Chapter Text
I, who alone have understood thee,
Find in thy heart my mercy seat,
My shrine, mine altar; I have wooed thee,
To lay my glory at thy feet.
Give me thy love--for thee is waiting
Eternal life for earthly span,
For I in loving, as in hating,
Am great like God--not weak like man.
And I, free son of ether, take thee
To far dominions high above
The stars of Heaven, and I will make thee
Queen of the world, my deathless love.
-The Demon, Mikhail Lermontov
***
I am seven years old.
I am seven years old, and I am just returning home from school. It's been my very first day at school, in fact; bewildering, exciting, strange. I am exhausted, so exhausted as I wipe the dust of the road off my clothes, off my too-short hair that I don't like. I was a big girl now, they'd said as they'd cut my hair--that awful pageboy bob all Swedish girls wore then--and dressed me in new clothes. A white piqué shirt and a short white pleated skirt, so well-cut the other children had jeered at me, telling me this was a school, not a tennis court.
I am in a black mood as I enter through the door, slouching as I drop my backpack and begin to undo my shoes. Yet something makes me pause: it's an unusual smell, as if of cologne and perfume combined. I am greeted by the lightness and sweetness of fruits and flowers, which then become submerged by the masculine blue freshness of musk and bergamot. When I look up, there's a light fedora on the hat shelf, and a massive coat hanging from a peg underneath it: this is where the scent emanates from, and now the smell of cigarettes joins it.
Grandfather only ever smokes a pipe; this flavour of tobacco is lighter, far less dark and bitter, the type of cigarette women smoke. I think upon it, think, deduce like a detective would as I undo my shoelaces, swish, swish, and my ankles hurt from the day, from going up and down the stairs at school. I take off my socks, and true enough, my ankles have been rubbed raw.
The floorboards creak, and I turn around to see who it is, but then I am being lifted from behind, up, up, spun in the air. I am frightened out of my wits, picked up by this strange man, shrieking as he spins me and spins me as if I were a doll.
"Let me go!"
He just laughs and sets me down, turns me to face himself. "What's the matter, Laura Erika? Don't you recognise me?"
And as he laughs, laughs at me he reveals teeth crooked, eyelashes so long they make his eyes appear kohled, his eyes the blue of midwinter dawns.
"Uncle Torsten!"
He smiles and cocks his hips, bounces his weight from one foot to another in that funny way that always makes me laugh, the way that always makes Grandfather glare at him sternly.
"Is it the moustache?" he asks.
He does look older. But his moustache isn't Grandfather's bristling walrus moustache; only the sort you would see in film magazines, invariably on the sorts of men they call cads. I had asked Grandfather what a cad was, but he had snatched the magazine from me and told me he would explain later.
He never did. But Torsten never behaves this way with me, never keeps secrets from me, never thinks I am stupid because I am not a grown-up. He will tell me.
"Are you a cad, Uncle Torsten?"
He purses his mouth in an exaggerated pout and flicks up his eyes, pretending to think, in a way that always makes me laugh, too. It makes him look like a pin-up--another word Grandfather had refused to explain to me--those women who make strange expressions as they pose in small swimsuits and whose sharp breasts look as if they are about to poke through their jumpers. And Uncle Torsten loves amusing me so: in this, we have our own, secret language; something the ordinary, boring adults are not party to.
"Ooh, perhaps," he finally answers, thrusting his hands into his pockets, smirking like the Devil. "But only very naughty men are called that. Depends on how naughty you think I am."
His grin makes me uneasy, making something in my stomach tremble in fear and delight. If he is naughty, then I must be naughty, too, because we are so alike. But naughty or not, I like it. We are different from the others, and as such, we should stick together: I don't think I will make any friends at school.
"I'm hungry," I tell him and slip my hand into his, dragging him towards the kitchen. "Let's get some sandwiches."
He laughs, laughs from the bottom of his belly and follows me.
When he leaves, my happiness leaves with him. He says he has to discuss business with Grandfather, says he will be back later in the evening. He kisses me on the cheek, and his moustache sends a strange tingle down my body, like a tickle but more intense, something I have only rarely felt.
