“Is she something you still think about?”
“Someone. She’s someone, Dr. Winston.”
“How do you think about her?”
“How
do I think? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to tell me, with all your questions and charts?”
Bill knocks on the door, peers through the wire-reinforced window. I’m running close to time; there’s another interview scheduled for this room after Foster. Keeping to schedule is highly valued. But I signal that I need five more minutes.
“In what light do you think about her? In connection to your feelings of remorse for your actions?” I ask.
“I’ve missed talking about her, Dr. Winston. They haven’t encouraged it much since I got here. It’s all about reflection, diffusion of violent thoughts, playing angry drum-filled songs at the music therapist’s to channel my angst.” He leans back and smirks.
It’s not technically true that he’s been discouraged to speak about her. His chart shows that he began mentioning her less and less and then not at all. His therapists have noted this as a positive sign of increased mental well-being.
“You could have raised the subject with someone,” I say. “If she’s still on your mind.”
“We both know it’s best for me not to raise much of my own volition.”
“Why do you say that?”
He laughs, looks away from me. “Haven’t I answered all your questions nicely?”
Bill knocks on the door again, more urgently. He brings his wrist to the window and taps his watch, holds up his index finger. I have one minute.
“Not as nicely as I would like.”
“What will you give me to be nicer to you?”
“Do you miss talking about her? You used to talk about her to others?”
“Of course. There are many people who find her fascinating.”
I hear the key turn, the door creak. “Dr. Winston,” says Bill, “Dr. Abbas and Dr. Latha are waiting for the room.”
“Thank you, Bill.” In my mind, I curse them, their patient and Stowmoor’s ridiculously restrictive schedules. “We’re just finishing up.” He nods and shuts the door.
I turn back to Foster and stare for a moment at his blue-grey eyes. He folds his freckled hands together, puts them on the table and leans forward. “You find her fascinating, don’t you, Dr. Winston? It comes across, in your article. In the way you ask me questions. You should ask me more.”
This time, I look down at the table. I flip through my notebook, click the pen in, out, in. I don’t know what to write. A host of questions whirrs through my mind. I want to ask him everything. But I’m apprehensive. Maybe a little afraid.
“We’re out of time for today, Mr. Foster. We’ll continue our assessment at a future appointment.”
“Out of time, out of time for today,” he parrots.
I stand up. Bill opens the door and two orderlies come and escort Foster around the table, towards the door. He adjusts his glasses, gives me a polite nod as he goes by. “A pleasure, Dr. Winston. I look forward to our future appointment.” The orderlies walk him down the hall.
“At least he’s respectful, that one,” says Bill. Another set of orderlies escorts in the next patient. Jana Latha, an assistant psychologist, and Abbas are waiting outside. Abbas sends Jana in with the file and hangs back to talk to me.
“Danica, that seems to have gone well. He seems to be responding to you politely, as a professional.”
“Yes, I think so.” I shuffle my notes, avoid looking at him.
“But you must watch your time. It can put everyone’s schedules off if you go over the limit.”
“I know, it’s just—”
“You’re still getting used to the system here, I know. I look forward to reading the report.” He turns to walk into the room.
“Dr. Abbas?”
“Hmm?”
“I need to schedule another interview with Foster. I did have a bit of trouble pacing the interview and missed some key points you outlined in the memo.” I’m taking a risk by telling him that I didn’t finish the agenda on time. But I need to speak to Foster again. “Also, near the end of our interview, he mentioned Báthory, the woman with whom he was obsessed, whose crimes he initially posited he was recreating.” I say this as authoritatively as possible; this admission is even more of a risk. I know it would set off an avalanche of disapproval from Sloane. But with Abbas, I think it’s a better strategy to reveal at least part of the truth.
“Well.” Abbas scratches his beard. “I’d have to look over his case file for the specifics, but I don’t believe he’s brought that up for some time. We have done some therapy with him regarding his obsessions...perhaps it hasn’t been as effective as we’d initially perceived, or perhaps he’s regressed.”
“Possible. I think it’s in the interest of the patient to assess more specifically his levels of obsession in general and to investigate the level of possible idolization of violent, anti-social figures. It is a possible display of maladaptive tendencies that should be examined for the report.” I say this in my most measured, assured clinician voice.
