Soul/Mate

by Joyce Carol Oates

  So he went there. Not to the apartment but to Normandy Court, where Susannah took him in. The Weidmanns he told her had this weird marriage where the wife drank all day and the husband had his own life practically; it sort of reminded Colin of this man who’d been killed in the city—what was his name, Robert Krauss? Roger?—a successful businessman and all that but unraveling at the edges, hanging out with weird people, rough trade maybe; yeah he’d made a pass at Colin, sort of, but tentative enough to pretend that wasn’t it at all; he felt sorry for them they were well-intentioned people basically very nice very kind very generous but pathetic like so many people out here—“I guess you don’t fit the pattern at all, Susannah, you must be lonely here aren’t you?”—and that was the right thing to say since Mr. Hunt was gone (gone where? married a younger woman?) and the kids were grown up and gone and there was bad blood all around, Colin Asch could smell it.

  He would tell her there is no door but the way in is everywhere. Like God whose center is nowhere and everywhere at once.

  Long ago, on the far side of the river … coming in breathless out of the freezing wind into the hotel lobby grand as the interior of a cathedral, and his mittened hand had slipped free of his mother’s gloved hand, and he was drawn forward staring at the enormous Christmas tree which was like no other Christmas tree he had ever seen because it was not green but white, and covered in eye-sized blue lights that winked on and off to a quick nervous beat, and glittering blue glass ornaments the size of a man’s fist … and the air pulsed a chilly blue, finely vibrating with the voices of strangers and their heavy footsteps. He had stared in astonishment at what wasn’t a real Christmas tree or even the idea of a real tree but the representation of a wholly artificial tree that nullified the idea of a real tree because it was perfect … it was white, it was manmade, it would never die. The entire domed alcove of the lobby in which it stood was blue, a thin cold artificial blue, and there were mirrored walls lightly frosted with artificial snow in which a child with pale blond hair and a small pale face stood transfixed, as if paralyzed by the sinister wonder in which he was enclosed: there was a child in the mirror and a child in a mirror in that mirror reflected from the opposite and adjoining walls, and in these other walls there was a child in a mirror contemplating a multiplication of children in mirrors seen from the side, from the rear, seen full-face, seen in their entirety and in fractured segments, a child repeated endlessly yet always the same child, identical and unmistakable, the eyes snatching here and there, and back again and there, finally staring aghast into Colin Asch’s stricken face. How could it be? And yet it was! The front of his head as it was ordinarily seen in a mirror yet every other angle of vision simultaneously as God would see so that the child was both inside himself and outside, and there was no child! And the air thrummed blue and was beautiful!

  Like dying, he would tell her, but not needing to go away to see what it would be like, after you were gone.

  In the Blue Room he could float for hours. For hours stretched like days, like an unbroken stream of fat clouds stretched across the sky. And no one could touch him: he was bodiless, weightless, shadowless. Floating.

  He’d known what he had wanted to do, and he had done it. Thus it was done.

  And it could never be undone.

  Not by any power on earth.

  Not by any power in the universe.

  Not by the power of God—if there was a God.

  XXX performed deftly and with precision, after days of admitted frustration, anger that interfered with his sleep and even his digestion since he’d been unable to get close to the target or, if he’d been able to get close, the circumstances (other people close by, witnesses) weren’t congenial for what he wanted to do. He knew that Miss Deverell might be waiting … wondering. Why was it taking Colin Asch so long to intercede in her behalf? After that lascivious look the fucker had dared give them, slitting his eyes and oily mouth in insult, as if, for that alone, he wouldn’t be punished!—as if for that instant’s assault, which pierced Miss Deverell sharp as a blade as Colin Asch with his senses keenly alert understood, he wouldn’t be punished by all means available! “Though he was dead, the fucker, when I did the other, I guess”—meaning the gouging of the eyes, which was an impulsive thing, sort of wild, whimsical, and cutting him up as he’d done with the razor, which he’d more or less planned depending upon the circumstances. For split-second timing of course was crucial. You had to know what you wanted to do, and you had to know how to do it. Fast.

  And then you had to know how to make yourself vanish. Fast.

  But for days prior to the execution of the plan he’d been balked and made a fool of, sort of. Like he had a hard on that couldn’t be discharged and he was getting meaner and nastier almost in a frenzy in that state. Like it was R.K.’s fault that C.A. couldn’t get close to him, to use either the wire or the razor, not one not two but three actual times he’d thought This is it calmly and methodically, but the situation had shifted at the very last moment like a picture suddenly blurring out of focus … which had surprised him so much he hadn’t had time to be scared until afterward, thinking of it. For if Colin Asch’s luck had not held, if he hadn’t a special destiny but was just an ordinary man, he’d be under arrest now, maybe, or he’d have been forced to kill another person, or more than one other person … not skillfully but desperately, in a panic.

