“Until you what?” asked Vince. His voice had gone low, flat, and humorless, but had lost none of its velvet quality. “What would you do? Would you…kill her?”
Michael snapped open his eyes. He was starting to see now, starting to remember what had happened, what he had done, and he knew that no one else must know, no one must see what was writhing inside him. “No,” he said. “No, I’d never do anything like that.”
“Oh, I think you would, Mr. Dean.” The man was affable again, giving a smile that edged down on one side into a smirk. “I think you’d be quite capable.”
“No. You’re wrong. I wouldn’t.”
“Of course you would,” the man scoffed. “Any of us would, if pushed to the breaking point. We all have one, you know. And I think that yours might be your wife.”
Michael felt that it was inevitable now, that the man would continue talking in that soft, cultured voice of his. Terrified of the answer, he asked, “How…how would I?” He nearly asked How did I? but caught himself in time.
“I think you would go to the shop,” said the man in a kindly manner. “In fact, I’m sure of it. I think you would use a duplicate key that your wife had, and perhaps slip in over the lunch hour when the seamstresses would be out. I think you would enter by the back door, you know, the one that opens into the room where all the bolts of fabric are stored and the clothes in progress are hung? But you would find that the other women had not yet left. So there in that room you would wait until they did.
“You would stand there, hiding amid the dresses, all those different kinds of cloth pressing against you, and you would think what’s taking them so long? All that cloth would begin to feel smothering after a bit, and you would grow claustrophobic, and it would seem to you that all that cloth was alive.”
Michael tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. The man’s voice grew more dramatic as he continued to declaim, and Michael could feel himself there in the shop, pressed upon by those dozens and dozens of stifling dresses, like the skin and bones of scarecrows with all the stuffing gone, the wool like some terrible beast’s rough fur against his face, the silk like cold and slippery dead hands.
“So you stand there in your coat and your gloves and you begin to perspire, and yet you feel cold and clammy at the same time. You know what you’re going to do, but you don’t yet know how. You had thought that you would strangle her, but as you wait there you know that you haven’t the strength remaining to do that. The dresses closing in on you, the horrible tension of waiting, they’re draining you away, the same way that you think your wife is draining your life away with her shop. But as weak as you feel, you also feel angry, and that anger grows within you. You’re livid with fury at these women for not leaving immediately, and even more so at your wife for not driving them out of the shop so that you can do…what you came to do.”
The same panic that had assailed Michael in the shop began to claw at him, and he breathed heavily through a dust-dry mouth, felt the beads of sweat on his lip, his forehead, soaking into the shirt he wore under the suit coat beneath the overcoat, and he felt that if he did not strip these garments away from his tortured flesh they would crush him, clog his pores with his own sweat, poison him with the acids of his fevered brain. But still the man went on.
“Then, finally, they leave. You hear their footsteps crossing the salon, and just as the door closes behind them you see what it is you will use, and it seems to you so perfect, so, shall we say, fitting, that your anger vanishes, leaving you clear minded and purposeful. You hear Debra’s footsteps now, coming toward the back room, and as she walks through the doorway, you push the dresses back so that the hangers squeal on the pipe, and you burst from your cloth prison, free at last.
“She speaks your name once, but once only, and not at all loudly, so great is her surprise. She has no time to say more, as you twist your hand and grasp the iron from the ironing board, raise it high above your head, and, before she has any conception that you have come there to kill her, you bring it down point first so that it strikes her just above her forehead. Do you see it?”
He did. He saw everything. He saw the steam iron’s cruel point pierce Debra’s skull, saw the blood pour down over her face, mixing with the water that trickled from the reservoir of the iron, so that the red streams broke apart, diluted on her nose and cheeks. He saw her standing there as he held the iron in place, the water still dribbling foolishly, like an absurd anticlimax, her eyes rolling up, her hands and arms twitching as the dying brain screamed its last, frenzied messages to the nerves.
