Touch

by Claire North

  They came in the night, men in thick leather gloves and black masks with long sweet-smelling beaks, plague doctors hunting a most unusual disease. They had tied rope around their sleeves, ankles and waists so that I might not burrow my fingers against their skin. Two of them sat on my chest while a third locked a collar on a three-foot pole around my neck then swung me up by my throat. I wheezed and scrambled and kicked and tried to catch at a hand, a hair, a foot, a finger – any stranger’s skin – but they were careful, so careful, and as they marched me on the end of my collar through the midnight streets, like a naughty dog on his master’s leash, they reminded each other, beware, beware, don’t get too close to the demon-devil, don’t let his fingers so much as brush yours in passing. In the dead dark of the night Roman emperors with broken faces, dead gods with shattered limbs, the weeping eyes of the Holy Mary and the hooded glares of the scuttling thieves as they slipped into the stone alleys between the leaning, stinking homes looked down and showed no comfort.

  In a stone cell beneath a stone tower built by a long-dead Roman and renovated by a long-dead Greek, they clamped me down with iron shackles to a wooden chair, so no part of my body could move. Then came the priests and the doctors, the soldiers and the violent men, who beat me with long cudgels, and swung incense in my face and said, begone, evil spirit. In the name of the father, the son, the holy ghost, I banish you, begone.

  On the third day of my captivity three masked men entered the room with a woman whose eyes were red from weeping and who tried, at the sight of me, to throw herself at my feet, to kiss my gloved and bound hands, and who was immediately restrained from crossing the line of salt that had been sprinkled around my chair.

  And she wept, and cried out, my son, my son, what demon has done this to you?

  If they hadn’t broken my ribs, poisoned me with their remedies and fed me no more than a little water and soggy bread with a very long spoon, I might have said, these men, good mother. These men that you see before you, they have done this to me. Come a little closer until your ear touches my lips, and I will tell you how.

  As it was, they had, so I didn’t, but sat limp and broken before her while she wept and wailed and called out for her boy and against all demons, until she was calmed and given a cup of wine with a little something extra to drink, and sat upon a low stool.

  Then the leader of my tormentors, a man in a great red cowl and huge crimson gloves that swelled outwards from his wrists, only to be clipped back in and tied to his forearm, knelt down before my mother and said, “Your son is dead, and in heaven. What you see here is a mockery of his flesh, a ghoul in the rotten body of your boy. We could have executed it without telling you, but you are his mother, and to not know the fate of your son is worse than knowing what horrors this creature has performed.”

  At this, she wept a little more, and I almost admired the compassion with which my would-be killer bestowed mercy on a mother.

  Then he went on: “This demon has fornicated with your son’s flesh. It has lain with both women and men. It has worn your boy’s face as it commits sin upon sin, revelled in its power, delighted in its wickedness. With every act it commits it brings dishonour upon the memory of your boy and it must die. Do you understand this, good mother? Do you forgive us the deed that we must now perform?”

  The woman looked up from this angel of death, to me, and I breathed, “Mother…”

  At once my killer clamped his hands tight around the woman’s own and hissed, “It is not your son. It is the demon. It will say anything to live.”

  And so my mother looked away from me, and with tears running down her face she breathed, “God have mercy,” though upon whom she did not say.

  I twisted and screamed, called out for my mother, mother, please, as they led her away, but she didn’t look back, and I didn’t entirely blame her for in truth I didn’t know her name.

  The next day, in the half-dawn light, they took me out to a courtyard framed with grey stone and locked shutters. They had a mansion which had once belonged to great men, but in this age of steel and smoke had fallen hard by, a cracked monument of imperial ambition.

