The Pierced Heart: A Novel (21 page)

28 A
PRIL

There were voices this morning. When he brought me my breakfast I heard the noise of heavy footsteps somewhere below, and the muttering of men coming up the stairs. He would have closed the door on me then, but one of the men called up and he was forced to go to the banister to answer him. And so it was that I saw them, one carrying a small mahogany case, the other two bent beneath a long box of cheap unvarnished wood. Weighty, it was, to judge of the way they were bent beneath it, and all three rough men, in aprons and coarse coats—had they not been so, I might have attempted to speak to them, but they kept their eyes averted as they passed, and he directed them to the door next along this landing, where I knew at once that he himself must be lodged. But what those boxes contained or whence they came I do not know, for when I pressed him he said only that he required
certain equipment for my treatment, and this would form a part of it. That he had already told me this before, and it would be of no use to explain it to me further because I would not understand. And then he ushered me back inside, and I sank slowly down and placed my cheek against the door and gazed, as the hot tears trickled down, to where the last edge of pale light still seeped through.

30 A
PRIL

I find myself listening, now, at the wall that separates us. My hearing has become so sharpened I can hear every tiny noise, every minuscule movement. Sometimes I tell myself I can even hear him breathing. For the first days I heard only such sounds as I might have expected—the scrape of a chair, the opening of a door—but last night, after he had taken away my dinner, and my lamp, I heard voices from beyond the wall. His voice, and a woman’s voice. My heart began to pound then, and I pressed my ear closer to the wall, but I could not discern their words. But it seemed to me he spoke to her as he used to speak to me, when he would hold my hands and question me and draw me into his eyes. But soon there were no words at all, only the sound of drumming against the floor and low breathless moans that brought the hot blood to my cheeks as my mind made pictures I fought to repulse. And then one long cry. And after that nothing but the silence, and the dark.

I sat there, I do not know how long, wondering if the next sound I would hear would be the key in my own lock, but it never came. And the next I knew was a door opening and closing, and steps descending the stairs.

When he brought me my food just now I said I was not hungry, and I asked him who the young woman was whose voice I had heard.

“You are mistaken,” he said after a moment, avoiding my gaze. “There is no young woman here. But we know, do we not, that you have always been vulnerable to the delusions of an enflamed imagination.”

“I thought,” I stammered, “that you believed me—that I was not mad—”

His eyes narrowed. “And of all the doctors who were brought to see you,
I alone
believed so. You should remember that. I will leave the food. I advise you to eat it.”

N
O DATE—

I no longer know how long I have been here. Something has happened to me, since the last time I wrote in this book. Whether it is an illness, or the consequence of all these dark and solitary hours, I cannot tell, I know only that I have spent what seems like many days on my bed, unable to move, drifting between half sleep and waking. Sometimes I have roused myself to find he has been here, but I have no recollection of seeing him, and the food he has left me tasted sour in my mouth. I have heard cries in the night, and wondered if it was my own voice echoing in my ears. I have felt the touch of fingers on my skin, and not known if I have dreamed. And I have endured, once more, the nightmare.

It was the light, once, that protected me—it was the sunshine of common day that kept the nightmare confined, and consigned its horrors only to the abyss of slumber. But here there is no light, no day, and the visions of the night hours begin to invade my waking mind. He knows not the torment he is inflicting, for else, surely, he would pity me. For here in the dark I cannot escape them—the looming shapes circling above my head, the hands reaching down towards me, the gaudy lights and the incessant repeating music, and always, always, at the last, that terrible image of my mother’s smiling face.

