Redemption aka A Conspiracy of Faith

44

She had seen the light of morning percolate down through the packing cases three times and felt certain that she would see it no more.

She had cried a few times, until she was no longer able. Until she hadn’t the strength even for that.

When she tried to open her mouth, her lips would not part. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. A day perhaps had passed since there had been spit enough in her mouth to allow her to swallow.

Now the thought of death seemed liberating. To sleep forever, with no more pain. To end this desolation.

“Let he who stands before death, he who knows that the end is nigh and who sees the moment at which it all must cease, let him speak of life,” she recalled her husband once having sneeringly quoted his father as saying.

Her husband! That man, who had never been alive in the slightest, how dare he heap scorn on such a sentiment? In a moment, she might even be dead herself. Certainly that was how she felt. But at least she could say she had lived.

Hadn’t she?

She tried to recall when, but everything merged into one. Years became weeks; partial recollections ricocheted in time and place, mingling together in all sorts of impossible patterns.

My mind will die first, I know that now, she thought.

She was no longer aware of her own breathing. It was so faint that she could not feel the air passing through her nostrils. The fingers of her free hand tingled. The fingers that yesterday had scratched a hole in the packing case above her and encountered something made of metal. For a while, she had tried to figure out what it was, but couldn’t.

Now her fingers tingled again. It felt like they were being pulled by strings directly attached to God. Tinglings, and the occasional flutter, like butterfly wings.

Do you want me, God? she asked. Is this the first touch, before you take me to heaven?

She smiled inside. She had never been this close to God before, this close to anyone. And she felt neither afraid nor alone. All she felt was exhaustion. The weight of the boxes on top of her no longer existed. Only this exhaustion.

Then suddenly she felt a pain in her chest. A stabbing sensation, so astonishing it made her open her eyes wide in the dark. The day is gone, my last day, flashed through her mind.

She heard herself groan and felt the muscles of her chest contract around her heart. Her fingers opened in spasms of cramp. Her face tightened.

Oh, it hurts. Please, God, let me die now, she prayed, over and over, until these portents of death at once ceased with a stab of pain almost more unbearable than the first.

In the seconds that followed, she was certain her heart had stopped. She waited for the darkness to come and take her away once and for all. And then her lips parted in a desperate attempt to snatch one final breath. A slight gasp that lodged itself in the tiny place inside her where her will to live stubbornly remained.

She felt a vein pulsate at her temple. Another in her lower leg. Her body was still too strong to succumb. God’s ordeal for her was not yet over.

Fear of what might now be in store made her pray. A brief prayer that she might escape the pain and that death would come soon.

She heard her husband open the door and say her name. But she was no longer able to form or utter a response. And what good would it do?

She felt her index and middle fingers twitch reflexively. Felt them strike the box above, her nails against the metal object she had encountered before. Metal, cold and unreal, until a spasm of cramp caused all her fingers to splay, and she sensed that protruding from the smooth surface of this object was something in the shape of a little V.

She tried to think rationally. Tried to separate things, so the nerve impulses from her colon that had ceased to function, from cells that screamed for water, and from skin that was no longer sensitive would not disrupt the image she now struggled to comprehend. The image of something metal with a raised V on its surface.

Her thoughts dissolved. Again, this void that threatened to consume her brain. This emptiness that returned to her at increasingly short intervals.

And then the pictures came rushing into her mind. Images of smooth objects, the menu button of her mobile, the face of her watch, the mirror in her dressing table, leaped forth and danced before her. Everything smooth that she had ever registered in her life jostled to find a place in her mind, a place where it would be recognized. And then, there it was. An object she had never used but which men had often produced from their pockets with pride when she had still been a child. A status symbol from an age long gone, to which her husband, too, had yielded. There it lay, the Ronson lighter with its little V, tossed into a packing case, perhaps so that she alone might find use for it. So that it might provoke her thoughts, or make for a final solution in what was left of her meager life.

If I could extract it and light it, everything would quickly find an end, she thought. And everything he owns would disappear with me.

Again, she smiled inside. The thought was so oddly life-giving. In burning everything, she would at least be making her own mark, planting a thorn in his life, which he would never, ever be able to remove. He would lose everything for which his crimes had been committed.

