House of the Lost

by Sarah Rayne

  As they lay on the bed she listened with attention to Annaleise talking about Elena, saying now her husband was First Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party he and Elena were people of considerable importance. Nicolae Ceauşescu had, in fact, recently met President Tito in Bucharest. The first of a series of what would be yearly meetings, said Annaleise, with unmistakable reverence. Zoia said it was gratifying that she had been able to help Elena.

  ‘I work with Elena a good deal,’ said Annaleise at once, ‘so I get to know quite a lot about what’s going on within the Party. We’re very close, she and I.’

  Zoia felt a spear of jealousy go through her at this, but managed not to show it.

  ‘She’s very pleased that we were able to close down that radio station. In fact, Zoia, she wants me to put forward an idea for your future.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Zoia, prepared to be suspicious.

  ‘The Party have recently acquired a very large old house.’ Annaleise’s voice was deliberately offhand, and Zoia thought, Ah yes, we all know what ‘acquired’ means when the Party is involved. ‘It’s known locally as the Black House,’ said Annaleise. ‘I don’t know what it’s original name was – I don’t think anyone does. It’s one of those places whose name seems to have been lost or forgotten.’

  As Elisabeth Valk’s name is to be lost and forgotten. Zoia asked where this place, this Black House, was.

  ‘Only about fifteen miles from here,’ said Annaleise. ‘Quite close to Resita. You remember Resita? We drove through it on the way to the Yugoslav border.’

  Zoia did not say she knew Resita quite well because she had lived near it as a child. She said she remembered.

  ‘Elena drove me out to see the place earlier today,’ said Annaleise, with pride. ‘It’s in a very remote village, and the house is quite grim-looking from the outside, but once you get inside it’s better than you expect. Perfectly habitable. The plan is for it to be a centre for what’s called deep interrogation – detailed questioning of people suspected of working against the Party.’

  ‘And they’d be held in this Black House while they were being questioned?’ asked Zoia.

  ‘Yes. It’s quite large enough; there are about thirty bedrooms and some could be partitioned. People could be kept there very securely until it was known if they needed to be sent to one of the gaols. It would be a kind of halfway house.’

  ‘Where would I come in?’

  ‘You’d be virtually in charge of the entire running of it,’ said Annaleise, and Zoia turned her head to look at Annaleise in surprise.

  ‘You’d have to be properly trained and briefed beforehand, of course, in fact you’d have regular training sessions. And you’d have to be approved by senior members of the Party, but if Elena wants you – and she does – that will be little more than a formality.’

  ‘Would I have to live in this Black House?’

  ‘Yes, you’d need to be there all the time. Once the project was properly launched you’d be expected to oversee any suspects held there – some of them might be kept for several weeks. You’d have to coordinate the gathering of information from all parts of the country and arrange for it to be passed to Party Headquarters. There’d be the transporting of suspects and prisoners, as well. It would all have to be very secret and it would be a very responsible job, but I told Elena you could be trusted completely.’ She glanced at Zoia. ‘It’s a small place,’ she said, ‘bit of a backwater, in fact.’

  I know that, thought Zoia. I grew up in one of those villages.

  ‘The Party want a backwater, though,’ Annaleise went on. ‘Elena told me so herself. They need a place where no one will suspect what’s really going on. But for all its remoteness, it’s to be an important centre for some of the Securitate’s work.’

  ‘I would be working directly for the Securitate?’ This sounded quite promising. It sounded as if it might even be some kind of reward for the months of unremitting dreariness in the bars and cafes.

  ‘You would. At times for the Politburo also.’

  ‘I see,’ said Zoia, thoughtfully.

  Annaleise had been lying on her back, her hair spread over the pillow, but she turned onto her side and reached out a hand. Her nails were long and enamelled with scarlet; they began to trace little scratchy paths of pure pleasure over Zoia’s breasts. But they had made love twice already, so Zoia tried to appear uninterested in case she appeared to be too easy a conquest. It was no use, though. The light scratching of Annaleise’s nails was dredging up a throbbing response and Annaleise would know it. She knew exactly how to reduce Zoia to a helpless slave.