It comes—every night now it comes, and I wake to the sound of my own voice, crying out a name I do not know—

Do not leave me—
do not leave me
—

N
O DATE—

I was sick today, wretchedly sick, and though my flesh feels scoured and drained, and I tremble to hold my pen, my head is a little clearer. And because my mind is steady now that my body is empty, I am starting to wonder if he has been poisoning me. Whether ever since I was foolish enough to tell him about the young woman I heard, he has secured himself from my inquisitiveness by drugging my food. I know he would not hesitate, for if there is a man capable of such a thing, it is he. And if it is truly so, what hope do I have? He can do with me what he wills, for no-one knows where I am, and no-one comes near, neither maid nor messenger. How I wish now that I had spoken to those men when I had the chance—for I have heard no human voice since, only the muffled drone of the city which rings about us. I listen until the hissing silence thunders in my ears but still no-one comes. I no longer live as others do, by day and night, but by lamplight and darkness. By dark I curl upon my bed, hearing mice scuttling in the skirting, and what must be great birds flapping and scuffling on the rooftop outside. By light I sit here huddled on the floor, enclosed within the pale circle of the lamp, tracing patterns in the bare boards. Following with my fingers where the grain combs into threads, or parts round the whorls in the wood like river water past a stone, but I stop always at those two knots, there, at the edge of the light, which stare back at me even now, sloping and menacing, like the eyes of some great and savage wolf.

When he comes to take the lamp, I beg him, on my knees, for news of my father. I take his hand and caress it, pleading for just a little daylight, but he throws me from him in disdain, saying that my case is a grave one, and the measures he is taking proportionate to my need. Surely, he says, a little patience and perseverance on my part is not so much to ask. And when he has gone, and I am left lying abject on the floor where he left me, I wonder if this is a punishment. The vengeance of a God my father confessed not to believe in, for perverting
the powers only a deity dare assume. For surely we offended against Him, in counterfeiting the souls of the dead and conjuring false terror from empty shadows. And perhaps it is for that dire sin that He shows me now what face terror truly wears.

L
ATER—

I am become a thing of darkness. My eyes are too weak to bear even the dim glow that comes when he opens the door, and I recoil from it in pain, as I recoil from his touch. I can no longer even see his face, as the light streams in behind him and he seems monstrous, like the fiend of some half-forgotten myth. My world has shrunk to these two narrow rooms and I sense it only by sound, and by skin. When he takes the lamp from me, I feel my way along the walls, seeing through my fingers. And once or twice, when my hands have grazed the mirror, or the coal-scuttle, I have seen a dull colour blossom at my touch. Not the icy flames I saw in Vienna, or the beautiful light that rose from Dora’s grave, but a meagre glimmer pricking at my nerves. I shrank from this, once, not knowing what it was and terrified that it branded me as mad. And then I gloried in it, because he told me it was a gift—a wondrous talent that drew him to me as to none other before. And then I think of that girl I heard, and those cries so suddenly cut off, and I am afraid.

N
O DATE—

It has been three days now, since I have eaten what he has brought me. I have thrown the food into the water-closet, and when he comes I disguise my weakness by cowering in the corner and refusing to go near him. He chides me, then, for childishness and pique and I turn my face to the wall and say nothing. Better far he should think so, than have him guess the truth.

N
O DATE—

I have made a discovery. The last time he left the lamp I took it into the sitting-room, wondering if despite its dirt and emptiness there might after all be something there that could tell me where I am—some discarded letter perhaps, or tradesman’s receipt. And it was then, when I went searching from shelf to bare shelf, that I discovered a door in the corner by the window, concealed in the wooden panelling. My heart rose an instant in a wild hope of escape, only for it to perish cruelly as I realised that there could be no egress this way—that it could be nothing more than a cupboard set into the dividing wall. And yet I persevered, thinking such a hiding-place might still contain something of use. I felt down the jamb with my fingers and found a small metal catch, and the next moment the door swung open towards me. And it was indeed, only a cupboard, barely three feet in depth. Or at least so I thought, until I noticed a tiny circle of light on the far side and saw that it was not a wall at all, but another door, leading to the apartment beyond. I pushed gently but it would not give, so I knelt down as quietly as I could and placed my eye to the keyhole. Because I knew by then what I would see.

I would see
him
.

