There are no words for death, anyway. Name them. “I’m ‘sorry’?” How many things one is “sorry” for! —That I spoke to you crossly? —That I missed your party? And, oh, yes, that your son is dead, your life ostensibly over, and that, in the wilderness of your grief, you’ll probably go mad and kill yourself. I’m sorry for that.
Wounds.
Time, for her, had created new ones, not healed the old, and was now adding to those, dilemmas of such magnitude, they were impossible to face: there seemed no solutions other than stasis and paradox.
However, the dailiness of our lives goes relentlessly on, and Mrs. Evans was reminded, not unamused, of a story she’d read many years ago about two golfers who were about midway in their game when a distraught friend rushed up with irrefutable evidence that the world, within hours, was to come to an end. This was indeed shocking and terrible news, “but,” said one golfer to the other, “let’s get on with our game; we may have enough time to finish.”
But with her eyes blind, her ears deaf to the usual joy of the season, what was there to do? She could bear none of it, really; nothing, and so planned no cards, no decorations, not even gifts for the servants. She’d simply give them several hundred dollars each: a check, or perhaps new bills if she could get to a bank or ask her accountant to do so.
And Dori and Rose could take care of all the other nuisance gifts: the mailman, the butcher, the little black boy who ran in from the truck with the daily groceries. Oh! and the man where they garaged the car (she’d heard he had a crippled daughter). And, yes, there was a sprinkling of others: Doris, her manicurist, Howard, that sweet gay boy who did her hair, and George, the charming young man at the bookstore who was always so courteous and helpful—surely some slight remembrance would be appropriate.
Suddenly she thought of Martin and everything stopped. She simply couldn’t give him money, as much as he could probably use it. She was so constantly tucking large bills into his pockets—for restaurants, for taxis, for theater tickets—that money as a gift would be unforgivable. So that was at least one gift that had to be bought. Perhaps she could send Dori to Tiffany’s, but would he know what a (glamorous! decadent!) young man would like? If he didn’t, she would tell him. Better—why not something almost but not quite offensively money?—a gift certificate from one of the men’s shops or department stores. Martin loved clothes, and that way he could be happy and choose exactly what his expensive heart desired.
The next “cloud on the horizon” was Bruno, her Little Crocodile! She had neglected him so! Rose had told her—with a clear, warning look of “watch out!” in her eyes—that he had telephoned seventeen times in the last several weeks. But how could she return his calls when he hadn’t a phone? Well, she would arrange to see him soon, squeeze an hour or so out of one day. In the meantime, she’d be sure to send him something: perhaps Dori could deliver it himself some evening—which would be a nice touch, more intimate than UPS, and compensate for all his calls. She might send several things: a poinsettia, a bottle of good brandy, a huge basket with a bright red bow filled with candies, jellies, cheeses and fruits (to satisfy that very large sweet tooth she knew he had!).
And that would be it.
Christmas.
Except for Angel. He had been first in her mind but she’d saved thinking about him for last because he was the most important, and—more than in her mind alone—he was also, much more than she wanted, now in her heart.
She wondered if he’d ever known a truly happy Christmas, a fine one, a beautiful one? What would this one be like for him? — his mother dead and his brutal, alcoholic father likely drunk, every ready with a coarse or obscene word, and a hand, perhaps even a belt, to strike him. So she believed. There seemed no other way to account for the boy’s obvious dread of the man, though Angel denied the beatings, and affirmed that his father “loved” him. What kind of love was that?
Of any bruise on his body, those she could see—he’d say, “I got it in a street fight.” But no; that blue stain on his throat (curious and frightening though she didn’t quite know why), the (sometimes) scratches or welts on cheek or arm, the bruised mouth: these were the signs, the marks of his father’s (drunken) hate, his brutal raging. Indeed, that broken front tooth wasn’t from a water fountain—another youth viciously pushing his head down! Any story would have been more convincing than that!
Who had broken his tooth? Why Aurelio, of course. Aurelio Rivera. His father.
