Winter's End (9 page)

A
lthough Catharina Pancek was only fifteen, with a childish face, she was resourceful. While pretending to give her a hug, a friend had slipped something into her hand, and whatever happened, she must hide it before the inevitable search was carried out. As she put it in her pocket, she recognized the tiny, familiar sound of little pieces of wood knocking against each other: matches! The best present anyone in her position could be given.

Miss Merlute propelled her on ahead through the dormitory where the older girls slept. They didn’t know Catharina’s first name, but their encouragement accompanied her all the way past their rows of beds.

“Be brave! You’ll be fine! Don’t be afraid.”

And as she went through the doorway, she even heard one last cry, uttered without any fear of the consequences. “Look at the Sky! Don’t forget!”

Catharina shivered. In the last few years she herself had tried to comfort girls being taken away to the detention cell, but she could never have imagined being condemned to it herself someday. As she walked past the beds, she felt her fear recede slightly as if the solidarity and sympathy of so many friendly voices were weaving her a garment of courage with light touches.

Once out of the dormitory, they walked quickly down straight, deserted corridors that Catharina had never seen before. Their shoes disturbed dark balls of dust fluff. These corridors couldn’t be swept very often. Miss Merlute went ahead, switching lights on and off as they passed. Sometimes she turned to make sure that her prisoner, whose legs were shorter than hers, was still following, and in profile her huge nose looked so long as to be almost unreal. Without slowing down, so as not to attract the supervisor’s attention, Catharina took the matchbox out of her right-hand pocket and thrust it into her thick hair. With a little luck she wouldn’t be searched there. They went through several doorways and suddenly, indeed entirely unexpectedly, they were outside the headmistress’s office. Miss Merlute quickly knocked twice on the door, then, after a pause, knocked for the third time.
That’s their code,
Catharina told herself.

“Come in!” called the voice of someone with her mouth full on the other side of the door.

Miss Merlute took Catharina by the collar, as
if she’d been caught stealing, and pushed her into the room.

“Pancek!” she announced.

The Tank, seated at her desk, was just finishing her meal. The leftovers were spread out in front of her: some lettuce, a chicken carcass, a bowl of mayonnaise with a spoon dug into it, a plate of cheese, some jam, a bottle of beer.

“Well, Pancek?” she asked, masticating noisily.

Well what?
Catharina would have liked to ask.

“Do you know where you’re being taken?”

“Yes, I know.”

“You can do mental arithmetic in there. It will pass the time.”

Catharina didn’t know exactly what the headmistress was getting at and said nothing.

“Are you afraid?” the Tank went on.

“Yes,” Catharina said untruthfully, guessing that it was better to say so. “Yes, I’m afraid.”

In fact she felt nothing at this moment, except anxiety that her matches might be discovered. Baffled, the Tank looked her up and down. “Have you been in the detention cell before?”

“No, never.”

“Excellent. It’ll give you something to tell the others when you get out. If you get out.”

You can say what you like!
thought Catharina.

Meanwhile Miss Merlute had sat down at a corner of the desk in front of her own plate and was stripping remains of meat off the chicken carcass with the point of her knife.

“Empty your pockets!” the Tank ordered.

Catharina put a handkerchief and a hairbrush on the desk.

“You can have the handkerchief back. It may come in useful. But give me your glasses and your watch. Glass can cut. You’ll get them back when you come out.”

Catharina’s confidence instantly evaporated. She had been shortsighted from birth and wore glasses with thick lenses.

“Oh, please let me keep my glasses!”

“What did you say?” thundered the headmistress. “Giving orders now, is she? Where you’re going, child, you won’t need any glasses.”

“I wasn’t giving orders, I only —”

“Your glasses!”

Catharina felt her eyes blurring, and sobs rose in her throat. She took her glasses off and put them on the desk with her watch. Everything around her looked hazy. She was in a mist, and her tears made it sparkle.

“Search her!” ordered the Tank.

Miss Merlute didn’t have to be told twice. Her nasty paws scurried over the girl, who gritted her teeth. The supervisor’s breath smelled of cold chicken and mayonnaise.
Just so long as she doesn’t search my hair,
Catharina silently prayed. She didn’t.

