He smiled. Mariana looked away, feeling exposed and irritated. She reached for her wine. She drained the glass. Then she faced him.
“Your turn, Professor.”
“Very well.” Fosca sipped some wine. “Was I a happy child?” He shook his head. “No. I was not.”
“Why was that?”
He didn’t reply immediately. He got up, and went to fetch the wine. He refilled Mariana’s glass as he spoke.
“Truthfully? My father was a very violent man. I lived in fear of my life, and my mother’s life. I watched him brutalize my mother on many occasions.”
Mariana wasn’t expecting such a frank admission. And certainly, the words had the ring of truth, and yet they were entirely disconnected from any emotion. It was as if he felt nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s terrible.”
He shrugged. He didn’t reply for a moment. He sat down again. “You have a way of getting things out of people, Mariana. You’re a good therapist, I can tell. Despite my intention not to reveal myself to you, you have ended up getting me on your couch.” He smiled. “Therapeutically speaking.”
Mariana hesitated. “Have you ever been married?”
Fosca laughed. “That’s following a train of thought. Are we moving from the couch to bed?” He smiled and drank some more wine. “I have not been married, no. I never met the right woman.” He stared at her. “Not yet.”
Mariana didn’t reply. He kept staring. His gaze was heavy, intense, lingering. She felt like a rabbit in headlights. She thought of the word Zoe used—“dazzling.” Finally, unable to bear it, she looked away, which seemed to amuse him.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” she heard him say, “but you have more than beauty. You have a certain quality—a stillness. Like the stillness in the depths of the ocean, far beneath the waves, where nothing moves. Very still … and very sad.”
Mariana didn’t say anything. She didn’t like where this was going—she sensed she was losing the upper hand, if she’d ever had it. She was also a little drunk, and unprepared for Fosca’s sudden switch from romance to murder.
“This morning,” he said, “I received a visit from Chief Inspector Sangha. He wanted to know where I was when Veronica was murdered.”
He looked at Mariana, perhaps hoping for a reaction. She didn’t give him one. “And what did you say?”
“The truth. That I was giving a private tutorial to Serena in my rooms. I suggested he check with her if he didn’t believe me.”
“I see.”
“The inspector asked me a lot of questions—the last of which was about you. You know what he asked?”
Mariana shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“He wondered why you were so prejudiced against me. What I had done to deserve it.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said I had no idea—but that I would ask you.” He smiled. “So I’m asking you. What’s going on, Mariana? You’ve been orchestrating a campaign against me since Tara’s murder. What if I told you I’m an innocent man? I’d love to oblige and be your scapegoat, but—”
“You’re not my scapegoat.”
“No? An outsider—a blue-collar American in the elitist world of English academia? I stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Hardly.” Mariana shook her head. “I’d say you fit in extremely well.”
“Well, naturally I’ve done my best to blend in, but the bottom line is that although the English may be infinitely more subtle than Americans in their xenophobia, I will always be a foreigner—and therefore viewed with suspicion.” He fixed his eyes on Mariana intensely. “As are you—you don’t belong here either.”
“We’re not talking about me.”
“Oh, but we are—we’re one and the same.”
She frowned. “We’re not. Not at all.”
“Oh, Mariana.” He laughed. “You don’t seriously believe I’m murdering my students? It’s absurd. That’s not to say a few don’t deserve it.” He laughed again—and his laugh sent a shiver down Mariana’s spine.
She stared at him—feeling she had just glimpsed who he really was: callous, sadistic, entirely uncaring. She was getting into dangerous territory, she knew, but the wine had made her bold and reckless, and she might never get this chance again. She chose her words carefully.
“I’d like to know, then, exactly what kind of person you think killed them?”
Fosca looked at her, as if he were surprised by the question. But he nodded. “I’ve given it some thought, as it happens.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“And,” he said, “the first thing that strikes me is that it’s religious in nature. That’s clear. He’s a spiritual man. In his eyes, anyway.”
Mariana remembered the cross in his hallway. Like you, she thought.
Fosca sipped some wine and went on. “The killings are not just random attacks. I don’t think the police have worked that out yet. The murders are a sacrificial act.”
Mariana looked up sharply. “A sacrificial act?”
“That’s right—it’s a ritual—of rebirth and resurrection.”
“I don’t see any resurrection here. Just death.”
“It depends entirely on how you look at it.” He smiled. “And I’ll tell you something else. He’s a showman. He loves to perform.”
Like you, she thought.
“The murders remind me of a Jacobean tragedy,” he said. “Violence and horror—to shock and entertain.”
“Entertain?”
“Theatrically speaking.”
He smiled. And Mariana was filled with a sudden desire to get as far away from him as possible. She pushed away her plate. “I’m finished.”
“Are you sure you don’t want anymore?”
She nodded. “I’ve had enough.”
13
Professor Fosca suggested they have coffee and dessert in the sitting room, and Mariana reluctantly followed him into the next room. He gestured at the large dark sofa by the fireplace. “Why don’t you sit down?”
