Our Endless Numbered Days: A Novel

by Claire Fuller

  I trudged downhill, using a stick to fight my way through tangled bushes and past spiny trees. I could manage only a short distance at a time before I had to stop and rest. Inside my father’s boots my bare feet slid about, my ankles banging into the tops, and the leather rubbing my heels into gory blisters with each step. I discovered that if I found a mossy spot I could put the balaclava under my head and lie down with my eyes closed for a few moments, to stop the banging pulse in my temple, but something always made me get up again and continue walking. When the midday sun passed overhead, the land turned upward again, and I staggered to the crest of a small rise. More wooded hills and another valley sloped away before me. I slid over the top, navigating the way down on my bottom. At the base was a gill, similar to ours—a long green tunnel with a tumble of mossy rocks—and for just a second I thought somehow I must have walked in a circle and crossed the river without noticing. After climbing down, I shifted a stone in the way Reuben had, and cupped my hands to drink from the icy flow. I followed the gill downhill, clambering from rock to rock until the hidden stream burst out from underneath the boulders and the gill became a proper force. Scrambling up the bank, I pushed my way through bramble and holly to walk beside the water. Every time, when I reached the top of each small rib of land or negotiated a thicket, with nervous anticipation I expected to see the edge of the world.

  All afternoon I walked, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, until the gill widened and became a river and when I next looked up there was open land falling away into the distance and rising again. I stood at the edge of the forest, watching the wind race across the meadow and the shadows of clouds wander over the grass. It was the darkening forest at my back that forced me onward and out into the open. I cut a path downward, over a long sloping hill, until in the distance I could see dotted across it, at intervals, towers of straw. I had seen towers like this before, but the name of them wouldn’t come back to me. Before the daylight had gone, I reached the first one—twice my height and smelling of newly cut hay. I tucked myself inside it and slept.

  In the morning, as the sun was rising, I hobbled across the meadow. In the night, my raw heels had dried and stuck themselves to the back of my father’s boots, and walking reopened the wounds, so that with each step pain shot up my legs. The dungarees around my head had shifted and fresh blood dripped down my cheek, which I caught with the palm of my hand and smeared upward, out of my eyes. I walked past more towers of straw and the sun got higher and hotter, so that I regretted leaving the river and forgot the pain in my head and my feet, and thought only of how thirsty I was. At the end of the meadow, over the brow of another small hill, I looked up and saw the red pitched roofs of houses. They clustered around a church, its white spire reaching above a line of trees. A thin grey road uncurled from the houses, running alongside the meadow. How many people would be in that village, I wondered. Fifty? Twice that? And I knew my father must have under-estimated the number of survivors. There weren’t two people left in our world, or even three, counting Reuben; there were more than a hundred. Without any clear plan, I walked down the hill and the road became closer and wider and greyer. The meadow went right up to it, with a shallow ditch dividing them. I stepped over and stood on the tarmac, dusty, man-made. Its hardness resonated through my knees and hip bones while I walked, and the loose chippings with their regular sides caught under my father’s boots.

  At the start of the village, I passed a large house with many windows and doors. The ground floor was painted white, and its top storey, shaded by a steep roof, was wooden. I thought about knocking on the front door to ask the owner for a glass of water, but the shutters were closed. A dog barked twice and whimpered from an inside room. Beyond the house were a field and another house, smaller than the first, but the same shape and style; after these there were no more gaps, only buildings. I carried on walking until a man with a moustache and a child came toward me.

  I glanced right and left to see how I might escape, but they walked quickly, and when I looked back they were a few feet away. The man stopped and pushed the child behind him, as though afraid I might leap forward. The child, with blond curls and a face that could have been a boy’s or a girl’s, peeped out, wide-eyed, from behind the man’s jeans.

  “Please, do you have any water?” I said to the man with curly hair, similar to the child’s but darker and thinner. The dungarees tied around my face, crusty with blood, pulled against my skin as I spoke. The man said something I couldn’t understand, touched the side of his face with his hand, and moved toward me, the child still clinging to his leg.

