The Sinner (31 page)

The other girls in my class were thrilled by the whole thing. They
thought themselves grown-up and bragged about it, even when
boys were around. "I've just got my period," they would say. The
boys seemed to find it a turn-on.

Then came the magazine episode. I'd seen a girl reading it in
the playground: Bravo, the Magazine for Young People. I had to have
it at once, of course. I hid it in the barn and dipped into it that
afternoon while Magdalena was having her rest. There were lots
of articles that interested me - pieces on music, singers and rock
groups, movie stars and how to apply make-up. There were also
letters from teenagers asking for advice.

One of them was from a girl only a year older than myself, but
she already had a boyfriend with a room of his own, where they
could spend time alone together. Whenever he put his hand inside
her panties, his penis went stiff and she became wet between the
legs. The girl wanted to know if this was all right. She felt ashamed
of this wetness, but her boyfriend thought it was great. He was a
bit older than her. Seventeen, I think.

The reply to the letter stated that getting wet between the legs
was quite normal - inevitable, in fact. To a man, the wetness
signified that a woman was sexually aroused and ready for sexual
intercourse.

My God, how ashamed I felt! I wondered what Father must
think of me. Did he think I was trying to turn him on? I felt quite
sick. All at once, everything had changed. My world had turned
upside down.

I had to go outside the moment Father came home that evening.
I couldn't bear to sit in the kitchen with him. As soon as he walked in I felt my cheeks burn. He noticed that something was the matter
with me. So did Magdalena. Father drove off again after supper,
and Mother retired to the living room. I did the washing up.
Magdalena, who remained in the kitchen with me, asked what was
wrong. "You went as red as a tomato," she said.

I told her about the letter. Only that, to begin with. She assumed
I had a boyfriend and pressed me to tell her more - every detail of
what we'd so far done together.

"No boy has ever touched me like that," I told her, "and no one
will ever do it again."

"What do you mean, again?" she asked. "That means someone
already has! Come on, Cora, don't be shy. Tell me!"

I didn't want to, but she went on pestering me until I gave in. She
listened attentively. Then, when I'd finished, she said: "Show me
exactly how he touched you."

When I showed her she laughed at me. "That doesn't count!
You've no need to get worked up about that. He was only checking
to see if you'd wet the bed. That's nothing - after all, he's your
father. It's the same as if Mother or a doctor touched you. Think
how often Mother messes around with me down there when she's
giving me an enema or a bed bath. That would make her a lesbian!
As for the doctors, you can't imagine. They don't wait till I need
to pee to take a urine sample, they simply stick a catheter into me.
No, believe me, Father hasn't done anything bad. Being abused is
quite different."

She knew this from a young woman she'd shared a room with
at the hospital one time. The woman had been a prostitute. She
had also done drugs and drunk heavily, so her liver was shot.
Her father was to blame, she told Magdalena. He had raped her
even before she went to school. At first with his finger and then
properly.

"Father hasn't done that, has he?" Magdalena asked.

I shook my head.

"You see?" she said. "You've really no need to worry. Ask Margret
if you don't believe me."

I was loath to do that. If Father hadn't done anything bad, why should I ask Margret? The fact that I thought he had - that was my
problem. Besides, I told myself, Father was an old man. Far too old
to do anything like that. How wrong I was!

Those were the true sins, the desires of the flesh. It wasn't about
coveting a slice of roast beef. It was about an old man who couldn't
control his physical urges - who had exposed himself to me, as
Mother would have put it, at a time when I still didn't know there
were two kinds of human beings. And then, when I did know
perfectly well, it happened again.

In April, three weeks before I turned fourteen, I woke up in
the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom. At first I
was simply happy not to have done it in the bed. I made for the
bathroom in the dark, not noticing that Father wasn't in his bed.
Once there I turned on the light, and there he was, standing at the
washbasin with his pyjama trousers around his ankles. He'd also
pulled his underpants down and was gripping his penis. His hand
was moving up and down. I knew what he was doing. The boys at
school called it jerking off.

I thought it a vulgar expression for a repulsive activity, and it
was appalling that my father should be doing it after I'd decided to
write him off as a harmless old man. Still more appalling was the
fact that I couldn't help watching him. Worst of all, he must have
known I was there - I'd opened the door and turned on the light,
after all - but he carried on regardless. It was disgusting, what with
the look on his face and the noises he was making.

Suddenly he spun round. "Go back to bed!" he yelled. "What do
you think you're doing, sneaking in here like a ghost?"

"I need to go!" I shouted back.

"Piss in the bed, then," lie yelled. "It's what you usually do."

He shouted so loudly, he couldn't have failed to wake Mother
and Magdalena, but he didn't care. I thought it was mean of him to
broadcast my shame at the top of his voice. I couldn't help wetting
the bed - he'd always said I couldn't. "They're the tears of the soul," he used to say, and afterwards he would go to the bathroom.
Perhaps for the same reason he'd gone that night.

I went back into the bedroom and threw myself down on the
bed. I'd forgotten I needed to go. Father came in a few minutes
later. He sat down beside me and stroked my hair. He'd washed his
hands - I could smell the soap.

He stared at me as if he meant to hit me. Instead, he started
crying. "I'm sorry," he blurted out, sobbing like a three-yearold with a grazed knee. I found that almost more revolting than
the other thing. Once he'd calmed down, he said: "I hope you'll
understand when you're older. Human nature is too strong. What
am I supposed to do? There are women who do it for money, but
that's just a business. When I do it by myself I can at least imagine
there's someone there who loves me. Everyone needs to feel loved,
even an oldster like me."