Mariana felt unwilling to sit next to him and be that close to him—it made her feel unsafe, somehow. And a thought occurred to her—if she felt this uneasy being alone with him, how might an eighteen-year-old girl feel?
She shook her head. “I’m tired. I think I’ll skip dessert.”
“Don’t go, not yet. Let me make some coffee.”
Before she could object, Fosca left the room, disappearing into the kitchen.
Mariana fought an impulse to run, to get the hell out of there. She felt woozy and frustrated—and annoyed with herself. Nothing had been accomplished. She’d learned nothing new, nothing she didn’t know already. She should just go before he came back and she was forced to fight off his amorous advances, or worse.
As she deliberated what to do, her eyes wandered around the room. Her gaze came to rest on a small stack of books on the coffee table. She stared at the first book on the pile. She tilted her head to read the title.
The Collected Works of Euripides.
Mariana glanced over her shoulder toward the kitchen. No sign of him. She hurried over to the book.
She reached out and picked it up. A red leather bookmark was poking out from inside.
She opened it at the bookmarked page. It was inserted into the middle of a scene from Iphigenia in Aulis. The text was in English on one side of the page, and in the original Ancient Greek on the other.
Several lines had been underlined. Mariana recognized them immediately. They were the same lines on the postcard that had been sent to Veronica:
ἴδεσθε τὰν Ἰλίου
καὶ Φρυγῶν ἑλέπτολιν
στείχουσαν, ἐπὶ κάρα στέφη
βαλουμέναν χερνίβων τε παγάς,
βωμόν γε δαίμονος θεᾶς
ῥανίσιν αἱματορρύτοις
χρανοῦσαν εὐφυῆ τε σώματος δέρην
/> σφαγεῖσαν.
“What are you looking at?”
Mariana jumped—his voice was right behind her. She slammed the book shut. She turned to face him with a forced smile. “Nothing, just looking.”
Fosca handed her a small cup of espresso. “Here.”
“Thank you.”
He glanced at the book. “Euripides, as you may have gathered, is a favorite of mine. I think of him as an old friend.”
“Do you?”
“Oh, yes. He’s the only tragedian who speaks the truth.”
“The truth? About what?”
“Everything. Life. Death. The unbelievable cruelty of man. He tells it like it is.”
Fosca sipped some coffee, staring at her. And as she looked into his black eyes, Mariana no longer had any doubts. She was absolutely certain:
She was looking into the eyes of a murderer.
Part Four
And so, when a man comes along and talks like one’s own father and acts like him, even adults … will submit to this man, will acclaim him, allow themselves to be manipulated by him, and put their trust in him, finally surrendering entirely to him without even being aware of their enslavement. One is not normally aware of something that is a continuation of one’s own childhood.
—ALICE MILLER, For Your Own Good
The childhood shows the man,
As morning shows the day.
—JOHN MILTON, Paradise Regained
1
Death, and what happens next, has always been a big interest of mine.
Ever since Rex, I suppose.
Rex was my earliest memory. A beautiful creature—a black-and-white sheepdog. The best kind of animal. He put up with me pulling his ears and trying to sit on him, and all the abuses a toddler is capable of, but still he wagged his tail when he saw me coming, greeting me with love. It was a lesson in forgiveness—not just once, but again and again.
He taught me more than forgiveness. He taught me about death.
When I was nearly twelve, Rex was getting old, and finding it hard to keep up with the sheep. My mother suggested retiring him, getting a younger dog to take his place.
I knew my father didn’t like Rex—sometimes I suspected he hated him. Or was it my mother he hated? She loved Rex—even more than I did. She loved him for his unconditional affection—and his lack of speech. He was her constant companion, working with her all day, and she cooked and cared for him with more devotion than she ever showed her husband, I remember my father saying, during a fight.
I remember what he said when my mother proposed getting another dog. We were in the kitchen. I was on the floor, stroking Rex. My mother was cooking at the stove. My father was pouring himself a whiskey. Not his first.
I’m not paying to feed two dogs, he said. I’ll shoot this one first.
It took a few seconds for his words to sink in, for me to understand exactly what he meant. My mother shook her head.
No, she said. For once, she meant it. If you touch that dog, I will—
What? said my father. Are you threatening me?
I knew what was coming. You need real guts to take a bullet for someone. That’s what she did when she stood up for Rex that day.
My father went crazy, of course. A crash of glass told me I was too late—I should have run for cover, like Rex, who had leaped out of my arms and was halfway out the door. I had no option but to sit there on the floor, trapped, as my father threw over the table, missing me by inches. My mother retaliated by throwing plates at him.
He charged through the broken dishes toward her. His fists were up. She was backed up against the counter. She was trapped. And then …
She held up a knife. A large knife—used for cutting up the lambs. She held it up, pointing it at my father’s chest. At his heart.
I’ll kill you, dammit, she said. I mean it.
There was silence for a moment.
I realized it was entirely possible she might stab him. To my disappointment, she didn’t.
My father didn’t say another word. He just turned and walked out. The kitchen door slammed after him.
My mother didn’t move for a second. Then she started to cry. It’s horrible watching your mother cry. You feel so impotent, so powerless.
