After this incident Arney moved to another school. It was Catholic too, but not so old, not so gothic. There weren't so many representatives of the clergy, religious subjects and ascetic disciplinary system. There wasn't separate education: boys and girls studied together. And the girls immediately noticed the new handsome boy. They constantly stared at him and giggled behind his back, that was embarrassing for Arney. While the boys immediately disliked Arney, although they didn't openly oppress him, they felt that he was a stranger.
Arney's new class teacher, Frau Ritter, was a young seemingly unremarkable woman of small stature, dressed in a gray dress of strict cut, her hair slicked back, with huge glasses on her small, thin face. She was an eccentric person, she didn't adhere to the school curriculum and gave students a lot of material that doesn't correspond to their age. She had her own views on education.
She believed that independence of thought and creativity should be developed from early childhood, and that children should join the masterpieces of the world classics from an early age. At the same time, Frau Ritter paid homage to mystical and fantastic literature and often read to the children of Edgar Allan Poe, Howard Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Stephen King and other non-child authors. The children willingly forgave her for this weakness and listened to these horrible stories with pleasure.
One day Frau Ritter began to read them a very strange eerie story, the author of which Arney's did not know. It was about a man suffering from a nervous disorder, painfully sensitive to sensory signals and experiencing unusual sensations, and that eventually led to the murder. This story was completely incomprehensible to 9-year-old students. But the eerie, ominous, irrational atmosphere of the narrative made a strong impression on the children. The entire class froze in suspense. When they got to the final words:
"But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now again! Hark! Louder! Louder! Louder! Louder! "Villains!" I shrieked, "Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"
Arney felt an inexplicable fear inside him. It seemed to him he was the main character of the story himself. He could not fall asleep for a long time after going into his bed, he saw the appalling pale-blue film-covered eye of the old man-vulture and heard the beating of either his own or old man's heart in the darkness of night. But despite this untimely strange acquaintance with Edgar Poe, Arney soon began to read these chilling stories on his own: "The Fall of the House of Usher , The Pit and the Pendulum, The Black Cat and others. Poe became his favorite author, because he felt a deep kinship with the maestro. So Arney discovered the aesthetics of terrible.
At that time for reading passed unnoticed. Arney spent hours reading books that didn't fit his age: mysticism, science fiction, esotericism. The world of the mysterious and supernatural completely bewitched him. All these mysterious incidents, inexplicable phenomena, mysterious symbols attracted him. Astrology, alchemy, palmistry, runes, Tarot. How dear to his heart were these mediaeval curiosities! After school Arney would fled to the old Jewish cemetery, there was quiet, reverent atmosphere. There he had found a secluded corner, where he could plunge headlong into the world of mystical literature. Oh, how wonderful those ancient symbols were! They lived their own special life: they interacted with each other, connected and diverged, loved and hated, weaved intrigues and created fates. And everything in this world was subject to strict laws. This world of harmony and order was much more perfect than the world of people. Oh, if one could leave this mortal body and live the pure life of the world of ideas.
And soon it became an urgent need for him, the only joy in life, because his body betrayed him. Strange changes began to occur in it, which disturbed and frightened him. He was 12 years old. He had grown noticeably over the past year, which made him feel uneasy, he began to pull his head into his shoulders, stoop his back, bend his knees. The hair started to grow in his armpits and on his pubis, the smell of sweat intensified, his voice became rougher, his testicles and penis grew in size, and in the morning his bed often was wet.
It was a completely new body, unfamiliar, alien and hostile. It seemed to him this body did not belong to him, he ended up in it by some ridiculous accident, as a result of some fatal mistake, a whim, or by the will of forces he had no idea of. It seemed to him that some hostile entity had supplanted his own self, and that he was deprived of control of his body. Maybe it was one of those creepy stories he'd heard at school about cases of demonic possession.
He was afraid to wake up in the morning, afraid to feel this new body, so swollen, wet, fragrant, full of unknown forces and vague desires. A wave of incomprehensible excitement rose from within, giving way to absolute apathy and sense of impotence. The heat gave way to chills. Something unknown was growing in him, something terrible. He was afraid to think about the future, afraid to look into the mirror, because he did not recognize himself, it seemed to him that someone else was looking at him on the other side of the glass, watching. And this other was completely alien and hostile to him.
Physical and physiological changes occurred also with other boys, and they often discussed that in the locker-room before gym classes. But if the other boys took it easy, laughed and even boasted about it, then Arney wasn't happy about it. That time the boys began to feel an increased interest in the girls, and the girls in the boys respectively, they began to make the first awkward passes towards each other at first timidly as if by chance then more and more insistent and openly.
