Even the Dead

by Benjamin Black

  He asked her about the young man who had been at dinner with her in the Russell. “Paul,” she said. “Paul Viertel. The son of my sister, the oldest one.”

  “Was she—?”

  “Yes, yes. Theresienstadt. Tuberculosis, and so one of the lucky ones, you could say.”

  She made him close his eyes so she could kiss the lids. “Like kissing a moth,” she said.

  They sat up, with the sheet over their knees, and shared a cigarette, passing it back and forth between them. “I can taste you on the paper,” she said. “My taste, too, from your lips. Both of us.” She laughed. “I had a boyfriend, when I was young, thirteen, fourteen. Very innocent. He had to go away, with his family. We wrote each other letters. I used to try to lift up the—what do you call it? the flap?—I used to try to lift it up and lick where he had licked.” She sighed, smiling. “He was such a nice boy. Not a Jew. He said it didn’t matter that I was, but it did, I think, in the end. Best, perhaps, that he went away.”

  They got up, and put on some clothes, and sat at the kitchen table. The light in the sky was fading fast now. The gloaming, he told her, was another name for twilight. “Gloaming,” she said. “I will remember that.”

  She was wearing his dressing gown. She hadn’t pulled it fully closed and he could see the slopes of her breasts; they gleamed, and in the cleft between them they were the color of a knife blade. When he was speaking, she had a way of lowering her head with her chin tucked in and gazing at him from under her gray-streaked fringe. Her plump upper lip was plumper still from his kisses.

  He asked her what Paul did, Paul Viertel, her dead sister’s son. She told him he was studying to be a doctor. “A proper one,” she said, smiling, “not like you, not a body snatcher.”

  He laughed. “Is that what I am?”

  “Or do I mean a sawbones? I don’t know.”

  They spoke of Phoebe. “Your daughter is unhappy,” she said.

  “Is she? Are you sure? What is she unhappy about?”

  “Many things. Herself. You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. She loves you very much.”

  “She does?”

  “You don’t believe it because you can’t see it.”

  He made a mock bow. “Jawohl, Herr Doktor,” he said.

  “Frau Doktor, please! Do I seem so mannish to you?”

  Each time a car went past in the street, its headlights turned the dusk a little darker.

  “Unhappiness is not so bad,” Evelyn said. “Once a woman came to Freud who was very sick, very sick in the head, you know, and asked him if he could cure her. ‘I cannot cure you,’ Freud said, ‘but I can perhaps make you be ordinarily unhappy.’ That was so wise, don’t you think? Ordinarily unhappy, like everyone else.”

  He asked her about her husband. “Oh, Richard,” she said, “he was more than unhappy.”

  “I didn’t really know him,” Quirke said. “What was his trouble?”

  “Everything. Including me, I think. He had, one might say, a talent for unhappiness, poor man. And of course, he drank—you knew that?”

  Quirke nodded. “Where did you meet?”

  Smiling, she shook her head slowly. “You must understand,” she said, “there are things I will not speak of. Not because they are so terrible, like what happened to my family, or so private, like Robert’s uncurable sorrow, or our son who died.”

  “Why, then?”

  She looked up at the window and the darkening blue air outside.

  “It seems to me,” she said, “that each one of us has a store of things that are—I don’t know what the word is. I am like a ship carrying a precious cargo through a great storm. All the sailors are telling the captain he must throw the cargo overboard or the ship will sink and all of them will be lost to the sea. But no, the captain tells them, no, if I do as you say, the loss will be greater than the risk of death—not the loss to the merchants who own the cargo, and who can always get more, but to ourselves. We shall arrive in harbor and be less than we were when we set out.” She laid a hand on his. “Do you see?”

  He was frowning. “No,” he said, “I don’t understand. Isn’t that the point of what you do, isn’t it your job to get people to talk about things, especially things that are painful, or private?”

  “Ah yes,” she said, “and that is why I am a doctor, and not a patient.”

