The Angel Makers

by Jessica Gregson

  ‘You mustn’t,’ she says, ‘because if you do, I will not marry you. And if you hurt me after we’re married, I will leave you.’

  He raises his head and gazes at her with amazement, tears forgotten (very quickly forgotten) on his cheeks. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘I can, and I will.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I don’t need you, Ferenc. I don’t need your status and I don’t need your money. If I wasn’t fond of you, and if I didn’t feel that you weren’t yourself when you hit me last night, I would break the engagement now. But I know that things are very difficult for you now, and that the war caused a lot of damage, and I know that you are a good man. So you deserve another chance.’

  He frowns, as if unsure whether he should be affronted or grateful; he plumps for the latter.

  ‘Thank you, Sari. And I am so sorry. I will never lay a hand on you again.’

  Does she believe him? She’s not sure, but she believes in herself enough to know that she will keep her word, and that she’s strong enough to leave him if he breaks his promise. That’s enough for now.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Evening is racing in across the plain, and Sari is standing at the stove in her father’s house, heating up Ferenc’s dinner, when everything starts crashing down. She doesn’t really heed the footsteps at first, pounding on the path outside – someone running home for supper, perhaps – but the steps don’t go past the house. Instead, they seem to be approaching, and as Sari carefully puts down the pan she is holding she just knows – not exactly what is going to happen, but she knows that it’s going to be bad. She turns to Ferenc, who is rising from the table, looking alarmed.

  ‘Who—?’

  ‘I’ll go and check,’ she says. She’s surprised at how calm she is. Perhaps it’s just Judit, perhaps someone’s fallen ill, perhaps everything is going to be all right after all.

  It’s Marco.

  He’s standing on the front steps with a wild look in his eyes, and for a moment Sari is paralysed, she can’t move, because surely this is too nightmarish a scenario to be true.

  ‘Go!’ she hisses, her voice sounding unfamiliar with panic.

  Marco’s face doesn’t change, and he doesn’t turn around. Instead, he grabs her wrist.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he says. He’s not shouting but still Sari recoils from the volume of his voice, with Ferenc just inside. ‘I can’t leave you here. Come with me. I won’t be missed for another two hours, we can get far enough away in that time to be safe—’

  ‘Marco, are you insane?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. I won’t leave you here. You know the plain, we can hide out for a couple of days, and then head for Budapest—’ ‘

  But Ferenc—’

  And Ferenc speaks, from just behind Sari’s shoulder. ‘Sari, who is it?’ and then drops into silence as he looks out the front door and sees a tall, furious-looking Italian officer gripping the wrist of his fiancée, staring at her ardently.

  Ferenc’s brain does not move quickly, and just as he is beginning to process this information and draw the obvious conclusions, Marco springs. He has a couple of inches on Ferenc, and the element of surprise; moreover, he’s both fit and furious and then Ferenc is on the floor with an almighty crash, Marco crouching over him, pounding his face again and again with a sound like rotten fruit falling from a tree.

  Sari watches, blank, her life dissolving before her eyes until she notices Marco’s raised fist is slick with blood and that wakes her up. She screams for Marco to stop it, unsure whether she’s speaking in Magyar or Italian or neither, she bounds across the room and grabs Marco’s hand, which is just starting its next inexorable downward swing. The force of movement nearly wrenches her arm out of its socket but she hangs on, and Marco turns to look at her, his face frighteningly white and vacant.

  Taking a deep breath, Sari says in clear, careful Italian:‘Get up. Get off him.’

  For a moment, it looks as if Marco hasn’t heard or understood what she’s said, but slowly some animation returns to his face, and without taking his eyes off Sari he rises to his feet, stepping back from Ferenc’s prone body. With a twitching, hitching movement, Ferenc turns over and clambers to his knees. Blood is pouring from his nose, and his face is already rising in a collection of plum-coloured bruises. Lifting his hand, he opens his mouth and spits out two teeth. Then, silent and expressionless, he turns around and thumps up the stairs.

