‘Irene will be safe with me,’ I told her. ‘Sit in the foyer, and when I come out we’ll talk about what I’ve learned. And bring me strong coffee, as well,’ I added, since the efficient heating in the house was making me drowsy. ‘When it’s ready, have your servant knock on the door and leave it on the floor. I’ll come out and get it.’
Mrs Lanik looked back as she crept down the stairs. She gripped the railing hard; I realized she was close to fainting.
I called to Irene through the door in German again, telling her that we were alone. After a few seconds, I heard the latch click. A blue eye peeked in the doorway.
Irene was a willowy girl, and nearly six feet tall, though she had the hunched posture of someone who had been taunted for years about her height.
After opening the door, she marched to the back of the room, anxious to put some distance between us. She had her mother’s short blonde hair and mesmerizing eyes. Her earrings were tiny silver bells.
She smiled at me fleetingly, standing between the head of her bed and a leather armchair positioned for a view out the window, then turned to the side abruptly, as though having just remembered to withhold her feelings. The oblique light from the afternoon sun made crescents of deep shadow under her eyes. The way she held her hands knitted tightly together seemed a bad sign.
She wore modest, impeccably pressed clothes – a silvery-green woollen skirt and an embroidered Ukrainian blouse. I had the sensation that they weren’t what she liked – that she dressed this way to please someone else.
Her shelves were neatly packed with books and stuffed animals. A Picasso print of a sad-faced harlequin was framed behind her bed.
‘Thank you for coming,’ she told me in an unsure voice. She spoke in German.
‘Thank you for letting me in,’ I replied.
She grabbed one of the blue silk cushions from her bed, took off her furry slippers and sat down in the armchair, folding her bare feet girlishly underneath her bottom. Placing the cushion over her lap, she leaned towards the window and gazed at the lawn below as if concerned about what might be taking place down there in her absence. Whether on purpose or not, she gave me a good look at the bald spot at the crown of her head where she must have been pulling out her hair.
A patient’s initial gestures often indicate how forthcoming they intend to be, and Irene had chosen to show me a symptom of her misery before even saying a word.
I sat down on her bed. Though the girl didn’t speak or look at me, I was at ease; this silence between myself and a patient had been a kind of home to me for many years.
‘Now, Irene, I’m just going to ask you some questions. Is that all right?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
I didn’t have much time, so I tried a shortcut that had worked for me in the past. ‘If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?’ I asked. I was hoping she’d accidentally reveal what was pursuing her by telling me her fantasy of escape.
‘You mean, where in Warsaw?’ she questioned.
She was afraid to dream too ambitiously, which likely meant she felt powerless to flee her predicament. ‘No, anywhere,’ I replied. ‘London, Rome, Cairo…’ Finding my professional voice again gave me confidence.
‘I’d go to France,’ she replied. ‘To Nantes.’
I heard Swiss vowels in her reply, though she was speaking High German.
‘Why Nantes?’ I asked.
‘Because my grandparents live there.’
‘Would you feel safer with them?’ I questioned.
Grimacing, she moved her cushion over her chest and clutched it tightly.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
Straining for breath, looking at me directly for the first time, she replied, ‘There’s a constriction in my chest that comes and goes. And when it’s bad, it’s like a big rough hand is pressing down on me. Sometimes I think I’m going to suffocate.’ She fixed me with a desolate look. ‘Dr Cohen, it’s this house… it terrifies me.’
When tears came, she faced the window again, afraid to see my reaction.
‘What about this house scares you?’ I asked.
For a long time, she made no reply. I took out my pipe and examined the bowl to keep from looking at her and making her more uncomfortable.
‘I often think someone is hiding underneath my bed at night,’ she finally told me. ‘Or in my wardrobe, or in the dining room – a person who wants to kill me. I check everywhere I can think of, but it’s too big a house to be sure I haven’t missed something – or that the killer isn’t one step ahead of me.’
A knock on the door startled me. ‘Your coffee, Dr Cohen,’ a woman called out.
I asked Irene to excuse me a moment. Opening the door a crack, I saw an elderly maidservant walking away. On the floor was a wooden tray on which she’d placed an elegant porcelain coffee pot – white, with a black handle – and a matching cup. I carried the tray inside and put it on the girl’s bed.