There was an invisible game between the boys and girls that Arney didn't understand. They constantly tried to touch each other with a word, a look, a body. There were some incomprehensible hints in their speech, their bodies acquired a new grace and new dynamics: approach, repulsion, pressure, retreat, resistance, suppleness. Sympathy and hostility became more pronounced. Almost everyone had their own preferences. Only Arney wasn't involved in that. He was a perfect outcast. Outwardly apathetic, passionate inside, passive and at the same time taut as a string.
Classmates, especially boys, often harassed Arney because of this, made fun of him, demanded overt confessions, bold actions and not getting that, made humiliating remarks about his masculinity. This was very frightening and depressing for Arney, and he began to avoid their company even more, to withdraw more into himself. Arney became to wrap himself more and more in a black shroud, descending into the world of shadows.
During this period the split between Anna and Varney deepened. Anna became even more independent, more self-willed, capricious. Varney became, on the contrary, even more inert, stubborn, sullen, demanding more and more energy for himself. Varney pressed Anna more and more; he wanted her to be his humble shadow, obey him in everything, providing him with energy. While Anna wanted to live her own full life, she wanted to love, create, dance. Varney couldn't let that happen, it was too dangerous for him, because it could deprive him of energy. But Anna didn't want to put up with Varney no longer, and one day she decided to kill him.
It was a cold spring day. Arney as usual went to the cemetery after school. The cemetery watchman gave Arney an unkind look of his alcohol-clouded eyes. He had noticed a tall, pale, thin boy, who had been coming here too often, long ago, and his another appearance irritated the old watchman. The boy walked down the alley passing ancient Jewish graves with mysterious Hebrew letters and headed straight for the spreading old oak tree, where he liked to sit, hiding himself from prying eyes.
Arney leaned against the rough surface of the oak, pulled out a razor, and thought: "If I stay alive, will it make any sense? Will it make anyone feel better? It is too hard for me to bear this existence. It's too hard to be human being. And if my existence doesn't matter, if no one needs me, isn't it better to leave right now?" The boy slashed with force the razor across the thin, pale hand. Dark cherry blood gushed from the vein. Arney closed his eyes, for a moment he was afraid, as if he were falling into a black endless void. "Where am I? Where am I going?", he thought. "Maybe I will fall like this for millions of light-years and there will be no end to it? Oh, how I wish I could go back to this old cemetery, to this world that I hate, there was some certainty at least."
Suddenly he felt someone kick him in the side. "Hey, get up!" a smoky voice croaked. "What are you doing? It is too late. The cemetery is closing." Arney opened his eyes. He didn't immediately know where he was. It was dark, but soon his eyes got used, and he saw the watchman above him. "Hey, guy! You're covered in blood! What happened to you?" Then Arney came to his senses, grabbed a razor, and ran away. His heart was pounding. The attempt failed. "Well, then it wasn't meant to be", Arney thought and headed home. His arm ached badly, but the blood stopped, the wound was covered with a thin layer of clotted blood.
Arriving home, Arney immediately received a portion of reproaches from his mother: "Where have you been for so long, little brat? I was so nervous, I wanted to look for you already. You don't think about your mother at all." Arney did not pay attention to these words and locked himself in his room. Eleanor knocked furiously on the door: "Why don't you want to talk to me, moron! You don t listen to me at all? You are just like your father." Arney lay down on the bed and covered his head with a pillow. He just didn't want to see or hear anything right now. He regretted the failed attempt.
After the house was silent, Arney got out of bed and quietly made his way to the bathroom to treat and dress the wound. He changed his blood-stained clothes, removed a layer of dried blood from the wound that looked like a red fat worm, and treated the cut with a swab of iodine. The wound was not very large. Arney felt as if he had cut himself deeper. It sored badly. He tied it up somehow with a bandage, using one hand. He tried to wash away the bloodstained clothes, but he did not succeed, then he hid it in his room, intending to get rid of it in the morning. At that moment Arney felt like a killer hiding the traces of a crime. After all he wanted to kill. He would have killed if he had been able to bring it to the end.
Since that Arney got a new hobby: he began to inflict wounds not only on his hands, but also throughout his body, not to kill himself, he knew that a small wound would not do much harm, but to feel the pain. He liked physical pain, because it distracted him from the mental pain that was unbearable. When everything was quiet in the house: everyone was gone or asleep; he would take out a razor, admiring it in the moonlight for a while, and then began to sink it slowly into his emaciated body. The edges of the snow-white skin parted and showed a red underside, drops of warm blood trickled down the body. The wound was sore from contact with the air, but it was pleasant. It was a kind of catharsis, purification, a release from the heavy oppressive feelings inside. Having enjoyed the moment, Arney wiped the blood, treated the wound, made a dressing and then went to bed. He slept soundly and serenely.