Читать книгу The Darkness that Divides Us - Renate Dorrestein - Страница 14

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E is for Evil

The next Monday morning we started on a new chapter in our reader, all about a mouse called Koos, but we couldn’t concentrate. We kept having to peek at Thomas’s empty desk. Halfway through the lesson, Miss Joyce sighed that there was no point pretending it was a day like any other. We’d better take out our crayons and make a lovely picture for Thomas to show him how bad we felt for him.

With a loud clatter, we got out our crayons. But then the classroom went very quiet. The idea that granddads died and then never took you fishing again was hard enough to fathom, but … your dad? Dads weren’t supposed to die, were they?

With clammy hands we drew a sou’wester lying abandoned on the ground in a stand of tall stinging nettles. Down in a corner we drew Thomas with tears rolling down his fat cheeks, with his mom next to him. Out of respect we went back and erased her broom.

After a little while, Vanessa asked in a small voice, ‘Did he have cancer, Miss?’

Our teacher sat down, facing us on the bench where Thomas and Lucy normally sat fondly bashing each other’s brains out. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said.

Lucy wasn’t at school that day, either. That was as it should be, naturally, if your fiancé’s father had died. You were supposed to stay home and weep, with a black veil over your face. The tears you shed beneath that black veil turned into crystals, which you were supposed to store under your bed in a special little box, so you could take them out every so often and, smiling wistfully, watch them sparkle in the light.

Miss Joyce sighed again. She said, ‘I’m afraid I know just as little about it as you. But I don’t think he was ill. If he had been, he wouldn’t have been able to hold down such a demanding physical job, landscaping in all kinds of weather, rain or shine.’ She pulled the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands. ‘Luckily, it hardly ever happens, but it is possible, my pets, for someone’s heart just to stop, or for something to suddenly go wrong in the brain.’

We, too, pulled down our sleeves. We swayed just as sadly from side to side as our teacher. It did help a little. Then we just sat for a while, saying nothing.

She said, ‘If he’d been found earlier, who knows, he might still be … It was unfortunate that it happened during the storm, when no one else would venture outside.’

It was another reason Lucy had to be shedding bitter tears right now. If only she had run away from home as she’d said she would! Because in that case she’d have crossed the field on her way to Shepherd’s Close. She’d have bumped into Thomas’s father, out for a stroll or smoking a fag he wasn’t allowed to light up at home. She would have seen him suddenly clutching his chest, and she’d have called for an ambulance. She’d probably even have been allowed to ride along in the ambulance, with the sirens going and all.

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the ground, isn’t he?’

‘No, silly, he’s in heaven!’

Miss Joyce said, ‘His body is being examined by a special kind of doctor to find out why he died. It’s the law.’

We perked up. Right at this very moment, he was being sliced into little pieces and examined under a microscope. Then, as soon as those doctors found out what had malfunctioned, they’d fix it. Then they’d stuff everything back inside and sew him up again neatly. And then they’d give him a huge electric shock, and then he’d open his eyes and get up from the operating table.

‘And after that,’ said Miss Joyce sadly, ‘they’ll take him home in a coffin, and then anyone who wants to can go there to say goodbye.’

At lunchtime, nearly all of our mothers showed up in the schoolyard. As soon as they saw Miss Joyce, they thronged around her, arms waving in the air. As if it wasn’t horrible enough, they cried, they’d just heard a piece of even more appalling news, first from Mr De Vries, who had a son who was a policeman, and then again at the baker’s, whose middle daughter was married to Mr De Vries’s son.

They had immediately decided that the children could no longer be allowed to walk to school and back by themselves. They had already worked out a carpool. They made our teacher swear she’d watch us like a hawk at recess, and be extra careful herself, for that matter. ‘Because he didn’t die from natural causes,’ they whispered behind their hands. ‘It was foul play!’ They couldn’t bring themselves to say any more; the very thought of it made them gag. With grim faces they grabbed us, lifted us onto the back of their bikes, and raced home. We didn’t know what had hit us.

Wherever you looked, you saw mothers with their kids on the backs of their bikes, or mothers dragging their progeny along on the pavement. On every street corner people stood in little huddles, whispering. The streets were buzzing with the shocking word that nobody had ever expected to use with regard to an acquaintance or a neighbour, even if he was only a superficial acquaintance or a relatively new neighbour: murder. Murder on home turf! Murder in the pioneer housing estate the prime minister had inaugurated in person, before the cameras of The Evening News, brandishing a great big symbolic key made of gold-painted plywood! He had spoken of a new way of life. A new, safer era for our country.

