Dragon at the Window

Dragon at the Window
In another hour or so they will come to wake me up. I am awake long before they knock three times on the door, but I will lie here pretending to be asleep. I don’t have a watch or a clock and the only way I know time passes is when I lie awake at night sometime and I can hear my heart beat, that and when the dragon passes the second bar over the east window then I know its 7 o’clock. Of course before he comes to see me – they never tell me that he will come but I can always tell – that’s when my heart starts to beat faster and I know that time has started to speed up again. Time, here, rarely goes faster than it should.

My room is white; I believe all rooms here are white. I have been to only one other room, Mrs Stephens’, for a visit, she is older than me. The sheets are white, the bed is also white, except the part that is leaning against the wall where the cheap white paint has peeled off and bits of green raise their heads, I say green but the way the light comes through the back and the reflection of the white paint around it gives it a silvery glow, they look like small warheads. If I could paint this room, I would paint borders of flowers, with corn poppies and geraniums; these used to grow like wildflowers everywhere in the village and sprigs of rosemary because I always remember; thyme because I needed courage and asters because I did love.

I slowly creep out of my bed and put my feet on the floor, its ice cold, my slippers are on the other side of the bed. I walk towards the window and stand behind the thin muslin curtains. They don’t let you open windows, in case somebody wanted to jump out of it; they try to take as many precautions as they can, coming up with ideas of avoiding death. I should imagine they spend more time thinking of death than any of the residents might do, planning for it. Last week Mrs. Dubois kept back her spoon from her dinner, she kept it hidden in her brassier. Rest of the week every one of us on the floor was checked for hidden utensils after each meal. Turned out that Mrs. Dubois’ family was to visit her that evening and she had asked her grandson to bring her some of that pudding she was always talking about but she forgot to ask him to bring a spoon. So, she hid the spoon that day; no visitor is allowed to bring food for the inmates, just like a prison in many ways. Although I do not comprehend how she was expected to kill herself with only a spoon.

It mustn’t be later than little past 6:30 yet, I can tell from where the dragon hovers, as if unsure whether to go forward, but it can’t go back, so it must move past the bars, in a circle and come back tomorrow. There are six pigeons at the bottom of the oak tree, fighting over the fallen acorns. The grass is still covered with dew; it looks like it has been freshly painted with a shiny green coat. There is no one in sight except the birds and the squirrels. It is unusual to see jays at this time of the year, but there they are, four of them, all breakfasting on the acorns. It is still quiet, except for the jays, they never could hide anything. Outside it looks peaceful yet it has a sense of foreboding, as if at any moment they will come to get us.

My warm breath has formed misty circles on the glass, like billowing smoke it comes out and rests on the frosty window panes. I can’t see through the layer of vapor any more and I don’t want to rub the haze away with my hands or the curtains, in case it leaves marks then they would know that I had been up early. This would make them suspect I haven’t been sleeping properly in which case I would be given more pills or worse they would suspect me of not having taken my pills and hiding them somewhere and then they would search me. So I go back to bed.

When she finally comes with my tray, its well past 7:30am, I can see the little time piece dangling from her pocket on her uniform on her left chest. She sets down the tray on the side table and asks whether I have slept well, I answer soundly. She wants me to tell her if I had any dreams last night that I can recall. I find the question impertinent. But I reply no. I try to put on my best behavior, always acquiescing to what they ask me to do, remaining polite. I am a good citizen in this dreary land, the last incident I had was nearly a year ago. I have to make myself believe that there is some truth to what they have promised, that I can go home when I am completely cured. I know, for myself, there is nothing that I suffer from that should restrain me from living a normal life, sometimes when the weather changes I do get pains in my joints, but I daresay that comes with age. But I have to convince them of this truth, so I comply with their every whim, perhaps then they will also believe that I am fit to leave.

They give me hope, false hope. I requested to have some of my personal belongings sent over, my photographs and keepsakes. They tried to make me see that that was not necessary as I would be leaving soon since I was getting better and then I could enjoy my belongings. No one is allowed to have personal things here. I am assured they won’t let me leave anytime soon. I sometimes fear that I shall stay here forever; the prison I avoided in my youth has finally caught up with me. It’s not fetid or putrid here; the malignancy of this prison comes from its cleanliness. Hygiene and sanitation rules the grounds and surface of this prison. There are many rules that us residents – inmates – have to abide by and newer ones are made up as they see fit. What goes on in the outside world is irrelevant, that world cannot interfere with this one. Even if others knew of our existence, like our families, they would be helpless to rescue us. They can operate openly yet no one will know what goes on underneath. This place is like a depraved Reich.

They are a great believer in equality. This is what first put me onto him, onto who he his, his true identity. He looked quite different from when I knew him as a young girl, but the pointed forehead, which from certain angles looks like a tumor and the shape of the head is unmistakable. When I have been good he doesn’t come to see me often, only when he is doing his rounds. But during the time I had an incident, he came to see me almost everyday.

I complete my breakfast of fruit, porridge, juice, toast and tea as they have insisted I must. Instead of this, I would have much preferred a slice of dark bread with some white cheese. I finish off with my morning medications, that are placed ever so subtly next to the tea cup, as if placing them at the corner of the tray makes it less conspicuous, a part of the breakfast and avoids drawing attention to them on their own. Taking the pills - a separate event after breakfast - could mean I am sick and hence I take the pills to get better and when I am better I can leave but as it is the pills are part of the breakfast, a part of my life now, I am not sick and hence can’t get better or leave this prison.

