The Scar

Siegmund is in the bed in the little house by the riverbank, his back against the wall, his legs spread apart. Beneath the wool blanket he can still feel the tickle of the straw mattress. On the inside of his right thigh is a thick, wide scar. He'd gotten the scar many years ago, when one night he'd been caught stealing apples from a barrel in a barn. The man of the house had heard an incriminating sound, and when he caught Siegmund with his hands full, took after him, caught him after only a few strides and pinned him to the ground. The field was dark and muddy from days of rain, and whenever Siegmund tried to get out from under the man, he lost his footing, his grip on the earth. The man struggled to brandish a knife, but once he did, Siegmund screamed in agony as flesh parted and muscle tore and blood began to mix with both fabric and soil.

Biting and screaming, he somehow managed to free himself, after which terror carried him across field and stream to the forest's edge. But the wound went deeper than any he'd received before and when he sat down to nurse it he began to feel faint, watched with wide, tired eyes as blood merged and bloomed throughout the fabric of his trousers. Soon he felt close to death and indeed this would be the closest he'd ever come to dying. With great difficulty, Siegmund tore off the arm of his shirt which he fashioned as a tourniquet, but even this did not stop the wound from bleeding.

Night deepened, and in the distance, he saw several lights flickering and knew there must be a village there and that he must go to it and so he limped through the ferns and the underbrush and kept asking himself was my crime so grievous that...? And the more he limped the redder his clothing grew and the fainter his heartbeat. Finally, he reached the village and threw himself on the first doorstep he could find. An old woman let him in. He got the impression she was only preventing a body from being found before her door the next morning.

Preparing a fire, she asked him nothing about himself beyond why he'd been cut up so badly. Siegmund was too weak to lie and so he told her the truth, that he'd been caught stealing apples and in response the old woman took a rag and bound his hands behind his back. Another she put in his mouth, and he bit down on it hard when she took the stoker from the fire and cauterized the wound. Then she forced him down into her cellar which smelled like earth and mildew, and it was there that he slept on the ground for the next week or two and fed on stale potatoes while the wound healed. As little kindness as this was, why she kept him there he didn't know and as the days passed and as other voices gathered above, he became suspicious and fearing danger stole away in the night where, for a month he had a limp.

In bed, Siegmund watches entranced as Sieglinde traces the length of the scar with her fingers, leans down and kisses the gnarled, marbled skin. Her eyes are closed in succor; her face obscured by a curtain of hair, which he brushes to the side, breath caught in the back of his throat. He's told Sieglinde the story before, that he finds the scar shameful and that it revolts him, yet here she is, holding him in place with her warm, strong hands. It is hard for him to look at her. He's afraid of her disgust -- towards him, towards the texture of the scar, towards his filthy days soaked in sweat and privation. He wonders what terrible visions she's had of his being cut open, his bleeding, his expiation in the cellar, trapped in the shame of dying. The blood which was so warm as it flowed outward, as it poured into the seam of him, warm like the cheek against his thigh. The more she kisses him, the less he is able to tell if her mouth reopens the wound or closes it forever. As soon as she takes him in her hand, he expires voicelessly, his fingers clenching the inside of his palms.

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