714 euros for my treatment. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for thinking of me and paying for my stay at the sanatorium, although it did look more like some kind of corrective institution than a place where people are cured. You know what I mean. Soon after I got there, during the first week of my stay, I was punished for listening to music during the so-called ‘hours of rest’ between 3 pm and 5.30 pm. How could I have known that the music from my iPad would be a nuisance to anyone? But I was caught. And she – Kyrie the Matron – ordered that I be locked up for two whole days and nights in an empty cellar where a chair riveted to the floor was the only furniture. I was tied to that chair and an unbearably strong spotlight was set up to shine straight in my face. You can imagine how I felt, Mum, with that sharp needle of light piercing the pupils of my eyes and the tight rope cutting into my body. I was so distressed and helpless there in the ‘Damned Cell’, as the kids at the sanatorium called that dreadful cellar with no windows and only a slit in the iron door. Within just a few hours you lose track of whether the sun is shining outside or people are sleeping peacefully in the stillness of the night. After a terribly long time, someone opens the hole in the door and peers at you. You can feel their cold, sneering gaze but can’t see who it is because your eyes feel like they’re covered with blisters of light from the constant aggression of the spotlight. Somewhere out there, beyond that little hole, behind that sarcastic tormentor, there exists a world in which people talk, move about, and sometimes, perhaps, even laugh.
You start to feel that the unpleasant, restricted world of the sanatorium is beautiful and free compared to the ‘Damned Cell’. Yes, free! But then you’re back in prison with the light stabbing you like an executioner’s knife for a long, long time without end... Until you start yelling and screaming like crazy, and that’s what you’ve become. You scream like a wild thing and howl with frayed vocal chords in a voice you’ve only heard twice before: at your own birth, and that time in the bathroom. They unlock the door. You hear Kyrie the Matron approaching and recognize her step but can’t see her in the murderous light. She comes up to you and you know she’s observing you with disdain. You can imagine she’s wearing black trousers, as usual, and the black coat she always buttons up, neat and orderly, with the blindingly white collar of a freshly ironed shirt showing at the neck. And then you hear her voice.
Mummy, if anyone has cared for me since my birth, it was you, even though I was such a shock to you! You couldn’t even admit to yourself that I was your baby. And how could you have? Such a little runt, all covered in black hair as a result of the irritation in your belly. I can imagine how hard it must have been to carry me all through pregnancy, and how much harder when you first saw me – like a wet rat straight out of the sewer. Even the honoured gynaecologist who helped with the delivery, with all respect for your unequalled beauty and the splendour of your vagina gazed in horror when he saw me. And all the more so when he first heard me cry! I know that everyone in the maternity ward was shocked by that horrible noise, which did not sound at all like a baby’s voice but much more like the protracted howl of a sick animal. At the time, of course, I was unaware of the terrible effect of my appearance and voice, but ten years later, when puberty took hold of me, I realized I had registered that event in my subconscious, poor me!
I was in the bathroom again, as usual, looking at my face in the mirror and feeling guilty about its appearance. I hated my big nose with its pus-filled pimples, my fat lips with white scabs in the corners – that whole, huge noggin stuck on top of my puny body, like something out of Punch and Judy. Only my eyes, which were very bright like those of a ginger tomcat, stared back at me, unpleasantly inhuman and cold even when my body was full of seething anger towards myself. Maybe they were like that because all the difficult experiences I had had since I was a baby had left my eyes dry, without a single tear.
But just when I was standing in front of the mirror facing my ugliness for the umpteenth time, some unknown urge from my rickety chest, some deep sorrow burst out through my carious teeth and escaped as a cry, loud and animal-like, followed by another and yet another, and I began howling there alone in the bathroom, squatting on the floor because I couldn’t bear to look at myself any longer. It’s lucky you weren’t in the flat at the time; you were at a rendezvous with your lover in Café Journal and couldn’t hear my barbaric cries for help.
Please forgive me, Mummy, for my ugliness! Forgive the worthlessness and putridness of this freak that dares to call itself your son!
Now in the ‘Damned Cell’, just like in the bathroom, I shed a pool of tears and then started wailing most horribly. Kyrie spoke to me as I was yelling and screaming and blubbering, my face smeared with tears and snot. Her voice was terribly calm: ‘Why are you making such a racket?’
‘S... sorry... Miss,’ I answered, still blinded by the sadistic blade of light and unable to see anything but her dark silhouette.
‘How dare you call me Miss!’ she interrupted. ‘What am I?’
‘You’re the M... Matron,’ I sniffled.
You can imagine how dejected and miserable I felt, Mummy. I tried hard to stop my tears and not make another noise. But I failed; it just wouldn’t work. So I wailed for all to hear, and inside as well, and when I was finally able to see her eyes scrutinizing me coldly with no feeling in them other than mastery, I felt so wretched and so punished.
‘You deserved your punishment, so now put up with it. And stop that pathetic bawling!’ she snarled, as if she could read my mucousy thoughts and was making me feel the full weight of my sentence, now when I was weakest and unable to defend myself.
It was ghastly, but even in that lowliest of positions I cursed Kyrie, that damn bitch. And when she left the cell, still indifferent and harsh, I swore to myself a hundred times over that I would have my revenge. That is the price that tormented souls exact of their tormentors. What else can a midget do – a Quasimodo like me – in the face of the appalling and endless humiliation those such as Kyrie subjected me to in the ‘Damned Cell’? Whenever I raised my eyes heavenwards to beg for help, the artificial glare of the spotlight whipped me back to earth, and whenever I tried to heave a sigh, as one small way of relieving my pain, the rope cut deeper into my chest. I know, Mum, that even in such harrowing hours you would be able to shake off evil thoughts and vanquish all misfortune with your inner peace. But I am far from possessing your virtues!
I stuck through the rest of my punishment, the second day and the second night, although I was no longer aware how much time had passed, and when they came in to tell me it was over and untied the blasted rope, I stayed sitting on the chair, withdrawn and dismayed, unable to move a muscle, although the rope had been removed and the door was open. I simply couldn’t move, and for a few minutes it felt as if I was blind and deaf – as if I was dead.
Then I pulled myself together, got up from the chair, and walked out of the cell, and even managed a smile. From that day on, I behaved like a model patient, ever obedient, although my spiteful mind was working to devise my revenge.
I will never forget how devotedly you cared for me when I was little – and I must have seemed like a baby for a long time, for I was five times smaller than the other boys my age, more wrinkled and wizened as well, and I didn’t grow any bigger. You were torn between your obligations to me and to your lover, it was a real martyrdom, yet you always managed to strike a balance and never gave up despite all the difficulties.
That’s why I’m so happy you’ve found a man who suits you, Mum. Young, capable and virile! Although I have to admit that when you first introduced him to me I felt like taking a bite out of his pretty face. I found him unbearably handsome, with the dark, lively eyes of a dandy, with teeth that shone when he stretched his mouth into a smile, and a charming dimple in his manly chin. I wished I could savage the seductive symmetry of that face – I wanted to bite deep, draw blood, and butcher that victorious young male’s air of superiority. And then his height! That was the end of me, Mother. I had the uncontrollable urge to shorten his long, elegant legs. Not only did I mean him harm but I started plotting straight away how to do it.
With ugly people like me, the spirit is easily corrupted into hatching hellish plans. Our flat is on the fifth floor of a building with no lift. I knew he had the habit of bolting up the stairs on his way to see you and bolting