Amil drops the cudgel. Turning, he follows Wolf who is circling the edge of the room. Wolf stops and looks back at him. But neither sees the other. Instead, Wolf sees a pile of human bones that keeps growing, that keeps swallowing the space around it; Amil sees a series of identical men, naked, skeleton-thin, squatting painfully over chamber pots, the diarrhea pouring out of them like fetid, stagnant water. Killer! Wolf and Amil scream at the same time before lunging at each other.
Assassino! Amil shouts.
Attentäter! Wolf retorts.
A noise from near the entrance makes them hold up. Still somewhat stunned, Basha is trying to crawl away, reaching up for the door handle with one hand and clutching a purse with the other. She is muttering: Please God, not again. Don’t let it happen again. Help me…
I’m sorry, Wolf says, smiling and offering her his hand. My friend has emotional control problems. Prone to outbursts. Neglected childhood and all that.
I’m prone to outbursts, Amil says. That’s a good one. What happened the last time?
Please…
Oh, come on, Wolf says with a dismissive wave. That doesn’t count. You heard what he called himself. A Marxist-Leninist of all things. You know how those guys make my blood boil.
Please…
Yeah, well, Amil says, you didn’t have to shove his head in the oven.
Please…I…
What’s she saying? Wolf asks, leaning down. What are you whispering?
As he places his ear near Basha’s mouth, she pulls out a can from her purse and sprays him in the face. He screams and falls to the ground, fists rubbing against his eyes.
Amil tries to approach but she holds out the can menacingly.
Come closer, you bastard. You sick fuck. Come on. I dare you. There’s plenty more where that came from. After I’m through with you, the cops will just have the mopping up. Unlike my ancestors, I’m not going like a lamb to slaughter.
Amil looks around, spots the gun where he’s left it in his private corner. But before he can reach it, she backs out of the door and slams it shut behind her, all the while shouting: Not again. Never again.
Wolf continues to writhe. Amil locks the door and then squats beside him.
My eyes, Wolf says moaning. I can’t see.
There is hammering on the door, followed by shouts to open it or have it broken down.
We have to leave, Amil says.
He leads Wolf towards the trunk, opens the lid and helps him to get in.
You should have killed her when you had the chance, Wolf says.
Yes, Amil says, lowering himself into the trunk and pulling shut the lid just as the front door smashes open. Maybe next time, I will.
EXORCISM
When he first stepped into the house, the owners ignored him completely. They had no wish for him to be there; or they’d changed their minds; or they simply couldn’t see him – in the beginning it made little difference. The fact remained he was ignored. Mother, father, son and daughter, all moved daily towards their appointed rounds without being in the least disturbed by or interested in the strange man who had slipped in one night, all asweating, through a window left open on the ground floor. It discomfited the guest, however, since he had arrived with their letter of invitation in his hand and had knocked long and hard on the door before spotting the curtains billowing through the window. Unfortunately, before he could present himself properly, the letter was stolen or misplaced in the turmoil that followed his entrance. But he remembered very well what had been written on it: “You, ____________, are cordially invited to marry our daughter on a day and time of your convenience and choosing. Till then, our home is yours. Please, make yourself welcome.”
Well, it so happened this daughter acted most distant of all. While the rest of the family at least had the decency to sit down to breakfast with him, even if they didn’t acknowledge his presence, she insisted on having hers in one of the numerous bedrooms sprinkled about the house. Occasionally, he would spot her approaching, dirty dishes in hand, from one end of the hall while he was at the other. He would rush to greet her, smiling and open-armed. But, between one blink and the next, she was gone (as if playing hide-and-seek with someone else). From a distance, from the distance she kept between them, she looked extraordinarily beautiful, almost translucent – and certainly what would have once been described as a “catch.” And he could see no reason why he, rather than the various and sundry strangers that milled about the grounds, had been asked to marry her. This disparate crowd grew daily in size and was constantly underfoot. When the house was bulging and could take no more, they started to pitch tents on the vast expanse of lawn. They were, to a person, impeccably dressed and carrying expensively wrapped gifts. They were also all male. He concluded the family recognized male relations only. Or the daughter wanted to maintain a homogeneous coterie of friends and these were actually the wedding guests. He even made a game of trying to pick out who the best man was, assuming there was one. This was a thankless exercise as any of the hundreds could fit the bill – so close were they in dress, manner and attitude.
The truth was that, before receiving their letter, he had hardly given marriage a thought. Why he’d responded to their invitation remained a mystery. Curiosity? The lure of wealth and a name steeped in mystique? Through an examination of their records (open for all to see), he discovered the family was rich from undisclosed sources and owned the land for miles around. He wasn’t greedy but a parcel of his own wouldn’t be at all bad. In fact, having never owned more than the clothes on his back, he was of the opinion he deserved everything they gave him. This was negated nicely by the initial phase of silence with which he’d been greeted.