The newspaper cuttings were still pinned to our kitchen cabinets. If we climbed on a stool we could touch them; by now they were as dry and wrinkly as an oak leaf pressed between the pages of a book and then forgotten. The cuttings drew a lovely picture of the picturesque new housing enclave, a place that avoided the urban blight of slums, poverty and decay. Here there were no homeless people, no crazies with matted beards (whether borderline or completely insane) sleeping in your doorway because the shelters had run out of room, no junkies or dealers on every bridge, underage prostitutes with laddered black stockings, pickpockets, preachers of the apocalypse, alcoholics, bicycle thieves, foreigners with hungry eyes, foreigners with vacant eyes, foreigners out to steal your car radio, foreigners out to rape your daughter, pimps walking around with a menacing swagger, or apartment dwellers who are so upset at the infernal racket their neighbours make that they resort to smearing the communal stairs with green soap.

Here everything would be different, the newspapers promised. No dark, dangerous alleys in our neighbourhood. No riff-raff in our streets. No risk of the menace that elsewhere could ambush you in your own home. And now? Now that promise of a safe life was smashed to smithereens. But where could our shocked mothers turn to recoup their loss? If only reality came with an on-and-off switch, like the TV, which they always hastily turned off when something unpleasant came on, like the recent news report about those kids who had been lured into the woods by some man.

Instead of making us lunch, our mothers gathered in one another’s living rooms with unkempt hair that would soon reek of smoke and cigarettes. They talked in low voices. Out in the corridor, we pressed our ears to the wall.

What, they asked one another, could possibly have led to this criminal act? If only they had the facts, a motive, the reason. Because what if there was a dangerous lunatic at large, ready to claim another innocent victim tomorrow? What should they do? And, by the way, shouldn’t one of them go over to Thomas’s mother, to see how she was holding up? They sighed deeply. They crushed out their cigarettes. They huddled a little closer together. Then, finally, they got down to the nitty-gritty. ‘A pencil,’ they said. ‘Who would ever think of that?’

Mr De Vries’s son and his colleagues didn’t need an autopsy of Thomas’s father’s heart, or of his blood vessels, or his lungs. His stomach didn’t have to be pumped to check for anything more unusual than the leeks, meatballs, and vanilla pudding he’d had for dinner that fateful night. They’d immediately known what the pathologist and his helpers had to examine, because there was just one very visible injury. All they’d needed was a pair of tweezers.

They couldn’t help whistling through their teeth when the pathologist pulled the pencil out of the deceased’s left eye. It had been driven into the eye with such force that the point had broken off against the inside of his skull. It was a fat, round, red colouring pencil.

He must have died instantaneously.

When at five o’clock that evening the details of the murder were published in the newspaper, our mothers could no longer keep it from us.

After tea we managed to give them the slip and snuck out of the house. We met up on the green. Hiding behind the beech hedge, we kept the rectory under surveillance. We waited patiently, confident that the police would come to the same conclusion as us. After all, there weren’t too many people who used that kind of pencil; it was only too obvious the murder weapon had come from this house. The killer must have stolen it from the studio. Or maybe he’d pinched it from Lucy’s backpack.

There were two of them, and they arrived in an ordinary, unmarked car. Their faces were ordinary too, and their windbreakers were so ho-hum that it almost made you fall asleep. It was all very different from what we’d seen on TV.

They were inside for an hour, at least.

We could feel our hair growing, that was how little else was happening. We hadn’t expected them to take this long over the identification of stolen goods. Though they had to be careful not to erase any fingerprints, of course.

Suddenly the rectory’s front door opened. Flanked by the two detectives, Lucy’s mother came out. She walked resolutely down the path, carrying an overnight bag, the kind mothers always took with them when they had to go to hospital to have another baby. One of the detectives held the car door open for her. Just as resolutely, she climbed into the back seat. We couldn’t see the expression on her face because her long, straight hair hung down like a curtain. It was as if she just had to go somewhere, and was thinking, How lucky that these nice gentlemen can give me a lift!

We all rose to our feet to gaze after the car. When it disappeared round the corner, we looked back at the house.

The rectory seemed to tower even higher than usual over the surrounding houses. We flung our heads back, but we didn’t see Lucy in the attic window gazing after her mother as she was driven away. We tiptoed up to the blue stoop and pressed our ears against the door. Inside we heard creaking sounds, the house sighing and quietly groaning, as usual. We rang the doorbell.

It took a while before we heard footsteps in the hall. Either Ludo or Duco pulled open the door with some effort, as if it had suddenly grown considerably heavier. We hardly recognized him. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were sunken, his hairline seemed to have receded at least another four inches, while what was left of his hair was sticking straight out on either side of his head. He tried to say something, but his mouth was too trembly to get any words out.