  26

  I awoke in a room where everything was white—bed, floor, walls. Uniformed people came in and pressed needles into my arms, shone lights into my eyes, and peered into my mouth. I lay still and let them examine me. They spoke in gentle questioning voices, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying and I didn’t know what to tell them anyway.

  Sometimes I whispered, “Is this the Great Divide?” but they didn’t answer. I was amazed at the different faces human beings can have, at the noises they made—from the squeak of their shoes on the white floor, to the clink of a wedding ring against a metal dish. I remembered the toy doctor’s set that Becky owned, with its medical instruments strapped into a carry-case. She would make me lie on her bed so she could listen to the beat of my heart through the plastic stethoscope. We never worked out what we were supposed to do with the hammer which was also included, so I used it to beat out a rhythm on her headboard and in a deep voice she would say, “A1, that’s an A1 heart you have there, Miss.”

  In the white room I drifted in and out of sleep. Reuben came to check up on me, sitting on the end of the bed with a leaf stuck in his hair. I asked him whether it was autumn yet, but he wouldn’t say.

  One day I woke properly. I was aware of the shape my body made in the bed, knees curled to my chest, hands clasped under my chin. I stretched out my feet toward the cool end, lifted up the white sheets and the white gown which covered me, and stared at my naked body; it had never been so clean. I got out of bed and put my feet on the cold, hard floor and stood at the window. Curving away to my left was a white building, three storeys high. The sky beyond its flat roof was still dark and all the windows were illuminated. Shapes and shadows of people walked past them, all busy going somewhere, doing something. The building formed a semicircle around a dull patch of green, not a quarter the size of the clearing. In the middle was a bench under a solitary tree—a spindly thing with leaves that were already turning brown. More than anything I wanted to breathe the same fresh and cool air the tree was breathing. I couldn’t find a catch to open the window; I tried to slide it, pushing one way, then the other, but it wouldn’t move. I pressed my cheek up against the glass, leaving behind a smudge, and then walked around the bed to a white sink and turned a tap. Water gushed out. I turned it again and the water stopped. On, off, on, off, on. It amazed me. I thought I would tell Reuben about it, and the idea that I might never find him in this huge white building made me sick with worry. Still standing at the sink, I looked up and was shocked to see a girl right in front of me, nose to nose. Her eyes were deep-set and her cheeks hollow; her head was shaved and bandaged, her face a more adult version of mine.

  There was a sharp knock, and behind her a door opened and a group of people came in: men and women in white coats and an older lady in a blue uniform. I spun around, clutching at the gaping gown behind my back, and the group all started talking at once. I recognized the sound of their words; how odd that they speak German in the Great Divide, I thought. The blue lady came forward and gently but firmly ushered me back into bed, while someone else turned off the tap.

  “I can do it,” I said, as she pulled back the sheets.

  The oldest man in the group came toward me and all the others fell into place behind him.

  “You are English,” he said, with some hesitation over the words. He started to say more, but gave up and spoke to th
e white-coated people, until a man at the back raised his hand and stepped forward.

  “Dr. Biermann would like to know your name,” said the young man. His thin hair was combed flat to one side, but a cowlick leaped out from his parting.

  “Punzel,” I said, more into the bedsheets than as a reply.

  “Rapunzel?” he asked, and his hand flew to his hair to flatten it.

  “Just Punzel,” I said.

  The man spoke to the others and said the name “Rapunzel” in the middle of his German.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  Everyone was silent, waiting, looking at me. I stroked my own head, feeling the soft bristles growing straight out from my scalp, while the overhead lights reflected in Dr. Biermann’s glasses winked out a warning. The glare from his glasses grew, spreading like drips of bleach on sugar paper, until his eyes were white, his face was white, and finally everything was white and I had the same sensation of falling that I had felt on the road in the little town.

