Everything There Was

by Hanna Bervoets

The saucer clipped a table. “Leo! What is this!?”

  He had to talk to me, throwing the saucer against his table would probably work better than “just tell me.”

  “What’s, what… Merel?”

  “I went by the gym.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “Merel? Just come over here.”

  “I’ve also been to see Barry.”

  Taps against table or chair legs, something was being rearranged or moved around: the coat or the doll rump. Was Leo already sitting up?

  “Is that the flashlight? The battery’s almost empty.”

  I flicked off the flashlight.

  “Sorry, it doesn’t even matter. But just come here.”

  “Was it Kalim’s idea?”

  “Merel, I’ll explain, but not like this. Come over here first, ok?”

  * * *

  He wasn’t sitting up; he was still down on the mat. Took my arms and put them on his stomach. His hands around my fists. He spoke calmly and slowly. Not like Leo. But like Leo, the presenter.

  The presenter said I’d been lying next to Barry for hours. On the teacher’s desk, under the sheet, I hadn’t wanted to let go, gotten angry as soon as Leo or Kalim came into the classroom.

  He also said I shouted. Shouted that it was his fault, that it was my fault, and that we’d run out of numbers.

  “I don’t remember that.”

  Why don’t I remember that?

  Leo continued, my head on his chest: I heard the words even before they came out of his mouth.

  “After leaving you there a whole day and night I came to get you.”

  Lifted me up and carried me down, while Kalim put necklaces around Barry’s limbs and made holes in them with a corkscrew. The blood he collected in teacups, which he then emptied in a frying pan.

  “Grilled chorizo,” Leo’s answer to something I wasn’t asking. And he claimed that I’d very briefly woken up.

  “You said something about a princess.”

  “Cinderella?”

  “Yes. Cinderella. That’s the one.”

  Meanwhile Kalim had dropped the little safe from the teachers’ lounge on Barry’s shins a few times. He started cutting where the breaks were. The grill rack from the oven was already on the brazier by then.

  “But whose idea was it? Was it Kalim’s?”

  “It wasn’t a matter of ideas. It was a matter of survival.”

  * * *

  Leo had expected it to taste like chicken.

  It hadn’t, it was more like the guinea pig he’d once been offered in Peru. So he imagined that he was eating that. The evening in the village restaurant, the friendly smile of the girl who’d served him the local delicacy.

  “The smell, taste, and mouth feel were exactly the same.” That supported the lie that made the truth bearable.

  He’d felt restored by it. Better. Good almost.

  “I’ve almost got my strength back.”

  “But what do you need strength for?”

  My question. But it came from Leo’s chest.

  Day 110

  I could see it, so it wasn’t real. There isn’t any light here at night, after all. But dreaming it doesn’t mean it never happened.

  He was standing in my classroom; it was two weeks ago. He went through the drawer of the teacher’s desk, the children’s desks. He looked under my pillow, but what he was looking for was under my mat. Melissa’s diary.

  He came across your appearance quickly, on the exact middle page. Mission accomplished, but he kept on leafing. Ripping pages out so days got lost. Then he shuffled them like poker cards, handed them out in such a way that all of us were equally likely to get a Sunday. He dog-eared the report-card pages, chewed on the cover until pink beads came hailing down. Beads that lost their color as soon as they hit the floor. From pink to white. White as snow, no: white as pills. Because they were pills.

  And then he looked up. Seeing me and seeing you too. Put his hand on my belly, his nails cutting through my skin, into my stomach until they touched your neck. Pulled you out by one of your eight tentacles.

  I couldn’t stop him, when I came in he was already standing on the teacher’s desk.

  He was about to perform, at least that was what it looked like: The camera was off but the light was working. His nametag sparkled in the light, only I couldn’t read it. Meanwhile he spread his arms – golden threads in his armpits – and opened his mouth. But there was no song. There was only a bang.

  Things shook, pills quivered, he jumped off the table, and finally I saw who he was, although I’d known all that time. The source, the origin, the beginning of everything: the perpetrator.

  And although perpetrators don’t need names, this man had given himself one. “Kalim.”

  Day 111

  “Leo?”

  “I thought you were still asleep.”

  “Where are you off to?”

  “What do you think? To the office, of course; download the latest Excel update.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Sure I am. And a new virus scanner.”

  “No.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m serious: Where are you off to, Leo?”

  He stood at the door, already holding the handle. His hair flattened on the back of his head, revealing the position he slept in last night.

  “To eat,” he said softly. “Are you coming?”

  “Pasta or rice?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’d rather stay here.”

  I turned over on his mat; Leo’s coat slipped off me: I felt cold and incomplete.

  “Merel?”

  He was back. Draped his coat over me again. A sleeve plopped down beside me.

  “You know that we’ve run out of rice and pasta, right? We have to.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “Come on, Merel. You’re practical. You’re a soldier.”

  I’m a soldier.