For hours, I try to focus on my new textbooks, but they frustrate me. I already know how to read, and the chapters seem too short, too condensed in comparison to the books I have already been reading on biology, geography, science. I feel suffocated within these books; they are too small for me, trying to drag me down to the level of the other children, most of whom seem several years younger than me, far below myself in intelligence. This is one of the first memories I have of that feeling: the realisation that I am older than most, smarter than most, more passionate than most. I feel a terror and a gloom settling over me: this is what I will have to be doing every day from now on, enduring school, enduring other children, tyrannical teachers until the day I turn eighteen.
I set my books down and leave for the living room, still restless. There's nobody there; there hardly ever is. The plush, brown sofa is far softer than my bed is, and the way it faces the windows always makes it incredibly warm in the evening light. So many afternoons and evenings have I slept curled up upon it, completely buried underneath a blanket, imagining I was safe in the nest of a great bear, held in his soft, brown, golden warmth. I wouldn't have to emerge for months and months from my winter sleep, I thought, a thought that always consoled me. Sometimes I would even steal honey from the kitchen and eat it with my fingers underneath the blanket, and the servants tolerated this, Grandfather only smiling at my play.
But now, I don't want to sleep. The tickling Uncle Torsten has left inside of me, this tickling, tingling inside of my belly and in my spine is growing stronger, like an itch I can't scratch because I can't reach inside of my body. It has never been this strong, and there's only one thing that's helped a tingle like this before: therefore, I straddle the arm of the sofa. I spread my skirt carefully around it, so that I won't ruin the pleats, and begin to rub myself against the hardest part of the arm. And the shudder that goes through me, now, makes me shake; I have to bite my lip so as not to moan. I know what I am doing is naughty, forbidden, something Emma always smacks me for, pulls my hair for. Yet she doesn't understand that I must do this, that this is a medicine, a relief for an internal pain that's far greater than that of any of her punishments. I hurt down there, hurt, and only this will dissolve the ache.
A shadow falls upon the yellow squares of light from the windows; it's that of a man smoking a cigarette, leaning against the doorframe.
"Laura, Laura," Torsten tuts, but his voice is warm, not truly scolding; he seems amused.
Gasping, I stop, my heart pounding. I don't know what to say. Will Torsten understand? Would he understand? He might be the only one who could understand.
He just stumps his cigarette and sits next to me on the sofa, looking at me, a strangely admiring gaze, taking in my body. No man has ever looked at me that way before, and a strange sort of pride uncurls within my chest, a strange tremor joining that of the tingling.
He flicks his fingers idly through the hem of my skirt, then smiles at me gently, sweetly, lost in thought. "You're going to break so many hearts one day, I can tell."
I don't know what to say to that, either. I just sit there, embarrassed, yet I don't want to leave him, the warmth of his gaze.
"Come," he says, patting his thigh. "It'll feel even better if you sit on this."
"You've done this?" I blurt out. "But I thought--"
"Boys do it, too. It's just a little different. Come, and I'll help you. I promise not to tell anyone."
I knew Torsten would understand! My heart skips, leaps in delight, and I almost kiss him--I know that's what a grown woman would do. He sighs happily and leans back as I balance my knees on the sofa and straddle his thigh. It's a thigh bony, hard, thin underneath his pinstriped suit, the woollen fabric rough against my own bare thighs.
"Comfortable?" he asks, his hands soft upon my hips, his eyes sparkling with mirth.
I am flushed all over; my chest feels as if it's about to burst and I can't breathe. My pulse pounds in my ears so loudly I can barely make out my own words. "Yes."
"Rub yourself against me. Ride my thigh, just like you rode the arm of the sofa; that's it, go on," he says.
And the look in his eyes as I do so--oh, I am going to die here, that's how happy his smile makes me. It feels wonderful to do this against another person, against the warmth of his body; I love it, and he loves it, too, the afternoon sun glittering in his eyes. He understands this game nobody else understands, doesn't think me bad for it and I love him for this, adore him for this. We have found a new game, another secret game that sets us apart from the others, above the others.
