White Eyes (part six)

Chapter Six: White Eyes

Carla did not know when she had been so miserable.
She knew, of course, that her punishment had hardly been unexpected, but it was no more enjoyable for that. Had she expected a little sympathy from her father? Had she thought that he might forgive her and let everything go? If so, she thought angrily, stomping on the ground, it was a stupid thing to expect.
Carla stood dejectedly beside her father’s little donkey, feeling like an animal herself with a halter tied around her neck. Laying her hand on the donkey’s rough back, she spoke softly to it.
“We’re in the same boat now, friend,” she murmured, “you and I.”
The animal gave a disgruntled snort, spraying spit all over Carla, and stamped its hooves in agitation. Carla nodded empathetically.
“I know,” she said, wiping the spray from her face. “Don’t fret, now. It’ll be all right; I’ll look after you.”
The donkey snorted again and turned its back on her.
“All right then,” said Carla. “Don’t listen to me.” She imitated the animal’s snort and spun around huffily.
Breathing in the heavy midsummer air, Carla reflected that the donkey had every right to be irritable with her. It was her fault, after all, that they were both in this predicament.
Carla recalled the morning’s events bitterly. She had been on her usual morning errand – selling her father’s wares in the town square – and she had taken her father’s donkey with her to share the load. Everything had been going smoothly. Carla had reached the town and was setting up her stall, laying out her father’s wares on the rickety wooden bench. It had been then that everything started spiralling out of control. It began when a boy snuck up to her bench and snatched something from the selection of articles laid out there. His action had been greeted with raucous laughter from a crowd of his peers that was standing around. Carla had yelled at him to put the object down, but he had danced out of her reach. He was chanting a little ditty that he had evidently composed himself.

Carla, can you catch me?
Catch me if you can 
You’ve just been robbed
By a little old man!

Oh, Carla can’t see me,
Can’t see Sam
White-eyes cannot see
The little old man!
   
Then the crowd of boys had started chanting, “White-eyes! White-eyes!” This had sent Carla into a rage, and she had started lumbering about trying to catch the boy; but of course he danced out of the way every time she came close to him, and started singing, “Carla, can you catch me …” all over again.
Eventually, Carla had grabbed the donkey and chased after the mob, every member of which had nicked items from her stall. This did not do her any good. They evaded her again and again, and when, finally, she gave up the chase and trudged through the crowded streets back to her stall, she had found most of her father’s precious and very expensive wares gone.
Carla’s situation did not improve when the boy who had taunted her complained to his father that ‘that weird blind merchant girl’ had set a vicious mule on him. When Carla had tried to explain that, firstly, that she had been sorely provoked, and secondly, that her donkey was neither a mule nor vicious, she had earned a very painful talking to from the boy’s father, who seemed to prefer to talk with his fists rather than with his mouth. 
And if she had thought that her father might take her side when she arrived home empty handed from the square, she was sadly mistaken. Her father had been more concerned about his lost wares than his bruised daughter, and had given said daughter a severe beating before sending her outside to collect water from the well, feed the donkey, rake the garden and fell a tree. She was forced to carry the tree out of the garden, where she dropped it by the side of the road. He then brought her inside to dust the cutlery and supply cupboard, count last week’s earnings, build a new table and fix a hole in the roof. When she had completed all these jobs and approached her father, red and sweaty-faced, he had eyed her disapprovingly, as though he was annoyed that she had managed to finish it all so quickly, and told her to do it all again.
Carla was now tethered to a wooden post in her father’s garden, having finished every job her father had assigned to her four times over. She was expecting to be called back inside to prepare his dinner any time soon.
After a moment or two of reflection, Carla turned back to the donkey.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have. Now I’ve got both of us into trouble.”
The donkey gave her a doleful look and went back to staring at the ground.
After a few more minutes in which Carla stood thinking despondently about her predicament, there was a loud slamming noise and her father came striding out onto the lawn, resplendent (although Carla could not see it) in robes of deep blue.