  A pyre had been built in the middle, and the red-robed masters of my demise stood round it, heads bowed, gloved hands folded across their chests, a single brazier smouldering at the foot of the stake. Ritual makes murder easier; it is something else to concentrate on. Seeing the pyre, I kicked and screamed some more, and they dragged me to the foot of the stake and pushed me to my knees. A priest stood before me, long black robes draping around his black-clad feet. He raised his hands to bless, if not exactly me, then the body he was about to commit to the flame, and it occurred to me that his robe, while extensive, could possibly obscure an excess of hairy leg. The question of what lay beneath a priest’s cassock was not one I had considered too deeply before, but now it seemed of absolute import and so I let myself collapse, falling against my own collar, dragging it down, even as it pulled into my trachea, cutting off breath. The guard who supported me was pulled forward by my weight and as I hit the ground, the priest started back, surprised at his own power to induce such an extreme reaction in the penitent. For the briefest moment I felt the pressure on my throat weaken and so I opened my eyes, pushed up off my belly and with teeth bared shoved my face up and under the priest’s robes and bit as hard as I could against what lay buried there.

  I felt hair on my skin, cloth in my eyes, tasted blood on my mouth and even as the priest cried out in shock and distress, I

  jumped, and staggered back, yelping, my black robes billowing around my legs. At my feet the shackled body was pulled back, a bludgeon to the head. I hopped away, hands shaking, and exclaimed in perfect Italian, “In the name of God, go in peace!” then scrambled away, gasping for breath.

  Blood drifted down the inside of my calf from the fresh bite mark in my flesh, but no one noticed. Meanwhile, the bewildered body opened his eyes, and as they chained him to the stake he cried out, what is this, who are you, help me, help me, what’s happening?

  I looked around at my silent companions. Thick gloves, long robes, no easy way in. A guard took a flame from the brazier, and as he laid it to the kindling the body on the stake saw me and screamed, “Heavenly father, help me, please!”

  A gloved hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said quietly in French, “He did not touch you, did he, Father?”

  I looked into a pair of eyes above a tight red mask and shook my head. “No,” I replied. “My robe protected me.”

  The eyes narrowed, and it occurred to me that I had no reason to think the body I inhabited could speak French at all.

  The Bible fell from my hands, and even as the robed man turned to his companions, I knocked the hat from his head and tugged the mask from his face, pulling one arm across his throat and pressing my other hand over his eyes and as he began to fight I

  switched, spinning to drive my elbows straight into the belly of the black-robed priest. My body was tall, old but lean, and I had a dagger and a pistol on a black cord which now I pulled and fired at the first man who turned to fire at me. The flames were catching on the kindling beneath the pyre, black smoke rolling up as the body began to scream, but the red-robed men were moving, reaching for weapons, calling out in alarm, and I bent my head forward, put my elbows together and charged head first at the nearest man, slamming into his chest and knocking him to the ground. A gunshot rang out and something exploded inside me, tearing through lung and bone. I fell back, the echo of the shot ringing in my ears, not so much pain as shock opening inside my chest. The man who’d fired stood not fifteen feet away, reloading his pistol. I crawled on to my feet, felt blood swirl around me, and ran at him, pulling my glove free from my right hand, as he reloaded, raised his pistol again and fired.

  The force of it spun me through a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree pirouette, and as I fell I reached for the nearest object I could find, which happened to be him, and my fingers tore the robes from his chest. I felt the warm touch of a col
larbone and

  blessed relief, blessed merciful relief I jumped

  a body with its bones still intact

  a bloodied corpse that clung to my collarbone clung no more, fell at my feet, lungs broken, chest shattered, face covered in its own blood.

  Now men were shouting, pistols drawn and daggers raised, but in the confusion no one quite knew who to shoot at, so I turned and looked for the exit, for the way I had come, and as the flames rose behind me, I hurled my gun to the ground and ran.

  Behind me, on the pyre, a man whose flesh was popping and hair was catching flame screamed as his legs began to sizzle in the heat.

  I ran.

  Chapter 24

  I, whose enemies call me Kepler and whose body, as it boarded the 7.03 bus towards Bratislava, answered to the name of Coyle, have in recent years tried my best.

  Which is not to say that the standard of my best is especially high.