  “Ok,” said Leo. “But I will. I’m sorry.”

  I soldier on.

  “No need. Go on, off you go. The boss doesn’t like latecomers.”

  “Merel…”

  On.

  “Will you tell them I’m sick?”

  “Ok.”

  Day 115

  He was just here. The perpetrator. Here, in my classroom. A cat with a hamster in its maw, he set it down beside me. Could you smell it?

  “Eat,” he gestured. He didn’t even tell a story with it.

  “For you,” he pointed. A gift commanding gratitude.

  But I won’t obey. The perpetrator does not get my gratitude, even though he did everything.

  “I don’t want to.”

  I pushed the plate away: a puck across the floor. And I saw the perpetrator hesitate, should he go after the roasted life?

  “I really don’t want any, please go away.”

  Again that dumb look. A cow behind barbed wire; he cannot leave but keeps forgetting why.

  “Go away, I don’t want any. Did Leo send you?”

  “In English?”

  “I think you understand me perfectly fine, Kalim. If that’s even your name.”

  “Please.”

  “You understand fine. Don’t you think I know? You read Melissa’s diary.”

  And again the perpetrator acted as if he didn’t understand.

  I pointed to my stomach. “Then how did you know about this?”

  “Ahh,” the perpetrator now exclaimed. An innocent look, but the innocent never look innocent.

  “Your hair,” he spoke. “It became full again, thick. Your skin was glowing, your breasts so round. I saw you coming back alive because of the life inside you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  I knew what he was doing, the perpetrator. What he had done to the others.

  A puppeteer escapes notice as long as you don’t see the strings. But now I saw them, the strings. They ran from his fingers to the mats throu
gh the pill bottles to the knife.

  Because it’s him.

  He is the one who turned Yuri against Natalie. He is the one who turned Natalie against us.

  He is the one who can tap into veins and cut into knees and yet didn’t save Yuri.

  And he is the one who told Barry I was sleeping at Leo’s. Who placed the necklace around his neck and pulled it until the sheet stopped bobbing. And he, he is the one who can be the end of you.

  Yes, it’s him, and it’s been him all this time.

  We just didn’t see it. No, we missed the puppeteer because we were preoccupied with other things. With bottles, pills. His pills, which he scattered to blind and ultimately poison us.

  And now the puppeteer acts as if he is himself a puppet: a cat with a hamster in its maw. But there’s a difference between the cat and the perpetrator. The cat doesn’t know any better. So you let it live.

  Day 131

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Doesn’t matter, it’s Sunday.”

  “So the help’s off today?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wanted to ask him to get the guest room ready. Barry comes in tonight.”

  “I think the guest room looks fine.”

  “Has it been swept?”

  “Yes.”

  “The bed made?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a fresh bottle of maple syrup on the desk?”

  “Yikes.”

  “See! We can’t leave anything to the help.”

  Day 118

  Night, it seemed. But the black behind the curtains had turned white. In the gray gleaming I looked at my hands; veins stuck out from my skin, blue tree roots, how did I know they were red inside?

  Just because you can’t see something, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I had to keep repeating it because otherwise I would forget. Forget that it is white outside and red inside. Forget that you’re inside of me.

  * * *

  They call it kicking but it’s not. It’s heads or limbs that hit the pink wall without planning to. But with you it’s different. Because you come from me: you don’t kick, you speak.

  * * *

  “Come on, Merel. You’re practical. You’re a soldier.”

  I’m a soldier.

  I will save us both.

  * * *

  I’d written it down in Melissa’s diary so I wouldn’t forget. So I knew immediately what I had to do this morning. Although it seemed to me still night.

  * * *

  I didn’t even hold on to the railing. Perfectly straight I walked, balanced unicycle, arms along my body, legs doing the work, the last ape in the sequence on the poster. We were naked, the ape or me. Only wore our blue tree-root armor. The armor protected us because the veins revealed that we wore nothing: Nudity makes you vulnerable, and you don’t attack what’s vulnerable. What doesn’t want to be attacked will attack first. So I had worn the garter snake.

  * * *

  How do you choose something you don’t want?

  By imagining what it would be like if you did.

  “That one,” I said. I pointed to a necklace of blue and green beads. Because I love green. And I love blue.

  * * *

  The first door: the sacrifice.

  It was still there, the red altar. The smell was different, I drew the sheet away and there they were: white veins, yellowy garter snakes, and teeming pieces of pasta, not red inside but full of little eggs. The hundreds of maggots, eating, mating, anything for the creatures in their stomachs, progeny and parasites, so why not use lead shot?

  * * *

  I took the snake off my neck. Placed it between my teeth. Bit the beast in two. And then finally found the knife.

  * * *

  The second door: the perpetrator.

  He was lying on his mat, didn’t even hear his door open, only opened his eyes when I was sitting next to him. And had already put the snake around his neck.

