by Paul Sussman
‘Oh Jesus,’ I muttered, terrified. ‘Oh Jesus.’
Since I first arrived at the castle all those many years ago, I’ve never ventured more than 20 or so yards from its front door. I’m not an agoraphobic as such. I am not afraid of the sky, or the countryside, or the wide-open spaces. I don’t have a problem with outside. I just don’t like going away from my home. It holds me with a compelling gravity. It is there that I feel secure, content, calm. It is in the castle that I feel myself. Each step away from it is like a step away from my own sanity.
‘Keep it together, Raphael,’ I hissed to myself through clenched teeth. ‘Stay in control.’
My plan, such as I had one, was to get down into the village, find the nearest suitable shop, buy my pens as quickly and with as little fuss as possible, and then get back to the castle pronto. To this end, clutching The Pill and The Photo for strength, teeth chattering, blood pounding in my temples, I made my way slowly step by step along the rutted track that loops and winds from the castle down into the valley below.
It was a crisp, clear day, the sky a pale, cloudless blue, the air sharp and clean. All around, the bracken-covered hills rolled sedately off towards the uneven line of horizon, whilst down in the valley, which because of the lay of the land you can’t actually see from the castle, there were forests and fields and the white dots of distant houses, clinging to the hills like boats on a stormy sea of green. Had I not been so jittery, I might actually have quite enjoyed the view. As it was, it required my full concentration just to keep myself moving forward and down, and I remained largely oblivious to the splendour of the scenery.
‘Easy does it, Raphael,’ I muttered, taking deep breaths and trying to control the trembling of my hands. ‘One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. It’s going to be OK. It’s all going to be OK.’
The track is about two miles long, eventually issuing on to a tarmacked road which in one direction, left, leads down to the village, and in the other, right, up and over the hills to the towns and cities and worlds beyond. More than once on my way down I had to stop, sweat pouring from my face, heart thumping, convinced I could go no further. I forced myself on, however, and eventually, after almost two hours of toil, reached the point where the track joins the road. Beyond that, however, I found I couldn’t go.
I tried. I stepped out on to the tarmac and willed my legs to carry me left and down towards the village, but they simply wouldn’t do it. They refused to work.
‘Come on!’ I shouted. ‘Don’t stop now! Come on!’
It was no good, however. I managed to totter a few yards, but then, like a fish on a line, found myself irresistibly reeled back. I put every ounce of strength I had into it, driving myself away from the track like a swimmer fighting against a strong current, powering my withered old limbs forward, straining, aching, but all to no avail. The castle’s gravity was too fierce. There was a limit to how far it would let me go, and I’d reached that limit. I sunk down on a hummock at the foot of the track, put my head in my hands and wept.
I don’t know how long I wept for, but I was still doing it, although less copiously, when the nurse pulled up in her car. She leaned across and wound down the window.
‘Are you all right?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I snivelled, wiping my nose on my sleeve (something I hadn’t done since my days with Walter). ‘Fine. Just a bit of hayfever.’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘At this time of year?’
‘Yes, well, I’m very susceptible to it. Thank you.’
She was dark-skinned – Indian, perhaps – and was wearing one of those attractive blue uniforms with a little watch on the front. I couldn’t help noticing, from the way she was leaning forward, that she had a marvellous pair of bosoms. Small but firm, like peaches, with slightly protuberant nipples. I hadn’t seen bosoms for 15 years and tried hard not to stare. Despite my distressed state and extreme old age I felt a vague stirring in the depths of my trousers. I shifted my position slightly so she couldn’t see it.
‘Do you need a lift anywhere?’ she asked.
‘No, I’m all right, thank you.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, yes, quite sure.’
She stared at me for a moment and then, killing the engine, got out of the car and walked round to where I was sitting, squatting down on the grass in front of me. She was young, probably in her mid-twenties, and smelt faintly of perfume. The trouser-stirring intensified.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ she asked, laying a hand on my arm.
