The Shadow - Part 2

By Zdravka Evtimova

After I came back to work, Antonia asked me, "Sit down in your chair, please. Now I’ll read the letter that Andrey has written you."

"Give it to me," I said. "I can read it myself." I knew she wouldn’t accept my suggestion. In ninety-five percent of the cases Antonia did what she had made up her mind to do. As far as the other five percent were concerned, my requests were granted only if I let her touch the shadow of my hands. Then the serene expression on her face resembled a patient under anesthesia.

"I’ll read the letter for you," she said. "You can lie back in your chair if you want. Now listen," Antonia started, her tone dry and even. "My dearest Sophie, Don’t believe them when they tell you that the peptidine they cram down my throat can suppress my feelings for you. If you are not with me, my bones hurt. My hands turn into burning firewood when you are gone. Perhaps I shouldn’t drink peptidine any more. You simply stay with me. Then I am healthy. I know I’m healthy when you are in my room. Let me live with you. I’ll cook for you, I’ll sleep on the floor by your bed and we’ll make love when you want. It will be enough for me that you and I walk under the same clouds, Sophie."

The thought crossed my mind that something was wrong.

"Andrey calls me Sophia," I muttered under my breath. "Antonia, you call me Sophie."

"Would you mind not interrupting me all the time?" she said in an icy tone of voice. I knew it made the inmates freeze in their tracks, even though we had not yet established some of the diagnoses.

"Andrey didn’t write that letter. You did, Antonia," I said. Nobody but me in the clinic dared utter a word when Antonia spoke like that.

"You are wrong," she said looking me in the eye. "Andrey wrote the letter, but I dictated to him. Listen, Sophie. You make me calm down. I know I have great potential as a scholar. I know my recent research has won high praise. So what? I just love it when you arrange my books, my pens…They become more valuable to me after you touch them. Sophie, I want you to know that I have dedicated each one of my scientific awards to you. I am unable to think if you are not…"

"Stop it! I kept putting off telling you. I’m getting married next week. You know Ivan."

It would be difficult for me to describe her reaction. Her hands hit the desk, her eyes intent on me, her face ashen and wet with sweat. Antonia did not speak and that was the most horrible thing. I knew her silences. They turned the whole clinic into a pyre and the light of the flames was an avalanche that smothered you.

"Listen to what Andrey has written to you!" This time her voice was not a grave prepared for her silence. Her voice was the death.

"Antonia, are you okay?" I asked, but she went on, calm and reserved.

"Listen to what Andrey wrote. Every word of it is for you." Her quiet voice was a path along which a man followed me. I was sure that man had a knife in his hand.

"Let’s do lunch. I’ll buy you a coke," I said. "You can touch my shadow again... I know it calms your nerves."

"Do you really think a human being can live with someone’s shadow? You’ve always been dull, Sophie. It’s a pity you have beautiful hair. Now you’ll marry your shadow off to that scumbag. His name was Ivan, wasn’t it? Ivan, of course… Listen to Andrey’s letter," she paused and took a deep breath. "Dearest Sophie, I’m afraid you know the symptoms of my disease. I feel like killing people when you are not around. When you are away nobody else matters to me. The others don’t deserve the air they breathe, do you understand me? Sophie, I feel sick with jealousy… what an ugly word, the ugliest one I know – ‘jealousy’. Unfortunately, my blood is its home. I’ll kill you, Sophie. I seem to have gone stark raving mad. Everyone knows that. I am crazy; it’s written down in my patient’s chart. That’s the meaning of the long Latin phrases which say that it is impossible for me to live without you. I’ll kill you and nobody will convict me of murder because I’m a lunatic. I’ll live on hoping they’ll give me one of your shirts – the one you wore during the last day of your life. How can you cure other people, Sophie, and see me suffering? I’ve made up my mind to kill you, Sophie. I’ll let you know when I’ll do it."

I saw Antonia grab a syringe. Peptidine. Peptidine! I’d be dead and cold within twenty-five minutes if she gave me the injection. According to Antonia’s experiments, death caused by peptidine was like a sled going down a snow covered sunlit hill. She approached me.

"Antonia! It’s me! What are you doing? Okay. Okay. I won’t marry Ivan! Okay. I’ll stay with you."

"You know very well Andrey doesn’t call you Sophie, don’t you. He calls you Sophia."

She edged the syringe closer to my face.

"Antonia, please!" I blurted out. "You know what you mean to me. I wouldn’t have graduated from the university without your help… I…I can take care of the sick… You take pictures of my face… Andrey tears them into pieces. You give my portrait to the inmates… They rip my face up. Antonia, no! Don’t! I love you!"

The syringe brushed against my cheek, crept down my forehead and stopped on my arm. I saw her face: ashen and wet with sweat. Her voice, heavy with death, cut through the silence. “Don’t lie to me!” She snatched the syringe and stuck it into my shadow, the shadow of my hand she had touched so many times.

"Your shadow will die,” she said. “It’s a pity, I loved it so much. You don’t have a shadow any more, Sophie. It’s dead. Give me your hand. Now!"

She touched me. It was the first time she had done that. Her fingers were very cold and smelled of peptidine.

“I’m so happy you don’t have a shadow any more,” she whispered. “How warm you are. How soft… ”

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