Passer-bys could never fail to be struck by his appearance. Not only did he in no way resemble his fair-headed daughter, but one glance at his attire and figure made one wonder why on earth he lived in a little farm house with a donkey and a batch of hens.
Carla’s father was a very tall man. He was slender, with a smooth grey beard that swept his toes and hair that almost reached his ankles. His cold grey eyes were set high up his forehead, above his long, straight nose. Had Carla been able to see it, she would have been envious; her own nose was small and potato-like, with freckles dotted here and there.
As her father approached her, Carla turned to face him.
“Marl-Heinen.”
“Do not address me in that insolent tone. To you, I am ‘Father’.”
“I am sorry, Father.”
“So you should be,” sneered Marl-Heinen. “You have caused much chaos with your negligence. You should have realised that such behaviour would cause you to have to suffer my – ah – displeasure.”
Carla hung her head.
“I am sorry, Father. It will not happen again.”
“That is not good enough.” Marl-Heinen’s voice was sharp and cold.
Carla raised her head fearfully.
“Please, Father. I mean what I say. I am sorry. Please forgive me.”
“I have forgiven you again and again. I have raised you under my roof for thirteen years, given you shelter and kept you alive with food from my table. I expect a little gratitude in return. I do not ask much of you, only that you obey me and stay loyal to me. Yet these small things you cannot do for me. You come back here to me, expecting forgiveness, expecting pity. I have given you those, and they are more than you deserve. But I will not fall for it this time.”
“Please, Father …”
“I do not want to hear your snivelling pleadings. I do not want to hear apologies. I want you to listen to me and not to interrupt, because it will be all the worse for you if you do.”
Carla fell silent.
“Good. Now, listen to me. I want you to do everything I say.”
“Yes … Father.”
“Firstly, I want to make it clear that you are not being untied from this post.”
“But, Father … food … water …”
“I will bring to you – what I can,” said her father with an odd kind of sneer. “That understood, you are to clean out the bog at the end of the road – tied to your post. I will provide you with a net.”
Carla did not want to know how she was going to manage that. Her father, however, guessed her thoughts.
“You will carry the post on your back. You will take the donkey with you. If it is any comfort to you, he will not be untied either.”
It was not any comfort to Carla, who looked up angrily.
“Father, what you ask of me –’’
“YOU WILL DO AS I SAY!” roared Marl-Heinen, so loudly that a couple of pigeons that had been resting on a tree branch above them flew off in alarm.
Carla sighed. There was no point in arguing.
“Yes – Father.”
“But that is not all. After cleaning out the bog of anything – anything and everything – you find, you are to go to town, still tied to your post, and try to sell it. You are to stay there until every single item is gone. I will not be supplying you with food or water. You will have to beg, or else starve. When you have finished, come back here and set your post where it is now. Do not bother waking me. I will come out of my own accord.”
Carla choked on a painful lump that had risen to her throat.
“Yes, Father. It will be as you say.”
“Good.” Marl-Heinen turned with a twirl of his brilliant cloak. “And woe betide you if there is a single dead body or lost trinket with you when you come back!”

This was why Carla could be found, ten minutes later, trudging dejectedly down the road from her house, a heavy wooden pole slung over her shoulders. Both her wrists were shackled to this pole; she felt rather as though she were stuck in a mobile pillory. To make things worse, her father’s donkey, also tied to the post, was accidentally ramming into it with every second step. This gave Carla the impression that she was not only tied to a pillory, but also leading a wild bull.
“Look,” she burst out angrily, as she staggered sideways for the twenty-first time, “if you can’t walk properly, we’re never going to get there, and we’ll both starve. Please, at least try not to bump me.”
The donkey took no notice, and continued to lumber along clumsily.
“Fine!” huffed Carla. She was in no mood to be amicable. “Fine, then! Have it your own way. I don’t care. You stupid lump of an animal,” she added under her breath.
