Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 (22 page)

When she had gone, he walked to the window and said, ‘So, you are okay here, in a private room?'

‘Yes, they want me to rest, and it was too noisy in the ward.'

‘And the food?'

‘Yes, it's fine. Do you—'

‘Thank you, but I have eaten. You know how it is on planes; always they feed you.'

‘I mean, do you want to see the baby?'

‘I have, I have. The nurses showed me. Look, I have already made a sketch.'

He took out a beautiful leather-bound sketchbook and flipped through until he found the page, holding out a drawing of a waif, the little wisp of baby hair transformed into a ragged crest, the mouth lolling open.

‘Oh, may I?' The midwife set the vase down on the floor and hurried over. ‘You're an artist! How wonderful. Oh, what a lucky boy to have his portrait painted before he's a week old.'

Otto smiled modestly. ‘Look through it if you would like,' he said. ‘Most are from Paris.'

Greer put her baby to the breast as she had been shown, self-conscious now that Otto was sitting opposite her, sketching. Everyone, it seemed, had been in to marvel and exclaim over the drawings, and now it was the turn of the lactation consultant. ‘Look,' Otto said, holding up his latest sketch. ‘Greedy Otichek.' The baby's mouth was enlarged, his cheeks ballooning, as if he would swallow his mother whole.

Greer felt tears threaten, for in reality her milk had not come in, and the baby fretted, which made her anxious and clumsy.

‘This is quite normal,' the lactation expert reassured her. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just relax and you'll be fine.' But Otik continued to lose weight, and Greer felt that she was failing him.

Otto was ebullient when he came to collect her. ‘Wait till you see,' he said, shepherding her out of the ward.

‘Are you sure he'll be all right?' she asked the midwife escorting them to the door. ‘He's so thin—'

‘He is fine,' Otto said with a broad smile. ‘Isn't he fine?'

‘Yes,' the woman said, smiling back at him. ‘Don't worry so much, Greer. Go home now. Rest, and enjoy your baby. He'll soon be back to his birth weight.'

On the drive back to the farm Otto said, ‘I have painted little Otichek. A whole series. It is my best verk, I think. Wait till you see.'

Greer clutched at this sign of paternal feeling. Such a warm, generous man could not fail to be a good father, she thought, given time. She turned in her seat to check on the baby, and smiled to see him sleeping.

They pulled up by the house and Otto leapt out of the car. ‘Come, you will see.'

‘But the baby . . .'

‘He is sleeping. Let him lie. Come on. This is my baby.'

Her raw senses recoiled at the reek of linseed and varnish as he opened the door, but she followed him through to the living room, ignoring the fumes. The paintings were propped against the walls, and her first impression was of rich dark surfaces slashed with scarlet.

‘This is old story about foolish woman,' Otto said, ‘who wanted baby most of all. Here she is. And here she finds baby – you see? It is piece of wood . . .'

‘A stump.' Her voice came out flat and dull.

The nuggety baby had roots for legs and branches for arms; the fingers were twisted twigs, the head a block.

‘He cries for food, all the time. See, he is greedy like little Otichek.'

Now the stump was slashed across in red to form a gaping toothless mouth. Around him were scattered broken plates and cups. Greer thought she heard a faint cry and turned her head.

‘The more he eats the more he wants,' said Otto, ‘until he has eaten all.'

The stump baby confronted his foolish mother and father, who stood side by side looking almost as wooden as their son.

‘Still he cries, but there is no more. So he eats up Father.'

Greer had fallen silent, listening as she stared at the painting of the father half engulfed by the monstrous child, his face impassive.

‘Next he eats up Mother. That is the thanks she gets.'

‘Otto, I think I can hear—'

‘And now he goes outside to eat more. He eats up all the pigs . . .'

Greer saw that the pigs were her own Wessex Saddlebacks, their black-and-white bodies despoiled and bloody, crammed into the giant mouth.

‘Then off to the village to eat more. First a girl . . .'

The girl's face, frozen in horror, filled much of the painting, her upper arms gripped by the twig hands of the monstrous infant. Was it Eva? The baby was crying, she could hear it clearly now.

‘Next he eats up horse and cart and farmer with it. And then sheeps and sheep farmer and dogs.' There were Molly and Spinner; a trotting horse and sulky from the stud across the road, driven by an old man; Charlie and his merinos. Greer felt her breasts prickle and sweat dampen her face, but Otto seemed unaware of her silence, gazing at his work with pleasure.

‘Ah, but here is trouble. Next he meets the old mother.'

Greer recognised the Judy character with her axe, but her whole attention was on the cry, which had intensified and now pulsed through her. She felt a cramp low in her belly, and half turned towards the door. ‘Otto, I can hear the baby. Just wait a moment and I'll fetch him.'

‘He is fine. You will spoil him if you run to him like this. I am showing you my work. Look.' He took her by the arm and turned her back to the pictures. ‘Here he says, “I have eaten up all the food – mother, father, pigs, girl, horse, cart, farmer . . .”' he pointed to each painting as he listed the gargantuan meal, ‘“sheeps, farmer again, dogs, and now you, old woman.”'

