“Will she take him where she went last night?”
I nodded. We walked along the empty Sunday morning streets toward the hotel. From the hotel, I remembered the way very welclass="underline" out the back door, across the street at the light, then down the first narrow alley on the right. The pavement and the façade of the old gray building were bathed in morning light and had nothing mysterious about them at all. From a distance I could already see the basement window.
There was no glass in the window frames, and the iron bars were covered with spider webs. I squatted down to look into the dim interior. Nothing but a few burnt black objects scattered about, and on the floor the outline of a person in chalk. The wall, too, was black and burnt.
“It was here?” Xander asked doubtfully. I nodded. An old woman came down the stairs and looked at the two of us with suspicion. “Are you looking for something?”
Xander gestured toward the basement apartment with his chin and asked, “What happened to this place?”
“Here? A month ago, a woman committed suicide, burnt herself to death, and it’s just been left like that. They say they’re investigating, there’s suspicion of murder. It would be better just to clean up the place. Leave it like this and the rats multiply, and before you know it it’s a nest for vagrants. Just last night I was sure I heard voices; it gave me a real fright. I live right upstairs, you see.”
“What kind of person was she, the one who died?”
“A woman in her mid-forties. She lived alone and didn’t talk much, we said hello now and then but never talked. They say she worked in a hotel. I can’t imagine it was murder.”
“Why not?”
“Well, why would anyone want to kill her?”
“So it was suicide?”
“She lived alone, you know. Could be she was lonely.”
“But it might have been an accident, don’t you think? For instance she was smoking and her hair caught fire.”
“Who knows, really? In any case a woman living alone, no good ever comes of that.”
“And it was just a month ago, you say?”
“Yes, one month exactly.”
When I rubbed my eyes on the way home, I found they were wet with tears. I looked at my reflection in a shop window. My eyes were red and swollen, and my face looked ravaged like a garden after a storm.
That night while Xander was asleep I went out again, alone, to the gray basement apartment. The night was heavy with fog. When I heard someone practicing scales on the saxophone in the distance, I began to run.
The basement windows were dimly lit. I rushed down the dark stairs and knocked on the door, which opened soundlessly. The woman came out and embraced me. I was still breathing hard, and my body swelled and shrank with each breath.
“You came! If you hadn’t come, I’d have felt so lonely.” The interior of the room was exactly as it had been the night before, and what I had seen in the morning seemed like a dream. On the table stood a single lit candle. The woman poured red wine into a glass. The wine smelled like blood. She cut me a slice of bread. This time, too, the bread was dry and tasted like coal. Today I found it delicious. Four black rats came to pick up the breadcrumbs.
“The fog is so dense, the town is like a jungle,” said the woman, and stroked the back of my hand. On the patch of skin where she had stroked me, shining scales began to grow. The scales reflected the light in red and green. Even when the woman blew out the candle, the scales still sparkled.
“Now listen carefully. I’m speaking to you because you are the only one who understands my words.” The woman’s breath was as cold as a night wind on my cheek. “At first everyone will praise your scales and envy them, and you’ll feel glad. But one day suddenly someone will say he’s going to kill you. Suddenly they’ll all hate you. Out of terror, your backbone will go soft, it will not hold itself erect. Your head will hang down in front. Then it’s too late. They throw stones, there’s a pounding in your head, and you realize the drum you hear is beating time for the sutras at your funeral.”
The woman took my face in both hands. There was a sound like sparks flying up from a fire, and my scales began to grow. I touched them with my finger. They were rough and cold.
The woman thrust the five bony fingers of one hand into my hair. I heard the sounds of bats beating their wings, and my head became very heavy. I was overcome with weariness.
“Aren’t you sleepy? Come to my bed. We’ll sleep a little.” The moment she said this, I heard the wooden door burst open. A dog was barking. Two large shadows threw themselves on me. I was knocked to the ground and cried out soundlessly.
“What are you doing here?” I heard men’s voices. The room grew bright. I was lying in the middle of an empty burned-out room. The German shepherd smelled the wine on my lips, bared its teeth and growled. Behind the dog stood two men in uniform. The furniture had disappeared. So had the woman.
“Show me your papers,” said a man with a beard exactly like a bush. I got to my feet. My clothing was streaked with soot.
“Your name?”
I tried to brush the soot from my clothes.
“I asked what your name is,” Bush-beard snapped.
“I don’t think she understands,” said the other man, a beanpole. “Maybe she’s ill. Look at her face, she looks like a ghost.”
“Maybe she’s a refugee.”
“Anyway, she’s not relevant to the case. Leave her alone.”
Bush-beard tapped my back lightly three times with the stick he held in his hand and shouted, “Get out of here, go home! They find you in a place like this, they’ll sell you.” Beanpole gave a long piercing laugh like a siren.
7
“Now, begin from that corner.” At some point, Bush-beard must have combed his bush and changed into a suit. I swung the heavy lead hammer and brought it down with a crash on the floor where Bush-beard was pointing. Rats scattered in all directions. The body of a rat that didn’t manage to escape was smashed beneath the hammer. Beanpole wrote something in his notebook. Bush-beard pointed to another spot. I lifted the hammer and brought it down. I heard the rat’s bones crack.
“A little more accurately please.”
I wiped the sweat from my palms with a handkerchief.
“Please open the closet,” the man said gently, so I opened it, and inside were a large number of rats huddled together trembling. When I raised the hammer, all the rats started running. The hammer fell. The last rat was too slow and gave a shrill squeal. Salty sweat trickled into them. I rubbed my eyes so I could aim where the man was pointing.
“Hurry!”
I lifted the hammer, staggering under its weight.
“Harder!”
I took aim and methodically delivered blow after blow as if I were stamping documents. There were fewer and fewer rats. Beanpole seemed to be recording the number of dead rats.
“Look, there too,” said the man, pointing with his chin. A few rats were gnawing at the door, apparently attempting to escape. With my last ounce of strength, I raised the hammer. Its handle was damp. The instant before the hammer hit the floor, one of the rats turned around. I recognized its face, that of the woman who had set herself on fire.
When I woke up, my palms and hair were dripping with sweat. As after a long journey, my hair smelled foreign and I wanted to wash the smell away, but a bathtub resembles a coffin so I washed my hair in the kitchen sink. I filled the sink, dipped my hair into the water, and swirled it around. Out came dead leaves, butterflies’ wings, dead ants, and dried lizards’ tails.
When I stood in front of the mirror, what I saw reflected was not myself but that woman, unmistakably. I turned the mirror to the wall and decided not to put on any makeup.