The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Like a waning moon her face shifted out of focus. Seigl tried to draw her attention to him but could not. His limbs were heavy as lead, paralyzed. The room began to darken. The piano music faded. A terrible depression swept over him like surf. In fact he was lying exhausted on a debris-littered shore, and dirty water broke over his body like surf. In this ridiculous open-backed nightgown he lay, naked beneath. He was humiliated, beaten. He was sick with terror that he would drown. I will never leave here. This is my tomb. He had lost all strength. He was too weak to deflect the passage of the present moment, let alone the course of history.

  Sensing his weakness, smelling blood like predators, the souls of the dead hovered near. In Homer’s Hades Up out of Erebus they came flocking. Thousands swarming from every side. Shambling, shiftless dead. Always he’d been troubled by these lines in Homer, that the dead were shambling, shiftless. They had lost their dignity, they were no longer fully conscious. It was horrible to think that among them were Seigl’s elders. His parents, grandparents. His ancestors. It was his duty as their son to nourish them with blood, otherwise they were too feeble to speak. And yet—he had only his own blood, he could not survive without it. Alone of this company only Joshua Seigl was alive. Like bleating sheep they called his name, groping blindly for him. He had to escape them. They smelled him, groped and clawed for him. Joshua! Joshua! But here was his salvation, they could not see.

  Seigl woke, sweating and agitated. He’d cried out in his sleep.

  But he’d escaped Hades, he was alive.

  Alma emerged from the bathroom, unsteady on her feet. Her face was drawn with exhaustion, he’d never seen her looking like this. He began to speak rapidly, pleading: “Alma! You were right—I lied. I couldn’t tell the truth. They tried to buy their way out—to deny that they were Jews. I lied for them! They argued that they were Christians, they’d married into Protestant families and they’d converted. They begged, they pleaded, they tried to negotiate with the Reich, they made payments to Nazi officials to allow them to emigrate, the Nazis took their money—of course!—but it made no difference, their property was ‘Aryanized,’ they were herded into the camps like the poorest of the Jews, the Jews they scorned, that’s why I call them ‘the shadows’—they were never real. Alma, you were right, I’m so ashamed.” Seigl’s voice was shrill and desperate. There was no sensation in his legs, he’d become a torso to be stacked like firewood. “They—they sent me away. I was saved. I was the only one. I couldn’t betray them, I had to lie for them! I’m so—”

  He was delirious, raving. Alma grabbed his hands where he was trying to yank out the IV needle. “Stop it! It was a long time ago, it wasn’t you. All that is crazy. What you need is to get well. None of that matters, see?”

  She was strong, stronger than Seigl in his flailing, weakened state. He had no choice but to give in.

  17

  MY HEART IS filled with HOPE

  This is REBIRTH

  My REDEMPTION

  Every cell in my body will be cleansed & made new. I believe this. She has saved my life.

  Yet: of all the words known to me, there are none. Her touch.

  18

  LIKE A DEEP-SEA predator scenting blood he came. He was sitting at the foot of the nineteen stone steps, smoking, when Alma’s taxi pulled up. She saw he’d been there some time, the sidewalk at his feet was littered with butts.

  “Hey babe.”

  His shaved head was smaller and meaner than she remembered. Only a thin stubbled layer of hair remained like lichen over stone. And his jaws were stubbled, hinge-like. When he smiled, the lower part of his face seemed to be detaching itself from the rest.

  The Tattooed Girl’s lover. Coming to reclaim her.

  It was the eve of Seigl’s discharge from the hospital. Each night, Alma had stayed until the nurses asked her to leave, when visitors’ hours were over at 11 P.M.

  “Babe? I want to see you.”

  She told him no.

  “Let’s go inside. We have things to talk about.”

  She told him no.

  He stared at her disbelieving. Was this the Tattooed Girl? He was still smiling his hinge-like smile. His predator eyes keen and alert upon her.

  “What d’you mean, babe: ‘no’? What the fuck is ‘no’?”

