by Helen Grant
‘The Woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer,’ I read.
I shrugged; it didn’t mean anything to me, though this was nothing unusual. My father was always enthusing over strange bits of medieval art. At home in England we had a copy of a painting showing St Bartholomew holding his flayed skin. My father had wanted to hang it in the dining room, but Tuesday insisted he relegate it to his study; she said it would put her off her dinner.
‘Look at the angel with the key throwing the dragon into the abyss,’ said my father.
I stared at the illustration. In the foreground a winged figure carrying a great key was lowering a grotesque horned figure loaded with chains into a hole in the ground. Two other figures stood watching this scene from a hilltop, and beyond them there was what appeared to be a fortified town in the medieval German style, with the defensive walls disappearing into a thick forest behind it.
‘Wouldn’t this make a fantastic frontispiece for a book about the Allerheiligen glass?’ my father was saying enthusiastically. ‘This fellow with the horns would make a fine Bonschariant, don’t you think? And with the German town in the background – it’s perfect.’
He ran a finger along a text at the bottom of the page and read aloud: ‘And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, Satan, and bound him a thousand years. And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled; and after that he must be loosed a little season.’
‘He must be loosed?’ I repeated with a shiver, eyeing the scaly body of the demon. I imagined him wearing away a thousand years in the darkness and then creeping up towards the light again, eager for revenge. Could evil never be destroyed, only postponed?
‘You’re not becoming squeamish like your mother, are you?’ asked my father.
I stifled the retort which rose to my lips. I shook my head and turned the page.
‘Ah,’ said my father, as though I had revealed a particularly pleasant view, ‘the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Stunning, isn’t it?’
Stunning was not the word I would have chosen. A heap of lamenting human figures was being trodden down by four figures on horseback, brandishing weapons. At the very bottom of the picture someone seemed to be descending headfirst into the fiery mouth of a monster. But it was not the despairing human figures which caught my attention – it was the four mounted figures, and one in particular. Three of the horsemen were sturdy-looking warriors, but the fourth was terribly, dismally thin, the bones and sinews of his emaciated body showing through the skin, his attenuated limbs appearing unnaturally long, his fleshless hands like talons. The sight of it chilled me, as though a wind from some far-distant place, some desolate land of desert and night, had touched me.
‘Well,’ said my father heartily, ‘can you tell me which of these gentlemen is which?’
I laid my index finger on the skeletal figure, although I could hardly bear to touch it.
‘This must be Famine,’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ said my father. ‘This is Famine.’ He pointed to one of the other horsemen, who was carrying a pair of scales. ‘This one –’ he pointed again to the thin figure – ‘this one is Death.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
For nearly a fortnight very little happened. Michel picked me up every morning and, as the days passed, the swelling around his eye subsided, the deep purple of the bruises fading to yellow. Still there was no opportunity to go and see the glass. Michel’s father spent every day at the farm, accompanied by Michel’s simian brother, Jörg. Frustrated, I sat in lessons next to the uncommunicative Johanna, half-listening to Frau Schäfer and dreaming of unlikely scenarios in which I found myself alone with Father Engels, who would be strangely impressed by me and have to remind himself of his vows. Sometimes I fantasized about sneaking to the farm at midnight and stealing the supplies of whatever it was Michel Reinartz Senior bought in Prüm, so that he would have to go there for the day. I knew this was impossible – even if I passed safely between the Scylla and Charybdis of Jörg and the dog, any attempt to tamper with the farm would arouse his suspicions for sure.
