The Devil's Sanctuary (35 page)
An author and journalist, Marie Hermanson published her first book in 1986. Her novels are huge bestsellers in Scandinavia, and
Musselstranden
(
Clam Beach
) is considered a modern classic, with more than 250,000 copies sold.
Mannen under trappan
(
The Man Under the Stairs
) was adapted into a TV drama in 2009. She lives in Göteborg, Sweden.
“Hermanson builds up a tension that appears increasingly Kafkaesque and claustrophobicâ¦THE DEVIL'S SANCTUARY shapes up to be a contemporary gothic horror, with characters straight from the totalitarian wax cabinet and with an unexpected lunatic running the showâ¦a chilling page-turner.”
âGunder Andersson,
Aftonbladet
(Sweden)
“The claustrophobic atmosphere is perfectâ¦I wish there was a way to stay in the suspenseful state. It's simply exquisite.”
â
Tidningen Vi
(Sweden)
“Extremely well written with a skillfully structured plot, solid characters, and vivid settings.”
â
Göteborgs-Posten
(Sweden)
“A well-executed suspense novelâ¦If you enjoy high quality suspense literature you should definitely read THE DEVIL'S SANCTUARY.”
â
Dagens Nyheter
(Sweden)
“I'm hooked already from the first page. The atmosphere that builds is hard to resist. Even when I have finished the book the sinister mood lingers.”
â
Kommunalarbetaren
(Sweden)
One of Madame Préau’s favorite pastimes is looking out the window of her Paris apartment and watching her neighbors. When she notices a malnourished, abused-looking young boy in their yard, she wants to help him. But is he real—or merely the hallucination of a lonely, mentally unstable old woman cut off from her own beloved grandson? After the police refuse to listen to her, Madame Préau decides to take matters into her own hands. She’s determined to rescue the little boy—and she’ll use any means necessary to make sure he’s safe…
“Each of us has heaven and hell in him…”
— Oscar Wilde,
The Picture of Dorian Gray
July 1946
The sun and wind were playing a lively game with the curtains. The little boy smiled up from his chair. To him it seemed like an invisible creature being tickled by this summer Sunday, playing hide-and-seek behind the jacquard fabric. When he closed his eyes, the child could have sworn that he heard chuckles of delight coming from behind the medallion print.
“Gérard!”
With his back straight and his palms either side of his plate, the little boy turned to look out the window onto the garden. A glorious scent emerged from bunches of gladioli, lilies and dahlias. Their astonishing colors sent bursts of light into the half-lit room. Peas rolled into the chicken gravy, swept aside by knife blades, indifferent to the lunchtime conversation.
Gérard went back to chewing, his nose in the air, hammering kicks against the legs of his chair. He wasn’t remotely interested in the subjects raised by his uncle, parents and grandparents—wage claims brought on by a rise in food prices, the “teeny tiniest swimsuits in the world,” an American nuclear test done on the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific and a trial in Nuremberg.
“Goering is pleading not guilty. It makes your blood run cold.”
Gérard’s uncle passed the silver breadbasket to his neighbor.
“The defendants don’t feel responsible for the crimes they’ve been accused of,” exclaimed Gérard’s father before biting down on a crust of bread. Having formed his chewed chicken skin into little balls and hidden them in his cheeks, the little boy now raised a white napkin to his lips. He pretended to wipe his mouth, and slyly spat out the chewed meat. All Gérard had to do then was drop it under the table. Like every Sunday since the end of the war, the cat would come later to erase all trace of his crime. But then, something disturbed the otherwise ordinary evening. A voice rose across the crystal glasses.
“Daddy, last night I saw Mama.”
Sitting rigidly at her place with her back to the window, Gérard’s cousin smiled. Everyone’s gaze converged on the little girl with the thick hair cut short at her chin. Dark bangs stopped at her eyebrows, and her emerald green eyes shone out below.
“She came into my room and sat down on the bed.”
Gérard froze. A breeze lifted the curtains, giving everyone at the table the shivers. His uncle blotted his mustache with the corner of his napkin.
“Elsa, be quiet, please.”
“You know what? She was wearing her flowered dress. The one you like so much, Daddy.”
Her grandmother let out a moan and waved a hand in front of her face as if to chase away flies.
“Elsa, go to your room,” insisted her uncle.
The little girl’s face was as pale as a bar of soap.
“She said you shouldn’t worry about her. Mama is well. She says she sends you a kiss. All of you. You too, Gérard. But she doesn’t want her nephew to feed the cat under the table anymore, she says it’s disgusting.”
Gérard dropped his napkin. The contents spilled out across his shorts, revealing his attempted sleight of hand. In the same instant, a slap stung his left cheek.
