The Angel Makers (24 page)

Judit is on her own. Sari knows that in some ways it would have been better if someone had been with her, so that they could start rumours flying about Ferenc’s progressing illness and her corresponding concern, but she also wants to be able to speak honestly.

‘He’s asleep,’ she says, as soon as Judit opens the door.

‘I don’t have long.’

Judit invites her in and gives her a cup of coffee before asking: ‘So? How is it going?’

Sari feels a surge of exultation and dread. She’s constantly surprised at how mixed her feelings are about what she’s doing, part of her horrified at the very idea that she is hastening someone’s departure from the world and part of her – always the bigger part, though not by much – certain that it’s the right thing for her to do, for herself and for the child.

‘It’s working,’ she says. ‘I’m giving him a bigger dose in the evenings, and he usually has quite a lot of pain during the night, but I spun a story about some stomach illness that’s spreading through the village, and he seems convinced by that.’

‘Is he having any other symptoms?’

‘Headaches, sometimes, and he seems quite tired, but I don’t know whether that’s because he’s so often ill during the night. Also, just this afternoon I noticed that his fingernails have changed – there are marks on them. Do you know anything about that?’

Judit frowns. ‘No idea, I’m afraid. What are you doing for him?’

‘I’m giving him wild chicory for the pain. It seems to work quite well, and it’s helping me look’ – she struggles for the word – ‘convincing, I suppose. I don’t think he’s at all suspicious. And you were right, he’s been so much nicer to me since he’s been ill.’

‘Ha!’ Judit snorts. ‘Of course. He needs you now, doesn’t he?’

‘He always needed me. I’m the one who does all the cooking, all the cleaning, going to the market—’ ‘Yes, but you’re the woman, and you’re supposed to do that. This is different. Men are children at heart, looking for a mother’s tit to suck on. Never is it more obvious than when they’re ill.’ She looks hard into Sari’s face. ‘And how are you feeling about it all?’

There’s a long silence, as Sari tries to sum up what she’s thinking and feeling. ‘I’m having nightmares,’ she says at last, speaking slowly. ‘I know that this is … it’s not right. But I think I’ve stopped caring about things like that. I’ve stopped caring about anything much outside of this.’ She motions with her arms, an arc around her body, containing herself and the baby tucked inside her. ‘I think when it comes down to survival, everything else stops mattering.’

Judit nods. ‘Let me know what’s going on, if you can,’ she says.

Day ten, midday. Ferenc has been getting incrementally more and more ill, but Sari’s not sure whether he’s noticed it himself. She’s seen it with other people when they’re suffering, when pain becomes a constant and it’s hard to judge whether things are getting worse or better. She asked him once, while dosing him with wild chicory tea in the small hours of the morning, whether perhaps she shouldn’t fetch Judit, and see if she could do anything about it, but much to her relief he refused; not that Judit would cause any problems, but she knows that his reluctance to see anyone other than herself while he is so ill is likely to extend to the doctor in Város, too, which is going to make things a great deal easier.

But that day Sari’s downstairs, mending one of Ferenc’s shirts, when she hears a noise from upstairs, a bang. The bang is followed by a series of quieter bangs and thumps, almost a drumming, which is strange enough to impel Sari to venture upstairs and investigate.

She finds Ferenc on the floor by the bed and is shockingly thrust back four years (a lifetime) to the day when she found her father in much the same position. But there the similarity ends, for when her father was lying there he was still and dead, while Ferenc is twitching violently, and Sari realises that he is having a fit.

She doesn’t know what to do, torn between duelling impulses. Should she try to help? Is this it, the end? In which case she shouldn’t try to help, but let things progress as naturally as she can. But what if it’s not the end, and he comes to and finds her standing idly by? She dithers for a moment, steps towards him, then jumps back again as his arm jerks towards her. She’s never seen anything like this before. His eyes are half open and his tongue is protruding; he must have bitten it, as a trickle of blood runs down his chin – she’s both repulsed and perversely pitying.

His chest hitches and he vomits and she can’t leave it any longer, can’t just leave him to choke to death on his own vomit on the bedroom floor, so she kneels down beside him and lifts his bucking head and shoulders into her lap, turning his head to one side, scooping the vomit out of his mouth with her fingers. He won’t suffocate, but what now? The fit seems to go on for a long time, but gradually the jerking movements still, and she looks down at him. Is his chest rising and falling, is he still breathing? Yes, and his eyes are opening, rolling around the room before they settle on her face, upside down from his prone position.

