“You should have taught me how to swim,” I said.
My father took off all his clothes, except his underpants, then put his boots back on and told me to do the same. He crouched down beside me and looked me straight in the eyes and made me promise I would sit where I was and not move so he could see me at all times. That was the only reference he ever made to the fish incident. He had behaved so normally afterward that, later, I wasn’t sure it had ever happened.
My father stuffed our clothes into his rucksack and held it tight to his chest. He walked into the water without noticing the cold; there was just a slight shudder when it came above his thighs. Every now and again he glanced back to check that I still sat where he had left me. I rested my head on my knees and watched him. The water came up to the top of his chest and he moved the rucksack higher, holding it above his head, feeling his way across the rocks. My father staggered, and when the water came up to his chin he had to tilt his head toward the sky. He forced his way forward until more of his torso emerged, until he reached the far bank and dropped the rucksack onto the stony edge. He came back toward me and did the same thing with my rucksack. Finally, back on my side of the river, my father took the branch he had found, held it horizontally, and tied me to it, looping a length of rope once around my waist and around my wrists. He stood beside me and we both gripped the branch, as if we were holding on to the front bar on a fairground waltzer.
If we make it across, we can go home, I said to myself.
Side by side we stepped into the water.
“When it gets too deep for you to stand, keep holding on with your hands and let your legs float out behind. I’ll be beside you, remember. It will be fine,” said my father. It sounded as though he was reassuring himself as much as me. I didn’t like the way the weed women wrapped themselves around my ankles. We were stepping into the unknown; anything could have been under there with them. The water was colder than it had been the day before, perhaps because of the oppressive heat in the air, or maybe because of the swirling speed of it. And it was noisier. Once we were past the vegetation, stones prodded under my shoes, and the shifting, restless riverbed tried to trick me and tip me over.
“That’s a good girl. Nice and careful. We’ll be at the other side in no time,” he said, and I wanted to believe him.
Icy inch by icy inch we crept in; the water chilled my knees, a thousand bees stung my thighs, and a cold deep pain rose between my legs, until I was waist-deep, and then chest-deep, standing on the tips of my toes. The river treated us like boulders, its flow buffeting us, splitting and regrouping beyond our bodies.
In the middle, the noise of rushing and churning was overwhelming. My father shouted, “Keep close to me! Keep close!” and something else, but the water snatched away every other word and spat them out far downstream. I could still touch rocks with my shoes, but the river, greater and stronger than me, picked my feet up and took them away. They didn’t float behind me like my father had said they would; instead they were pulled and jerked as if they were a rag doll’s. I gripped the branch so tightly I could see white knuckles. I was lifted off my feet and the stick came up to meet my face, or my face went down to the water. It filled my mouth and throat. I could taste it at the back of my nose, dirty and coarse. I tried to cry out, to let my father know, but more water choked me. My legs twisted. My father’s eyes were wide and his mouth was open, but I was already under the surface when he shouted for me to hold on.
The current lifted my legs forward. My wrists were still bound, tied to the branch. My hair became the weed, dark strands whipping across my face, dragging with the flow. I went under and my father let go of his end of the branch. For an instant, his hands were on my waist, but I slipped away and it was just me and the angry river. It took me and played with me, turning me over and over, around the rocks and so fast that time slowed, and under the surface all was quiet. I could see whirlpools down there, where the disturbed liquid lifted and shifted the pebbles on the bottom and each time they moved a spurt of silt moved with them. I danced with them, was held by them, let go and became the water, flowing with it.
My father shouted, a small voice from far away. “Peggy! Punzel!”
I opened my eyes to the roaring water, slamming me between rocks. My hand was full of pain, trapped between the branch and stone. And my father was holding me around my waist again while he tried to untie me. The water was still struggling to take me, slapping my head forward. My father gave up with the tangle of rope and lifted me, still attached to the branch, over to the bank. He laid me on my back with my arms outstretched, and I moved my head to the side, coughing and spewing water.
“Fuck, fuck. Peggy!” His nails were bitten down to his fingertips and he found it difficult to pick at the knots in the rope, which had tightened around me when I had been tossed and turned in the water. He worked at them until they loosened, then he shifted me onto my side and slapped my back. He picked me up, floppy, and held me in his arms.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Where does it hurt? Here?” He pushed my hair out of my face. “Does it hurt here?”
Realizing that I was on the bank and still alive, I cried, dry choking tears. My father, misunderstanding, began to check me all over, bending my knees and elbows and wiggling my fingers. One knee was grazed and oozed watery blood. The other was already swelling and changing colour. My wrists were sore where they had been rubbed between the rope and the branch. But when my father had examined me all over and was satisfied that my injuries were superficial, he opened my mouth to look at my teeth.
“About eight years old, if I were to hazard a guess,” he said in his army voice. It made me laugh, and he laughed with me and kissed my forehead and kissed my cheeks, his face wet, but not from the river.
“I lost one of my shoes,” I said in a whisper. We both looked at my feet—a wet shoe on one foot but only a sock on the other. My chin began to wobble again.
“I promise, Peggy . . .”
“Rapunzel,” I said.
“I promise, Punzel, that we will come back and look for it and I will teach you how to swim.” He was solemn, as if he were making a very serious vow. “But we’re nearly at die Hütte. We need to reach the cabin before it gets too late.” He carried me up to the rucksacks and dressed me and dressed himself. He wrapped my shoeless foot in an empty canvas food bag and secured it to my ankle with a piece of string. Inside my head I made a vow too—that I would never go in the water again.
The walking was slower after that. I hobbled along behind him, my grazes stinging and my foot feeling all the stones and roots in the ground through the bag. My father used a stick again to beat an uphill path through the undergrowth. He held back branches for us to pass beneath, but he hurried, excitedly urging me on. He didn’t get his map out again; we just walked away from the river, and after another ten minutes the bushes thinned and we came into a space where the trees were much less dense. Ahead of us in a small clearing was a single-storey wooden cabin.
9
London, November 1985
After breakfast, I lay on the sofa as I often did, my eyes shut, drifting off in the overheated sitting room. There were so many possibilities for activity, but all were optional and all seemed pointless when our lives didn’t depend on any of them. I could watch television, try to read a book, write down my thoughts and draw pictures of what I remembered, as Dr. Bernadette urged me to do, or I could listen once more to The Railway Children; I had checked and it was still in the sideboard. Ute had given up trying to encourage me out of my lethargy and was simply happy that I was downstairs, where she could keep an eye on me. She didn’t understand that because there was so much choice, I chose to do nothing. I preferred to lie still, with my mind empty.