Faithless: Tales of Transgression

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Not a victim! She has been strongly advised to take at least two weeks’ leave from the Clinic and to see one of the staff trauma counselors but she has declined. Apart from the wounds, which are only flesh wounds, and not infected, Matilde is certain she hasn’t been traumatized. And Hector Ramos is still in custody and no one, so far, has posted bail for him ($2,500 bond on $25,000 bail)—Matilde calls the Detroit House of Detention daily, she knows how quickly even murder suspects are released back to the streets in Detroit. Back to their victims, but I am not a victim: I can protect myself.

  A fever. She’s awake for hours, then sleeping fitfully, kicking at the bedclothes. Sees again the flying flashing knife which she tries again to deflect with her bare hands, forearms. If that man—that stranger—had not intervened perhaps she would be dead. And if then dead—where? Through the window beside the bed a tattered luminescent night sky, moonlit clouds like rock fissures. A harsh whining November wind. It’s only 3:20 A.M. If she can make it through the night. And the next night?—and the next. She isn’t going to quit the job for which she’s been trained, the profession to which she’s given her youth, her passion, her unmediated heart. She isn’t going to move from her aunt’s house. But hearing, with a stab of panic, a car at the curb, or is it in her driveway: his car: the Volvo. Matilde?—I want to see you. Matilde stands cautiously beside the window looking down, sees no car in the driveway, or at the curb; goes to the other windows, looks out and sees nothing; hears nothing. (Except the wind flinging leaves against the windows. And the myriad ceaseless noises of the city.) Thinking, but he wouldn’t come here. Uninvited. At this time of night. That’s absurd. That’s madness. Of course. I know. Yet unable to return to bed for some time, staring at the street, the windswept trees, the sky marbled with light—a scene weirdly dilated as if, violently shaken, it hasn’t yet settled back into place, into its normal proportions.

  A case of nerves. That morning at eight-fifteen, leaving her car parked on C-level of the high-rise garage, Matilde experienced a sudden jolt of panic—ridiculous!—as a coffee cup, Styrofoam, glaring-white, blown by the wind, rolled clattering in her direction. And every time the phone rings, and it’s a man’s voice. And a late-afternoon call from one of the women counselors at the shelter, a call having nothing to do with Mrs. Ramos, and Matilde steeled herself expecting to hear that Ramos had been released and had murdered his wife. Steeling herself waiting to hear what was not told her even as, gripping the telephone receiver tight, oblivious of the pain of her scabby-stitched flesh wounds, she believed she was actually hearing what was not told her amid the pounding in her head, the beat! beat! beat! of her brain. The madman. Ramos. Now coming for you, Matilde. And tonight as previous nights the telephone rang several times—at nine, at eleven, again at eleven-thirty. Matilde has shut off her answering machine; she knows who it is. Let’s just see each other, let’s talk. Matilde?—I’m not going to give up. Methodically Matilde has shredded his notes left for her at the Clinic as, that first evening, her wounds still smarting with pain, she’d thrown away the printed card he’d given her. No. I can’t. I won’t.

  Wounds. A dozen cuts of varying degrees of depth, severity on her palms, knuckles, wrists, forearms. All but two were not deep enough to require stitches. Where the angry man had slashed her on the left side of her neck there’s a burnlike scab of about three inches—it looks like a birthmark, or a pursed mouth. Matilde contemplates it frequently, noting the progress of its healing. How lucky you were, they told her at the hospital, your scarf (she was wearing a thin cotton-knit scarf tied casually about her neck) blunted the knife blade, an artery might have been cut. Matilde caresses the crusted scab with her fingertips, prods it into pain, scratches it gently when it itches. A fact: there’s a quickened, feverish heartbeat inside the wound.

  Infinite regret, regress. It’s only 4:10 A.M.! Flattened on her bed, on the rock-hard mattress, a hand on her burning, slightly sunken stomach, another hand, the back of her hand, on her burning forehead. She had felt his heartbeat, too. His mouth, the heat of his breath, the adrenaline charge. Yes I want you, but what does that mean: want. A woman wants a man, it’s a mouth wanting to be filled. No but I don’t want you, I don’t want it. Her eyeballs glaring up out of the dark mute ignominy, anonymity of desire. I want, I want, I want. Turning her head, her stiff neck, to see the time: only 4:11 A.M.!