“Take her away!” the Tank concluded.

Their wild careen down the corridors began again. Catharina slowed down, arms stretched out in front of her to avoid bumping into obstacles.
When Miss Merlute had had enough of that, she seized her prisoner by the collar again and did not let go. Soon they were in the refectory. It was strange to be there in the middle of the night. The heavy tables, cleared after supper, seemed to be sleeping like large animals. Sounds echoed through the room. Miss Merlute opened the door at the far end of the refectory and switched on a flashlight, and, side by side, they both started down the steep staircase. After a few feet, they passed the cellar on their right and went on down. The steps glistened with moisture; sounds were muted. It felt like walking into a tomb. The spiral of the staircase finally came to an end, leading to a tunnel about thirty feet long, its roof propped up in a makeshift way and with a trodden mud floor. The detention cell was at the far end. Miss Merlute turned an enormous key in the lock, pushed the door open, and ran the beam of her flashlight over the furnishings inside.

“That’s the toilet,” she explained, pointing to a tin bucket. “Emptied once a day. You’ll get a meal once a day too. And that’s your bunk.”

The Sky!
thought Catharina, eyes raised to the top of the wall.
Light up a bit of the Sky, you old witch! Even if I can’t see it clearly! I don’t mind about the bucket!
But Miss Merlute wasn’t going to linger here. She was probably in a hurry to finish her meal in the Tank’s company. She turned on her heel and left the cell. The next moment, the place was plunged in darkness. Catharina heard the key turn in the lock, then
the supervisor’s rapid footsteps as she went away, and after that all was silent. Groping in the dark, Catharina made her way to the bunk and sat down on it. It was made of planks and had no mattress. She took the box of matches out of her hair, where it had been resting safely, and carefully opened it. She counted the matches three times, taking great care not to drop any on the damp floor. There were eight exactly.
How many seconds of light do eight matches come to if you let them burn right down to the end in your fingers? Sixty-four seconds? Seventy-two?
She remembered what the Tank had said about mental arithmetic.
What did she mean by that, the mad old bag?
Anyway, it would be better to hold out as long as possible before using them. She must save them up, a bit like saving up visits to the consolers. Catharina felt a pang when she thought of her own consoler, her kind little mouse. How sad she’d be to think of her in here! With her right hand she pulled the blanket up to her nose and found that it didn’t smell as bad as she might have feared. She wrapped herself up in it to sleep. It must be ten in the evening. A long night lay ahead.

When the cold woke her, she couldn’t tell whether she had slept for only a few minutes or several hours. Was it morning yet? She thought she heard an insect moving close to her ear. Or a spider? She pulled her coat close around her, hauled the blanket up again, and tried to go back to sleep. It was no good. Gloomy thoughts kept coming into her mind, like an army of insidious beetles scuttling
over her.
Where have you gone, Milena? Will you be back soon? Who’s going to come looking for me here?

She held out for what seemed an eternity, although perhaps it was only an hour, and then made up her mind to strike the first match. She would burn one after each meal, so that would be one a day, and she wouldn’t be using them up too quickly. She got up and pulled her bunk over to the back wall. If she stood on it, she was very close to the beam they talked about. Just as she was about to strike the little sulfur head of the match on the side of the box, she felt sudden anxiety: suppose there was nothing on the beam after all? No sky, no cloud? No picture of any kind? What a disappointment that would be! And if there really was something, would she be able to see it without her glasses? She hesitated for a few seconds and then finally decided. The match caught fire at once, and Catharina was amazed to see how it lit up the entire cell. She raised her trembling arm toward the beam, and she saw it.

Yes, a patch of sky was painted on the half-rotten beam. It measured only about twelve by six inches, and the azure blue had certainly faded, but it definitely showed the sky! You could tell from the cloud to the left of the picture. A billowing white cumulus cloud like a cotton ball. The flickering flame made its shape swell and seem to move and change: it was an elephant, a mountain, a dragon. Catharina watched, fascinated. It seemed to her that the sight of those colors, even blurred by her short sight, had plucked her out of the dark depths of the earth
and brought her back to the land of the living. It was as if the wind were blowing in her hair and the blood running through her veins again.

