The White Body of Evening by A L McCann Read Free Book Online

wound.
    “Sieh doch selbst!”
Anna said to Paul, pointing to a picture book on her lap.
    Albert stumbled towards her, clutching his side. She heard the knife fall to the ground as she looked up at his white face and at his shirt wet with blood. For a moment she saw nothing and then, almost choking on her own breath, caught him as he fell into her.
    “
Was hast du gemacht? Was hast du gemacht?”
she screamed, looking at his blood on her bare arms, as he sunk onto the floor beside the child.
    A moment later she pulled herself together and ran next door, telling herself to say it calmly in English so that they’d understand that her husband had tried to kill himself. For the second time in his life Jack McDermott ran the two blocks to Dr Winton’s, returning in a hansom, while a distraught Anna knelt over her husband and Sarah hurried Paul into his bedroom.
    When Albert saw Dr Winton appear above him he almost laughed out loud. He was bleeding steadily, but of course he’d never meant to kill himself. He still saw everything as lucidly as he had at the moment of his decision, but now feared that somehow the sinister presence of the doctor would bring him undone. He began to weaken and feared that he really might bleed to death. The doctor was ready to usher him away. His teeth glistened like fangs under his fine, auburn moustache, reminding Albert of a cat or a rodent or some dreadful hybrid of the two – a hairy, carnivorous scavenger. Finally he shut his eyes.
    Anna’s fears, for a moment, reflected those of her husband. As Jack and the doctor carried Albert into the carriage, Anna watched Dr Winton uneasily. If Albert should die, she thought, that man will come for me. She dared herself to think it, only to smother the thought the instant it had formed. She left Sarah looking after the baby and got into the cab.
    “I don’t think you need fear, Anna,” the doctor said as the carriage jolted into motion. “Your husband is bleeding very slowly and the wound is not a deep one. When he gets to the hospital he’ll be fine.”
    He patted her arm. She was too exhausted to refuse his sympathy, concentrating her attention on her husband, feeling herself go blank with the shock of his pale face, the blood, the horrible implications of his act.
    She held Albert’s hand as she watched the houses flash by. The carriage was moving rapidly. Its chaotic motion made her feel ill. If he dies, she thought, she’d be to blame. She had forced him to marry her, she told herself. Her distance, the unconscious wish to be free – but she stopped herself. It was too horrible. She wanted to love him. She knew that she wanted to love him.
    Albert was convalescing on the couch within a few days. The wound, as Dr Winton had said, was not a serious one. Albert’s mental fragility, however, was another matter. A doctor at the Homoeopathic Hospital recommended that he see someone at Yarra Bend, someone with experience in the treatment of hysterics and neurasthenics. Anna and Robert, both harbouring an instinctive fear of mental illness, insisted that he’d be all right at home for the time being, but nevertheless agreed they should consult an expert.
    Anna, deep down, doubted Robert’s private insistence that he’d be fine under their supervision, but she was also sufficiently convinced that, because she was partly to blame for what had happened, she could also restore her husband to health simply by being more willing to meet the demands of their marriage. She knew now that she had entertained a kind of distance from the whole thing. She was barely aware of it until the sight of her husband bleeding on the floor tore the scales from her eyes and she stared into the giddy emptiness of their relationship.
    “What have I done, Albert?” she asked him as they sat on the couch together.
    “Nothing, Anna,” he said in an apathetic manner that, far from consoling her, suggested that he didn’t have the energy to implicate her in his