The icy-cold carrots and apples pressed on my stomach; my hands were so cold they had lost aIl sensation. If I were to leave the village, I would freeze, so I had to stay there, and I longed, with every fibre in my body, to get myself under cover. Without much further ado, I set off back towards the old man’s house.
It was strange how much at home I felt moving around that unfamiliar place. I let myself in, dumped the stuff from my jacket in the kitchen then looked in on the old chap; he was lying there just as before, but as I stepped closer my nose was assailed by the stench. He had shit himself and wetted the bed. I dithered for a while: this was unbearable, it had quite taken my appetite away. I thought the whole thing over afresh; my head was clear by now.
I chopped up some kindling in the yard, lit a fire in the kitchen range, put on water to heat up. Within minutes warm air was wafting through the kitchen, so I opened the connecting door to the other room. Having washed in the hot water, I felt a great deal better. I turned the old man over onto my bed, wiped his arse, yanked the soiled sheet off his bed, shoved it into a bowl of steaming, soapy water, laid my own sheet under the old chap, then aired the room. Only at this point did I pause for a moment: how come the beds had been made for two? No matter, maybe it was the doctor, I thought to myself.
The walls soon warmed through, and I took the soiled sheet in the bowl of water out into the yard. I inspected my hands, and it struck me, for no particular reason, what a lot of things they had handled already. I rinsed the carrots and apples, pealed them, and chopped them up onto a plate for the old man.
I sat him up in the bed; he did not open his eyes, though from time to time there was a flash of the whites of the eyeballs, but I could only get a few morsels down him, and three sips of water. He swallowed mechanically; I had to hold his head tight so he would not choke, and told him in a loud voice what to do: Swallow! Chew! Sip!
I went back into the kitchen and slumped onto the chair; I was exhausted. I slowly nibbled up the carrots and apples, stoked the fire, took my jacket off, then tried to gather my wits in order to work out how I was going to get home. I was not going to set off that day – that I was sure of. And I also thought to myself that anyway the doctor would be coming the next morning, maybe I could trust him, tell him everything, scrounge some money, and clear off.
The old man was sleeping peacefully in the bed; he was warm enough to have pulled the bedclothes lower down off himself. I perched on the side of the bed, and all I could think of was that time should roll on and the doctor come as soon as possible. My eyelids were drooping, and I thought to myself that I could do with a spot of shut-eye, so I cautiously snuggled back next to the old man.
It must have been after noon when I woke, but I was no longer alarmed; I was partly reconciled to my position in that I had managed to gain some control over things and I had a plan for deliverance.
Dusk was drawing in; the fire had burned down to embers, so I went out to chop wood. The dull axe blade had trouble splitting the thick logs, and in the gloom I was fumbling in the earth in the hope of finding something on which to whet it when my hand came to a halt. I sensed that someone was watching me. I raised my head. A shadowy figure was standing behind the garden gate. I tried to make it out in the twilight. Blow it, I thought to myself, I’ve overplayed my hand and come unstuck. Tossing the axe to the ground, I went over to the gate. After a few paces I could see that it was a woman, her oval face glistening in the light that was filtering out from the kitchen window. Good evening, I said. Good evening, she replied. May I come in, she asked. Of course, and I opened the gate.
In the kitchen I offered her a seat then went to fetch another chair from the next room. She was mopping eyes alarmingly red from weeping. At first I thought she must be the old man’s daughter, but because she did not seem to want to see him, and did not even ask after him, I quickly dismissed that notion and trusted I would be able to carry on coolly playing the role of the son – at least until the morning.
The woman could hardly have been over forty, and if one discounted the eyes swollen and a mouth-line puffed-up from crying, I would go as far as to say she was pretty. She began by saying she didn’t even know where to begin. I listened to her for about an hour as it meanwhile grew quite dark.
She was in a big jam: everyone in the village looked on her as a city tart, because she was pretty, and round there they hated outsiders; they were all supposed to marry someone from that village or, at worst, the next one over. Her husband drank like a fish; he had plenty of money, farming a few hundred hectares with his workers, but he now did little else except hit the bottle. She could not leave him, because he would go after her and kill her, he had promised as much; either that or her husband’s brothers would kill her, for what difference that made. She did not have the nerve to kill herself, and since I too was a stranger there, maybe I would understand.
I clutched my head in my hands. Somehow I felt unable to trot out that if only she would give me some money, I would not be seen for dust. That was clearly not going to solve the problem for her.
Come with me: bring some money from home, and we’ll make ourselves scarce, I said. It’s impossible, because they’lI be after me, she replied, and from the way she said it I too sensed that it was too big a price to pay for my liberty, I ought not to take it upon myself.
We fell silent; she stopped crying. I did my best to help: what if she were to kill him, I said. That’s impossible, I’ve already thought of that, it would be the end of me, she said. But maybe if you were to do it. My expression froze totally at that. Oh no, I responded, not that. I would pay you; he keeps loads of money at home, a million or so. I said nothing for a while. I can’t do anything like that…, I said. He’s pegged out at home, out of his skull even as we speak. Come with me, please, I beg you, help me. She stood up, opened the door wide, and waited for me to go with her.
I didn’t have the heart to leave the wretched woman to her own devices; I thought to myself, if I were to go and have a looksee, she might calm down, at least until tomorrow. I grabbed my jacket, and off we went.
Her husband was pegged out in the front room, his arms dangling from the settee, his mouth wide open. The woman studied me curiously to see what I would come up with. She glanced from me to the fat, dead-drunk pig to whom she had pledged her tooth…
And what if it were made to look like suicide, I whispered. I don’t know; I don’t know anything about that sort of thing, I’m all mixed up, she said. One could torch the house on him, let’s say, I said, and I began spilling out ideas, each better than the last, but with a callousness that even I found surprising, as if I were just tossing them around in a brainstorming session. Torch the house on him, I said. Or bury him in the garden. That’s not suicide, the woman said. True, I replied. Or stick him into his car and trundle it into a lake. There is a lake here, the woman said, just over a mile outside the village. Then what are you waiting for, I asked. Help me, she pleaded.