  The man with the cowlick was sitting on my bed when I woke up. He bounced a couple of times as if he were testing its springiness and smiled at me. On the chair in the corner of the room, an older, fatter man took a pen and notebook from his jacket pocket. I tried to read his writing upside down and thought I could make out the words keep off the line, but then realized he would be writing in German.

  “So, you are English?” the man next to me said. I nodded.

  “I’m Wilhelm, medical student, final year,” he said, and laughed even though he hadn’t said anything funny. “And this is Herr Lang. He is a policeman . . .” He indicated the man in the corner. “. . . a detective. Dr. Biermann asked me to come to speak to you. Rapunzel, do you know where you are?”

  “In the Great Divide, or I may be dead, or both,” I said.

  Wilhelm laughed again, a girlish giggle, and I thought it must be true. He talked to the detective in German, and the man gave a snort.

  “You’re certainly not dead,” said Wilhelm, turning back to me and smiling. “You’re in a hospital.” And his hand flew upward toward his hair. “You hurt your ear and you lost a lot of blood and you were very . . .” He paused, searching for a word. “. . . thirsty, when you were found. I think you are perhaps a little confused. We would like to find out more about you. Would that be all right?”

  I nodded.

  “For instance,” he said, “where do you live?”

  “In die Hütte,” I said.

  The man behind us shuffled around in his seat, and Wilhelm made a surprised sound in the back of his throat. He asked me a question in German.

  “I only speak English,” I said.

  After a pause, he tried again. “Where is die Hütte?”

  His tone was gentle, but the action of his flying hand made me suspicious, and I wondered whether he was trying to catch me out. Perhaps he knew where die Hütte was, had already been there and discovered my father on the floor.

  “Out there.” I waved toward the window, and Wilhelm looked behind him, as though he might see die Hütte on the other side of the patch of grass.

  “Who do you live there with?” he asked.

  “My father,” I said.

  “Is he still in die Hütte?”

  “And Reuben,” thinking while I said it that it was almost true.

  “Reuben,” said Wilhelm. “Is he your brother?”

  “No.” But I didn’t know what to say he was.

  “Your grandfather?”

  “No.”

  Wilhelm’s hand rose halfway, then dropped. He kicked his heels against the floor so they squeaked, and he smiled again, and I wondered if he found the noise funny instead of irritating, like I did.

  The man in the corner spoke sharply, and Wilhelm said, “How old are you, Rapunzel?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I haven’t had a birthday in a long time.”

  “And what is the name of your father?” I knew that “Papa” wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

  “James,” I said.

  “Does he have a surname?”

  I thought for a few moments. “I can’t remember,” I said honestly, but Wilhelm raised his eyebrows and translated without turning around. The man in the chair scribbled.

  “Would it be OK to speak to your father? Perhaps on the telephone? He must be worried about you.”

  “He’s resting,” I said, and then, “Reuben said he’s dead.”

  The man in the corner coughed and I thought he must have understood me. My answer seemed to surprise Wilhelm; his hand moved even faster than before, patting down his wayward hair.

  “Oh, I’m very sorry. How did he die?”

  “Reuben hit him with the axe,” I said.

  The detective asked a question, but Wilhelm ignored him, instead leaning forward with a look of concern.

  “Did Reuben hit you too?” He raised his hand toward the bandage on the side of my head.

  “No, of course not.” I flinched, alarmed that he was getting the wrong idea.

  The man in the corner started to talk with more force, and Wilhelm translated as I spoke.

  “Papa did that with the knife.”

  “And what about your mother? Does she live in die Hütte?”

  “She’s dead,” I said, and a wave of panic washed over me at the thought that they were both gone, and Reuben too, and that I was here in this white land alone.

  Wilhelm frowned. “It’s OK, Rapunzel.”

  “Punzel,” I said again.

