The Sinner (2 page)

Something inside her disintegrated - or rather, burst open like
a safe being attacked with an acetylene torch. It was an unreal
sensation. As if she were no longer lying in her own bed, she felt
a hard surface beneath her back and something in her mouth like
an outsize thumb that depressed her tongue and caused her to gag
unbearably.

Cora's response was purely instinctive: she wrapped her legs
around Gereon's neck and squeezed it between her thighs. She
was within an ace of breaking his neck or throttling him, but she
didn't even notice, she was so far away at that moment. It wasn't
until he pinched her in the side, gasping and panting and driving
his fingernails deep into the soft flesh of her waist, that the pain
summoned her back.

Gereon fought for breath. `Are you crazy? What's got into you?"
He massaged his throat and coughed, staring at her and shaking
his head.

He couldn't fathom her reaction. She herself was equally at a
loss to know what it was she'd suddenly found so repulsive and distasteful - so terrible that she'd momentarily felt his tongue was
the touch of death.

"I don't like it, that's all," she said, wondering what it was that
she'd heard. The music was still playing softly: a children's choir
singing "Silent Night" - what else, on such a night?

Her unexpected onslaught had quenched Gereon's desire. He
switched off the radio, turned out the light and pulled the covers
over his shoulders. He didn't say goodnight, just growled: "That's
that, then ..."

He fell asleep quickly. Cora wasn't sure later whether she had also
dozed off, but at some point she sat bolt upright in bed and lashed
out with her fists, yelling: "Don't! Let go! Let go of me! Stop it, you
filthy swine!" And her ears rang with the wild beat of the drums, the
throb of the bass guitar and the shrill strains of the organ.

Gereon woke up, grabbed her wrists and shook her. "Cora! Stop
that!" he shouted. "What is all this shit?" She couldn't stop, couldn't
wake up. She sat there in the darkness, desperately fighting off
something that was slowly bearing down on her - something of
which she knew nothing, only that it was driving her insane.

She didn't recover her composure until Gereon had gently
slapped her face several times. He asked her again what the matter
was. Had he done something wrong? Still too bemused to answer
right away, she merely stared at him. After a moment or two he lay
back. She followed his example, turned on her side and strove to
convince herself that it had just been an ordinary nightmare.

But it happened again the following night, when Gereon tried
to make up for lost time, even though there was no radio in the
bedroom and he made no attempt to do what he regarded as
the supreme expression of love. First came the music, somewhat
louder and longer lasting - long enough for her to realize that she
had never heard the tune before. Then she fell into the dark hole
and emerged from it yelling and lashing out. She didn't wake up.
That she did only when Gereon shook her, slapped her face and
shouted her name.

The same thing happened twice the first week in January and
once the week thereafter. Gereon was too tired that Friday night

so he claimed, at least - but on the Saturday he said: "I'm getting
sick of this." That may also have been his reason the night before.

In March he insisted on her going to a doctor. "It isn't normal,
you must admit. Something's got to be done. Or do you plan to go
on like this indefinitely? If so, I'll sleep on the couch."

She didn't go to a doctor. A doctor would have been bound to ask
if she had some explanation for this curious nightmare, or at least
for why it happened only when Gereon had made love to her. A
doctor would probably have begun to rake around in the dark hole
- to persuade her to become aware of things. A doctor wouldn't
have understood that there are things too terrible to become aware
of. Instead she tried a chemist, who recommended a mild sedative.
This cured the yelling and lashing out, so Gereon assumed that all
was well again. It wasn't.

It got worse every weekend. By May her fear of Friday nights
was like a wild beast gnawing away inside her. The first Friday
afternoon in July was sheer hell.

She was sitting in her office, which was just a cubbyhole
partitioned off from the rest of the storeroom. There was a light
over the desk, and standing on the outskirts of the glow it shed was
a fax machine displaying the time and date.

Four-fifty pm, 4 July ... Ten more minutes to the end of office
hours. Only another five hours or so, and Gereon would be
reaching for her. She yearned to go on sitting there till Monday
morning. As long as she was sitting at her desk, she was a smart,
efficient young woman, the heart and soul and motive power of
her father-in-law's firm.

It was a family firm: just Cora, her father-in-law, Gereon, and an
employee named Manni Weber. They were plumbing and heating
engineers, and nothing functioned without her. She was proud of her
position, having had to fight hard for her place in the hierarchy.

Her father-in-law had asked her to take over the office-work the
day after her marriage. He wouldn't take no for an answer. "What do you mean, you can't? You've got a pair of eyes in your head;
look at my books, you'll soon pick it up. You didn't think you were
going to twiddle your thumbs in idleness, did you?"

Twiddling her thumbs had never been her style, and she told
him so. The old man nodded. "That's settled, then."

Until then he'd had to handle the paperwork himself after hours.
Her mother-in-law could just about answer the phone, which was
little more than Cora herself could do to begin with.

The old man never offered her any tips or advice on how he'd
done things hitherto. As for being guided by his books, they would
have had to be better kept for that. There were times when he
seemed to relish her helplessness, but she didn't remain helpless
for long.

