A Stranger in My Grave

by Margaret Millar

  “The stranger,” she said at last. “How did he die?”

  “Suicide. His file card was marked sui mano, ‘by his own hand.’ I presume someone thought putting it in Latin would take the curse off it.”

  “So he killed himself. That makes it even worse.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps I had some connection with his death. Perhaps I was responsible for it.”

  “That’s pretty far-fetched,” Pinata said quietly. “You’ve had a shock, Mrs. Harker. The best thing you can do now is to stop worrying and go home and have a rest.” Or take a pill, or a drink, or throw fits, or whatever else women like you do under the circum­stances. Monica used to cry, but I don’t think you will, Daisy baby. You’ll brood, and God only knows what you’ll hatch. “Camilla was a stranger to you, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how is it possible that you were connected in any way with his death?”

  “Possible? We’re not dealing in ‘possibles’ anymore, Mr. Pinata. It isn’t possible that I should have known the day he died. But it happened. It’s a fact, not something whipped up by an over-imaginative or hysterical woman, which is probably how you’ve been regarding me up until now. My knowing the date of Camilla’s death, that’s changed things between us, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He would have liked to tell her that things between them had changed a great deal more than she thought, changed enough to send her running for cover back to Rainbow’s End, Jim and Mamma. She would run, of course. But how soon and how fast? He glanced at his hands gripping the steering wheel. In the dim lights of the dashboard they looked very brown. She would run very soon, he thought, and very fast. Even if she weren’t married. The fact dug painfully into his mind as though in her flight she wore the spiked shoes of a sprinter.

  She was talking about Camilla again, the dead man who was more important to her than he ever would be, in all his youth and energy. Alive, present, eager, he was no match for the dead stranger lying under the fig tree at the edge of the cliff. Pinata thought, I am, here beside her, in time and space, but Camilla is part of her dreams. He was beginning to hate the name. Damn you, Camilla, stretcher, little bed. . . .

  “I have this very strong feeling,” she said, “of involvement, even of guilt.”

  “Guilt feelings are often transferred to quite unrelated things or people. Yours may have nothing to do with Camilla.”

  “I think they have, though.” She sounded perversely obstinate, as if she wanted to believe the worst about herself. “It’s an odd coincidence that both the names are Mexican, first the girl’s, Juanita Garcia, and now Camilla’s. I hardly know, in fact I don’t know, any Mexicans at all except casually through my work at the Clinic. It’s not that I’m prejudiced like my mother; I simply never get to meet any.”

  “Your never getting to meet any means your prejudice or lack of it hasn’t been tested. Perhaps your mother’s has, and at least she’s playing it straight by admitting it.”

  “And I’m not playing things straight?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “The implication was clear. Perhaps you think I found out the date of Camilla’s death before this afternoon? Or that I knew the man himself?”

  “Both have occurred to me.”

  “It’s easier, of course, to distrust me than to believe the impos­sible. Camilla is a stranger to me,” she repeated. “What motive would I have in lying to you?”

  “I don’t know.” He had tried, and failed, to think of a reason why she should lie to him. He meant nothing to her; she was not interested in his approval or disapproval; she was not trying to influence, entice, convince, or impress him. He was no more to her than a wall you bounce balls off. Why bother lying to a wall?

  “It’s too bad,” she said, “that you met my father before you met me. You were prepared to be suspicious of me before you even saw me, speaking of prejudice. My father and I aren’t in the least alike, although Mother likes to tell me we are when she’s angry. She even claims I look like him. Do I?”

  “There’s no physical resemblance.”

  “There’s no resemblance in any other way either, not even in the good things. And there are a lot of good things about him, but I guess they didn’t show up the day you met him.”

  “Some of them did. I never judge anyone by his parents, anyway. I can’t afford to.”