  ‘You have to go,’ Sari says, turning to Marco. He is looking down at his bruised and bleeding hands with what seems like incomprehension. ‘You have to go,’ she says again, louder this time, urgent. Things have been shattered, and she doesn’t know what she can do to fix them, but she knows that she can’t do anything with Marco here. And his crazy talk about them leaving together – oh, she’s touched, there’s a warm fluttering in the pit of her stomach despite the awfulness of the evening’s events, but it’s impossible, and he must see that it’s impossible.

  She hears Ferenc moving about upstairs, and gives Marco a gentle shove towards the door. ‘Please go. For both of our sakes.’

  ‘I can’t,’ he says simply.

  What happens next happens very quickly. There is a sound like thunder – Ferenc running down the stairs. Sari feels him move behind her, very close, and then pain pours through her head as he grabs her by the hair, winding it roughly around his fist, pulling so tightly that her chin is raised, her neck aching. She sees Marco’s expression change from wariness to horror, and that’s when she becomes aware of the cold, round barrel pressing into her left temple.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Ferenc says through clenched teeth. Sari feels the puff of his breath on her cheek, and of course Marco doesn’t understand, but when Ferenc roars ‘Move!’ his meaning becomes clearer. An awkward, four-legged beast, Sari and Ferenc shuffle towards the door, Marco ahead of them, casting desperate glances back in Sari’s direction. They stumble down the stairs and over the silvery grass, wet with dew, towards the forest.

  This is it, Sari thinks. She’s surprised to find that she’s not afraid. She wonders where Ferenc got the gun. She wonders whether death will be painful, and whether Ferenc will kill her or Marco first. She looks up at the moon, bobbing white and serene over the treetops, and is comforted by the thought that other people are looking at that moon, other people who are oblivious to the sordid little drama being played out in Sari’s corner of the world.

  ‘Stop,’ Ferenc commands, and they lurch to a halt. They’re not so deep in the woods that Sari can’t see the faint glimmer of lights from the village through the trees, but they’re far enough away that they won’t be disturbed, she’s sure of that. She knows every inch of these woods, every gnarled stump and skein of bracken, and the familiarity is steadying – but whenever she looks at Marco, it’s as if she’s seeing the woods through his eyes, the inexplicable tangles of blackness, the tilted unevenness of the ground, the eerie noises that surround them. Oh, Marco, she thinks, what a frightening and alien place to die.

  Ferenc unwinds her hair a couple of times so that he’s still holding her, but she’s not pressed so tightly against him, and as she moves away she catches sight of his face – bone white in the moonlight and still swimming with blood. His eyes look as flat and expressionless as pieces of silver, and his mouth is twisted into a strange expression as if he’s forgotten to remove an earlier smile. She realises then how stupid she was to think that it was possible to reason with him, to believe any promise that he made; she realises that the essential Ferenc has gone, the disintegration starting during the war and ending in these last, deceptively calm few weeks.Yet, despite the circumstances she feels a brief flare of pity for him.

  ‘You’ve been fucking my fiancée,’ Ferenc says to Marco. His tone is mild and almost friendly. Marco looks quickly between Sari and Ferenc, frowning in incomprehension, and Sari fights back the temptation to translate for him; what good would it do, anyhow? The moon glints off the barrel as Fer
enc moves the gun until it’s pointing at Marco. His hand is steady.

  ‘Run,’ he says to Marco. Marco doesn’t understand, and looks imploringly at Sari. Ferenc tugs roughly on her hair. ‘Tell him,’ he orders.

  ‘He wants you to run,’ Sari says to Marco in Italian. Her voice is barely above a whisper and her lips feel numb. Marco’s brow creases; it’s as if, even now, he can’t quite believe the ridiculousness of the situation. Nothing in his ordered, civilised background has prepared him for the rough and ready way that things work out here. Spreading his hands, head on one side, he takes a step towards Ferenc, like this is just a misunderstanding over a game of cards that can be easily worked out with a bit of sensible discussion.

  Ferenc shrugs. ‘Suit yourself,’ he says, and smiles, black gaps glaring from his bloodstained mouth.

