She wasn’t quite ready to use his name. Their acquaintance was too new and fresh and… and so important to her. Of that she was completely certain. With the image of him alive in her mind, she was again in the blissful half-hour she had just spent with him. Her mind had recorded every last detail: the tiny café table squashed into a corner, his absurd Polish, his gestures, his smile... Warm delight bloomed inside her with her recollections. She forgot for a while that she really was in a freezing, filthy train car on the verge of collapse, on a rickety metal seat that wobbled with every movement of the train. The thought of her new American friend made her heart beat faster and warmed her body and soul. “What is all this? What is this strange feeling that I’m suddenly reborn?” she kept asking herself. “I’ll speak with him tomorrow! Oh, I want to see him as soon as possible!” and her face melted from the frozen stiffness of the polar cold into a very private smile.
A sudden jolt of the train caught her unexpectedly, throwing her bodily to the other side of the aisle, onto the empty seats. Before she could recover, the lights went off and the whole carriage, now submerged in stygian darkness, seemed to be running amok, lurching violently from side to side and faster and faster. “It must have gone off the rails!” She panicked as she was being shaken like a dried pea in a gourd. She tried desperately to find some balance and hold on somewhere. All she could hear in the pitch dark were the grinding noises of breaking iron and the shattering of the window glass into a million fragments... Now and then, nightmarish sparks rained down outside the windows as the metal gathered dust from the ground, creating a lightning illumination of devastation. Her ears were filled with the pandemonium and screaming of crashing and tearing metal, together with terrible shrieks of panic and pain from other passengers wailing for help. After four or five strong lurches one after the other, the car overturned completely. Kasja was tossed like a feather to the roof which was suddenly underneath her. She felt a hot pain just below her belly, a pain that took her breath away. She found herself firmly impaled on one of the luggage racks. She screamed, and something struck her unconscious.
When she awoke in the hospital a few days later, the first thing she noticed was that her body ached horribly. She tried to turn to look around her to see where she was but could not move for the pain. She had no idea how she found herself here. She remembered nothing of that terrible night on the icy railroad. It took her some time to pull herself together and realise where she was. With immense effort, she raised her head a few inches to reach the bell to summon a nurse. But her head was not under her control; it stopped petrified and fell back weakly on the pillows.
Someone was shouting, “Miss! Miss!” In the next bed, an older woman with well-cut grey hair was sitting up and calling. Now she could see that the room contained four beds, two on either side. She wanted to communicate with the woman but all she could do was moan, “It hurts! Oh, it hurts too much!”
The woman jumped out of her own bed and trotted to the door, calling loudly for one of the busy nurses rushing up and down the hall.
And then her older sister Maya burst into the room in a flurry of excitement. It was Maja who for the days and nights since the accident had hung sleeplessly by her side, stroking Kasja’s face and bathing her forehead to relieve the fever of infection, trying to make her little sister as comfortable as possible in the bed, seeing that everything around her was in order. She’d been sitting on a ramshackle hospital chair which creaked in complaint at the slightest movement, and had sat silently and patiently for hours on end, praying incessantly that God would let her wake up. Glued to that chair, Maja had lost count of the hours which had long since become days. Now and then, she tried to move her numbed finger joints, but all her attention was focused on the pale, still, almost lifeless body of her beloved little sister in that bed.
Kasja was one of the lucky few who had lived through the terrible derailment of that train. Just before she had opened her eyes, Maja had staggered up to search for a cup of tea and stretch her cramped legs for a minute. After four long days and nights and with only a few winks of stolen sleep, she had begun to feel her own strength ebbing slowly. But as she flew back into the room, she sprang to her sister’s side and clutched her left arm. “Kasja! Kasja! Speak to me, please!” she almost sobbed, stroking her hand.
“It hurts, it hurts so much. I don’t think…” Kasja murmured faintly, with a feeble attempt at a smile which was quickly overcome by a grimace of pain. “What... happened? What... where am I now? Is this a hospital? All I remember is the train... the train in darkness... and it hurt so... still hurts so much...” Every word was clearly painful.