The two of them took a very long time to reach the bog considering it was just down the road. By the time the donkey had come to a stumbling halt at the nastily squelching edge of the quagmire, the heavy gloom of a twilit sky was already descending upon them. Had Carla been able to appreciate the beauty of the night sky, she would have glanced up through the small gap in the dark canopy above her, through which a single star was peeping.
“Come on,” she said grudgingly, “we’d better get a move on or we’ll be here all night.”
Stooping low, she felt around the edge of the bog and wrinkled her nose in distaste. The smell emanating from the mud was just about as much as her over-sensitive nose could bear.
“Help me,” she muttered distractedly. “Stupid donkey – I can’t do this on my own, you know.”
The donkey gave her an appraising look and stayed right where he was.
Carla knelt at the edge of the quagmire for a long moment, wondering how on Earth she was going to clean out the bog with a pole tied to both wrists (and a donkey) and slung over her shoulders. She knew that this was exactly why her father had assigned her this task; because it was virtually impossible to execute. She knew that he wouldn’t be expecting her back for a long while yet. Well, she thought, glowering, he was going to get a surprise. She was going to finish this tonight and if, in the morning, she was still going, she would … keep going. Carla sighed in frustration. There was no way out of it. Taking a deep breath, she leant over the bog so that her nose was almost touching it, and flung the net into the mess.
It was gruelling work. Not only were the fruits of their search too foul to contemplate, but there were a lot of them, and it is very hard to clear out a bog with your hands tied to a pole that is slung over your shoulders.
After at least six hours of this tedious labour, Carla had extracted a credible amount of undesirable items. These included several sunken, preserved bodies (both animal and human), their eye sockets empty and staring; a range of mud-coated bracelets and assorted pieces of jewellery, varying in size, value and foulness; a slimy bronze amulet that looked at least one thousand years old; something small and almost flat that had a very smooth surface and could be prised open to reveal a mangled interior, with odd little pea-sized protuberances that could be pushed down (Carla fiddled with these for a while until she realised she was squashing the numerous little swamp bugs that had taken refuge under them); a tangle of slippery rope that looked horribly like a noose; a muddy bundle of something that might once have been clothes, and the ancient wooden lid of a chest.
How Carla managed to extract all this from the bog even she didn’t know – although the job had become considerably easier when she had figured out that by hunching her head and hefting the pole over the nape of her neck she allowed herself much more freedom of movement. Of course, this had hardly made the work more comfortable; the pole weighed her hands down and the donkey would not budge, meaning that Carla had had only a restricted area in which to move around. Only when the net had started pulling up no more than broken pieces of brick and slimy weeds had Carla decided her job was done. As she dragged out the last copper trinket, along with a mass of mud, she reflected that it probably was best that she could not see any of it; she would have probably been repulsed beyond reason, and would have refused to continue work.
Now, as she lay on the muddy grass beside the bog, breathing heavily, the first pale rays of dawn began to slant down through the ceiling of foliage above her. The donkey had consented to lie down on the grass beside her, and she could hear its heavy breathing somewhere to her left. The first stage of her punishment was over – the second was still to come.
Carla did not know what she had done in the distant past to warrant such an existence. She knew that her father hated her, and, try as she might, she could not love him either. Maybe her mother had been decent. Maybe her mother would have treated her as her only child, and not as a piece of garbage stuck to the bottom of her shoe. Carla had no idea – according to her father, her mother had abandoned her as a tiny child, leaving him with the burden of looking after her. This was a feat he had barely accomplished: Carla thought it was more a case of her looking after him. She had asked him – many times – what her mother had been like. The only answer she ever received was a withering glare and an insistence that it was none of her business. Carla thought privately that it was very much her business, but never pressed the point. After all, maybe she did not want to know the answer. Maybe her mother had been a ghastly hag of a woman, and had left because she did not think blind children were worth one second of her time. This was, in any case, an opinion that Carla’s father often expressed. He had a knack for doing so; he often slipped in snide remarks intended to humiliate her. Once, when Carla was pouring his onion soup and her hand slipped, causing the liquid to spill over the table, he had sighed exasperatedly and had said, “Oh, dear. Having trouble distinguishing the cup from the table, are we? You might want to look more carefully next time – anyone would think you couldn’t see it!” Although said in a light-hearted manner (Marl-Heinen had been in a good mood that day), Carla had left his presence feeling as though her ears had been shut in an oven for an hour.
