Epitaph For A Tramp

by David Markson

  “It’s no bother. Here.” She was at a closet in the hallway, and she held out a folded bath towel. “1*11 have the bedroom ready when you come out. I’ll be back out here, so you can just go through the hall. And here—here are some hangers.”

  “Good enough,” I said. “Look, it’s a little after two. Suppose you wake me about five, maybe just before.”

  “You’re certain? So early?”

  “Be enough.”

  “All right. I’m sure I’ll feel better by then. I appreciate this, Harry. I do.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  Accommodating old Harry. I took the gear and went into the John. I loafed under the spray for a good ten minutes, then toweled off and hung my clothes behind the door. I was still making like two-gun Doc Holliday, with both the .38 and the Luger, and I tucked them away in a corner with my shoes. I wrapped the towel around my middle and poked my head out.

  “Okay to go through?”

  “Yes, Harry. And thank you.”

  “Right, Estelle.”

  I ducked across the hall. There was a tiny crack of sunlight breaking through a lower corner of the blind when I closed the door after myself, but otherwise the room was gloomy, with that odd, cathedral sort of light you get when you draw heavy shades in the daytime. The sheets were crisp and fresh and I melted into them. I rolled over on my right side, jammed a fist into the pillow to give it some substance, and corked off about as quickly as I had when Duke Sabatini had mistaken my skull for a high inside fast ball.

  You asleep, Harry? I asked myself sometime thereafter.

  Sure, I’m asleep, I told myself.

  How come she’s here then? I wanted to know.

  How come who’s here?

  Me, silly, she said.

  It was a dame I’d known once. She’d floated into my arms out of nowhere. I’d thought she was dead. You never know. Was only undressed.

  I AM dead, Harry, she said. Isn’t that absurd? I played cops and robbers because I was bored and now I’m dead.

  Go away, huh?

  She wouldn’t. She said, You should have helped me, Harry. I told you to help me a year ago and you didn’t, and now look what I went and did.

  She was chilly as wet oysters. I was doing my damnedest not to touch her, but she wouldn’t be put off. Hold me, Harry, she insisted. Don’t twist may. Everybody holds me, why not you? Anyhow it’s only a silly old dream.

  Some dream. I could hear the bedroom air-conditioning as clearly as I could hear her rustling in the sheets.

  “Hold me, Harry,’’ she said. “Oh, my God, hold me!’’

  I did not know how long it had been. It might have been two minutes or two hours. I could still see the crack of light through the blind but I could not tell how much it had shifted. I had been asleep deeply enough so that I had not heard her come in. It had been the touch of her flesh that woke me.

  Her thighs were pressed tight along my own and her face was against my shoulder. She was staring up at me.

  “Estelle, for crying out loud—”

  My hand had fallen over the curve of her hip and onto her thigh. Maybe I was still dreaming after all. If I hadn’t known better I would have sworn the body was Cathy’s. Everything about its touch was exactly as I remembered it.

  “Harry,” she said. “Harry, I need you. I need you so much, so desperately. Hold me, Harry. Oh, God, hold me!”

  No dream, Fannin. All very real, oh, yes, oh, yes. But did Fannin dig all this? Fannin was rather confused. He had had a bellyful of lunatic junkies, simpering fags, sour writers, greasy gun-punks. Now he had the frustrated old maid sister. The end of a perfect day.

  Her arms had come around my neck, clutching at me, and I could feel the swell of her breasts. Her thighs were heaving. I hadn’t moved.

  So talk then, Fannin. Try art maybe, or literature. Try the last quartets of Ludwig von Beethoven. Try your all-time favorite football players. Maybe you can get her distracted and nostalgic over Jay Berwanger, Ace Parker, George Gipp, Whizzer White, Jim Dieckleman, John Kimbrough.

  Sure.

  “Harry,” she said again. She said it like a cry from down a well, like a wail from a cell in the deathhouse, like a moan from an overturned car in a ditch. Her mouth was chewing my face and her legs were thrashing. Poor goddam Estelle. So you’re tired, Fannin. So Thomas Hobbes says the life of man in a state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Win one for Hobbes. You can do it, Fannin. Win one for all the loyal alumni, for all our far-flung boys in service, for all those sweet white-haired old ladies who told us they’ll never get off those sickbeds again if we lose, for—

  “—Harry!”

  It was a high, arching, lazy, end-over-end punt. It hung there, floating, almost suspended. Slowly, very slowly, it drifted down, and I waited for it between the goalposts. Five defense men swam up in front of me as I tucked in the ball and began my return. It was like running under water, and they never touched me.

  After the game Knute Rockne himself came down into the locker room to pat me on top of the head.

  “Harry,” she said. “Oh, Harry, I’ve wanted you so, needed you so. Don’t leave me, don’t go away. Don’t even move now, don t move.”

  Her face was turned. There was still sweat. And then she was crying.