And perhaps because I am so helpless, so entirely subservient to the power he wields, I have taken to sitting at this door and observing him. It is my tiny vengeance to watch him so, when he has no notion I am there, for it is clear to me he has not perceived that this hidden door separates us. But I have learned nothing from my spying that I did not know, or that might assist me. It is part of his bedroom I can see, a bedroom most luxuriously appointed. There is a large bed, and what I think must be a table, covered with a heavy crimson satin cloth. Sometimes he lies many hours on that bed by day, full-dressed in the clothes he always wears, not sleeping, but not awake, as if sunk in a trance. Sometimes I see him reading from a great quantity of
heavy volumes which appear to contain diagrams, or sheets of figures, or obscure mathematical signs, and once I saw a great piece of glass, cut in a diamond shape like the prisms I once studied in my father’s books. And when night has fallen and he has brought me my dinner, I hear him, for many hours, writing, the pen scratching scratching scratching across the page.

N
O DATE—

It must be more than a month since we left my home, for my bleeds have come. Having endured so much, and so long, this last might seem such a little thing, and yet I am weeping now for the first time in many days, not just for myself and for my father all those long weeks alone and unknowing, but because I am ashamed. I have not brought those requisites with me that a lady needs, and there is no way, here, of obtaining them. Nor will I raise the subject with him, not only because it is unfitting, but because I will never again put myself in his debt. He has taken from me all I had—my home, my father, even the light and air—and now he seeks to take what is left of my dignity.

Perhaps it is because I have been so sick, but I cannot remember so much blood before, not even that first time when I was a girl, or in Vienna before we left, when I was so ill and those doctors diagnosed
chlorosis
. I have conquered my punctilio and my humiliation and torn the bed-linen, winding it into heavy bandages, but still the blood pulses from me as if my last strength were ebbing away, and when I woke last night gasping from the nightmare the bed was drenched with it, and I heard a child’s voice crying in the silence. I sat a moment, the wetness thick on my skin, praying I was mistaken or had dreamed it, but then I heard the cry again and knew it was not so.

I crawled to the hidden door and I knelt, trembling, by the keyhole. The curtains were undrawn now, and the white moonlight flooded so into the room that I had to close my eyes for a moment in sudden
pain—I had never seen it so bright as this, so powerful as this, and I thought afterwards that he must have employed that prism I had seen in his hands. The light fell full on the table I had seen before, but as my eyes became accustomed to the brightness I saw that its red satin covering was gone and my heart froze as I saw that it was indeed a table, but one such as I had never seen before—a table covered in leather with holes drilled along its edges, and straps threaded through them, and there, there—I shudder even now as I write it—a young woman was lying, half-naked, her ankles pinned by those leather straps. I could not see her face, but I could tell her youth from her slenderness and the little rosebud tattooed near her foot. And then another figure passed close before the door and I saw only black. But I knew who it was. I scarcely dared breathe then, as I watched him move forwards towards the bed, his back toward me, and then he bent low over the girl as he had once bent over me—as he had once bent over my Dora. I knew—I thought I knew—what he would do then, and bit my lip until my teeth pierced flesh. She moaned, just as I had once moaned, but my body had never convulsed as hers did now, thrashing, twisting, thrown again and again hard against the wooden frame. I turned my face away and clasped my hands tight over my ears but I could not shut it out—the drumming of the table against the floor, and above it the sound of a little child crying, “
Mama! Mama!
”

I lay there in the silence that followed, too terrified to move, feeling the blood seep through my thin nightgown, until at last I heard sounds from the room beyond. The sound of something heavy dragging across the floor, then the door opening and steps on the stairs outside. I crept to the keyhole again and saw that the room was as it had always been. The red satin was again in place, and of mother and child there was no sign.

T
HE NEXT DAY
—

I can barely read my writing, so weak are my eyes, so unsteady my hand. Still the blood comes, and now there is pain such as I have
never endured. For hours I have sat here, crouched in the water-closet, shivering despite the heat, weeping tears of self-pity. Because now, after all these weeks of listening and hoping—now, when I no longer have the strength to crawl to the door and beat my fists upon it, someone has come. I do not know who it is, but I can hear, even from where I am, the low murmur of voices from beyond the wall.
His
, and another man’s. I cannot make out his words, cannot even gauge the man’s age, and though I cry out, I know he does not hear. I am too weak, and he is too far, but still I cry out, the tears running down my face.