Festival of Fear Read online

  Anka

  ‘That’s all of them?’ asked Grace, as Kasia came down the stairs, carrying a bundled-up blanket in her arms.

  ‘The very last one,’ said Kasia. She lifted the corner of the blanket to reveal a boy of about three years old, with a white face and bright red lips and curly black hair. His eyes kept rolling upward and off to the left, and his chin was glistening with dribble. This was little Andrzej, who was suffering from cerebral palsy and a heart murmur.

  ‘Thank God for that,’ said Grace. ‘Now let’s hope they knock this terrible place down.’

  She took a long look around the hallway: at the faded, olive-green wallpaper and the stringy brown carpet, and the sagging red vinyl couch where visitors were supposed to sit. The windows on either side of the front door were tinted yellow, so that even the air looked as if it were poisoned.

  ‘So many children have suffered here,’ said Kasia. ‘So much misery. So much sadness.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Grace. ‘Let’s get out of here. It’s a long drive to Wrocław.’

  ‘Your husband is coming this evening?’

  ‘He missed his connecting flight to New York, but he’ll be here by tomorrow morning. He’s bringing Daisy with him.’

  ‘Oh! You will be so pleased to see her!’

  Grace smiled, and whispered, ‘Yes.’ It had been over a month since she had last seen Daisy, and she had missed her so much that she had been tempted more than once to give up the whole project and fly back home to Philadelphia.

  But each time she had revisited the twenty-seven children in the Katowice orphanage, she had known that she could never abandon them. Ever since she had first been taken to see them, seven months ago, she had been determined to rescue them.

  As Kasia had said, ‘These children, they are not unhappy. To be unhappy, you have to know what it is like to be happy, and these children have never been happy, not for one single moment, from the day they were born.’

  Last September, as the poplar trees of southern Poland had been turning yellow, Grace had been visiting the industrial city of Katowice to take photographs for a National Geographic feature on ‘Newly Prosperous Poland.’ But on her last evening, at a crowded civic reception at the Hotel Campanile, she had been approached by Kasia Bogucka and Grzegorz Scharf.

  Kasia was anorexically thin and very intense, with cropped blonde hair and high angular cheekbones and startlingly violet eyes. Grzegorz was much more reserved. He wore rimless spectacles and a constant frown, and although he couldn’t have been older than thirty-five, his hair was receding, and he had a middle-aged tiredness about him, as if he had witnessed more misery than he could bear.

  ‘We work for a charity for disabled childs,’ Grzegorz had explained. ‘Both physical disabilities, if you understand, and also mental, in the brains.’

  ‘You must come with us to see the Cienisty Orphanage,’ Kasia had pleaded with her. ‘You must take pictures, so that people will know.’

  Grace had sympathetically shaken her head. ‘I’m sorry. My flight leaves at eleven tomorrow morning. I won’t have the time.’

  ‘Then, please – why don’t you come now?’

  It had been well past nine. Grace had been wearing her red cocktail dress and red stiletto heels, and she had already drunk two and a half glasses of champagne. Outside, the night was black and she could see raindrops sparkling on the hotel windows.

  ‘I am beg you,’ said Grzegorz. ‘These childs, they have no hopes, none at all.’

  Even now, she couldn’t really explain why she had decided to go. But ten minutes later, she had found herself in the back of a Polonez station wagon with no springs, jolting her way along a rutted road toward the south-eastern outskirts of Katowice. Grzegorz had lit a cigarette, and when he had wound down the window to let out the smoke, the rain had come flying into her face.

  After fifteen minutes’ driving, they had reached a scrubby, desolate suburb, with only the illuminated sign of a Statoil gas station for a landmark. Off to the right-hand side of the road there was a tall stand of fir trees. Beyond the fir trees, Grace had been able to make out an overgrown garden, with overturned shopping carts in it, and a large square house, with peeling purple stucco on its walls.

  Grzegorz had driven up to the front of the house, and parked. It had stopped raining now, but water had still been gurgling down the drainpipes. The three of them had climbed the steps to the front door, but even before Kasia had been able to knock, it had been opened by a plump, round-faced woman with a headscarf and a tight checkered overall. Her eyes had looked like two raisins pushed into unbaked dough.