He spent the nights lying on his bed, asking himself questions. These questions served only to agitate him further as he could come up with no answers. The days began with meticulous searches through his pockets – he was always losing something; they ended with frantic explorations through the complex of rooms. Most, especially those occupied by the people he had come to call the wedding guests, were barely furnished, unpainted, harshly lit, with gyprock and ceiling beams showing. A few – always empty – were quite ornate, decorated with what he surmised were the sentimental jokes of the family: pictures of mythical animals, rosy-cheeked cupids, scenes from 19th-century melodrama. One day, he stumbled into what must be the wedding room. It was designed in the style of a miniature Sistine Chapel, complete with the story of the Creation and Fall of Man and ringed by rose-shaped stained-glass windows through which flowed a gorgeous flood of light. He knew this was no natural light but one stimulated through modern technology. Nevertheless, it felt like a holy place and something gently bowed his head. The slight pressure might have kept him in that position for the rest of the evening if a spider hadn’t scuttled down from the ceiling (from between that tiny space that separates God’s finger from Adam’s) to play near his face. On another occasion, he overheard scattered bits of conversation from a room he happened to be passing. Female voice: “…can’t touch it…” Male voice: “No…not any longer…” Female voice: “But it’s…so beautiful…don’t want to…” Male voice: “…must. For the family…” At this point, having either overheard him in turn or come to a natural conclusion, they ended the conversation and he tiptoed away not to risk being discovered.
Although the verbal silence between him and the family was never broken (except with the daughter), a type of communication did evolve. This was in the form of notes attached to his door. The first was signed by the father and read: “Love is an unnatural state of mind. I detest mixed marriages.” Neither applied to him. Love might be a twitch in his genitals but never a state of mind and, as far as he could tell, they were of the same colour, race, religion and language. Yet, the note seemed particularly appropriate. The next day, an anonymous note: “Without love and without hope…” That was all. Followed by a threatening note from the brother: “You’ve caused us nothing but misery and sorrow. There is no reason for this
. My sister is a fragile bird whose body has never been touched and whose heart beats pure. What about yours? I’ll pray for the surgical return of your purity.” A note from the mother: “I want your love. Without your love, I live in a world of quiet despair. My legs ache to think of your strong and delicate muscles pumping against me. Please come again.”
He attempted at first to answer these with notes of his own, notes which he left scattered about the house. They went untouched. Perhaps they were glanced at, even read, but he couldn’t be sure. In any case, he wasn’t very good at writing and it took only the slightest hint of laughter, a suggested wisp of a smirk, to discourage him. This was the laughter, the smirk he interpreted behind the gesture of not accepting his notes. So, one evening, he gathered them all and threw them into the incinerator. A flurry of messages followed, littering the front of his door. Then they stopped. The wait was agonizing. He had expected naturally to advance from notes to civil conversation. Sign language, at least. Instead…a return to silence.
After not seeing them for several weeks, he found all four accidentally in a new attic he’d been exploring. He spotted them the moment he opened the trap door and poked his head in. They were hanging, not ten feet away, from the sturdy centre beam. He went no closer for, as much as he admired the dead in theory, he had no use for them first-hand. So he backed out and ran to his room. There, behind the safety of the abstract, he decided to solve the mystery. Taking out a piece of paper, he wrote four headings: Murder, Suicide, Accidental Death, Of Natural Causes.
• Murder: no motive; no weapon; no suspects (except the thousands of wedding guests and myself). The guests are out due to the very nature of their being here; the investigator is never a suspect.
• Suicide: very improbable; difficulty of accomplishing same; no reasons for such behaviour on their part. Is suicide a family affair?
• Accidental Death: my philosophy instructs me there is no such thing. All thoughts in this category will be shifted to the first and second.
• I conclude, therefore, by a process of elimination, that the four members of this family died, at the end of a long and productive life, Of Natural Causes which, being natural, couldn’t be helped.
Naturally, the house was his. He would burn it down. But, first, he had to bury them. Perhaps they had a burying room, as well as a hanging room. He returned reluctantly to the attic, hoping the process of decomposition hadn’t started yet. Climbing out of the trap door, he sniffed the air. Musty, but not putrid. Good, the flies and rodents hadn’t yet discovered them. As he got up his courage to cut them down, a rope snapped and a body fell to the ground – head rolling off in one direction, the rest in another. He clutched at his stomach and threw up noisily into the fibreglass insulation. It was while wiping his mouth that he noticed the pieces of straw jutting out of the body’s shirt-collar. Caught in the inertia of anger, he tore them apart, bit by bit, leaving the daughter for the last. Her, he raped – symbolically, at least. Then, sweeping up the leavings into a pile, he urinated and defecated on them.
This is the last straw, he said to himself as he climbed down out of the attic (and not getting his unintended pun). He was determined to leave them forever. Laugh at him, would they? He’d show them. But, first, he had to wash the spittle from his face. He opened the door to the toilet in his room, took one step in search of the light switch and plunged screaming into nothing. His telltale hand on the door knob saved him from plummeting into what he was sure was their bottomless room. He struggled to climb out and crawled back to his own room. It was only when he fell onto the bed that he noticed the stain spreading across the front of his trousers.