Greer took in the old woman standing on the monster's shoulder with her dripping axe, the wooden chest opened from gullet to guts. She felt milk leak from her and dampen her shirt.

‘“No, you do not eat me!” she cries, and she splits him open with axe.' Otto chopped at the palm of one hand with the side of the other, and Greer flinched. The baby's cries had risen to such a pitch that Greer could hardly endure it.

Animals and people tumbled out of the sooty red cavern of the monster's chest and belly, like entrails from a butchered carcass, or a parody of birth.

‘And never more does mother say “I want little baby”,' Otto concluded. Greer turned and rushed out to the car, fumbling over the capsule straps, haste making her clumsy, and gathered the hot little sobbing body to her chest, crooning and swaying as she walked back into the house.

Otto was still studying his pictures when Greer returned and settled herself in her father's armchair. Struggling to make her voice calm, she said, ‘You've painted your mother? With the axe?'

‘Yes, and Father, too. See, in the cart with the horse. He is Grandpapa now. I have told him about little Otik.'

The baby was hiccuping, pressing his cheek against her, so Greer pulled up her shirt and put him to the breast. The baby cast around for the nipple, a stuttering cry starting up. She cupped his soft head and guided him onto the breast. Was he attached properly? Her hands were trembling, but she looked up and smiled. ‘I'm glad you've told him. You must tell me what he said.' Little Otik was suckling, and she knew that she must calm herself, must live these days to the full, and enjoy her baby as the midwife had said. She smoothed the pale down on his head and watched the tiny fist curling against her breast. Something would happen.

And it did. Greer came down with pneumonia, a virulent form of the disease that had her back in the small local hospital before she'd had a chance to settle little Otik into the nursery. This time it was the intensive care ward. Her fever was so high that she felt ethereal, thin and hot and free from care, as if the dross in her were being burned off. Her dreams were vivid and strange, and full of fire. The smokehouse was burning, tussocks of flame sprouting from the windows.

She woke once, weeping, because her dead parents had come to her, had looked down at their new grandchild as if to bless him, and had laid their hands on her bowed head in a sort of benediction. ‘I'm sorry,' she said, like a refrain, ‘I'm sorry. I've been such a fool.'

She had woken again to a baby crying, or so she thought confusedly, but there was no baby, and she wept and tried to submerge herself in the same dream but dreamed instead of little Otik. In the nightmare he was glistening with lard, lying trussed on a baking dish surrounded by chopped vegetables. The heat radiating from the dish beat against her forehead and cheeks and neck, and she woke gasping, sticky with sweat, her heart hammering. Otto was there, at the nurses' station, with the baby capsule on his arm. He was laughing with the nurses, his round face shining and taut, as if the skin were stretched tight enough to split, and yet still he charmed them. When had he grown so fat? How had she not noticed? The baby was crying. She knew the baby was crying, she could feel it in her breasts, in the prickle and leak of milk. Where was he? Who was feeding her baby?

When she dreamed again, she was in a forest, the trees reaching down their gnarled branches to catch at her, tangling in her hair, scrabbling at the infant in her arms. She recognised her own orchard, transformed by sleep. She had betrayed the trees. They stooped to engulf her, but she struggled to escape, plucking at her arm to release a clinging tendril; then the old Judy was there, with her axe on one arm, and a tightly swaddled baby on the other. Her face was riven by creases and cracks, as if she had endured a lifetime of care and hard work. Greer was glad to see the axe. ‘Who are you?' she croaked, but the crone did not speak.

She woke to find an old nurse thumbing the tape on her intravenous drip.

‘You mustn't pull it out. Leave it be now. Try to sleep.'

The mild words filled Greer with sorrow, and tears seeped from her eyelids and ran down into her ears, wetting the pillow under her neck. It was too hard. Life was too hard. She wanted to rest and let someone else shoulder these burdens for a while. Just till she was well again. She wanted to lie with her small son and gaze into his smoky eyes and think of nothing.

Greer returned to herself slowly, and as she did, the ache to see her little boy, to be home again, became almost unbearable. The nurses taught her to express milk herself, now that she was feeling stronger, but why didn't they bring the baby to her? She asked for a phone, but nobody answered when she called home. Where could he be? She called again an hour later, but the phone rang out. He had not been to see her, apart from that one hazy visit, and as the afternoon and then the evening passed, she became first anxious, then panicky, then frantic. How many days had she been here? Who was caring for her little boy? She had to get home. But the nurse absolutely forbade it. ‘You will not move from that bed until the doctor has seen you in the morning. What nonsense is this? Your husband is caring for the baby, he has formula, and the milk you've expressed, there is absolutely no cause for alarm.'

‘But he doesn't—'

‘He can learn the same way you'll have to learn. Now go to sleep and no more chatter.'