The Angel Makers (21 page)
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.
She never used to be this jumpy, but she drops the bundle of cloth on the ground, thereby preventing a swift escape.She doesn’t look at Judit but drops straight to her knees and starts gathering them up, and much to her consternation, Judit drops to her knees beside her, puts a finger under Sari’s chin, and turns her face. Sari keeps her eyes resolutely down, but feels herself flushing, knowing that Judit is taking in the new, shiny bruise, the dark smudges of old bruises, the cuts and scratches.
‘Oh, Sari,’ she says.
‘I’m fine,’ Sari says quickly, snatching the rest of the sheets from Judit and springing to her feet. Judit’s face is almost more than she can bear; she’s never seen her looking so upset before, and very faintly, at the back of her mind, Sari feels something, some emotion that she can’t afford to let in.
‘If you need me, you know where I am,’ Judit says gruffly, but Sari has already turned her back on her, and is striding resolutely towards home.
The first time Sari is sick, she doesn’t think anything of it. Ferenc kicked her hard in the stomach the day before, and when she finds herself retching over a bowl the next morning, she assumes that it’s simply the aftermath, and that it will pass.
The next time she is sick, it is harder to ignore. Already the knowledge is tickling at the edge of her consciousness, but she pushes it back; impossible to think about that now. She hides it as best she can, making sure she is never ill in front of Ferenc, staying away from foods that make her feel queasy. When her time comes, she binds herself up with rags as usual, and Ferenc doesn’t question anything – after all, he’s not the one to do the washing, so he’s not to know that the rags are clean rather than bloody by the end of the day. It is just the stress, she tells herself. Plenty of women skip their period when they are worried, or if they haven’t been eating enough, both of which definitely apply to her. Things should be back to normal soon.
A few nights later, they are in bed. Ferenc has just fucked her, and she is naked, unusually – often he is happy just to push her skirts above her waist to gain access – and as he eases himself off her, she notices that he is looking at her strangely.
‘You look different,’ he says, eyes narrowed, slightly accusatory.
‘Different how?’ she asks, and he puts a hand on her breast.
‘Different
here
.’
She pushes herself up onto her elbows and looks down at herself. Her breasts are bigger, undeniably, and her nipples stand out, pinker and larger than they did before. Of course she hasn’t forgotten everything she learnt during her four years with Judit, and again there is a subtle click in the back of her mind, a shift in knowledge, but she is not ready to accept it.
‘I suppose I’m growing up at last,’ she says. He looks at her suspiciously, but says nothing more. It is two more weeks before he confronts her with it, when she is standing at mirror, brushing her hair before bed, and he comes up beside her, places a hand on her stomach, slightly swollen below the waist of her skirt.
‘You’re pregnant,’ he says.
Click.
‘Yes,’ she replies. She puts down the brush and turns to him; he is biting his bottom lip, his hands curled into light fists.
‘Is it mine?’ he asks.
She knows she should lie. She knows that she should just tell him what he wants to hear, that his knowledge of women’s bodies is such that he would believe her if she said that she has some arcane way of knowing who the father of her baby is, because he wants to believe it. Instead, she is honest.
‘I don’t know.’
She’s prepared for the slap, and the punch that follows it and knocks her to the floor. She’s prepared for the kick in the ribs, and the kick in the stomach.
She’s not prepared for the bitter, violent rage that fills her with that kick. It rushes through her with a speed that is dizzying. She hasn’t felt a real emotion in weeks, and she probably should have weaned herself back onto them with something light and bearable – concern, perhaps, or sympathy. In her condition, this murderous fury has a similar effect on her that a full, rich meal would have on a starving man; she’s almost maddened with it. Ghost-Sari is gone, and real, flesh-and-blood Sari is back, together with a primeval urge to protect the tiny life coiled inside her, the life that Ferenc is setting out to destroy. As he pulls back his leg to kick her again, she rolls backward, out of his range, and he flails, comically, as his foot connects with empty air. It gives her the time that she needs to get to her feet. As he staggers backwards, trying to regain his balance, she casts around for a weapon, anything that will stop him from coming at her again. She is between him and the mirror, and swiftly, instinctively, she drives her elbow into it. It shatters. She seizes a dagger-shaped shard, oblivious to it cutting into her fingers, and holds it in front of her.
‘If you come closer, I will kill you,’ she says. Her tone is matter-of-fact. ‘You can hurt me all you want, but you will not hurt this child.’
He looks from her face to the shard and back again. She knows that he could probably overpower her. Her main weapon against him is surprise, and she doesn’t know how long that will last. She takes a step towards him, and he moves back sharply, sitting down on the bed.
‘Get out,’ he says hoarsely. ‘Get out.’
She goes.
As she runs, she feels as if the last weeks are catching up with her – emotions that she avoided at the time battering against her body in quick succession. Grief for Marco – poor, heroic, naïve, idiotic Marco – and pain and humiliation and anger for herself. How can she have let this happen? It is unthinkable. She, who has always castigated herself for a surfeit of pride, rather than a lack of it – how could she have let someone treat her like this? It’s as if her real self has been on holiday for a few weeks, and is horrified to see the destruction wrought in her absence.
It’s all right
, she says to her sad little shadow-self that has been holding the fort,
I’m back now. It’s going to be all right
.