those he’d seen during his fit. The familiar house, and the steps, and the door. Then the floorboards and the shoes and the hem of the cassock. And finally the priest’s eyes. Then the images became jumbled, first one, then the other, always ending in the priest’s eyes.
The eyes devoured him with their malevolence as the dream became a nightmare. The priest was going to kill him – he had to get out of the house. Then he was running through a world of white, hearing his own frantic breathing and the crunch of his feet in the snow. But the world was no longer white, it had become blood-red. Everywhere he looked the snow had turned red – he was running through blood.
Then, as he felt he could run no longer, he was under the house, looking up at the floorboards. He was safe here. Here he was away from the blood. But he was not safe. The blood had followed him. It was pouring through the floorboards, drenching him, choking him, he was drowning in blood. And as he lay drowning he heard the priest’s voice calling. ‘Pietro! Pietro!’
‘Pietro.’ It was Violet’s voice and he awoke wi
th a start.
She was kneeling by the bed shaking him, her voice trembling with fear, and in the dim light of the moon through the window he could see that, in her hand, she held the piece of leather strap.
‘Is all right, Violetta,’ he assured her. ‘Is a dream, that is all.’ And he took the strap from her.
Violet could have wept with relief. He’d been making the most awful sounds, as if he were choking in his sleep; she’d been sure he was having a fit.
She got back into bed and as they sat cuddled up together he told her about his dream. Violet was horrified, but again Pietro saw it as a breakthrough.
‘Is no dream, Violetta,’ he said, ‘is a memory. The priest, he has done something very bad. I feel his evil. If I find who is this priest, and if I find what is it this priest has done, I find who I am. This I know.’
Neither slept well that night. Pietro tossed fitfully, the images returning. And, beside him, Violet lay half awake, fearful that at any moment his nightmares would become a seizure. She was frightened. Unlike Pietro, she was no longer sure that today had been a breakthrough. She hated the priest.
As the train pulled away from the platform, Rob Harvey sat back and stared out the carriage window. His Saturday night excursion to Sydney had served its customary purpose: he’d picked up a girl in one of the classier bars and they’d gone to his hotel and had sex – it had been over four months since he’d slept with a woman. She’d been a nice girl: they’d had a laugh and they’d talked and, afterwards, she hadn’t counted out the money when he’d given her the envelope. He’d enjoyed her company even more than the sex. But when she wrote down her telephone number and told him to contact her any time he was in Sydney, he’d decided he wouldn’t. His intimacy with the girl had only served to remind him how lonely he was.
He wasn’t thinking of the girl as he stared intently out of the window; nor was he paying any attention to the shunting yards as the train slid past, or the rows of shabby houses and the back yards of Sydney’s poorer inner suburbs. He was trying to keep his eyes averted from the woman sitting opposite, and he was finding it difficult. There were just the two of them in the dogbox carriage, and he wished he’d bought a newspaper, or that there were others with whom he could strike up a conversation. It was going to be a long eight hours to Cooma, he thought.