‘Yes,’ I mumbled. ‘Quite all right. It’s just . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve run out of pens.’
‘Pens?’
‘Yes. Felt-tip pens. I’m doing some writing, you see, and all my pens have run out. I was just going to get some new ones.’
‘Well, I could take you into the village if you like. I’m going that way.’
‘You’re very kind, but it’s simply no good. I can’t leave the castle.’
She narrowed her eyes, clearly unsure of my meaning. I noticed she had a small, crescent-shaped scar just below her left ear.
‘I live in the castle up at the top of the track,’ I explained. ‘The old observatory. Do you know it?’
She shook her head.
‘I’ve never been this far away from it before, you see. I know it sounds ridiculous, but if I go any further I think I’ll have some sort of breakdown. You must think I’m mad.’
She gave my arm a reassuring squeeze.
‘Not at all. It must be very hard if you don’t feel comfortable being outside.’
‘It’s not the being outside that’s difficult. It’s just going away from the castle. I don’t like to leave it. Which puts me in a bit of a fix, you see. I need these pens, but I can’t actually get to the village to buy them. It’s very frustrating.’
I bit my lip, trying hard not to start crying again. I hate crying in front of women. The nurse brushed a strand of dark hair out of her eye and looked hard at me.
‘Would it be any good,’ she asked after a long pause, ‘if I drove down to the village for the pens and then brought them back to you here? Would that solve the problem?’
‘Would you?’ I cried. ‘Would you do that?’
‘Sure. It’ll only take fifteen minutes, and I’m not in any hurry.’
‘I’ve got the money,’ I said excitedly. ‘And I’ll pay for your petrol.’
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I really don’t know what to say,’ I laughed, getting to my feet and pulling the cash from my pocket. ‘This is wonderful. Marvellous. Quite unexpected. And I don’t even know you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I really thought the note was fucked. Oh I’m terribly sorry. Please excuse my language.’
‘I’m a nurse,’ she smiled. ‘Unshockable.’
I handed her the money and issued precise instructions as to the type of pens I needed (black felt-tip) and how many (18). I then stood back and waved as she drove off with a toot and disappeared around the corner. Only after she’d gone did I notice the unsightly bulge in my trousers. I hoped she hadn’t seen it and, rearranging myself, sat down again to await her return.
She had said she’d be back in 15 minutes, but it was closer to an hour before she reappeared.
‘I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come back,’ I said as she pulled up beside me and wound down the window.
‘Sorry. Flat tyre. I’ve got the pens.’
She indicated a brown paper bag on the passenger seat.
‘Get in. I’ll give you a lift home.’
‘That’s very kind, but I don’t think your car would make it. The track’s steep in places, and full of potholes. And, anyway, the walk will do me good. Going up should be a lot easier than coming down.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
She shrugged and, leaning over, handed me my pens.
> ‘You’ve got some change,’ she said, fiddling with her purse.
‘Keep it.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Please. I don’t need it. If you don’t want it, give to charity or something.’
She smiled, and put her hand out of the window.
‘Well, goodbye then.’
‘Goodbye,’ I said, taking the hand. ‘I really don’t know how to thank you. You’ve saved my life.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘Really, you have. I can’t thank you enough. You’ve been a godsend. My name’s Raphael, by the way. Raphael Phoenix.’
‘That’s a nice name,’ she said. ‘I’m Emily.’
She wound up her window, turned around and sped off back towards the village.
And now I should be getting on. It’s mid-afternoon on Wednesday, 29th December and I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. It’s going to be hard work, but I still think I can finish my note in time for my death. I can feel the energy flooding back through me. I’m raring to get murdering again.
The above has used up not only all the wall space between the study doorway and that of my bathroom, but also some of the bathroom wall too. I won’t, it seems, be able to match my next victim to his room quite as precisely as I was able to match Mr Popplethwaite to his. It can’t be helped, however. The events of the last 48 hours were important, and needed to be recounted in full. There’s no point writing a suicide note if you can’t be flexible.
