Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  It was six or seven years since Colin had been in the Weidmanns’ house, but he remembered it clearly. In certain respects he was gifted with a photographic memory: he gathered, from things people told him and from things he read, that his mind wasn’t like other people’s minds but capable of summoning back memories vivid as dreams, frequently so real they left him shaken and aroused. So the Weidmanns’ big Victorian house entered, came flooding back as if he’d left it only last week. The carved archways and molding, the tall narrow many-paned windows with their elaborate curtains and draw drapes; everywhere you looked, antique furniture and Oriental carpets and polished hardwood floors. Cut-crystal chandeliers, stained-glass window in the foyer. The smell of freshly polished silverware. Of freshly cut flowers. Of money.

  There’d been talk of the Weidmanns taking Colin Asch in after the accident in which his parents drowned (which he thought of as simply the Accident—when he thought of it at all), and again after the trouble at the Monmouth Academy and Colin’s breakdown and hospitalization. But their children, a boy and a girl Colin’s age, he’d blanked out their names, had opposed it. They’d been jealous of him, pretended to be afraid of him. The little fuckers.

  “But I’m here now.”

  He was grateful for the hot splashing water, the fragrant soap. It was the least they could do for him—his own blood kin, after all. He shampooed his hair roughly and rinsed it, surprised at its length. He didn’t want to be mistaken for some hippie queer. Out of the shower, dripping, he dried himself in an enormous towel the size of a beach towel and combed through his snarled hair with a stainless steel comb that must have belonged to his Uncle Martin—this was Martin’s bathroom—then shaved with a razor he found in the medicine cabinet—his uncle’s too, he assumed—hands shaking slightly so he had to go slow, didn’t want to nick himself. In the mirror his expression was guarded, self-critical. He’d always been aware of his remarkable good looks—a Nordic angel, Mr. Kreuzer used to call him, mocking and loving—but he knew that good looks can be lost rapidly, in a few months, a few days, a single hour if it’s the right hour. His eyes looked shadowed even in the bright overhead light, and the whites were lightly threaded with blood as if he hadn’t slept in days. (About that—sleeping—he wasn’t too clear. He guessed he’d slept in the car in hidden places off the highway, curled up in the back seat with the .38 revolver under him.) They would feed him here in this house, and they would see to it that he slept, rested, regained his equilibrium. They were good people, the Weidmanns: Ginny especially. If only she wouldn’t try to overdo it.

  Colin’s hands ached where the wire had cut in deepest. He had not noticed at the tune or afterward, driving gripping the steering wheel tight. He had not wanted to use gloves with the wire noose because it was tricky enough handling it with his bare hands. He thought of surgeons, their manual skill, precision: required to wear the thinnest of gloves when they operate, because they need to feel what they’re doing and the instruments are so delicate. And if the membrane of the glove is pricked, and if blood from the patient seeps through, there is the danger of AIDS. Except for AIDS he’d go to medical school and train to be a surgeon. You’re born with the touch, it’s said, or you are not. You are or you’re not. Like musical talent, which Colin Asch had had too, as a child.

  “It’s so fucking unfair.”

  He couldn’t have said what was unfair but he felt it keenly, and he knew too that they were talking about him downstairs, hearing of his “tragic” life, et cetera, shaking their heads and murmuring the usual banalities. If the Weidmanns went too far with that shit they’d regret it.

  It burned his ass too that his Uncle Martin (so-called uncle: the two of them weren’t related by blood, and even if they had been he’d be Colin’s mother’s uncle, not Colin’s) just naturally assumed he hadn’t any decent or even clean clothes of his own. Wear anything you like, anything that comes close to fitting, the smug old fart had said, showing him shirts, a rack of neckties, letting his beefy hand fall on Colin’s shoulder as if he had the right. Maybe he was queer too, like the bastard back at the rest stop. His uncle’s age, you might as well try anything.

