by Hugo Wilcken
“Poor old Joe. But what about you? Where’d you go? Why’d you disappear like that?”
“The usual reasons. Trouble with the boss. Money trouble. Girl trouble.”
“That reminds me. The woman you used to run around with. What was her name?”
“Marie.”
“That’s right. Marie. Spanish, isn’t she?”
“French.”
“I see her around sometimes. My wife knows her. She’s a maid, I think. For a family somewhere around these parts. In one of those spanking new buildings. She used to talk about you. She used to ask after you.”
“Did she? Do you know where I can find her?”
“I’ll ask the missus. But where can she find you?”
“I’m at the Cravan Hotel, Third Avenue. If you see Marie, tell her she can leave a message for me there.”
The evening was breaking up. A party of men had already left to blow the rest of their wages at a nearby brothel. One of the barmen was prodding a man asleep in his beer at the bar. Bottles and cigarette butts dotted the sawdust floor. Outside, the city cast an alien light over a homeless huddle sleeping under the awnings of a jeweler’s store. Even here, the night had the power to transform everything into nebulous mystery. I made my way through the crowd of drunken revelers and found myself back at my hotel without knowing how I’d gotten there—as if I were already in a dream.
3
It was Saturday morning. I was supposed to be at work, but I’d called in sick. The foreman had been angry, and I’d lose the day’s wages, but I didn’t feel particularly concerned. I was horribly hungover, which put me in a heightened, nervy mood. I’d managed nonetheless to get downstairs while morning coffee was still being served. The breakfast room had a similar feel to the hospital’s communal hall, and indeed a similar layout as well. Those who had work, or were trying to get some, had already left an hour earlier, but a few men remained slumped in the armchairs by the fire. They’d no doubt sit there all day, since it was fiercely cold outside. They’d sit there until they’d run out of money, and were kicked out of the hotel. That same fate could easily befall me if I lost my job.
As I drank the watery coffee, fragments of conversation from the night before came back to me. I recalled the man who’d claimed to have known Smith. Maybe there really was someone who’d worked on the docks a few years back and who’d borne some resemblance to me. But why had he told me that Joe Torma had been killed in an accident, when in fact I’d seen him a month or two before in the hospital? Perhaps he’d been mistaken, or I’d heard him wrong, or he’d been playing some kind of joke on me. It seemed that as Smith gradually solidified, the rest of the world reconfigured itself in order to account for his presence, albeit imperfectly. Just as, at the same time, it erased the traces of Manne from the city’s streets.
Outside, snow swirled into never-settling patterns over the city. I climbed the Third Avenue El stairs opposite the hotel, and while waiting on the platform, I turned out my pockets and came up with a few dollars and some change. It was all I had to live on until next Friday—I’d gone through the rest the night before. A train clattered into the station. I took it up to Fifty-Ninth Street, then made my way back on foot to the corner of Fifty-Sixth and First. I was in front of my old apartment building again, now almost a picturesque ruin with the snow blowing into its broken windows. On the left inside the iron gates, the building’s mailboxes were dilapidated. My eyes instinctively swiveled toward the lower right-hand corner, where Manne’s box had been. It was still there, and Manne’s name was still marked on it. Mail and advertising material were stuffed into its mouth. I cast around until I found an old trash can lid, which I used to knock off the lock. I flicked through the pile of bills, tax notices, and other official-looking letters. Only one card caught my attention. I recognized the handwriting:
You weren’t at the funeral, why not? I need to speak to you. There is something I have to tell you. Please give me a call.
The card had been sent in early October; it was now late February. I folded it in half and put it in my pocket. An intense sadness invaded me, a pity for Manne, as though he were an entity outside me. He’d died like a dog. No one had thought to empty his mailbox, or even remove his name from it. Who would have settled his affairs? The city had closed in on his life, compressed it until there was nothing—only a few unpaid bills, a file in an administrative building. A name on a mailbox.