Not a fountain, but a fist.
But about Christmas. And Angel . . .
Hadn’t the day its true meaning through the eyes of a child? Adults for adults, only went through the motions. The way children played “house” so adults “played” Christmas. The way to live it as an adult was to live it vicariously. Could she do that? Could she live it through Angel? With effort, she could try.
So she changed her mind. There would be a Christmas, this year after all: with a huge tree, the best, Douglas fir, the day before in New York, and perhaps midnight mass with Angel by her side. She longed for a whiff of that marvelous Catholic incense (or was it Good Friday or Easter that they used it?). She might even go up to the altar rail (if Angel did) for the taste of that curious little wafer on the tongue; then, afterward, after church, a small supper. Just she and the boy. She wanted to watch those shining eyes, the mouth falling open at the sight of countless gifts, all in white tissue tied with white satin ribbon, piled so high under the tree he’d have to wade through them knee-deep as he would into mountains of wind-drifted snow.
That would be Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day they’d rise in the darkness, sullen with sleep, and make Dori fly through the icy dawn to Long Island. She’d phone Delia well in advance to have a tree there, too, and just a few extra presents: maybe skiis and a sled. There were marvelous hills, and if God were truly good, as everyone claimed, He’d send them a gift of snow.
The Village has a reputation for housing any number of freaks. But these are the normal kind: deviations of mind, not body, expressing their symptoms in behavior and dress considered bizarre by the constant rash of morbid tourists who need to be confirmed in the misconception that any departure from their comfortable, statistical norm is, if not the patent hand of the devil, at least his blurred fingerprint.
True, the widespread confusion of sex in this area—always a wonderfully laughable and entertaining subject (was that a boy or a girl!?)—contributes to the prevailing notion that something is not quite right in this best of all possible worlds; still, without the confusion, how is one to know that (here but for the grace of God go I?
Only living saints, if there are any, and a few peculiar “therapists” seem to know the truth: there I go.
In view of this, usually only the physical freak is noticed by the people who count: the police.
So, a tiny man with a stunted wing, haunting the dark streets about and around the Harrington-Smith Evans home at all hours of the night (though he clung to the shadows and was more often invisible than not) was something not to be neglected.
Two blue-coated stalwart men, their hips bulging with the instruments of death, capture and surrender, caught sight of him several times and finally climbed from their blinking red-eyed car to question the suspect.
Suspect of what? Well, you name it. Murder, robbery, arson, rape. Yes, even the latter. It takes strength (an enormity of which dwarfs are known to possess) not size, to seize, overpower, subdue (drag the kicking victim into cellar, alley or bush) then consummate that most heinous of crimes.
Bruno had adequate credentials in his wallet, as well as money, and was indeed well-dressed. He was not drunk, or high on dope, and didn’t carry (not yet) a weapon of any kind.
Could they charge him with indecent exposure, loitering, committing a nuisance? Littering? Crossing the street against a red light?
They had to let him go with ambiguous warnings, mysterious threats that they were aware of his presence, that crime was rampant, and that if h
e was an insomniac (as he claimed) and liked to walk at night, how come he was so far from home? Wouldn’t it be a good idea—much safer—if he confined himself to his neighborhood where people (including the police) were accustomed to seeing him?
Bruno agreed (yes, of course; yes, they were right) with vigorous nods of his weighty head. Then, without being aware of it, or why, the officers did not turn and walk the few steps to their car; they backed away.
“Jeeze!” said one, smiling weirdly at the other’s weird smile as they drove off.
What was troubling and entertaining them so, was that they’d had to stare down at a face and head that clearly, because of its size, belonged at least six inches above their own.
For once, to Martin’s surprise and satisfaction, Mrs. Evans seemed to have an enjoyable time. She had actually eaten more than two-thirds of her entree and a green salad, followed by a cream custard covered with a burnt sugar sauce. Instead of champagne, she’d wanted a sparkling burgundy and between them they finished off a bottle.
