The Woman who Loved an Octopus and other Saint's Tales (2 page)

* * *

How is your baby? the doctor asks.

Still in the hospital, I say, which she knows. Recovering, I say, which means nothing.

I don't say: I have a baby with bandages for a body. Bandages for a face. No mouth, no nose, no eyes.

I don't say: They're going to try another skin graft next week but they don't know if it'll work this time.

How is your baby? the doctor asks, and I flinch. The question sounds like an accusation.

* * *

When I was first taken to this room to talk I expected somebody who would want answers from me.

I wondered what I should do. To say nothing is dangerous. When you say nothing, it means that you will not co-operate.

To say too much is dangerous. People will become suspicious if you talk too willingly.

I was surprised that the questioner was a woman. The other doctor had only told me that he thought it would help me to see a specialist. A therapist. He said the word slowly and looked at me, drawing breath to explain to me what a therapist does. I should have let him. It might even have been amusing to listen to him talking in terms he thought suitable for me, the refugee from a primitive, war-torn country: soul doctor and bad spirits that needed driving out of my troubled self.

A therapist, I said. Ah well. I would have preferred a Jungian analyst. Still, we can't have all we want, can we?

That shut him up. Later though I wished I hadn't said it. To speak without thinking means you have less control over what you say. Now they know that I know about therapy and analysis, that I might be able to see through some of their simpler tricks. I have given myself away. They will have to use the big guns now and I might not be able to withstand those.

When it was time for the first session, I forgot about my decision to appear to allow myself to be drawn out, to talk, apparently reluctantly, slowly, but to talk. I just sat and looked at her. I listened to what she said, not to her words, but trying to find the sense behind them. I wanted to sniff out her intentions, tried to work out what it really was she wanted to find out.

* * *

She rarely asks questions. More often, she will just sit and look at me, or out of her window, or to a point just to the side of me. At first I worried that she was giving a signal to somebody. But behind me is nothing but a blank wall.

I am trying to understand why you are so afraid, she says.

I don't like her asking questions. I am trying to understand you means I am trying to look inside your head so that I will know which levers to pull.

I decide to challenge her. Why? I ask back.

She wrinkles her forehead, appearing to give my question thought.

Because I feel that there is something in the way, she says. We seem to be running on the spot without getting anywhere.

I am pleased to hear this. I have been successful in resisting her, but she doesn't seem to have noticed that I'm doing it on purpose. She thinks it's because I'm afraid.

Unless it's a trick. It might well be a trick, lulling me into believing she is worried, into believing I have tricked her when she sees through me perfectly well.

Why do you think I'm afraid? I ask.

She leans forward over her desk, looks at me earnestly. She had wanted me to sit in a corner of her office, on the sofa or an armchair, and she would have sat in the other armchair. She said it would be more relaxed. But I said I preferred her sitting at her desk. I said it was more professional, but the truth is that I prefer to have the desk between her and me. It gives me a small advantage in case I have to run away.

You have been through terrible things, she says. The invasion, the war, your father dying, your baby wounded in the fire.

I hate being reminded, having my nose rubbed in my infirmities, my misfortunes.

So, she says, I would expect you to be traumatised, of course.

I hate being told that I conform to her expectations. Why does she need me to tell her anything at all if she knows everything about me anyway?

In fact, she says, you have come through this remarkably well. You managed to save yourself and your son.

That means: you're not that badly traumatised, you don't warrant all that much help and sympathy. You can look after yourself after all. You're tough.

But, she says, there appears to be something more specific. There is something sharply defined that you appear to be terrified of. I would expect you to be hypersensitised generally, which you are. But there is something more than that. At least that is my impression.

She leans back again. This, she explained to me at the beginning, is so as not to crowd my space.

I prefer it when she shows emotion, because then I can read her more easily.

What do you think there might be? I ask her. It might give me an idea of what she thinks.

I don't know, she says. Only you can tell me.

Why should I, I say, my voice flat. I hadn't meant to say that, certainly not in the way it came out, as hostile as that.

She says nothing. She is good at saying nothing.

To break this silence would be to give up, to give in, to wave the white flag and signal surrender. I would have to trust her blindly, put my fate, my past and my future, into her hands.

I say nothing.

She says nothing.

I think of another room, another questioner, another me.

* * *

I want to scream at the doctor. You don't understand at all, I want to scream. You have no idea. No idea. You think the world is safe. You have never been in a war. You don't understand. The fact that I can sit here and not tell you anything means I trust you enough to believe that you're not going to have me punished for not co-operating.

But I would rather cut off my thumbs than tell her that.

* * *

The sky is red. In my dream, I am running, stumbling, my lungs burning with smoke. I know that I am dreaming but it makes no difference. The night it happened, I kept telling myself that it was all a nightmare. I ran away from the fire with the screaming baby and told myself, this is not really happening, it is only a dream. But it wasn't. It was real and it never ended. It still goes on, and my dreams are more real now than my waking hours in this grey country where people tell me that life is safe. I can hear the baby's screams. They pierce my ears like an electric drill.