  The Tattooed Girl was wearing white, like the nurses at the hospital whom she so much admired. White rayon trousers, a white rayon shirt and white cotton sweater buttoned partway over her bust. Thin white socks like a little girl’s socks, and sandals with crepe soles. Her hair had been brushed back from her face and tied with a scarf whose ends fell on either side of her head. Her mouth was pale, of the hue of lard, without lipstick. She’d lost perhaps ten pounds and was thinner in the face and breasts. She was standing with her legs apart and slightly bent, and her hands, stubby-fingered, were visibly trembling.

  Her shaved-headed lover said, with a fond, sneering laugh, “Look, babe. You came looking for me. So here I am.”

  He told her he was bartending now, in the city. It was work he liked but only part-time. He’d had enough of fucking waiting tables, he said. He cursed the manager at The Café. Cocksucker sonofabitch. Asshole better not get in his way. As he talked, the Tattooed Girl understood that he needed money. This was the tone, these were the facial grimaces, that signaled a man in need of money. When he appoached her, she could smell that need. A cheap metallic smell it was like copper pennies held tightly in the hand.

  When he touched her, she threw off his hand.

  No, she said.

  “What the fuck do you mean, ‘no’?”

  He was becoming seriously pissed at her: couldn’t she see?

  Still she told him to go away. He couldn’t come in the house, she said.

  (Alma had left the house lighted. She always did, leaving for the hospital in the early morning so that, when she returned, alone, more than twelve hours later, it would seem to her that Seigl was already there, inside.)

  Mr. Seigl was there, she said. She was not allowed to have visitors.

  Bullshit, Dmitri Meatte said. “You told me you have a room. Take me there.” He peered at her suspiciously. His hinge-smile had ceased. “Unless you’re sleeping with the Jew, huh? That’s it?”

  She told him again to go away. She didn’t want to see him.

  “Are you crazy, Alma? You know you want to see me.” He came closer. The metallic smell was stronger. “You know you want it.”

  Alma shook her head no. Like a stubborn child, frightened, yet standing her ground.

  He told her she’d be fucking sorry.

  He told her he needed money.

  He told her he’d be calling on Seigl, and telling him an earful, if she didn’t give him what he wanted. And fast.

  Panicked she shoved him in the chest. He called her cunt, and grabbed her hair. He would have struck her in the face except she kicked him in the groin, reacting purely out of instinct, blind and desperate. He gave a high-pitched bat cry. His face crinkled like an infant’s. As he backed away doubled over, groaning and gasping for air, and cradling his genitals in both his hands as one might cradle precious eggs already broken, she warned that she would kill him if he came there again.

  The Tattoed Girl fighting for her life.

  19

  ON THE FIRST day home from the hospital, Seigl slept.

  On the second day home from the hospital, Seigl began to recover his appetite, and ate.

  On the third day home from the hospital, Seigl gave his assistant Alma Busch a gift to thank her for her “vigil at my side.” It was a necklace that had belonged to his mother.

  This necklace was the most beautiful thing Alma had ever seen.

  It consisted of three strands of jade-colored oval beads of opaque glass that looked sculpted. The strands were of varying lengths, falling midway to her waist. Lowering the strands over her bowed head, gently untangling the beads, Alma’s fingers shook. In a nearby mirror Alma’s stunned face was made beautiful by its proxi
mity to the necklace and for some seconds she stared at her reflection without recognition.

  She would not utter the words Thank you. She would not trust her voice.

  There was her employer’s smiling face in the mirror behind her. He was telling her the necklace was Venetian.

  “ ‘Venetian’—what’s that?”

  “From Venice. Italy. We’ll go there next fall, on our way to Rome.”

  20

  I’VE GOT TO get out, Alma. Can’t breathe.”

  On the morning of May 19, five days after he’d been discharged from the hospital, and improving rapidly each day, Seigl became restless and insisted upon hiking in Mount Carmel Cemetery, where he hadn’t been in months.

  Alma would think his remark about needing to get out a strange one. For each day since his discharge from the hospital Seigl had been outside, if only on the terrace overlooking the river, sitting in the sun, a book on his lap, gazing into the distance. More recently he’d been walking in the neighborhood. In the hospital he’d lost fifteen pounds but the treatment had been successful, Seigl’s doctor said.

