Nadia could not tell time yet. It was the stillness of the night that told her that it was already past midnight, to her a magical line between today and tomorrow. She was born at this hour, her mother always said. She was called Nadia because the stillness of the hour brought hope that the morning was approaching.
“Why they had to be all fancy and give you that Russian name I don’t know,” her grandma used to say. “Hope is a good English name; how would people know what Nadia means anyhow?” But Nadia liked her name and she liked the fact that the meaning was hidden like that.
She was often awake when all was quiet. Tonight something in the way her father left the dinner table disturbed her peace, kept her thoughts occupied. After the phone call he had walked out with a slight hunch in his shoulders and a certain sideways emphasis in his walk. He picked up the car keys with a deliberateness that was new to her. Nadia’s stare had fixed on the plate that remained half-eaten.
She could hear her mother’s usual ritual at the kitchen table. First the whistle, then the clanking of the cup in the saucer, then the precise pouring. She always waited for the spoon in the cup, always, even though she knew that her mother takes no sugar. The stir never rings. Nadia found the incompleteness of her mother’s tea ritual comforting. It made her feel that her mother would never end, that she would always be there, drinking tea, making pancakes on rainy days, accepting mud cake offerings from Nadia with delight. But on this night the very fact of her mother in the kitchen at such a still hour alerted her to a feeling that some ominous event had occurred, the kind that grown-ups whisper about and children can only suspect.
Later she woke to hushed voices somewhere in the house. She caught words like “nurses” and “coma” and “only the one little brother pulled through”.
In the morning Nadia’s mother entered her room to wake her. Her face was grave, and Nadia sensed that she dared not ask. Her mother was never one to look grave. The house was different. Breakfast was different. A veil of gloom hung over all things. She sensed that some invisible and dark sadness had filled her father.
During the day Nadia found it comforting to listen to the sounds of all the little things her mother did during the day, or to her father practising his sermons out loud in his study. The symphony of home and warmth and love. All the things that had, more than she could know, guarded her innocence.
As her mother’s friends took tea at their house that afternoon Nadia curled up in her trusted secret hiding place underneath the piano to listen to the voices. From the sitting room talk she could make out a surname, a street name, whispers, sometimes snatches of sad conversation. Mother told Mrs Kruger that the doctor said “... ninety percent, third-degree burns ...” Her father had a degree, Nadia thought. She knew a degree was a paper that said that you are smart.
When Mr Cooper came to fetch Mrs Cooper, Father told him that when the youngest little boy went the mother ran out into the night and screamed as if to tear the heavens open. That’s how the brother knew, they said. Such a young boy, they said.
Nadia wished that she could ask Mother what it all meant, could ask why things don’t feel the same anymore, as if the very colours of the things around her seemed different altogether. But she could not phrase the question.
At church Father told the parishioners to pray for the family. Some people took parcels of food and clothes and blankets to church. Mother said it was for the people with the surname who had nothing left and that Nadia should go and play. Little girls should not lend their ears to adult conference. It left Nadia suspicious that perhaps life was not an everlasting tea ritual.
And then one day there he was at the school gate. Nadia knew it was the little boy that everyone spoke about in whispers. Just because she knew. She had been taught not to stare, but she suddenly felt that nobody had ever taught her how not to stare when a sight pulls your innocent eyes like some mystical magnetic force, when the sight makes the core of your body twirl and your faith shrink. Nadia thought that if this thing is real, everything else is not.
She could not keep her eyes off him, his leathery bald head, one patch of hair left, no nose, a hole where one ear should be. His fingers looked like something a small child made from play dough. One leg could not be made straight.
Nadia closed her eyes. She thought to herself that it was an unreal thing, a monster, and monsters don’t exist. Once when she had a bad dream Mother said that if Jesus is your Saviour, monsters don’t exist, and for a little girl with a name that means “hope” there will be no monsters. But she opened her eyes and there he still was, standing a few feet away, alive and real. A monster.
She ran to class, where everything was familiar and routine and where the chart on the wall had her name on it and where she knew that she was a good girl.
But he bothered her. Even when he was not around he bothered her. He troubled her in her dreams. Nadia would dream that she is walking to school. A short way ahead of her she notices him hobbling along. She walks up behind him and takes one book from his backpack and she carries it in her arms. It’s heavy, but after a while she takes another, then another, until his backpack hangs open, gaping and empty and she walks bent over forward with all the weight. The books grow larger and heavier in her arms, and they just grow and grow. Every time they reach the corner the road stretches out again and becomes narrower and longer. When they finally do reach the school gate he suddenly spins around and before she can look up at his face he snatches the books back. Nadia wants to explain. She is not stealing and she is not mocking. But she never gets the chance. Before she can look up at his face he is gone and she wakes with a feeling of heaviness that seems impossible to carry.
In the days following, Nadia searched for some familiar and comfortable feeling she used to have, and so she stayed behind to sweep the classroom for an extra star on the chart one afternoon. She found solace in aiding her tired teacher.
As she walked home none of the usual companions dotted the street ahead of her or sauntered lazily behind. She walked alone, tormented by overcrowded thoughts. As she cut across the park something caught her eye. And there stood the little monster. A vision or a thing – she couldn’t decide. He stood by the swings, his face turned towards her. She wanted to look at his face. Then she thought she didn’t want to look at his face. But she was drawn to look at his face. She needed to see his face. She closed her eyes and he stood there, as if he knew. When she opened her eyes she looked, and then she spun around and ran. He was behind her. He was following her. He was a monster and he was going to swallow her whole.
She slammed the gate behind her. It was heavy – cast iron and wood – shaped like a medieval gate with an old cast iron lock with a keyhole, straight out of Mother’s imagination and laboriously crafted by Grandpa. She suddenly found herself wishing that it could keep all ugly things out, like at the palaces where handsome princes lived and giants remained locked out.
Then something made her look into the keyhole, a feeling that something was beckoning her. Looking back at her was an eye. Blue. Deep. Like a pool or a star. The eye was unusually inviting. She recognised something in this one staring eye, some trace of soulfulness. Nadia opened the gate and there he stood, holding up her pencil case. “It fell out,” he said. He has a voice, she thought. His face has blue eyes and a voice. She took the pencil case from his hand. His skin felt like the leather of Grandpa’s wallet. She smiled at him, he gave a semi-smile, somewhat distorted. She watched him walk off before going in for tea.
That night she dreamt that she is walking to school. A short way ahead of her she notices him hobbling along. She walks up behind him and takes the first book from his backpack and carries it in her arms. Instead of the weight of the books she has come to expect, she feels that burning feeling that comes with the knowledge that one has sneaked into a room where you are not allowed. It gives her the pressing and sudden urge to put the book back. He senses it and turns around. She looks straight into his eyes, and she feels locked into magic. Blue. Deep. She hands him his book, and as their hands touch, he smiles and says her name.
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Kommentaar
A powerful, moving story. The construction and imagery are based on a movement from, so to speak, darkness to light, with the sudden burst of light at the end being almost overwhelming.