I made my way upstairs with trepidation. The building had never been particularly well maintained, but it was now scattered with garbage and debris, clearly unlived in. I stood outside my door. It had been forced, kicked in probably, and swung almost imperceptibly on its hinges as if it too were shivering with cold. The shadows I could see behind it unnerved me, and I didn’t immediately go in. Instead I climbed halfway up the next flight of stairs. I knelt down and felt under the now tattered carpet and pulled out a key, my key. It was superfluous, of course. But in my hand it momentarily felt like an instrument of magic—a way back to Manne, should I ever want it. I pushed the door open. How many thousands of times had I done that, and seen this same view of my tiny hallway? The image was so deeply embedded that it wasn’t just a memory, it was an integral part of me. Only now, for the first time, it was different. The wallpaper had been partially stripped, exposing the brickwork, and holes had been knocked into the wall. I tried the light switch but it didn’t work; looking up toward the ceiling I could see wires gouged out and hanging down. I stood there and stared at the walls for some time—partly because of their unsettling effect on me, partly out of a fear of penetrating farther. The hanging wires and peeling wallpaper revealed my apartment’s superficial claim to existence, its essential artifice. And yet it had not entirely disappeared, nor had its replacement entirely manifested itself. I was in a transitional space, awaiting its metamorphosis.
Now I walked through to what had been the front room—hesitantly, because I couldn’t rid myself of the irrational expectation that I might see Manne in there, or his ghost at least. The room had been largely gutted, its furnishings removed. The only objects I recognized were the table and two chairs, pushed to a corner and covered in plaster dust. I briefly imagined workers clearing out the place, but leaving the table and chairs until last so they could have something to put their tools on, eat their lunch off. I picked up what I’d thought was a half-dollar from the table, but rubbing the dust off I was disappointed to see that it was a foreign denomination. I felt a tremendous urge to smoke, and went through the various pockets of my threadbare coat, but was completely out of cigarettes.
The bedroom. Despite its transformation—an entire inner wall had been knocked down—I could still see in my mind’s eye how I’d left it for the last time: the bed, with Smith’s comatose body upon it, and Abby’s painting hanging behind. The nude in that painting had been staring into a room that wasn’t there—only now it was miraculously there. The removal of the wall had in fact left an opening to another room: the builders were obviously joining two apartments together to create a grander, more upmarket residence. I’d often fantasized about what the other apartment on my floor would look like inside, and now I could see. For years it had been occupied by an unmarried woman, neither plain nor beautiful, who had seemed to lead as routine an existence as myself, leaving for work and returning home at exactly the same hours each day. Occasionally I’d hear the muffled sounds of a radio program from her apartment, just as she probably heard gramophone records from mine. But apart from that, there was only one time I’d ever been disturbed by her. After I’d gone to bed one night I’d heard voices through the wall—a man and a woman. That had surprised me, because I’d never noticed her having visitors before. At first the tone of the conversation had been neutral, but later it had become more heated, and finally there was shouting. Not long after, a door had slammed and I’d gathered that the man had left. For the next hour or so I’d heard soft sobbing, then finally nothing. I’d stayed awake for hours afterward, though, un
able to sleep. The morning after, I’d seen her on the stairs, and wondered whether she might apologize for the noise of the night before. But she’d simply given me the same curt nod we’d always exchanged by way of acknowledging each other’s presence. Nonetheless, I’d thought I’d detected a minute change to her face. A week or so later, it had occurred to me that I hadn’t seen or heard her for several days. It took another week for it to hit home that she was no longer there. She’d been in her early thirties when she’d moved in, her late thirties when she’d moved out.
Something stopped me from actually stepping over the rubble into the other apartment, but from where I was standing I could see that it was the mirror image of my own. There were marks on the floor made by the legs of her bed: we’d been sleeping inches apart, separated only by the wall. The faded wallpaper was the same, as was the view through the window onto the courtyard. How many times had she and I unknowingly gazed out at the same time to the brick wall opposite? In the years we’d lived on the same floor, we’d barely addressed a word to each other. And yet there was that peculiar intimacy of living so close to someone, of seeing them every day.
