You Can't Catch Me

by Joyce Carol Oates

  2

  Running for his very life: along deserted Burlingham Boulevard, where the enormous sepulchral homes of Grunwald’s neighbors were hidden in darkness … into the moon-splotched shadows of Fairmount Park, which, by night, had acquired a sinister yet dreamlike atmosphere, silent except for the cry of a screech owl in the distance … in a state of mind, or of nerves, unlike any he had experienced previously in his life. How close he had come to killing another human being! And yet, how sick with disgust he would be, shortly, how revolted at his own cowardice, when the reality of what he had done—what he had failed to do—sank in. I have allowed the monster to live, he thought. Fleur will never marry me now: will never so much as look at me again.

  So he ran, and walked, and ran; hearing the sound of footsteps somewhere behind him; which, when he listened closely, seemed abruptly to fade. Had Grunwald sent someone after him? Was Grunwald himself in pursuit? Tristram’s heart lurched against his ribs. His body was covered with perspiration.

  It had been his intention originally to change his clothes again; to return to the Hotel Moreau by taxi, as he had left it, in the suit in which he had departed, having disposed of his other clothes, as well as the duffel bag, the rope, the flashlight, the “murder weapon.” He had secreted the duffel bag behind some bushes in the park but could not now recall its location, no more than he could recall how he had expected to find a taxi in this part of the city, at this time of night.…

  He had even lost the beret. He prayed he had not lost it in Grunwald’s house.

  Were there patrolmen on duty in the park? Was he being observed? Though officially closed at sunset, this enormous park was surely a place in which many might hide … derelicts, criminals … madmen. Its utter stillness reminded him of the Black Forest, in which he had hiked years ago as a young man touring Germany. Or had it been Angus Markham who had hiked in the Black Forest?

  The footsteps behind him were more pronounced. Someone was certainly following him. A policeman would have shone a light on him and commanded him to stop, but this pursuer followed in absolute silence, as wordless as Grunwald had been in his savage attack.

  This time, Tristram thought grimly, it will be to the death.

  Instinct guided him into a pedestrian tunnel leading beneath a park road; the sort of place, debris-littered, puddled, smelling of decayed leaves and human urine, in which vagrants sometimes take refuge. Tristram’s fastidious nostrils contracted against the stench. The tunnel was long … longer than seemed possible … a horror of echoing footsteps and the sound, or sounds, of trickling water. In the distance Tristram could hear the eerie, chilling, yet melodic cry of the screech owl; and was reminded, with a pang of hurt, of home; of the home lost to him now; wrenched from him as forcibly and as cruelly as valuables are wrenched from a mugging victim. This too he blamed on Otto Grunwald.

  Shrewdly, Tristram pressed himself against the side of the tunnel; and waited. The far end of the tunnel was so distant, its aperture so faintly illuminated by moonlight, his pursuer would be unable to see him silhouetted against it. The man had boldly entered the tunnel; was making his way forward gropingly; his breath coming in quick snorting pants. It was Grunwald of course for who else could it be? He wants my heart, Tristram thought. Nothing less will satisfy him.

  This time Tristram was prepared: Markham’s dagger in hand, and his fingers closed firmly about it. And when his pursuer passed close beside him Tristram leapt upon him with the fury of an unleashed predatory beast; and, giving the astonished man no time to defend himself, let alone attack, struck him numberless blows with the knife: to the chest, to the throat, to the arms, shoulders, belly, loins. He paid no heed to the man’s terrified cries and his pleas for mercy—“No! No! I beg of you! Let me live!” Nor did he pay much heed to the warm blood that spurted forth, as if by cruel magic, from each stabbing blow of the dagger.

  Then the man lay silent and unmoving at Tristram’s feet, in a trickle of fetid water. “There. That’s done,” Tristram said, with satisfaction.

  He wiped the dagger’s blade on some leaves close by; then walked off a few feet, and paused, and listened, his head cocked to one side, before leaving the tunnel’s shelter. But no: there was no further sound.

  Not even the screech owl.

  3

  And in the morning Tristram received one of the great shocks of his life.