  She turned and looked at him as if she expected him to elabo­rate on the subject. He said nothing more. The less she knew about him, the better. Walls weren’t supposed to have family histories; walls were for protection, privacy, decoration, for hiding behind, jumping over, playing games. Bounce some more balls at me, Daisy baby.

  “Camilla,” she said. “You’ll find out more about him, of course.”

  “Such as?”

  “How he died, and why, and if he had any family or friends.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we’ll know.”

  “Suppose it turns out to be the kind of knowledge that won’t do anybody any good?” “We’ve got to take that chance,” she said. “We couldn’t possi­bly stop now. It’s unthinkable.”

  “I find it quite thinkable.”

  “You’re bluffing, Mr. Pinata. You don’t want to quit now any more than I do. You’re much too curious.”

  She was half right. He didn’t want to quit now, but a surplus of curiosity wasn’t the reason.

  “It’s 5:15,” she said. “If you drive faster, we can get back to the Monitor before they close the library. Since Camilla committed suicide, there’s sure to be a report of it, as well as his obituary.”

  “Aren’t you expected at home about this time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I think you’d better go there and leave the Camilla busi­ness to me.”

  “Will you call me as soon as you find out anything?”

  “Wouldn’t that be a little foolish under the circumstances?” Pinata said. “You’d have some fancy explaining to do to your hus­band and your mother. Unless, of course, you’ve decided to come clean with them.”

  “I’ll call you at your office tomorrow morning at the same time as this morning.”

  “Still playing secrets, eh?”

  “I’m playing,” she said distinctly, “exactly the way I’ve been taught to play. Your system of all cards face up on the table wouldn’t work in my house, Mr. Pinata.”

  It didn’t work in mine either, he thought. Monica got herself a new partner.

  When he returned to the third floor of the Monitor-Press building, the girl in charge of the library was about to lock up for the day.

  She jangled her keys at him unplayfully. “We’re closing.”

  “You’re ahead of yourself by four minutes.”

  “I can use four minutes.”

  “So can I. Let me see that microfilm again, will you?”

  “This is just another example,” she said bitterly, “of what it’s like working on a newspaper. Everything’s got to be done at the last minute. There’s just one crisis after another.”

  She kept on grumbling as she took the microfilm out of the file and put it in the projection machine. But it was a mild kind of grumbling, not directed at Pinata or even the newspaper. It was a general indictment of life for not being planned and predictable. “I like things to be orderly,” she said, switching on the light. “And they never are.”

  Camilla had made the front page of the December 3rd edition. The story was headlined suicide leaves bizarre farewell note and accompanied by a sketch of the head of a gaunt-faced man with deep-set eyes and high cheekbones. Although age lines scarred the man’s face, long dark hair curling over the tips of his ears gave him an incongruous look of innocence. According to the caption, the sketch had been made by Monitor-Press art
ist Gorham Smith, who’d been among the first at the scene. Smith’s byline was also on the story:

  The body of the suicide victim found yesterday near the railroad jungle by a police patrolman has been identi­fied as that of Carlos Theodore Camilla, believed to be a transient. No wallet or personal papers were found on the body, but further search of his clothing revealed an enve­lope containing a penciled note and the sum of $2,000 in large bills. Local authorities were surprised by the amount of money and by the nature of the note, which read as fol­lows: “This ought to pay my way into heaven, you stinking rats. Carlos Theodore Camilla. Born, too soon, 1907. Died, too late, 1955.”

  The note was printed on Hotel Parker stationery, but the management of the hotel has no record of Camilla staying there. A check of other hotels and motor lodges in the area failed to uncover the suicide victim’s place of res­idence. Police theorize that he was a transient who hitch­hiked or rode the roads into the city after committing a holdup in some other part of the state. This would explain how Camilla, who appeared destitute and in an advanced stage of malnutrition, was carrying so much money. In­quiries have been sent to police headquarters and sheriffs’ offices throughout the state in an effort to find the source of the $2,000. Burial services will be postponed until it is established that the money is not the proceeds of a robbery but belongs legally to the dead man. Meanwhile, Camilla’s body is under the care of Roy Fondero, funeral director.