  ‘The Securitate has a very wide net,’ she was saying, her fingernails beginning to scratch a little deeper into Zoia’s skin. ‘They employ spies at all levels, in all walks of life. We both know how it works, and we know the methods of persuasion sometimes needed to get at the truth. You might have to get involved in the questioning yourself. You might need to be a little bit hard on some people. Could you do that? It’s all for the good of the country, remember.’ As she said this her hand ceased its movements for a moment.

  ‘I think I could,’ said Zoia, her mind going back over the years to the labourer’s cottage and the things done to her there. ‘People have been cruel to me in the past.’

  ‘Then you could hand out a bit of what you had to endure. Have what the Americans call payback.’

  ‘Payback,’ said Zoia, trying out the word, and felt a sudden surge of power. My turn to dish out the punishment. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘I could do whatever was necessary.’

  ‘Good. Oh, very good.’ Annaleise’s voice was suddenly soft and thick with sexuality, and her hand slid lower, the questing fingers were no longer teasing but demanding. She sat up in the bed, and leaned across Zoia’s prone body. Her hair, which had become unpinned, brushing against Zoia’s thighs and as Zoia felt Annaleise’s warm moist breath between her legs, she gasped, then gave herself up to the familiar tumult of sensations, and everything else vanished from her mind.

  Much later, when she had washed and put on her clothes and joined Annaleise in the living room, Annaleise returned to the question of the Black House.

  ‘We need to get a few more details clear before you go home,’ she said, and she was no longer the sensuous partner of the bedroom, but the sharp ambitious woman who intended to work her way up to a position of real power and influence. ‘There’s plenty of time to discuss it – your bus doesn’t go for another hour, does it?’

  That meant Zoia would have to queue up to catch the last bus to her own rooms, and she could hear an icy rain pelting against the windows which meant the bus would be crowded and she might not be allowed on.

  ‘The house has to be provided with a cover,’ said Annaleise. ‘Those are Party orders. People in the immediate area must think it’s been opened up for some innocent use. They mustn’t be allowed to suspect what’s really going on inside. That shouldn’t be a problem, though. We’ll think of something credible.’

  She got up to open a bottle of wine. She seemed to Zoia to be drinking more these days. ‘In your place,’ said Annaleise, handing Zoia a glass, ‘I’d be inclined to build up a bit of a local legend about the Black House as soon as possible. This is a country full of legends, folklore and myths: use whatever you can. Make the place feared and shunned. It’s a small village; they’re probably credulous and superstitious, and it shouldn’t be difficult to foster a few dark stories.’

  ‘Will there be anyone in the village itself worth watching?’ said Zoia and Annaleise smiled.

  ‘What a clever, intuitive creature you are. Do you know of the existence of the circle in life’s pattern, Zoia? Fortune’s wheel that turns the fate of men? Did your studies at the university cover any of the philosophers? Boethius?’

  ‘Well, a bit,’ said Zoia uncertainly, loath to display ignorance.

  ‘There’s the turning of a wheel in the pattern of this,’ said Annaleise. ‘Because there’s a man living qu
ite near the Black House who will be very worth watching indeed.’ She sipped the wine for a moment. ‘His name is Andrei Valk,’ she said, and, as Zoia looked up in surprise, she smiled. ‘Yes, Elisabeth’s husband. If we could get evidence that he’s playing the same kind of game as his wife, we would be very pleased indeed.’

  It was then that Zoia knew Elisabeth had not lied when she flung that angry accusation at Annaleise. Annaleise was indeed wreaking revenge on Elisabeth Valk for having rejected her, and that revenge was not going to stop at Elisabeth’s imprisonment. It was going to include her husband and perhaps even her entire family.