  The Philadelphia Inquirer, delivered to his hotel room, was ablaze with headlines announcing the death of “Otto S. Grunwald, Philadelphia businessman and philanthropist”: but the accompanying photograph, of a smiling, crinkle-eyed gentleman, bore only a glancing resemblance to the man Tristram had met; and the accompanying story had it that Grunwald had been found dead in his study, in his home on Burlingham Boulevard, the probable victim of a would-be burglar or burglars. “But he died in the park, in the tunnel,” Tristram said, stunned. “If he died at all he did not die there.” With trembling fingers Tristram held the newspaper aloft, close to his face, and read and reread all that pertained to Grunwald. There was even a photograph of Fleur on an inside page, taken the previous autumn at a benefit dinner for the American Red Cross. Posed in a high-necked long-sleeved dress with her arm formally linked through that of the tuxedo-clad Grunwald, lovely Fleur stared at the camera so strangely, smiled so small, tight, secret a smile, Tristram almost did not recognize her.

  “If he died at all … he did not die there.”

  And, on page forty-nine, there was a two-line headline in very small type, to the effect that a homeless man by the name of Poins—“a familiar habitant of Fairmount Park, known to locals for his faithful proselytizing of a ‘prophet’ by the name of Bruno Love”—had been found in a pedestrian tunnel in the park by an early-morning jogger. The three-inch article noted that Poins had once been a well-respected mathematician and had taught for twenty-five years at the University of Pennsylvania; that he had lived in the area of the park for the past decade, or more; that “no known motive” was given for the killing, in which the victim “suffered more than thirty stab wounds” over much of his body. There was no accompanying photograph.

  “Poins! The madman! Him!—Did I kill him?”

  Tristram let the newspaper fall to the floor, and passed a hand over his eyes. He could not understand it. He had fled like a coward from Otto Grunwald’s home, having not killed him there; yet the man was dead, had been found by servants in a room tactfully described as “an extension of his library,” the victim, like poor Poins, of “multiple stab wounds.”

  Had he killed Grunwald after all, without intending it? without remembering it? Or had someone else killed Grunwald?—But the coincidence would be too great: another intruder, another break-in, at the very same hour.

  No. It was too much of a coincidence.

  And he had killed Poins, obviously. He distinctly remembered crouching in the tunnel, awaiting his pursuer, raising the dagger high, and higher still.… “Did I really do such a thing? I? Tristram Heade?” A violent shudder ran through his body. “But why did I do it?”

  The telephone was ringing; had perhaps been ringing for some time; half consciously Tristram reached out to pick up the receiver, and heard a woman’s voice speaking his name.

  That is, “Angus! Angus!”

  It was Fleur Grunwald, sobbing, it seemed, with grief—or was it joy—her words coming so incoherently at first, Tristram could scarcely understand what she said. Yet the substance of it was, so far as he could assess, that she was “eternally grateful” to him and would “eternally adore” him—and would come by taxi to his hotel at once.

  Tristram had been standing rigid, if not paralyzed; in his, or Markham’s, dressing gown; his head ringing, and his eyeballs aching as if he had stared too long into a bright beam of light. He had heaved himself out of bed with enormous effort some forty-five minutes before, and had not taken time to shower, or even to shave; his fingers were sticky with a reddish-brown substance (which could only, he supposed, in these circumstances, be
blood), and he felt, overall, as queasy, as uncertain, as demoralized, as depressed, as he had ever felt in his life; like a seasoned gambler—the analogy flew into Tristram’s head from he knew not where—who has won the first race at the track, and has taken his winnings and bet again; and won; and taken those winnings and bet again; and won yet again; and has taken those winnings (by this time a deliriously large sum), and has dared to bet again … in defiance even of his premonition that Luck, that expendable quantity, has expended itself quite enough already on his behalf. And here was Fleur Grunwald’s call, and here, so intimate in his ear, her voice; and the promise that she was coming to him at once; the promise, or its implication, that she was at last his.

  “That is some consolation, at least,” Tristram heard himself say, thoughtfully.