To save money I walked back to the hotel—a long ramble down an icy Third Avenue, stopping off on the way at a soup kitchen at St. Marks, where I queued up for something to eat. I passed a phone booth, and suppressed an urge to call Jeff Speelman. I’d even checked the number on the card he’d sent me, before stopping myself. Why was I still chasing Manne? Why couldn’t I let him alone, when I had this new life before me? I wondered what Speelman had wanted to see Manne about. Perhaps Abby had left me something in her will. Perhaps Speelman wanted to give me back some of the things that Abby had taken on our separation. Or was it the reverse? Did he want Abby’s painting, the one that had hung over our bed? I stood there in the street, staring at the people scurrying in and out of the cold. I could feel myself on the brink of tears. The old apartment key was in my pocket, and an uncanny sensation lingered within me.
There’d been a message slip for me at the front desk of the hotel. I’d assumed it was someone from the shipping company, and didn’t bother to unfold it until I was upstairs in my room. It read: “Marie Wilders. 12:45 p.m. No.: GR 5-9975.” That was all. I poked about in my coat pocket for a nickel and went to the phone in the hallway. The operator let it ring on the other end for a long time before she finally cut in: “No answer.” Back in my room I tossed the slip onto my bedside table, beside Speelman’s card. The light was fading; I hadn’t realized it was that late. It was one of those days you float through without ever really knowing the time.
I lay down on my bed and let my mind drift back, just as I’d used to do in the hospital. I was thinking about Miss Fregoli again. About how her mother had written me, a year or so after her daughter’s suicide. Somehow she’d come across the article I’d published about the case, and had guessed the identity of the patient even though I’d used a pseudonym for her. She’d enclosed Miss Fregoli’s two-page suicide note. “I don’t want it, I never want to see it again, but perhaps it might be of use to you in your studies,” she’d written. The note itself was something else: an abstract, measured, elegantly written disquisition on life and death. It had confounded me, not only because it didn’t sound like anything Miss Fregoli could have written, but also because it was unlike any other suicide note I’d seen in my time as a psychiatrist. They were rarely contemplative or metaphysical. On the contrary, they tended to be short, flat, even practical—one that had always stuck in my mind had simply said: “Don’t forget to feed the cat.” And then a couple of years after receiving that letter from Miss Fregoli’s mother, sitting in a restaurant in Central Park on a warm spring day, I’d been reading a Balzac novel. In it, a young woman kills herself and leaves a letter, quoted in the novel. I’d been astonished to discover that parts of it were word for word the same as Miss Fregoli’s. She’d told me in one of our last appointments that she’d been reading Balzac. That must have been in the back of my mind while I’d been browsing the shelves of the Gotham Book Mart for something to read. I’d spent the rest of that day wandering around the Park, wrestling with the implications of my discovery. Miss Fregoli’s note—which had on some level moved me, even seduced me—hadn’t meant what it had literally said. It now seemed to me like an airless, mirthless joke. I’d understood nothing of her, I’d realized.
I shook my head. Why couldn’t I leave the memories alone? Manne was the dive inward, when what I needed was the opposite. I got up, fished out my nickel again, went back to the phone. Once more, the ringing went on and on until the operator broke in: “No one answering.”
“Let it ring another minute.”
“Ain’t no one answering.”
“Let it ring.”
“Suit yourself, mister.”
The wind rattled the windows behind me, the vibrations resolving to a single, plaintive note. I’d been seized with this idea that contacting Marie would render Smith more concrete, deepen his character, and give him more of a life. Wouldn’t it in fact have the reverse effect? What would happen when she realized that I wasn’t whoever she thought I was? I managed to put that thought aside. I recalled the woman I used to see on the balcony, back at the hospital, and the way she’d stared back at me. That simple, repeated encounter had been perfect in its way, perfectly unreal as well.