  Zoia was impressed by the Black House – by its age and size – but she was not in awe of it or its former owners, whoever they had been. When she considered this, she thought it was because it was so neglected: its fabric was crumbling, paintwork and woodwork were dull and worm-eaten, and most of the upper-floor rooms were mouldy with damp. It was impossible to be in awe of people who could allow such decay to creep over a building.

  Over the fireplace in the main hall was the outline of a coat of arms: Zoia tried to make out the motto, but the stone was too worn away. To whom had the crest belonged? What margravines or boyars or voivodes might once have walked these rooms and fought and loved and quarrelled and conspired here? What rich hunting parties might have stayed in the house when it was young, riding through the forest to be greeted by the doffed caps and tugged forelocks of villagers? That’s where I’d have been, thought Zoia. Down in the village with the serfs, and not so very far away, either. She was not very knowledgeable about geographical distances, mostly because she had hardly travelled anywhere, but she thought her own village was about ten kilometres away. No one knew that, though. Not even Annaleise knew where Zoia came from, and this gave her confidence. The Black House did not belong to her and never would, but she could come and go as she liked, giving orders, surveying the surrounding countryside from the windows of the upper floors. She could feel herself on equal terms with the house’s ghosts.

  But what about her own ghosts?

  One day she walked through the overgrown grounds, trying to work out exactly where the Black House’s boundaries lay. A track led down to the high-road between the trees: it was just wide enough for a car and there were already deep ruts made by the Securitate’s jeeps. The ancient forest that once had covered this hillside, had almost vanished and the remaining trees were dry and twisty-looking, their roots and trunks buried in the thick undergrowth. But there were splashes of colour everywhere: gentians and star flowers and Zoia was enjoying these. She had almost reached the foot of the hill when she caught sight of something deep in the trees, something that was not part of the forest or the undergrowth, but something that, even from this distance, dredged up the very darkest of her ghosts.

  Her heart began to bump with fear, and she was plummeted back into the past.

  It had been an afternoon when her father came home more drunk than usual, and began berating Zoia’s mother for not having food ready for him. She scurried about the tiny scullery, setting pots to boil and cutting bread, her hair falling over her face in her panic-stricken haste. But when Zoia and her sisters went to help and Zoia said they should throw the food in Father’s face, she said they must forgive him because he had a thwarted life and no money. Zoia and her sisters did not know what thwarted meant, but they knew what it meant when Father came into the room they shared, the girls on one side of a thin curtain, the boys on the other, and they knew what it meant when he seized whichever of the girls was nearest. The three boys said one night they would stand up to him and defend their sisters from his beatings and from the way he slid his fingers inside their clothes. It was a sin, they said, and as the girls got older the stroking would lead to other things. Zoia, who was eight, did not really understand this, but her eldest sister, who was eleven, seemed to. Over the years they had made a lot of plans to stand up to their father, but they never did. Zoia did not think any of them dared.

  But her father had heard Zoia’s remark about throwing the food in his face, so today she was the one to be grabbed and subjected to the swishing leather belt. She submitted without struggling, because when his violence was at its height it was no use fighting back; he was as strong as three men put together. But she had discovered that while it was not possible to shut out the pain and fear entirely, it was possible to make it a bit easier by reciting in her head the pieces of poetry she learned at school. She tried to do it tonight, but for the first time the poetry failed her, and something snapped inside her driving out the fear and engulfing her with cold hatred for her father.

  After he had finished beating her, she crept into a corner of the cottage, wrapping her arms round her as she always did, and waited for him to go up the rickety stairs to the space under the roof to sleep off the drink, which he always did. Would he do it today? How drunk was he?

  It seemed he was very drunk indeed. Zoia heard him climb onto the bed, and within a very few minutes he had fallen into repulsive snoring sleep. She waited a while longer, her heart thudding, scarcely aware of the pain of her bruised back and legs. Her brothers and sisters were somewhere outside – they all had tasks to do on Saturday when it was not a school day – and her mother was cleaning pots in the scullery. Zoia took a deep breath and went up the stairs, moving a bit awkwardly because of the beating, and praying the worn treads would not creak and give her away.