All the same, I chafed under the burden of passing days, occasionally tempted to spill the load at my father’s feet. I watched him setting off for Köln and for the Eifel Club library in Mayen. I saw him bringing home books and pamphlets and papers to add to the ever-increasing piles in the living room; or gazing intently at the glowing screen of his laptop as he composed yet another letter, asking for access to archives, copies of documents, interviews, recommendations, anything. I was sorely tempted to tell him what I knew – but then, what did I know? Michel claimed to have seen the Allerheiligen glass, but until I had seen it with my own eyes I had nothing but hearsay. Worse, if I told my father, Michel would probably refuse to take me to the glass at all. Even if my father knew for certain that it existed, the information would do him no good at all as long as its location remained a secret. It would be no use applying to anyone else in Baumgarten – that was clear. So I waited, and then something happened which almost blasted the Allerheiligen glass out of my mind forever.
It was a Wednesday afternoon, cool but sunny. Michel had dropped me off after school and driven away. Autumn was turning the leaves to orange fire. I kicked my way through a drift of them before I opened the green gate and stepped into the courtyard. I was not expecting anyone to be at home; my father had been planning to drive to Koblenz that day to talk to a superannuated Catholic priest who had had a parish close to the site of the vanished Allerheiligen Abbey and had an interest in the glass. Tuesday had intended to go with him, and I had assumed that Polly and Ru would go too.
Surprisingly, the front door was unlocked. The car was gone, so my father must have left as planned. I knew better than to think that Tuesday would have stayed behind, with nothing to look at but the forest: in her eyes, trees were only of any use when pulped, processed, printed and bound into the pages of Vogue. I guessed that Polly must be home. I went inside, dumped my bag on the table and took the stairs two at a time.
‘Polly?’ I burst into the bedroom, almost falling over Polly’s training shoes, which were lying discarded in the middle of the floor. I looked around me and froze.
‘Polly?’
Polly looked over her shoulder at me. Her face was agonized. She was struggling to get into her clothes as quickly as possible, but before she managed to pull the enormous sweatshirt over her head I had a plain view of her curved back, of the spine and ribs clearly showing under the pale skin. There was a dizzying moment when I thought, I’ve seen this before, followed by a searing sense of guilt which seemed to detonate inside me with the blinding force of a grenade. Was it possible that I had seen this before and not noticed it – that I had seen it and done nothing? Then the storm which seemed to be boiling in my brain cast up one clear image, of my father bending over a large hardback book, his forefinger on a woodcut illustration. That was where I had seen this dreadfully emaciated form before. This one is Death, my father had said. The realization loosened my tongue.
‘My God, Polly –’ I began.
‘Get out!’ she snapped at me, her face distorted with anger. ‘Get out!’
‘But I –’
‘I want to dress in peace. Just get out, will you?’ she flung back at me. ‘Go!’
‘But, Polly – what’s happened to you? You’re so thin.’ I could hear my own voice wavering.
‘Shut up.’ Polly yanked the sweatshirt down over her hips and turned to face me. ‘It’s none of your business. And don’t even think of telling her.’
I didn’t have to ask whom she meant. ‘But –’ I began again, and then stopped. I was out of my depth. Polly just stood and glared at me, hands on hips, waiting for me to leave the room. I saw her running kit lying on the bed and realized that she must have been jogging in the woods. Now it made sense, Polly getting up so early in the morning to go out. She didn’t want anyone to see
her getting in and out of her sports kit.
I looked at her helplessly. The shock of seeing how terribly thin she had become was still pulsing through me, but at the same time some tiny, selfish corner of my mind was wishing that I hadn’t rushed up the stairs so quickly, hadn’t barged into the room before she had the time to cover herself up, hadn’t seen the truth. It was all too much: first the man in the orchard, then the horror in the cemetery and now this. I had the feeling that my sanity was suspended on wires and one by one they were snapping under the load.