A concert followed, Boulez conducting at Lincoln Center. Stravinsky was featured, the principal piece Sacre du Printemps. And it really had been good, the way Martin liked it: strident, loud, the sound all but bursting his eardrums,
Glancing now and then at the boy’s absorbed, so-serious caught-up face, Mrs. Evans found herself smiling.
The applause was thunderous, the audience on its feet. She could feel the live, raw enthusiasm erupting. More than a sundry assembly of diverse individuals, it became an immense mass-creature, a voracious army of army ants, the Frankenstein sum being infinitely more than its many parts.
Martin was flushed and excited, forgetting her momentarily, all adulation for the little man with the baton who was bowing modestly and smiling with the satisfaction of a lickingly-whiskered well-fed cat.
“Wasn’t it wonderful!” Martin murmured as Dori drove them home. And he reached for her hand.
It was the first time, the very first time he had ever touched or held her that way, and she was undecided whether artfully to withdraw or not. Clearly, there was not only method to his not-so-mad madness, but, like the theater of the ancients, there was the necessity of a beginning, a middle and an end to his play. And this was the beginning of a love-story she could not only not endure but could barely contemplate.
Still, it would be an insult to pull back her hand instantly. He wasn’t exactly a lovesick priest touching a startled nun, so rather than imply a rejection, anything unpleasant in his touch, she let her hand rest in his a few tasteful moments, then, on the pretext of adjusting an earring, took it away.
However, the maneuver wasn’t quite over; but even at best, would have been ill-timed. They stood on her doorstep a few minutes, she being too tired and the hour too late, to ask him in, while—begun in the car—he finished another of his “anecdotes about famous people,” the supply of which was inexhaustible.
“It’s true,” he said, “Nijinsky was working out the choreography for Sacre when he went insane. Some blame the music— how savage it is! And keeping to its spirit, he danced without shoes, using flat pounding rhythms with his bare feet. But it is also said—” (how long his stories went on!) “—that it was a kind of over-reach on his part, an immensity of desire, a will to perfection that could not be humanly achieved. Not even by the fabulous Nijinsky! And so his mind snapped.”
All of which may or may not have been true. Besides countless anecdotes describing events that had actually taken place, she’d discovered that Martin wouldn’t hesitate to make one up, forgivably so, because like everything he did, it was for her pleasure, her diversion, her entertainment.
But now (of course)—after the quasi-successful “hand-holding” came “the kiss.” Being the first, he was gentlemanly enough not to force himself on her or even take her by surprise, but to ask permission; standing there as straight and attentive in the shadows as a Prussian soldier waiting for orders.
She hesitated. But why make a fuss? Perhaps her own silly mind was putting more ardor and ambition in him than really existed. A kiss? A brief light touch of the lips? Why not, between friends.
But of course Martin had something more and much different in mind. Hardly in mind at all. He was what he was: a healthy, profoundly sexual young man, his body aroused, and a back-logged accumulation of towering lust that had taken months in its making.
Regardless: he grabbed her roughly about the waist, forced his body to all he could find of hers between the soft open fall of her mink, while his mouth crushed bruisingly against hers, ready to devour her, to the last crumb, on the spot.
It was moments before she could free herself, and in those moments had to acknowledge that she experienced a sensation that, while perfectly controlled, implied a hunger that may have been as keen as the boy’s.
But then she was free and his face lightly slapped, both of them knowing it was an idle gesture, a bourgeois cliche of innocence outraged.
“Goodnight, Carma,” he said, his manly voice—as the dirty books would have it—husky with emotion.
She murmured a doubtful goodnight, withholding his name as punishment and threat, watching him walk slowly, without backward glance, down the street.
Hadn’t she known all along that what had happened would? It was simply that she hadn’t thought about it directly and intentionally. And she wouldn’t think about it now. If she didn’t want to see him again, she wouldn’t. And if she did, she would.
She saw Dori coming back after garaging the car, and waved as he opened the alley gate to go into the house through the service entrance.