  Seigl agreed. “I feel like a new man. Every cell in my body has been cleansed.”

  When Alma hesitated, not knowing if Seigl wanted her to come with him, Seigl said, eagerly, “Come with me, Alma! We’ve been stuck inside too long.”

  Alma asked, Should she bring the cane?

  Seigl said, laughing, Fuck the cane.

  It was a warm, thinly overcast day. The wind from Lake Ontario smelled of imminent rain. Yet the sun was reflected, whitely, strangely, from myriad surfaces, as if the lush green of May was mostly moisture, and ephemeral. Alma would remember that Seigl seemed determined to get to the cemetery, and, at the cemetery, he was determined to climb the hill.

  “The last time I climbed Mount Carmel, I was an ignorant man. This time—I’ll see things differently.”

  Seigl spoke excitedly. Alma saw that his skin, sallow for so long, was flushed, ruddy. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, his eyes were clear and alert. In the hospital, intermittently, he’d been raving, delirious. The nurses had told Alma not to be alarmed, it was a temporary effect caused by the powerful steroids. But Alma heard that edge of excitement and elation in his voice, and it made her uneasy.

  (She’d disobeyed him and brought along the cane. Hoping that, if Seigl noticed it, he wouldn’t be angry, or hurt.)

  That morning, Seigl had wakened and come downstairs by 7 A.M. He’d worked outside on the terrace, he’d made several telephone calls. He would be having dinner with Sondra Blumenthal that evening, and would arrive at her house by 6 P.M. to play chess with her son, Ethan.

  Alma had never met the child Ethan. She’d heard “Ethan” spoken of occasionally. Calmly she thought I don’t hate any of them. No longer.

  She thought I am the one he loves.

  For this truth was clear to her: and did not require saying.

  Any more than it requires saying that there is God, and God is God.

  BY THE TIME they reached the cemetery they’d been walking uphill steadily. Alma was beginning to perspire beneath her arms and at the nape of her neck beneath her heavy hair. Seigl was walking so quickly, Alma could barely keep up with him.

  Inside the gates, Seigl declined to take the zigzagging gravel drive to the top of the hill, and insisted upon climbing a flight of stone steps built into the hill. Alma saw how high, and how steep, these steps were, and began to protest, but Seigl said, frowning, “Alma. You’re my assistant, not my caretaker.”

  Alma wondered: could she climb those steps herself? There were many more than nineteen. And some were partly crumbled, covered in moss. There was a rusted iron railing on one side of the steps that looked useless.

  Alma said, faltering, “Mr. Seigl, I—I don’t think—”

  “ ‘Joshua,’ Alma. I’ve asked you.”

  “ ‘Joshua.’ I don’t think—”

  “You are not my assistant to ‘think,’ Alma. You’re my assistant to ‘do.’ ”

  Uttered in Seigl’s lightly chiding teasing voice, this was not exactly a reprimand.

  “This we can leave in the grass!”

  Seigl took the cane from her and flung it aside. Days later it would be discovered amid the grave markers of strangers and brought to the cemetery groundskeeper.

  Alma smiled, frightened.

  Nearby was the groundskeeper in fact, noisily revving up the motor of a tractor mower. Alma looked to the man as if in appeal: middle-aged, with a fringe of gray-grizzled hair, a hefty torso and coarse dark skin like tree bark. Rudely he stared at Alma for a long moment before seeing who the man was with her, calling then, “Good morning, Dr. Seigl!”

  Seigl called back, waving, “Good morning, Luigi.”

  Alma thought, He will tell him not to climb those steps, they’re dangerous.

  Seigl began the climb energetically. Why he was so eager to get to the top, Alma could not guess. He was wearing baggy khaki shorts, a white T-shirt that fitted his body loosely, a soiled baseball cap. And on his feet his old, smelly, waterstained running shoes. Alma, behind and below Seigl, craned her neck to watch him. Only midway in the climb did he pause for breath. She saw him gripping the railing, which held. Alma had become short of breath almost immediately, rivulets of sweat running down her face. If her employer turned to glance at her, he’d laugh at her discomfort, he’d tease her, but he seemed to have forgotten her, beginning his climb again. By the time he reached the top he, too, had slowed his pace.

