It was as I was kneeling over him, attempting to shift him to the right without once again rolling him onto his back, that you came back in, dear listener. A slender figure in blue and gray, with a cool, neutral expression on your face that did not change, mirabile dictu, when you saw what must have seemed an extraordinary thing.
You said, raising your voice slightly to carry over the racket I was making, “The doctor would like to ride home with the Regional School Inspector. He is on his way upstairs.” Then you stepped quickly across the floor and, lifting the Regional School Inspector’s legs by the knees, with a twist and a quick thrust of your hips, fit them into the dumbwaiter. Then, marvelous girl, you offered me your hand. Taking it, I climbed down and brushed off my skirts.
“The hat,” I said. You glanced around, fetched the hat and the cane that I had not noticed leaning against the wall beside it, and brought them back.
“The cane will not go,” you said. “We will have to put it down the shaft.” You tossed the hat onto the body, then lowered the dumbwaiter a turn or two. The Regional School Inspector sank out of sight. The cane you maneuvered through the opening to stand on top of the dumbwaiter, in the open shaft, leaning against one wall.
There was a knock on the door. I arranged myself behind my desk as you closed the dumbwaiter and went to the door, silently admitting the doctor.
He took a few steps into the room—he was thus standing almost directly on top of the small damp spot, visible as a darker patch, on the rug—and glanced around with evident surprise. “I thought to find the Regional School Inspector here.”
“Why, no,” I said. “We spoke quite briefly earlier this afternoon—had routine matters to discuss—and then he took his leave. I imagine that he is long since departed.” I saw how, behind him, you gently, slowly nudged the coal scuttle toward the fireplace with your heel.
He clicked his tongue. “I hope he has not forgotten that I was to ride back into town with him. He said he had found me a new assistant. We were going to discuss it on the road. I am very anxious to secure an assistant. The loss of Dr. Peachie has upset my plans for retirement. It is time I retired.” His voice had become high and peevish. “My own nag has a loose shoe. I do not wish to lame him. Your man said I might return for him tomorrow. I do not understand what is keeping the inspector.”
“Excuse me, but he may still be inspecting the grounds,” you murmured. “I heard him ask Clarence where the well was located.”
“Then I am sure he intends to keep your appointment and will be back presently. Will you take a tonic while you wait, Doctor?” I stood and took down the bottle, noticing too late that there was a spot of what must be blood on my sleeve. As I lowered my arm, keeping my gaze fixed in friendly inquiry on his face, I let my fichu fall carelessly over the spot, and transferred the bottle to my other hand.
“Is that paregoric? Strong stuff, Headmistress Joines. It will do no harm in small doses, but I would be careful not to develop a dependency.”
I smiled. “Is that a no, Doctor?”
“Well, just a drop.” I settled the lace more firmly around the telltale spot, but before I could transfer the decanter to my right hand, you stepped forward and took it from me, bearing it away to the cabinet whence you removed two small glasses. You poured as steadily as a waiter in a Pullman car. Your manner as you offered us the glasses was perfect, not too obsequious, not too bold: invisible. That this takes a sort of talent, I recognize. I do not possess it.
Then you sank gracefully down upon the hearth, moving the coal scuttle openly now, back into the shadows behind the iron stove.
I cannot dispell the feeling that there is something wrong with this story. It will come to me.
The doctor sniffed stertorously. “I smell smoke. Is something burning?”
“A small accident earlier today,” I said.
We made inconsequential conversation for a while longer, and then, “It is too bad of him!” exclaimed the doctor again. “I don’t have all day to wait on his convenience. Where can he be? A fine thing if he just went off without me! Is his vehicle still here?”
You rose at once and, saying you would find out and return with the intelligence, left the room. You returned a short time later with the information that the carriage was still in the drive, but that no one had seen the inspector. “Shall I tell someone you wish him to be found, Headmistress?”
“Yes, thank you. Ask Clarence to take a turn through the grounds, and when he finds the inspector, remind him that the doctor is waiting.” You disappeared again. “Should we be concerned for his safety?” I asked the doctor. “Is he a sensible man, would you judge?”