I’ll kill him for you, I said.
But that just made her cry harder.
And then … we heard a gunshot.
And then another.
I don’t remember leaving the house—or stumbling into the yard. All I remember is seeing Rex’s limp, bleeding body on the ground, and my father marching off, holding his rifle.
I watched the life drain out of Rex. His eyes became glassy and unseeing. His tongue went blue. His limbs slowly turned stiff. I couldn’t stop staring at him. I had a sense—even then, at that young age—that the sight of this dead animal had stained my life forever.
The soft, wet fur. The broken body. The blood. I shut my eyes, but I could still see it.
The blood.
And later on, when my mother and I carried Rex to the pit and threw him in, down into the depths, to rot with the other unwanted carcasses, I knew that part of me went down with him. The good part.
I tried to summon up some tears for him, but I couldn’t cry. That poor animal never did me any harm—he showed me only love, only kindness.
And yet I couldn’t cry for him.
Instead, I was learning how to hate.
A cold, hard kernel of hatred was forming in my heart, like a diamond in a dark piece of coal.
I swore I would never forgive my father. And one day, I’d have my revenge. But until then, until I grew up, I was trapped.
So I retreated into my imagination. In my fantasies, my father suffered.
And so did I.
In the bathroom, with the door locked, or in the hayloft, or at the back of the barn, unobserved, I would escape—from this body … from this mind.
I would act out cruel, horribly violent death scenes: agonized poisonings, brutal stabbings—butchery and disembowelment. I would be drawn and quartered, tortured to death. I would bleed.
I would stand on my bed and prepare to be sacrificed by pagan priests. They’d grab hold of me and hurl me from the cliff, down, down into the sea, into the depths—where the sea-monsters were circling, waiting to devour me.
I’d shut my eyes and jump off the bed.
And I would be torn to shreds.
2
Mariana left Professor Fosca’s rooms feeling unsteady on her feet.
This wasn’t from the wine and the champagne—even though she had drunk more than she should. It was the shock of what she had just seen—the Greek quotation underlined in his book. It was strange, she thought, how moments of extreme clarity often had the same texture as drunkenness.
She couldn’t keep this to herself. She had to talk to someone. But who?
She paused in the courtyard to think this over. No point in going to find Zoe—not now, not after their last conversation; Zoe simply wouldn’t take her seriously. She needed a sympathetic ear. She thought of Clarissa, but she wasn’t sure Clarissa would want to believe her.
So that left only one person.
She pulled out her phone and rang Fred. He said he was more than happy to talk to her, and suggested they meet at Gardies in about ten minutes.
The Gardenia, known and beloved by generations of students as Gardies, was a Greek diner in the heart of Cambridge, serving late-night fast food. Mariana walked there, along the curved, pedestrianized alley, smelling Gardies before she saw it—greeted by the smell of chips sizzling in hot oil and frying fish.
Gardies was a tiny place—barely a handful of customers could fit inside at once—so people would congregate outside, eating in the alley. Fred was waiting outside the entrance, under the green awning and the sign reading, Have a break the Greek way.
Fred grinned at Mariana as she approached.
“Hello there. Fancy some chips? My treat.”
The smell
of frying had reminded Mariana she was hungry—she had barely touched that bloody dinner at Fosca’s. She nodded gratefully.
“I’d love some.”
“Coming right up, miss.”
Fred bounded into the entrance, tripping on the step—and colliding with another customer, who swore at him. Mariana had to smile—he really was one of the clumsiest people she had ever met. He soon emerged again, holding two white paper bags, bulging with steaming chips.
“There you go,” he said. “Ketchup? Or mayo?”
Mariana shook her head. “Neither, thanks.” She blew on the chips to cool them for a minute. Then she tried one. It was salty and sharp, a little too sharp, with vinegar. She coughed, and Fred gave her an anxious look.
“Too much vinegar? Sorry. My hand slipped.”
“It’s okay.” Mariana smiled and shook her head. “They’re great.”
“Good.”
They stood there for a moment, silently eating their chips. As she ate, Mariana glanced at him. The soft lamplight made his boyish features seem even younger. He was just a kid, she thought. An eager boy scout. She felt a genuine fondness for him in that moment.
Fred caught her looking at him. He gave her a timid smile. He spoke between mouthfuls. “I’ll regret saying this, I’m sure. But I’m very happy you called me. It means you must have missed me, even if just a tiny bit—” Fred saw her expression, and his smile faded. “Ah. I see I’m wrong. That’s not why you called.”
“I called because something happened—and I want to talk to you about it.”
Fred looked a little more hopeful. “So you did want to talk to me?”
“Oh, Fred.” Mariana rolled her eyes. “Just listen.”
“Go ahead.”
Fred ate his chips as Mariana told him what happened—about finding the postcards, and discovering the same quotation underlined in Fosca’s book.
He remained silent after she finished. Finally, he said, “What are you going to do?”
Mariana shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Fred brushed the crumbs from his mouth, crumpled up the paper bag, and threw it in the bin. She watched him, trying to read his expression.
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