He slept for what seemed forever but which was actually two days. During that time, they took the opportunity to add innumerable rooms to the house. They also removed his clothes and replaced them with a wedding outfit, a spiffy grey tux that had been impeccably tailored. The tent guests were brought inside to join the others already in the house. They were installed in the pews according to some mysterious ranking and size of gift. Among them was a priest. He gawked at the replica Sistine Chapel (giving Eve the mal’occhio) and rubbed his hands appreciatively. A red carpet led from the bridegroom’s door to the wedding room. There was no chance of his getting lost. Gifts lay scattered in the halls, mostly useless items: bird calls and eagle feathers and the occasional lizard in a glass cage.
When the bridegroom finally awoke from a dream of whores, he knew right away it was his wedding day. All the troubles of the previous weeks (silence, notes, practical jokes) came together, formed a heap on his chest. For some reason, there was now no turning back. When one builds to a climax, there’s no sense in omitting it. By then, it’s too late. (“Never too late; always too late,” his mother relished saying over the phone.) He remembered as he dressed that no one from his family had been invited. And they had wanted so much to be there for his wedding, to make up for all the elopements. Perhaps it wouldn’t seem this strange if they were there. Family has a way of destroying all mystery.
The first people he saw on opening the wedding-room door were his mother and father. What a surprise! They were talking in animated whispers to the bride’s parents. How he would have liked to be playing with his mother’s breasts at that moment. Of course, they all turned when he entered – his parents, the bride’s parents, the brother, the priest, the rows upon rows of men. His mother crinkled her eyes; his father hoisted his pants with pride. Several of the guests put away their dice; others released a torrent of frogs; still others added grease to their hair. Radiant, unperspiring faces followed his progress to the altar. Arriving, he shook hands with his future father-in-law. He wavered a moment between shaking hands and kissing before leaving a print of his lips on his future mother-in-law’s cheek. She turned and kissed him passionately, slipping her tongue into his mouth quickly back and forth, then biting him on the lip. The photographer snapped a picture but, in his hurry, cut off their heads. They were about to grapple, to take advantage of the heat of the moment, when the music started and they reluctantly separated.
The bride entered on the arm of her brother (who had taken the opportunity to sneak out). He didn’t recognize her as the girl who continually avoided him. This one was solid, opaque. As she came towards him, the appropriate music was piped in through loudspeakers. But, when she reached him and had taken her position beside him, the person playing started shifting between tender waltzes and martial airs. This bothered no one except the bridegroom who was easily influenced by music. At one moment he stared dreamily into space; the next found him in the fixed-bayonet throes of patriotism.
(The brother: “It was I. I led her to the double-bladed axe. A creature never touched except by my unsullied hands. I watched her being penetrated before a crowd of dice-throwers. Then they gorged themselves for our benefit, running about the tents, chasing the animals, poking at each other with sharp sticks. One of them stumbled down the bottomless room. That helped make up for all the suffering and sacrifices. Most are gone now. Such banal relations he possesses. Illiterates that stink of the trough. No regard for art. No awareness of their meaningless lives.”)
(Again, the brother: “I don’t think I’ll be able to listen to their night noises. Several times I have pleaded with my sister to stop, to halt the degeneration into a rutting bitch, but she’s on his side now. In fact, the noises seem to have grown louder lately. Perhaps to spite me. My parents have settled into sullen gloom. They accuse me of allowing her to abandon them. How quickly they forget. I was against it from the beginning. And I told them he’d only dilute the blood of the family. But they wouldn’t listen. By all rights, she should have been my bride. I was the only one fit for her.”)
The silence deepened after the wedding. Except for the girl, of course, who took to talking all the time (even when he sweated and grunted to climax; even when she lowered her head onto his penis). She told him about the house and its rooms, the family, the silence, the notes, the practical jokes, the bottoml
ess room, the wedding room, the things stolen, her brother, the guests rented in town, the addition of rooms, the deletion of rooms, the empty rooms, the unfurnished rooms, her body, her face, her fantasies, her innermost feelings. Then she questioned him about his house and his family, his face, his body, his feelings, his dreams. Did he masturbate? How often? Which fingers of which hand did he use? Would he do it in front of her? Was he in love with his mother? Her mother? Did he dream of being violated? Yet, while all this talking filled him with facts, new ideas and a sensation of being wanted, it didn’t help clear up the confusion he’d felt from the moment he’d first climbed into that open window.
To escape the chatter and to give himself a chance to think, he resumed his daily tours of the house, which had continued to expand since the wedding. Occasionally, he still found a stranger or two lost in the maze of rooms. Invariably, they were emaciated and in need of psychiatric attention. He gave them soup and the name of a good mental hospital, then bundled them off. He also boarded up the door to the bottomless room, fastening iron bars across it. That didn’t stop the strange scratching noises but at least gave the impression of neutralizing his fear.
Of the other three inhabitants, he saw less and less. They avoided him, no longer came down for breakfast, slammed doors in his face. But he didn’t care for he was taking over more and more. The family obviously sensed this. They moved off to the corner of the house as far as possible removed from where he stayed. When he entered their room one day (purely by accident), they scurried about packing what they could carry and went in search of another home. The girl cried for a while, especially when she came across something or other that had belonged to one of them or reminded her of them. But he was happy to be alone and sole master of the mansion.
The Photographer in Search of Death Page 2