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24.
On another of those dream days, when she awoke like someone pickled in amber wine, there was a loud knocking on the door. She sat up in bed, having been sleeping naked, and held the sheet up to her chin. Trembling, she glanced over at Lindy. Her roommate's small shape lay twisted and still amid her gray blankets. Lindy's snoring was light and even, and she apparently did not hear the pounding at the door. Tedda shrank back against the wall in terror, still holding the sheet to her chin. She could see the door visibly moving as feet kicked it and fists pounded it. Still Lindy slept.
Suddenly all became still. A man's sharp voice barked through the wood. It seemed to be Gruen the Younger, rider on the huge white horse. He too fell silent. She heard him say "Well?"
Reluctantly, afraid not to obey, she rose from the bed. She quickly slipped on her underpants, slip, skirt, and a turtleneck sweater. Striding to the door, she hesitated a moment, then lifted the crossbar. She stepped back as the door swung open. For a moment, she saw only Major Gruen standing there in his jodhpurs, holding a riding crop in one hand and tapping the palm of his other hand with it. His brown boots looked muddy, and his herringbone civilian suit looked rumpled, damp, and smelled faintly of horse sweat and horse manure. His hair was mussy, and his eyes looked foreboding. In that moment, she realized she had made a terrible mistake to open the door, but what choice did she really have? In a few moments, they would have battered the door in to get at her.
She feared rape as she saw the four or five burly infantry rejects fill the air space in the door—men who might have served but had been physically or psychologically wounded and now only ran errands or drank in the stable or hung about looking sullen. She saw their dirty knuckles and twisted fingers on the door jamb, saw their intent faces, their eyes boring into her, their hands grasping toward her. She shrank back, tripped, and they were upon her in a moment. She had time only to glance over once more to see the sleeping figure of Lindy, whose arm rose and fell gently as she lay facing away toward the wall. Then the men pinned her down, one on each limb and the fifth cradling her head between his thighs as he knelt beyond her. He pulled her chin up toward him and stuck something wooden in her mouth. Something to pry her teeth apart and keep them that way. She struggled, tears filling her eyes, and anger making her bite down on the mouth bit. Before she closed her eyes and passed out, she saw another glimpse of Major Gruen. Two white-coated medical orderlies entered the room. One carried a metallic case in one hand and a very painful, ugly-looking complicated naked steel clamp in the other. The other man carried a fine, piercing light in one hand and a small forceps in the other—too small for vaginal operations, so it must be the mouth or the other end. She felt her clothing being pulled off her. For a second, while she was suspended in air as her clothes pulled away and she felt a chill breeze on her bare, goose bumpy skin, she struggled. Then they pinned her down again so that her soft flesh was crushed painfully against the hard wooden floor. She saw a very ugly, large syringe rise into the air, with brownish fluid in its cruel glass window. A squirt in the air, and then it plunged into the skin of her neck, right into the big arteries pounding away under the soft skin there. She closed her eyes and began to see lights. She felt sharp pain in two places—her mouth and her anus. Wires of fire seemed to be snaking up into her bowels and down her esophagus. She felt herself gurgling and choking frothy warm fluid that she assumed must be blood. I don't want to die, she cried silently, oh please, I want to live!
She had that horrifying glimpse again, of herself astride the other woman with a knife, like in a violent and nightmarish painting by Breughel.
With that, she passed out and slept deep and hard. It was a dreamless sleep, except for a monotonous series of brief waking moments in which she seemed to be an underwater thing, an eel, in a sunken building, and she darted snake-like here and there, grabbing bits of stray food floating in the dim sunlight from somewhere far above, before retreating once again into the darkness of her lair, an ancient coal bin.
When she awoke, a rich but melancholic sunlight filled the room. The building smelled of beef gravy and sour bread. She heard the inmates babbling and fighting down in the echo chambers of the first floor. Lindy was somewhere down the hall, singing a cheerful song interlaced with broken whistling. Tedda's mouth felt dry, and she reached for the water glass by her bedside. The water tasted metallic, almost like blood. She made a face and spat it out, back into its glass, and she saw rusty sputum full of old blood roiling like tomato-marble. She cried out in shock and dropped the glass, which shattered on the hard floor. She pushed the blankets away and looked down at herself. She was naked, and her arms and thighs had faint discolorations. She felt stiff and sore. It had not been a dream. Hearing voices in the hall, with the door slightly ajar, she pulled a blanket up.
Lindy breezed into the room, carrying a stack of freshly laundered, dried, and folded clothing. "Oh, hi, you're awake."
Tedda tried to speak but only a croak came out. She sat up and ran her fingers comb-like through her hair.
"I thought you were never going to wake up," Lindy said. "I wonder what was in the stew this morning when we got home. "I slept like someone on drugs."
You probably were, Tedda thought as Lindy merrily put her clothes away in her locker.
Tedda cleared her throat. "I dropped the glass."
"Oh," Lindy said, glancing at the floor, "I'll get a broom and dust pan. You okay?" She stepped from the room, still in earshot.
"I had another of those dreams I've told you about."
Lindy came back with a worn broom and black, dented dust pan. She squatted by the bedside, cleaning up. "I told you, they keep us doped up sometimes."
"Why?" Tedda said, swinging herself into a sitting position to get dressed. Her rear end burned for a moment, and she squirmed until it no longer hurt. She put a finger in her mouth and twisted it around, searching for any kind of foreign object, but felt only soft, wet tissue and teeth with old dental work needing repairs. Her teeth felt sort of numb, but that was the only anomalous thing she could sense. She wasn't even sure about that.
"Who knows?" Lindy said as she rose and took the broken glass outside. Tedda rose and walked to the window, stepping into her clothing as she did so. She lifted the window and leaned on the sill, enjoying the comforting trilling of birds and the last golden blast of sunlight on opposing windows in the quadrangle even as the sadness of evening descended. She leaned out and spat more rusty sputum, watching dizzily as the clotted droplets twirled heavily on their way down into bushes and darkness.
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