The Last Four Things

13

Windowless and lit by beeswax candles so that it did not smell or feel like the inside of an oven, the wet and dry room in the convent of the Sanctuary was lined with red cedar from Lebanon and on the floor with menge from no one knew where but prized for its resistance to water and soap. In the middle of the room were two wooden squares that looked like oiled butcher’s blocks. A curious Vague Henri, full of anticipation and worry, was led into the room by the two chosen girls. One introduced herself as Annunziata and the other as Judith.

‘What are your surnames?’

‘We only have one name,’ said Judith.

‘Are you,’ enquired a hopeful Annunziata, ‘feeling ill-tempered?’

‘No.’

‘Not at all?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It would,’ said Judith, ‘be a help to us if you were to shout at us.’

‘And slam those doors to the cupboards.’

‘Why?’

‘We’d like to practise calming you down.’

‘Why?’

‘Men shout a lot, don’t they?’

Bewildered by what they wanted from him, Vague Henri had to concede that in his experience this was indeed true.

‘We asked Mr Cale to shout at us but he said it wasn’t a good idea.’

‘Probably that’s true.’

‘Will you? Oh please!’

They were so sweetly beseeching that awkward as he felt, Vague Henri thought it would be churlish to say no. Five minutes later he was sitting in the corner of the room weeping as if his heart would break while the girls, pale and bewildered themselves now, stared down at him, shaken by the storm of fury that had erupted from the sweet young man, sobbing uncontrollably in front of them.

After ten minutes the agony began to pass and the girls helped Vague Henri to his feet.

‘Sorry,’ he kept saying. ‘Sorry.’

‘There, there,’ replied Judith.

‘Yes,’ added Annunziata, ‘there, there.’

They led him over to one of the large blocks of wood, after stripping him of his shirt and trousers and socks. He vaguely resisted when they started to remove his loincloth but ‘We have to wash you,’ they said as if it was as immutable as the laws of God. He was too tired to resist. The girls sighed at the ancient scars and the new cuts and bruises from the beatings in Clink Number Two and asked him so gently how he had come by them that he almost started crying again.

‘I slipped on a bar of soap,’ he said, and laughed and so was able to control himself. Seeing he was unwilling to tell them the girls left him and went and fetched hot water and soap which they knew he had not slipped on because it was clear he had not seen soap for some time. Judith poured a bucket of hot water over him in a careful flow from head to foot and Annunziata began to work up a great frothy blanket of suds, so very careful not to press too hard on his cuts and bruises. Over the next hour they squeezed and rubbed and eased his aching body so gently and with such skill that he fell asleep and when they finished he did not wake even when they dried him carefully, like a baby, in every crease and fold and dusted him with fine talcum from the chalk farms of Meribah and scented him with oil of apricots. They covered him in towels and left him to sleep. He did not wake up until late in the evening when the girls returned, took him to the dining room and fed him all over again and questioned him about his life outside. There wasn’t any point he thought in telling them anything unpleasant; nor did he want to. So he told them about his life in Memphis as they gasped in amazement and delighted in every word about its dreaming spires, its frantic markets and its golden youth – its great men, its snow queen women (‘How?‘ they cried in horror, ‘Why?‘). Sitting there drinking and eating and wonderfully at ease with these two beautiful girls hanging on his every word he was aware even as he talked that this was something that might never come his way again. But the delight was not over. When their curiosity was satisfied, if only temporarily, the two girls had more in store for him. But about that it is not necessary to say anything.