  They went into the bedroom to finish dressing. With their clothes on, they found they were suddenly shy of each other. He walked her down the stairs to the street. That single star, stiletto-shaped, glimmered low in the sky above the roofstops.

  “Look at this,” Evelyn said, gesturing disgustedly at the Volkswagen. “My little Hitler car. I should be ashamed.”

  She unlocked the car door. He felt a sudden rush of panic. “Will you see me again?” he said, touching her on the elbow.

  She was getting into the car, and paused now and glanced back at him over her shoulder. “Why, of course,” she said. “Why would I not?”

  “Yes, but—” He didn’t know what he wanted to say. “I mean—I mean like this. Will you see me again like this?”

  She sat behind the wheel.

  “I don’t know,” she said. She was facing the windscreen, frowning, and didn’t look up at him. “I think so. It was very nice, between us.”

  He leaned down and put his head in through the low doorway and kissed her awkwardly. She caught him by his shirt collar and held him captive, crouching, half in and half out of the car, barely keeping his balance.

  “My dear,” she said, “look at you, so silly. You think perhaps we can be unhappy together, ordinarily unhappy?”

  “Like everyone else?”

  “Yes. Like everyone else.”

  She let go of him, and he stood back and swung the door shut. She didn’t roll down the window, but pressed the ignition, and switched on the headlights, and drove away.

  * * *

  Half an hour later, his telephone rang. It was Evelyn. He carried the phone to the window with the receiver to his ear and stood looking out at that star glistening tremulously above the roofs. He wondered what it was called. Sirius, was it, the Dog Star? Were these the dog days? He didn’t know.

  “I just wanted to say good night,” Evelyn said.

  “I’m glad you called.”

  “Are you?”

  All her questions, he noticed, no matter how inconsequential they might seem, were real questions, demanding real answers.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am. I was thinking about you.”

  “Good.” She was silent for a time. “It’s so strange,” she said, “I have something of you inside me still. Just now I put my finger there and tasted it.”

  “Did you? What does it taste like?”

  “Bread.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Bread and pearls.”

  “Pearls don’t taste of anything.”

  “How do you know? Anyway, it sounds nice, yes?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Will you tell Phoebe about tonight, about us?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”

  “Then I shall.”

  “You’ll tell her?”

  “Yes. Why not? She’ll be glad, I think. She worries about you, that you are lonely.”

  He felt a tiny stab of misgiving. Did she too think of him as lonely, was that why she had let him take her clothes off and make love to her?

  “I can hear you thinking,” Evelyn said. “You mustn’t think sad thoughts. You are loved—this is true, what I’m telling you. Even if you and I were never to see each other again, you would have been loved, by me. And always you have your daughter.” She paused. “Be kind to yourself, my dear. Try to be.”

  He was silent.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes, I’m here,” he said. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

  “Say nothing, then. Keep your cargo, throw none of it overboard.”
<
br />   “You know what I’m thinking anyway.”

  She gave a low laugh. “Of course I do. I am the witch doctor, of course. I have a patient who tells me that after every session with me he feels empty, as if I have put a spell on him and drained his blood.”

  “Is that good or bad? It sounds bad.”

  “It is neither. It is just a part of the process.”

  “Part of the cure?”

  “There is no cure. I told you this. Only the process.”

  “I think I’m in love with you, Evelyn.”

  “Yes, yes, I know you do.” She spoke softly, as if to soothe a child.

  “You know I love you, or you know I only think I love you, which?”

  “Both, maybe. But I am tired now, and I must go to sleep. I will not wash my hands or brush my teeth. I want to wake up in the night and smell and taste you.” She sighed. “I am being ridiculous.”

  “We both are. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No,” she said, “it doesn’t.”

