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Crazy Katherine
We rented a flat in a two-storey townhouse in the centre of Carlow, which deserved a bit of care and a spring clean. Sunny’s cooks were already living there—Ringu, Asif, Adjit and Khan. That was something for me. Such company, straight off the red carpet. I thought I’d just grab my suitcase and run away while I still could. Sunny couldn’t be serious, I thought. But it turned out most of them were fairly harmless. I was most fascinated by Adjit. He must have been around forty, and he wore a large white turban on his head. He was a Sikh from India. Under the turban he had long silver hair that he cared for with the greatest love. It was a kind of ritual for him. He would rub it with olive oil so it wouldn’t lose its shine. When he spoke, he sounded adorably like a child learning to spell. He always smiled quietly, and there wasn’t a trace of malice in his eyes. Sometimes I watched him meditate, sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to his Indian mantras.
It was unusual to live with people from such a different world, one miles away from our narrow-minded European understanding. All the Indians ate with their hands. They made homemade chapati flatbreads as thin as paper and cooked vegetarian meals with chickpeas, curry and all kinds of fragrant spices.
You would never see Adjit eat meat—he’d rather die. It was terrible torment for him to fry greasy burgers at Sunny’s bistro, but he had no other choice. He needed the job so he could send money to his family in India. It was the same with the other Indians there. Each of them had someone back home they had to provide for. I found that admirable. Most of them followed their traditions, and none of them drank or smoked. Naturally, that didn’t apply to Sunny—he considered himself a Europeanised Indian.
Still, Sunny knew his family’s traditions well and often told me stories about the poverty and misery his family lived in. Instead of Hollywood blockbusters, we watched Bollywood productions. You had to give them a chance to develop a taste for them. They were films full of colours, saris, brown skin, dancing and Indian singing that at first sounded like wailing but, after a while, got under your skin. It was just about tuning in to a different frequency. Then suddenly you could feel all those strange sounds vibrating inside you with a mysterious power.
None of my new friends celebrated Christmas. Indians had their own Hindu festivals, so they were all pleasantly surprised when Sunny and I brought in a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and made a traditional Czech dinner. Everyone sat at the table and feasted. Since I was the lady of the house and also the only woman there, everyone respected me—Indians have a deeply rooted respect for women.
Sunny and I lived in a small attic room with a window facing the street, where we had our privacy, far from all curious eyes. He was the lord of his castle, their provider, and they all looked up to him with respect. He was fair to everyone and always tried to pacify any disputes. We decided to buy a pair of canaries. I was as excited as a little child. My Indian prince fulfilled even my smallest wishes whenever circumstances allowed.
“What shall we name them?” I asked him.
“How about Mithu and Mithi. That means I love you in Sanskrit,” Sunny said. I didn’t care whether he made it up on the spot—it sounded nice.
At the bistro I mostly worked night shifts until the morning and slept during the day. It messed up my whole biorhythm. After a while I felt like a nocturnal animal that only crawls out of its hideout at night and returns with the dark. I missed daylight. I hardly had any social life, apart from the moments when Sunny took me out for a drink in his free time. I didn’t earn much, but since Sunny paid for the housing, I didn’t complain. Still, I kept waiting for my permit that would allow me to stay legally in the country. Sunny assured me he had paid a significant sum at the authorities and that it should be sorted soon. I trusted him.
Our relationship seemed fairly content. Yes—contentment, that’s what I’d call it. Happiness? I hadn’t felt that in a long time. In fact, I didn’t even know what happiness was anymore. I was content and safe with Sunny, that I knew. I had my home and was treated with respect like never before. And yet, something was missing, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
Then terrible things began to happen. Our lives were turned upside down like by Hurricane Katrina. Sunny’s ex-girlfriend Katherine, Jessie’s mother, began to claim her rights and aggressively tried to win him back. She appeared in my life completely unexpectedly.
Our first encounter happened under dramatic circumstances, when one night she mysteriously got into our house. I was lying in bed while Sunny was away. I only woke up when her body pressed down next to me and she shook me like a ragdoll. I was scared to death. Fear kept me frozen.
“Don’t pretend you’re asleep,” she said in a voice full of undisguised hatred.
I didn’t utter a word, which probably annoyed her even more.
“I’ve long known you European women are worthless—but that you’re sluts, that I didn’t know!” she whispered into my ear.
At that moment I felt blood rush through my entire body. If I hadn’t controlled myself, I would have hit her so hard she’d have flown through the wall. But I didn’t, because I was afraid of the consequences. I swallowed my pride and let her spew her insults for a few minutes. I no longer pretended to sleep. I covered my ears so she wouldn’t poison me with the venom she was spitting.
When she had vented her anger, she slowly left the room. In the dark I managed to take in the rival I would now have to face. She was a small, black-haired Irishwoman with dull features and porcelain-pale skin. There was something sinister about her that I didn’t want to provoke. I knew she was mentally ill.
Sunny was in shock when I told him the whole story. He decided to go and confront her. I’d never seen him so furious before.
