The windows of the isolation room had been fitted with iron bars, and a heavy lock hung on the door, its keyhole staring vacantly at me. I tried to imagine being locked in there alone, far from the rest of the house, looking out at these hideous weeds. Would they tie a man up? Put him in a straitjacket?
I had to cup my hands to the glass of the window, between the bars, before I could see inside, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I saw a cot, a basin on a nightstand, a single wooden chair. The walls were stained; water had come in during a rainfall, perhaps. Dust littered the floor. This was the room’s only window. A man would sit here and stare at nothing, see no one, count the stains on the wall, on the ceiling . . .
The men know. It’s getting worse, too. Did you hear the last one screaming? Said he could see something from the window . . .
I pushed away. My skirt caught on something, and I looked down to see a weed growing along the wall, my skirt hooked on its sticky tendrils. I pulled myself free as other weeds scratched my legs. I was in the grip of something strange. I felt as if someone had slipped me a drug, something that made me see more than I wanted, as if I could peel up the edge of the visible world and glimpse what lay underneath. The woman watching me. This horrible, strangely awful room that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I took a step back. I saw my reflection in the window, and behind me something moved.
It was a figure. Tall, indistinct. A gleam of sunlight on metal, and then it was gone. Not my father. And yet—
He found you, a voice said in my head—the same crazy, panicked voice I’d heard in the men’s lav. You broke the rules and he found you and you know what happens when he gets angry.
I whirled around. Nothing there. Only the hot, dead air and the sour smell of the weeds. And then another voice came, this one deeper, indescribable. You coward. I took a step and something hit me hard in the stomach.
I bent double, moaning low and terrified, and the impulse to scream was so overpowering I pressed my hands over my mouth as another mad sound escaped me. I breathed out in a hot rush of air. As impossible, as insane as the situation was, my brain still recognized what was happening. I was about to get a beating. I had to run.
I forced my legs to move, one step, and then another, pushing through wave after wave of panic. Just move, move. I staggered through the fetid grass and out of the shadows into the sunlight again, and then I dropped my hands and kept running.
I had little memory of the hours after that. I know I put on my cap and apron and helped with supper. I was a shell, functioning like an automaton on the outside, my brain rattling with wild terror on the inside. It was a familiar feeling, a reaction I could not control. It was a survival instinct born of many beatings, of the need to appear normal, not to let on. My mind was very good at this, at moving my hands and feet and working while the rest of me shut down. My life, for a short time, was happening to someone else, and so I got through one moment, and then another, and then another.
You coward.
My feelings were gone, gone.
It was only much later that I hid in the nurses’ lav and got up the courage to take off my apron and unbutton my blouse. I stood before the dim mirror and ran my hand over my smooth, white stomach, looking for a bruise. I knew what they looked like, the bruises that came from a blow like that. My father had given me dozens of them.
There was nothing.
I had not known I was crying.
I wiped my tears and stared at my unblemished skin in the mirror for a long, long time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“There were four Gersbachs,” said Nathan the cook. “Two parents, a boy, and a girl. Kept to themselves, I hear.”
“How old were they?” I asked, spooning my stew. It was night again and I was back at the table in the kitchen, eating before my proper shift began. I sounded almost normal. I tried not to let the spoon clatter against the bowl. “The children?”
“Bammy’s age.” Nathan jerked a nod at the kitchen boy, who was about sixteen. “Or so Bammy himself says. He’s from the village.”
I looked at Bammy. “Did you know them?”
“’Course not.” He looked at his shoes. “They was rich.”
“Why are you asking?” Nathan said to me.
I turned and found him looking at me closely. Before my shift I had rebraided my hair, sponged myself off, tried to rest. It didn’t matter that I was cracking up inside; I couldn’t show weakness, not to these men. “What’s it to you?” I said to Nathan, and was rewarded with an approving grin.
I turned back to the others. “But they were outsiders,” I said. “The Gersbachs.”
“Germans,” said Nathan.
“No,” I said. “Swiss.”
“Never.”
“They were Swiss,” Paulus Vries cut in. “She’s right. Not everyone’s a Hun, you simpleton.”
“And what the hell are you?” Nathan shot back at him.
“I’m South African. Did you think I was a Hun, too?”
“I don’t know what the hell you are.” Nathan looked stubborn. He hadn’t liked being wrong. “Maybe you’re a spy.”
“I fought in German South-West Africa in ’fifteen,” Paulus said tightly. “I killed as many Huns as any man here. We buried them in the heat and left them there. The Germans ought to have no love for me.”
“All right,” I said. “Back to the Gersbachs. They came here and built this place. Then what? Where did they go?”
“They moved away,” said Paulus.
“They didn’t,” Bammy broke in.
We all stared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Nathan.
Bammy shrugged. He was gawky and painfully shy, but he was warming a little with newfound authority. “There was talk in the village, that’s all. They built the house—we saw the trucks haul everything over the bridge for months. But no one saw them move out or drive away. There’s only one way off here, and that’s over the bridge. No one saw it.”
I thought of the figure I’d seen in the reflection in the window. I put my bowl down.
“Someone must have seen something.” This was Roger, who had been listening quietly until now. He looked uneasy. “What about the servants working here?”
“He fired them all,” Bammy said. “Mr. Gersbach. Said they were moving away, taking none of the staff along.”
“There you go, then,” Roger said. “They moved.”
Or he knew, I thought. He knew that, for whatever reason, they wouldn’t need servants anymore. “Perhaps they left in the middle of the night,” I said. “Maybe they had debts and had to get away.”
“You haven’t lived in the village,” Bammy replied. “No one would miss an event like the Gersbachs’ moving out, even at three in the morning.”
“Well, they must have done it,” said Paulus. “The place is empty. Their things are gone. They did it quiet, that’s all.”
Bammy shrugged and dropped his gaze back to his shoes.
There was a moment of silence. I bit my lip, my courage deserting me. I was going onto another night shift, alone. I saw a ghost today, I wanted to say. I saw another one last night. Please tell me I’m not the only one. I felt fragile, and I didn’t like it. I opened my mouth and took a breath, but it was Bammy who spoke first.