After breakfast I am assisted in getting dressed, something I am fully capable of doing myself. Today, like any other day, there are several activities planned, these are in tune with the age or problems of the residents, we are mostly elderly and sick, hence the activities are fairly sedentary in nature. One such activity is a walk through the garden, which I must say is maintained very well, some of us are also allowed to play card games like gin rummy and spades, but I prefer playing Belot and Cruce, this game the four of us played during our childhood. Some play musical instruments like the piano, which is kept at the corner of the sitting room, there is another piano in the big hall that is only used when we have special programs. There are gymnasiums, pools, and tennis courts for those of us who are allowed to use these but they maintain very strict security in these areas. Most of us do not prefer these activities, and we would rather do something normal like gardening or cooking, but these are generally not allowed, especially if one is very sick. The activities are ways to keep us occupied, keep our minds off our own thoughts.

You can tell how ‘sick’ each of us are by the number of staff keeping us company on our walks. If there is a nurse dedicated to you, it means you are very sick. However, if there are two or more people in the care of one nurse, it indicates you are doing relatively better. Of course one can move from one category to another depending on how good or bad they have been. For those who need more than one person to come outside, are rarely allowed to. We all have different problems, I am told; yet we are all linked together somehow. The treatment he is trying on us is supposed to be very effective, even unconventional. I heard nurse say that he was trained in Europe, more is my worry. For a long time now, I have been supervised along with a group of three other residents which is indeed a sign that I am doing better. Today the asters and delphiniums in their shades of blues, pinks and whites, are looking particularly beautiful. The delphiniums look like they are standing up to greet us; it is not a plant I would choose to have plenty of in this garden, they are poisonous but I don’t think anyone knows that, then they would have them uprooted and I wont tell them.

After our walk, I go back to the sitting room where there are a few others, passing time the best they know how. I recline on the chair next to the big French window; it gives a lovely and clear view of the grounds. I leaf through today’s paper, there isn’t much in it that interests me. I want to read the Gazeta now, at home I never did enjoy reading that paper too much, maybe because my turn at the paper came after I come back from school and by then it had been read by Papa first then Mama and then Granpa. By then it was wrinkly and crumpled and the news also tasted stale. Granpa kept me company when I came back home, as Mama would be at the factory, working. We ate our afternoon meals and went through the Gazeta, he liked reading to me and telling me about the different happenings in the world and our corner of the world. And when I was a little older I would read to him till he fell asleep in his arm chair; he died in his armchair, restfully. I think of all of us, Granpa had known the most peace in life, despite the war he had witnessed.

After Granpa passed away, for a few weeks I came back from school only to spend the afternoon in the house by myself, this was when I realized how the house and everything in it spoke to me, in their own secret languages. The old oriental carpet hanging on the wall in the sitting room, I always knew hid secrets of the war, perhaps a plan woven into its black, orange, green and red design, very cleverly done. Both the stairs, – the one going up to the bedrooms and the one going down to the cellar could have been hollowed out to store weapons, they creaked when we used them. In those days I looked for secret passageways in the walls and expected to find them, according to Granpa’s stories, each house in this village had the potential to become a headquarter for the leaders to meet or for an armory, or even a secret meeting place for the resistance who could then leave through the secret passage had any unwanted visitors come to the house claiming such a meeting were indeed taking place. Little did I know then of the unwanted visitor who would interrupt my life only a year later and change it forever.

In my ardent search for any clues Granpa may have left as to the function of the house at the end of the war, I had started to neglect my school work, stopped seeing Marie and Pyotor – they were siblings and my best friends since we were children – and I even neglected the housework I was responsible for. That year by the middle of spring nearly all the cherries in our garden were ripe even before school closed for vacation. One Sunday, after we had come back from church and completed our dinner, Mama said that the cherries needed to be picked before they started to spoil or the birds or the neighborhood boys got to them but Papa already had plans to play chess with Vlad’s father and uncles, so Mama handed me the wicker basket and asked me to climb the tree to pick as many cherries as I could. When the basket was nearly full I had reached the top branches, I could see the top of the main stump now, there was a hollow there which made me think how easily a person could hide in here in the dark or store small weapons. The basket had grown very heavy on my arm and it fell, at this Mama became very cross with me and she started to yell at me to get down at once, the cherries strewn on the ground looked like blood, splattered as if many people had been killed there and all that remained of them was the flowing red river.

After she had finished scolding me for dropping the basket Mama spoke to me very tenderly, she said, ‘Daria, I have been noticing you become so withdrawn and you look so pale. Honey, Granpa left us because it was his time; he had lived a long and happy life. He had seen so much, had so many wonderful experiences, we should honor that. He wouldn’t want us to get astray from our lives in memory of his.’ I wasn’t thinking about Granpa at all. Soon after that Mama told me that it’s not a good idea for me to come home from school and spend the afternoon by myself. So she spoke with Marie’s mother and wanted me to spend the afternoon with them, studying and playing. They were only too pleased and although I knew I would miss exploring the house, I looked forward to it as well.

Thus the three of us – Marie, her brother Pyotor and me – started on what then seemed like endless adventures. We played in the unused or abandoned fields where the grass was overgrown, our favorite game was ‘Soldiers’ - we pretended to be soldiers in ambush, one of us had to die after a while and Pyotor usually pretended to be the enemy soldier and would chase us through the fields and shoot us down. During the summer vacation, when we had all day to spend together, we investigated every house that had been abandoned and were rumored in some cases to be haunted by the people who had been killed inside them.

One such house was the Masirov mansion where every last family member including the servants had been killed off one night when the resistance was passing through this area. Masirov was a rich business man who made his fortune exporting wheat and textile and had ties to several European merchants; he was also known to be anti-Leninist. Granpa said that not everyone in Sprazc was pro-resistance to begin with but they were not influential like Masirov either, hence they didn’t matter to the resistance. As long as we kept quiet and went about our business without interfering or opposing those who were openly or thought to be linked with the parties in Moscow - although no one in Sprazc had ever been to Moscow and were mostly discontented youth or farmers who became starry-eyed by the propaganda that reached them through the middle echelon representatives of the parties who had made it their business to promote unrest – we would be left in peace, it was a silent treatise of sort. This was true unless the resistance soldiers were looking for a killing spree to quench their blood-thirst or if they had come into one of the houses and their demands weren’t met. The people, who so willfully and yet others so furtively, joined up with hopes of gaining something out of it never managed to better their lives but degraded into the same hapless conditions that the village fell in later years but since tradition did hold a special meaning in our village, they continued having faith in their Moscow liberators as well.