“Don’t move, darling, don’t move at all, love” her sister ordered. “I’m going to get the doctor!” But before she finished her sentence, the nurse and a doctor burst into the room. With all the fuss created by the other patients, someone had alerted the medical staff who had rushed to see what was going on. The doctor approached the bed and Maya found herself almost crushed against the chest of drawers in spite of her efforts to make herself as small as possible to give them space.
Kasja’s painfully breathed first question was: “Doctor, am I going to live?” There were so many reasons she wanted to go on and be alive, so much more since she had met the American. Their meeting was the first thing that came to mind as she regained her senses. Not even the terrible shock of the derailment and the crash had been able to erase the memory of that enchanted half-hour with him – whenever that had been.
“Of course you’ll live! You’ve had a bad four days, and three complicated surgeries and lost some blood, but it all went well.” The doctor smiled and turned to Maja, who was standing motionless with tear-filled eyes. “Did you discuss, ah… the rest with your sister?” the doctor said aside in a low voice.
“No, Doctor,” said Maja with trembling lips. “There hasn’t been a chance, she just woke up and started to look around. We haven’t had a chance to talk at all.”
“Hmm.” The doctor threw a compassionate glance towards Kasja and turned back to her sister. “Very well. You’ll have plenty of time to talk later when things calm down. For now, I’ll ask the nurse to give her an injection, a very strong sedative which may induce some depression, but will control the pain. But don’t worry. Her brain is functioning, and she understands where she is, very encouraging. We’re on the way. From now on, she’ll still be in touch with her surroundings but will seem to be sleeping. Her body needs rest more than anything. A few more days’ peace and rest are the most powerful treatment in this phase of convalescence.” He gestured to the nurse to administer the medication. “She has several broken ribs, and multiple fractures of the left hand and foot, a badly cracked pelvis and a severe concussion.” A high price of the accident for Kasja, but compared to the tragic fates of others, who, if they had not been killed outright, had been injured far more seriously with permanent disabilities. This was the cost of the minimal maintenance of an antiquated rail network and polar temperatures that had parted the rails and caused the disaster.
“What matters is that she has survived!” Maja concluded for the umpteenth time, allowing a tremulous sigh of relief to escape her lips.
****
Two months had passed since the accident and Kasja was improving steadily under the watchful eyes of Maja and the doctors. She was pursuing a series of countless physiotherapies that would lead to her complete recovery. Everyone was impressed by her determination to get better as fast as possible. Her progress had amazed all the medical personnel as well as her own sister. The handsome smiling face of her American friend had taken hold and would not leave her mind. She woke and slept in the hospital, only with the thought and hope of seeing him again. This gave her the courage to dream of regaining a normal life. She was utterly determined. She would search for him and find him whatever it cost as soon as she was quite well. She would move Heaven and Earth to find him, to explain, to clarify why she had never called him, to assure him she did want to see h
im. But first she must take care of herself, concentrate on getting well enough to run and find him. Did he know she was still alive? There was no day or moment that she did not feel that question inside her, along with a not-quite-admitted doubt. She had not told her sister a word about this little story; she had only made the excuse that the seminar she had attended had been late in closing and so she’d had to take that last train of the day.
Maja found at last the right moment when they were alone in the hospital room away, for once, from the curious eyes of fellow patients. She took Kasja’s hand and looked into her eyes. Faint sunbeams penetrated the double glazing and cast a golden glow on the white bedclothes. Under the pale light illuminating every corner, Kasja seemed relaxed, very calm, almost happy to the eyes of her sister. “I have something to tell you, my love, but I want you to promise to face it calmly,” she said seriously.
“What’s up? What do you want to tell me?” asked Kasja with growing uneasiness as she took in the distress which her sister was unable to hide.