“Eminently, I would have said. Solid. No fool. Though I can’t like his wandering off like this. A fine time to go for a stroll!”
“Perhaps he found something else that he wished to inspect,” I said. If a slight sneer crept into my voice, I regretted it at once. I had something more important than my injury and my revenge to think of. For I knew now that I had found my successor.
What other young woman of my acquaintance would so calmly and efficiently assist in the disposal of a Regional School Inspector with a crushed braincase? Seeing at once that the school came, and must always come, before any one individual’s well-being, or indeed his life? There may be some trouble about your complexion, but there have been other colored mediums who have made a “hit”—Paschal Beverly Randolph, Hattie Wilson, Leafy Anderson, to name a few—and you are clever. I make no doubt that you will shrug it off, or even turn it to your advantage. It is what I would do. And it is not the least of my satisfactions that my father would writhe to see a “half-breed” in his daughter’s shoes.
You returned with Clarence and the information that the inspector was still missing but that Clarence had found a man to fix the loose shoe and that he would be done presently. “If you will come with me, Doctor?” Clarence said, and led him, still complaining, from the room.
Your eyes met mine, and I nodded meaningly at the typewriter. Then I returned to the land of the dead, where I had, and have, unfinished business.
I know, I have unfinished business in the land of the living, too. It is presently dripping down the dumbwaiter shaft.
We have unfinished business, I should say. Since you will be my successor, won’t you?
I should like, I don’t know why, to hear you say, “I will.” But of course you will. Even if, from modesty or dread at such a heavy responsibility, you demur. Even if you stuff your old suitcase with your few, paltry possessions, your silk stockings, purchased on a secret expedition to Greenfield, the balding hairbrush from which the red paint is flaking, the little purse of figured Oriental silk, also red, with gold birds flying into the seams, and just $3.66 nestling inside it, the black notebook with its homely strap, the ceramic figure of the Siamese twins—I know your little secrets!—and closing the door quietly behind you, leaving the lamp burning in my study, set out from the school this minute, crunching down the gravel drive that is a pale river in the moonlight, the cool mist beading your cheeks. Even if perhaps no one is recording this dispatch, for you have long since left in just this fashion, or in another, if you wish, taking a lantern and striking out cross-country instead, a more difficult path but one that will take you to Greenfield by morning, where you will be able to catch a ride to Boston or even New York, it will do you no good. I will be with you sooner or later, speaking to and through you, speaking my mind, speaking your mind, changing your mind, talking you home.
I will never stop talking.
That’s it! That’s it! That’s what that was bothering me! These alleged events took place, allegedly, in the alleged land of the alleged living. But [pause, static] I could not have dispatched, simultaneously, both my report and the Regional School Inspector! So [pause] I must have dropped the thread of my story when I left here, to commit a murder, and picked it up again when I came back. Is that possible? Of course. But not without leaving a gap in
the narrative. And I have the impression that I have been talking continuously.
I’ll check the transcript. If there’s a gap, I’m guilty. No gap, not guilty, just deranged. I joke! Ha ha ha ha! [Laughter continues, approx. forty-five seconds.] Anyone might—must—fall into error here, where one’s very life depends on getting caught up in the story. If that door was a dummy, and like a dummy myself, or a dreamer waking to another dream, I came back to a Creation of my own creation, it’s no more than many another necronaut has done. No matter, the transcript will give the truth of it. [Long pause.]
Oh.
No, it won’t.
I could be gone a year, two, twenty, and still pick up where I left off.
Well, damn. [Muttering.] It is rather deflating, having witnessed the failure of one’s life’s work, killed a man, concealed his body, lied and feared discovery, to suspect that it might never have happened, at least not in a sense meaningful to the law.
Was it, perhaps, a rehearsal?
A directive?
Pure fiction? [Long pause, static, sound of breathing.]