Pyotor insisted that there were still skeletons remaining in the basement of Masirov’s and since Marie and I didn’t believe him we had to explore it for ourselves. The mansion now belonged to our Government, but they hadn’t taken much interest in it, so the once grand house of Sparzc stood decrepit and yellow amidst the wild foliage that had overtaken its grounds. The first time I went inside the house, it was with Pyotor and Marie, during our summer vacation, we had been playing outside in a nearby field when suddenly the grey clouds captivated the skies and a heavy downpour began. We went in as if we needed shelter from the rain but all three of us had wanted to investigate the house for quite sometime and none would admit to our curiosities. Though we were sixteen years old, we entered the house like children, with open minds and expecting just about anything. The first thing that overtook me was the smell; it was the musty, stale air. There were thick cobwebs and carcasses of tiny insects that had been foolish enough to climb those webs. We made our way past the foyer into a big room; it must have been made specially for big gatherings, there was a large fireplace still, a few odd chairs, the large window panes had been covered with the passing weather on the outside and dust on the inside to form a grey crust that kept the sunshine away. As we went from room to room, searching, I realized that there were footprints here and there on the dust carpet covering the floors. I knew that we weren’t the first ones exploring this house and many others had been here before us. So the feeling of ‘discovery’ I had cherished was slightly dampened, I also felt that if there were any treasures to be revealed, other people may already have gathered them, but in a village like ours any discovery of subsequence would be known to all, although their extent would be greatly exaggerated. Then we made our way down to the basement, it was dark as night and chilly, empty wine bottles were strewn about the place, there were shelves for storing vegetables and fruits for the winter, however there were no skeletons. The only light came in through the pane of a dirty window which was on the street level. Once we came out of the house, it had cleared up; I was considerably relieved to come back into the world of the living. We were covered with dust, Marie’s family didn’t live too far from the Masirov house, so we went over for the rest of the afternoon.

New neighbors had moved into the house next door and Marie’s mother was entertaining them, mother and son. The first time I saw him, I could barely bring myself to breathe, I must have stared at him for only a few seconds but it felt like a whole eternity, he smiled at me slightly, looking more confused than pleased. His name was Ulrich and his family had moved in from the west. When he spoke he had an unknown accent, later I found out that it was German. He was to join our school when it started again. He and Pyotor became friends very quickly – the four of us became friends, he told us of this world outside of Sprazc that none of us had ever witnessed nor were likely to, we listened to him fascinated, trying to picture what the words, stories meant.

The rest of the summer was spent in a kind of childhood bliss, with more exploration and discoveries, some of those discoveries were taking us on the verge of adulthood, yet all our activities were innocent and perhaps naive. We went to the woods regularly and collected wild berries and chanterelles, which we brought back to Marie’s, her mother sautéed the mushrooms with lots of garlic and we gaily dined on them. Another of our favorite activities was burning the dry, fallen leaves; before the fire was lit of course Ulrich would throw a handful at me and run away, that would really annoy me and in turn I would throw some at Pyotor or Marie. We would have to collect the leaves all over again before we could burn them. Once the flame died down, Pyotor would get some new potatoes from the kitchen and put them in the ashes to cook, after some time we would take out the potatoes, peel and eat them with some buttermilk.

“Mrs. Gouché, its 12:30pm, time for your lunch.” I was woken up by a pasty hog-faced nurse, she was a large, oily woman who could snap my neck with two fingers, I say this by the malice and disgust that lurks in her eyes as she towers over me, prodding my arm. Lunch and more pills, was followed by a session of listening to music, it is a part of the therapy, there are twelve of us in the group, the doctor plays the music and encourages us to talk. Sometimes if we feel that the doctor will punish us if we don’t talk, we have to say things that we know may entertain him, other times we keep mum. They have methods here, for extracting thoughts. For instance, I recognized at once that they can trace words back to memories that are stored in my head and that way they can access them and everything else inside me, so I made up my mind to talk only when absolutely necessary. They have been trying very hard for me to talk to them, in their words, “open up”, but I know better than to do so. I also don’t let them hear my thoughts, I will quickly change my thoughts when they are near me because they may be able to hear me when they stand close to me. But when anyone stands close to me, on whatever pretext, I feel scared that they can hear me.

By their own admission, they want to know me, everything about me, I think that is insolent, so when they ask me to talk, I simply lie to them. Their devices and tactics never seem to amaze me. Once, the nurses and doctors tried to move me in my sleep, four of them pushed me but I pushed back, in my sleep I was more powerful, so I could resist them but when I opened my eyes they had already gone. Under no circumstance do I trust them, I know they only want to cause me, and all of us patients here, harm, I am wary of them, their ‘methods’ and ‘pills’ are all ruses to get inside me.

The music we are listening to today are sounds of the sea crashing against rocks with intermittent calls of gulls and skimmers, sometimes its classical music they play, I do like those best and yet other times its some new age folklore music, I detest those sessions. Even if I hate the music or don’t agree with what they are saying I try not to draw attention to myself, this means having to do what I am told, I don’t care to be punished, when we are punished they get only more access to us. Our punishments vary with how much wrong we are supposed to have done, if it’s someone refusing to take pills they are given the needle, but there are other weapons, much stronger like magnets and electricity. Once when I lost my limbs for three days, I was given the magnet but that was not nearly as bad as the electricity.