“That night... the night of the train wreck,” said Maja, and her voice became shaky. “When the train jumped the track, some piece of iron thing hit you, right under your tum…” She was desperately trying to search for the right words for what she had to tell her sister. Kasja winced. She still didn’t remember much about the accident and didn’t want to; all she could recall was the awful feeling of being alone and helpless in the dark and being thrown around from one side of the train to the other. And the horrible pain of that iron shelf wedging itself in her groin.
Maja swallowed. “Um...”
“What is it?” By now Kasja was sure she didn’t want the answer. It couldn’t be good news.
There was nothing for it now but to say what had happened. “That last hit... it wounded you badly in the pelvis and your reproductive system. You were bleeding for ages while they tried to get you out of the wreckage. When they brought you to hospital, you were rushed into the operating room. They had to stop the bleeding.” Maja took a breath. “Darling, they had to remove one ovary, and there was some damage to your uterus that had to be repaired to save your life. And there’s quite a lot of internal scarring.”
Kasja knew very well that she had been injured in that region, evidenced by the two long rows of stitches. She stared bewildered at that part of her body hidden under the covers and was silent. Finally, she asked, “And what does that mean, Maja?” turning to look her sister in the face. She was afraid she already knew the answer.
Maja stared at the floor helplessly. She tried to take a deep breath and draw in as much courage as she could for the inevitable next question. “It means that your chance of becoming a mother from now on is pretty near zero… I’m so sorry. It’s such a shame! I’m so sorry, dear little sister,” she said as gently as she could. But the harshness of the fact outweighed all gentleness.
Kasja looked at her for a while in silence. The words which had just issued from the mouth of her sister amputated part of her life. Her dreams died in that hospital room. All her struggle to recover and her resolve to find the beloved American were in vain. What would I tell him? I’m barren? Of course, he would have to be told. How would he react when he heard these words from her lips?
“It might have been better if I had been killed with all the others,” whispered Kasja and burst into tears.
Maja crossed herself. “In the name of God! Never say such a thing!”
Kasja peered again at the ruin of her body and wept.
Later that same evening, when the storm of tears had abated, she lay exhausted and told her sister about David. Then she fell heavy as lead into the warmth and the safe shelter of Maja’s open arms.
CHAPTER NINE
First Stop: Roodebeek – Keith
Keith drove carefully through the dusk, glancing left and right in his effort to familiarise himself with this totally unknown area. Parking space, parking space... always a problem... Aha! There was a precious empty place on his left under a bright street lamp, and he pulled in expertly. As he switched off the ignition, he congratulated himself on finding a safely illuminated spot.
Twilight was falling at the end of an unusually warm autumn day. Just behind the Brussels Gare du Midi lay a once-proud neighbourhood, now falling into decay under neglect and the contamination of exhaust fumes. The crumbling façades of impressive villas exposed their decline into tiny flats, housing immigrants from north- and sub-Saharan Africa and the poor. It smelt of misery and poverty, and perhaps a little danger. Groups of dark-skinned youngsters lounging in the doorways eyed the expensive car stopping on their street with great interest; Keith assumed that they were speculating about which of their neighbours would open to this mysterious stranger. He removed the key from the ignition and glanced around, still none too sure he was in the right place. Without getting out of the car, he groped in his breast pocket and pulled out a tattered scrap of paper, folded in four. Opening it, he checked the street number of the house against it. The blue-green ink had already begun to blur, but was still legible: Madame Aida Fetelian, Rue Joseph Claes 84, Saint Gilles. Just under it in the same scrawl was written Psychic medium – talks with the dead...”
