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Left alone in the dark, this secret festers, until everything around it is infected with its rot and it has become impossible to ignore, forcing us to witness the most depraved sides of humanity.
“Nothing,” she told me, “appeals more to a man than a young girl who’s not been had yet, apart from a girl who’s not been had yet and gives the impression she’ll be had by him.” She made me think of myself as a piece of fruit and the act of sex like plucking a plum with a rough hand, bruising the flesh.
Some things are so horrible that the only sane response is a bit of madness.
“Because the truth scares people. They’re always afraid of what they can’t explain, and my Ruth can’t be so easily explained.”
Spirits like her are not drawn to the happy and carefree; they want salt, be it blood or be it tears.
D: “You said you never let another spirit in. Why make an exception for Ruth?” P: “Because she was mine and I was hers.”
I wished she’d push me away already and tell everyone that I was not her husband instead of letting me kiss her so dispassionately. It was not right, to kiss a woman so beautiful and feel so little.
Nobody wants a girl who’s mad. The only thing left to a girl like that is to make use of what lies between her legs,
“You must be careful with that, Roos. It’s a dangerous thing, to try and give someone everything. One day, you might find you’ve given away things you should’ve kept. Some parts of us must remain inviolate if we are to survive as a person.”
If I did something naughty, she made me kneel on uncooked rice for hours while she prayed the rosary.
“Forgive me. I didn’t mean to laugh. Sometimes I can’t help it. I must laugh or else go mad.”
D: “So you were possessive of Mrs. K— in the same way a collector of shells or butterflies is?” P: “No. Those are objects. I never saw A— [Mrs. K—] as such. I was just… I wanted to eat her up and drink her in. I was hungry for her touch and her words and her love. That’s very different from collecting shells or butterflies.”
“Will you tell me something?” I murmured. “What should I tell?” “Anything. I like to hear you talk.” “I don’t have anything interesting to tell you.” “Everything you say is interesting to me.”
“Mama always said Catholics like pain.”
“Thank God for small blessings.” “Not God: nature and its tendency to decay.”
I was in the tuberculosis house, and outside were Hugo Knoop’s plaster saints. Whenever I didn’t look at them, they crept closer. I spun around till I was dizzy, trying to look at all of them,
“That’s mine,” Ruth said. “I like to rub glass to powder. I’m like a magpie. I like shiny things, like Peter likes things dead and shriveled.”
Again, he punched. She bit harder. Blood spouted into my mouth, hot and rich and thick. It tasted like money.
With a man like Thomas, you must keep your cards close to your chest, because everything he knows about you, he will use to destroy you if it suits him.”
“He was ruthless. He told me I had no claim to the Rozentuin outside my marriage, and a wife only belongs when she breeds. I told him that was all very well, but he couldn’t divorce me without my consent, and consent I didn’t. I had given and given and given while I was with him. I was empty. I couldn’t give him any more.”
She pinched the base of her ring finger, which still bore the white mark of her wedding ring, now sold. “Sometimes, I think that all I am is what he made me,” she murmured.
Her thighs trembled around my head, then tightened. As she came, she began to howl so loudly that it scared me. I crawled up over her body and clamped my hand over her mouth, and still she screamed.
“Oh, Roos, how easy you are to love and admire when you talk like that. But you’re wrong, you know. At some point, I will let Thomas in, and you will let me. There’ll come a time when anything is better than this endless waiting, when pain and degradation become preferable to this not knowing what it is exactly that he shall do to us.”
“We are wedded to each other, you and I. You’re my helpmeet and yokemate, and I am yours. My love for you is as strong as death. You can’t send me away. Do you hear me? I won’t let you!”
“How else does one show the strength and sincerity of one’s love if not through suffering and sacrifice?”
I fastened my mouth over the wound at her wrist. The flesh was torn and wet. I began to drink in the same way Peter had. Her blood was thick and hot and rich, and it filled me and sustained me, and I understood why spirits craved it, why Ruth had so often sucked at my scrapes and cuts. It was an act of utter intimacy.
“Your poor body is all battered now, and for that I’m sorry, too. But Peter will tuck you into the bog, and there, your broken flesh will be of no account. You’ll sleep in the water, and you’ll dream of good things. I shall do my best to make sure no one will disturb your slumber.” And then, because three times makes it real: “This you shall remember: when you wake, please come haunt me.”