  Sari sees Marco fall. For a split second she thinks he must have tripped, and then she hears the shot – a dry crack, like someone stepping on a twig, only louder – and notices the dark smear in the centre of Marco’s forehead. She feels nothing, dimly realises that she must be in shock, and is thankful for it. Thankful still when Ferenc pushes her roughly down into the sodden leaves on the ground, pushes her skirt up, and fucks her, hard, unyieldingly, and yet she’s only faintly aware of the pain, the burning, the wet smell of the leaves, the slimy feel of them on her back and he slaps her once, twice, turning her face from side to side and then he is spent, panting like a dog on top of her as she stares at an unrecognisable shape she only later realises is Marco’s lifeless legs.

  She’s suddenly cold as Ferenc lifts himself off her but she doesn’t move.

  ‘Get up,’ he says, but she still doesn’t move. ‘Get up,’ he says again, accompanied this time by a kick to her ribs.

  She gets up. She feels nothing, though a dozen emotions occur to her (anger? grief? humiliation?) – she just can’t be bothered to deal with any of them right now.

  ‘Come on,’ Ferenc says. He’s let go of her hair now, and is gripping her wrist instead. They move away from Marco’s body and the shadows close in on it behind them, but Sari is unconcerned; whatever it is that made Marco is gone, and what’s left is just a husk. She wonders half-heartedly where Ferenc is taking her, and why he doesn’t just kill her there, with Marco, but then realises that he is leading her out of the woods – not back towards the village, no, nor towards her father’s house, but in a wide, sweeping arc across the plain. They are heading for the camp, for his old house.

  Gunther is on guard, standing at the gates, and he scarcely looks up when they approach. ‘Excuse me,’ Ferenc says in German – his German is very good, better than Sari’s though she’s loath to admit it – and Gunther raises his head, his bored expression vanishing as he takes in the blood, the manic glint in Ferenc’s eyes, Sari’s white, strained face. His hand moves for his gun, but Ferenc reaches out and seizes his wrist, stopping him.

  ‘Ah, no,’ he says, indulgently, as if he is talking to a child, ‘You won’t need that. My name is Ferenc Gazdag, and my family owns this property.’

  Gunther’s eyes widen. It’s hard to believe that this bloodstained, half-mad looking wretch can be from the richest family in the village, but his precise, accentless German, and his easy, urbane manner support his claim.

  ‘I just thought I should let you know,’ Ferenc continues, in the same easy, friendly manner, ‘that one of your prisoners is dead in the woods over there. He has been fucking my fiancée, you see. You should probably go and collect the body. If anyone asks what happened to him, you should tell them that he was shot while trying to escape.’

  Gunther’s mouth falls open, closes, and opens again. ‘What? But—’

  Ferenc shakes his head, smiling slightly. ‘No arguments, please. My family has allowed our property to be used in good faith. I doubt that my parents – or your superiors – would be happy to hear how things have been run around here, how enemy prisoners have been allowed to walk around the village and take advantage of our women. I don’t think they’d like that at all, do you?’

  Gunther is silent for a moment, looking stunned. Slowly, he shakes his head.

  ‘So you’ll stick to my story, then? Good. I am a proud man, you see, and I don’t want people to know what this little bitch—’ his composure slips slightly as he shakes Sari by the shoulder – ‘what Sari has been up to.’

  By the time they get back to the house – walking the long way again so that they won’t be seen – lights are bobbing in the woods; Gunther has despatched some of his men to find Marco’s body. Ferenc has not said a word since they left the camp, but nor has he let go of Sari’s shoulder, and she knows that she will have bruises in the pattern of his fingers later.

  Ferenc shuts the door quietly behind them, and on some level Sari knows that she should find his façade of calm frightening, but she just cannot summon the energy. It’s as if all the vital, vibrant parts of her have flickered out, leaving an insipid, disinterested shell behind. He turns from the door, again with that unsettling smile, and walks towards her, pulls back his arm, and punches her in the face. All his weight is behind that punch. She falls. The beating goes on for a long time, and then there is space, and silence. It’s as if she’s still falling.

