Deadly Communion

50

KRISTINA WAS SITTING AT her dressing table, inspecting her face in the mirror. A thin line had appeared which she had never noticed before, a hairline crack curving around her mouth. When her expression was neutral the mark was insignificant, as subtle as the craquelure in varnish. Indeed, she had to tilt her head in the light to see it. But if she smiled the line deepened.

Perhaps she had been laughing too much lately? Perhaps this was the cost of happiness? When she was younger, there had been very little to laugh about and her skin had been taut and smooth. She had been wrong — and more than a little naive — to assume that success and contentment would come without complications.

The house was silent. Her husband Heinz had not yet returned. The old general was dying, and the good doctor was doing all that he could to make the war hero’s last hours as comfortable as possible. Heinz was a good man. She did not like keeping things from him, but in this particular instance there really was no alternative.

I’ll do it now, she thought. Get it over with.

Kristina rose from her dressing table and crossed to the wall on which Czeschka’s Ashputtel lithographs were hanging.

Her mind went back to the day when the detective from the security office had come to question her. She remembered the young doctor who had accompanied him. What was it he had said? Something about the lithographs being very fitting, given her occupation. He had made her quite anxious by standing so close.

Kristina followed the wall, pausing to consider each tableau. It was like participating in the fairy-tale equivalent of the Via Crucis: the stepsisters, Ashputtel by the wishing tree, the handsome Prince. The final lithograph was a portrait of Ashputtel with a white dove perched on her shoulder. An inscription below the image read ‘For she is the true one’. Kristina pulled the bottom of the frame away from the wall and caught two sheets of paper as they fell from their place of concealment.

The first was a drawing of a naked girl lying on a divan. Her legs were parted, exposing her sex. She was wearing black stockings which were too large and had slipped down her skinny thighs. The collapsed silk had been executed with exquisite precision. A small but distinctive oval mole below the girl’s belly button had not escaped the artist’s meticulous eye.

The second drawing was of the same girl standing with a companion of roughly the same age. They were both naked and wore sulky expressions. Again, the oval mole was clearly visible.

Kristina stared at the images for some time and a few tears trickled down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the sleeve of her kimono and, bracing herself, crossed over to the enamel stove. She crouched down and opened the door in its base, releasing a blast of heat.

A complex set of emotions stayed her hand.

It felt very wrong to be burning art. Of course, the artist’s choice of subject matter was questionable but there was no denying his talent. And more importantly still, by proceeding with this barbarous act she felt that she was — in a sense — doing violence to herself.

Such considerations had made it impossible for her to destroy the drawings when she had first acquired them. Instead of doing what was necessary she had stupidly hidden them behind the lithograph of Ashputtel and the white dove. What if the young doctor had touched the frame — and the drawings had fallen to the floor? She could not afford to be sentimental.

Kristina posted the first drawing into the stove. She watched the paper blacken, curl and then burst into flames. Something close to grief tightened her chest and her breath became laboured as she watched the image of the girl turning to ashes. Curiously, the bottom right-hand corner of the drawing resisted ignition, managing by some accident of physics to preserve its existence for a few more seconds more.

Kristina read the signature: Rainmayr.

The paper turned from yellow to brown and then shrivelled to nothing.