"You know the best games, Uncle Torsten," I laugh, and now my rocking brings me so close to him I can feel the heat of his face and chest against mine.
"Naughty people always do," he says, and now his hands steal underneath my skirt, toying with the front of my panties. "Do you know what naughty people call this thing girls have down here, this thing you were rubbing?"
I don't want to seem stupid. They certainly won't call it a 'wee-wee' like the adults do, or a 'fanny' like an English nurse had once called mine, or a 'vulva,' like the medical books do. And I am sure he is about to tell me. "No."
"Well, on a grown woman, it's called a 'pussy,'" he says, that word wonderfully wet, slithering sweetly out of his mouth, sticky, juicy. "But since you are just little, still all smooth..." suddenly, he bounces his knee so violently I am thrown against his body; I have to brace my hands against his chest so as not to fall off. "Do you know what a cad would call this thing?"
"Stop teasing me!" I tell him, tossing my hair from my face.
He lifts up my skirt and looks at my panties, and a veritable convulsion goes through him. He closes his eyes and inhales, sighs in ecstasy.
"Candy." He opens his eyes and they glimmer with wickedness, with happiness. "That's what you've got down there."
Oh, God. This is wrong; I know this. This is utterly wrong, this is something an adult should not be doing to a child; I have heard of candymen, and perhaps this was what they'd meant by that word. But I can't stop; I hurt too much to stop. I enjoy this too much, oh; I can't stop now. This must be one of those things grown-ups were wrong about, tried to keep from me because they didn't understand how good it felt. I look down at myself, at the round mound of my sex pressed against his thigh, the way I am rubbing myself against him, and shudder.
Candy. This makes sense--it smells sweet, so sweet, and it has tasted sweet whenever I've rubbed it with my fingers and then held my fingers to my nose and my mouth.
"Candy," I say out loud, laughing in his lap.
He moans in delight, pulls me against himself, his other hand stealing to my buttocks. "That's right," he croons. "And I'm going to make your little candy feel so good," he says, "so good."
"Torsten," I gasp, because I can barely breathe, but I don't want him to stop. The tingling is now unbearable, the way he crushes me against himself with one arm, his other hand still playing at my panties, and I think I'm going to faint. "Please, please, don't stop; please do something. I'm hurting. Please."
"Are you aching?" he pants, and there is something hard in his trousers, something that's not his wallet; he is now rubbing himself against me, a caricature of an adult bouncing a child on his knee, violent, frantic. "Because I'm aching, too, Laura," he groans feverishly.
"Yes," and now I want to cry, clutching at his jacket.
"Then, don't stop, my child," he growls, and now the hand that had but played at my panties reaches between my buttocks and presses there, presses against my anus through the cotton, the strangest of sensations. "Does that help?"
But now, I am falling, shouting into his suit, the tingling swirling into my entire body and this helps, it does, but I can't tell him; I am shaking too much. I sob against his chest, and I can smell something unpleasant, something like lye, and his fingers are hurting me, but I am free. All tension leaves me and I fall slack in his arms, fall slack into his embrace, still swirling, pulsing, humming, but I feel so much better.
There's a wet stain on his trousers, and he looks down at it and laughs, short of breath. "I think you helped me, too."
"Can I see it?" I ask, because now I am curious, want to see where that smell comes from, the thing that had grown so hard in there.
He kisses my cheek and pulls out his handkerchief. "I would love to show you my candy, too, but we don't have time. Your grandfather would find out, and you must never tell him we did this, or he will send me away forever. Do you understand?"
"I do," I mumble, hanging my head. His haste hurts me, but I know he's right: it's late, and Grandfather usually comes down around this time to sit and drink by the fire. And I would not have him send Torsten away, so I climb off and straighten out my skirt, straighten out my hair.
Torsten looks down at me and in the evening light, I am sure I have never seen a man so handsome, a man as beautiful as a woman. He strokes my cheek and looks at me with such happiness in his eyes it makes me ache.