The second and fourth Thursdays of each month the world goes mad. Electricity is scheduled for the next day and all the people on the list try to convince whomever will listen that they are doing better and don’t deserve to be on the list, but in trying to act normal, they give themselves away, so no one can be taken off the list once they have been put on it. I have been put on the list three times now. Electricity changes people, I don’t know how much good it does them, but they are altered greatly, they become scared and quiet as a mouse, you can see the grey fear hanging around them. It is his greatest weapon, to see people scared, to be in control, to make people do what he wants them to, he takes away their powers and makes them helpless, this makes him feel he has accomplished something worthwhile. He is a boastful man.

After the music session is over, we do more exercise. Sometimes we attend classes which as I am told teach life-skills, perhaps how to be alive, be compatible with the world - I don’t know which world, our gated one or the one outside, as they differ considerably, in fact there is barely a semblance. Group activities and discussion sessions are also regular features in our daily life, sometimes we watch a film, of course when we know beforehand that we have to discuss the movie later, our enthusiasm to watch dissipates, still it is a good distraction. In these discussions, I don’t let them come close to my thoughts, I don’t allow myself to think of my past, in case they hear me. He is interested in my past.

At nights, when no one is nearby, I like to lie awake and think of my life and my past, so I hide my medications below my tongue and only pretend to swallow them in front of nurse. It’s a surreptitious life, like having a double identity or being someone else but I have to keep up appearances to protect myself from the enemy, like in Paris with Henri. He rescued me from the tyrant, from the unbearable life in Sprazc. In Paris, we told everyone that we had met in Prague, where Henri was over on a business trip but actually we met on the train on the way to Prague. It was an overnight journey and the money I stole from Mama’s purse ran out in the Czarek station where I bought the train ticket. He was sitting opposite me, they way he kept staring at me I thought he was going to cause me some harm but I may have overreacted because at that time a falling leaf would have scared me. An hour into the journey when we were just entering the suburbs of Czarek, he stood up and pulled out a funny-looking valise from the overhead compartment and brought out some dry sausage and bread from a packet which he offered me. My instinct was to turn it down but I hadn’t eaten since I left Sprazc and I already felt I could faint of the hunger, so I accepted them gladly. As I hungrily devoured the food, he looked at me with eagerness, as if trying to figure out what I was doing on that train, before he could ask, I told him I was on my way to an aunt’s in Prague, at this he only looked more amused and continued staring at me more intensely. I could sense that he was about to start a conversation and I was too tired from all the walking to indulge him, so I closed my eyes and soon fell asleep.

When I woke up, the sky was a pale gray, morning was just reaching out. The man in front of me was asleep, I looked at him for the first time, his clothes were well cut and from his leather shoes I could tell that he was not poor but he did seem foreign. He looked much older than I, for a moment I was afraid again to be alone with a stranger but even then I could not believe that he would do me any harm, he seemed a kindly man. After a little while, he woke up and straight away asked me, “What are you running away from?” I was shocked, I panicked, in the rush of leaving home I had forgotten to think of stories I could tell people, I hesitated for I couldn’t think of anything to say, I had already lied to him about visiting my aunt but obviously he did not believe me. “Tell me the truth, did something bad happen to you?” The way he looked right through me unnerved me, so I just nodded. He asked, “What happened?” I don’t remember what I told him after that or even how much but I couldn’t help pour out my heart to him – a complete stranger. So far I hadn’t told anyone, not even Mama but at that moment, in the middle of nowhere, heading towards the unknown, I needed to unburden myself, so I cried and shivered and talked, words just fell out of my mouth, like we used to rush out of class once the final bell rang, except I could never go back to those happy days of mine. At the end of it – I don’t know how it happened – he was sitting next to me with his arms around me and I was resting my head on his shoulders. We sat there is silence for a very long time. Finally he said, “Come with me to Paris. You cannot be on your own in Prague, what will you do? You will need money, you don’t have any qualifications for work, you can only work as a domestic. I will take care of you, you should trust me, I won’t harm you.” I believed him, every word he said for I felt that he had spoken in earnest and he would indeed take care of me but I thought it out of the ordinary that a friend would turn on me like so and a stranger would propose to me protection and that I would believe the stranger.

Years later, I asked Henri – by then he was my husband – what made him bring an unknown person into his home, all he could say was that I looked so scared out of my wits, helpless and undone, he couldn’t abandon me and at other times he said that he had fallen in love with me the first time he saw me, I have always felt unsure whether to believe this, but I did know that he loved me dearly. I never did fall in love with Henri. To me, he will always be my rescuer. Despite that, our life together was a happy one. I agreed to come with him to Paris and even to marry him because it seemed better than being in Prague all alone and he was right - I did not have a clue how I would have earned a living. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made, for my time in Paris was the happiest years of my adult life. Henri was already successful as an automotive dealer and he had an apartment on rue de Saussure in 17ème, that is where I moved in. In the beginning, life was difficult because I did not know any one, had no friends, also I did not speak the language. I was still afraid to go out alone, just in case someone recognized me from Sprazc, Henri consoled me and said I was being irrational and that I was safe here. He would come back to the apartment during his lunch break and spend the afternoon with me, sometimes we would go for a walk along the promenade and sit in one of the gardens where he started to teach me the language, how to buy groceries and about the bus routes of the city. During the day, I began exploring the city, every nook and cranny of it I walked and in its sights and sounds lost myself, my haunting past. Instead I took up the new identity of a young Parisian woman who was just as comfortable in a café at Montparnasse as at a club in Montmarte. Many evenings Henri took me dancing in his little blue Renault 4, I was constantly apprehensive of meeting someone from my past in these clubs but we usually ran into Henri’s friends. Even then I wondered if they suspected me, if my fear and guilt was evident on my face and I always felt a little embarrassed when being introduced because there was no proper status that followed “This is Daria.” Daria who was left unanswered and although I could be anybody, I was trying to fit in. Finally when we – Heri and I, got married, I thought at least now people wouldn’t wonder who I was, I hate the curiosity of others.