  The tiny sliver of room smelt hot and sour from the belched and farted beer. Her father lay on the bed, half on his side, still fully dressed, his eyes closed, his face the colour of bad cheese, a dribble of saliva running from his mouth. Zoia hated him so much it burnt up her whole body. Did she hate him enough to do what she had planned? How would she do it? She smiled, because she knew exactly how. The thick leather belt with the hard shiny buckle was hanging on the end of the bed, as it always was, and when Zoia picked it up the leather felt strong but soft. It would wrap round a neck very easily indeed.

  He was in such a deep drunken sleep he was not even aware of Zoia kneeling on the edge of the bed and looping the belt round his neck. For a moment it lay there like a thick flat snake, then Zoia slotted one end through the buckle of the other end and pulled hard. At once his eyes flew open and he stared straight at her, then gasped, gusting stale beer-breath sickeningly into her face. He would not gust his horrid beer-belch into any of them ever again. Zoia kept her mouth firmly shut so as not to breathe in more of the smell than necessary, and pulled again on the leather. This time it tightened all the way to his neck, and the buckle bit into his skin so that beads of blood sprang out. He grunted and flailed with his hands, threshing and writhing like a hooked fish, but, as Zoia had hoped, he was too fuddled from the beer to put up a real fight. If he fought properly she would let go and run away, pretending she had not done anything.

  But he did not fight. He plucked feebly at whatever was constricting his throat, too far gone even to realize that by knocking Zoia away – which he could easily have done – he could free himself. Zoia was beyond fear by this time. She kept hold of the belt, and although she thought there was a step on the stairs behind her she dare not let go for long enough to look round.

  Her father’s face was flooded with scarlet and his eyes bulged – they were flecked with blood and his tongue was protruding from his mouth. Zoia lost all sense of time. There was nothing in the world any longer but the feel of the leather and the harsh choking sounds of the man on the bed as he slowly strangled. The scarlet deepened to crimson, and livid purple blotches showed on his cheeks. He’s dying, said an exultant voice inside her head. He’s dying and once he’s dead everything will be better.

  From a long long way off, she could hear a voice telling her to come away, to let go of the belt. Then someone prised her hands free and she saw they were bloodied and bruised and that some of the nails were broken and bent back from where she had forced the belt tight. But the thing on the bed had stopped struggling. Its eyes were fixed and staring,
the coloured parts rolled up leaving only round white globes.

  Someone was crying very hard. Zoia looked round to see who this might be and realized it was her mother. It struck her as extremely silly that her mother should cry, because there was no longer anything to cry about. There would never be anything to cry about again. It seemed a long time before the crying finally stopped, and Zoia’s mother wiped her eyes and face, and took Zoia’s hand. Best they should go downstairs now, she said. Her face was creased and still tear-stained, and her voice shook, but she asked if Zoia knew what had just happened.

  ‘Of course I know,’ said Zoia. ‘I’ve killed him. I did it for us all. For you and for the others.’ She saw, then, that her brothers and sisters were huddled together at the top of the stairs, their eyes huge and frightened. ‘I know it was wrong,’ she said. ‘You aren’t supposed to kill people, so I ’spect I’ll have to be punished. I’ll confess next Saturday though, and if I explain why I did it, it’ll probably be all right.’

  ‘You mustn’t confess,’ said her mother at once. ‘Zoia, you must promise never to tell anyone what you’ve just done.’

  ‘Oh yes, I have to tell the truth.’ The nuns at school said you should always tell the truth; if not, God would be very cross and Jesus would weep. ‘I’ll be given a penance,’ she said.

  Mother seemed not to be listening; she reached for a thick woollen scarf, said they were going on a small trip, just a very little walk.

  ‘Why? Have I got to confess it now? Is next Saturday too late?’ Killing somebody would be a mortal sin, and mortal sins were very bad indeed. Perhaps you had to confess them right away.