The Watcher

27

I’m at work, but I’m not getting anything done. I sit in meetings but am hardly even aware of what’s being said. All I can think about is my wife and what happened this morning. In the afternoon, I shut myself in my office and make it clear that I don’t want to be disturbed. Then I stand for a long time, looking out the window, out at the street below my office.

That same morning, I stood at the foot of our bed and looked at the lump under the covers, legs drawn up, back curved, the very same position. And yet, something was different, something about the energy in the room. Suddenly I had the sense that she was about to get up, that maybe she already had. I couldn’t decide whether I felt relieved or worried. I cocked my head and studied my wife’s motionless body, searching for some kind of sign. Is this how it started that time, too? Did she lie there like this right before? A tight, stifling pressure rose in my chest.

Finally I walked over and sat on the edge of the bed next to her.

“This isn’t the same,” I said. “Not at all like then.”

Her first love had cheated on her and left her for someone else—I haven’t left her. I’m wavering, that’s true, and I understand that it’s enormously painful news to take in, the news that not only have I been with another woman but also that I’m uncertain of whether I want us to stay together. But I’m still here. I haven’t moved out of our bedroom or suggested we get a divorce, and I haven’t seen Anna since I told my wife about her.

On the spur of the moment, I took her hand in mine.

“You understand that, right? Then was then, and this is now.”

Her fingers were ice-cold, and suddenly I didn’t know if I was trying to convince myself or her.

I cautiously stroked the back of her hand. Thought about the degradation she’d had to endure back then. How her first love had crushed her completely with his lies and deceit, but also with his patronizing attitude. And what it made her do. How she couldn’t handle losing him and how, hurt and desperate, she made up a story about being pregnant in the hope that he would come back. Her plan backfired when the boy didn’t question her story and instead spread it around and made jokes at her expense. That was when she got out the kitchen knife.

I turn away from the window and walk over to my desk, pick up my phone, and call home. It rings and rings, but no one picks up. Either she’s asleep, or she’s not there. But why would my wife do that? Why would she let me believe that she’s sacked out in bed and then go somewhere else while I’m away? My thoughts turn back to what happened in the bedroom this morning, and I shiver a little.

I don’t want you to hurt yourself again. The thought had dwelled on my tongue but didn’t go any further. Because, right then, she moved. She pulled her hand away, and when I turned to face her, she looked me right in the eyes for the first time since the dinner when I’d laid my cards on the table. The look in her eyes was murky and confused. I felt an urge to get up from the edge of the bed, but I didn’t.

She slowly rolled over from her side to her back and folded back the covers. Then she started pulling her nightgown up, over her thighs. I misinterpreted her intentions at first. But soon enough I understood that she had something totally different from seduction in mind. She folded up her nightgown to reveal her stomach. Her fingers felt their way over her skin, and even before they reached their goal, I realized they were on their way there, to the place in her body where she had once stuck in a knife and cut into her own flesh. One cut, which she had then sewn up herself.

The guy who didn’t believe her, who had cheated on her and mocked her, she was going to get back at him. “An abortion,” she’d said when showing him the wound on her abdomen. “Now do you believe me?” He did not. “That’s not how they do it,” he explained before adding: “What kind of monster are you?”

When she told me that the barbed wire was a lie, when she finally revealed the whole truth to me… yes, I felt faint. If I hadn’t been lying down, I would have fallen over. I couldn’t get it into my head that such an act was possible, could hardly imagine what it would take to inflict that kind of injury on yourself. I didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think that this wasn’t some stranger we were talking about, some crazy person on the news. I couldn’t understand that this was my woman—my very own wife—who had deliberately plunged a knife into her own belly, slicing through skin and fat and muscles, and who then, all by herself, stitched the wound closed.

As if hypnotized, I stared at the exposed scar just above the top of her underwear, which otherwise she usually always kept covered. This time she didn’t. This time, she didn’t try to hide the scar but instead clenched her fist just above it. Then she slowly unfurled her index finger until it was out straight, and her hand was practically trembling with resolve. She pointed straight at the scar, and when I raised my gaze to her face, I saw intense dark clarity in her eyes.

The confusion that had filled them before now was gone.