Erwin Mortier: My Fellow Skin

A small, compact bundle in my nightwear, I kicked impatiently against the bedclothes that granted me little freedom. When I tried spreading my legs, the sheet stretched taut like a sail between my ankles and hips.

“Get up!” I must have cried. Or maybe it was “Pa-pa!”

The echo bouncing back from the walls sounded less hollow than usual, and it was then that I realised, with some alarm, that the door was ajar.

There was the scrape of a foot, a tightening of the covers.

I glimpsed a hand disappearing below the end of my cot. Someone with designs on my bears had ducked away like a flash, and was now lying in wait.

I stared hard at the foot of the bed, as if I would eventually be able to look over the edge and grab the intruder by the scruff of the neck.

We waited. Neither of us dared to move, afraid to make the slightest sound. I could hear his breathing and he could probably hear mine.

From outside came the sounds of early afternoon. I could hear someone tramping about in the yard with clanking pails and the chickens squabbling over the best scraps.

A jolt reminded me of the intruder. Perhaps he’d been crouching there the whole time, perhaps his muscles had gone all rigid and he’d toppled over.

From behind the foot of the bed rose a mop of tousled, chestnut hair, then eyebrows like brushes over dark brown eyes. Holding my gaze, without a hint of shame.

I screwed up my eyes in disbelief. No-one ever came in here except my father, my mother, and on very special occasions one of the Aunts. To pick me up or lie me down or pat me fondly. That was the only kind of stir there was supposed to be.

Everything else was supposed to keep quite still, like my bears on the shelf.

When I opened my eyes again I saw him emerging from his hiding place. His shirt hung out of his trousers. The buckles of his sandals were undone and tinkled around his ankles. He advanced slowly, a sly grin on his face.

“In the hole, down in the hole!” he chanted under his breath.

From the corner of my eye I saw him going down on his knees beside me. The wooden bars rattled loudly as he shook them, and he gave a little laugh of grim amusement.

Then, after a few seconds’ tingling silence, came the sound of his voice alarmingly close to my ear. “Anton…” he said, and then, slowly and maliciously, “An-ton-ne-ke,” as though he took pride in knowing my pet name and using it against me.

I averted my face crossly and fixed my eyes on the stains of long-evaporated rainwater below the window sill. Sometimes, in the evening twilight, the stains seemed to liquefy and turn into trolls or wizards. If only I could focus on other things for long enough, he would surely go away of his own accord.

Suddenly I felt three fingers trailing across my face, moving from cheek to mouth and up to the eyes. I curled my toes in response to the tickling sensation, blew hard against his hand and twisted my head from side to side.

His fingers closed round my nose like a vice.

My eyes filled with tears, and the pain shot all the way up to the roots of my hair. He dragged me upright. I did not resist. My panting breath moistened his wrist. I struggled with both hands to push him away, but he did not loosen his grip, determined to unscrew my nose from my face.

I didn’t want to plead for mercy, I didn’t want to cry out, but his fingers dug deeper and deeper into my flesh. I felt sick with pain. My midriff tensed, my lungs filled up almost to bursting, but when my mouth opened wide to scream, a woman’s voice, the same one as the night before, seemed to do it for me.

“Roland,” she yelled, “Roland, boy… where are you?”

He let go of me at once. My head crashed back on the pillow.

I heard him stomp across the floor and out of the room. The door shuddered on its hinges.

My muscles relaxed, my breathing recovered its familiar rhythm and I rubbed the moisture from my eyes. Elsewhere in the house a tap was turned on, pipes murmured. Somewhere water splashed in a basin.

*

Roland. When my mother took me downstairs he was nowhere to be seen, but there were two unoccupied chairs at the other end of the table, gaping at me menacingly.

It was still dark in the house, and no-one spoke. The Aunts clasped their cups with both hands and drank in silence, pausing briefly between sips to stare blankly into the distance. A thin, strangely cold light entered the room through the crack under the roller blind, making the Aunts’ black hairpins stand out from the surrounding gloom.

Everything seemed to be late. The cool of the shuttered rooms downstairs had robbed the hours of their soul. Outside, the back yard would be blazing in the heat of mid-afternoon, while inside a morning atmosphere still reigned. There was the usual bustle to prepare for a new day, even though the day was half-gone already.

Michel was missing. He ought to have been right next to me at the corner of the table with his walking stick propped against his thigh, feeding me my slice of bread, while I sat enthroned in my high chair with my own table-top and potty and the dog looking up at me longingly, whining softly and pawing the air.

My father was nowhere to be seen.

My mother stacked the dishes and carried them to the kitchen. The Aunts leaned back helpfully when she swept up the crumbs from the table with a small brush.

“Eat,” she snapped at me in passing. She pushed the bread into my hands.

I nibbled at it listlessly. Everything was eluding me. The table was already being cleared. Only at the far end, well beyond my reach, by the empty chairs, were things left standing: milk and jam and sugar.

*

I heard feet stamping on the stairs, and again the voice of that woman.

“Come here, silly…”

Roland lurched unwillingly into the room at her hand. His hair had been combed flat against his skull and shone as if he’d been given a coat of varnish. The buckles of his sandals were fastened and his shirt was firmly stuffed into his trousers, which had been pulled up almost to his armpits. He resembled a wooden doll, only just come to life, with nothing but strife in mind.

“Sit down at table now. It’s always the same with you,” his mother snapped while she turned an apologetic smile on the rest of us. She was just as coarsely shaped as her son. She exuded the same sort of menace, like the ominous grey of thunderclouds glowering behind a stand of trees.

I was glad to be sitting in my high chair, for the lofty protection it gave me. He would have to reach up on tiptoe to pinch me, or hoist himself on to the chair next to mine, but to my relief his mother sat down beside me.

“I’ve left you some cheese,” she said absently, “and there’s pear treacle, too.”

A cushion was stuffed under Roland’s bottom and he eyed me triumphantly from the other side of the table as if it were his own property. While his mother was busy buttering his bread, he lifted the lid of the sugar bowl a little way and let it drop with a loud clatter, again and again, with shorter and shorter intervals.

“Stop that, I tell you.” She snatched the lid from him and pushed the sugar bowl out of his reach.

He pouted sulkily and slumped back in his chair, ignoring his plate. Then he lunged forward and grabbed the milk jug, holding it at such a steep angle that the milk spilled from the lip on to the tablecloth.

“You wicked boy.” She gave him a smart rap over the knuckles.

He hit back immediately.

She was too astonished to speak. Her hand glanced off his temple. His head juddered sideways. He squirmed on his chair and started kicking the leg of the table non-stop.

The Aunts tried not to notice. They emptied their cups and folded up their napkins. The only sign of annoyance as far as I could make out was Aunt Odette’s eyebrow shooting up. She must have been seething with disapproval.