In the land of the dead, a person might well experience her life as a book, and not even her own book, but an anthology of fleeting impressions, speculation, and hearsay taken down by minor scholars and anonymous record keepers. She might, further, go so far as to heap this book with baffles and blinds, introductions, footnotes, etc., so that by the time the putative reader reached the crux of the matter she did not even recognize it.
[Audio break.]
But the Regional School Inspector is saying something. I thought he was dead?
“I cannot see my way around—”
I kill him again.
“It is my duty to—”
I kill him.
“I shall recommend—”
Again.
“Effective immediately—”
Again. What sport! Again. Bodies fall and dissolve into black-red surf and form again and shoulder up, cladding themselves in black wool on which with admirable attention to detail a few moth casings have been distributed, and fall again under my remorseless blows. I employ the Fendente, the Montante, the Imbroccata, the Stoccata, the Stramazzone. I dispatch a thousand Regional School Inspectors and still they come.
“And thus heredity pronounces its infallible judgment,” my father is saying, “for an impetuous and injudicious union will yield, without fail, an unsound adult, deformed in both the physical and the moral sense.”
“Says the man who strangled his wife.”
“And incinerated his daughter, I know. The regret, I promise you, is literally eternal.”
“The regret at failing, one must suppose.”
“Failing?” The hot surf [static] leaps and crackles. Drops bright as cinders blister my arms. “Certainly my tally is nothing to yours,” he concedes handsomely. “You have carried on the family tradition, I’m gratified to see. Remind me, how many have you exterminated to date?”
My arm rises and falls, rises and falls. The hod is looking a little battered. “Figments,” I say. Coal-black spindrift smokes up.
“Are you certain?”
I touch a finger to my upper lip and bring it away printed with a fine red thread. “We are all figments,” I say, though the dictum has lost some of its power to comfort. Then, despite myself: “I escaped!”
“Are you certain?” says my father.
“I escaped, leaping through the flames.”
“You’re probably right.”
“I broke down the wall, leapt through the flames, and emerged, like a phoenix, stronger and more perfect.”
“I’m sure you did.” I flinch as my father grins, widening the blood-red cracks in the blackened mask of his face.
I hack and thrust, nauseated. Gobbets, some with hair.
Oh, this poor bald place. Sketch of a sketch of. This poverty of imagination. Compared to the competition. Durer’s cubic foot of turf. Or the turf itself.
[Static, audio break.]
I set my foot onto the black blood on the floor. It is wet, black, glistening, a little sticky, nothing like a hole, and still I fall through it. Somewhere a crow is laughing. Or a child?
[Audio break.]
If I am still in the land of the dead, have I missed the Regional School Inspector’s visit?
[Audio break, betokened hereafter by a skipped line.]
Miss Exiguous’s fingers turning yellow-white with pressure. Finster ducks her head, lets her hair swing forward; I can just see the quivering pink nose, the pink rims of her eyes. The long ears squeezing the narrow skull. And then I look more closely and see wet blood slicking fur, cut mouth gushing blood as it opens again, saying [static]—
Rabbits can’t speak.
Opens and she throws herself through. And I—
Has the inspector not yet finished his inspection? Do I still have a chance to fetch back the girl, make everything right, save my school?
Or must I kill him? Again?
And will you, dear listener, having copied down the script, play your part? Or will you rise up against the puppet master and squeak out lines I never wrote for you?
Ah! Here is Finster, running like the dickens right through the walls and across the—
I climbed into the dumbwaiter, inserting myself to the right of the corpse, and just like that I was standing in my office and the rolling knock on my study door was still reverberating in the air. “Enter,” I said, but rather than opening the door, I crossed quickly to the blue-glowing window and looked out through my pensive reflection and down. An elderly carriage stood in the drive; two horses stood resignedly in the fading light, their noses in feed bags that looked very like the creels we had fashioned for my students (with good reason, since a similar pair had been their inspiration). The Regional School Inspector had not yet left, there was still time to make things right; or maybe, better, there was nothing to make right, maybe that unfortunate and even more unfortunately timed incident in my office had not yet happened or would never happen: my father would keep his peace and I mine, the lamp would not tip or I would catch it from the air before it fell, Finster would not flee me or death would not snap shut on her so fast that I could not cheat it, this time.