After I had been in Paris for nearly a year and had managed to learn the language and to get around without much difficulty, I entered into a secretarial course and soon after got a post in a private office. By this time, Henri and I had lived together but separately in his apartment and although he was always the perfect gentleman with me and had never given me inkling into his feelings for me, one day he proposed that we get married. I had gotten very fond of him and comfortable with the protection he had provided me, so I agreed to marry him to show him my gratitude. He was never demanding of me, treated me with utmost respect and I believe that he was happy with our marriage as was I, particularly after Mark was born after three years. By then, I had quite given up worrying about my own past, – although it was never too far away from my thoughts – in its place I was happy being a young wife and mother. A few months before Mark was born, I gave up my job and submerged myself in my domestic life and I was happy to take care of my son and husband. During summers we went to Cape Erquy and in winters we visited Grasse and Avignon, once when Mark was fourteen we went to ski in Chamonix. I lived in Paris for twenty years, Sprazc and its ungodliness had washed off, I felt almost like a free woman. In 1985, Henri’s dealership suffered a great loss, he seemed tired of trying to make it work in Paris, although he was still selling his cars the company was loosing money. He said Paris was changing, it was no longer the city he was born or grew up in, it was in its decline, intellectually and morally. The city was more crowded than ever, new buildings were going up each day in every part of the city, there were new motorways and more people made Paris home than I had ever known in my twenty years living in the city. I had made this city my home, but it wasn’t the home I had always known, its developments and changes were not so important to me but to Henri it was unbearable, the changes. So, on what seemed like nothing more than a whim to me, he wanted to sell his business, our house and go to California where he said the opportunities were much better and apparently also a growing market for Renault. Within a year we moved to Brentwood in California, Henri never opened another car dealership, he pretty much retired after we moved here, I have never known him to be an impulsive man yet with his decision to come here I realized how little I actually knew my husband. The first year we spent trying to settle in a new country; the next year, Mark left for University and we decided to travel across our new country. When Mark was twenty two years, Henri passed away in his sleep, peaceful like the life I knew he led. He had left me comfortably off and I wanted to spend the rest of my life quietly away in our home. After his marriage, Mark decided that that was not to be and I was sent here, this asylum. He is coming to see me tomorrow and of course to talk with him, I am curious to hear what he will tell me about what the doctor thinks about me, my progress as they say.

The sky is bluish grey, the dragon looks pale, not wanting to come out of its cloudy blanket. I finish breakfasting and my morning walk, the nurse has already pointed out to me a third time that my son is visiting today. I do so love him, even if he sent me here but I think that was his wife’s doing, he reminds me of Henri in so many ways and I find that to be a comfort. At times, I find him irritating for not standing up to his wife more or agreeing with the doctors about my treatment, I feel after all that I have done for him he washed his hands off me too easily. I know he will meet with the doctors before coming to see me, I only hope he wont ruin the work I have been doing here which will allow me to leave this dreadful place once and for all by blurting out some stories. Finally when he arrives it’s nearing 11am, he brought me a nice bouquet of flowers but the nurse took it away, he kisses me and sits next to me. I have to coax him to tell me what the doctor said, he is reluctant, as usual, to share. I persist that it will motivate me to get better and I will try harder, at this he is a bit annoyed. He says “You know what they want to know about, Mama, your childhood; I have told you this before. But you won’t share anything with them, it is slowing down your progress because Dr Rubinstein is not able to make a proper diagnosis.”
“Dr Rubinstein knows nothing, he is an evil man, Marek. I don’t trust him.”
“Mama, why you always say that, I will never know. He is the best doctor in this institution, he has a lot of experience and he has cured a lot of patients, even those who have the same problem as you. If you let him, I know his treatments can benefit you. Will you please try?”
“Its not up to me to try, what does he want from me, I am here in this prison, I do what the nurse’s and doctors order me to, I have given up my life, my home, I don’t even have a picture of your father or Elia, my only granddaughter, I can keep in my room. My life has no value to anyone, not even to you, Mark, that’s why you could throw me away from home so easily.”
“Mama, that’s unfair, you were home as long as we you were doing okay and we could keep an eye on you. You became a danger to yourself and us, you had to be treated, don’t you see that?”
“Treat me for what, I am fine. I have had accidents, things I forget but nothing that should see me imprisoned like this. Accidents can happen to anyone.”
“You set the house on fire, trying to boil eggs. I am only too glad that you forgot the gas and came outside, otherwise you would have been incinerated. You dropped Elia from the bed, if it weren’t for the rug, she would be dead. We have to keep an eye on you and Elia, you can’t live alone or without supervision. Pauline can take care of only so much and I am at work all day. This is for the best.”
“Pauline, she is the one who asked you to send me away, didn’t she?”
“No, absolutely not, you know that very well.”
“All I know is she couldn’t stand me. She was trying to poison me. I got sick after I drank the soup she made for me, do you remember that?”
“Mama, stop it. No one is trying to poison you, why should Pauline try to harm you, she loves you and she knows how much I love you. This fear is in your mind, Mama. That is what the doctor said, that you are delusional and paranoid.”
“You are against me, all of you, that is the reason why the doctor makes up such lies about me. You will not rest till I am dead, I know it. The doctor will be only too happy to do that for you, why don’t you just ask him, he will gladly do away with me.”
“You must stop this, stop crying. It will be all right, only if you cooperate a little. Can you do that?” He gently slips his hand into mine and squeezes it as if he is going to bring out a promise from me. He is my little boy, I feel needled when he patronizes me.
“I don’t remember my childhood, it was all such a long time ago. When you are my age, you will understand, it does no good looking into the past, you have to live in the present.”
“It’s not about that, for you to live in your present, you have to get better and for the doctors here to help you get better they want to know when this disease started. Dr Rubinstein would have liked to know if there was any family history and whether there was one incident that triggered this, if you had any symptoms as an infant, there is so much that is unknown. Mama, I am telling you what he told me because I am hoping that you will be able to help him once you know what he is looking for. You will help, wont you?”
“Marek, did he say if I have made any progress so far, am I getting better? I have been trying you know, I do everything they ask me to, I always listen to them. Did he say anything about letting me out, any hint about when I can go home?”
“Soon, very soon, just as long as you do exactly as he asks you, you will get better very quickly and then you will come home.”
“He will never let me go, don’t you see that? They never let anybody leave this wretched place unless they are in a box. That Dr Rubinstein is a soul collector, it is his passion to keep us here and torment us.”
“That is not true, simply what you want to believe. If you don’t do as you are told in the future and tell them about your childhood, about Sprazc, you will only have to stay here a lot longer.”
“O Marek, help me, I make to you this appeal, take me home.” I turn to him and cry, he seems unsure of what to say, he looks just as helpless as I, so we just sit there holding hands.
“Dr Rubinstein has another alternative method he wants to try on you, he told me this morning. It may prove to be helpful, he is hoping it will give him the insight he needs.”
“What is this new alternative treatment, will it hurt me?”
“No, it won’t hurt you at all. All you have to do is follow his instructions. He will try hypnotizing you and when you are in the frozen state, he will ask you a few questions. It can be a powerful method for remembering things you might have forgotten. He is hoping it will be productive for your future treatments. He is particularly interested in knowing if there was something that happened in your late teen years that may have triggered some kind of malfunction in your brain, which set in fear and paranoia in you.”
“He wants to know about my childhood, does he?” I would have thought he already knew, of course I don’t tell this to Mark. “And how soon will he try to hypnotize me?”
“Soon, perhaps even tomorrow or maybe the day after. He just wanted to have a word with me first. He wants to try this method the earliest possible so that he can determine the next course of action. Mama, I believe you can overcome this disease, that’s why I told you about the doctor’s diagnosis and what he wants to do. You will collaborate, you will listen to what he tells you to do, wont you? ”
“Of course, Mark, I will. I promise you I will try to do the best I can. I will tell him everything I can recall and what I cannot, he will get to know from the questions he asks when he hypnotizes me.”
“You know, the doctor thinks that you have periods when you are very lucid but at other times, perhaps due to some external stimulus, you get lost. You have stretches of dormant periods with intermittent outbreaks. If he can determine more or less when it first began and what is causing these outbreaks, he thinks there is a fair chance of curing you.”
I have never heard such nonsense in my life but I promise Mark to be a good girl, I don’t want him to know anything, that I am scared. I won’t be hypnotized, I won’t go under his spell at any cost.