"My little accomplice. I promise to come back for you one day, and take you to Stockholm, and then we'll have some real fun together, you and I."
"You swear?" I am holding back tears again, my lower lip wobbling.
He kisses me, right on the mouth, swift but sweet; a kiss that tastes of cigarettes and cognac. "I swear."
***
I woke up in a bedroom not my own: not the familiar red, Latin warmth of the bedcovers and tapestries enclosing me in their womb, but the harsh, stark, clinical white of a hospital, I the babe torn out of its mother's body.
And like a newborn, my first instinct was to scream. Yet my throat was dry and very little sound would come out, and when I tried to move my hands, I felt straps around my wrists, ankles. Straps, straps--a new game invented by Torsten, perhaps--no, no, Torsten was in jail, and that was the last thing I remembered. Oh, my head, my throat, my head--all dry and rough and full of pain, my memory smashed to pieces. I remember the mobsters, I remember their oversized suits, I remember the police raiding the nightclub. Torsten, Torsten! I had told him not to get himself mixed up with the mob, had told him not to gamble, but he had, he had, and--
"Good morning, Mrs. Morgonstierna."
There was a man at the door, a doctor going by his white coat and arrogance, and now he nodded to a fat nurse who proceeded to relieve me of my straps. What's the meaning of this? I wanted to scream, yell; who gave you the right to treat me like this? Don't you know who I am? But even in my delirious state, I realised the gravity of the situation and knew I had to protect myself at all costs.
"Where am I?" There, a neutral enough question.
"At the Frith Institute." The doctor smirked in a self-satisfied manner. "You were very lucky to have ended up here. I like to think that our methods are more... modern, shall we say, than those practiced at most sanatoriums."
An asylum. I was in an asylum. And they must have drugged me, I realised; I should have been more shocked and my heart should have been galloping by now, yet I took in all of this as if from behind a thick wall of glass. And I couldn't remember a thing about what had happened after the raid, after they had taken Torsten away.
"How did I get here?" I mumbled. "Why can't I remember?"
Again, that awful, smug smirk spread on the doctor's face. He sat next to me, and from his badge, I could read his name: Dr. Segert, Director. He was somewhere in his forties, bland with a nondescript, pudgy face, thinning hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. His manner was that of the hero-doctor, the type who knows it all, the type who talks down to everyone he meets, thinking himself smarter than everyone else as he administers poisons, kills his patients with his hubris.
I loathed him immediately, and sure enough, he saw this; he looked down upon me with the condescension of a teacher observing a problem child.
"The therapies we employ here often cause minor amnesia. Sometimes this is only beneficial if a depression has been caused by trauma or if a manic would rather forget the things he did during a relapse."
"And which one am I?" I snapped. "Tell me. I have the right to know."
He kept on smiling to himself; I could not help but think his lips were the hideous, glossy purple of an old man's penis. "Overdose. Your maid called the ambulance. We found you collapsed on your living room floor. Once we were sure the drugs had left your system, we employed deep sleep therapy, combined with a series of electroshock treatments. Our standard procedure in such situations. And I must say, you look all the better for it."
The bastards. They must have thought I had been suicidal, but now it all came back to me. I had been hysterical after Torsten's arrest: I had been drinking heavily, consuming all the drugs we had left in order to calm myself down. I had not been eating for days, and had miscalculated the doses. I had been so stupid, so stupid, just as Torsten had been so stupid, and now we were both paying the price.
"It was an accident," I said quietly, staring at my hands. "I wasn't trying to kill myself."
Of course, Segert didn't believe me. "I'm sure you didn't. Nevertheless, we are keeping you here for close monitoring."
I could practically hear a prison door closing behind me, keys being turned in a lock. I swallowed. "How long?"
He laughed a little in his throat, incredulous, as if my asking this had been preposterous. "Until I deem you fit for release."
Of course, of course. I glared up at him. "Is this because of--" I almost said 'Torsten,' but held my tongue at the last minute. "Is this because of my husband? I swear I remember nothing."