After I was captured, I saw an electric drill being put through a man's hands. I heard his shrieks even over the screaming of the drill. He wasn't killed. It wouldn't have been so bad if he had been. It would have been over. But he wasn't killed.

I had to sit next to the man in the interrogation room and watch. When I tried to close my eyes they hit me, and then they hit the man. I had to watch. I kept my eyes fixed on the drill, I studied the drill until I could have drawn it with my eyes closed. It was dark green and orange and on the side of it were the words Made in Germany, and while I sat there, a part of my mind detached itself from that room and made plans for how I would get away, and swore that I would never go to that country Germany, never, never, no matter what. And that's why, when I finally got away, I didn't stop there although the other refugees said it was a good place, with good medical care for my son, and that I should stay. But I couldn't stay. I went on, north and west until I came to the Channel, and the train and London. I know it's arbitrary. It could have said Made in Britain on the drill and I'd be in Munich or Berlin now instead. I don't expect anybody would accept it as a reason, even if I told them, and I won't. But that's why I'm here, because I had to watch an electric drill put through a man's hands.

After they had finished with the man they said they would start on the baby. They had someone carry my son in, and a man stood over him with the drill that was still smeared with blood from the other prisoner, and they said it was either the drill in my son's belly or I would talk and tell them the truth. They said they were tired of my games.

They started the drill.

* * *

I killed my father, I tell the doctor. I watch her face. I want to see if she will understand.

She watches me back. I can see what she's thinking: Patient blames herself for father's death. Survivor's guilt
.

I say nothing.

She says nothing.

Finally she asks, how did you kill him?

My mouth opens and I say, I pushed him. I pushed him and he stumbled and he fell into the fire. That's how I killed him.

And then I say nothing at all after that. I have made sure that she won't believe me when I tell her what really happened.

* * *

How is your baby? the doctor asks.

Another operation yesterday, I say.

The skin of my face feels like paper. My eyes burn. I was up all night, sitting by the bandages and tubes and beeping machines that are as close as I can get to my son. The nurses didn't send me away. They only said that the operation had gone better than they'd dared hope, and that they would keep him sedated for a while longer, and not to be disappointed if he didn't come round. I think what they meant was that there was no point in me staying, but I stayed anyway, and they didn't send me away.

Maybe the last operation, I say.

But I'm too tired to hope. I'm too afraid to hope. I don't tell her that.

But when she smiles and says, I'm glad for you, that's really good news; I don't contradict her.

* * *

No, I said. I had to scream it over the noise the drill made. No no no please no please please.

They switched the drill off. Looked at me.

So the bitch has decided to talk, has she? Maybe she has a heart after all.

I'll tell you what you want, I said. My eyes burned. The inside of my mouth felt like paper. I wanted to say: I will tell you nothing, I will not betray the things I believe in, the people I care about. But instead I said: I'll tell you what you want. Everything. Only don't hurt my child.

I betrayed my father in exchange for the life of my son. I told the men in the interrogation room about the place where my father was hiding, and how to get inside. I hoped the password had been changed in the time since my capture.

They were gone three days.

They tied me up and left me alone in my dark cell, no food, no water. I could only just feed the baby. I couldn't clean him, or myself. I couldn't stop him screaming. I was terribly afraid that the men had left, that the baby would starve, that I would starve, alone in the dark.

I thought of my father. The last time I'd seen him we'd quarrelled. I had seen the whole mess coming. I'd even told him that if he thought getting in one lot of bandits to fight another was a smart idea, then he was probably more senile than he appeared and it was time to hand over the reins of power to someone else. He said the only reason he wasn't going to throw me out was that my son might one day follow him on the throne. I told him he could keep his throne. But he hadn't been able to. The
coup
happened two days later, and we'd been on the run since then.

I prayed that the men wouldn't find him.

They came back after three days, stinking of smoke, and told me what they had done. They told me that they had beaten my father and lit the building around him. They told me how he had cursed me with his dying breath, in the flames.

Then they poured petrol over everything and set fire to the prison too, and then they left.

I don't know how I got out. All I can remember thinking is that I had sacrificed my father for the life of my son, and that the sacrifice must not have been for nothing. If the baby died, my betrayal would have been for nothing.

I never told anybody. When I got to London and claimed asylum and they asked me what had happened, I said that my father had died in the fire and that I ran away with the baby.

Now I owe my father a life. I owe my father my son's life.

In my dreams under the red sky, my father comes tottering, a human torch, faceless, his hands stretched out like claws. I know what he wants. He wants his grandson's life. That's why I have to watch the baby as he sleeps, because I am afraid his grandfather's spirit is going to come and take him.

* * *

I killed my father, I tell the doctor.

She watches my face. I think she tries to understand.

I say nothing.

She says nothing.

Finally she asks, do you want to tell me how you killed him?

With words, I say.

I tell her how.

And now he will...

I hadn't meant to say that.

And now he will? she asks.

I look at her. He will come back and fetch my son, I say. A life for a life.

Is that what you were so afraid o
f
? she asks.

I say nothing.