You Can't Catch Me

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Reared to be polite to any elder, Tristram was incapable of pushing rudely past the man, as others in the park had done; though indicating that he was in a hurry, with no time to spare, he could not forestall a small speech on the subject of Armageddon and the “harmonic concurrences of the universe,” delivered in so brisk, clipped, and atonic a manner as to suggest a robot’s voice. The old man’s movements too were mechanical, as if he were wired; indeed, Tristram saw, amazed, he was wired; his panama hat seemed to be threaded with fine wires, and there was a network of wires visible inside his coat, like a spider’s web. As the old man spoke in small rhythmic surges he blinked, and winked, and frowned, and smiled, and ceased to smile, and smiled again, and nodded, and extended the pamphlet another time, tapping Tristram’s wrist with it, as if his speech were fully patterned in every respect, allowing no margin for error. He was a tall, spindly, dirt-encrusted old man who edged closer to Tristram than Tristram thought necessary, but his manner was eccentric rather more than threatening. “My name, sir, is Dr. Poins,” he said, in his mechanical singsong, “—and there, sir, is Dr. Love. Dr. Bruno Love, Ph.D., my mentor of the past twenty-nine years, who chooses not to foist himself upon us.”

  There stood some yards away, off the path, a shy dwarf-sized oldish man; like Dr. Poins dressed in much-rumpled and soiled clothes, though not, like Dr. Poins, so far as Tristram could judge, wired. He could not have been more than four feet ten or eleven inches tall, with a nut-brown, slightly misshapen, yet rather sweet face; a look in his eyes, Tristram thought, of infinite sorrow, compassion, and wisdom. Something about him led Tristram to believe that he was mute; very likely, then, both deaf and mute. Yet he was standing, in the dreamy vitrescent light of late afternoon, in spring, in Fairmount Park, with a wonderful sort of dignity; even defiance.

  As Dr. Poins continued to declaim of Armageddon, and the cosmic cycle of 166,666 years that was shortly to complete itself, Tristram, now rather desperate to be gone, took out his wallet, withdrew a bill, and pressed it into Poins’s hand. He had noted that ARMAGEDDON was priced at fifty cents. “Sir, wait, oh sir, wait!” Poins said loudly, following after him, “—this is a five-dollar bill, sir, and I have no change,—you must know, sir, that a man like I, in my circumstances, sir, would not have change, in any case not the correct change, sir, no more than Dr. Love, who scorns all material matter and mercenary gain, sir, and you have forgotten your pamphlet, sir, inadvertently insulting both Dr. Love and I though you seem kind-hearted, sir, and mean well! Yet do you suggest that I am to be pitied? That Dr. Love of all persons is to be pitied? Is that your intent, sir, or—Sir! I am addressing you! How dare you walk away!”

  Poins, infuriated, limped along after Tristram like a small yapping dog at his heels, shouting, and waving his arms in scythelike mechanical gestures, drawing a good deal of amused attention from passersby. “Sir! My curse upon you, sir! To insult us, sir, when we bring such sinners as you salvation! To insult Poins, sir, is human, but to insult Love, sir, is the devil’s work! My curse upon you, sir! May you never forget this day or this hour!” Tristram, increasing his stride, his face burning, called back over his shoulder that he had meant to insult no one; he had no smaller change than a five-dollar bill; he was in a hurry—“a desperate hurry”—and could not stop to talk. Finally the old man dropped back, panting, and winded, shaking a fist at Tristram; continuing to shout until Tristram was out of earshot.

  What an absurd encounter! And at such a time! (It was now 6:22 P.M.) Tristram descended a long sloping hill to the street, stumbling, and nearly falling, his face very hot as if he had indeed been guilty of insult, however inadvertent. He had thought the white-haired old man a harmless eccentric.… And now he had drawn a curse upon his head … at such a time.

  He wondered what Markham would have done, in his place. But Markham was doubtless too canny to ever find himself in such a place.

  4

  Feeling rather self-conscious because he had come on foot, and not in a taxi, or, better yet, a limousine, Tristram rang a clapper-bell at the front entrance of the Grunwald estate, and was admitted, after a brief wait, by a grizzled black man in a uniform. Asked his name, he said, after a moment’s hesitation, “Heade. Tristram Heade.” He added, “I believe Mr. Grunwald is expecting me?” The black man regarded him with lustreless, unreadable eyes, and said, “If you are Heade, Tristram, as it’s writ on this paper, yes, Mr. Grunwald is expecting you.”