  ‘Ah, Panna Bogucka,’ she had said, as if she hadn’t been entirely pleased to see her.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind, Weronika. I brought a photographer with me.’

  The plump woman had eyed Grace with deep suspicion. ‘She is not going to take any pictures of me? What happens here, this is not my fault. I do my best but I have no nurses and you know how little money they give me.’

  ‘Weronika . . . I just want her to take pictures of the children.’

  Weronika had clucked in disapproval, but had stepped back to allow them inside. Grace had noticed how worn out her shoes were. The hallway had been dimly illuminated by a chandelier with only two of its six bulbs working, and it had been deeply chilly. It was the smell, though, that had affected Grace the most. Boiled turnips, and damp, and urine-soaked mattresses, and something else – some sweetish, nauseating stench, like rotten poultry.

  ‘The Cienisty Orphanage was first opened after the war,’ Kasia had explained. ‘In those days there were so many children who had no parents, and nobody to take care of them. But now they use it for children with anything from cystic fibrosis to cerebral palsy to Down’s syndrome. What do you call it? A garbage dump, for children that nobody wants.’

  ‘Aren’t they given any treatment?’ Grace had asked her.

  Grzegorz had let out a bitter laugh. ‘Treatment? You are meaning therapy? There is nobody even to wash them, and to change their clothes, and to give them foods. Nobody even talks to them. They are forgot, these childs. They are worse than being orphans. They are worse than dead people.’

  As they were talking, a girl of about seven years old had materialized from one of the side rooms, as silent as a memory. She had approached them very cautiously, to stand only three or four feet away, listening. She had been painfully thin, with straight brown hair and huge brown eyes. She had been wearing a black tracksuit that was two sizes too big for her, and soiled red slippers that were almost gray.

  She had been clutching a doll. The doll had a white china head, with a wild shock of white hair, but a strange and beautiful face. Most dolls have a blank, witless stare, but this doll looked both serene and knowing – as if she were alive, but far too shrewd to let anybody know.

  ‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ Grace had asked the little girl. At the same time, she had lifted her Fuji camera off her shoulder, and removed the lens cap. She had understood at once why Kasia had wanted her to take pictures. There could be no more graphic way to explain what these children were suffering. It had all been there, in the little girl’s eyes. The loneliness, the constant hunger, the bewilderment that nobody loved her.

  Weronika had tried to put her arm around the little girl’s shoulders, but the little girl had twisted herself away.

  ‘This is Gabriela. Say “dobry wieczór” to the ladies and the gentleman, Gabriela.’

  Grace had hunkered down in front of Gabriela and reached out her hand. ‘Good evening, Gabriela. How are you?’

  Gabriela had lowered her chin, but had kept on staring at Grace with those enormous dark eyes.

  Grace had taken hold of the doll’s hand, and shaken it. ‘Dobry wieczór, dolly! And what’s your name?’

  Kasia had asked her the same question in Polish. Gabriela had hesitated for a moment, and then she had whispered, ‘Anka.’

  ‘Anka? That’s a nice name. Do you think that Anka
would mind if I took her picture?’

  Again, a long hesitation. Then Gabriela whispered something and Kasia translated. ‘Anka does not like to have her picture taken.’

  ‘Oh, really? I thought all pretty little girls like to have their picture taken.’

  Gabriela had looked around, as if she had been worried that somebody might overhear what she was whispering. ‘My grandmother gave her to me, before she died. My grandmother said that I must keep her close to me, day and night, and especially at night. And I must never let anybody else hold her, and I must never let anybody take her picture.’

  Grace had stood up, and laid her hand gently on top of Gabriela’s head. ‘OK, have it your way. I just thought Anka might enjoy being famous.’

  Kasia had said, ‘Come and take a look at the other children. They will give you plenty of photo opportunities, I promise you.’

  Grace had waved goodbye to Gabriela and Anka, and Gabriela had waved Anka’s hand in reply.

  ‘What an odd little girl,’ Grace had remarked, as they followed Weronika and Grzegorz down a long, poorly lit corridor.