I still had the receiver to my ear, and the ringing cut out abruptly—for a second I thought the operator had terminated the call. Then I heard a click and a tentative “Yes?” It was a female voice, one that I couldn’t place, but that nonetheless reminded me of someone, somewhere.
4
“Do you remember that place where we used to meet?”
“Which place?”
“The French café. Do you remember?”
“I’m not sure.”
“We used to go there for a drink, before a movie. It had a long, polished bar.”
“I remember it now. Le Zinc.”
“It’s not there any more. I walked down that street the other day. It’s around the corner from where I work. The café’s gone.”
“What’s there now?”
“Just a bar and grill. They changed the decor. It doesn’t look anything like the old place. It was strange going in.”
Marie was silent for a moment. She reached out, gently put her hand to my cheek. I flinched; her touch had sent a tiny shock through my body. It was the first physical contact I’d had with a woman in a while.
“How did that happen?”
“Accident. I fell onto the rails at a subway station.”
“It’s changed you.”
“It’s disfigured me.”
“You don’t have the same face. You’re different, that’s all.”
Her hand was still on my cheek: I put my own over hers. My scar, which had never healed properly, didn’t seem to displease her. Before, I’d been ashamed of it, but on hearing her words, I understood that it could be seen from another perspective. Perhaps it could even be appealing, under a certain light. After all, there were women who liked imperfection in a man.
“I haven’t asked why you left.”
“I don’t know how I could explain it.”
“It doesn’t matter now. I guess you called at the right time. If I’d heard from you even a week earlier, I might have put the phone down.”
I grabbed the waiter as he passed, ordered more drinks, and pulled out the wallet I’d pickpocketed from a dozing drunk on the subway ride up—it was full of bills, two weeks’ wages worth at least. All the time we’d been sitting in the booth by the window, Marie had been staring at me, and I’d turned away, hiding behind my hands, behind my drink. I’d been looking through the glass front of the bar, and had allowed myself to become fixated on a man loitering on the other side of the road; I’d entertained the absurd fantasy that he was spying on me. But my intuition that Marie wasn’t repelled by my disfigurement freed me up. Now I felt I could bear the ferocity of her gaze. I, in turn, examin
ed her properly for the first time. Dark hair, olive skin, trim figure. Her face was careworn and she was probably younger than she looked. I had the impression that she’d undergone a major trial, and despite pulling through, had remained diminished by it.
We’d both been acting stiffly and awkwardly, me even more markedly than her. But by the second drink we’d eased up, leaning into each other over the table. The past, real or imagined, was the silent backdrop to a conversation that in itself remained determinedly in the present. I listened to Marie as she talked about her work as a maid, at the midtown apartment of a divorcé and his young son; I told her something of the life down by the docks. The talk was muted, effortless. All too quickly it was time to go. Marie glanced at her watch: “I’ve got to see someone. I told you I only had an hour.”
I helped her out of the booth. Outside the bar, we stood on the sidewalk looking at each other. The strain of melancholy, admittedly there from the moment I’d heard her voice on the phone, was now all too palpable.
“The French café. The last time we met there, the very last. We talked about living together. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“And then you left.”
“I’ll make it up to you. If you want me to.”
By way of answering, she kissed me briefly on the cheek. There was a pause, as if we both knew it wasn’t enough. I embraced her, and at the same time felt her hands pressing into me. We must have been in each other’s arms for a minute or so before she eventually disentangled herself.
“I’ll always want the best for you.”
“I know.”
She strode off without looking back. I stood there on the sidewalk for quite some time, staring at the corner around which she’d disappeared. Eventually I wandered back into the subway. I put my hand to my cheek: it felt wet. I wasn’t sure whether they were my tears, or hers, from when she’d put her face to mine.