  The Grunwald mansion was constructed of a darkish stone that drew in and seemed to absorb light; a stone that looked inordinately heavy, and solid. There was a high-peaked slate roof, there were numerous leaded windows, and, to one side, past which the black servant led Tristram, a pair of French doors leading onto a terrace ringed with evergreens in stylized sculpted shapes. A house in which no one lives, Tristram thought. He seemed to recognize the look.

  Indeed, all of Burlingham Boulevard had this look. As of a sepia photograph, a daguerreotype, imprecisely reproduced. The sidewalks were unusually wide, but in poor condition; Tristram had been the sole pedestrian, and had had a sense, passing through Grunwald’s neighborhood of mansion-sized houses, all of them set back from the street in impeccably tended lawns, of entering a depopulated world. The boulevard itself was empty; the tall plane trees that lined it had a melancholy autumnal look, as if their peeling bark meant death. The only visible activity was that of workmen of various kinds—gardeners, lawn crews, roofing repair men. In Grunwald’s driveway, parked at the rear, and being hosed and polished, even now, by a black chauffeur, was a long sleekly handsome black Rolls-Royce.

  Yet none of this, Tristram thought, will save the monster.

  The black servant was leading Tristram along a dim-lit corridor whose walls were hung with oil portraits, presumably of Grunwald ancestors. Still heated from his encounter with the madman Poins, Tristram surreptitiously wiped at his face with a handkerchief; straightened his tie; pressed, with his right elbow, the dagger snug in his coat pocket. Taking yourself by surprise you take your quarry by surprise as well.

  The black servant, about to open a door, glanced over his shoulder at Tristram, frowning. “Did you speak, sir?”

  Tristram said, coolly, “I did not.”

  Otto Grunwald turned out to be so little like the man Tristram had anticipated, the first several minutes of their conversation passed in a sort of daze for him, while he blinked, and stared, and swallowed hard, and tried to get his bearings.

  Grunwald was a man, clearly a gentleman, whom Tristram would have guessed to be in his early sixties; with a high, slightly pinched forehead, fair fine thinning silky gray hair, a narrow nose, narrow chin, “chiseled” lips. His eyes were of the color of damp stones, and sad; the left eye in particular. His skin was both fair, like Tristram’s, and very faintly discolored, as if with a coppery or liverish undertone. Speaking, he chose his words with care and a look of distrust; his handshake had exuded a quick animation, quickly fading. Tristram thought: An ill man, who is determined to be well again.

  They were seated in Grunwald’s library, which reminded Tristram uneasily of his Grandfather Heade’s library; though Grunwald, being a collector, as he called himself, of “variegated tastes,” had amassed things that would have astonished Tristram’s grandfather; including, most conspicuously, not one but two specimen skeletons from the London School of Medicine. “‘Adam’ and ‘Eve,’ the medical students called them, though, to the layman’s eye, they display no significant sexual distinction, save size. I must confess that I paid a fairly hefty price for them,” Grunwald said, sighing, “—and I don’t doubt that I was cheated. At the time, I was a very inexperienced collector, and my enthusiasm outran my perspicuity.” Tristram nodded, and made a show, out of politeness, of examining the skeleton nearest him; the rather diminutive “Eve.” The skull, eyeless, noseless, with many missing teeth, looked as if it might be made of papier mâché, inexpertly fashioned; the bones, blatantly wired as they were, and affixed to a metal pole, had a plaster
ish look, like a Hallowe’en decoration. How tragic our lives, Tristram thought, deeply moved, or are they merely farcical: to come, after so much passion, so much grief, so much joy, and doubtless many moments of pristine insight into the nature of one’s fate, to this.

  Grunwald said, with a confidential dip of his voice, “It does give me pleasure of a childish sort to ‘see’ my specimens through the eyes of a brother collector. One who can be expected to understand, and to sympathize.” The lid of his right eye twitched as if in a wink.

