Free The Dumb House by John Burnside Page B

more to myself than to him.
    He made a soft snuffling noise, and pointed at the midden on the floor. He looked like an animal. Once again, I was struck by the thought that he didn’t belong in a house. He should have been kept out of doors, digging for grubs and worms in the shrubbery, sucking the matter out of birds’ eggs. At the very least, he should have been kept in a pen, in one of those wire runs for rabbits and chickens.
    I watched, as he lowered his face and began lapping up orange juice from a puddle on the lino, and it occurred to me, then, that the boy was acting: he knew exactly what he was doing, and he was doing it for effect, just as his mother knew what she was doing, when she sat naked in her bedroom, swigging gin and waiting for me to arrive. Now, all of a sudden, I was tired of these games. I was tired of the child, and of his comatose mother; I was tired of the ornaments, the silver frames, the floral dressing gown. I was tired of the whole affair. I turned to go andthat was when I saw the knife, the smallest glimmer at the edge of my vision, an apparition of silver through the litter of broken eggs and bloodstains. The boy almost caught me with it, slashing at my leg with a sudden, neat swing of the arm. I managed to twist away and turn, as he came again, reaching out, snatching his hand in mid-air, more by luck than by judgement. For a moment I looked at his face in surprise; I expected a signal of some kind, a flicker at least of anger or hatred, but there was nothing. I held on to his hand as I twisted the knife loose and let it fall. The child’s face was empty: there was nothing there, no fear in his eyes, just as there had been no anger. He simply gazed at me, coldly, and I knew his attempt to cut me had been a deliberate, calculated act. I held him tightly, locking his forearm in my fist.
    I remembered all the times he had stood watching me, while I talked to him, or offered him sweets; watching me, like some animal from the woods, puzzled by the very fact of my existence. I realised then that he had been watching me all along: even when I hadn’t seen him, he’d been there. He must have felt betrayed when he’d seen his mother pull me down on to the sofa, when he’d seen us disappear into her room. He must have listened to her little cries and whimpers and wondered what I was doing to her, and now he was trying to take his revenge. He hadn’t lost his head for a moment; he had worked out a plan of sorts and set a trap for me. I smiled.
    â€˜You’re quite clever, really,’ I said. ‘You’re not as stupid as you pretend.’
    He watched me. I think I saw a flicker of contempt then, as if he had guessed what I was going to do before I even knew myself. If he had, he still wasn’t afraid: he kept his eyes fixed on my face as I took his thumb in my left hand and, with an effort I found quite exhilarating, twisted it back and felt it snap.
    His face showed the pain, but he made no sound. He didn’t cry out, he didn’t even struggle, he only whimpered a little, towards the end, as I broke each finger in turn, gripping his arm tightly and holding him up as he began to slump, his face white as death, his eyes glazed, his legs giving way beneath him, as if he were suffering from vertigo. When I had finished I let him fall, and he lay still in the puddles of orange juice and egg yolk. I believe he must have fainted. I stood over him, listening: there was no sound from upstairs, no sound except his breathing. For a moment I was dizzy with the sheer immediacy of it all – the sweet-sickly smell, the boy’s gold hair, his broken fingers, the thought of the woman upstairs, still sleeping, warm and damp and vulnerable. The thought passed through my head that I might go back up and finish what I had begun, but I pulled myself together and left, slipping out the back way as always, moving invisibly through the garden and out into the gathering