  The stalker. Headlights trail across the ceiling, thin and fleeting as another’s thoughts. She hears footsteps below her window, on the narrow asphalt drive between her house and her neighbor’s. She has been asleep—a jagged, serrated sleep like wind buffeting sails—on the bedside table a bottle of red wine, an empty glass. The house is locked and the door to the bedroom locked and the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver is in the drawer of the bedside table only a few inches from her hand. Now in fact—as in a film suddenly speeded up, to indicate not just the swiftness of time’s passing but the insubstantial nature of time—the revolver is in her hand. She winces with pain but it’s a wakeful, tonic pain. Not just to shoot, but to kill.

  The heartbeat. Unbearable. Pulsing everywhere like the air charged to bursting before an electrical storm. Matilde, in a state beyond fear, in a sleepwalker’s calm beyond panic, has thrown on her white terrycloth bathrobe and she’s barefoot, advancing to the top of the darkened stairs, the revolver in her hand: her right hand, shaky but steadied by her left. Scabbed cuts on both hands now throbbing, but Matilde doesn’t notice. The beat! beat! in her eyes so pronounced that her vision is blotched, wavy as if she’s undersea. As if the air’s choppy vibrations have become visible, tactile. Beneath the sound of the wind she has heard a sound of footsteps at the rear of her house, a sound of breaking glass. It is 5:15 A.M. and the moon is gone, layered over in cloud. After the Detroit riot of 1967 Matilde’s aunt had installed a burglar alarm but the system gradually broke down, the fierce frantic din was triggered by wind, or the slamming of a door, or squirrels in the attic; it rang in the night and it rang in the day and it rang when no one was in the house, nor even near it, and the police rarely responded to any homeowners’ alarms in Mittelburg Park because they were always going off. And so when Matilde moved into the house she never replaced the burglar alarm system which would now be ringing as the kitchen door is being forced. Matilde at the top of the stairs descends slowly, the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson in her hand, aimed at an invisible target in midair. She calls out, Who’s here? Who are you? I’ve got a gun. She believes that she is utterly in control, composed as one who has rehearsed a scene many times, yet her voice is oddly faint and shrill, shrunken like a child’s piping voice, a doll’s voice, a dream-voice. She speaks louder, Is someone there? Go away! Get out! I’ve got a gun. These words echoing as if they are not Matilde’s but another’s, mocking—gun, gun, gun. Someone has broken into Matilde’s house, and he’s heard her. An intruder, or intruders. As if Matilde can see through the door at the rear of the hall that runs the length of the house, from the front vestibule back to the rear door, the door that’s been forced, she knows that the intruder or intruders are deliberating what to do: to escape, or continue. They are strangers to her, or they know her—Matilde Searle—very well. Her body is covered in a rank animal sweat and prickly beads of moisture have formed on her forehead but Matilde is utterly calm, as a sleepwalker is calm, never in her life so keenly awake! so alert! her slender bones bright-brittle as glass! She has positioned herself on the stairs in such a way that, crouching, aiming the gun through the bannister’s rails, if the swinging door that separates the front hall from the rear is pushed open, nudged even an inch, she will fire.

  The wind. The November wind, flinging leaves, bits of grit, scraps of paper, blowing the clouds in tatters across the sky that, over the industrial stretches along I-75 downriver and west of the city is a faint flamey-red through the night, has confused her: so Matilde tells herself. Barefoot and shivering at the rear of the house, finally daring to investigate, switching on lights, making of herself a bold, wh
ite-glaring target should anyone be outside watching, she sees to her embarrassed relief that the door has not been forced, after all: but a pane of glass measuring about five inches square has been shattered. Maybe a would-be intruder had smashed it, maybe it had been cracked and the wind broke it; Matilde shines a flashlight out into the backyard where tree limbs, debris have fallen, the tunnel-like swath of light quivers, she darts it quickly about the leaf-strewn browned grass but sees nothing, no one.