  He had not returned to the Hotel Moreau, and to the safety of his suite, until nearly dawn. And then afoot; and appearing, he had no doubt, much the worse for wear—his trousers torn, muddied, and stained with dried blood; his hands stained too; his hair dishevelled; his gait swaying and uncertain as a derelict’s. The uniformed doorman, of whom, with his generous tipping, he had made a loyal friend, did not do much more than blink in sympathetic surprise at the apparition he presented; then proceeded to brush him off, to the extent to which he could, with his gloved hands. There were fragments of dried leaves in Tristram’s clothing and hair; even, in his hair, as he would discover up in his room, that confettilike substance, transparent, but colored, found in children’s Easter baskets. When he reached into his pocket to give the doorman a tip his fingers closed upon a hard, stonelike object, which he instinctively let go: it would be Otto Grunwald’s artificial eye.

  And so, as he discovered in the elevator, it was.

  “An eye for an eye,” he whispered.

  Though in fact he was rather shaken, for he had not seriously believed at the time that the artificial eye had popped out of Grunwald’s head when Tristram had slammed him against the wall; the thought had been sheerly notional, a panicked whim, the consequence of the extreme emotional duress in which he had been at the time.… Yet here was the eye, tremulously resting in the palm of Tristram’s hand! His defeated enemy’s left eye, made not of old-fashioned glass but of some extraordinarily lightweight synthetic substance, a kind of plastic, he supposed. The “white” of the eye was a yellowish-ivory shade, which ingeniously matched the slightly sullied look of the human eye; the iris was a faded brown, flecked with bits of hazel like mica. The precise mate of the dead man’s living eye. But what am I meant to do with it? Tristram wondered, shuddering. I can’t keep it, but it would be too cruel to … dispose of it. He seemed to sense that even Angus Markham, that most practicable and least sentimental of men, would draw the line at “disposing” of the eye.

  Up in his room, Tristram breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had journeyed long and far in order to exact his revenge; and had not, in the end,—whether out of weakness, or oversensitivity—exacted that revenge except (for so he reasoned, at this time) in self-defense. So he had rescued poor Fleur from her marriage, but not at the cost (for so he reasoned, at this time) of a merely wanton, gratuitous act. “You gave me no choice,” Tristram said, placing the eye carefully in the ashtray atop his bureau, where the other artificial eye had been.

  Tristram then pulled off his filthy clothes, and fell almost insensible into his bed; and slept the kind of deep, ponderous, soul-restoring sleep with which he had come to associate that particular bed.

  (In one of his dreams, which he was not to recall until after Fleur’s arrival and departure that morning, Tristram saw himself approach his mirrored reflection with his right hand extended … and saw the reflection extend its right hand to him … so that the two men, or, rather, Tristram and his mirror-self, shook hands. “I am so happy,” Tristram whispered, “—why has no one ever told me, in all of my previous life, of such happiness?” But the mirror-self was not, he saw upon closer inspection, Tristram Heade; it was another man, a stranger—a just perceptibly older, thicker-bodied, ruddier-faced, slightly ravaged Angus Markham. Markham pointed to his left eye, saying silently, It is the fact that the iris is surrounded by white that accounts for its look of terror; then, before Tristram could respond, You should not have set a mercenary spy on my trail ran through Tristram’s thoughts in the same quicksilver fashion, like ripples running silently through water. And then the dream rapidly dissolved, and Tristram was left alone again, his heart pierced by a profound melancholy.)

  “I can’t believe it. I am a free woman at last.”

  Fleur did not throw herself into Tristram’s arms, as he had hoped she might; but, visibly trembling, her lovely eyes welling with tears, she clasped his hand in both her black-gloved hands, and drew so close to him he halfway thought, inhaling her fragrance, that she might lean forward on her toes and kiss him in childlike gratitude. Her skin was pale and luminous, the cheeks lightly flushed as if with fever; the irises of her eyes were so dilated as to appear nearly black. A strand of golden-brown hair fell loosely across her forehead and tempted Tristram to smooth it back into place.… How the sight of her rocked him, to his very soul! In her excited state Fleur was even more beautiful than he recalled. And though she wore black, layers of black, a smart black woolen jacket atop a pleated black silk blouse, a black skirt that fell nearly to her ankles, black textured stockings and shining black patent-leather shoes,—though the woman’s body was covered, cloaked, from ankle to neck, and from neck to wrist—Tristram could well imagine, with a swoon of desire, what lay beneath. Here stands my fate before me, he thought.