“I saw it…” Michael said slowly and painfully. “But no one was there…no one…” He looked at the man who looked like Vincent Price, and thought he saw that sinister face beginning to soften, as though Michael were looking at him through the viewfinder of an unfocused camera. “How could you have been there?” Michael asked. “You couldn’t have been… you couldn’t have…”
“Yes. You went through the shop, didn’t you, to make sure that there was no one else there, no one who could have seen you. But I was there, Michael Dean. I was there.”
“No…no…” The panic and rage were coming over him again. He could scarcely keep his hands at his side. “No one was hiding in there…”
“I wasn’t hiding,” said the voice of silk, “but I was there. I saw, Michael. I saw everything. I know what you did. I know all…”
Michael could bear no more. He had to silence that whispery, silken voice, and he grasped at the throat of the blurry figure seated next to him. Then he realized why the face was out of focus, as his hands sank into layer upon layer of fabric, as though whatever had been bone and muscle had dissolved, leaving only the soft folds of clothing behind.
But Michael discovered with an even greater shock that there was more cloth here than mere apparel would provide. The man’s body itself was composed of fabric that softened and took the shape of Michael’s clenching fists, and as he became aware of exactly what it was that mocked him with its knowledge, he started to tear at its still smirking face, rip at the mouth from which the silken voice had purred, only to find that mouth to be silk itself, shredding into fragments beneath his clawing fingertips.
He plucked away the ragged strips, laughing and moaning and crying at once, and didn’t start screaming until he snatched away the final piece of silk and saw beneath it Debra’s bloody skull, its crown split to reveal a brain pan that seemed filled with sodden, crimson cloth.
“I dunno, Jimmy, it was weird…” Ray snapped his bar rag and shook his head, then continued talking to the uniformed policeman who stood across from him. “…the guy looks a little nervous, like he really needs a drink, but nothing special, you know? So he orders a whiskey, then, real low so’s I can’t hear, starts talkin’ to himself, least that’s what I think. But then I see he’s talkin’ to the next stool, which nobody’s on, you know? Nobody around him, and he’s goin’ on and on, and I figure boy, here’s a cheap drunk.
“This keeps up for a while, and I’m not gonna bother him, he wants to talk to himself that’s his business. But he starts gettin’ more worked up and just then the guys from the early mill shift come in, fill up the bar, and Stosh sits next to the guy, and the guy grabs him by the neck. Well hell, you seen Stosh’s neck, King Kong couldn’t get his fingers around that neck.
“So the other guys pull him off, and by this time he’s screamin’ bloody murder and they hold him and I call you guys, that’s it.”
“You ever see him in here before, Ray?” the policeman asked.
“Nah. Don’t think so. Who is he?”
“He wasn’t fit to answer any questions, but his driver’s license says Michael Dean. There was a business card in his wallet for a dress shop a few blocks away. Debra Dean’s. I’ll head over there, see if she’s the wife or something. Let you know what happens.”
“Thanks, Jimmy. Take it easy.” Ray watched Jimmy leave the bar, then looked at Michael Dean’s drink. It was still full, and Ray rais
ed his eyebrows, picked up the glass gingerly, and dumped the whiskey down the sink. Then he wiped the area of the bar where Michael Dean had sat.
When he leaned over to take a final swipe at the curved edge, he noticed something lying on the floor. He walked around the bar and picked up a small, irregularly shaped piece of fabric. It was damp, and he cursed softly at the mill workers who invariably spilled their beers. In the dim yellow light of the tavern, the remnant of cloth looked red, and it wasn’t until he tossed it in the cardboard trash box under the bar that Ray saw the redness still clinging wetly to his stubby, calloused fingers.
Blanket Man
The figure was that of a sitting man, legs crossed beneath him, head bowed. Over his head and body was a yellow-brown blanket that hid him completely. In front of him on the pavement sat a small wooden bowl. McBride’s quick glance told him that there couldn’t have been more than five hundred yen in it, barely the price of a meal.