“I told you to stop that!” scolded his mother.
Tears filled the little boy’s eyes and his stomach hurt. He lowered his head toward his stained shorts, so he didn’t see his uncle get up from the table and haul his daughter unceremoniously off to her room. Elsa’s cries echoed in the stairwell. No one dared eat dessert. The St. Honoré cake stayed wrapped in its paper, much to Gérard’s chagrin, as his mother pushed him out onto the landing before he could even button his jacket.
“Would you hurry up? Stop dawdling!”
Gérard hated his cousin ever since she had gone crazy.
They don’t believe that you’re alive, but they’re wrong.
All I have to do is close my eyes to find you.
You’re wearing your pretty flowered dress
And you’ve tied a scarf in your hair too quickly.
I think that you’re kissing me, crying.
My cheeks smell of your kisses.
You walk so quickly that the train has already carried you away.
You’re going to come back. I’m certain that you’re going to come back.
It’s only a name on a list.
Daddy’s wrong.
They’re all wrong.
August 1959
The young man slowly locked his arms across Elsa’s chest. He held her tightly against his body, not letting go. Her eyes closed, the young girl kept her mouth open, as if she were at the dentist. She breathed like a puppy that had run around too much, her head bent back, her gingham blouse swelling. A sigh escaped her lips.
“Go ahead. Squeeze. Squeeze me tight, cousin.”
In Elsa’s garden, between the chaise longue missing its cushion and the cherry tree, Gérard felt confused. An overpowering sensation emanated from the young girl and her surroundings. The lawn seemed to be inhaling the young man feet-first, the plum trees bending toward Elsa, holding out their ripe fruit. When he was with his cousin, the world seemed to shrink to contain her and her alone, erasing everything around them, leaving only the faintest outlines; Gérard could make out only the beauty of this incandescent girl as she swooned.
“The stars,” she whispered, barely audible. “I can see tiny yellow stars. Squeeze again!”
Gérard’s arms tensed, responding to the plea in spite of himself. Then, suddenly, the gasping stopped. She collapsed. Her body slid against his stomach and fell to the ground like a sack of laundry. The young man hastened to hoist her onto the chaise longue. He slapped lightly at her cheeks, moaned her name and felt for her pulse, but he couldn’t feel it in her ivory-colored wrist.
“Elsa? Elsa!”
He brought his mouth to her lips to give her some air. There was no sign of life. Sobbing, he shook the young woman by the shoulders.
“Elsa! Answer me!”
He cursed himself for surrendering to the young girl’s capricious desires, for agreeing to play such an idiotic game with her, gambling her life for a thrill. But he hadn’t wanted to look weak in front of Elsa, so he had slipped his arms under hers and squeezed and squeezed.
“Elsa, please!”
And as Gérard had often witnessed before, his cousin made a miraculous return from the dead with an easy laugh, coughing, like a little girl recovering from being tickled. Jaded from her years at boarding school, she had no doubt experimented with some of the other girls—other respectable girls from good families—small acts of transgression against their overly regulated lives. Elsa had snuck out and developed a taste for the forbidden, and it had left her with a nonchalant, provocative grace, and a boy’s stubborn willfulness.
“That was delicious, cousin.”
Elsa grabbed Gérard by his shirt collar and pulled their mouths together.
“Do it again. Suffocate me in your arms. Make me die again.”
The taste of madness was irresistible.
Saint-Prayel School, Moyenmoutier
September 15, 1961
Dear Daddy,
My students are all very well-behaved, not like Monsieur Mohr’s class—they’re always giving him such a hard time. I’m grateful to my students for making my job easier and am encouraged by this first step on the path to becoming a teacher. I believe that children have something to teach us about our capacity for understanding and grasping the truths of this world. They try to express their understanding of the world with brand new words, ones they’ve barely learned, and I find it so endearing.
I miss you, and the house too. I often go for walks here. The forests are magnificent and I breathe in pure air that smells of ferns. Mama would find it too cool, though.
I have a comfortable little apartment just above the school that comes with the job, but I am fairly isolated and far from the town. Gérard doesn’t visit me until he gets leave, which is rare. In Algeria he is mainly treating civilians, and tells me he is performing amputations on children. I think that the Algerians aren’t just fighting for their independence; they’re starting a real revolution. It’s all anyone talks about around here. Sons, husbands—many of the men have left, and those who come back are demoralized or violent. They’ve all become hardened, and they put on an arrogant machismo. They have to relearn how to treat their wives and children. Some have come back so burdened that they are physically hunched over, their arms dangling below their waists, as if pulled down by the weight of clenched rocks in their fists.