  Shedding the blood of any number of men was worth it, for this.

  But Tristram dared not embrace Fleur quite yet, dared not display his passion too roughly. (And it was passion, indeed: sudden, fierce, manly.) His handclasp made her wince, the very expression in his face seemed to intimidate her. She could only stay with him a few minutes this morning, she said; her life—her “newly widowed life”—would be disagreeably public for some time. For overnight, in the space of an hour, she had become a wealthy woman.

  “It was one of the terms of our … agreement,” Fleur said softly, gazing up at Tristram with wide dilated eyes. Her lips drew back repeatedly from her small even white teeth in a twitching smile. “Otto agreed to leave me most of his fortune, if I would consent to marry him; not a penny, he said, to his relatives, who, he claimed, were always spying on him, and talking of him behind his back, and waiting for him to die. His despicable nephew Hans was the most blatant! Of course there will be sizable sums, amounting to millions, given away to charity,—to those charities whose organizers succeeded in flattering Otto the most—but not a penny, not a penny,” she cried, laughing up at Tristram, “—to the Grunwalds. To the very people who have for so many years been snubbing me!”

  Tristram said, “It is no more than you deserve.”

  “It is no more than I have earned,” Fleur said fiercely. “Of course Otto was in the process of altering his will, to eliminate me entirely, since I fled him and vowed, this time, never to return; of course he was outraged, wounded in his pride, and would have done anything within his power to defeat me, but he could not have foreseen you. That you would reappear again in my life, and transform it completely. I know, I know, Angus,” she said quickly, laying a hand on Tristram’s arm in reassurance, “—that it isn’t anything more than coincidence, your arrival here in Philadelphia and my desperate appeal to you,—to all that is decent, kindly, noble, courageous, generous, and manly in you!—and the fact of, of what happened last night, to poor Otto. Set upon as he was by a thief, or thieves, and stabbed to death in the very ‘cave’ of his crimes. It isn’t anything other than coincidence, and we will speak of it no further. We will never speak of it, dear Angus! Never!” And in an impulsive childlike gesture she lay her gloved forefinger against her lips.

  Tristram was suffused with pleasure; and gratitude at her gratitude; but said, “One thing does worry me, dear, a bit—You said tha
t the Grunwalds have been cut out of your husband’s will? Including that rather surly young nephew—”

  Fleur shuddered and looked away. “Hans. As much a beast as his uncle. I’m sorry that you had to encounter him.”

  “Do you think,”—Tristram paused delicately, “—he might cause trouble, over the will? Cause us trouble?”

  With a visibly trembling hand Fleur shaded her eyes, and seemed unable to speak. Then she said, faintly, “Please don’t force me to think of such possibilities now, Angus. Not now. Please don’t spoil my joy in my relief, in my release, dear Angus, if you love me, now!”

  “Of course I love you,” Tristram said, utterly rapt. All thoughts of Hans fled from his brain; all thoughts of Otto Grunwald’s fury, and the mystery of his death; all thoughts too of the luckless Poins, of whom this innocent young woman knew nothing. Tristram edged toward her, wanting very badly to take her in his arms. But did he dare? In her state of nerves? Did even Markham dare? “—I love you, darling Fleur, as you must know, since I have proved it. We will never speak of it again, of course,—but I have proved it. I want to marry you, and take you away from this city, and we can begin again, in another part of the world, as husband and wife, in whom everything will be renewed.” Tristram paused and swallowed hard, seeing the look of sudden maidenly fright in Fleur’s face. “As soon, I mean, as propriety allows.”

  Fleur continued to stare at the floor, or at the cruelly pointed toe of her patent-leather pump. It seemed to Tristram that she nodded … or did not quite nod.

  “We are to be married, Fleur—aren’t we?”

  Again, the nod of her lovely head was near-imperceptible. Her cheeks appeared warm, and her eyes too brightly shining. She is as stricken with joy as I, Tristram thought, but does not know how to express it. The wavy strand of golden-brown hair had slipped further into her face, and Fleur brushed it away with a nervous gesture. “As soon as propriety allows,” she whispered, blushing.