Eloquent Silence (15 page)

‘And of course with the toilet being in there, too, I strongly objected to that for my sake, but mainly for the girls’. They need to be able to have their baths and go to the toilet in privacy. It’s nothing for him to go in there and use the toilet for every purpose you can imagine when they’re in the bath. I don’t like that. It’s not as if he couldn’t wait a couple of minutes until they were out and dressed.’ Annie looked at her parents sadly.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘The psychological side. And as for the pregnancy either having the baby or having an abortion, I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t, aren’t I?’

‘It looks that way, my dear,’ her mother replied with empathy. ‘Only you know what you can live with and how much you can endure.’

‘I feel as if I’m working towards an inexorable end,’ Annie finished sadly as she pushed her cup and saucer away in preparation of standing up. ‘Just how I’ll arrive at it I haven’t quite worked out. I told you I took the rifle out to his father, didn’t I? He told me Conrad would never hurt me. Huh! The next time Conrad called there his father just gave it back to him, nice as you like.’ She smiled unconvincingly at her parents. ‘I never knew old Hank was so gullible.

She gave a tired little laugh, trying to be humorous in the face of her uncertainty. ‘To me I think of him sometimes as Rumpelstiltskin, and dumpy little man with a grumpy attitude. Or one of the seven dwarfs, minus the beard.’

Her parents smiled at her softly, knowing the strain she was under and the difficulty she was having in holding her marriage together.

Knowing whichever position she chose with regard to her pregnancy, Conrad had already tried and condemned her, Annie continued trying to make her mind up and choose according to her own lights and to bear the undoubtedly ugly consequences.

If, by some remote chance, she and Conrad stayed together as a couple and if the child dared to be a girl, its life would be more than unpleasant, to put it mildly. Annie quaked inwardly at the thought. Perhaps it would be as impossible as Sarah’s was, the second child, the one whom he had denied fathering.

If, by another remote chance, she dared to leave Conrad, another child would make the process of rearing her family that much more difficult and complex. Was it fair to the child? To the other children?

How as it a man could say he loved you with one breath and with the next, set out to rob you of your self worth and self confidence, your right to your own will and dignity, your need for self esteem? Haul you around and hit out at you with no compunction? Was that love? Surely love should be about nurturing, caring, respect? Annie sincerely doubted that he had the capacity to really love another human being let alone a woman.

And if they were not able to experience and share those things, how about common courtesy, civility, consideration? Why was it necessary for one party to go against everything the other said simply for the pure hell of it? Why should one person build themselves up at the expense and degradation of the other?

How do we reconcile ourselves to the choices we make in life, seeing them as the best possible alternative at the time then looking back and in hindsight, seeing that choice in a whole new perspective? How devastating that young people in their teenage years with no experience and nothing behind their life plans except high hopes and expectations, should make such disastrous decisions that would blot the rest of their days?

Annie could not fathom the psychology of her partner and was wallowing in the depths of a marriage she did not understand or believe in. 

She was aware that whichever path she went down, Conrad would assume his holier-than-thou attitude and make her feel like a whipped pup with a mixture of contempt, spite and punishing rebuttals.

But then, she conceded to herself, hadn’t it always been that way between them? The pattern of the marriage had become clear within the first month. The hitting, the gun-waving, the name-calling, the volatility of the whole set up. She shuddered, unwilling to recall the incidents that had brought her to this crossroad.

In this, the early, unconfirmed stage of her pregnancy there were times when she was still able to deny the reality of the child within her, a brief and ultimately gut-wrenching passing moment in time. Aware that weeks were slipping past and that the deed, if it was to be done, must occur before her maternal instinct took its unrelenting hold on her, she often thought that it was already too late.

From having borne three children, Annie remembered how sweet it was to be at the beginning of a new life. She recalled well enough the tenderness, the joy, the overwhelming love for the newborn that had caused her to lie sleepless throughout the first night of each of their lives. Annie was entirely aware of the magic of childbirth and the unutterable joy of new motherhood and felt the anguish of having to let go of this.