Why, thought Carla, why me? Why do I have to live with a man who loves me about as much as a squashed bedbug? Why did my mother have to abandon me before I knew my own name? Why do I have to be blind?

*

The sun was already halfway into the sky by the time Carla had reached the town. As she trudged wearily through the streets towards the square, she tried to make herself as unobtrusive as possible. This was no mean feat – a muddy, ragged girl walking along with a pole slung over her shoulders and leading a donkey carrying several dead bodies and assorted trinkets is not very easy to miss. Therefore, Carla trusted to the cover of the early morning mist that blanketed the town, and reached the square without being spotted. Once she was there, however, and had set up her stall (with difficulty), she knew that there could be no avoiding being seen. It was inevitable that people would come, and that people would see her, and that people would laugh. Sighing, Carla resigned herself to a whole day of sweltering heat and ridicule.
The first possible customer that stopped to investigate was a middle-aged man, tall, thin and smelling strongly of brandy. Carla could tell that he was holding his nose because of the sharp intake of breath and a slightly nasal snort as he leant closer to inspect her unsightly wares.
“What in heavenly Hell are you selling there?”
Carla tried to incorporate her best manners with as much contempt as she could muster as she answered.
“I’m selling the contents of the bog at the end of my road, sir.”
The man recoiled slightly, hesitated for a moment and then headed off in a hurry. Carla was not sorry to lose that particular customer; he had not sounded overly enthusiastic.
The next passer-by took a very similar angle.
“Er – I don’t mean to be rude, but would you mind moving somewhere where your smell doesn’t reach everyone else?”
“Yes, sir, I would. You see, sir, it is my intention to sell these items.”
The man snorted in apparent disgust.
“You’re going to be here for a long time, kid.” He turned and walked hurriedly in the opposite direction.
After this second rather negative approach, the wind suddenly changed, blowing at Carla’s back: now the smell of the undesirable items from the bog could be caught even if one was standing on the other side of the square. Unsurprisingly, after this unfortunate occurrence, Carla’s stall was generally granted a wide berth.
By the time the sun had risen properly, Carla had not managed to sell even the smallest trinket, and was in the process of settling into a state of deep despair. She therefore greeted the arrival of a third possible customer with a wide, if rather tired, smile.
“Hello. Er – would you mind at least having a look at what I have before fleeing in disgust? You see, I’m rather desperate for buyers.”
There was silence. Carla sighed, thinking that yet another possible saviour had run off in order to escape the reeking mound of junk. Then –
“Whaddya call this, then?” 
Carla started and turned. The voice had come from somewhere beneath her right elbow. Fixing her blank eyes on what she hoped was the location of the speaker, she began to reply, in what she hoped was a helpful tone.
“Er … that’s still you down there, is it?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Carla paused, bemused. “Then who is it?”
There was another silence, and again, Carla sighed and turned back to face the front. Then the man spoke again.
“You actually fell for that.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Er … what?”
“Of course it’s me down here. Who did you think it was?”
Carla began to feel irritated. Was he going to get on with it?
“Whaddya call this?” He asked again.
“I’m sorry; I can’t see what you’re holding.”
There was another silence, but Carla was not fooled. She could almost feel the little man’s eyes scrutinising her face carefully. Then, evidently, he decided that she was not lying, for he gave a funny sort of grunt, and Carla felt something pressed into the palm of her hand.