Unceremoniously, we shoved him out of our way and thronged inside. ‘Lucy!’ we cried into the dark, cavernous hallway.

Ahead of us, at the end of the corridor, a faint shimmer of light spilled from the semi-closed kitchen door onto the tiled floor. Stumbling towards it, we flung the door all the way open.

Lucy was sitting at the kitchen table with her head buried in her arms. Her back was arched like an angry cat’s. Her bony vertebrae poked through her sweater. Her legs were clasped around the rungs of her chair as if she were afraid she’d float up to the ceiling otherwise. Ludo—we could tell from the shoes it was he—sat next to her, rubbing her back.

The kitchen smelled of ginger biscuits and chamomile tea. As usual, there were piles of dirty dishes on the granite counter. The hum of the water heater was a hum as familiar as our own heartbeat. The last of the stickers we had stuck on the fogged-up window a while ago were peeling off. For a while there, they had been giving out stickers with every purchase: petrol or chips or detergent. We’d been over the moon about it at first, collecting them greedily and swapping them in elaborate transactions—blood was spilled over those stickers!—but in the end we got fed up with them, we wound up just sticking them anywhere, indiscriminately, on any convenient surface, there were just too many of them, it was raining stickers, and still our mothers insisted on bringing them home with a tireless zeal that embarrassed us no end, they kept buying more stuff just so they could saddle us with even more of those wretched stickers; all in all, it had been a complete farce.

In the doorway, Duco said, ‘I couldn’t stop them.’

Ludo looked up as if he’d only just realized we were in the kitchen. Then he shook Lucy’s shoulder gently. ‘Honey,’ he said, ‘your friends are here.’

But she didn’t raise her head from the tabletop, which was a mess of white rings made by juice glasses.

Ludo said, ‘It is sweet of you to have come over right away.’

We glowed with pride. The Three of Cups, the card of friendship: that was the most important card of all.

Duco walked over to the cooker. He started turning on the burners, one after another.

Ludo went on rubbing Lucy’s back. He didn’t explain what else you were supposed to do in this situation, besides coming over right away.

Duco told us, ‘We’re about to eat.’ All four burners were now blazing away. The gas hissed. But we didn’t see any pan of potatoes, nor even the faintest sign of dinner preparations.

Yet, for some reason, we had suddenly lost the nerve to ask why Lucy’s mother had gone with the police, or where. Too embarrassed to open our mouths, we scuffed our feet on the floor. Our eyes darted here, there, and everywhere, trying to find inspiration for something to say. But all we saw were the Luducos’ crumpled faces and Lucy’s winter-white neck, and it was hard to say which of those was the most pathetic.

‘Oh honey,’ Ludo muttered. ‘Oh my little girl.’

Shuddering, Lucy hunched her shoulders a little higher.

Duco stared at the blue gas flames.

Our parents were waiting for us at home; surely Lucy would understand that. In countless houses mothers were beginning to fume, glancing at the clock. They were starting to hurl complaints about like tossed frisbees: Jesus Christ, I’m not running a hotel here! Then, beginning to get worried—there was a murderer on the loose, after all—they grabbed coats, scarves, hats, gloves, and flashlights. They ran into the street. They called out our names. They bumped into each other in the dark, and cried out in alarm, ‘Yours too?’ Suddenly weak at the knees, they propped one another up, fear clutching at their hearts. Anything, they’d do anything for us: wash our dirty socks and knickers, clean up our messes, donate their last kidney to us—‘That’s what a mother is for, darling.’ They’d do anything to have us back. But something as simple as walking over to the rectory to rescue us from that awkward scene in the kitchen? The thought never even entered their heads.

Frightened, we grabbed one another by the hand. All we could hope for now was that Lucy’s mother would shortly hitch a ride home. As soon as she walked in, everything would go back to normal again. But as Duco went on staring at the flames as if paralyzed, and Lucy began to sob under her breath, it finally hit home: we had probably seen the last of her, for the time being.

The authorities promptly started showing up. Lady social workers in grubby sweaters with their hair in a bun marched in and out of the rectory. They took notes and wrote reports. They had to grudgingly concede in the end that it would be best for Lucy to stay where she was. Especially in light of the fact that the Luducos had immediately stepped up to the plate and offered to look after her. A mother accused of murder—it was such a dreadfully traumatic thing for a six-year-old to have to go through that further changes in her living conditions could prove dire, if not fatal. Peace and quiet, and an orderly routine in a familiar environment: that was the ticket. At least for the duration of the preliminary investigation, which could drag on for months.

They signed their report with a flourish, and left.