  ‘She has delusions,’ Kasia had told her. ‘The last doctor who came here, he diagnosed her as schizophrenic.’

  ‘What kind of delusions?’

  ‘She doesn’t believe that she belongs here at all. She believes that she lives on a farm someplace in the country, with her father and mother and her two younger sisters. She says that her father grows turnips, and keeps pigs. She sits in her room most of the day, talking to her sisters, even though she doesn’t have any, and never did, so far as anybody can make out.’

  ‘And Anka?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe she did get her from her grandmother. Who knows? But what a strange doll, isn’t she? I never saw another doll like that. Beautiful, but strange.’

  Kasia had taken her upstairs and led her from room to room. Every room was crowded with cribs, and in each crib there was a thin, hopeless child. Some of them sat staring at nothing at all. Others slept, clinging to their blankets. Many of them rocked endlessly from side to side, or banged their heads against the bars of their cribs. One little boy kept his face covered with his hands, and endlessly grizzled.

  Every room was cold, with rough brown blankets pinned up at the windows instead of curtains, so it was always dark.

  Grace had tried to stay as detached as she could. She had taken scores of photographs, at least ten of every child. When she had finished, she had followed Kasia back down to the hallway, where Grzegorz and Weronika had been waiting for them.

  ‘Well?’ Grzegorz had asked her.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Grace had told him. She had been very close to tears.

  ‘You will show these to your magazine, yes?’

  ‘I’ll do more than that, Grzegorz, I promise you. I’ll get these children out of here.’

  As she had been about to leave, Gabriela had approached her and tugged repeatedly at her sleeve.

  ‘What is it, Gabriela?’

  ‘She wants you to take her with you,’ Kasia had translated.

  ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. Not this time. But I promise you that I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘She says that the witch is coming to get her.’

  ‘The witch?’

  ‘Baba Jaga. She is a witch from Polish legend who is supposed to eat children.’

  Grace had taken hold of both of Gabriela’s hands, and said, ‘There’s no witch, Gabriela. Nobody’s going to hurt you.’

  But Gabriela had held up her doll, and said, ‘Anka keeps me safe from Baba Jaga. Every time I have a nightmare about Baba Jaga, I kiss Anka and Anka swallows it up. But now she is full up with so many nightmares and she cannot swallow any more. Next time Baba Jaga comes, Anka will not be able to save me. Baba Jaga will eat me, and spit out my bones, and stick my head on a pole.’

  Once this had been translated by Kasia, Grace had shaken her head and smiled. ‘Gabriela – nothing like that is going to happen to you. I have to talk to some people in Warsaw about you, and make some arrangements. Do you understand? But when I’ve done that, I’ll come back and take you away from this place.’

  Gabriela had looked up at her with pleading eyes. ‘Please, you must take me now. I do not want to be eaten.’

  Grace had turned to Kasia. ‘Can’t we take her? She’s so upset.’

  ‘It is absolutely not possible, I am afraid,’ Kasia had told her. ‘Not tonight, anyhow. We have to ask for the proper permissions from the Public Adoption Commission. They are always helpful with healthy children, but with sick children like these – well, there can be very difficult bureaucratic problems. Hundreds of forms to fill out.’

  ‘OK,’ Grace had said, with reluctance. But then she had wagged her finger at Gabriela’s doll, and said, in a stern voice, ‘Anka! You listen to me, Anka, and you listen to me good! You keep Gabriela safe for just a little while longer, OK? Make sure you find the room in your tummy to swallow a few more of her nightmares. We can’t have Baba Jaga eating her up, can we?’

  Gabriela had said nothing more, but had held Anka close to her, and stared at Grace with such desperation that Grace had said, ‘Come on, Kasia. Let’s go. This is all too painful.’

  As they had left the Cienisty Orphanage, Grace had seen lightning flickering on the horizon, over the factory chimneys of Katowice, and heard the rumbling of distant thunder, like a wartime barrage. She had looked back, and seen Gabriela standing in the open doorway, still staring at her.