The pens are all working perfectly – I’ve checked each and every one on a piece of paper, so as not to get any nasty surprises further down the line – although, as you will doubtless have noticed by now, they’re not what I ordered. I told the nurse to get black felt-tips, since that’s the colour in which the note has so far been written (and a very appropriate one too, given the subject matter). My new pens, however, are all sorts of different colours, each pack containing, in order of arrangement, starting from the left, a yellow, an orange, a pink, a red, a light green, a dark green, a blue that’s neither strictly light nor dark, a purple, and a vile, disgusting-looking brown. I’ve already used the two yellows writing the above, and have just started on the first of the two oranges. Whether she simply forgot my instructions, or these were all the shop had, I can’t say. From being a sombre, black and white affair, however, my note has suddenly taken on the appearance of a field of sunflowers. My demise, it seems, is fated to be a multicoloured one.
One final thing I should mention before my next murder is the face. As I trudged back up the track, pens in hand, whistling contentedly to myself, I heard a sudden rustle in the bracken away to my right. I looked over, and there, amongst the dense, curling fronds, I saw a face. A pale, rather beautiful face, surmounted by a heap of blonde hair. I only saw it for a moment before it shot back into the greenery, and by the time I’d waded through the bracken to the spot where it had been there was no sign of it. I might have imagined it. Or it could have been a rabbit or something. But I’m pretty sure it was a face. And a vaguely familiar one too. Very strange.
Enough rambling. Time to go to America. I can’t stop thinking about that nurse’s bosoms.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHEN I SET sail for America in the summer of 1919 I did so for one reason and one reason only – because Emily had said she’d be on the boat.
‘I sail from Southampton today,’ she had informed me the morning after the catapulting of Prince Gummy-Molars. ‘Why don’t you come too? I’m sure we’d have a lot of fun.’
And that was all the encouragement I needed.
‘I’ll meet you on board!’ I cried, hurrying off into the dawn mist. ‘If you get there first, order me a pink gin!’
Five hours later, feeling distinctly queasy, I was standing on the deck of the Aquitania as she nosed out into the choppy waters of the Solent, bound for New York via Cherbourg. I’d already been right round the ship once looking for Emily, and over the next seven days would do so at least another 50 times, covering every square inch of the vessel, even down into the engine room and stokers’ quarters. All to no avail, however. Dear, darling Emily, my love, my life, was nowhere to be found.
‘Don’t worry, lad,’ consoled Alf, a stoker who’d befriended me during my days of fruitless searching. ‘It’s a big ship. She’ll turn up eventually.’
Which, as it happened, she did. That, however, was 12 years later, on a completely different boat going back the other way. For the present she had disappeared, and when the Aquitania finally slipped beneath the benevolent gaze of the Statue of Liberty and docked in New York I was not merely pale and drained and exhausted and limp after a week of uninterrupted vomiting and seasickness, but also very much alone. I had The Pill (in a small silver snuff-box in my pocket), The Photo, and some money which I’d stolen from my most recent victim. Aside from that, however, I was wholly at the mercy of fate. The Manhattan skyline reared over me like a petrified forest, and I remember feeling rather scared. It was the first time I’d ever been abroad.
Of my first eight years in the United States I shall say little. Not because they were uneventful. Quite the contrary. They were far too eventful. So much happened, so many acquaintances were made and things done and places visited that I would need at least four rooms to describe them, and even then would still have to reduce my writing to the size of a pin-head to get it all in.
America was, for me, a revelation. It was so vast and fast and loud and brazen. So extraordinarily open, as though the door of my life had hitherto been only slightly ajar, and I was now able to push it wide and charge through into the world beyond. Everything was so much bigger than in England – the people, the buildings, the streets, the food – and appeared to happen at twice the speed, and with twice the intensity. From the moment I arrived I was intoxicated by the place. Quite intoxicated.
I disembarked in New York with enough money to last me a month, at a pinch. As it was I took a room in rather a nice hotel fronting on to Central Park, ate out every night and was penniless within a week. Thereafter I was forced to work, something which, up to that point, I’d never actually done before.