Mme Martina's scribbles, which included several spelling errors in the French, brought a weak smile to his face. She was an original: a charwoman whose plump hands brought immaculate order wherever she passed and who held a doctorate in Post-World War II European History from the University of Iasi, one of the best in Romania. But all the seals and signatures were useless in today’s post-communist hyper-capitalist Europe. She had earned it in the time of Ceaușescu, and everything she had been taught was now considered mere propaganda for an era gone forever. Back in Romania, she could have been teaching in a secondary school, but with tragic irony, a professor’s salary was less than a quarter of her earnings from cleaning houses in Brussels. Besides, she had recently lost her husband to cancer, and there was nobody back there but some distant relatives, with whom, she said, she had nothing at all in common.
He had been coping with his grief quite well, he thought. Though the centre had dropped out of his heart with the loss of Maeve, months had passed and sometimes he could get through as much as two hours at a time, concentrating on figures and their intricate relationships. Work was his salvation.
Mme Martina took care of his dwelling place; he didn’t think of it as home. But one day after a sleepless night, a girl was handing out red roses on the street for some cause or other, and he’d had to turn around and go back to the flat, unable to continue to the office. Martina was polishing the table when he let himself in. He had forgotten she was due today. She looked up, dropped her rag and trotted towards him with little exclamations of concern. He fell into the chair and buried his face in his hands.
“Are you ill, Monsieur Keith? I call doctor?” she asked with motherly concern.
“No, no,” he’d said. A doctor could not cure what ailed him. Suddenly he found himself confessing the whole painful story of Maeve, and when he was done, both of them were in tears. Martina’s own loss was still recent. She brought him a napkin to wipe his face, and still sobbing, she tried to tell him of the great comfort she had found.
“I talk to my Josef,” she said. He looked up. Oh, Lord, that was all he needed. Spirit voices. “Oui, I go see this woman, she call him to come and he talk to me. Now it’s like he move abroad, not like lost and gone. You must go see psychic woman. She bring your girl, you talk, much better.”
Well, that was ridiculous. There was certainly no scientific evidence; it was a well-known swindle. He’d never believed Maura’s leprechauns, either. He joked, “A scholar like you, Martina, can’t possibly believe in such bullsh— nonsense! Parapsychology and psychic vibes!”
But despite this immediate and emphatic rejection, Martina insisted passionately that he must go and see for himself. She sat down and wrote the medium’s particulars on a clean napkin. “I tell you, Monsieur Keith, I speak with my Josef. Himself. He re
member things she not know.” She claimed that Josef had spoken of details, of personal memories the medium could not have invented or guessed.
She continued to maintain that such communication had helped her tremendously, had given her peace of mind, a way out of grief and pain for the loss of her beloved. She swore that the medium had managed, not only to communicate with her dead husband, but he had been able to warn her of events in the future, to draw attention to matters that she should be particularly aware of over the course of time. The whole experience had convinced her that the psychic had really managed to communicate with her Josef.
While Keith dismissed that idea immediately, he liked her too much to crush her illusion if it comforted her. At the end of their conversation, telling her he’d think about it, he had folded the napkin and shoved it into his back pocket, promising to consider a visit to the medium himself. He didn’t have the heart to disappoint her. She was always so kind and obliging with him and basically, he trusted her. He had no doubt that she sincerely believed with all her soul what she was saying.
Days and weeks had passed and the napkin was forgotten in the pocket of his trousers, hung in a closet. And when some time later he gave the trousers to the cleaners, on the day he went to collect them, the proprietor with great care – and to his surprise – placed in his hands the folded paper napkin, saying that he had found it in a pocket and felt that it might contain some important information for him.
From that moment, the idea of visiting the psychic returned and took root in his mind. It felt almost like an omen that the napkin had managed to survive and eventually return to his hands so fortuitously. Moreover, the more he thought about the possibility of visiting the medium, the more his curiosity flourished. It began to devour him. Martina might have been of necessity a charwoman, but she was an educated person with years of experience behind her. There might be something in this. Too many coincidences... “At worst,” Keith thought, “I'll lose fifty euro,” which Martina had said was the cost of a visit. After pondering, overcoming a thousand objections, going back and forth over it for at least eight months, he could resist no longer.
The Next Stop Page 8