The door opened, and I turned, and Finster splashed into the lakes of my eyes; she did not appear to see me, but hurried across the room, opened the dumbwaiter, and climbed inside, pulling the door shut behind her.
The door opened again, and you came in. Walked across the room to the dumbwaiter. Opened the door, took out a cane—
Or is it my father who planned this farce for me?
—opened the door. Taking your hand, I stepped out of the dumbwaiter and found myself entering the same room from the other side;. It was empty but for myself; the dumbwaiter door on the opposite wall was closed; there was no stain on the carpet, there was no blackened patch; the decanter on the shelf was full. Someone knocked lightly on the door and, without waiting for an answer, you walked in.
“Then I am sure he intends, et cetera,” I said. The doctor looked a little bewildered. “I mean, have some paregoric.”
“Is that paregoric?”
“Aha! Caught you!”
“Excuse me? I thought you said it was tonic.”
“That’s almost persuasive, but not quite.”
“Are you feeling quite well? Paregoric is strong stuff, you know. It will do no harm in small doses, but I would be careful not to develop a dependency.”
“Now that is interesting. Note how new sense is spliced onto senseless repetition, and thus we jog along, looking alive. Sure you don’t want some?” I waved the decanter.
“Just a drop.”
“Drink up!” I said, handing him the whole decanter. “Really I cannot be bothered to play out this scene.” I marched straight to the dumbwaiter and got in.
I was in my study. The dead man on the floor was my father.
I was in my study. The door o
pened. A little girl came thumping in, set one ill-fitting shoe on a black patch of blood, and fell through it.
I was in my study, sprawled on the floor. A man stood over me, holding a coal scuttle.
I was on the floor of my study. You stood over me, holding a cane, its brass end dripping blood.
I was a patch of blood on the carpet of my study.
I was you, entering the room to see a man’s legs sticking out of a hole in the wall, one cuff rucked up, showing red sock garters and a patch of white hairy ankle, from which an old scar ran up and out of sight into the tube of the trouser leg.
You were kneeling, your straight, narrow back to me and your head bent, exposing the brown nape, some fine, minutely curled black hair that had escaped your braids, and a deep gash welling with blood. I was dropping the coal scuttle, my hand falling away . . .
A little girl was sprawled on the floor of my study, her head a peculiar shape.
A little girl was writhing in flames.
A little girl was pawing at the wire that was tightening around her neck.
In short, the witch’s daughter had thrown down her last and best talisman. Which? The mirror, of course. In its shards I saw a thousand selves, a thousand worlds.
I don’t mind confessing that I lost my presence of mind. (Presence! Of mind?) I don’t know how many times, saying door and opening it, I flung myself through myself, flung myself through myself, through myself, through my [static], I don’t know how many worlds I flipped through, worlds no more than doors to other worlds no more than doors, until for all my haste I might as well have stood stock-still on a representative threshold, since each departure was also an arrival into the same damn place. It was in other words a lot like life, escaping each now only to arrive in now again, almost unchanged, just a little more out of breath, until the day you are done with breathing. Escaping the now into the now, it’s enough to make you lose faith in last resorts, the closest you ever get is the next-to-last, and the door that keeps on opening to let you in is the same door, like, like, like nothing, maybe it’s a revolving door. So my hurry was just a frantic way of staying put, and the open door just one more way to lock me in! It stunk, frankly, this pent pending, not literally, it was odorless, but repulsive, ontologically speaking, and it was this stink of a becoming that had stuck and spoiled in the pipe that got to me at last. So I stopped. So now we’re getting somewhere. Out of the frying pan. And already the light is roaring against my face, already smoke is pluming through the floorboards, this is what there is, this is all there is, or ever was.
Riddance Page 35