The sudden return of darkness and the sharp burning pain at her fingertips brought her back to reality: she had just used up her first match. Now there were only seven left. But never mind: she had seen the Sky, and it made her feel stronger. She lay down again, full of courage now.

Don’t worry, Milena! Go where you have to go and do what you have to do. I can hold out — for you, for Helen, for all of us. Never fear, girls, little Catharina Pancek has seen the Sky and she’ll hold out. You’d be surprised!

Her handkerchief was drenched with tears, but to hell with the Tank. The Tank could get lost — they weren’t tears of misery or fear.

Miss Merlute had told the truth. Someone visited Catharina next day. The sound of the key turning in the lock made her jump. A flashlight dazzled her.

“Your meal.”

A small woman put a tray down on the side of the bunk. It held a piece of bread, a plate, a jug of water, and a glass.

“Eat it while I take the bucket away to empty it.”

“What time is it, please?”

“I’m not allowed to talk to you,” replied the woman, and she went out, taking care to lock the door again behind her.

Catharina drank half the contents of the jug in a single draft. She realized that she was incredibly thirsty. Feeling around on the tray, she found a spoon and gingerly tasted the contents of the plate. Beans, barely warm. She swallowed a mouthful, bit into the bread, and thought it was almost nice.
I’ll keep it,
she told herself.
I’ll eat it bit by bit and make it last.
She hid it under the blanket and forced herself to finish the beans.

A couple of minutes later, the woman was back. She put the bucket down in the corner of the cell and came over to the bunk, shining her flashlight on the tray.

“Finished?”

“Yes,” said Catharina. “Do you . . . do you work in the boarding school? Are you new? I don’t know you.”

“I’m not allowed to talk to you,” the woman repeated. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

She picked up the tray and went away.

Alone again, Catharina lay on her back for a long time with her eyes wide open, in a very strange, dreamy state. She could have sworn that she knew the woman’s voice.

Passing the time was difficult. Catharina exhausted all possible games. She tried to remember poetry she had learned as a child. She went through the names of all the countries in the world in alphabetical order, then boys’ first names, then girls’ first names, then trees and animals. How much time did all that take? Hours or minutes? How could she
know?
Do mental arithmetic
. . . Why not, after all? She started saying her multiplication tables.

On the second day, the same woman came back, and it was all just as it had been the day before. The only difference was that she had boiled potatoes instead of beans.

On the third day — had her hearing grown sharper? — Catharina thought she could just hear the sound of mealtimes in the refectory above her: footsteps, plates and cutlery clinking, chairs being pulled over the floorboards. But the sounds were so faint that she didn’t know if she was imagining them or not.

On the fourth day, when she was about to light her fourth match, she struck it clumsily and the flame went out at once. This tiny incident plunged her into deep despair. That same day the small woman stopped dead in the open doorway as she was leaving the cell and asked, “Is your name Pancek?”

“Yes,” replied Catharina.

The woman stood there perfectly still for a few more seconds, saying no more, and then she went away.

On the fifth day, Catharina began coughing, and she had a sore throat. She realized that she was finding it more and more difficult to keep count of the days she had spent in the cell. Everything in her head was completely mixed up. The only certain way she could check was by counting the number of matches she had left, because she burned
only one a day, and she couldn’t prevent herself counting them over and over again. Three matches left . . . three. Three more days when I can see the Sky . . . and then what? Where would she find the strength to keep going after that?

On the sixth day, the woman stopped in the doorway again and continued with the question she had been asking the day before. It was as if she had thought of nothing else since.

“Pancek — Catharina Pancek?”

“Yes,” said Catharina. She was sitting on the bunk, trembling feverishly.

There was a long silence, and then the woman said, “It’s nine in the evening. I always come at nine in the evening. I’ll leave the jug of water close to the door for you. I’ll be back tomorrow.”