  He laid a hand on my arm. “Did Reuben hit her? You’re safe; you can tell me what happened.”

  “No,” I said. “She died a long time ago. I lived with my father in die Hütte. I was going to live with Reuben in the forest on the other side of the Fluss, but I couldn’t find him.”

  “Where is this forest man; where is Reuben now?” Wilhelm asked, his face level with mine.

  “He crossed the Fluss before me, he went into the trees and then he was gone.” I put my face in my hands, my body doubling over. “He left me.” Dry heaves were coming up from my stomach. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought he might come for me in the night, I was so scared, but he was gone. And then I saw the Great Divide . . .”

  Wilhelm moved closer and put his white arm over my shoulder and pulled me in toward his chest. I heard my gasping noises, but no tears came. Up close, underneath a smell of medicine, I sniffed something floral. He held me until the dry sobs had subsided, and I pulled away from him.

  “What is the Great Divide? I don’t know the German for this,” he said, and spoke to the detective.

  I shrugged. It was too much to explain. The three of us sat silent.

  “Do you know what the date is?” Wilhelm asked after a minute or two.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s the twenty-first of September, 1985,” he said. “We think you walked to Lügnerberg. Do you remember if it was far? How long it took you?”

  “Nine years,” I said.

  Wilhelm shook his head. “My English is not so good. You were walking for nine years?”

  “What’s Lügnerberg?”

  “The village where you were found. You were worn out, Rapunzel, your feet are damaged. You must have walked a long time.”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you think you could draw a map of where you came from? The policeman”—he indicated the man with a twitch of his head—“will need to help your father and to find Reuben.”

  He spoke to the detective again, who tore a page from his notebook and handed it over. Wilhelm took a pen from the top pocket of his white coat and, resting the piece of paper on the clipboard that had been hanging on the bottom of my bed, handed them to me. It was the first paper I had touched since I had held the sheet music for La Campanella before the forest fire. But this was blank, apart from faint blue lines on both sides. Wilhelm gave me the pen. I looked at him and at the paper. He took the pen back and clicked the end of it so the nib poked out from the bottom. He nodded a
t me—go on, he seemed to be saying. I pressed the end too and the nib disappeared; again, and out it came. The detective had moved forward to stand beside the bed, watching me. His gaze made my hand shake. I was worried he would tell me off for wasting his piece of paper, that he would laugh at my drawing. I hadn’t drawn a picture since I had been at school, but I put the pen on the paper.

  In the middle of the sheet I drew a little house with one window and a door and a metal chimney poking through the pitched roof. Woodsmoke puffed into the summer sky.

  27

  The following morning, a woman with translucent skin came into my hospital room lugging a plastic bag. She tipped a pile of clothes out over my bed, a kaleidoscope of unnatural colours; they smelled of unwashed necks and damp blankets, they smelled of die Hütte. I drew my knees up to my chest.

  “This is very nice,” she said in English, picking up a long checked skirt, similar to the one she was wearing.

  With my eyes, I traced the pale blue journey of a vein from the bottom of her cheek up to her temple.

  “And about your size, if we can find you a safety pin.” She smiled and she held it out, trying to measure it against me. “I hear you were found in the woods,” she said, examining my face. “You had a lucky escape by the look of it.” She burrowed into the heap of clothes. “Here’s a blouse that will do.” The collar, a nylon ruff, had a rind of grey around the inside. The woman excavated a jumper, red, green, and purple stripes zigzagging across the front.

  “Do you have any underwear?” I asked.

  “Bras? Knickers, do you mean? I’ll have a word with the nurses on my way out. They should be able to find you some paper knickers at least.” The woman’s eyes had become watery, but she carried on. “Now, how about shoes?”

  “I have my own.” I leaned over the side of the bed for my father’s boots and remembered that I hadn’t seen them since I’d worn them when walking through the village.

  “I was told you needed shoes, so you’d better have some. What about these?” She held out a pair of patent Mary Janes.