Chapter 19: Sixty-Four Years Aloud

The left sleeve came up first, over a wrist.

Then the right.

He turned his forearms out to the candles and held them there, palms up.

He showed them the way a man shows a stranger something he is proud of.

The scars started at his wrists and went on up, small and white and crescent-shaped, hundreds of them.

They lay so close that the skin looked knitted.

Nobody in the Hall made a sound.

"Sixty-four years in October," Ole said. "Every night."

"Ole," said Ingeborg. "He is confused." Her voice was calm and a little thinner. "This is the sickness of age."

"I'm confused about many things," Ole said, with dignity. "Where I left my glasses. The new telephone. I am not confused about this."

"Show them the rest."

He looked at me.

"Doctor," I said. "You've seen that arm before."

The grey-bearded man had not sat down.

He stood next to me with his hands tight on the strap of his black bag.

"In March of 1991," he said, "Mr. Haugen had pneumonia. I was called to the house."

"Doctor," said Ingeborg.

"I examined his chest. I examined his arms." The doctor's voice was low and rough. "I counted the marks. I stopped counting at three hundred."

"You will sit down."

"I said nothing. I asked nothing. A man bitten that often ought to have been a husk, and he was splitting wood the week after."

He faced the room. "I have a medical bag and a long memory. I have been ashamed for thirty-five years."

A murmur ran through the pews.

"A fourth bite sickens," Ingeborg said, her voice cutting through. "A fourth bite kills. I have said it for a hundred and thirty years."

"Then he's a miracle," said the doctor. "Twenty-three thousand times, Chair. Tell me what he is."

She didn't answer.

"Chair." It was the woman with the ivory cane. She had risen, leaning on it, and she looked very young and very old.

"You say he is a thrall."

"I say it."

"Then do what you do every night. Ask him."

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