"I loved you once," I said, on the verge of crying too.

Mother and Magdalena had been woken by the din, as I'd feared.
Mother gave me some funny looks at breakfast the next morning,
but she didn't ask what the matter was. Magdalena wanted to know
when I came home from school at lunchtime. She kept badgering
me every time Mother left the kitchen. "Come on, tell! What did
he do? Did lie stick his finger up you after all, or did he go the
whole hog?"

I shook my head. I didn't want to tell her what had really
happened, nor did I need to. Magdalena could guess what I'd seen.
She'd known for a long time why he sneaked into the bathroom at
night. Why? Because he'd often knocked on their door and warned
Mother he was going to do like the man in the Bible who spilled his
seed on the ground. Could she reconcile it with her conscience that
he had to keep on sinning this way?

Magdalena found it funny. "He's still pretty randy, our old man,
but lots of them are at his age. The old ones tend to be the worst
of all, take it from me, especially when they can't perform the way
they'd like to. Did you really see exactly how he did it?"

I couldn't talk about it. I was in a complete turmoil for days. As
for the nights! Father came home very late for the next week or so. I was already in bed, as a rule, but I couldn't sleep. Sometimes I
thought I ought to say something nice when he finally did appear.
Like telling him I still loved him. I'd lied to him so often about
other things, it wouldn't have mattered.

But when I heard him coming up the stairs and turning the handle
I felt my stomach go as cold and stiff as the stone that seemed
to be constricting my chest, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't utter
a word. I pretended to be asleep and listened to his movements,
trying to gauge whether he was getting up again, coming over to
me or going to the bathroom.

I wished things could be the way they were in the old days, when
I'd even slept in his bed - when he was simply my father, nothing
more. He had suddenly ceased to be that. Now lie was just a dirty
old man who jerked off. The boys in school said you had to think
of naked women while doing so. I grasped what Father had been
thinking of three weeks later.

We were having lunch on Sunday when lie suddenly said to
Mother: "I'm switching bedrooms. This present set-up won't do."

Mother disagreed, of course. "Why get so worked up after all
these years?" he yelled at her. "Surely you don't imagine I could
still be tempted by your shrivelled flesh? Don't worry, I prefer
juicier meat, and I'd like some within arm's reach of me every
night. I don't want to be the one that sacrifices our second lamb,
but if things go on like this, I can't guarantee I won't. And don't
quote Magdalena at me. You'd be powerless to help her in a real
emergency, however near to her you slept."

He had to sleep in my room once more that night. Mother took
Magdalena up to bed a little earlier than usual and locked the
bedroom door from the inside. The next day Father confiscated
the key and carried his bedclothes across.

Magdalena moved in with me. This soured the atmosphere
for weeks until Mother finally grasped that her chastity wasn't in
danger and that Magdalena and I were getting on together. It's true
I was anxious for the first few nights, not being used to Magdalena's
funny breathing, but she laughed at me. "I always breathe like this,"
she said. "It's just that you don't notice it during the day."

After a few weeks I thought it was great, having her in my room.
She did too. I usually took her upstairs after supper. She preferred
me to help her rather than Mother. I couldn't carry her - it was
a long time since even Mother had been able to do that - but she
could walk very slowly if well supported. She could even manage
the stairs as long as she took a breather after every step.

I used to hang onto her while she was brushing her teeth, a
thing she preferred to do on her own. Then I had to wash her. She
couldn't have a bath in the bathtub any longer. Mother used to sit
her in it and lift her out. When she got too big, Father bought her
a chair with a hole in the seat and a pail underneath. That worked
all right. You only had to wipe the bath out afterwards.

I was pretty clumsy at first. I washed her the way I washed
myself, but her skin was very sensitive from lying down so much,
unlike mine. The rough flannel hurt her.

"Use your hands instead," she said. "Then take the sponge and
rinse off the soap. And only dab me with the towel, don't rub.
Mother never understood that. Maybe she thought if she scratched
me when she washed me, I'd at least be making some contribution
to the family's penance."

After washing her I applied some ointment to prevent bedsores,
then pulled her nightie over her head and put her to bed. After
that, if there was nothing more to be done in the kitchen, I used to
stay with her. We always had a lot to tell each other before going
to sleep.

I could talk in a different way once we were in bed with the door
shut. Magdalena was the only person I could talk to really frankly
about everything. Not about stealing, but about how disgusted I
was with Father and myself and the fact that I never wanted a
boyfriend.

Although Magdalena was a year younger than me, she took a
different view of such matters. "Just you wait," she told me. "Once
you've lost a few pounds your self-loathing will disappear of its
own accord. As for the other thing, there's no comparison. Old
men disgust me too. Why do you think I won't let Father touch
me? Being messed around by him is the last thing I need. I'm sure he'd sit me in the bathtub and lift me out if you asked him to,
but no thanks. It's quite different with a young man. I've noticed
that with the doctors. There's a big difference in the way they look
and the touch of their hands. I like the students best of all. They
often come crowding around me. To them I'm a sight to be seen,
a medical miracle. I'm the half-heart with the inoperable aortic
aneurysm, the survivor contrary to all expectations. Who knows,
perhaps the thing in my stomach took over the heart's function
long ago."

She laughed softly. "The youngsters stand there without a clue
about how to use their stethoscopes. The poor fellows aren't
allowed to do much more than that, just listen to what a balloon
full of holes sounds like."