She quickly grasped the essentials and persevered. Nothing was
handed to her on a plate - she'd even had to fight for the wooden
partition that separated her miniature office from the rest of the
premises.

For the first year she'd sat at a discarded kitchen table in the
corner of the big, unheated, eternally grimy room. She dared
not complain, although the old man didn't even pay her a wage.
Gereon himself earned nothing but pocket money plus their board
and lodging, and his car was registered in the firm's name. If they
needed anything else, he had to ask.

Even Cora's pregnancy brought no concessions - not even a
modicum of comfort. She continued to sit in the corner of the
storeroom until the very last minute. When she went into labour
she was working out an estimate for a gas central heating system
- standing at the table because she couldn't continue to sit any
longer, her back was aching so much. Her mother-in-law got
hysterical because everything went so quickly. A few fierce pains,
then her waters broke, and she felt intense pressure in her lower
abdomen.

She hadn't wanted to go to hospital at first, but in the end she
called out: "I need an ambulance! Call an ambulance!"

Her mother-in-law just stood there, pointing at the table. "You
aren't through yet, finish it first. No one gives birth in ten minutes; I was in labour with Gereon for a whole day. Father will be furious
if that isn't finished by tonight, you know what he's like."

She knew it only too well, having lived under the same roof
since her marriage. The old man was a tyrant, an exploiter, and
her mother-in-law a submissive creature who bullied anyone in a
weaker position than herself. Gereon was just a follower of orders,
and Cora a slave. She'd sold herself cheap, almost for nothing, in
return for the illusion of a well-ordered existence.

And suddenly, as she stood hunched over the old kitchen table,
watching the puddle spreading around her feet with one hand
clamped between her thighs and pressed against her bulging belly,
she'd had enough. Finish it first? No!

In the hospital she found time to reflect on her life at leisure and
grasp that a well-ordered existence also had its drawbacks. In such
an environment, any hope that her dreams would come true by
themselves was futile. The only question was, how much of a risk
could she afford to take? Still, she told herself, it would be easier
with a baby in her arms. Those seven or eight pounds of humanity
would be enough to support any demand she made.

She proceeded to put her ideas into effect when she came home a
few days later. This earned her the reputation of a brazen, ruthless
creature - a hussy with hair on her teeth, as the old man often called
her. She certainly wasn't that, but she could act like one if necessary.
Besides, asking his permission would have achieved nothing.

She fixed up the office, complete with desk, filing cabinet and
heating. She also took other liberties, like paying herself and
Gereon a salary. The old man flew into a rage, accusing her of
barefaced rapacity. "Where did you learn to pick other people's
pockets?" he demanded.

Her heart was in her mouth, but she stood firm. "Either we get
paid like other people or we go and work elsewhere, it's up to you.
Ask around, find out what other firms are paying, then you'll see
what a good deal you're getting. Me, pick your pockets? Never say
that again! I earn my money!"

It was an arduous business, getting her way with the old man,
but she managed it. She had even, well over a year ago, squeezed a house of their own out of him. More than once she'd been afraid
he would chuck her out, child or no child. "Go back where you
came from!" Gereon had merely stood there, looking hangdog.
He'd never once backed her up or uttered a word in her defence.

To her chagrin, Cora had realized soon after their son's birth
that her husband would be no help to her. That had ceased to
matter now Gereon was simply like that. He did his work. That
apart, he liked a quiet life - and a bit of lovemaking on Friday and
Saturday night. She couldn't baulk at this because lovemaking was
something good, something wholly normal and natural.

Eight minutes to five on 4July ... Cora still had another invoice
to make out. She'd kept putting it off so as to occupy her mind for
those last few minutes. A new central heating boiler. Gereon and
Manni Weber had installed it on Wednesday, and there were two
more scheduled for next week. The new anti-pollution regulations
were compelling people to scrap their old boilers. The regulations
had come into force several years ago, but many householders had
jibbed at the expense and waited until the district chimney sweep
threatened to put their old boilers out of action.

It was funny in a way, that attitude. You knew exactly what you
were in for and did nothing. You simply waited, as if an old boiler's
emissions would conform to the stricter standards overnight,
entirely by themselves and of their own accord - as if a hole inside
you would close up from one minute to the next.

It had closed up four years ago, although not from one minute to
the next. The process had taken a month or two. That was before
she met Gereon, whose raids on her body kept dislodging the scabs
that had formed in the previous few days.

Three minutes to five on 4 July ... Nothing left to do but that
invoice. Last Friday she'd been able to devote some time to the wage
slips. Although only an illusion, it had kept her panic at bay. It wasn't
just fear or a simple sense of unease; it was a reddish-grey mist that
filled her brain, pervading every cranny and jangling every nerve.

Five pm! Stiff-fingered, she removed the sheet of paper from
the typewriter and carefully checked the individual figures. There
was nothing to correct, just a bit of desk tidying to do. Last of all she turned the calendar over to next week. Monday! Till then
two eternities loomed like a double death, and she was half-dead
already.