Retribution.

She held her breath and began again to scratch away at the cardboard, realizing at once how tough the material was. How unreasonably resilient. Scratching away tiny pieces at a time. Like a wasp consuming the surface of the table in the garden. She imagined paper dust descending through the air in front of her face. Tiny particles that together might make a hole, if only her fingers were strong enough. A hole through which the Ronson lighter might fall into her hand.

Eventually, when she had labored enough to dislodge the lighter only a few millimeters, her strength ebbed away.

She closed her eyes and pictured Benjamin for a moment. Bigger than he was now, talking, and nimble on his feet. A gorgeous little boy running to greet her. A fine leather ball in his hands and his eyes full of mischief. How she would have loved to have been there. For his first proper sentence. His first day at school. The first time he looked into her eyes and said she was the best mummy in all the world.

The emotion she felt may have been no more apparent than a slight moisture in the corner of her eye, but it was there. Emotion at the thought of Benjamin. Her little boy, who would now have to live without her.

Benjamin, who would have to live with…him.

NO! everything inside her screamed. But what was the use?

And yet the thought kept coming back, more and more insistent. He would be with Benjamin, and this thought would be the last thing on her mind when her heart finally succumbed.

She extended her fingers again. The nail of her middle digit found a shred, and she began to scrape, scratching with this one finger, until its nail broke. Her only tool denied her. And then she drifted into sleep, tormented by her realization.

The cries from outside came at the same time as the mobile again chimed in her back pocket. It sounded weaker now. Soon the battery would be spent. She knew the signs.

The voice belonged to Kenneth. Perhaps her husband was still in the house. Perhaps he would open the door. Perhaps Kenneth would know something was wrong. Perhaps…

Her fingers moved slightly. It was the only response she could muster.

But the front door did not open. The sounds of arguing never came. All she perceived was her mobile ringing, its tone becoming fainter. And then the lighter suddenly dislodged and came to rest against her thumb.

The slightest wrong movement and it would be lost to the darkness that surrounded her.

She tried to disregard Kenneth’s cries, to ignore the fact that the vibrations of the phone in her pocket were now growing weaker. And then, with the slightest twitch of a finger, the lighter lay in her hand.

Once she felt certain she had a proper hold, she twisted her wrist as far as she could. Perhaps only a centimeter, but enough to give her hope. Her ring finger and little finger were lifeless and numb, and yet she believed in her endeavor.

She pressed as hard as she could and heard the faint escape of gas as the valve opened. So very faint.

How could she ever press hard enough to make a spark?

She tried to channel all that remained of her strength into the extremity of her thumb. Into this last display of will to show the world how she had lived her final hours, and where she had died.

She pressed again. All the life inside her went into this one action. And like a shooting star in the night sky, the spark burst out in front of her in the darkness, igniting the gas and making everything bright.

She twisted her wrist the one free centimeter back toward the cardboard and allowed the flame to lick the sides of the packing case. Then she let go and watched the sliver of blue turn yellow and widen, wandering slowly upward and leaving behind it a blackened fan of soot for each centimeter’s advance. What for a moment had been aflame was then extinguished incrementally, like a trail of gunpowder leading nowhere.

After a moment, the weak flame reached the top of the box and died. Only a deep red glow remained. And then it, too, was gone.

She heard him call and knew it was over.

No more strength.

She closed her eyes and imagined Kenneth outside in front of the house. The brothers and sisters they could have given to Benjamin. A beautiful life.

She sniffed in the smell of smoke, and new images darted in her mind. Camps by the lake. Bonfires of Midsummer Eves in the company of older boys. The aromas of a farmers’ market in Vitrolles, the one time she and her brother had spent a camping holiday with their parents.

The smell of smoke seemed stronger now.

She opened her eyes to a yellow light dancing with blue above her.

And the next moment everything was in flames.

Burning.

She had heard that almost everyone who died in fires died from smoke inhalation, and that if a person wanted to save themselves they should crawl along the floor, underneath the smoke.

She wanted to die from smoke inhalation. It sounded like a merciful, painless death.

But the smoke was rising and she was unable to stand. The flames would consume her before the smoke. She would burn to death.

And then came the fear.

The final, definitive dread.