As they walked past the beggar, McBride thought of digging some coins from his pocket and dropping them into the bowl, but Sechrist was walking too briskly. McBride would have had to stop and then catch up to his colleague. So he strode on, with a quick look back at the man sitting on the sidewalk of the Sanjo Bridge.
The image stayed with McBride. God, the temperature in Kyoto in July was in the mid-nineties, the air humid enough so that he broke a sweat after only a little exertion. What would make someone sit on the hot pavement in the sun under a blanket? Was it masochism or asceticism run wild, or was the beggar just cold-blooded?
“Ted, did you see that guy?” he asked Sechrist.
“Who?”
“The guy under the blanket.” McBride told him about the beggar, but when Sechrist paused and looked back, the man was lost in the crowd of people going both ways across the bridge.
Sechrist shook his head. “Lots of homeless here, plenty of them crazy enough to wrap up in a blanket on a day like this.” He walked on and McBride followed.
“I wish I would’ve given him something,” said McBride, loud enough for Sechrist to hear.
“You?” Sechrist said and cocked an eyebrow.
McBride knew what Sechrist meant. He wasn’t a giving man. He smiled sheepishly, something he hardly ever did, and shrugged.
“Hiroshima get to you after all?” Sechrist asked.
“No, not really.” McBride had had a weekend free between the Friday meeting in Tokyo and the Kyoto meeting they’d attended earlier that day, and had spent the time in Hiroshima, which he’d never before visited, even though this was his tenth trip to Japan. Sechrist had suggested it, telling him that it wasn’t as bad as he might think, and something everyone should see.
McBride hadn’t expected to be overly moved by the rebuilt city and its memorials and museums, and he wasn’t. There was a palpable sense of sadness there, but he hadn’t felt the crushing guilt that so many other Americans had described. The whole thing had happened before he was even born. Besides, he had enough on his own conscience, if it came to that, and it seldom did.
Across the river Sechrist found the yakiniku restaurant he had been looking for, a well-hidden place on a second floor where they ate meat and vegetables they cooked over a grill in the middle of the table. They had a full view of the Kamo River over which they had crossed, and if McBride craned his neck he could just see the bridge, over which foot traffic would be flowing long into the evening. A good place, he thought, to beg.
“So,” said Sechrist as he waited for a slice of beef tongue to cook on the grill, “how’s your lady? Claire, right?”
McBride nodded. He’d brought Claire with him on a trip to Tokyo eight months before, and Ted Sechrist had met her then. “I don’t know. We broke up a few weeks ago.”
“Really? Sorry to hear that. She was a looker, Dennis. Seemed very nice too…” Sechrist let the sentence trail off as if expecting a further explanation, but McBride only took a strip of beef from the grill with his chopsticks, dipped it into sauce, and ate it. It was no business of Sechrist’s that Claire had unrealistically expected to be McBride’s second, and trophy, wife. He was enjoying his freedom too much to let that happen.
“And how’s your son?” Sechrist asked.
“Good. Starts college this fall.”
“Where?”
McBride had to think for a moment. “Cornell.”
Sechrist chuckled at the pause. Though he didn’t say it, McBride heard, Good old Dennis. Never look back, and knew he was right. He didn’t look back. That was always a mistake, in business or in life. If you looked, you’d see in your rearview mirror what you’d left lying in the road.
By the time they started back over the bridge, it had grown dark, though the bridge was well lit. McBride put his hand in his pocket as he walked, and his fingers wrapped around a large 500-yen-coin, which he intended to drop into the covered beggar’s bowl. The man, however, was nowhere to be seen, and as they stepped off the bridge onto the street McBride opened his fist and let the coin drop back into his pocket.
At the hotel, McBride declined Sechrist’s suggestion of a drink in the bar. They made arrangements to meet for breakfast, after which they would return to Tokyo on the bullet train, and McBride went to his room.