Not for her this time, she had concluded sorrowfully. They would all have to pay too huge a price, her children, her baby and herself. Wrapped further in bondage to this strange, angry, unreliable man, she could not be responsible for the emotional costs involved to them all.

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M
ore cloak and dagger enquiries resulted in information about a gynecologist in the nearby city of Ravensbrook who had a legal method of coping with these kinds of dilemmas. A referral from a GP was not required.

Jittery Annie rang for an appointment. She was given one for the next day.

After the children were asleep that night she approached Conrad as he lay on the lounge watching a loud and vicious episode of ‘Combat’, his favorite television program. Vic Morrow shot at an escaping prisoner of war and Annie thought she had better wait to see whether the escapee dropped or ran before she spoke. He dropped.

Conrad looked up at her coldly.

‘What do you want?’ he asked disdainfully, barely moving his lips, a frown on the forehead of his swarthy face. She looked at his arms, sinewy like tree trunks. He could take her out with one clip from those arms and the hairy, squat fingers at the ends of them. She girded her loins mentally and prepared herself for the next battle, should it be necessary.

After a lengthy silence, ‘Conrad,’ she began nervously, ‘I have made an appointment to see Dr. Mengel in Ravensbrook. If he will perform an abortion on me, I think it’s best for all concerned if I have one.’

She stood in the doorway twisting her hands around each other.

‘Suit yourself,’ he grunted in reply, jutting his square jaw out in defiance, wanting no part in the decision, she supposed. Best to let her make the decision and wear the consequences, then his conscience would be clear of any recriminations.

He rolled his eyes and waved his hands at her in dismissal, then turned his attention back to the program. She saw that he was in shutdown mode and would not give an opinion either way, leaving her to make the decision and cop the blame for the consequences.

‘The appointment’s for tomorrow at one o’clock,’ she continued, her face gaunt and tired while ignoring his surliness. ‘Will you drive me, please? I doubt if I’ll be fit to drive home afterwards.’

‘I suppose so. That’s enough about it now. You got yourself into this mess and now you can’t get yourself out of it without my help. Don’t you always rely on me to do your dirty work? Want me to front up? Huh. Typical. That’s the way you are, Annie. Hopeless. Just let me watch my program here, will you? I’ve been slaving my guts out all day while you’ve just been flitting around enjoying yourself.’ He looked at her with an indifferent glance. ‘I’ll take you,’ he acquiesced with bad grace and not a flicker of emotion, impervious to her distress.

‘Thanks.’ She unwound her hands and turned to go.

He gave a guttural snort of derision.

‘Can’t face up to it alone, hey? Chicken-hearted, as always,’ he threw after her in disgust, waving his meaty arm in space as a gesture of how little regard he had for her. ‘Just shut up about it,’ he warned darkly, enunciating each syllable clearly.

‘If you say so,’ she said, hightailing it from the room and down the hallway.

She left him alone to enjoy his violent program, helicopters whirring in the background, hand grenades and machine guns exploding in the foreground. He had agreed to let her go ahead if she wanted to, she thought as she went to bed to read one of her Thomas Hardy novels.

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T
he following day he gave his tacit approval to the operation by being quite civil to her during the drive to the city of Ravensbrook, some twenty miles east of their small home town of Belsen. Only civil, she told herself. His sour nature was a fact of life, she was fully aware after eleven years of marriage.

Or at least she thought he gave his tacit approval as he drove without conversation to the nearby town, assuming they had formed a truce over this controversial matter. He wore his usual attitude of superiority, looking down his snub nose at the roadworkers on the verge of the highway.

‘Useless bastards,’ he commented with vehemence, lips curled in disdain. ‘Wouldn’t be capable of doing a decent day’s work slogging their guts out like I do.’

Annie tried to relax, hoping this event which would take place when they arrived at the doctor’s would not widen the ever–growing gulf between herself and her husband. Heaven only knew they had problems enough without any further dissent within the floundering marriage.

Her heart ached at the thought of the tiny being inside her that would soon cease to be a viable human being. Soon it would be simply a dead object that would have to be expelled from her body even as her body was preparing to bring it further towards life.