We read, The dog has a bone. We read, What do I hear? We read and we read, as if the only way we could keep the world turning was by deciphering new words and learning their meanings. Miss Joyce slowly paced back and forth among our desks. Every time she walked by Lucy, she’d tug her plaits straight or fold her collar down neatly. At recess she sometimes gave her a banana.

Lucy wouldn’t speak. She chewed on her fingernails. All her drawings had prison bars.

Thomas had returned to school with a note from his mum. The teacher had read it, nodding sadly, and then assigned him a new seat at the back of the classroom. There he now sat every day all by himself, being what he forever would be: a fatherless boy. You could hear it in his voice when it was his turn, when he droned in his rapid but vapid monotone, ‘See, the fox is in the box. The fox sees the dog. The dog runs up the tree. The tree is in the wood.’ You could tell how much he missed his father, especially when he read the words ‘tree’ and ‘wood,’ and he was starting to scare us—his sadness scared us, his anger and his despair. During break he went off by himself in the playground, kicking at pebbles the way he had once kicked at clumps of grass in our field. Lucy, slumped against a wall, watched him, her eyes burning in her pale face like two pieces of glowing coal. He ignored her. He looked right through her. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t exist.

The rest of us, who used to know everything there was to know about Lucy, now knew next to nothing. Day in, day out, we’d hang around, trying to wangle some information out of her. More than once we spotted the detectives’ car parked out in front of the rectory. What were they doing there?

She wouldn’t answer us. She bowed her head and kept her mouth shut.

We tried to imagine her mother in a smoky interrogation room, a blinding spotlight trained on her face. The thought gave us hope. The interrogators were bound to fall head over heels in love with her, that was a given. She’d end up winding them around her little finger. She would simply roll them up and tuck them in her pocket. Before we knew it, she’d be home again. And then Lucy and Thomas would sit together again in the front row in Miss Joyce’s classroom, as usual. Lucy would be talking a mile a minute again, glaring at anyone who so much as thought of mocking her fiancé. It would probably annoy the hell out of us; still, anything was better than this quiet, dazed Lucy with the bowed head. This was a turn of affairs we’d certainly never asked for. None of us was any the better off for it.

Our parents bought Christmas trees in the town square. They treated us to doughnuts in a pedestrian mall that was so draughty that the powdered sugar flew everywhere. Then we went window-shopping; Mum grabbed Dad’s sleeve firmly when the jeweller’s window display came into sight.

For weeks, festive lights twinkled indoors and out, angelic music played, bells went ding-a-ling, the world smelled of pine needles, mulled wine, and toasted almonds.

On New Year’s Eve we had our first glass of champagne. Our fathers got to their feet to toast the new year, one that would hopefully prove safer for everyone, with more police patrolling the streets. ‘We’re lucky; we still have each other,’ said our mothers. ‘Let’s always remember that, and be thankful for it, too.’ Then we had to pretend we had the hiccups, if we wanted to avoid a round of hugs and kisses.

Next came a cold spell, with deep snowdrifts. We were pulled to school on our sleds. We got ice skates, because when you were six it was high time you learned to skate. You’d thank your parents someday. You could hear the water slapping softly against the ice from below. It was scored with grooves that tripped you up. It was just a question of gritting your teeth and trying to keep going.

Sometimes we’d spot the Luducos pulling a listless Lucy across the ice. Methodically, assiduously, the Luducos would swing their legs, left, right, left, as they dragged her along. At the far end of the pond they made a pirouette, then they skated back smartly, with Lucy in the middle. Over the open ice they went, left, right, left, the Luducos in hats that probably dated from the First World War, and our Lucy with a scarf tied across her mouth. A scarf that said: I will not talk.

What was she keeping from us?

Sometimes Thomas’s mother would come to the pond, too, to watch from the sidelines. After all, bacteria are killed by the cold. But she never spoke to anyone, and in the end, people gave up trying to get her involved in the fun on the ice.

There was no one to pull Thomas across the dark expanse, nobody to teach him how to dig the toe of your skate into the ice to come to a screeching halt. Half the time he’d just stand and watch next to his mother on the frozen grass, with such a look of yearning in his eyes that the rest of us were inclined to press our foreheads into our own dads’ stomachs. But Dad shook us off; he was busy trying to impress the new lady next door, who had no idea how he smelled when he got up out of bed in the morning. He was talking in this cool, amused way. Out of the corner of his mouth came a message meant only for us, a message we had to lip-read so he wouldn’t have to say it out loud: Scram. Go on, scram, get lost!

And when the ice melted and everything turned green again, the criminal investigation was finally completed and the trial could begin.

Soon enough, the newspapers talked of nothing else.