  “Harry.” Her voice was ragged against the pillow. “I was so frightened. When you didn’t call me back after this morning, I was so worried. I was afraid they... afraid...”

  “Estelle?”

  “—Afraid they might arrest you when they found the money in your apartment, might think you killed her and—”

  She winced, gasping in pain. She had to, because I’d grabbed her so tightly by the shoulders that I felt bone.

  My face was no more than four inches above her own. I could feel her hot breath, see the sudden fierce panic in her eyes. My voice belonged to somebody else who was trying to scream with gravel in his throat, and I was the only one in the room who could hear him.

  You never told this woman about the money in your pad, Fannin, the voice roared.

  CHAPTER 18

  I sat there on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor in the unreal light. There were Luckies on a telephone table and I took one. The match flared and died. The smoke turned to steel wool in my mouth.

  So Henshaw’s batty clock had been right. She had had time to make another stop. Probably Leeds had not even found out what direction she’d taken when he tried to go after her.

  “Here,” I said. “She came here.”

  Estelle did not answer and I turned to look at her. The sheet was twisted low across her thighs and her hands lay motionless at either side of her, upturned and curled like dead things in the wake of plague. Her face was turned so that only the plane of her cheek was there. The line of her breasts was lovely, as beautiful as Cathy’s had ever been.

  “And it probably didn’t have anything to do with the money then either,” I said.

  “No.”

  “Tell me, Estelle.”

  “Yes.”

  I heard the sheets whisper and when I looked again she was sitting with her knees drawn up. Her arms were clasped around her calves and her head was pressed forward, and a Modigliani or a Gauguin could have done something remarkable with her. She sat that way for a long time and when she finally lifted her face she kept it straight ahead, not looking at me. Her voice was muted and hard to hear.

  “Two-thirty,” she said, “perhaps a quarter to three. She was ... I thought she was drunk. She told me about the robbery, things about Troy and running away from a man—it was difficult to follow. Perhaps I was too sleepy, too annoyed to want to understand. She hadn’t been here in weeks, hadn’t even been to see mother in the hospital. I told her to take back the money to whomever she’d gotten it from and to stop acting like a child....

  “She took the phone and dialed a number, then she hung up without saying anything and ran out. That was when I saw it in her face, I think, whatever it was t
hat made me realize she really was in trouble. I wanted to make her explain it more carefully. My summer coat was in the front closet and I pulled it on over my pajamas. I took my pocketbook and ran to the elevator....

  “I had to wait for it. There was a small foreign car pulling out across the way when I got down, one of those MG’s, and I saw that Catherine was driving it. I called out but she didn’t hear me. My Plymouth was right out front. I got in and followed her....”

  “You didn’t see anyone else? A red-haired man in a Dodge?”

  “No.”

  “Go on, Estelle.”

  “Yes.” She had not moved. “I thought I could pull up next to her, but she was driving too fast. She didn’t stop for lights. I didn’t either, after the first one. When she got over to 68th I remembered that your apartment was there. I realized it was probably you she’d called. I thought she would be all right with you. I was going to turn around and go back home. I...”

  Her voice broke. I butted my smoke in the tray, not saying anything. Her eyes were deeply shadowed in the dimness. After a while she went on.

  “I don’t know why I stopped. I remember she made her tires screech. I parked behind her and I opened the door to get out, then I changed my mind. I don’t think she’d been aware of me at all, she was in such a peculiar state, but she did look around when I closed the door. She turned back and came over to me....

  “My hands were actually shaking, I had been so unnerved by it all. I opened the door again, almost just to have something to do with them. I asked her what was the matter....

  “She had stopped next to the door, and she was smiling at me. She said... she said, ‘Oh, I don’t need you anymore, Estelle. I’m going up to see a man, he’ll help me. The kind of mm you wouldn’t know anything about. The kind couldn’t get in your life.’ And then she laughed…

  “She laughed. I don’t think she meant to be cruel, she was simply upset. But to say that to me, after all those years...”

  Estelle stopped. She sat there. I waited. “Nineteen,” she said then. “I was nineteen when our father died, and Catherine was seven. Even then mother was deaf, capable of almost nothing. All those years when Catherine was a child I supported us. I brought her up. I never asked her to be grateful. But what time did I have for anything else—for men? What man would have married me anyhow, with two other people to support?

  “No, I couldn’t get a man. She was right. She was the one who could. She was sixteen when it started. I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t listen. Six years it went on, seven, I don’t know how long. She was a slut, there was no other word for it. She had abortions. Not one, two. The first time when she was eighteen. Conceived children without even being sure whose they were and then had them torn out of her while I who was never going to have them, who would have given my life to have one, had to watch while she...

  “She came to me for the money. Both times. I went with her to the doctor, hid it from mother. She always came to me, but only when it was something like that, only when it was dreadful and...