  Dawn. At 7:05 the telephone begins to ring. Matilde has not gone back to bed but has showered, shampooed her hair; she emerges from the fragrant steamy warmth of the bathroom as the phone rings, rings. A harsh glaring-gray light porous as moisture is pressing against the bedroom windows. The wind has subsided to fitful gusts, another day of Detroit no-weather, dull blank vacuity as if the sky has sunk beneath its polluted weight and it’s a joyless world of cloud, fog. As if the catastrophe has already happened, it’s over and now another day rolling from the horizon. Matilde winces at the light, there’s a tall narrow window beside her bed where the blind is broken, months ago the damned thing snapped up to the very top of the window frame and Matilde hasn’t replaced it, countless items in the old house she should replace or repair but the thought of making an inventory leaves her dazed, exhausted. It’s 7:05 A.M. and the telephone is ringing and whoever is calling Matilde at this hour must have something crucial to tell her unless of course it’s a wrong number. Always the possibility, having steeled herself to hear his voice, the voice she doesn’t want to hear, she will not in fact hear it. Matilde?—I’m not going to give up. At 7:05 A.M. taking pride she’s made it through the night—another night. The gun returned to the drawer of the bedside table and the drawer shut tight. Matilde wonders, would it be easier, believing in God? At 7:05 A.M. of this November morning, which in fact is the morning of her fortieth birthday, this is a thought that strikes her as urgent. She lifts the receiver of the ringing phone believing that whoever it is on the line, wanting to speak to her, or to someone, will have the answer.

  THE VAMPIRE

  Through the rifle scope the woman’s head silhouetted by light drifts like a wayward balloon.

  Staring into darkness. Into him.

  No. She can’t see. The part-shuttered windowpanes, the bright-lit room behind her, would reflect light.

  Seeing her own face, her fleshy torso.

  Seeing her eclipsed eyes. Seeing nothing.

  Now she’s sighted through the rifle scope from the rear of the tall narrow house where there’s a shallow ridge of grassy earth.

  Through the rifle scope hair-fine lines crossing to indicate that lethal spot at the very base of the skull.

  His forefinger on the trigger. Squeezing.

  Except now seen at an angle, in fact barely seen, through the rifle scope as she moves through the kitchen into that alcove off the kitchen, what is it—the pantry. She’s in the pantry. Where there’s a second, waist-high refrigerator and a freezer.

  That freezer stocked with venison. One of Carlin’s fans brought it. Just a token of my esteem. My admiration for your good work. Bless you.

  Through the rifle scope the woman’s eyes glisten.

  Through the rifle scope she’s seen now from beneath. Not twelve feet away. Yet (there’s music playing inside the house, loud) she hasn’t heard a sound, no footstep. His quickened breath, a faint steaming breath in the just-freezing air she hasn’t seen and will not see.

  No moon tonight. Yes, a moon, a crescent moon (he’s checked the newspaper, the weather box) but massed cumulus clouds, gusty autumn and no moonlight to expose him. In his night clothes. Night camouflage. Hooded canvas jacket purchased for this night. The color of night.

  Beneath the side window, spongy leafy earth. He knows he’s leaving footprints which is why he’d purchased, at a Sears in Morgantown, not the same store in which he’d purchased the jacket, a pair of rubber boots two sizes larger than his own.

  Which he’ll dispose of hundreds of miles away from the house in which the dead woman will be discovered, encircled by footprints in spongy leafy earth.

  Through the rifle scope—is the woman smiling? Smiling!

  She’s speaking on a cellular phone tucked into the crook of her neck. That slow sensuous smile. Greedy gloating smile. Incisors damply glistening.

  Through the rifle scope, the crosshairs, that fleshy face, smiling.

  Through the rifle scope moving about idly as she speaks on the phone. Unconsciously caressing her breasts. Smiling, and laughing. Speaking to a lover. One of the widow’s lovers. Since your death. Since she’s begun to feed.

  Through the rifle scope the woman’s head large as a dinner plate. He wonders will it shatter like a dinner plate. He wonders whether anyone will hear the shattering.

  In Buckhannon, West Virginia. On a moon-shrouded autumn night.

  How many months, now it’s been more than a year, since Carlin Ritchie’s death he isn’t sure. He’d count on his fingers except his forefinger is in use.

  But his arms ache! This heavy rifle he isn’t used to, the long barrel. Purchased especially for tonight. His arms, his shoulders, his backbone, and his wrists ache. His jaws ache from that fixed grimace he isn’t conscious of; next time he sees his face, examines his stubbled face in a mirror (in a motel near Easton, Pennsylvania) he’ll see the creases etched in the skin as with a knife blade. How he’s aged.