He coughs once, and spits weakly. ‘What happened?’

‘You – you were having a fit. I think I should fetch Judit.’

He blinks hard, trying to clear his mind, and then shakes his head. ‘Don’t need her.’

‘
Please
, Ferenc. I don’t know what this means, I don’t know how to treat it. Please let me get Judit to have a look at you.’ She puts on her most imploring expression, and is quietly impressed at how her acting skills are developing – she finds that there are real tears standing in her eyes.

He seems to be moved by her pleading, and finally he nods in curt agreement. ‘All right. If you can get her to come here, I’ll see her.’

Even as she walks, she wonders why she’s insisted on summoning Judit. Of course, it’s more convincing from Ferenc’s point of view to do so, but what does that matter? Ferenc is unlikely to leave the house or speak to another person again before he dies, and so what difference does it make whether he spends his final few days (or weeks – though God forbid that should be the case) suspicious and paranoid, or as trusting as he seems to be right now?

But she’s in luck; as she rounds the curve in the path and Judit’s house comes into view, she sees the unmistakeable broad arse of Jakova Gersek disappearing through the doorway. A perfect chance to spread gossip of Ferenc’s illness, and thereby ensure that her own name stays as clear as possible! But yet she hesitates. It was one thing to plan the discussion of a theoretical illness in front of others; it’s another to contemplate Jakova hearing of the reality of Ferenc’s plight, if not the causes. It seems like an unpleasant invasion of Ferenc’s privacy. But this, she tells herself, is not the time to worry about propriety and Ferenc’s delicate sensibilities. She reminds herself of the far greater sin that she is in the process of committing, and this has a surprisingly motivational effect that serves to carry her down the road and up to Judit’s door.

She enters without knocking, and feigns surprise when she sees Jakova sitting at the kitchen table, clearly suffering from toothache, her cheek puffy and her mouth amusingly twisted. She’s clasping a poultice of Judit’s to the side of her face, and regards Sari out of ill-tempered eyes.

‘I – I’m sorry,’ Sari stammers in Jakova’s direction. ‘I need to see Judit.’

‘Of course,’ Jakova replies, with a half-hearted effort at good humour. ‘How is Ferenc, by the way?’

‘Oh, quite well,’ Sari lies airily. It’s for the best to do so, she decides, so that it can’t be claimed that she’s deliberately spreading word of Ferenc’s illness. Jakova is the type to prick up her ears in response to lowered voices. Word will get out easily enough as it is.

‘Hello, Sari,’ Judit pokes her head out from the kitchen. ‘Everything all right?’ She raises her eyebrows meaningfully.

‘Um,’ Sari replies. ‘Could I have a quick word with you?’

Judit beckons her into the kitchen, and as soon as she’s out of Jakova’s line of sight, Sari jerks her thumb towards where she is sitting, winking, to which Judit nods in response.

‘It’s Ferenc,’ Sari says, in a stentorian whisper. ‘You know he hasn’t been well recently? He hasn’t been too good since he came back from the front, but he’s been worse in the past couple of weeks.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Judit hisses back, grinning broadly, clearly enjoying the play-acting.

‘He hasn’t wanted to see you, or anyone else, but this afternoon I went upstairs and found him having a fit. I don’t know how to treat it, so he agreed that he would see you, if you came to the house …’

She lapses into silence for a moment, before adding, ‘So, 210 can you help?’

There’s a pause, while Judit weighs up what the right response is. ‘Is it true?’ she mouths silently at last, and when Sari nods in response, she says out loud, ‘Very well. Just let me finish with Jakova, and I’ll come up to the house. You run back now, make sure he’s all right. I should be there in about a quarter of an hour.’

When Sari lets herself back into the house, everything is silent. She climbs the stairs as quietly as she can, not sure what she’s afraid of disturbing – Ferenc in the act of dying, perhaps? – and when she gets to the door of the bedroom she’s reluctant to look inside. But it hasn’t happened yet; Ferenc is asleep, or unconscious, perhaps, but certainly alive. She can see the bedclothes pitching and tossing with the rise and fall of his chest. He seems quite peaceful, so she leaves him there and goes back downstairs to wait for Judit, who arrives twenty minutes later. As soon as she pokes her head around the door, Sari puts a finger to her lips. ‘He’s asleep upstairs,’ she whispers. ‘If you keep quiet, we can talk down here before you go up and see him.’