  14

  Hackett’s office was stifling—he told himself he must get that bloody window unstuck so he could open it and let in a bit of air. Instead he thought he might venture out for a stroll. It was another unendurably hot day, the sky cloudless and the city lying torpid, like a huge, stranded turtle, under the sun’s relentless glare. He had thought of buying himself a straw hat, like the rakish one Quirke was sporting these days, but he didn’t think he would have the nerve to wear it. And anyway, May would be bound to laugh at him. His wife had a good heart, and loved him, in her way, as he loved her, but she had a merciless eye for his foibles and his foolishnesses and would let none of them pass unremarked. So he took up his old felt trilby and shut the office door behind himself and went down to the street.

  He walked up to College Green and along Westmoreland Street. Bewley’s was belching clouds of smoke from the big vat of roasting coffee just inside the open front door. The clock over the offices of the Irish Times told him it was eleven twenty-five exactly, but even as he looked at it, the minute hand moved on with a jerk and a tiny quiver. He kept his eyes averted from the shop windows because he didn’t care to catch sight of his own reflection. May had been on him recently to take up a diet and reduce his potbelly, but he knew he wouldn’t; it was too late for him to try shifting so much fat. He sighed. Life was tricky, that was for sure.

  By the time he was halfway along O’Connell Street his shirt was wet under the armpits, the band of his hat seemed to have become welded to his forehead, and he had to keep mopping the back of his neck with a handkerchief that was already sodden and limp. So he crossed the road and jumped onto a bus for Dorset Street just as it was moving off. He didn’t bother to look for a seat, but stayed standing on the platform, holding on to the rail, trading complaints with the conductor about the heat wave that was showing no sign of ending.

  When he got to Dorset Street he stood outside the tobacconist’s shop and peered up at Sam Corless’s window. There was nothing to be seen, of course, except grimed glass and a frayed cretonne curtain. Maybe he shouldn’t have come up here, he thought, maybe he should leave the poor man to his grieving. Nevertheless he rang the bell, and after a minute or two Corless came down and opened the door. He was gray and haggard, and seemed to have lost weight even in the short time since his son’s death—his face was so gaunt his spectacles, still with the lump of sticking plaster around the earpiece, looked far too big for him, like an ill-fitting prosthesis.

  “Good day to you, Mr. Corless,” Hackett said. “The name is—”

  “I remember you,” Corless said. “I’d hardly forget, would I.” His voice, feathery and hollow, seemed to be coming out of an echoing underground cistern. “What do you want?”

  “Well, I was just out for a stroll and I thought I’d pay a call and see how you were getting on. If I’m an annoyance to you, say so.”

  Corless managed a sort of grin. “Why would I be annoyed,” he said, “by a visit from the police?” He stood back, holding open the door. “Come in, you may as well.”

  Hackett followed the stooped and plodding figure up the narrow stairs. In the flat the air was thicker than ever, and there was a dull, brownish smell, the smell of things left long unwashed.

  “Sit down,” Corless said. “Throw them books on the floor. Will you have a drink? I’ve no beer. There’s only whiskey.”

  “A drop of whiskey would be grand,” Hackett said, looking for somewhere to put his hat down. “They say spirits have a cooling effect, despite what you might think.”

  Corless rummaged about under the sink and came up with a bottle of Powers, three-quarters empty. “I should be fairly cool myself, then,” he said. “I’ve drunk enough of the bloody stuff these past couple of days. This is the second bottle, unless it’s the third. I’ve lost count.”

  He set two small glasses on the draining board and filled them to the brim.

  “Your good health,” Hackett said, lifting the glass to eye level.

  Corless, leaning against the sink, did not return the toast. He drank, taking half of the measure in one swallow.

  Dance music was playing somewhere, not loud. Corless pointed to the floor. “That bastard below has the wireless going nonstop all day long,” he said. “It always seems to be the same stuff. I think he must be practicing to be a ballroom dancer. And then comedians, and the audience in fits. Furlong is his name. Doesn’t smoke, himself. Imagine that, a tobacconist who doesn’t smoke.”

  They listened to the music for a while. Glenn Miller, Joe Loss, one of those—Hackett knew nothing about dance bands, never having been much of a dancer.

  “The funeral was yesterday, I saw,” he said. “I’d like to have gone, but I couldn’t. How was it?”