Mark left after a few more minutes but he gave me rather a lot of bad news. I feel restless and exhausted. If he hypnotizes me, the truth is bound to come out, I will have no control of what I say, I will tell him what he wants to know under his spell and I cant let that happen at any cost. He knows my past, he is the one who caused me such pain, yet he wants to continue tormenting me now, this is his new ploy to torture me. Thinking about it still sends shivers down my spine for although I have tried to forget it, it has never been too far away from my mind. When I think of the good times the four of us had and how close we had become, it seems something so vile could only have occurred in a nightmare. I believe within moments of meeting Ulrich, I had fallen in love with him. He was beautiful, kind and caring, he was unlike anyone I had ever met in Sprazc. He told me stories of his old school friends and how much he enjoyed going to the movies with them. Along with Marie and Pyotor, we spend a lot of time together, playing, walking around the neighborhoods and sometimes doing homework.

The first Saturday after school re-opened, Ulrich took me to the movies. He came to our house to pick me up and we took the bus to the high street. I don’t remember much of the movie because I was so nervous, as I wanted to believe that this was a date. He put his arm around my seat, behind my shoulders and even as his shirt sleeves brushed against my dress, I thought I would faint. We drank cola and ate popcorn, sometimes he would turn to me and put his mouth against my ear and ask me whether I could follow the movie and I usually pretended I didn’t, just so I could feel his warm breath against me, his mouth almost kissing my ears. I must have looked flushed when we came out of the theater for he asked me if I was feeling alright, to which I nodded my head but could feel the warm blood rise to cheeks. We walked slowly down the streets, talking about nothing in particular and yet everything, sometimes holding hands and quite forgetting there were others around us. When we came close to my house, we found Pyotor with a few of his friends, he ran towards us and greeted us warmly. He asked where we had been and when Ulrich told him that he had taken me to the movies, Pyotor seemed a little disappointed. I thought perhaps he was upset because he wasn’t invited. Finally Ulrich and I reached home, I thanked him for taking me to the movies and out of some force inside me, I gave him a peck on the cheek and rushed inside the house. That night, I lay awake thinking of Ulrich, my heart pounding away like a mail train.

We continued to spend time with one another whenever we could, sometimes – although by now this was very occasional – it was the four of us – Marie, Pyotor, Ulrich and I, then we just played games. When we were alone we kissed and held hands, I knew he loved me as much as I loved him and this made me happy and peaceful. I enjoyed sharing my thoughts with him, I told him of the war stories that Granpa shared with me, and how the resistance had fought the enemy as well as the locals and about their brutality in pillaging our village. I told him about our little village, how much I loved it here but that I wanted to travel elsewhere, see more than what our tiny village could offer. I loved our church and cinema but wanted to travel to Prague and Warsaw for new fashionable clothes just like the pictures in the colorful magazine that Mrs. Colek had started to sell in her little shop. In Sprazc, almost everyone was acquainted with each other but that was far from meaning that they were all friends or got along, there were pockets of people who believed in one thing and another group in something quite contrary, almost everyone was a Roman Catholic in the village and almost everyone was against the war as well as the resistance but some people in the village were secretly known to be spies for the resistance. People didn’t want to be involved with the Germans or Russians, the resistance; they wanted to be left well alone to mind their own lands unless they thought that going with one party would benefit them or they felt the need for excitement and then they riled up forces against one of the two. However, being Roman Catholic, everyone converged at our little church and our priest had a hard enough time as it is preaching on top of which he had to do some strategic crowd control. Ulrich told me stories of his village too, and hearing those I realized how people are the same everywhere.