Judit comes inside and sits down; she seems to be tightly coiled, almost humming with excitement.

‘If you’d planned it, that couldn’t have been better,’ she says, with hushed exultation. ‘As soon as you’d gone, there was Jakova, fake concern plastered all over that squashed face of hers, saying that she
just couldn’t help overhearing
’ – Judit affects a falsetto whine in imitation – ‘and wondering what was wrong with Ferenc. Didn’t tell her much, of course, only that he hasn’t been well since he came home, and that’s why he hasn’t been out a lot, but I’m sure he’ll be fine given time.’ She smirks, rolling her eyes. ‘It’ll be all around the village by nightfall.’

‘Thank God for gossips,’ Sari says, only half joking.

‘So, what’s going on?’

‘It’s as I told you – he had a fit this afternoon, and then he vomited. The vomiting is nothing new. He’s been doing that since all this started; he still thinks he’s got some sort of stomach illness that’s been going round the village, and that it’s affecting him particularly badly because of that fever that he got when he was away at war. But a fit … I didn’t know what to do about it.’

‘Well, you’re not supposed to do
anything
about it,’ Judit says, looking at Sari searchingly.

‘I know, I know. It’s just … it’s hard. Since he’s been ill, he’s been acting so differently, it’s sometimes hard to remember why I started doing this in the first place.’

‘Are you planning on stopping?’

‘No! No. I don’t think so.’

‘Because you could, you know. Let him believe he had some sort of nasty bug, but now he’s better. That’s one of the advantages of this plan, and one of its pitfalls – you can stop any time before the end.’

Sari laces her fingers together, fixing her eyes on the intricate patterns that they make. She doesn’t really know if she’s thinking of backing out. It hadn’t occurred to her until Judit suggested it. Adding the powder to Ferenc’s food has become second nature to her, a habitual culinary ritual. An image of his face suddenly swims before her, the trusting way that he looked at her when she suggested she go and fetch Judit after his fit, and for a moment she thinks about letting him off. Perhaps this illness will have wrung all the violence out of him; perhaps they can find a modicum of happiness together. Perhaps.

‘He would never let the child live,’ she says to Judit, her voice flat. ‘My duty is not to him. It’s to my child, and to myself.’

‘Good girl.’ Judit nods in approval, as if she’s been presented with a series of perfectly executed sums, rather than the agreement to continue murdering a man. ‘Now, shall I go up and take a look at him?’

Sari lets herself into the bedroom and wakes Ferenc, who is disoriented but calm. She explains to him that Judit’s here to see him, and he doesn’t seem clear on why she is here, but accepts it without question. It’s that trust again, Sari thinks, with a spasm of self-loathing.
Forget it
, she tells herself harshly.
If he were well, he’d hurt you without a second thought, kick and punch that child out of your womb. Have no pity for him.

She leaves Judit alone with him, and is waiting downstairs when she reappears a few minutes later.

‘I gave him some Spanish garlic,’ Judit says. ‘Won’t do anything, of course, though he’ll maybe think that it’s working.’

‘All right. Judit … ?’

‘Finish him off, Sari,’ Judit replies harshly, without waiting to hear Sari’s question. ‘Write to his parents tonight, and finish him off over the next few days. You can start giving him double the dosage you’ve been giving him. He’s confused now, and if you bring it to an end now, you can make sure that he’s never properly himself again before the end. That’s for the best, Sari. If you’re going to do it, that’s how you should proceed.’

Judit leaves, and for a few moments Sari stands stock still in the middle of the room.
This is it
, she says to herself.
This is it.
She waits for the enormity of it to hit her, but it doesn’t, and after a minute Sari realises that she’s mentally planning this evening’s meal; she’s not even thinking about Ferenc and his demise any more. How far she has fallen, morally! She waits for the guilt of that to hit her: again, nothing. For the best, really. She goes to the drawer and takes out some paper, then sits down at the table to write to Ferenc’s parents and tell them of his illness.

Day fourteen. Midnight. This is it, Sari thinks. It has to be. She’s done as Judit suggested, doubling the dose of powder in all the food and drink she gives to Ferenc, and it’s had the effect that Judit said that it would. He is constantly disoriented and confused now and his occasional flashes of lucidity are becoming rarer and rarer.