“This,” said the man.
Carla fingered the object he had given her: it was flat and round, and its surface was rough and irregular. She realised what it was.
“Oh,” she said. “This is one of my most valuable items. An ancient, bronze – er – amulet. It was my – great-great-great grandmother’s. Very valuable. Yes, indeed. Great historical value. Yes – if you scrape off the layer of mud, you’ll see …”
Carla began to scrape at the mud with her overlong fingernails, hoping that she was revealing something reasonably impressive. Finally, the last vestiges of caked dirt and dry slime floated to earth, and she handed over the amulet.
The little man was silent as he examined the uncovered surface of the object. Carla had just begun to wonder of he had run off with it when he grunted again.
“Impressive,” he said grudgingly. “Those are emeralds?”
“Er …” said Carla. She was wondering whether maybe she should have kept the amulet and given it to her father as compensation for his lost goods.
“Are these emeralds?” asked the man again, a little impatiently.
“Yes,” said Carla. “Yes, they are … they’ll take a little cleaning up, of course, but – ’’
“I’ll give you three hundred jashii for it.”
“I – what?”
“You heard me. Three hundred jashii. Got a problem with that?”
“No, I – of course not – it’s just … blimey …”
“Then stop stuttering and tell me – have we got a deal?”
“Yeah … yeah, I suppose we do – wow!”
Carla closed her fist around the fat, clunking leather bag the man had just pressed into her hand. Then her euphoria dimmed slightly. This was the equivalent to robbing.
“Thanks, but I really can’t – ’’ Her insistences were fruitless: the man was already halfway across the square.
Jubilant at this unforeseen turn of good fortune, Carla reached the afternoon in high spirits. She did not even care that she did not manage to sell anything else all day; she suspected that even her father (who by no accounts could be considered generous) would think three hundred jashii a reasonably good haul for a day. Just as she had reached the conclusion that she would tip everything else back in the bog, however, who should turn up but Marl-Heinen, decked out in glittering robes of rich plum. Carla knew it was him when she heard the familiar tell-tale signs of his approach: astounded mutterings and the admiring whispers of shoppers as he swept impressively past them.
Carla knew what to expect as her father’s footsteps drew nearer. Bowing her head, she waited. Her sharp ears picked up the renewed mutterings of the crowd as Marl-Heinen, the wealthy, respectable merchant, approached the dirty blind girl with her pile of reeking junk. Surely he was not thinking of buying something from her?
Carla’s father halted five feet from her. She could tell that he was eyeing her wares with distaste. Deciding to humour the crowd, she did not make any sign of recognition; the fact that Marl-Heinen knew the local social outcast would make a considerable dent in his flourishing reputation. She waited for him to break the silence. Finally, he spoke.
“What is this?”
The question was said with disdain, and Carla could tell that he was enjoying the chance to humiliate his only child.
“Does anyone know this thing?” Carla knew that he was referring to her.
“No-one? What a pity … I would very much like the chance to speak to the person who permitted a rag like this to set up a stall in our marketplace.”
There were a few murmurs of agreement, and one man called loudly, “Chuck ‘er out, Heinen!”
Carla’s ears were steadily reddening underneath the layer of dirt coating her face, but still she did not speak or look up. She would not be goaded; she did not need any more punishments.
Evidently, her father was displeased by her silence, for he sneered and said silkily, “It seems the blind girl is dumb as well … in more than one aspect, may I add.”
There was an appreciative snigger from the crowd, and Carla had difficulty swallowing the retort that sprang to her lips. It seemed, however, that her father was determined to make her rise to his bait.
“Tell me, girl – from whom did you inherit your extraordinary lack of sight? You see, I would blame you for this junk pile –’’ he indicated Carla’s wares, “ – but I am not sure if you are sufficiently intelligent to be responsible for your actions.”
