Eva Stands Up

The room was dark again. Julius had taken the candle with him.

Her body ached. But it was her mind that was really in agony. She didn't know what was still to come, what she would still have to endure. These mountains were not finished with her yet.

Long after Julius had gone, Eva lay still. His heavy footsteps down the steep stairs had faded, but his presence remained in the room. She felt him in the low-hanging roof beams, in the cracks in the floorboards - and in the burning welts that blossomed on her tender skin.

The silence was another kind of ****.

Eva turned slowly, her limbs wooden, her face buried in the rough blanket. She pulled her knees up to her chest, huddling like a small child, but that offered the adult no comfort. Her body felt alien - a thing discarded after being measured because it was found wanting.

Julius had touched her. Like a man who wanted to possess her. But not out of lust. He had proceeded coolly and calculatingly, like a farmer inspecting his livestock to decide which animals were suitable for breeding and which he would be better off slaughtering.

The shame was suddenly there again, sharp and icy, like cold water in which she was immersed.

Eva turned onto her back and stared at the sloping ceiling. She had no light in the chamber, the candle was still cold. Nevertheless, a flickering glow came from somewhere. The light penetrated under the door and through the cracks in the twisted wood. Was someone out there listening?

She pressed her hands to her stomach as if to hold herself together. That Julius had hit her - she could bear that. Pain was something she understood, something she knew and had overcome many times before. But that touch, that test ... and that quiet moment afterwards, when he knew and yet said nothing - that worried her more than she could explain to herself. What did it mean? Did her future depend on it? Her life?

Her uncle's face appeared before her inner eye. The smell of tobacco that always surrounded him. The wheezing of his breath as he leaned over her in the dark. The whispered promises of what he would give her if she kept quiet and said nothing to anyone. The threats hidden in candy if she did betray him. Her fists clenched. A dry sob escaped her chest.

They were the same, these two men. Not in what they did - but in their character. In the way they consumed everything around them. In the way they regarded the people around them as their property.

Eva straightened up. She had survived this house in the city. She had escaped from it. She could do it again. She would free herself. From Julius, from the village, from the mountains.

She just had to will it.

And yet here she was. Lonely. Naked. Ashamed.

A tear stole from the corner of her eye and ran lazily down her temple.

She pulled herself together. She had to act. Lying there and feeling sorry for herself was no way out. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up.

Julius had told her to get dressed. But her dress was dirty and torn. She had spare clothes in her backpack, a thin, linen undergarment, woolen stockings and, of course, underwear. But there wasn't enough space in her small rucksack for a second dress. A minimum of food. She wanted to be quick and light on her feet in order to master the narrow, steep mountain paths. For everything else, she had relied on the proverbial hospitality and, if necessary, the charity of the mountain dwellers.

And then she remembered what else she had put in her rucksack. At the bottom, wrapped in a handkerchief. The knife. It wasn't big, but it was sharp.