  In a small room in a small flat in a small town a girl with scars in her arms sat awake, and afraid, in a room she herself could not remember tidying, ready to live a life no one else but she could possibly live.

  A blink of the eye, and all things change.

  Consequences are only for the ones who stay behind.

  The bus rattled through tiny villages, picking up an old woman here, a pair of teenage lovers there, no more than six or seven passengers at any time, heading through Slovakia.

  My stop was unmarked, but the driver knew the place, pulling up by a shrine to St Christopher and a mud path framed by a tunnel of beech trees. The ground was soggy with the mulch of fallen yellow leaves as I walked to a grey tomb of a building surrounded by gardens of sloping grass and still lily-spotted ponds. A small fountain was dried up and clogged with moss by the front door. Metal grilles had been nailed on the outside of the windows. A wooden board proclaimed, DOMINICO HOSPICE, PLEASE SIGN IN AT RECEPTION.

  Under communism mental health was easy. Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or, worst of all, the manifestation of any views contrary to those held by the state were simply the expression of a diseased mind best kept isolated from the body politic. To be ill was to be at fault. You, said the state, you who weep when you look upon the harsh truths of this world, see so clearly the lies that people tell – you have done this to yourselves. And so must be thankful for whatever little mercy the country throws your way.

  We call it a disease, a doctor once whispered to me in the backstreets of Vienna, but a disease is not nearly as easy to blame as people.

  Communism had fallen, but ideas fall more slowly than men.

  This I’d known when, all those years ago, having drained his accounts and disowned his family, I marched the body of Horst Gubler to the gate and proclaimed, help me, I think I am possessed.

  The receptionist asked for my name.

  Nathan Coyle, I said, in my best Canadian accent. It sounded almost identical to my American accent, except for my pronunciation of the letter ‘z’, a refinement entirely wasted on the Slovakian matron behind the desk.

  I’m a nephew of Mr Gubler, I said. I’ve come to see my uncle.

  She looked astonished.

  Goodness, she said, you didn’t say you were his nephew the last time you were here, Mr Coyle!

  Didn’t I?

  Perhaps I wasn’t thinking straight.

  Remind me when it was that I last dropped by?

  There is a picture in the Kepler file of Horst Gubler.

  It shows a man in his early sixties, sitting with his back to the window. He has two chins: the first sharp, pointed, the second longer, lower, sagging towards the base of his neck. His hair is salt-white, straight, cut short, his eyes grey; his nose is hooked and, on lesser men, might seem oversized but fits his features well. He looks away from the camera, half-turned towards some unseen stranger, wears hospital blue and seems surprised to have been caught there, framed by the setting sun. In another life he might have been a genial uncle, a teddy-bear Santa, or perhaps, had circumstances permitted, a trusted Congressman and abuser of women. Yet here, now, he was all that he was – a man of no wealth, friends or even citizenship, for he accused himself of many crimes, burned his US passport when he entered Slovakia, gave away his assets, dismissed his friends, and acted, indeed as he proclaimed when entering the mental home, as a man possessed.

  I was led through halls smelling of disinfectant and boiled onions. Behind heavy metal doors that buzzed when opened the abandoned of the nation sat in silence, watching daytime TV. A recent donation from an unknown benefactor had bought an art studio, a small room with wide windows looking north, whose door stood locked – for the funding, while generous, could not support a teacher and the paints as well.

  “We like the patients to be expressive,” explained the matron as she led me through the halls. “It helps them find themselves.”

  I smiled and said nothing.

  “I don’t approve,” said an old man, sitting in a chair alone, a knitted cardigan too small about his tiny shoulders, his lower lip thrusting forward until it nearly stuck out beyond the tip of his nose. “They don’t know. When they find out – that’s the day. Then they’ll come back just like I said.”

  Of course they won’t, Matron smiled. You’re talking nonsense again.

  A corridor up some stairs, a locked security gate. More doors of thin wood, most standing open. Outside each a rack for paperwork – records of appointments, blood pressure, medication, and a few scant photos for those who wanted to remember, of families who’d long since walked away, children who never came to visit, a home that the patient would never see again.

