Free Women in the Wall by Julia O'Faolain

, etc. and, besides, that screaming reminded one harrowingly of the human condition and the fact that we are all dust. I had been embracing dust, lavishing sentiment on it. I wanted to get home and wash.
    I had just managed to find my clothes—the girl had undressed me, throwing them in various directions—and was on the point of leaving when she came back, pushing the curtain aside and caught me by the arm.
    “She’s dying. Do you know anything of medicine? You’re a student, you must! Come.”
    “I’m a …” I wanted to say “a student of theology”, but the ridiculousness, the blasphemy of such an avowal in such a place restrained me. “I know nothing about medicine. Let me go.”
    But she took no notice. “Well, someone has to help,” she said. “The midwife’s drunk. Out cold and the physician won’t come. Oh holy angels, help her! She’s having an abortion but it’s gone wrong!”
    I slapped the girl’s mouth. “Blasphemy!” I shouted.
    The girl touched her mouth in surprise. It was bruised. She was, I noticed now, only about fourteen: a child.
    “You’re asking the holy angels”, I explained, for she clearly didn’t understand, “to help you commit a sin.”
    But as well tell that to a calf or a puppy dog. The girl crouched and began to embrace my knees. She was whimpering . I pulled her up. “Please,” she was begging hysterically , “ please help my sister.” She had managed to pull me down a corridor and now pointed to a curtain like the one in front of her own cubicle. The screams were coming from behind it. I pulled it aside and was faced by the open mouth of a woman’s matrix. For a moment I had the delusion that it was screaming at me. Then I saw the rest of the body and its head. The face was pale, straining and wet with sweat. The mouth was gagged but the gag had come loose and the screams were coming past it with the regularity of a baby’s. A pot of herbs were placed on a brazier and the steam from it had filled the room and begun to condense and rain down in drops from the ceiling. The smell of mallows and fenugreek was overpowering . The girl’s ankles had been strapped to her thighs and a stout cloth passed across her chest and under her arms to bind her firmly to the bed. Bundles of faggots had been placed under the bedposts.
    The first girl—I had not actually learned her name—said “The abortion’s gone wrong. There’s an impediment. It won’t come. Help me shake her. Take hold of the foot of the bed and I’ll take the top.”
    She bent down and actually managed to raise the bed on which her sister was strapped. She was strong. Probably when she wasn’t working as a whore she had to do heavy jobs. Most of those girls are slaves. I stared at her.
    “Help me!”
    “Are you sure this is the thing to do?”
    “Yes. They gave her sneezing powders and that didn’t work. Then they tried fomentations. Then they shook the bed. Now we must try again.”
    Mechanically—my mind was stunned—I did what she said. We raised the bed several times and brought it down sharply. The faggots broke its fall. We did this about eight or ten times. Suddenly the sick girl gave a nerve-shattering shriek and fell silent. Her sister ran round the bed. I didn’t look at what she was doing. She was in my line of vision and anyway I was suffering from nausea. I was suffering too from shame for, after all, what I had been doing not ten minutes before might well, in a few months’ time, produce just such another scene as this one. I began to imagine I had been responsible for what was happening to Celia. The two girls fused in my mind and when the girl—my girl—stepped away from the bed holding a basin full of blood I fainted.
    When I recovered I was in another room. A man was holding some sort of acid to my nose. He turned out to be the brothel-keeper, a Greek and very anxious that I should not report what I had seen. It was not, he assured me, illegal—a lie—but would not be