  Kasia had been right. If the children at the Cienisty Orphanage had been healthy, there would have been no problem at all in finding homes for them. An American couple could adopt a healthy Polish child for less than $7,500. But who was going to take on a ten-year-old girl with Down’s syndrome; or a seven-year-old boy with violent epilepsy; or any child with multiple sclerosis?

  After more than three months of pleading and cajoling, however, Kasia had found places for all twenty-seven children – with private families, or children’s homes, or hospices. It was her tragic photographs that touched most people’s hearts. They had been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Newsweek and shown on CBS and NBC nightly news.

  She had been able to call Kasia at the end of February to tell her that she was flying over to Poland again, and this time she was going to take the children back to Philadelphia, all twenty-seven of them.

  Kasia’s voice had sounded very distant. ‘I am so sorry, Grace. Now we have only twenty-six.’

  ‘What’s happened? Don’t tell me that little Andrzej’s heart gave out?’

  ‘No . . . it was Gabriela. She disappeared from Cienisty three days ago. We thought that she had run away. She was always talking about going back to find her father and her mother and her two sisters. But early this morning some people were picking mushrooms in the woods nearby, and they found her body.’

  ‘Oh, no! Not Gabriela.’

  ‘The police don’t yet know how she died. They say that her body was savaged by animals, dogs maybe, so it is difficult for them to be sure.’

  Grace had slowly sat down. Through her kitchen windows, she had seen Daisy building a snowman, with two lumps of barbecue charcoal for eyes and a carrot for a nose and one of Jack’s old, khaki fishing hats on top of his head. Daisy was only a little older than Gabriela, but she was rosy cheeked and well fed, with shiny blonde hair. Watching her running around their snowy back yard, in her red woolly hat and her fur-collared coat, Grace had thought of the last time she had seen Gabriela, standing in the front porch of the orphanage in her shabby black tracksuit, with Anka clutched tight in her arms.

  ‘Please, you must take me now. I do not want to be eaten.’

  Kasia carried little Andrzej out to the waiting bus. It was sunny outside, but very cold, and exhaust fumes floated past the window like departing ghosts. Grace was about to follow her when she thought she heard a noise in one of the bedrooms upstairs – a mewling sound, like a cat, or a very young child in distress.
r />   She went to the bottom of the stairs, and called, ‘Hallo? Is anybody there?’

  She waited, but there was no reply. The children couldn’t understand her. Many of them wouldn’t have been able to understand her even if she had spoken to them in fluent Polish. But they always spoke to her, and smiled, and touched her, and called her ‘Gracja’.

  She had nearly reached the front door, however, when she heard the mewling noise again.

  ‘Hallo?’ she repeated. There was still no reply, so she climbed the stairs to the second-floor landing. She had torn down all of the blankets from the bedroom windows, so that sunlight fell across the corridor in a series of shining triangles. She walked slowly past all of the open doors, looking into every one. All she saw was empty cribs and filthy mattresses, and white plastic potties.

  She was just about to go back downstairs when the mewling was repeated. It sounded as if it was coming from the bathroom, right at the very end of the corridor. She opened the bathroom door and said, ‘Hallo? Is anybody still here?’

  The bathroom was cold and silent, with a huge bathtub that was stained with rust, and old-fashioned faucets with strings of black slime hanging from them. In the far corner, next to the grimy washbasin, there was a dilapidated laundry basket, with a broken lid.

  Wrinkling up her nose, Grace picked up the lid and looked inside. There, lying on a tangled heap of soiled pajamas, was Anka, Gabriela’s doll, with her wild white hair.

  ‘Anka!’ said Grace, lifting her out and straightening her arms and legs. ‘Who left you in there, you poor little creature!’

  Anka stared back at her, as serene and knowing as ever. The sight of her brought back such a vivid picture of Gabriela that Grace felt her eyes fill up with tears. If only she had listened, when Gabriela had begged her to take her away. Who cared about bureaucracy, and form filling, when the life of a seven-year-old girl was at risk?

  ‘Come on, Anka,’ she said. ‘At least I can save you.’

  She carried Anka downstairs. Then she walked out of the front door and closed it behind her. It refused to shut completely, so she opened it again and slammed it hard.