  Horst Gubler’s door had no photos.

  It stood ajar, and when Matron knocked, she didn’t wait for an answer before opening it.

  A single bed, chair, desk, sink. A PVC mirror, carefully laminated and glued to the wall. A window with a grille over it, which looked west towards red-leaved trees growing bare with the coming cold.

  “Horst,” said Matron, and then, in heavy English, “Look who’s back.”

  Horst Gubler rose from his single chair, put down his book – a much-thumbed swashbuckler of minimal merit, and looked at me. He held out a clammy hand and stammered, “P-p-pleased to meet you.”

  “You remember Mr Coyle,” chided matron. “He came to see you not five weeks ago.”

  “Yes. Yes. He did.” He must have, for Matron said he did and so it must be. “I h-hoped,” his tongue tangled on the word, but he scrunched his eyes up tight and then forced himself on, “you were from the embassy.”

  “Horst –” a sad shake of the matron’s head was enough to bow Gubler’s eyes to the ground “– we’ve talked about this.”

  “Yes, Matron.”

  “Mr Gubler doesn’t remember things clearly, does he?”

  “No, Matron.”

  She turned to me, her voice ringing out for every ear. “It’s common among patients suffering psychotic episodes to seem lucid during the event but amnesiac following it. Mr Gubler’s psychosis – a belief in possession – is a fairly typical mechanism, thankfully less common among Western societies than it has been.” She beamed, a little chuckle swelling up from within her bosom as she added, for the ease of all concerned, “Things keep getting better, that’s what we say!”

  I laughed because she laughed, and my eyes flickered to Gubler, who stood mute and still, head bowed, hands folded in front of him, and said not a word.

  He sat on the edge of his bed, fingers clinging to it as if he might drop.

  I closed the door as the matron walked out, then sat in the chair opposite him, studying his face.

  I barely knew it. For weeks I had regarded it in the mirror, let it grow a shabby beard that blurred rather than enhanced its features. Yet even when searching for means to punish that face, striving with all my might to rip Horst Gubler to shreds, there had been a pride in the eyes, a crinkle in the lips which I could not erase. So long had I stared at that reflection that I had come to loathe i
t, for no matter how sad I waxed my features, how deeply I scrunched my eyes or wrinkled my nose, the glowing defiance of the man who got away with it always burst through.

  No more.

  I had done everything I could do to destroy this face, but only at the very end, when I stood before a stranger in a strange land and told a single truth – “I am possessed” – had I achieved my aims.

  The face was broken now, my work concluded.

  I said, “Hello, Mr Gubler.”

  “H-hello,” he stumbled, not raising his head to look at me.

  “Do you remember me?”

  “Yes, Mr Coyle. My memory is better now. You came here with your p-partner.”

  “Ah yes, my partner. Forgive me, I have several partners – can you remind me which partner I came with?”

  His eyes flashed up, for this was a test, surely, a test of his mind, and he would not fail. “Alice. Her name was Alice.”

  I smiled and shuffled a little closer to him on the edge of my chair. He flinched, head twisting away to one side.

  “Do you remember what we talked about, Mr Gubler? The last time I came to see you?”

  A dull, single nod.

  “Can you tell me what it was?”

  “You wanted to know about my h-history. It was a psychotic break,” he added, voice rising in case he had made a mistake. “I was not possessed; I had an episode arising from marital and work-related stress.”

  “Absolutely,” I replied. “I remember you telling me about it. How did you say it began? A woman touched you. She had dark skin, a blue dress; she shook your hand and the next thing you knew…”

  “Here.” His voice was a bare whisper. “I was… here.”

  “Yes, you were.” I leaned forward, threading my fingers together between my knees. “And what else did you tell us? About being possessed?”

  “Not possessed, not possessed.”

  “There was something else, wasn’t there,” I murmured. “When you woke up here, your hand was in a doctor’s hand and you looked up at him, and what did he do next?”