My first job was as a waiter in Bisky’s Kosher Salt-Beef Parlour on the Lower East Side. All day from morning to night I would charge to and fro through a fog of chicken-soup steam serving salt beef and latkas and chopped liver and gherkins to a predominantly immigrant clientele, my face drenched in a greasy sweat, my ears ringing to the cries of ‘Chicken Kneidlach Double Sour Cream Bagel Table Four! Gefilte Fish Cream Soda Table Eight!’ that emanated in a constant stream from the pungent inferno of the kitchens. The owner, Solly Bisky, pronounced my name ‘Penix’, and insisted I was by far the worst waiter he’d ever had the misfortune to employ, an appraisal that, given the number of plates I dropped and orders I mixed up, was probably not that far wide of the mark.
I remained at Bisky’s for six months, renting a room in a tenement overlooking a clattering subway track, until Solly caught me humping his daughter behind a vat of gherkins in the restaurant storeroom, whereupon I was chased off the premises and found a new job selling refrigerators in Brooklyn. I was as bad at that as I had been at waitering, however, and soon gave it up in favour of a position in the bed department at Bloomingdale’s. That didn’t last long either – sacked for, quite literally, falling asleep on the job – after which I worked as an usher in a nickelodeon on Broadway, a bellhop at the Waldorf, a hotdog salesman in Central Park and a flower-delivery man in Manhattan, in the process enjoying intimate relations with most of the women to whom I was doing the delivering. Then I left New York altogether and went south to sunny Miami, where I got a job as a lifeguard. In six months of sitting in my swimsuit atop a rickety wooden tower, however, I was never once called upon to rescue anyone, which was fortunate, because I’ve never learned to swim.
From Miami I went west to New Orleans, where I found work as a croupier, and where news of my father’s death finally caught up with me, almost a year after it had happe
ned. Then it was north to Memphis to work as a car salesman; north again to Jersey City, where I enjoyed a brief career as a journalist (covering, incidentally, the legendary Dempsey–Carpentier world heavyweight title fight); and then over to Chicago for a spell of illegal liquor running.
From Chicago it was west to the Rocky Mountains for a fruitless season of gold prospecting; south to Denver, where I worked as a conman selling fake baronial titles to gullible millionaires; north, south, east and west as a travelling purveyor of Captain McCabe’s Hair and Scalp Tonic; and then to Salt Lake City, then Seattle, then Portland, then San Francisco, then Phoenix (my name town!), then San Francisco again, and then lots of places I’ve forgotten, and so on, and so on, and so on, back and forth, and side to side, and up and down, and round and round. In those eight years I must have done every job, and visited every town, and stayed in every hotel that Twenties America had to offer.
So many names and faces drift back to me from those times. Wally Dingle, for instance, of Miami, a fellow lifeguard of such consummate ineptitude he generally ended up having to be rescued by the very swimmers he’d gone out to save. And Vince McLuskey, ace crime reporter on the Jersey City Inquirer, who smoked 300 cigarettes on a day (‘I’ve cut right down’) and was later arrested for committing most of the crimes he’d reported himself. And Reverend Parkes, a Chicago preacher who, when he wasn’t campaigning for the National Temperance, ran a nice little side-line sneaking crates of illicit booze across the border from Canada. And, of course, dear old Mrs Clune, octogenarian multimillionaire widow from Baltimore who paid me 50 dollars a day to pose naked whilst her chauffeur, Perkins, took photographs of me.
I should like to devote more space to these people, and that period, for it was a triumphantly life-affirming time, and suicide notes should, in my opinion, be nothing if not life-affirming. Three days from my death, however, and with but a limited amount of wall space left before me, I have no choice but to turn my back on those years and instead, like a child playing leapfrog, hop over the first two thirds of my American life and land foursquare in early 1927, which is when I arrived at Union Station, Los Angeles, and when this murder really begins. Time to get into movies. Time to become a star!