Somebody in the crowd hooted with laughter. Carla had a sudden image of a pudgy little boy sitting on the bank of a river, spearing a particularly juicy piece of bait on to his fishing hook so as to attract a particularly stubborn fish. Carla, however, decided that the fish would remain at the bottom of the river, and started to concentrate with all her might on the fat bag of jangling gold in the pocket of the ancient waistcoat she was wearing.
“Can you hear me?” said Marl-Heinen, an ill-suppressed sneer in his voice. “I – would – like – to know – how – you – sustained – such – severe – brain damage!” 
He carried out this statement in mime, shrugging his shoulders and then pulling a grotesque face. The crowd howled with laughter and Carla envisioned a swarm of underwater midges slowly forcing the fish to the surface. It took all her determination to beat off the midges and sink back to the bottom of the river.
Some of the painful internal struggle she was suffering must have shown on her face, as Marl-Heinen leered in triumph and said, “Good Lord, I think the girl’s trying to lay an egg!”
Carla decided that thinking of the bag of gold was not working, and instead began to fantasise about melting Marl-Heinen into a jelly.
Her father now addressed the crowd.
“Tell me – has anyone bought anything from this girl yet? Because if so, I would strongly advise you to throw it out at the next possible opportunity: there is a likelihood that her stupidity will rub off on you!”
Marl-Heinen was getting desperate, and this fact showed itself clearly in his last sneering comment: it was so un-funny that hardly anyone laughed, and some of the gathering extracted themselves, shaking their heads and muttering snatches of things like ‘losing his touch’ or ‘just goes too far’ or ‘pointless cruelty’. Carla was rather inclined to agree with them; her father, however, was not.
Carla could almost feel his chest swelling with rage, and braced herself for the impact. It seemed that Marl-Heinen was on the verge of shouting, but he caught himself just in time and contented himself with glaring at his daughter as though hoping his gaze would bore holes into her. On the pretence of bending over to examine a reeking pool of sludge, in which floated a particularly foul piece of what might once have been jewellery, he muttered a dire warning to his daughter.
“I warn you, if you are not back at the house by sundown, even if you are on your way, you had better turn back and run, because I’ll be letting my dogs loose, and they certainly won’t care if you are my daughter or not – and neither will I.”
Without another word, Marl-Heinen turned on his heel and, sweeping the ground with his magnificent robes, disappeared into the crowd.
Carla’s euphoria from selling the amulet for three hundred jashii had gone without a trace, to be replaced with a deep-rooted sense of despair. How on earth was she to sell all of this before sundown? And if she didn’t manage – Carla gulped – she was going to get the chance to acquaint herself with her father’s bloodhounds. Not wholly cheered by this prospect, Carla set about her business in a flurry of panic.
“Sir – sir!” she called, desperate, as yet another man hurried, repulsed, away from Carla’s stall. The sun had sunk dangerously close to the horizon by this time. She could tell by the way the heat slanted onto her face.
“Sir, you haven’t seen this lovely necklace – look, sir, all shiny and … and colourful…”
Giving up on him, Carla called out, to a woman who had just entered the square, “Miss – excuse me, miss! Miss, would you like to buy this elephant statuette? It really is very valuable – my father got it from a tradesman in Southern Fervensterra – worth one hundred jashii, but you’ll get it from me at twenty – please!”
The woman was so generous as to glance once at what she was being offered, and then trotted off in disgust.
Carla was falling into a state of deep despair. The sun was now descending with what seemed an indecent haste - and when it finally landed on the horizon, Carla knew that she would have to act fast if she was to deprive her father's bloodhounds of the best meal they had had in a long while.
Her last desperate hopes vanished with the last traces of heat upon her face. Somewhere, she knew, Marl-Heinen was releasing his dogs. Deciding not to bother with her large pile of unsold goods, Carla slipped out from behind her stall and set off at a fast pace - somewhere between a brisk walk and a run - in the direction of the square's only entrance.
The trouble was, somebody had beaten her to it.