Abbas takes a deep breath, scratches again. “Agreed. Have Kelly schedule you a brief appointment with him for next week. But, Danica,” he turns to face me fully. “Only assess his levels of obsession in regard to this issue. Don’t push him farther. As we said, this is a sensational case, and I don’t blame you for being intrigued by it. But we must remember our roles, stick to form. We don’t want to undo any progress he’s made here.”
“I agree completely,” I say, while thinking about how I can talk Kelly into scheduling me for more than a half-hour slot.
He pats my shoulder. “Very good, Danica.”
He walks into the room and sits beside Jana, across from the patient. Bill shuts the door.
I try to keep my footsteps at an even pace, but I feel as exhilarated as the first time I spoke to Foster, and again I want to run, to skip down the hall. I’m half nervous, half excited that I’ll get to see Foster again. What does he mean when he says there were many people to speak to about Báthory? I almost want to thank Sloane for what her lecture has prodded me to think about further.
Back in my office, I start my report on Foster, but I can’t focus. All I can think of is Báthory, Foster’s obsession, his possible cohorts. Maria would salivate over this possibility, this information. I daydream about the book she’s proposing. What if we combined her discovery of the diaries with chapters of mine about Foster? It could never happen, of course. It would be almost impossible to write about Foster, as I know him now, without breaking confidentiality regulations. Though, if he agreed, I could interview him not as a clinician, but with the intent of researching the book. He might agree to it. He knows he’s a celebrity. He ripped out my article from the journal. Maybe he’d want me to write about him.
I stop my thoughts there, chastise myself for even fantasizing about promoting the fame of a murderer. For my personal, vain, purposes. If Maria knew I entertained these sort of thoughts...I think she would be intrigued. I consider teasing her, dropping hints that I would never follow up on, batting her hopes about like she’s done mine.
I haven’t checked my email since this morning; I open my inbox, hope to see her there. Maybe she’s heard more about the new lawyer. She did say she’d be in touch.
I breathe deeply. A message.
Dani,
These few pages may catch your eye. Do let me know what you think.
x, M.
P.S. The opening is next Thursday, in case you have forgotten.
Maybe it’s serendipity. The attachment is titled “Elizabeth.”
Sárvár, January 14, 1601
I do hope he did not suffer long. If it was the same disease he wrote of in his letter to me last spring, he would not have known much. When at his worst, he told me, he could not remember what he was like; the doctors reported that he was cold yet sweating, unable to walk, unconscious most of the day; and later they told him that in those brief times when he had been awake, his eyeballs had rolled to and fro in their sockets and he could not form any words, only mumblings. I know he wished to die on the battlefield, but there he was always victorious. It was the unseen, this illness, that broke the body of my Black Knight.
At last now I can move from this puny estate, and away from Ursula. She should be long dead, but still she lives, feeble and useless. Though she manages to bark out her commands, her insipid requests. “Where is my grandson? He must spend more time with me.” As if I would poison him, as if I don’t pay for a tutor to tend to him all day. At night, her decrepit hacking rings through the halls and echoes in the drawing room, so if I wish to escape her invalid’s clamour, I must sit in the library, with the books she has bound all in the same plain brown leather, in the ragged chairs she refuses to replace. She has deemed it sufficient for there to be just a braided rug on the floor, the kind the chambermaids make out of rags. I believe she thinks if she flaunts the Nadaskys’ poverty and simplicity, it will make their nobility seem all the stronger by comparison. This is passing foolishness, the thoughts of a deranged old woman.