Forgive me for writing about sad things again, but I have no one to tell other than a stray dog who pisses against my door. I chase him out of the schoolyard regularly, as I don’t want him to give the children rabies. I hope that you are well and that you don’t miss me too much.
With love and kisses,
Elsa
She stood in her room a yard away from her bed, staring at the ceiling. There was an odd noise, like a marble rolling along the floorboards. The noise stopped, and started again, this time like the footsteps of a dancer called to the attic for a macabre ballet. The woman stood in the middle of the room, dressed in a nightgown, one hand running over her round belly.
Leave me alone. Leave me alone, please.
She had gotten up to drink a glass of water to improve her circulation. Then, when she was coming back into her room, she had opened the curtains, worried. With her face tilted toward the frost-covered glass, she looked out beyond the chestnut tree, looking around for someone, a shadow crossing the snowy garden, the memory of a floral dress disappearing around the corner of the street one spring day during the war. Then the noise came again. A marble across the floor. Sashaying footsteps.
No. I’m begging you. Go away!
Elsa stood immobile in the middle of the bedroom, her skin taking on a bluish cast from the street lamp. Her knees weakened and she buckled, writhing in pain. Overhead, the noises started again, louder, mirroring the rhythm of her contractions, as if someone was slowly scraping away her insides with a knife. She mustn’t groan, mustn’t scream, mustn’t wake her husband.
Leave me alone! I don’t want to come with you! Not now!
It had been two hours since the sun had withdrawn from her frozen feet. The sound of her fall had woken Gérard. His young wife was lying in a puddle of blood. The baby was coming.
August 22, 1974
Gérard,
I can’t go on with your way of life anymore. Your absences are longer than ever. Watching you come back late, neglecting your son and your wife, all so that you can take care of people other than us—other people who aren’t suffering like I am—is not acceptable. I can’t endure the weariness of a doctor who has reached his limit, be subjected to your mood swings and your listlessness—it’s too much for me. I already know how this scene ends, there’s no need to play it out further. Your plan to leave for Canada to take up your studies again and to specialize is a shining example of your egotism. How can you intend to dedicate your life to diseases of the heart when you show so little regard for my heart and that of your son? Did you even think of us, of what I would be obliged to sacrifice in order to follow you—my position as school headmistress, for example?
I would prefer that you not return home again and that, in time, you find your own apartment so that you can take stock of your situation.
This changes nothing about my feelings for you. I love you, you are the only man in my life and you are the father of my son.
I will explain the situation to Martin.
Elsa
Kneeling in front of the low table in the living room, the child unwrapped his present with all the enthusiasm of a man condemned to death. The size of the package, wrapped in pine-green paper, was far too modest to correspond to Martin’s hopes. He had asked for a giant Erector set and a chemistry kit for his birthday. The child held up the package: too heavy for a board game or a giant puzzle.
“Go ahead, Martin, open your present.”
His mother forced a smile through too much makeup. Her lipstick was a dark purple streak against her flour-white face. The cider was too sharp and the chocolate cake needed more butter. Also missing were Martin’s classmates: his birthday party couldn’t be held until classes resumed in January. There was no upside to being born between Christmas and New Year at all. It was usually impossible to get all of your friends together—the luckiest of whom had gone skiing—and there was the disappointment of Christmas gifts being put aside for your birthday, unless your parents planned ahead, which was never the case with Martin’s parents. So, the gifts that he received were rarely as impressive as those opened by his friends twice each year. Regardless, Martin’s mother had always held on to the idea that they should “mark the occasion.”
“A little party, just us. What do you say?”
Sitting on the big armchair in the living room, her knees together below her lilac wool dress, she looked like she was praying, elbows bent, watching Martin’s fingers tear open the wrapping paper on his first gift. When he saw the encyclopedia, the child turned pale.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s not what I wanted.”
“It’s a useful gift. You’ll need it for your studies.”
“Yes, but it’s not what I wanted.”
“We don’t always get what we want in life, Martin. Open your other gift.”
“If it’s like the first one, I don’t want it.”
“Stop that. Go on, open it. It came from Galeries Lafayette in Paris.”
Martin pulled off the paper more quickly this time: maybe it was one of those wonderful toys he’d seen last week in the window of the big Parisian shop. Inside a gray cardboard box lined in cellophane, the little boy found a pair of mittens and a matching hat.
“It’s pure wool. With these, you’ll stay warm going to school in the morning.”
The hat was rust-colored with brown snowflakes embroidered on it. It was a ridiculous thing to wear in the schoolyard. Martin looked at his mother, incredulous.