We went out into the garage, inspected the car, and I showed her how to set the accelerator, the gear and the clutch. But you have to do it, I said.
The car had not been used for years, the tyres were flat. I snatched the pump down from the wall, and though my head was reeling from it all, did not waste a moment. When I had finished on the first wheel the woman gently grasped my neck and stroked my face. No, I said, I told you you have to carry it through. She vanished whilst I was pumping the next tyre, and all at once it had come down to me: there was I, pumping up the tyres of the car of a total stranger, in a completely unknown place that I had no idea how I had fetched up in, with the old chap croaking back there, whilst here I was helping to send a lousy creep to his maker. I’ll scarper before the woman gets back, I thought to myself. Except there was nowhere to scarper to; it was bitingly cold outside, and the fog was closing in, and she would follow me to the old man’s house.
By the time the woman had returned, I had filled all the tyres. In her hand was a bundle of money, which she stuffed into my jacket pocket. Eight hundred grand, she said. For fuck’s sake, I yelled, get it through your head: No! The woman pulled down the garage door. Pipe down, they can hear you. Afterwards you can do with me whatever you want, she said. Oh no, not that, I said in a more hushed voice, but the anger was undiminished, and I sensed the anger was somehow alleviating my hangover. If I do whatever I want with you, that would leave you exactly where you were to begin with, I said. That rat also did whatever he wanted with you. The woman flinched, momentarily lost for words, then still managed to come back: But you’re different.
I did not answer. I took the woman by the hand and we went back into the front room, grabbed hold of her husband, lugged him to the car, and stowed him on the back seat. From here on in it’s up to you, I said, and with that left her there.
The old fellow was still lying peacefully on the bed, puffing faintly. I paced up and down. It suddenly occurred to me: the money. There it was in my pocket. Eight hundred thousand, I counted it out.
It was well into the night by now; outside all was still, the sky had cleared, and the temperature had sunk below freezing. I tossed a few more billets on the fire, got out the money, plonked down seven hundred thousand next to the old man, on the chair that the doctor had used. I stuffed the remaining hundred thousand in my pocket, then started off on my way.
On getting out of the village, I started to jog to warm myself up. Every now and then I glanced back, so that if a car were coming I would have time to stop and thumb a lift. Nothing came, but after half a mile or so I grew weary, though I had warmed up. Then, all of a sudden, there was a flash of headlights on the road behind me, and my shadow was thrown a hundred yards ahead of me.
The car drew up alongside and the door on the passenger side opened. The woman was behind the wheel, with her husband in the back, just as we had stowed him. Come on, give me a hand; I don’t know what to do with him on my own, she gestured behind her. Leave me out of it, I said, so it beats me how, just a couple of seconds later, I came to be sitting in the car.
We turned off the road towards the lake; the sky was glittering darkly on its surface. The car stopped in the wooded part of the reservoir, where a long slope led down through the banking to the water. With considerable difficulty, we heaved the man into the driver’s seat and belted him in. The woman started the engine and set it in gear, whilst I fixed the accelerator pedal to slightly more than idling and wedged the clutch to the seat with a stick which could be yanked away through the rolled-down wing-window with a length of twine.
All set, I asked the woman. All set, she replied. I pressed the twine into her hand and she yanked it without giving it a moment’s thought. The car slowly trundled towards the lake. Then all at once the woman started racing after it. Fuck it, she shouted, I left my house key inside. She ripped the door open and clambered in: in the dark, I couldn’t see what she was doing. The car was picking up speed all the while, and by the time it had reached the edge of the lake it must have been doing about twenty. Get out, I shouted after her. Just before hitting the water the car thumped against a hillock on the right hand side and the door slammed to; I raced after it. Even in the water it kept going before submerging. I ran up and down the bank; the water was icy-cold. Come on now, come on, I urged the woman under my breath. The top of the car vanished completely under the water, the eddies swirled slowly outwards, and the lake again grew calm, with only the ripples surging towards the far bank to break its surface. One minute elapsed, then two. I could not bring myself to go in after her. On the contrary, I edged away step by step. On getting back to the road and setting off again in the dark, I thrust my hands in my pockets and had a feeling that somehow nothing had happened. And the further I went, the more I kept repeating that to myself: nothing, nothing at all. I don’t even know who they are.
It was still night when I reached the next village, or maybe it was a town. Two taxis were parked in the centre. I got into the first; a young lad was listening to the radio. They say the cold spell will let up tomorrow, he said. Good thing too, I responded, I’ve got a splitting head from this cold front. Where to, he asked. It’ll be a fair drive, and then I named the town, pressing fifty thousand into his palm. Fair enough, he said, and I felt relieved.
He said nothing until we had left the village. Only then did he ask: Husband coming home? And he guffawed. You got it, I said, on top of which I did two people in and saved someone’s life. The lad’s expression did not so much as flicker: that sort of thing happens round here, it’s a prosperous area, and fortunes easily change hands. But if you give me another hundred grand, I never saw you. I’ve only got fifty, I said, and pulled it out. Alright, he replied, then I’ll say I only saw half of you – from the back, let’s say. And he started to laugh his head off: a decent little caper at last. There was I thinking I would have to wait another week, he said. Though that one’s a dead cert. Right? Get smashed out of my skull with my mates. That’s when my birthday will be. Happy birthday to you, I said, and turned the radio up.
Translated by Tim Wilkinson