What was I supposed to do? If I ignored Polly’s plea and told Tuesday, Polly would never forgive me and it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. Tuesday, who was naturally skinny and could have munched on lard sandwiches all day every day without putting on a gram, would have no conception of how Polly felt. My instinctive reaction was to go to my father. When I was a little girl he had seemed so strong and handsome and clever, like the hero in a fairy tale who alone has the power to make everything right. But as I stood there, staring at my sister and feeling as though the shreds of my life were hanging off me like rags, I felt the creeping coldness of doubt coming over me. I thought of my father smashing the glass horse in the hallway in our house in England; I thought of him bent over stacks of dusty books at midnight, flipping pages with one hand and scribbling furiously with the other. He was a driven man; if I presented him with this problem he would go at it with his usual directness, like Alexander the Great hacking through the Gordian knot with his sword. Polly would close up like a sea anemone, withdrawing to some place inside herself where none of us could reach her. I knew too that she would think I had betrayed her. It had always been me and Polly, Polly and me, whenever there was a family row or Tuesday became too unbearable. It had been me and Polly all those years ago, when we had been motherless and confused, clinging to each other for comfort. I knew that if that ended, I would be just as lost as she would.
My legs felt as though they were about to crumple beneath me. I sat down on my bed and put my head in my hands. Polly said nothing but when I looked up she was pulling on a body warmer. It was too warm for the day, which was mild, but now I understood why she was doing it. Layers provided an appearance of bulk.
‘Polly –’
‘Don’t say it,’ she snapped. She sounded close to tears. ‘It’s all right for you. You’re the same as her. You even wear her clothes.’
Instinctively I looked down at myself, although in fact I had kept my hands off Tuesday’s things since the day in the cemetery.
‘Oh God,’ I said uselessly. ‘Look, can’t we just –’
I stopped. I had been going to say, Can’t we just tell someone? But who would we tell? If not Tuesday or Dad, who else could I talk to? Frau Schäfer? Polly wasn’t at school, so I wasn’t sure Frau Schäfer or anyone else would – or could – do anything, even if I told them. Anyway, I was pretty sure that the first thing she would do if I did tell her would be to contact our father or Tuesday. I racked my brains. I had a vague feeling that there were people you could call in Britain, telephone lines set up to advise people about this sort of thing. But we weren’t in Britain any more, I reminded myself. Nor, come to that, did we have access to a working telephone. I looked at my sister and I felt a kind of dull despair.
‘Polly, what are you doing?’ I asked her eventually.
Abruptly she sat down on her own bed opposite me. ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m not – you know, making myself throw up or anything.’
I was not sure I believed this but I didn’t say anything.
‘I’m just doing lots of exercise and eating less. That’s healthy, isn’t it?’ She looked at me defiantly.
‘Polly, you’re skin and bone,’ I blurted out.
‘I’m not,’ she snapped. She looked down at herself and I wondered what she was seeing, whether in her mind the skinny limbs and jutting angles were encased in a soft layer of fat. ‘What’s your problem anyway? Are you jealous, now I’m finally getting the weight off?’
I couldn’t even formulate a reply to that. I might just as well have envied a death’s head its sharp cheekbones.
‘Look,’ said Polly eventually in a softer voice, ‘I didn’t really mean that. It’s just – you don’t know what it’s like. You’ve always been the thin one.’ She reached out and touched my hand. ‘Can’t you be pleased for me?’
‘No, I can’t,’ I said stubbornly. I looked her in the eyes. ‘You’re starving yourself.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ snapped Polly, withdrawing her hand. ‘Everybody diets. Tuesday’s always dieting.’
There was some truth in this. Periodically Tuesday would pat her non-existent stomach and announce that she was going to detox. But this was worlds away from what was happening to my sister, who seemed to be melting away like a wax taper burning down.
Perhaps Polly took my silence as agreement. At any rate she leaned forward with a conspiratorial air, as though about to impart a secret.
‘Listen, Lin, you’re not going to tell Tuesday or Dad, are you?’ she said in a wheedling tone. ‘Promise?’
This was too much. ‘No, I’m not promising.’
‘Lin, if you –’
‘I didn’t say I’d tell them either,’ I said. ‘I just need to think.’
I stood up. For a moment I waited for her to say something – anything. But she just sat there examining her hands in her lap. Her hair hung in lank strands over her face; I couldn’t even see her expression.