Eventually they pulled up before a long, low, cream brick house in the business area of Ravensbrook. The doctor’s name was the only one engraved on the brass plaque at the front door, proclaiming him to be a gynecologist. Old pine trees and young hibiscus shrubs surrounded the building and a wide concrete path led to the glass door.

She entered alone, Conrad opting to wait in the station wagon and read a Western novel.

A middle-aged nurse with heavy jowls, coarse, soap-stone skin and oily jet-black hair caught back with a rubber band, sat at the desk filling out filing cards. She was wearing a crisp, white uniform and looked up from her black laminated reception desk which was flanked by couple of tired umbrella plants, nodding briefly at Annie.

The receptionist looked down again and continued with her paperwork.

Annie, trying hard to be as unobtrusive as possible, sat down in a brown plastic stackable chair and glanced nervously at the pile of tattered magazines protruding from the peeling cane magazine rack. Her heart was thumping and her mouth was dry. She made several attempts to swallow, trying to suck some saliva into her mouth, finally making a gagging sound in her attempt to bring some moisture into her dry mouth.

There was no-one else in the bleak waiting room. A soft shriek pierced the air, emanating from the next room.

Annie shuddered and clenched her hands around her handbag, at the same time reaching for the right words in her mind to convince the doctor to help her.

‘Mrs. Himmlar?’ asked the receptionist pleasantly enough in the course of time.

Apparently the shriek was the notification that it was time to be agreeable to the next client. The woman’s glazed eyes gave the impression of a certain degree of boredom with the tedious, never-ending stream of troubled, pregnant women.

‘Yes,’ Annie answered with a feeble smile, trying hard to convince herself that this was just a normal, everyday consultation.

‘Doctor won’t be long. Come this way please.’

She spread her hands out before her like an opera singer’s then swept swiftly out from behind her cluttered desk and along a dim, musty corridor. Pausing and turning theatrically, she showed Annie into a spruce, timber-paneled room with deep, leather-covered chairs, a large mahogany desk and several expensive oil paintings, the luxury of the room in stark contrast to the sterile, cold waiting room.

Annie squinted to try to read the signature on the painting nearest to her. It was something to do while she waited. Should have brought my reading glasses she thought inconsequently. She heard the strains of piped music. Chopin, recalled Annie from her classical music days. This unhappy episode will end to the strains of Chopin.

After what seemed to the patient to be a very long time, when she had reached the nail-biting, lip-chewing stage, the heavy door opened and there he was. Dr. Mengel. Large and friendly looking, he was a bulky man exuding pleasantness. A trustworthy man to all appearances who appeared to be a gentle, soft-natured person. His eyes were bluer than the sky and he wore a small, neatly trimmed mustache, snowy white to match his thatch of hair.

He who must be trusted
,
thought Annie, feeling like a lamb to the slaughter. She eyed him uneasily, still uncertain whether she wanted to go ahead with this plan or not.

Maybe if the child were a boy Conrad would accept it reasonably well. Such a macho man as he adored his son and would hopefully adore another one.

But what if it turned out to be another girl? A quick picture of Conrad’s disappointed face as he viewed the beautiful newborn Sarah, flashed through Annie’s consciousness. How could any father be disappointed in such a lovely healthy child, round and plump, healthy and absolutely perfect?

‘Hello, Mrs. Himmlar. And how are we today?’

He’s speaking to me as if this were a normal day....as if I were a normal person.....as if I had come here to get in ingrown toenail removed....as if he does this every day.....he does....I can’t.

‘Fine, thanks, Doctor,’ she told him with her stomach performing double flips. My stomach’s full of writhing snakes....God, what if I have too be sick right now....right now here in this pristine office....sick.. Oh, God...Dear God.

He eased his large bulk into the huge leather chair behind the desk. He looked at her kindly, inviting her to have confidence in him. He picked up her card and regarded it with much interest.

‘So, here you are all the way from Bergen Street in Belsen, my dear. I see. Uh huh. Quite a drive. And what can I do for you, my dear?’ he inquired genially.