  “And then she married you. You. And I was so glad for her, so glad, because that should have been the end of it. My God, what else could she ask but a man like you? And then when she threw you away, went back to being a tramp...

  “And then to say that to me this morning, whether she meant it or not, to throw it up to me that she could still go back to you whenever she wanted, that even after the way she had been unfaithful she could still have you, while I who had no one, no one...

  “There was a fruit knife wrapped in tissue paper on the front seat. I’d bought it the day before and forgotten to bring it upstairs. She was standing there, laughing, and I could hear the mockery of it, and I remembered so many things, so many. ... And then the knife was in my hand and there was blood on it and... and.. “

  “Estelle—”

  She sobbed once, making no other move. Her voice was still flat, almost emotionless, and I knew there had to be something she was leaving out. I did not say anything. I told myself to let her finish it first.

  “I saw her kneeling there. I threw the knife on the floor. I tried to lean out toward her and I couldn’t, I...

  “And then she got up. She .. . Oh, God! She stumbled across the sidewalk and she almost fell and I still could not do anything. And then I saw her go into the hall—

  “The money was on the curb. I don’t know why I picked it up. And then I was driving, running away....

  “But I stopped again. I was on Third Avenue. I sat there,

  shaking. I had to go back

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I left the car and walked as far as the tailor shop on your corner and I stood in the doorway. And then you came down and the drunk was there and I was going to scream. I couldn’t make a sound. I could only stand there, even after you went back inside, not knowing whether she was alive or...

  “You came out again and drove away. I saw you leave the key and I ran across. I went upstairs and I saw her and I... I...

  “I vomited in the bathroom. I flushed it three times. I remember that, three times, to make sure it was clean. I was going to wait for you but I couldn’t, not with Catherine on the floor, not knowing I was the one who...

  “I had the sack of money with me all the while. I put it in the laundry bag. I didn’t think anyone would find it there, not right away. I thought I was going to be sick again but I wasn’t. I ran out—

  “I put the key back under the mat. I walked slowly, I remember that, too. The knife was still in the car. I drove home and brought it upstairs and washed it. I didn’t know if she had told you who had done it, I thought perhaps you had been here looking for me while I was still out, still... And then when that Duke came I thought it was you at the bell, I didn’t even ask who it was, and then a minute later you were here and I could see that you didn’t know, and... and...”

  Estelle suddenly had her face in her hands. Her body shook violently. She threw herself face-down against the pillows.

  I sat there. The soft light reminded me of places I’d been under dense high firs. If I hadn’t been looking at her, the sobbing could have been the sounds of scavengers in the brush, chipmunks foraging.

  “Why?” I said then. “Not just because she said something about a man you couldn’t get, Estelle. Not just for that.”

  The sobs died slowly. She lay still. “Why, Estelle?”

  Her face was still buried. She lifted it slightly, not toward me. “Yes,” she said. “For that and... and...”

  “What, Estelle? What?”

  I was watching her. She pressed her head back against her raised shoulders with her weight on her forearms, holding it there. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Really her head dropped again.

  “This morning,” she said. “I told you what happened to Catherine when she was six, what... what a man did to her. The man who attacked her was... his name was Robert Bell. He was twenty. My father was still alive, and Robert was staying with us for a weekend at the cottage we had rented. He was my fiancé, my...

  “We were going to be married that autumn. And he did that We were sleeping together. I was giving myself to him because I loved him, because I thought that was the way it should be. And he raped Catherine. She was six years old—six!—and he chose her over me. All right, yes, there was something the matter with him, he was obviously ill, but how do you think I felt? He had come into my bed that very night after my parents were asleep and then the next morning in the woods he...

  “It was hideous when it happened, hideous! Catherine wandered off and it was three days before they found her. It was terrible for her, yes. But what about me? Everyone was frantic when the doctor told us what had happened, but no one paid any attention to me at all, no one stopped to understand how I felt, to care—

  “My father almost went out of his mind. His heart was bad to start with, and that was one of the things that killed him, I’m sure of it. The first night, after Robert confessed, when she was still in the hospi
tal, we were in the waiting room. I was crying and so was mother. And then all of a sudden father was screaming at me, almost insanely. He told me it was my fault for going with Robert. He said... he said, ‘You! You can’t even get yourself an ordinary man like everyone else! No, the only man you can find is a degenerate, a pervert!’ They had to put him to bed. I almost killed myself the same night. He never fully recovered, he...

  “And then she forgot! Catherine forgot! While all my life I’ve had to live with the memory of it! And all my life I tried to give myself to her, because maybe it was my fault in part, maybe I was responsible. I cared for her, cried over what she was, what she had become... and then this morning when she said that to me, said almost the same thing my father had said, that I couldn’t get a man, I...

  “I just lost all sense, all reason, I...”

  She was clutching the edge of the bed, sprawled across it at an angle near me. Her arms were rigid and her jaws were clamped tight. It was a long moment before her muscles loosened. She drew in her breath deeply.