Untitled Part 3

My life seemed to lose focus at that point. I took to getting up late and staying up all night; I went through weird phases for a while, trying to fill the sudden emptiness. Surrounding myself with books, wrapping myself in a cocoon of useless facts, I memorised French départements and their capitals, binomial nomenclature, Freud’s structural model of the psyche, Hawkings’ multiverse theories. I learned things most adults wouldn’t have known, yet I was still a child at heart, wanting desperately to believe that he loved me, that he loved her, that any day now things would go back to how they had been before.
It wasn’t just her who was gone; so was the father I had known. One night he came into the living slash dining room, where I was trying to watch the subtitled version of ‘The Lives Of Others’ through the pixelating and buzzing. He stank of alcohol, his eyes bleary, sweat stains on the shirt he’d worn for a week. The Swiss army knife some distant uncle had sent me for my tenth birthday was in his hand.
I was ridiculously slow, I was stupid back then. I just felt vaguely annoyed that he’d taken the knife without my permission. When he put the longest blade to my throat I didn’t even try to fight, because I didn’t understand. I still didn’t understand when he dragged me into the bathroom. The grimy bath was filled almost to the brim. He picked me up, dropped me face-first into the icy water and held my head under.
The shock made me gasp. A freezing stream of water gushed into my lungs. His hands were pressing me down, holding me down, merciless. I couldn’t even beg for him to stop and I panicked.
A concerned woman in the apartment next to ours began knocking on the door round about the point I ran out of breath and stopped thrashing, becoming limp. The blood was drumming in my head, white lights floating in front of my eyes.
The sound of the bathroom door slamming brought me back to my senses, sharpened by the turn of the key in the lock. It took a few seconds to register that I could move freely now. Thank God. Surfacing, I dived over the edge of the bath and coughed onto the tiles. The rise and fall of voices came from outside. When I could stand, clinging to the towel rail for support, I peered through the keyhole.
The apartment door was wide open and my father was talking to the woman, leaning against the doorframe, one hand on his hip in a casual pose. He was his charming self again and explained how his silly little Nathan was going through that difficult age and had thrown a silly little tantrum about something and oh dear yes he’d also left the television turned up a little loud, sorry about all that. The neighbour laughed and sympathised and teased me the next time she saw me in the corridor.
The damp mark his wet hand left on the wallpaper was all there was to even hint at what had just happened. Needless to say she did not see it. I pulled the plug so that the water gurgled down the drain and twisted the chain around my finger. Then I wiped my face. I would never give anyone the satisfaction of making me cry again.
What terrified me the most was not the knowledge that my father would hurt me again and again and again. It was the way he could change his persona in the blink of an eye. Ladies’ man. Abusive husband. Good-natured jack-of-all-trades. Sadistic torturer. As long as I lived with him I would never be safe.
It was then I cut myself off from the world.