9 FLASHBACK 5

Zaan could feel Ella's body shacking or perhaps it was merely the shaking of his own. There was a sound of trampling boots below inside the house and outside. There was a long, rolling clang, as though the washtub had been flung across the yard. and then a confusion of painful shouts which ended in a yell of pain.

He heard Ella snap her teeth together. and then a voice, a thin cultivated voice which Zaan and Ella had the impression of having heard before stuck in, but they weren't able to distinguish that whose voice that is because of the situation.

"DON'T TOUCH EACH OTHER OR YOU WILL NOT KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT" said the voice.

Something crashed on to the sofa behind Zaan's back. Something had been thrust through the window and had burst in the frame. There was a stamped of boots up the stairs.

Zaan was not trembling anymore, Even his eyes he barely moved. One thing alone mattered,: to keep still, to keep still and not give the voice an excuse to hit him and Ella.

There was another crash. Someone had picked up the glass plate from the table and smashed it to pieces on the floor. There was a gasp and a thump behind the Zaan, and he received a violent kick on the ankle which nearly flung him off his balance. He saw that Ella was thrashing about on the floor, fighting for breath. Zaan dared not turn his head even by a millimeter, but sometimes Ella's livid, gasping face came within the angle of his vison. Even in his terror it was as though he could feel the pain in his own body.

The deadly pain which nevertheless was less urgent then the struggle to get her breathe back, he knew what it was like; the terrible, agonizing pain which was there all while but could not be suffered yet. Because before all else it was necessary to be able to breathe.

Suddenly he felt a sting on his head as if something heavy has hit his head, the next moment before he knew he was lying on the ground his body not able to move even an inch from its position.

Zaan had a glimpse of Ella's face, upside down, yellow and contorted, with the eyes shut, and with a smear of rouge on either cheek: and that was the last he saw her before fainting.