  According to Sheriff-Coroner Robert Lerner, Camilla died of a self-inflicted knife wound late Thursday night or early Friday morning. The type of knife was identified by authorities as a navaja, often carried by Mexicans and Indians of the Southwest. The initials C.C. were carved on the handle. A dozen cigarette butts found at the scene of the tragedy indicate that Camilla spent considerable time debating whether to go through with the act or not. An empty wine bottle was also found nearby, but a blood test indicated that Camilla had not been drinking.

  The residents of so-called Jungleland, the collection of shacks between the railway tracks and Highway 101, denied knowing anything about the dead man. Camilla’s fingerprints are being sent to Washington to determine whether he had a criminal record or is registered with immigration authorities. An effort is being made to locate the dead man’s place of residence, family, and friends. If no one claims the body and if the money is found to be legally his, Camilla will be buried in a local cemetery. The Coroner’s inquest, scheduled for tomorrow morning, is expected to be brief.

  It was brief. As reported in the December 5th edition, Camilla was found to have died of a knife wound, self-inflicted while in a state of despondency. Witnesses were few: the police patrolman who discovered him, a doctor who described the fatal wound, and a pathologist who stated that Camilla had been suffering from prolonged malnutrition and a number of serious physical disor­ders. The time of death was fixed at approximately 1:00 a.m. on December 2.

  Probably, Pinata thought, Daisy had read all this in the newspaper at the time it happened. The pathos of the case must have struck her—a sick, starving man, fearful (“This ought to pay my way into heaven”), rebellious (“You stinking rats”), despairing (“Born too soon. Died too late”), had sent his final message to the world and committed his final act.

  Pinata wondered whether the stinking rats referred to specific people, or whether the phrase, like the grumbling of the girl in charge of the library, was an indictment of life itself.

  The girl was jangling her keys again. Pinata switched off the projector, thanked her, and left.

  He drove back to his office, thinking of the money Camilla had left in the envelope. Obviously the police hadn’t been able to prove it had come from a robbery, or Camilla wouldn’t be lying now under his stone cross. The big question was why a destitute transient would want to spend $2,000 on his own funeral instead of on the food and clothing he needed. Cases of people dying of malnutrition with a fortune hidden in a mattress or under some floorboards were not common, but they happened every now and then. Had Camilla been one of these, a psychotic miser? It seemed improbable. The money in the envelope had been in large bills. The collection of misers was usually a hodgepodge of dimes, nickels, dollars, hoarded throughout the years. Further­more, misers didn’t travel. They stayed in one place, often in one room, to protect their hoard. Camilla had traveled, but from where and for what reason? Had he picked this town because it was a pretty place to die in? Or did he come here to see someone, find someone? If so, was it Daisy? But the only connection Daisy had with Camilla was in a dream, four years later.

  His office was cold and dark, and although he turned on the gas heater and all the lights, the place still seemed cheerless and without warmth, as if Camilla’s ghost was trapped inside the walls, emanating an eternal chill.

  Camilla had come back, quietly, insidiously, through a dream. He had changed his mind—the sea was too noisy, the roots of the big tree too threatening, the little bed too dark and narrow—he was demanding reentry into the world, and he had chosen Daisy to help him. The destitute transient, whose body no one had claimed, was staking out a claim for himself in Daisy’s mind.

  I’m getting as screwy as she is, he thought. I’ve got to keep this on a straightforward, factual basis. Daisy saw the report in the newspaper. It was painful to her, and she repressed it. For almost four years it was forgotten. Then some incident or emotion triggered her memory, and Camilla popped up in a dream, a pathetic creature whom she identified, for unknown reasons, with herself.

  That’s all it amounted to. No mysticism was involved; it was merely a case of the complexities of memory.