  Through the rifle scope, a woman’s torso. Shapely breasts, shoulders. He’d caressed them, once: he knows. In layers of clothing, gypsy-clothing Carlin called it, admiring, lovesick, velvets and silks and Indian muslin, long gauzy skirts swishing against the floor. Even at home, by herself, she’s in costume. Through the rifle scope laughing like a girl, eager, shrewd, wetting her lips; unconsciously stroking her breasts. Through the rifle scope on display as if she knows (but of course she can’t know) she’s observed.

  On TV it looked as if she’d dyed her hair a darker, richer red. Tincture of purple. Yet streaks of silvery-white, theatrical as bars of paint. How does it feel? Widow? His name, his memory. Dedicating her life.

  Through the rifle scope, that life. Will it shatter, like crockery? Will any neighbors hear?

  But the nearest neighbors are at least a quarter-mile away. And this wind tonight. A low rumbling, a sound of thunder in the mountains. No one will hear.

  Through the rifle scope she’s moving toward the stairs. Still talking on the phone. Slow hip-swaying walk. She’s gained how many pounds since becoming a widow, twenty pounds, twenty-five, not a fat woman but fleshy, ample. Solid. Those solid breasts. Skin that exudes heat. Burning to the touch. He knows!

  His finger on the trigger. For in another minute she’ll have climbed the stairs. In another minute she’ll be out of the rifle sight. He’s anxious, on the veranda. Peering through a side window. Risking being seen. Boots trailing mud. Nudging the barrel of the rifle against the very glass. This wide, old-fashioned veranda on which Carlin lay. Don’t want to die. Yes but I’m ready. I want to be brave. I’m a coward, I want to be brave. Help me. On this moonward side of the house if there were a moon this October night which there isn’t. Like God watching over me Carlin said if there’s a God but I guess there is not.

  Which is why, through the rifle scope, or not, we die.

  2

  IT MIGHT BE that I know of a murder soon to be committed, and it might be that I don’t. I mean—I don’t know if the murder will be committed, if the murderer is serious. (Though he surely seems serious.) Does this make me an accessory? Am I involved, whether I wish to be or not? I don’t mean just legally, I mean morally. What’s the right thing to do here? Say I make a call to the potential victim, what do I say? “Ma’am, you don’t know me, but your life is in danger. You’re hated, and you’re wanted dead.” The woman would say, “Is this some kind of joke? Who are you?” I’d say, “It doesn’t matter who I am. Your life is in danger.” She’d be getting upset, maybe hysterical, and what could I tell her, really? How could I save
her, if the man who wants to kill her is determined to kill her? I surely couldn’t give her his name. Even if that makes me an accessory. And I surely couldn’t inform the police, any police. And anyway—does such a woman deserve to be saved?

  My cousin Rafe has said, There are folks who deserve to die because they don’t deserve to live, it’s that simple. They must be stopped in their paths of destruction.

  I’ve known about this murder, this potential murder, for less than a week. Never did I ask for such knowledge. I’m not a man who thinks obsessively, I mean I’m not a man who broods. I’m a tool and die designer, I’m skilled at my job, working with my brains and my hands and when I’m working I’m focused like a laser beam—I put in an eight-hour day, we’re on computers now doing three-dimensional design and when I’m through for the day, I’m through. Like, wiped out. And now knowing of this murder-to-be, I’m having trouble concentrating at work. I’m having trouble driving my car. Even eating. Trying to listen to my wife, to tune in to something besides my thoughts. She is one of these, an emissary of Satan. A vampire. Must be stopped. My life at home is a quiet life; we’ve been married a long time and neither of us will surprise the other except if my wife knew my thoughts she’d be surprised, shocked. Last night was the worst yet. Trying to sleep. Kicking at the bedclothes like they’re something trying to smother me and grinding my molars (a habit I’d gotten into when our two boys were young teenagers making our lives hell, but I hadn’t done for years) so my wife wakes me, frightened—“Honey, what is it? What’s wrong?” She switches on the light to look at me and I try to hide my face. I know what she’s thinking—I might be having a heart attack; her father died of a heart attack at around my age, forty-four. That’s young, but not too young. My own father had a saying—You’re never too young to die. And it’s true, my heart is pounding so hard you can feel the bed shake and I’m covered in cold sweat and shivering and for a minute I don’t even know where I am. I’d had a few drinks before going to bed and my mind’s like cobwebs. I tell her, “Nothing! Nothing is wrong. Leave me alone.”