  * * *

  And believe it or not, the perpetrator did nothing. Only looked. I know why. He did not see my armor, not the creatures in my stomach, not you. He only saw a vulnerable naked ape. But things you can’t see do exist.

  So I pulled the snake tighter. The head in my right hand, the tail in my left. The eyes of the perpetrator grew big. His fingers tugged at mine but they were too late; the beads sank into the skin, into the throat, disappeared into the flesh. And I pulled a little harder and I looked at my armored hands. The way the veins swelled, turned into larvae.

  And I thought about how I’d hang them on a little fishing pole, hold them over the plastic carousel, above the little pink fishes, their gasping mouths, your gasping little mouth, two blue lips, one hook, eight tentacles, a hundred beads now whizzing through the classroom, hailing down like they’d done in my dream, but the colors were wrong so maybe this was the dream and the rest real, although I don’t think that’s likely: When I woke up, the ape was still next to me.

  The snake around his neck. His eyes wide open.

  I put on his coat. The nudity was no longer necessary. Only the knife.

  Day 130

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  “What day is it?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Ah, nice, then we don’t have to go to the office today.”

  “Nope.”

  “Will you hand me my fur negligee?”

  “I haven’t seen your negligee in a while. Maybe in the other wing?”

  “Hmm, I don’t know. No matter, I’ll just wear what I wore yesterday, it’s Sunday anyway. What’s for breakfast?”

  “Meatloaf.”

  “Delicious.”

  “Should we eat in bed or in the winter garden?”

  “In the winter garden. With the special china.”

  Day 120

  Leo was right. I feel better, good almost. It invigorates you, another man’s flesh running through your veins.

  The fog seems to have been blasted from my mind. He found me in the gym.

  On the floor, with blood on my arms, my stomach, my legs. And a lot of blood on my face.

  I must’ve wanted to make a fire, he said. I must’ve been looking for the lighter, and when I couldn’t find it in the dark, I’d just stuffed the meat in my mouth. A large piece, probably from the buttocks; you could tell from the wound that the knife had sliced downward. Said Leo.

  I nodded. Yes, it must have happened that way. And I talked, explained why it happened that way.

  That I did it for you. Had to choose: you or the perpetrator. The choice was simple. Because the perpetrator was sick. So sick that he needed pills to survive or to give to us – I don’t know and it doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is that he’s guilty.

  “Later,” said Leo. “We’ll talk later.”

  But I had to tell him more. Everything I’d seen and thought over the previous nights.

  Yes, maybe the perpetrator was sick. But you don’t operate on a pet with a tumor; you put it down. And yes, maybe the perpetrator was also a victim. But every sacrifice requires a victim to be slaughtered. Furthermore, the perpetrator was dangerous. Our protection, your protection: This is meat with a reason, and I wanted Leo to know it too, but he put his finger on his lips, “Shh.” And a hand on my stomach. “We have to get to work.”

  Get to work with what the perpetrator had taught him.

  * * *

  Tie off the limbs with necklaces and cut little holes in strategic places; around the organs, in the largest veins. Collect the blood and heat it over a high fire, then the flaying, remove the organs. Bowels are discarded; liver, spleen, and stomach are edible. The best thing to do is to make soup from them; that will temper the flavor. The meat remains: muscle coated in remnants of fat. Don’t fry it too long, grill it a little at most, it’s best on the bone.

  To be able to tear off the meat along with the bone, the bones need to be broken first. And the tendons cut, that’s best
done in twos: One pulls the tendon tight; the other severs it with a knife. We are getting better at it, working systematically too, from the feet up to the stomach.

  The legs are finished now, but we still have the rump and the arms and the head. We’ve put wet dishtowels over them. On frosty nights, the maggots stay away.

  Day 132

  “Good morning, beautiful.”

  “Is it Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then Barry’s here.”

  “All right, he’s in the guest room, sleeping, got an epic jetlag.”

  “When did he get here?”

  “Last night. We didn’t want to wake you, but we already sat and talked for hours in the winter garden.”

  “What about?”

  “All kinds of things.”

  “What things?”

  “Life. Work. That it was no fun anymore after we left. He missed us, mostly you. Now Barry’s sitting opposite Maaike at lunch every day, she only talks about Pinterest and Match.com.”

  “I would never talk about Pinterest.”

  “Exactly. So Barry started out on his own, making travel documentaries. He went to Tierra del Fuego, Spitsbergen, Miami. Sold the first series to a big network right away. And he’s got a new boyfriend, I saw pictures: Dude looks like a model. They’re crazy happy together.”

  “How nice.”

  “Yes, it really is: He was glowing all over. So now you can stop worrying and go back to sleep.”

  Day 124

  He’d wanted to tell me sooner, he said. It was never the right time. When everything was going on with Natalie, with Barry, never the right time. What kind of time it was this morning I don’t know, but he said, “Merel, I want to give you something.”