I wish for her to suffer greatly with this illness. I remember when I was a girl, seven or eight, when I was with my family at Ecsed, before Ursula grabbed my life by the scruff and arranged my marriage to Ferenc. A band of gypsies had come through our village, and a constable in the service of my father had caught one of them for selling his daughter to the Turks. They came to visit my father to let him, the ruling lord, decide how this man should be dealt with. My father told them to take the man to the stables. I overheard and asked for leave from my tutor to go and play on the estate. I hid behind the stables and watched as one of our boys led an old grey mare into the yard. The gypsy was yelling that he was innocent, and straining against the constable’s men who held him, but as he struggled, a purse full of money fell from his belt. He would not explain to my father where he got the money, and my father did not care to give him another chance. He told the men to beat the gypsy until he was limp, and to tie him up. Then he gave a nod to the stable boy. The boy produced a long, sharp blade, and slit the mare’s neck in one strong motion. Blood swelled from the slash, painting a dark bib on her grey-haired chest. The horse stumbled, took two steps forward and fell. The boy rolled her onto her side, then slit her belly open, sternum to tail. Her entrails spilled out, dark, snakey tubes, and her limbs twitched and kicked. The men dragged the beaten gypsy over to the dying horse and stuffed him inside her belly. They left his head outside the wound, cradled on the escaped intestines. Then the stable boy took a needle and twine, and stitched the belly closed. The gypsy’s head still stuck out, just under the horse’s tail. His hair was now slick with slime and dung that had leaked out of the severed bowels.
I watched this scene and felt that hard, sick knot in my stomach. I had watched my father discipline our servants before, and I had seen the authorities beating peasants for one thing or another when we rode in our carriage through the village. But the extremity of this, to sew a live man into a dying animal to rot and fester, was something I had never witnessed. The men, and my father, laughed at the gypsy, then walked away. The gypsy’s eyes welled up, and he let out a howl once he understood they meant to leave him trapped inside the body of the horse. My father and the men looked back briefly, and then only laughed harder.
I stayed hidden for a few minutes, until the men had gone and the stable boy went to groom one of the other horses. I edged closer. The sun was warm, and everything smelt like hot iron, like slaughter. Flies buzzed around the horse’s spilled blood, the crack of the wound, the dung in the gypsy’s hair. The knot in my stomach became harder, and for a moment I thought I might vomit. I turned around, collected myself, then looked back. The gypsy’s head was lolling around, and even though he was bound, he was trying to wiggle free, his futile movements muted by the heavy flesh of the corpse. This time, I saw it: it did look funny. He looked like a tiny, ugly doll struggling to burst from the wreckage of that old mare. I giggled. After all, he did sell his daughter to the Turks.
The gypsy lived through the next day. The day after, from my window, I could see a few of the stable boys lugging the grey rotting mess out of the yard.
I wish a death like this on Ursula. Except she should be stuffed into a cow. I would stitch her into the gutted animal myself.
There’s a knock at my door. “Heading to the staff room for lunch?” It’s Jana. Her fishbowl office is in this corridor too, a couple of doors down from mine. She’s holding up a brown paper bag.
“Uh, yeah.” I close the attachment. “I’ll meet you there...Have to finish something up.” I’m preoccupied with images of dead horses and feces.
“Right, then, see you in a few.”
I know Báthory’s story. But somehow I had hoped that as a little girl she might at least have thought about helping the gypsy. I look at the tuna sandwich I shoved in my briefcase this morning, half-squished in its zip-lock baggie. I leave it there and walk away from my desk.
It’s Thursday night and I’m on my way to the gallery openings. Henry’s been excited about the Fantasy and Disaster festival for weeks. He’s been at the gallery all day setting up his show,
Le Paradis Rouge.
I’m a few blocks away from the venue for
Honey, Torture
when Maria texts me:
At Orange Palm. Show to die for. U must come.
I’ve been thinking about the horse and the gypsy and the girl countess all week, wishing Maria could translate the diaries and send me instalments at a faster rate. The more I think about it, and the more I read, the less I suspect that Maria is fabricating these entries. She’s eccentric and sometimes deluded about what she’s entitled to in life, but her story about how she found them sounds authentic. She’s been trying to find them since we met two years ago—why would she suddenly fake their discovery?
I text her back:
Will stop in.
I told Henry I’d be at his gallery, the Wynick, by seven. The Orange Palm is just a few blocks from Henry’s show, but it’s already six fifteen so I’ll have to hurry. He hates when I’m late. I pass some graffiti,
Art Is My Hustle
, spray-painted in stencilled block letters on the sidewalk. I pick up my pace.