  Though Tristram’s response was rather restrained, Grunwald went on to boast a bit of his collection of medical curiosities: on all of the walls were lithographs and engravings of medical scenes, depicting, among other things, early surgical operations in England, Germany, and Holland; there, in that glass-fronted cabinet, were rows of false teeth, the oldest dated 1723,—“hideous wooden chompers, aren’t they”; in the adjacent cabinet, a display of antique syringes, hypodermic needles, and “douching” and “enema” devices,—“merely to look at them is to shudder, don’t you think”; in other cabinets medical kits, blood-letting and surgical instruments, “leeching vials,” and hearing-aid horns of various shapes and sizes. “The pride of my collection thus far is that kit of ophthalmic prostheses, or artificial eyes as they are called,” Grunwald said, almost tenderly; but, as Tristram merely frowned, and said nothing, the subject drifted by.

  (On his feet, pacing about, gesturing, and smiling, and speaking at times rather exuberantly, Grunwald seemed to Tristram a fairly normal, even rather appealing person; yet with something stiff, even paralyzed, about his face. Had he an artificial eye? The left eye appeared to be fixed in its socket while the right moved easily.…)

  The black servant reappeared, with drinks; Tristram found himself accepting a glass of rather too sweet Madeira wine; and talking, very nearly chatting, with Otto Grunwald, on the subject of collecting … which seemed to engage Grunwald so intensely, with such passion, Tristram could have been led to believe it was the purpose of their meeting. From time to time he paused, and said, “As I suggested in my telegram—” but Grunwald seemed not to hear, or, suddenly nervous, or distracted, murmured, “Ah, later,—there will be time for that later.”

  Tristram glanced at his watch. It was already 7:40 P.M.

  Grunwald said, “It seems, Mr. Heade, that you and I have a party in common: the redoubtable Virgil Lux.”

  “Ah yes,” Tristram said, blinking, “—Virgil Lux.”

  “He is a fine man, don’t you think?”

  “I think … I think he may now and then be duplicitous,” Tristram said carefully.

  “Do you really! Do you!” Grunwald leaned forward with such unfeigned interest, such a widening of his eyes, Tristram could not fail to be flattered.

  There followed then an animated half-hour or more during which Grunwald plied Tristram with questions about Lux, and other Philadelphia dealers of Tristram’s acquaintance, and Tristram answered, sometimes at length; all the while aware, or partly aware, that his meeting with Otto Grunwald was not developing along the lines he had anticipated. He had to forcibly remind himself, in the very midst of an amusing anecdote, that Grunwald was Fleur’s husband … Zoe’s husband … the man, the monster, who had held her virtually captive for years, and tattooed her lovely body in hideous serpentine designs … the likelihood of which, let alone the reality, here, in this elegant setting, with evidence on all sides of taste, discrimination, and care, seemed hard to grasp. He knew why he had come, and he was determined to fulfill his mission, and yet … why had he come, and what was his mission?

  A voice counseled him: Taking yourself by surprise you take your quarry by surprise as well.

  Ah yes.

  And then it was 8:30 P.M. and a light rap at the door informed the gentlemen that dinner was served; and Tristram found himself, wine-warmed and somewhat sleepy, seated at a beautifully set table across from Otto Grunwald, and eating, with hapless pleasure, roast beef of exquisite tenderness; and drinking yet more wine. When, at last, toward the end of the meal, he said, “I am here, Mr. Grunwald, to represent your wife, who is deeply unhappy with—” Grunwald brushed the remark aside impatiently, and said, “I don’t care to hear about my wife, Tristram—I hope I may call you Tristram?—or of the tales she spreads, of me, in this city. I am utterly, utterly sick of the subject; sick to the depths of my soul.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Tristram stared at his host, quite astonished.

  Grunwald continued, “This is a woman, Mr. Heade, whom I married out of love and idealism; and, though I should not want her to know it, pity. Yet within the space of a few years she has been unfaithful to me—I am certain of it. I do know that she has violated not one but several of the specifically itemized terms in our marriage contract; what is most shameful, and a source of unending sorrow to me, as to all the Grunwalds, is her insistence upon telling utterly fantastical tales of my alleged ‘barbarism’ and ‘cruelty’ to any and all who will listen. The very same tales she told to me when we first met.”

  “‘Tales’?” Tristram asked weakly. “‘Fantastical’?”