“What kind of psychopath is she? How did she even get in?” I tried to figure it out.
“One of the guys must have let her in. They know her by sight and probably didn’t expect what she would do. I’ve already scolded them—they had no business letting her in. She won’t step foot in here again, I promise you,” he said firmly.
“She has psychological problems, she regularly sees a psychologist. Her family in Carlow is notorious as the worst troublemakers. They say her mother’s insane too. Whenever I’m with her, first she begs, then she fawns, and when she realises I don’t want her, she throws hysterical fits. She throws herself at me, scratches and bites. Look,” Sunny said, showing me his shoulder with a few scratches.
“My God. And you let her treat you like that?” I asked in horror.
“I can’t do anything to her. Of course I’d like to slap her, but I don’t hit women,” he said simply. I didn’t expect him to. But for someone to threaten my life in my own house—that I wasn’t willing to tolerate.
“I just don’t understand. You told me all along you weren’t with her anymore. So why does she think I stole you from her? It makes no sense,” I pointed out.
“Of course we’re not together anymore. We broke up long before I met you. But she must have found out and suddenly started demanding I return to her. She’s trying to get to me through Jessie, and she threatens that if I leave her, I’ll never see him again. And as a foreigner here, I wouldn’t stand a chance. She could snatch him right in front of me and no one would do a thing,” he said resignedly, staring sadly into space.
But Katherine wasn’t about to give up without a fight. She wrapped Sunny around her finger because she knew she could threaten him through Jessie. He had a knife at his throat and could do nothing. Once a week she came to the bistro and helped herself to the day’s takings from the till. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to skin her alive, and if reason hadn’t stopped me, I’d have gladly done it. But I stayed in the background, trying to stand by Sunny no matter what.
Katherine decided that if she couldn’t have him, no one would, and she made sure I soon felt her terrorist attacks on my own skin.
One day she decided to use little Jessie for her scheme. She squeezed him through a tiny window from the street into our house and then had him open the door for her from inside. When I came back from work, she was lying on the sofa as if nothing was happening. I froze on the spot but didn’t even try to ask what she was doing there. The others in the house knew about her, so I just tried to avoid her.
But then I noticed someone had tampered with my cosmetics. Lipstick and mascara were smeared and broken, perfume used up, powder scattered. I was never a pedant and didn’t care much about things—they can always be replaced. But I absolutely hated when someone touched my personal belongings and deliberately destroyed them. It had never happened to me before, but this time I felt immense rage. I grabbed my handbag with what was left of my cosmetics and went to confront her. Fear or no fear—this was too much.
“Hey, can you kindly explain to me what this is?” I asked coolly, showing her the bag full of cosmetic mush. She looked at me like a saint, but under the mask she wore I could see how much she enjoyed it.
“What do you mean? Jessie played with it and broke it. So what,” she said indifferently.
“So what? Are you kidding me? Then you’d better keep a closer eye on your son,” I said, holding myself back from tearing her hair out.
But she stepped up, puffing herself up like a turkey. She was a head shorter than me, yet she exuded enormous menace. I didn’t back down an inch and looked straight into her eyes. I could see how hard she tried to intimidate me, but I wasn’t afraid of her anymore. At that moment Sunny came through the door.
He tried to find out what Katherine was doing there and argued with her, but it was pointless. She clearly thought she had him in her power and wasn’t afraid of him. Furious, she got in my face and started yelling at me.
“Don’t tell me how to raise my son, you loser!”
“No one’s telling you that, but maybe you should think about yourself,” I replied.
At that point I had no choice but to retreat because she began pushing me towards the stairs. She kept hitting my shoulders with both hands, trying to knock me down. Then I saw a quick movement—Sunny grabbed the arm she was about to hit me with and threw her to the ground, where she lay for a while, whimpering in shock.
“Run upstairs and lock yourself in,” Sunny said sternly. I knew something had happened that shouldn’t have. It had gone too far.
Katherine pulled herself together and started hurling endless insults at Sunny. Then she opened the glass front door and slammed it so hard all the glass shattered into the street. She was deranged. When she realised she had cut herself, she went even more insane.
I obeyed Sunny and ran upstairs, locking the door twice. My heart was pounding like a steam engine. From below I heard only the screams of a madwoman and the muffled shouting of someone I thought I knew well. I wasn’t sure of anything or anyone anymore. Where on earth had I ended up?
I was proud of Sunny for standing up for me and, for the first time, showing her that he was the master of the situation. That’s why she was so furious. She knew he was capable of protecting me even at the risk of losing his son. I heard her running up the stairs after me. She began speaking to me in a slightly gentler voice.
“Open up, I know you’re in there. I just want to talk to you, I won’t hurt you.”
I came up to the door.
“I don’t care what you want. Leave me alone. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
After a while of pleading and knocking, she left.
Only once she was gone from the house did I have the courage to come out. There were smears of blood all over the walls, which she had deliberately left behind. By then I was already thinking of how to escape. To pack up and leave. It wasn’t worth it anymore.
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