  Corless gave a sardonic laugh. “Oh, smashing,” he said. “A great crowd attended, and a fine time was had by all. Talk about dancing—it was round-the-house-and-mind-the-dresser till the small hours of the morning.” He made a sour face and drank off the rest of the whiskey in his glass. “There was me, and my dead wife’s sister, and some old fellow I didn’t know from Adam, who’d strayed into the wrong funeral, if I’m not mistaken. The wife’s sister had to go home and make her husband’s dinner.”

  “Sorry,” Hackett said gruffly. “I should have gone.”

  “It’s no matter. Burying the dead is best done quickly. I don’t hold with keening and wailing.”

  He refilled his glass and offered the bottle wordlessly to Hackett, who shook his head.

  “All the same, a sad occasion, a funeral,” Hackett said. “It’s the finality of it. I buried my mother not long ago. It was only when I saw the coffin down in the hole that it dawned on me at last that she was gone.”

  Corless, still leaning against the sink, shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “I have the suspicion,” he said, “that you didn’t come here to console me. Have you found out anything?”

  Hackett rose from the chair and held out his glass. “Maybe I will take a sup more,” he said.

  Corless poured the whiskey. His hand was unsteady. Hackett returned to his chair. The dance band on the wireless below was playing “Chattanooga Choo Choo”; even Hackett recognized that one.

  “Tell me, Mr. Corless,” he said, “did your son ever talk to you about his work?”

  “Didn’t you ask me that already, the other day?”

  “I don’t think so, but of course, the old memory is not what it was.” He took a careful drink from his glass. “Anyway, I’ll ask it again now: did he?”

  “I told you, Leon and I didn’t talk very often. He disapproved of me, didn’t like my politics. The feeling was mutual.”

  “But you must have seen him, the odd time?”

  “Oh, we saw each other for a pint, now and then.” He noticed Hackett’s look, and sighed. “You’re thinking I wasn’t much of a father. Maybe I wasn’t. But I loved him, all the same. I just wasn’t much good at showing it. He understood. He was the same himself. As my old mother used to
say, we’re not the kissing kind.”

  “Did you ever meet his girlfriend?”

  Corless stared. “Did he have a girlfriend? That’s news to me.”

  “A girl called Lisa.”

  “Lisa who?”

  “Smith, she calls herself,” Hackett said, “though we’re not entirely sure that’s really her name. It seems she was there, the night your son died.”

  “Was where? Where was she?”

  Hackett got out his cigarettes. “Will you smoke a Player’s?”

  “No, thanks, I’ll stick to the Woodbines.”

  The both lit up. At the first intake of smoke Corless coughed so hard he had to put the whiskey down on the draining board so as not to spill it. “Jesus Christ,” he said, gasping, “one of these days I’ll bring up a lung.” He stood with his head lowered, taking deep breaths, then picked up his glass again and drank. The cigarette was still burning in his fingers.

  “It seems,” Hackett said, “this girl, this young woman, Lisa, had been to a party of some kind with your son. They were coming home late and they had a row, and she made Leon stop, and she got out of the car to take a taxi. Next thing she saw was the car in flames, apparently.”

  Corless stood motionless, watching him. “And then what did she do?”

  “She got into a panic, I think, and went home.”

  “She went home? She didn’t try to help Leon, she didn’t call an ambulance, or the Guards?”

  “I don’t think there was anything to be done, by that stage,” Hackett said, looking down at his hat where he had put it on top of the pile of books on the floor beside his chair. “Not anything that would have helped your son, anyway.”

  Corless’s mouth was set in a thin, bitter line. “Who is she, anyway?” he asked.

  “Well, that’s what we don’t know, you see.”

  “What do you know?”

  Hackett sipped his whiskey.

  “It’s a queer sort of a situation,” he said. “You remember Dr. Quirke, that was here with me the other day, the pathologist? It seems the girl, Lisa, knew his daughter from a course they were in together, and came to her and asked for her help, saying she was frightened and needed somewhere to hide.”