In the end I left the room and went downstairs. Before I was even halfway down I heard the door close behind me and the click of the key turning in the lock. There was a silence and then a sudden thump! as though something had hit the closed door. I guessed Polly had thrown a shoe at it.
Down in the living room I couldn’t think what to do with myself, and there was always the risk that my father and Tuesday would come home. I could imagine Tuesday taking one look at me and saying, ‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’ She still hadn’t cleared up yesterday’s lunch either, so the living room had a slatternly look about it. There were even several flies buzzing about. I opened the front door and went out into the courtyard. I went and looked at the burnt remains of the tree. The sooty patch was still there, like some sinister lichen trying to scale the wall, although someone had swept up the shards of glass. I stared at the black patch and all of a sudden tears were pricking at my eyes. I couldn’t make sense of it; after everything that had happened, I could feel myself about to cry my eyes out over a fire that had been put out quite safely. Nobody had been hurt. The house had not burned down. The landlord had not even appeared to berate us, which suggested that nobody had told him the evil news. I stared at the wall and tears trickled down my cheeks. My chest heaved and a great sob forced its way out.
Above me there was a sudden bang. I looked up. Evidently Polly had just slammed a window shut. I could hear a clatter as she struggled to force the handle into the locked position. Since I was clearly not welcome in the house, I stumbled over to the gate and stepped outside, with the vague idea that I would set off through the woods. I would howl out my misery to the trees and the ferns. I would walk until I had calmed down again – that way nobody would have to see me –
Oh no. ‘Michel,’ I said under my breath. His name was bitter in my mouth, the coppery taste of the bad penny which always turns up. The red Volkswagen was parked under a tree at the side of the track and he was standing next to it. I wondered whether he had driven off at all, or whether he had been here the whole time. Surely it was not possible that he could have heard me and Polly rowing? I remembered the window Polly had banged shut. Had he heard anything?
Michel raised his hand. ‘Hi, Lin.’
‘Hi.’
It came out as an angry squeak. I knew he would notice and I could feel my face growing hot. I hoped I was not blushing.
‘What’s the matter? Are you OK?’
Now he was coming towards me, and the expression of concern on hi
s face made me want to scream. Why did he have to be here, when all I wanted was to be alone? The last shreds of my self-control broke.
‘Oh – fuck off,’ I snapped in English, turned on my heel and started to walk away as fast as I could without the indignity of breaking into a run. I could see a small path leading away into the forest – it was much too narrow for a car. That should prevent him following me, I thought.
It didn’t. I had only got about ten metres into the woods when I could hear him panting right behind me. I guessed he had run after me. I wheeled around, very seriously tempted to slap him with the flat of my hand. With difficulty I restrained myself.
‘Leave me alone, can’t you? What’s wrong with you?’
‘I’m sorry.’
He really did look sorry, I had to give him that, but for some reason this simply infuriated me more.
‘It’s no use being bloody sorry. Just leave me alone!’ I was almost shouting in his face, heedless of the fact that I was using English and most of it was probably going over his head. ‘I mean, what are you going to do? You think you can help me?’ My hands flailed the air, as though I would have liked to claw something. ‘You can’t do anything to help. Nobody can. You don’t know what it’s like. I don’t even feel safe here! The house nearly burned down, I can’t go for a walk without your dad’s horrible mad dog trying to tear my throat out and now Polly’s starving herself to death.’ I glared at him, my chest heaving. ‘You think you can sort all that out? Be my bloody guest!’
There was a long silence. I turned my back on Michel so that he would not see the tears running down my face. My view of the little path winding away between the trees blurred, so that it looked as though it was leading away into nowhere.
‘Lin?’ said Michel eventually in a low voice.
I shook my head, lips clamped tight shut. I didn’t trust myself to turn round.
‘Lin, I don’t know what’s wrong with your sister, but the house – you know, it’s OK. That black stuff can be cleaned off.’