  The sun, thinly veiled by cloud, shone opaquely on all sides.

  The mower had started. A deafening roar.

  At the top of the hill, Seigl turned aside as if stricken by a new thought. Alma, craning her neck, called out, “Mr. Seigl—?” She hurriedly climbed the rest of the way. One of the steps was loose, her foot nearly slipped. There was a smell of lush, damp grass on all sides. Something was wrong here, something was jeering and mocking. When Alma reached the top of the steps there was Seigl hunched over, pressing the palm of his hand against his chest. She tried to take hold of his arm but he pushed her away without seeing her. His face was contorted, almost unrecognizable. She cried his name, she asked what was wrong, she was overcome with panic trying to hold him but he pushed away from her, stumbling, livid with pain. As Alma stared in horror she saw him lose his balance and fall backward down the steps, heavily, like a dead weight, onto the hilly ground thirty feet below where he lay broken and still as if already dead.

  I screamed, no one heard me, I climbed back down the steps to be with him. I don’t remember after that. There was a loud roaring noise. In the ambulance he was still alive, he was looking at me. He put out his hand to me, he called me Alma . . .

  IV

  The Shadows

  1

  IT WAS A TIME of deep plunging sleep and when she woke each time he was still dead.

  2

  CREMATE.’ ‘CREMATORIUM’ . . .”

  Her lips moved, she must have spoken aloud.

  They hadn’t wanted her with them. It was a private ceremony as they said.

  His family, his close friends. Only his very close friends were invited.

  They had not wanted Alma Busch who’d been Joshua’s assistant. Alma Busch The Tattoed Girl!

  Yet finally she was allowed. She had had to beg. But she was used to begging, she was good at begging. Her doggy eyes, bloodshot from crying. Someone took pity on her, among the Steadman relatives.

  And so she was shunned by his people, but allowed. At the rear of the chapel where no one need see her.

  (A strange chapel it was: no cross. Only just a platform bearing the coffin. Maroon velvet drapery as in a theater. Where was the furnace? Her nostrils widened, sniffing.)

  “He should be buried. In a real grave. In a cemetery. So that . . .” She wiped at her nose. Was she whispering aloud? It was none of their business what she was saying, they had no right to judge.

  Yes! She would sit alone yet obtrusive as a bad smell at
the rear of the windowless chapel. She wore a shiny black dress with a black shawl, or was it a curtain, ugly and graceless, wrapped around her, their eyes raked upon her in grief and repugnance she was allowed to see. Know that you are not wanted. Know that you are despised.

  In her grief and confusion nonetheless she saw: the sister was not present.

  His sister who’d struck her. His sister who had sent the mutilated book. His sister who had peered into the Tattooed Girl’s heart.

  She shrank from their eyes, though they were no more than shadows. She would ignore them as they ignored her. His relatives she’d never met and would not meet, and his “close friends” whom she’d seen at the house numerous times and served bringing drinks, food, taking away their dirtied plates and glasses, oh thank you, Alma, they would murmur scarcely seeing her and now they would ignore her for her way of grief was vulgar. Among them the woman who’d loved him and who despised Alma Busch and would spread lies about her in grief and fury at his death.

  Alma was sobbing openly. Sitting stiff in dignity as you’d sit in pain. Her arms were folded around her rib cage, tight. Gripping herself tight to keep from exploding. To keep from breaking. Her ash-blond hair was greasy, uncombed. It had been jaggedly cut to an unbecoming length just at her shoulders. Her face was sickly white, without makeup, soft as a runny pudding. No longer a girl’s face but swollen and shiny as if roughly polished. The tattoo on her cheek was a lurid smudge you wanted to wipe off with a tissue.

  Recorded piano music was playing. One of those pieces he had asked her to bring to him at the hospital. Mozart, Schubert . . . The sound of it pierced her heart. It would drive her from the chapel.

  Before the coffin was borne away. Someone rose to speak but already at the rear of the chapel the Tattooed Girl was pushing out of the pew, stumbling out of the chapel. Before the coffin was carried away to the furnace and nightmare flames.