sneaked in a few beers. Because, as he explained with a glint in his eye, he was a bit of a rebel. I assured him that he most certainly was.
After a week I was released, and Gregor booked off an hour to drive me home. When we arrived at the fortress, all was silent. Normally this would mean nothing-maybe Marianne Engel was out for a walk, or preparing on a fresh slab of stone-but I had a bad feeling. I didn’t even bother to check her bedroom; I headed directly for the basement, with Gregor following.
Even though I had lived with her for more than a year, I was not prepared for what I saw. First, there were three newly completed statues: numbers 8, 7, and 6. Given that I’d been gone only a week and it usually took her more than seventy hours to complete a single piece, the arithmetic suggested that she’d been working not only without a break but also with greater fervor than usual. This I could hardly believe.
Marianne Engel was not working or asleep on new stone. She was sitting in the middle of her three new grotesques, covered entirely in stone dust that emphasized her every emaciated bone. She had been skinny when I’d left for the hospital, but she was much thinner now. She must have eaten nothing since I’d last seen her. Her chest heaved a wretched little victory with each breath, and her skin, which was so bright when she was healthy, looked as though it had been rubbed over with old paraffin. Her face was a skeletal mirror of what it once had been, with such large dark circles under her eyes that they gave the impression of gaping sockets.
A crimson gloss of blood coated the medieval cross tattooed on her stomach, oozing from a series of deep gashes on her chest. Her right hand lay open on the floor, cradling a gory chisel in fingers that looked like an old lady’s, ready to snap under even the slightest pressure.
Across the flaming heart on her left breast, Marianne Engel had carved my name deeply into her flesh.
I have no doubt that Gregor Hnatiuk is a good doctor but his practice mostly involves speaking to people, trying to figure out their problems, maybe prescribing a few pills. He was not prepared to see what Marianne Engel had done. He didn’t seem to be able to accept the scene as real, perhaps in part because she had long since stopped being a patient and had grown into a fond acquaintance. He was unable to distance himself and kept blinking as if trying to reset the wayward gyroscope of his mind, surprised each time he opened his eyes to find that nothing had changed.
Marianne Engel turned her euphoric face towards me, her eyes filled with tears not of pain but of joy. Her face was filled with vacant wonder, as if she had seen something far too marvelous for mere words to describe.
“God sent an immense fire into my soul.” Her voice quivered with delight, as the blood continued to flow out of my name on her breast. “My heart was utterly inflamed with love, and I hardly noticed the pain.”
Despite his initial shock, Gregor recovered first and ran upstairs to phone emergency services. Meanwhile, I tried to convince Marianne Engel to rest calmly, but she just kept talking. “That which abides the fire shall become clean.” She stared at me wildly, as if waiting for agreement. “The water of separation shall purify.”
Gregor returned, bringing with him a blanket to cover her shaking body. As we draped it over her, he tried to reassure her. “The paramedics are coming, and everything will be okay. You just need to relax.”
Marianne Engel paid no attention to the words. “The Lord is a consuming fire.” Ten minutes later, when the EMS team arrived and Gregor led them into the basement, she was still going on. “That which can’t abide the fire shall go through water.”
The female paramedic asked whether there was a history of substance abuse and I assured her there was not; she nodded, but I’m not sure she believed me.
“The skies sent out a sound,” Marianne Engel was saying, as they knelt beside her and checked her vitals, and it was as though she were trying to convince them. “The arrows went abroad.”
The paramedics strapped Marianne Engel to a board and carried her out. I was allowed to ride in the ambulance with her, while Gregor followed in his car. I held her hand as they slipped an IV tube into her arm. “When the rock was opened,” she slurred, “the waters gushed out.”
In a few moments, the drugs put her to sleep. As soon as she was under, I gave a more detailed medical history-as much as I knew, in any case-so the paramedics could radio ahead to the hospital. When we arrived at the emergency entrance, two doctors and the on-duty psychiatrist met us and Gregor took over the task of admitting her. I continued to hold her unconscious hand and talk soothingly, saying all the things I wanted to tell her, but still couldn’t, when she was conscious.
When I finally returned to the veterinary clinic, Cheryl sat me down. “Do you know what pancreatic insufficiency is?”
I said I did, if it was anything like pancreatitis in humans.
“Dogs can get pancreatitis as well, but that’s not quite what Bougatsa has. Pancreatic insufficiency is common in large breeds like German Shepherds, and symptoms come on quickly, which sounds like what happened here. To put it simply, he can’t break down his food into smaller molecules because he lacks the proper enzymes. As a result, he’s not absorbing any nutrients, and that’s why he’s hungry all the time. He’s been eating as much as he can, even plants, to make up for the lack, but no matter how much he eats, he isn’t getting the nutritional benefits. It’s kind of like he’s been starving to death.”
“But that’s the bad news,” she said. “The good news is you caught it quickly and it’s completely treatable, controllable with diet. He’ll be his old self in no time.”
She took me to the kennel and I would almost swear there was a sparkle in Bougatsa’s eyes when he saw me coming. But it was probably only because Cheryl had given him some food he could finally digest.
The doctors told Marianne Engel they were only treating her for exhaustion, but the truth was that they were also monitoring her mental state closely. Gregor came by her hospital room often, but his visits were driven by friendship rather than professional interest. Because of his personal involvement, a different psychiatrist was handling the case.
I came every day and the doctors even let me bring Bougatsa by the hospital once. Canine therapy, they called it. Marianne Engel came out to sit on a bench in the sunlight and pet him a bit. She seemed shocked by his thinness, as if she didn’t remember that his condition had developed in front of her eyes. The dog, for his part, forgave her completely for deserting him when he needed her most. Dogs are stupid like that.
When she was released at the end of the week, it was against the strongest recommendations of her doctor. I was hesitant, as well: of all the damage she’d inflicted on herself, most had come through simple disregard for her own body. Carving my name into her chest was a willful and horrifying act, which made me feel I was no longer simply neglectful of her but also a cause of her pain. As she was physically recovered, the hospital couldn’t keep her without a court order, however, and no matter what I said I couldn’t talk her into a few more days. When we returned home, Bougatsa ran all around the house, knocking over the plant that a few weeks earlier he’d been eating.
Marianne Engel had been home only two days before she started peeling off her clothing to prepare for her next stone. When she came to the bandages wrapped around her chest, she removed those as well. “I can’t communicate with these on.”
I was not going to let her do this again. I had already watched her collapse twice. I would not fail her a third time; I would not allow my name to become infected on her flesh.
What followed could not properly be called an argument, because arguments involve an exchange of opposing ideas. This was all me. I spoke softly; I yelled; I cajoled; I threatened; I pleaded; I demanded; I spoke with logic; I spoke with emotion; I spoke word after word after word after word that she completely ignored. She gave the same answer repeatedly: “Only five statues left. I’ll rest when they’re finished.”
As I could not talk her out of it-logic is useless in the face of obsession-I would have to find another way to