  So Colin, his heart beating sullenly, selected a plain white cotton shirt, a plain navy-knit tie; the neck and shoulders of the shirt were too big for him but he liked it, sort of, when clothes didn’t exactly fit, gave him a boyish even a waiflike look, a real advantage. He’d always been young, and he’d always looked younger than his age. There was a real advantage in that; he thought of it as a kind of lever.

  He sat on the edge of the Weidmanns’ bed, pulling on black silk socks. Wild! A few days ago he was on the beach in Lauderdale, greasy hair blowing in his mouth, and now he was here! The master bedroom was a spacious high-ceilinged room with green silk wallpaper, thick white wall-to-wall carpeting, most of the furniture oversized—big four-poster antique bed, big bureau, big full-length mirror. If he had time he’d investigate but he hadn’t time, they were awaiting him downstairs; he was hungry. In his uncle’s cuff link box he found a pair of gold and onyx cuff links which he slipped into his pocket; in his aunt’s jewelry box he found a pair of gold and diamond earrings which he also slipped into his pocket, reasoning that, with all the Weidmanns had—and of course Ginny’s really expensive jewelry was locked safely away—they wouldn’t miss these small items. In a dressing room alcove he found his aunt’s handbag, or one of her handbags, a red leather Gucci, quickly extracted the wallet and from that a few bills, two tens, a twenty, a five, reasoning they wouldn’t be missed, so many bills remained. And the bitch had credit cards, of course. They all did.

  “It’s the least you owe me. Fuckers.”

  When, downstairs, he entered the dining room it was like stepping out onto a stage: he could feel the electrically charged air, his mere approach giving off sparks. Ginny with her big mouth and probably Martin too had set him up perfectly so now there were these assholes, solemn-faced, gaping at him: Colin Asch. He just took over; he had them all. But he played it cool, knowing everybody likes sweet shy boys, tongue-tied boys, orphan etched into their faces. And no reason he could have named except he’d actually looked through some of the material in the back seat of the Toyota, felt a sudden kinship of sorts with the victimized animals, legs in traps, wired up for experiments in laboratories, chickens with their beaks chopped off, monkeys with skulls sawed open—Christ, what a world of suffering! Why does God allow it to happen!—so when he picked up his fork it seemed to him that he’d be the kind of person who couldn’t eat meat, who was too pure to eat meat, and the rest of them would have to acknowledge it. Thus within seconds the taste and even the smell of the lamb roast was nauseating.

  This caused a flurry of excitement too, his aunt fussing over him and sending the little black girl away for a clean plate; Colin liked it but squirmed with embarrassment. Sons of bitches looking at him imagining themselves so superior, taking pity on Colin Asch.

  One by one he took them in. Tried to memorize names—his short-term memory was fantastic when there was some purpose for it.

  The youngest woman at the table was “Hartley,” about thirty years old, little-girl good-looking, black glossy hair, bangs to her eyebrows, fleshy red mouth he imagined sucking him off, and that expertly; and within days. “Charles Carpenter,” a mild-mannered but probably shrewd-minded coldhearted son of a bitch, mid- or late forties, lawyer, and well-to-do. His wife, “Agnes,” a drunk with a soft ruined face, heavy-lidded eyes, too much jewelry hanging on her with a mineral glitter as if out of spite (the woman’s jade dinner ring was the size of a robin’s egg), but Colin connected with something in her, something sour and peevish waiting its turn. And there was a guy his age or a year or two older, “Schmidt,” by the look of him a young lawyer or a young stockbroker, nattily dressed, smug, hopeful, trying to impress the table (trying to impress “Hartley”) with some crap about West Germany. And there was another man whose name Colin hadn’t caught—he’d have to ask before the evening broke up—pi
nch-faced, bald except for patches of grizzled gray around his ears, nervous, sad, heavy-hearted, Colin could see, or sense; in his early fifties maybe, or older. And quietest of them all a woman named “Dorothea Deverell” who was a Mend of Colin’s aunt, creamy-pale skin, large intelligent eyes, watchful too, very still, hard to estimate her age but Colin supposed she must be in her mid-thirties … who did she remind him of? She wore her dark hair brushed back from her face and fastened neatly at the nape of her neck by a tortoiseshell clip. She looked down the table at him intently, he had the idea respectfully. It occurred to him that she was a good person, she had a good kind decent generous soul; like a spark the idea ignited in his heart, pulsing warmly through his blood. Later that night he would note in the Blue Ledger, I think so. Of course I can’t be sure.