He raised his eyebrow. "Mr. Morgonstierna is still awaiting trial. However, the police and I are in agreement that you were a danger to yourself and others. You assaulted an officer, in case you have forgotten."
"But you can't do this!" I exploded, throwing the covers off myself. "I am innocent, and so is he, I--"
Segert nodded to the fat nurse. With a wrestler's strength, she pinned me down as he administered an injection. I stared up at her moustache, at the mole on her upper lip, so dizzy I couldn't even cry even if inside, I was howling, weeping, wailing like a banshee. I was still howling as the drug swirled into my veins, golden and soft, like a pillow being held over my face, silencing me, suffocating me.
"I want my Daddy," I murmured, in Swedish, and my eyelids were too heavy to stay open.
"Orphaned," Segert said to the nurse, the voice of a scientist making an observation, devoid of empathy. "Bring the catether. I'm putting her back on Somnifen." He turned to me and petted my hair, speaking to me in Swedish: "You rest now, young lady. In another three days you should be right as rain."
The room swam around me; I barely felt any pain in my urethra before I passed out again, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
There is no calendar on the wall; I don't know how many days I've been asleep for, but I know I have lost weight. The bathroom mirror shows me a woman crumbling, the construct of Diana Morgonstierna peeling and cracking, revealing the shadow of Laura Erika Barring underneath. I see long blond roots in my hair where my henna has grown out, and I am paranoid that it will give my true identity away, even if I know most women dye their hair for non-sinister reasons.
I had a friend here, Therese, a beautiful young negress. She was schizophrenic, they told me, yet I found her lucid; when she was swimming in the euphoria of sedatives, she told me of her child. Of how her white boss had raped her, repeatedly, how she had defended herself against him, how they had thought her mad, delirious. How she had given birth to a beautiful baby boy--she still remembered him, despite the procedures they had performed on her, she said, tapping at the scar upon her temple.
"Da colour of cream coffee, he was, but dey says I was pollutin' da race, y'see," she said. "Took 'im away, like dat. Took my womb, too," she said, "like dat," making a snipping movement with her fingers. "But the Lord's callin' to me, and I know he'll be reunitin' me an' my boy real soon. Real soon, Diana, you just wait an' see."
And sure enough, they took Therese from me. They had found us embracing, kissing; had found us touching each other, clinging to each other for warmth. They said we were perverts, said that she was a bad influence on me, said that this matter would be taken care of. They took her away and gave me more shocks, punching more holes in my memory, erasing a kiss here, a touch there, saying they would soon have burnt the stain of sexual deviance from me. Now, I no longer remember whether I had known Therese for days or weeks. But every time I close my eyes, I can still see her brilliant white smile, hear her humming her favourite hymn, of the Heavenly Father coming to take her home.
When is my Heavenly Father going to come and take me home?
Segert tells me I'm making progress, that I'm a model patient, and soon he takes a liking to me; he stares at my breasts as he tells me these things. He takes me to his office and tells me about himself, of how he used to be a plastic surgeon--and how he soon saw most of his patients were more deformed on the inside, so he took to psychiatry and neurosurgery instead. Creating a face anew was nothing when you could resculpt, reshape a person's soul, he said. In this, he said, he was doing God's work, bettering society, ridding it of unwanted elements.
Proudly, he shows me his case files, of gibbering maniacs pacified through leucotomies, of homosexuals and masturbators cured through castrations, newspaper clippings declaring 'Gustaf Segert' a byword for progress in Germany.
I sit there and listen to him quietly, just as I lie underneath him quietly. His penis is too small to give me acute pain, his new miracle drugs soon curing the infections he gives me ("cystitis is quite normal after extensive catetherisations," as if it wasn't his stinking bush of pubic hair, his own lesioned, spotted cock that gives me these infections over and over), and now there are scars on my lower belly. I have been given a salpingectomy, he tells me, a removal of the Fallopian tubes, for as pretty as I am, as Aryan as I am, I am unfit, too feeble-minded to reproduce.