Pyotor, on the other hand, had clearly started regretting the idea of becoming friends with Ulrich, he would try to avoid us when we were together and at times he was positively beastly towards him. Once I spoke to Marie about Pyotor’s behavior, all she would tell me was that I didn’t spend as much time with them as I used to and that’s why her brother was upset. But I knew he was more than upset, he was jealous. He had started to spread rumors about Ulrich, that he was a German sympathizer, I learnt this from Marta. At first, I didn’t pay any heed to it, it sounded silly, far-fetched and inconsequential; also I had still considered us children, not the adults we were fast becoming. Perhaps I should have been more aware. Gradually, I spent even less time with Pyotor while Ulrich and I became really close.

One Sunday, after church, Ulrich and I walked down to the Masirov mansion, we went in and looked at the giant empty rooms which beckoned people and furniture inside them. I went down to the basement once more and he followed me, it was still dark and chilly but this time I wasn’t scared as he held my hand. Down in that mysterious room, he pulled me close to him and kissed me. In the murky stillness of the house, the only sound was my heart beating as he parted my lips with his, it felt moist, warm and reassuring and at the same time it was like a thousand volts of electricity passing through my whole body. I put my hand behind his head and grabbed onto his hair, for my knees felt weakened and could no longer support me. He continued to kiss my cheeks and ears and neck and I felt alarmed because he had unbuttoned my dress but I was speechless to stop him. So there I stood with my back against the wall, helpless and sanctioned for a new life as he went on kissing me and touching me everywhere. If it weren’t for the feeble light that came into the room through the only window in the basement, I would have quite forgotten that there was a world other than the one I was being submerged into. With my eyes closed and breath fitfully ceasing, I was being drawn into a sacred tryst where pain, pleasure and sacrifice had come together like I had never experienced before.

And then I opened my eyes and that is when I saw it, a pair of eyes looking straight at me through the window on the street, like two viper’s eyes, just as it was about to attack. I let out a scream and stood there in complete paralysis. Momentarily I didn’t recognize who it was and then I saw clearly that it was Pyotor. By the time Ulrich turned around, he was already gone. I felt our sacrosanct rite was dispirited. More than that I was angry, I could now feel rage rush through me like molten lava. To my sheer annoyance, Ulrich seemed no more than amused at what had happened, I hurriedly got dressed and left. The next day I wanted to avoid meeting anyone, particularly Pyotor and even Ulrich, so I stayed home with faked stomach cramps, it was easy for Mama to believe me as I looked confused and shaken at what had happened the day before. I stayed home, thinking of Ulrich but I could not disassociate Pyotor looking at us through the window from my thoughts. I tried to find ways to give him some kind of explanation, to make him understand how I felt.

Around 4pm I was roused from these thoughts by a knock on the front door, it was Pyotor but he seemed so unrecognizable, he had his hair combed backwards, he must have applied some gel to make it sit like that and he smelled of cheap cologne, which he must have purchased from Mrs. Colek. He seemed unsure of himself, finally he came into the sitting room and asked me why I hadn’t been to school. When I told him I wasn’t feeling too well, he gave out a malicious laugh and said he totally understood and moved close to me and put his hand through my hair. I did not like the way he kept staring at me and never before had he touched my hair like that. Before I could walk away he grabbed me by the arms and tried to kiss me on the mouth. Disgusted by his behavior, I asked him to stop but he plainly had no intention to do so. All of a sudden he seemed more powerful than I had even known him to be and I was quite defenseless to do anything. I asked why was he doing this and he snorted at me that he had seen me yesterday and if I could do it with a no-good like Ulrich, I sure should take some pleasure in doing it with him. He had already torn my shirt buttons and pounced on me like a predator about to relish his prey. In one moment I knew if I didn’t do something to get myself out of his daemonic clutches, I would regret it forever. I managed to get hold of the table lamp and hit him on the head with it. He lay unconscious, slumped on the sofa, for a minute I thought I had killed him but I could see that he was gradually coming around, so I took this opportunity to flee the house as I didn’t want to be around when he woke up. I ran towards the bus stop and waited for Mama to come back from the factory. When she saw me slouched in the corner of the bus stop, she got a fright. She asked me whether I was alright, I was shaking from head to toe but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what had happened so I told her that my cramps had gotten worse throughout the day and I was waiting for her here at the bus stop so that we could visit Dr Patryeski before she went home. We went to the doctor’s, who could find nothing wrong with my stomach, but said that I had the symptoms of a concussion, my pupils were dilated and heart rate was much faster. He attributed those to walking all the way from our house to the bus stop and waiting outside in the chilly weather for so long. When we went home, I knew Mama would ask me what I was up to and so I went straight to bed. Next morning, there was nothing I could say to avoid going to school and besides, I was terrified of being alone in the house.

At school, I found everyone staring at me, as if missing one day of school had changed everything, as if they knew what had happened, I tried telling myself that it was not possible for them to know and I was just imagining it. But then in class Marie didn’t sit next to me and even the teachers, I thought, were looking at me strangely, with disgust. Pyotor was nowhere to be seen and I was glad of that, so after school I confronted Marie, she refused to talk to me, eventually she said that everyone knew what kind of a girl I was, the whole school knew that I was sleeping with many different boys and I was cavorting with Ulrich only because I was a German-sympathizer like him.

I had to see Ulrich as soon as I could, so I ran from school and went towards his house. When I reached his home I found him laid up on the sofa with several wounds on his face, both his eyes blackened and a gaping lesion above his lips, there were blood stains on his shirt. He was beaten up by some of the boys who were known to be very pro-resistance on his way back from school, they called him a Nazi, spit on him and threw stones at him. As I told him what they had been saying about me, I broke down in his arm and cried, I also wanted to tell him what Pyotor did to me yesterday but I was so disgusted with it that I couldn’t bring myself to put into words what had happened.