  Though probably little or nothing would have come of this insight—Colin Asch was visited with so many insights, sometimes within a single hour—had not, a little later, this woman spoken so strangely, and so … purposefully. To him. In front of the entire table.

  Exactly how it happened he wouldn’t be able to recall, afterward, trying to record the episode in the Blue Ledger. Carpenter’s wife, Agnes, had been questioning him about vegetarianism, asking did he belong to a cult, coming fairly close to insulting him—it was really surprising how hostile the bitch was for no reason at all simply for the hell of it, which Colin Asch could understand but which didn’t mean he liked it or liked being mocked in front of a little audience including the hot-looking girl with the eyes and the pouty luscious mouth and Miss Deverell, who looked pained at the attack—but he maintained his composure, observing himself carefully as if indeed he were on stage as years ago he’d studied a videotape of Colin Asch on an actual stage—he’d played the role of Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s tragedy at the Monmouth Academy and everyone marveled over his acting skills, most of all Mr. Kreuzer who had directed the play—so there was no temptation to lose control, start stammering, saying things he’d afterward regret. In fact the nastier Mrs. Carpenter became the nicer Colin Asch could be; there was a palpable rhythm to it, like two people on a teeter-totter, or fucking: which was maybe why Mrs. Carpenter persisted, when everyone else was on Colin Asch’s side and casting her disapproving looks. Colin got to his feet so agitated he didn’t know what he would say; the words just came out of him: “The suffering of animals is no less because it lacks a language. Like the suffering of infants.”

  That got them. That got them! Agnes Carpenter had to back down, knowing she’d pressed him too far. And the others said things, tried to gloss over the awkward moment, fat blowsy Ginny Weidmann trying to slide her arm through his as if she had the right. “We understand about the animals, Colin, really we do,” she said anxiously. “Won’t you sit down, dear? We promise you can eat your meal in peace.”

  Colin wrenched away from her. “Do you!” he said.

  Thinking: You can all go fuck yourselves.

  It was at that moment, in the startled silence, that the woman Dorothea Deverell spoke. A stranger to Colin Asch yet clearly sensing his inner distress. Saying in a weird quiet premeditated voice words of a higher consolation: “But animals eat one another too. We, I mean—since we are animals. It is something of which we should be ashamed, but even shame is not enough to defeat hunger.”

  Colin stared at her through a watery red haze. How strangely she’d spoken, how unexpectedly! To him! Piercing his heart!

  There had never been anything like it before in his life.

  Thus the ugly moment passed, and Colin Asch was able, with dignity, to resume his place at the table, and his meal: for which he was indeed ravenously hungry. And afterward, upstairs in the room these kindest of people had provided for him, he had recorded the incident in the Blue Ledger as best, considering his exhaustion and agitation, as he could. Animals eat one another too. We, I mean … Even shame is not enough.

  A beautiful woman. “Dorothea Deverell.” A stranger to Colin Asch yet mysteriously knowing him; knowing how he craved understanding, sympathy, consolation. The gist of it is, hunger sanctifies! he recorded.

  An utterly simple truth which it was required a stranger tell him, lest false guilt contaminate his soul.

  So Colin Asch, though by nature the roving kind—or is it roaming?—restless to the very marrow of his bones and drawn, it sometimes seemed, by the sun’s westward movement across the sky, to movement of his own, allowed himself to be cajoled by the Weidmanns into staying on in Lathrup Farms for a while. Through Thanksgiving, at least. Until he knew more clearly what his plans for the future were. (He wanted, he said, to look for a job. Maybe later return to school. There were so many good schools in the Boston area. Many job prospects too, he guessed. At RISDE—the Rhode Island School of Design—Colin Asch had been an outstanding student; certain of his instructors had praised and encouraged his talent, as an artist and as a graphics designer. There was a future awaiting him, they’d said.)