Even in the faint light from the street lamp, she could see him smiling. Was it because he approved of Martin? No, it couldn’t be that. Martin wasn’t anyone who could be approved of at all. It was simply that he was probably happy to see her appear less sad, less grieved, beginning to take an interest, however slight, in the real world, and not the morbid one that had been slowly killing her for so long. Indeed, if she had gone out with the bony, hook-nosed sanitation man who, with his wheeled trash can and broom, she sometimes saw cleaning the street, Dori would have approved.
What she hadn’t noticed, nor had Martin, or even Dori who usually kept a sharp eye on the premises as he went in and out of the house, was that crowded into the shadows, flat against the wall at the side of the stairs where a locked, iron-barred door led to the basement, was . . . Well, what was it?
Not a man; it was far too small. Not a child; though that was possible but unlikely so late at night, unless it was lost, or drugged, or mad and wandering. Perhaps it was an animal, Certainly it had an animal’s stealth and cunning. It had hidden itself so well: to listen, to watch.
But animals never wear coats, nor carry straight-edge razors in inner breast pockets.
This particular razor had a beautiful white porcelain handle, and was decorated with cornflowers, some pale, worn away, others the bluest of blues.
It takes courage and the kind of insanity that is totally careless and destructive of self to be able to use a razor, neither of which Bruno possessed for a long while.
Crimes of passion are sometimes quick, sometimes slow. In Bruno’s case, the growth was progressive. It took time, this becoming. Time to grow senselessly wild, to grow mad.
The question was: who was he to murder? Mrs. Evans? That tall, handsome, straight-backed young man? Or himself.
Perhaps all three.
In the meantime, needing more time to brood, to feed the spreading fire of his hate and his love, he quit his job. He was no longer good at it anyway, having become stupid and slow, neglectful and careless—under the increasingly puzzled eyes of his superiors. Another week and they would have let him go anyway, impending Christmas or no.
He ate little or nothing, slept hardly at all, his activities confined to two: at night he prowled the streets, watching the Evans’ home, and, in the daytime he read virtually ceaselessly, from dawn to dusk when his swollen eyes, webbed with hairlines of blood f
rom the strain, would close of themselves for an hour or two’s rest before he bundled himself up for his nightly vigil.
Great Expectations. Vanity Fair. The Sea Wolf. Jane Eyre. Tom Sawyer. Then Wuthering Heights—how that one moved him! darkening even more his mind, deepening the ache in his heart because the love of his life was truly as imperative but inaccessible as Cathie—and he felt his own soul wandering the desolate, fog-swept moors, calling to the unlistening wind her name.
Finally and crucially, came The Hunchback of Notre Dame which he had read with horror and fascination as a child, and now read again, almost straight through without pause, rediscovering some of the passion, delight and terror of his boyhood. It had been a book, the first time, that had seemed literally to be about him, for of necessity he’d identified with Quasimodo, living out the hunchback’s pain, degradation and thwarted love for Esmeralda with such pity, empathy and helpless rage, several pages became wet with his tears.
Now, reading again with a sigh of wonder, the very last page, he went back and reread the final few sentences, describing how, in the vast tomb of Monfaucon, years after the main events of the story, the fragile remains of the sweet heroine were found with the bones of Quasimodo, her twisted love wrapped around her. “When,” Bruno read, “those who found this skeleton attempted to disengage it from that which it held in its grasp, it crumbled to dust.”
. . . To dust, Bruno echoed, lifting his streaming eyes. But the curious thing was that this time, rereading the book, he hadn’t identified with Quasimodo at all, but entirely with the priest, Frollo, who loved Esmeralda also—loved her with such a depth of unholy passion, such soul-consumed agony, that his words to his condemned, pillored love who would die in the morning could be only and none other than Bruno’s to Mrs. Evans.
He read and reread them, committed them, like a burning brand against flesh, to memory, spoke them aloud, over and over until nothing, only the words, remained in his otherwise empty heart.
Bereavements Page 15