  “It’s quite simple,” he said aloud, and the sound of his own voice was comforting in the chilly room. It had been a long time since he’d actually listened to himself speak, and his voice seemed oddly pleasant and deep, like that of a wise old man. He wished he could think of some wise old remarks to match it, but none occurred to him. His mind seemed to have shrunk so that there was no room in it for anything except Daisy and the dead stranger of her dreams.

  A drop of sweat slid down behind his left ear into his collar. He got up and opened the window and looked down at the busy street. Few whites ventured out on Opal Street after dark. This was his part of the city, his and Camilla’s, and it had nothing to do with Daisy’s part. Grease Alley, some of the cops called it, and when he was feeling calm and secure, he didn’t blame them. Many of the knives used in brawls were greased. Maybe Camilla’s had been, too.

  “Welcome back to Grease Alley, Camilla,” he said aloud, but his voice didn’t sound like a wise old man’s anymore. It was young and bitter and furious. It was the voice of the child in the orphanage, fighting for his name, Jesus.

  “All those bruises and black eyes and chipped teeth,” the Mother Superior had said. “You hardly looked human, half the time.”

  He closed the window and stared at his reflection in the dusty glass. There were no chipped teeth or bruises or black eyes visi­ble, but he hardly looked human.

  “Of course, it’s a very difficult name to live up to. . . .”

  THE CITY

  10

  But there was love, Daisy. You are proof there was love. . . .

  Through all of Fielding’s travels only one object had remained with him constantly, a grimy, pockmarked, rawhide suitcase. It was so old now that the clasps no longer fastened, and it was held together by a dog’s chain leash which he’d bought in a dime store in Kansas City. The few mementos of his life that Fielding had chosen to keep were packed inside this suitcase, and when he was feeling nostalgic or guilty or merely lonesome, he liked to bring them out and examine them, like a bankrupt shopkeeper taking stock of whatever he had left.

  These mementos, although few in number, had such a strong content of emotion that the memories they evoked seemed to become more vivid with the passing of the years. The plastic cane from the circus at Madison Square Garden
took him back to the big top so completely that he could recall every clown and jug­gler, every bulging-thighed aerialist and tired old elephant.

  The suitcase contained, in addition to the cane:

  A green derby from a St. Patrick’s Day party in Newark. (Oh, what a beautiful binge that had been!)

  Two pieces of petrified wood from Arizona.

  A silver locket. (Poor Agnes.)

  A ukulele, which Fielding couldn’t play but liked to hold expertly in his hands while he hummed “Harvest Moon” or “Springtime in the Rockies.”

  A little box made of sweet grass and porcupine quills by an Indian in northern Ontario.

  A beribboned cluster of small gilded pine cones that had been attached to a Christmas present from Daisy: a wristwatch, later hocked in Chicago.

  Several newspaper clippings about exotic ports on the other side of the world.

  A package of letters, most of them from Daisy; the money orders which had been enclosed were long since cashed.

  A pen which didn’t write, made of gold which wasn’t real.

  Two train schedules.

  A splinter of wood—allegedly from the battleship West Virginia after it was bombed at Pearl Harbor—which he’d got from a sailor in Brooklyn in exchange for a bottle of muscatel.

  There were also about a dozen pictures: Daisy holding her high school diploma; Daisy and Jim on their honeymoon; a framed photograph of two identical middle-aged matrons who ran a boardinghouse in Dallas and had inscribed across the pic­ture “To Stan Fielding, hoping he won’t forget ‘the Heavenly Twins’”; an enlarged snapshot of a coal miner from Pennsylva­nia, who looked exactly like Abraham Lincoln and whose chief sorrow in life was that Lincoln was dead and no advantage could be taken of the resemblance. (“Think of it, Stan, all the fun we could have had, me being Abraham Lincoln, and you being my Secretary of State, and everybody bowing and scraping in front of us and buying us drinks. Oh, it just makes me sick thinking of all them free drinks we missed!”)