At night, in my bed, I laugh inside, for this Frankenstein, this Caligari, this puppeteer who thinks himself a demiurge has liberated me. In sterilising me he has given me relief from my greatest fear: that of pregnancy. I cry into my pillow in thanks as I await my Heavenly Father's return. Silently I weep, as silently as I play with my pussy, pushing a finger inside my ass. It's the only way I can orgasm, now, the barbiturates having numbed my clitoris so much, a finger curling in my ass, the only place Segert hasn't taken yet, curling until it's dirty, so I can taste it to remind myself of my Father.
My ass no longer tastes sweet; they are giving me sugar instead of saccharine. I grow fatter, lazier, but that makes Segert cut down on the sedatives, declaring I no longer need deep sleep therapy. Yet I still hear him using the word "unfit" behind my back, and now that they have removed my silver bracelets, my collar and my cuffs, it is my abnormality I decorate myself with. Each declaration of myself as "unfit," each "feeble," each "pervert" sets me above the rest, and I wear each one like a diamond, stringing them into garlands upon my neck to replace the ornaments they stole from me. And in my perversion, I sparkle and shine bright, bedecked in cascades of jewels like an ancient courtesan.
Sometimes I pretend to pray in the hospital chapel; they use myrrh in their incense. Myrrh, the fragrance of incest; in my mind, I recite the myth I had learned by heart from Grandfather's books. Myrrha, just like I, just like I--she desired her father, Cinyras, bore Adonis for him. The gods took pity upon her, changed her into a tree. And still she stands, weeping fragrant tears for her forbidden love, and this scent, the scent of incest, the Christians think sacred! I laugh out loud in the chapel, and oh, if they only knew why!
I hallucinate Torsten so often it's hard to tell whether the few news I hear from him are things I dreamt up or true. I spit on my pillow at night and rub my face in it as I masturbate, imagining my spit his sperm, his sweet, delicious sperm. I write letters to him, calling him Nicolas, darling husband, begging for him to take me home. I dream of him at the train station at Forssa, the way he had laid his hand on my shoulder and kissed my head, the day he had come to rescue me from my imprisonment.
So when I hear his voice on the telephone, I can not quite believe it. His voice sounds older, more broken, but it's him, it's him; I can barely speak for my tears. I want to say so many things to him, but can't; Segert is listening. But Torsten tells me he's had a good lawyer, has been declared innocent, and all charges against him have been dropped. He is free, and he is on his way to take me home.
Segert hits me that night, jealous, takes me until I bleed. I only close my eyes and think of Torsten's blows, how he would hit me much harder, how he would make me come with his hands, his blessed hands, his cock so much bigger, harder, brutal at the root of my womb, where Segert never reaches.
Soon, you will be home, Laura Erika, soon; just one more night.
The morning is wet, misty, filled with smog. Pale, Torsten appears at the wrought iron gates, so thin underneath his huge coat and his hat; his eyes are full of sorrow. He looks ten years older, and my heart lurches as I lurch, stagger towards him, not having worn my heels for weeks. Will he be able to save me this time? Heal me this time? Some scars are forever; some things cannot be mended once they've been broken--how much of me is there even left for him to salvage, now?
"Laura," he whispers as he wraps his coat around me and holds me tight, and I can feel he is shaking.
"Call me that again," I murmur against his chest. For had it not been Diana who had overdosed, Diana they had drugged, shocked, violated? Not Laura, no; never Laura Erika, never this little girl now weeping openly in her father's arms.
"Laura, Laura, Laura," he says with grave solemnity, understanding this perfectly, telepathically, calling me back to myself.
Laura is still far away, just as she had been when Segert had been inside of her, she watching everything from outside her body, from somewhere high above. But now, this blonde girl in her father's arms lifts her head and listens. This body feels cold, full of pain, but the ghost of Laura forces it into movement, forces it to respond to her father's embrace.
"Never leave me again, Daddy," she whispers, "never, ever."
"Not until the day I die," Daddy says, wiping his tears with his sleeve.