  When she comes to, she is lying in bed and Ferenc is sitting beside her, dabbing at her swollen face with a damp cloth. He’s cleaned himself up and changed clothes, and looks deceptively normal. His hands on Sari’s face are gentle, and when she opens her eyes he doesn’t stop what he’s doing, cleaning the blood from the corner of her mouth.

  When he is finished, he looks at her and gives a friendly grin. ‘Quite a set of bruises you’ve got here, Sari! You’re going to be a sight for the next few days, silly girl.’ He pushes her hair back from her face, and she winces slightly as he grazes a cut on her scalp. ‘How are you feeling?’

  How is she feeling? There are no words. ‘All right,’ she says.

  ‘Good girl.’ He smiles again, looking into her face. ‘We need to have a bit of a talk, Sari. Things are going to change a lot for you, and I’m sorry about that, but you do see that you’ve brought it on yourself, don’t you?’

  She doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t seem to expect her to.

  ‘Now, you’re going to be living here from now on. I already spoke to Judit about it, and she didn’t seem too happy, but that’s her problem, the dried up old cunt. You’re not to go out without my permission, and I should tell you now that I’ll only give you permission to go out to the market, or to do washing. No more work for you, Sari. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but you see, it’s how all this trouble started in the first place, isn’t it?’

  Again, she says nothing.

  ‘And if you have any thoughts about running away, Sari, you should forget them right now. My family knows people in all the villages around here, and if you leave, they will help me find you. And I will find you, Sari, I will not give up until I find you, and then I will kill you. Do you understand me?’

  She nods gingerly, and he smiles, obviously pleased.

  ‘Good girl. That’s what I like to see. I’m sorry to have to be so strict, but you must see that I can’t tolerate this sort of behaviour, can’t you? A lot of men wouldn’t be so forgiving, but I love you, Sari, and so if you’re good, I’m still prepared to marry you, even though you’re spoiled goods. Not many men would be so generous, you know. Really, you should thank me.’ His face hardens suddenly. ‘Thank me, Sari.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispers. He voice is cracked and painful.

  ‘Say my name.’

  ‘Thank you, Ferenc.’

  He claps his hands, looking delighted again. ‘Very good! You’re welcome, Sari. And now—’ he yawns theatrically. ‘Well, it’s been a busy day, so it’s about time for bed, don’t you think?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he gets to his feet and strips off his shirt and trousers. Sari notices that his body bears the marks of where Marco hit him – it seems like a hundred years
ago. She shuts her eyes. The bed dips as he climbs in beside her, and there’s a whisper as he blows out the lamp.

  ‘Goodnight, Sari.’

  Within minutes, he’s snoring beside her. She stares at the ceiling, wondering if this is what it feels like to be dead. She’s not so far from Marco after all.

  Sari finds that she gets used to being beaten surprisingly quickly. At the end of every day, she mentally tallies what she has done to provoke Ferenc – burnt the dinner, spoken out of turn, footsteps too loud – yet no matter how careful she is, every day she seems to find a new way to offend him, which requires discipline and punishment. He doesn’t want to do it, of course he doesn’t, he insists; he loves her, so why would he want to hurt her? But he has to; it’s for her own good.

  Sari doesn’t believe this, but she doesn’t not believe it, either. Nothing really penetrates her brain any more, nothing touches her. She’s shut off all the dangerous, painful parts of herself, as deliberately as someone snuffing out a candle; she’s sent the important parts of herself away somewhere, leaving behind only enough to be functional. She doesn’t think of the future any more, and she’s forgotten the past, living in an eternal present. Sometimes she wonders why Ferenc didn’t kill her along with Marco that night, and then she realises that he basically did.

  She sees Judit once by the river, and that’s bad. Ferenc is usually quite good about not hitting her face on days before she is going to have to go out and be seen, but he’d given her a nosebleed the night before, and she’d managed to get blood all over the good sheets, and they need washing. Her hair is down in a way that best hides her bruises – a rather impressive black eye, in this case – and she’s managed to wash the sheets without making eye contact with anyone, which is good. She’s just about to leave when somebody says her name, and Judit’s claw-like hand fastens on her wrist.