  Grunwald said with a bitter smile, “And Philadelphia is, I hope I do not offend you with my language, a very cesspool of gossip. ‘The more lurid, the more likely to be believed,’ a society columnist for the Inquirer observed the other day, in print. She seemed to think it was a good thing.”

  Tristram swallowed hard, and reached for his wineglass. His brow furrowed thoughtfully.

  Grunwald said in a measured, reluctant voice, “I don’t doubt that Fleur has appealed to your gallantry; you would not be the first man to have succumbed. She has cultivated a talent for enlisting others, including even certain female members of my family, in her campaign against me … her threat of causing scandal and bringing, as she says, ‘infamy’ upon my name, in the hope of getting a larger divorce settlement than the law would likely grant her. I am told that she has a lover, and will remarry at once, no matter how she denies it … a man she met at the racetrack at Saratoga … a stranger to me.” He looked at Tristram, his right eye sharply in focus. “Is his name known to you?”

  “No,” Tristram said. “Certainly not.”

  “Of course, she would have sworn you to secrecy, in any case,” Grunwald said. There was another brief pause. One set of plates was being cleared and another brought to the table. “Yet to my shame, Tristram, I must confess that even now I adore the woman, and would probably take her back at a moment’s notice. And forgive her all her cruelty. She’s so very beautiful, and has that air about her, when she’s most herself, of supreme innocence!”

  Tristram said, “I find it very difficult to believe, Mr. Grunwald, that—”

  “It is difficult to believe,” Grunwald said heatedly, “—in fact it is impossible to believe, the bizarre tales that woman spins. Her doctor tells me it is a symptom of her illness, and not a moral failing as such; that is, she does not lie; except as children of the ages of six, seven, eight, are said to lie, in inventing odd little fairy tale-like stories in which they themselves are the central characters, often the victims. Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

  Tristram had heard of such a thing, in regard to young children; but shook his head resolutely, no. He did not at all like the direction in which this conversation was moving.

  Grunwald said, with an air of dreamy regret, “When I first met Fleur she was only seventeen years old … the foster child of the pastor of the church to which I belong.… I knew of her unhappy background, and, by degrees, she told me more … an alcoholic father who abused the family, and eventually disappeared; an emotionally unstable mother, also an alcoholic, who lived with a succession of ‘husbands,’ and made no effort to protect her daughter from them; an abusive older brother … whom she accused of ‘sullying’ her when she was eight years old. This brother, she claimed, was not only sexually exploitative but sadistically inclined; he tortured her by tying her up, holding lighted matches against her ski
n, even ‘tattooing’ her. (She showed me several of these ‘tattoos’ on her arms and upper body; I learned after we were married that they were merely designs she had painted on herself with vegetable dye! Yet she was oddly proud of them, and ashamed of them, as if they were real.) If only Fleur could have been an actress, she might have put her talent for duplicity to some use! But she lacks the seriousness, and the stamina. Professional acting is a very different matter from the sort of performances she gives.”

  “Tattoos? Vegetable dye?” Tristram asked, staring.

  “Once, when she was ill with a fever, she raved about an infant she’d had … that had died at childbirth … or had somehow suffocated. She hinted that this infant was the result of an incestuous rape but of course I have no way of knowing if she spoke the truth, or even, in her state, if she knew the truth. She is supremely gifted at self-dramatization, as perhaps you know,” Grunwald said, sighing, “yet, like you, I would probably believe her, still … to a degree, at least … if she comes back to me as she has in the past, repentant, yet insisting upon her innocence, and my cruelty.”

  “What did you say about tattoos?—and vegetable dye?” Tristram asked.

  “I don’t want to expose poor Fleur any further,” Grunwald said. “If she and her attorney force the issue, we will have a day, many days in fact, in court; until then I had better remain silent. But you should know, Tristram, that this is not the first time Fleur has left me, nor is it likely to be the last. Unless she does have a lover, and he too forces the issue.… It has been her habit every eighteen months or so to run off, and hide with one or another indulgent female relative of mine (I don’t doubt but that she is in Delancy Street at the moment but I will not compromise you by asking); then she returns, seemingly genuine in her repentance, though always claiming it was I who drove her off. Such a pretty, fickle, shallow creature!—and yet I adore her! What’s to be done!”