As he undressed, he realized that he had not yet shaken from his mind the image of the beggar covered with the blanket. He supposed it was the mystery that held his interest, the idea that anyone could have been under there, maybe even someone young and strong who had learned that such a pitiful and enigmatic figure yielded more goodwill offerings than a person fully seen. Perhaps the paucity of coins in the bowl had been due to the fact that every few minutes the beggar simply emptied it into a larger container under the blanket. Maybe now that same beggar was cooling off over a Kirin and a dinner worth thousands of yen, before returning to his air-conditioned apartment.
McBride made himself smile at the thought as he stepped into the shower and washed away the day’s sweat and grime. He got out, toweled himself, dried his hair, and slipped into the yukata the hotel provided, then stepped out of the bathroom.
By the dim light of the bedside lamp, McBride saw that he was not alone in the room. Sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor between the foot of the bed and the wall of shelving that housed the desk and the large TV was a figure covered by a yellow-brown blanket.
McBride’s breath locked, and he felt his heart pounding. He blinked his eyes several times as if to whisk the sight out of his vision, but it stayed. For a long while he didn’t move, thinking that the figure still might vanish. He wondered if he was dreaming, since the distinctiveness of his dreams often surprised him, but decided after a moment of reflection that he was not. All his senses were sharp. He was indeed seeing what he was seeing.
If so, there could be only one reasonable if unlikely explanation. For some unknown reason, the blanketed figure had followed him to his hotel, made his way past the front desk, and entered McBride’s room, either with a key or because it had been left ajar. McBride steeled himself with the righteous indignation of a man whose privacy had been invaded, and took several steps toward the sitting figure.
“Hey!” he said, but the figure neither replied nor moved. McBride was next to it now, but instead of pushing it with his fingers, as he had intended, he reached for the lamp on the desk and switched it on. The additional light only brought the figure into higher relief. McBride could see that the blanket was a loosely woven cotton rather than wool, and the color was blended from both brown and yellow threads that made it the color of sodden hay.
The details confirmed McBride’s feeling that this intruder was corporal enough, but when he grasped the blanket at the ridge between the man’s shoulder and his head, he found that he could not bring himself to jerk it away as he had planned. Instead he stood for a moment, then, holding the cloth between finger and thumb, slowly moved backward, dragging it off.
Even minutes later McBride could not have said what the figure was wearing. He was too fixated
on its face. As the blanket revealed the head, it turned slowly to look at him, and he nearly squealed. No eyes pierced him, for they had been burned away, sealed over with gray, charred lids. The whole face was a bumpy terrain of ashy ridges and dark, sunken hollows. Strands of long, black hair were dusted with ash, the filamented ends crisp and sere, curled by fire. The mouth was a black gash, the brown lips swollen and suppurating.
All this McBride saw in a quick, fierce moment, and then he pressed his eyes closed with a sharp intake of breath until the fear that the figure would rise and move toward him made him open them again. When he did, there was nothing there.
The figure had vanished, but McBride’s fingers still held the blanket, the bulk of which lay in folds on the floor. He looked about desperately to see if the thing had leapt wraith-like to another part of the room, but he was alone. Then he looked at the door and saw the chain still in place.
McBride’s whole frame was wracked in a shudder, and he let himself drop heavily onto the bed, flinging the blanket from his fingers as though shaking off a spider. His mind spun in a dozen different directions, trying to create rational or even irrational explanations for what he had just seen. Hallucination, perhaps. He had hallucinated that face from Hiroshima, for he had no doubt that it had been born of his visit to the city and the photos of the blast-burned victims he’d seen there.
But if he had been hallucinating out of some misplaced guilt over both his country’s sins and his own failure to drop some money into the covered beggar’s bowl, was he still hallucinating? The blanket which lay at his feet had to have come from somewhere.
Or had it been there all along? Had he taken it out of the closet to throw over the bed in the cool, air-conditioned room? He bit back his fear and picked it up. It seemed clean, and when he held it gingerly to his face, there was no odor to it at all, not even the neutral smell of clean cloth.
The Night Listener and Others Page 35