Walking back home, it dawned on me that whatever rumors and defamation Pyotor had set his mind to spread about Ulrich and me, I couldn’t limit or undo. Everyone in the village would come to know about it and unfortunately believe it too, most important of those people would be my parents whom I never meant to hurt or disrespect. I also knew that the group that beat Ulrich would do it again at every chance they got. In the little time we had known each other, I had fallen in love with him and it was more than I could bear to see him be torn apart like that. However what I saw when I reached home was beyond my worst imagination. As if, raping me and slurring my name wasn’t enough, as if beating up the person I loved was not satisfying enough, he had written the word ‘slut’ on the wall of our house in big red letters and since he had the nerve to do this in the middle of the day, I was convinced that the entire village would believe the story he had manufactured.

Never before had I felt this kind of vulnerability, exposure and destruction. I wanted to disappear. I wasn’t sure how I could have continued living in Sprazc after what had already passed, I was still more unsure whether Mama would have believed me had I told her the truth in its entirely. It seemed like there were too many unknowns but they all lead to the same unbearable unhappiness. So I decided then and there that I should go away from my village, I knew Mama kept a little purse with some money in her armoire. I got dressed warmly as it was already beginning to get chilly, took the money from her purse and headed towards the train station.

When I was first admitted to this asylum, I couldn’t believe my eye, there he was happily greeting me and introducing himself as Dr Peter Rubinstein. I couldn’t help but gasp at the sight of him, every time we meet, I am frightened. But in all the time I have been here, he was never able to get me alone, so he couldn’t hurt me, directly. Now with his idea of hypnotizing me, he can pull out any information from me and I will be helpless. I am feeling very scared now, I know I don’t have much time and I am feverishly trying to think of what I can do. I was able to escape once before, I won’t let him harm me any more, I am determined to escape again. I have to act fast. I think of the little animals underneath the oak tree and how easily they can come and go through the gates of these grounds of chaos and deceit, they remain unaware of the pain and sufferings that lie just behind these walls. Perhaps it’s better to be unaware of the truth or that it doesn’t matter how we perceive truth because it remains unchanged regardless of the way we view it, like the flowers in the garden – the white and blue delphiniums, how prettily they stand in open air.

The nurse came in to check up on me, I am tired from Mark’s visit and the news. The rest of the day passed with more scheduled activities of physical exercises and lessons. I have been told already that the hypnosis is to be tomorrow at 11am and I should have a restful night for the best results. I acquiesce to her statement. Nonetheless, tonight I am determined more than ever to not swallow my pills given to me after dinner but rather to stay awake and search for an escape route. I am restless on my bed, the sheets and blankets feel like they have been woven with stones and rocks and yet I am shivering. I am aware that it’s not feasible to leave the building now as there are nurses who sit along the corridors guarding the fortress of fear, there are security guards outside too. In the morning when I am walking in the garden, that’s my only chance but I have to be very careful.

For one last time I want to think of my family and Henri, Mark and Elia, of Mama and Papa and how much I have missed them all these years and whether they would have ever forgiven me if I had stayed in Sprazc. I chose my fate then, and I do so now, once again but there will be no forgiveness for this sin, although I am not renouncing, I am escaping and this has come to be the only way. Had this journey not begun in iniquity, it would not have ended in such wickedness; had they left us be, Ulrich and I would have gotten married and raised a family in Sprazc or elsewhere and would have abided by our church. I would have had a happy life with him, my life with Henri was peaceful but I know that I will never get back that peace or happiness even if I could live with Mark and Pauline. I try to imagine a life with Ulrich and what he would have looked like as an old man but I must have fallen asleep because I can see the dragon come into my room underneath the layers of curtain.

I already find myself in a heightened state of alacrity, although I am unsure whether it is due to the thought of getting caught while stealing or the dreaded meeting with Dr. Pyotor or in fact the thought of finally escaping this prison. When breakfast arrives, it’s of the same well-balanced nutritious variety and now I feel cheated as even the death row prisoners are granted a last meal according to their wishes, today I wish I could have some of Mama’s pierogies. After breakfast, we go down to the garden, since there are three more women with us, the nurse is already distracted trying to keep up with our different walking paces, I am hoping I can uproot one delphinium without her observing me. As we walk by the white and blue border, I purposefully slow down and make sure that no one else is in sight, with all swiftness I pull out the root of one and tear a small piece of it. When nurse turns around to see me, I already have it in my pocket but since I am bending down, I pretend I have fallen, she pulls me up and dusts the clay from my skirt and hands. Even though she looks suspiciously at me, she cannot guess what I have done.

Soon I am taken upstairs and I wash off and change my clothing. The nurse checks me again to see if I am alright, she prods into my eyes and then checks my pulse followed by pressure. When she is pleased with herself for doing her job, I am left alone during which time I retrieve the small piece of root from my skirt and wash it in the glass of water. I just need to eat a little bit of the root to be relieved from this reformatory. It is a little before 11am but I am taken in to see him. This is a room I have never been in, it is not white like the others but looks like a living room. He greets me with a smile and welcomes me to sit down on a rather large chair. He asks me how I am feeling and then tells me that there is nothing to be afraid of. He explains to me the procedure and how it will help me, I try to listen to him but all I can think of is Ulrich. Then he stops talking and I know it is about to begin, he comes close to me and stands with a funny looking small object in his hand. I can see the white of his eyes, they look just as they did through the window in the dark of the Masirov basement. I put my hand over my mouth and swallow the root. He continues to talk some more about how important it is to follow his instructions and then he asks, “Are you ready, Mrs. Gouché?”
“Yes, Pyotor.”