  So he said yes. So he said Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

  And meant it! God, yes.

  “Everybody else treats me like”—he paused, reflecting—“dirt.”

  “Oh, now, Colin dear, that can’t be true,” Aunt Ginny said reprovingly. “Can it?”

  He was twenty-seven years old, in December to be twenty-eight years old. Alone. Unmarried. No true family. In Europe it was several times said of him he was “so uniquely American,” but in America what could be said of him? He carried innocence about him like a radiant heat, shining in his beautiful eyes, coursing through his veins. His handshake, his touch, communicated warmth, strength, modesty, a special destiny. Knowing nothing of his tragic background, women adored him for the hurt in his face, and his manliness. Some men too adored him, and some men feared him. And with good cause! as he noted, amused.

  Of the several XXX incidents recorded in the Blue Ledger, only one was female. And that, in one of the western states, in so blurred a passage of Colin Asch’s life (someone had turned on Colin Asch to the powerful visions of mescaline) it scarcely counted. Might in fact have been a dream. Contemplating the cryptic abbreviations in the Ledger regarding that incident Colin Asch was as puzzled, or nearly, as a stranger to the Ledger might have been. He’d forgotten the girl’s name, the girl’s face, even the means of death! Which was not consistent with his character.

  Before Fort Lauderdale and the sixth-floor condo in Sea Breeze Village, Colin Asch had been living in Miami, and before Miami he’d been living in Houston, and before Houston he’d been traveling in Morocco (where one evening in Tangier he knocked on the door of the American expatriate writer Paul Bowles—and was admitted), and before Morocco he’d been traveling in Greece, Germany, Holland.… Before that was the United States: a brownstone in Brooklyn Heights where he’d lived with some of the members of an experimental troupe of actors. And before that a string of shitty manual jobs, servile jobs, in the New York area. And before that … things were vague. Patches of his adult life were shifting out of focus like his childhood, which was so distant from him as to have happened to another person. Barely remembered on the far side of a river.

  These things he yearned to tell the Weidmanns’ friend Dorothea Deverell. How he was cursed with too many talents. Music, art, writing, acting, science, “the art of human relations” … all beckoned. Yet in none thus far had he managed to succeed while others, less talented, had forged careers. “So damned fucking unfair.”

  The truth was that much that had happened to Colin Asch in the course of his life, beginning with the Accident surely, but perhaps beginning at birth, had happened merely in his vicinity. Apart from his will and without his guidance.

  Thus “praise” and “blame” are equally unmerited.

  Thus “he” (agent) and “it” (action) are falsely separated.

  Thus even the most general time demarcations—“past,” “present,” “future”—are invalid.

  For in the Blue Room (which at certain times Colin Asch was privileged to enter)
all things become one. The fierce blue light erases all shadow. There is no gravity, no weight. Not even “up” and “down”!

  Purification is the goal. The means scarcely matter.

  Absolution.

  Sanction.

  As Colin Asch would explain to Dorothea Deverell. When he saw her again.

  Each day Colin Asch scanned the newspapers hoping to find an account of the episode recorded in the Blue Ledger as B.L. 781011Alf. But there was nothing. Days passed, and a week—and there was nothing!

  “Fuckers.”

  It angered him that his victim Block, who had in the end put up a desperate struggle to live, like a maddened animal, and had given Colin Asch quite a workout, should not merit even an inch of newsprint here in the North. Nor was there anything in Newsweek, to which the Weidmanns subscribed. You would think the Florida state police and the highway patrol would talk to reporters about having come upon a “perfect crime”—for, if it was not perfect, where was the perpetrator?

  “Yeah,” Colin said, snorting in derision. “Where is he?”

  He considered writing messages to the police down there. Maybe the Jacksonville police too—maybe they were involved. Just to burn their asses a little. Give them a hint who they were dealing with. And maybe to Georgetown University where Block had taught—ANIMALS ARE ONLY HUMAN TOO might make a good cryptic message.