  “But of course Colin Asch’s luck held.”

  It had been a sign of genius to darken his face as he’d done with theatrical makeup, and wear the woolly little goatee, which he’d worn once before with success, and of course the dark glasses that were practically wraparounds so his eyes were totally hidden … and a black wool cap fitted like a swim cap on his head, to hide his hair … and the fawn-colored suede outfit meaning he was a certain class of black, had money, taste, personal style. And the clarinet case. Genius shows itself in detail; in detail is the mark of the artist.

  So Colin Asch allowed himself to be glimpsed by the parking attendant who would be the only witness. The only surviving witness.

  R.K. had taken the elevator up into the parking structure so C.A. took the stairs, not altogether certain which level R.K. was on but there was no problem locating him—in his dark topcoat and asshole astrakhan hat, weaving a little as he approached his car, drew his keys out of his pocket to unlock the door. The lateness of the hour and the semideserted garage made everything still. A certain holy quality to it. Shadowless. C.A. swallowed hard, feeling that little kick or trip to his heart that meant he was approaching the edge of what he’d been born for, what was necessary to exact, to restore balance. The secret was control. The secret was easing into the Death axis where you become the agent of Death in full control of Death, not its accidental victim or witness. So there appeared on level 3B of the parking structure this light-skinned youngish but old-fashioned kind of affable Negro, middle class you’d guess, professional class, strolling openly and in no hurry toward a Datsun hatchback parked a few spaces from R.K.’s Lincoln, a coincidence the two men were going to their cars at the same time but nothing more than a coincidence surely, and when R.K.’s eyes lifted narrowing a bit in his direction the black man nodded respectfully and glanced away as you’d naturally do in such circumstances; then he glanced back as if in recognition, smiled tentatively, said in a lilting friendly absolutely unintimidating voice, “Mr. Krauss, is it?” and Krauss it was, thick-bodied, thick-necked, eyelids mildly inflamed with a long night of holiday drinking, lips pursed, baffled but not wanting to make a social blunder, so the black man said quickly, in his rich low melodic voice, “Wouldn’t expect you to remember me, Mr. Krauss, but we met a few weeks ago, I think, out in Lathrup Farms, at a concert, a recital, at the arts center—wasn’t it Howard Morland who introduced us?”

  So, the setup: and R.K. naturally fell for it, it was innocent-seeming certainly, even in such deserted surroundings smelling of concrete and cold and dirt, and there’s a well-dressed artsy-type black man extend
ing his hand for a brotherly handshake and R.K. has no choice but to shift to a magnanimous liberal-hearted white in fact nodding in a semblance of recognition, friendly too and extending his gloved hand in that automatic response you can trigger in strangers if the right cues have been signaled as, here, with clockwork precision, they have been signaled. And easing in snaky-quick and close the affable black begins a smile not to be completed as a smile, exactly.

  “Fucker! Did you think you could escape me!”

  The assault by the agent of Death is so swift, so unexpected, the fur hat knocked from the head, the wire noose forced down and tightened in the same fluid motion, there is no time for anything more than a faint gurgling protest, a muffled dreamlike shriek of astonishment as the eyes bulge outward, the skin darkens with blood swelling within seconds like the skin of an overripe tomato about to burst, then the victim is on his knees flailing, convulsing, tearing with his nails at the unbelievable pressure around his neck choking the life out of him in beats in perfectly calibrated beats—clockwork that can run in one direction only and can never be controverted not even by the power of God.

  Thus the victorious hunter stands over his fallen prey whose death he has earned, whose death is his. Legs apart, knees bent, muscles strained to their fullest, expression thoughtful, patient—for the death convulsions are the streaming-out of life in the one that yields to the streaming-in of life in the other.

  Did you think you could escape me?

  Mr. Kreuzer had revealed to C.A. and a very small number of other privileged boys the secret of the X-factor, which democracy and Christianity and “archaic ethical remnants” sought to deny, but which manifested itself in the very genes and chromosomes of the biological organism—that approximately one tenth of one percent of the species Homo sapiens was destined to rule the rest, by way of superiority of intellect, personality, spiritual and physical strength, and that intangible element in the human psyche known as will. “Will is the conduit of fate,” Mr. Kreuzer said. C.A. had not at first—for he was very young, a mere boy, a mere angel boy in whom his devil twin still slumbered!—comprehended. Will is the conduit of fate.

  Thus when one is beset by emotion, by raw unmediated impulses flying like maddened wasps about one’s head, it is will that must prevail, as will prevailed in Colin Asch, after the XXX on January 2, successfully completed, and the life that had luridly coursed up into him by way of his tingling hands and arms was almost too potent to be contained, he wanted to shriek, he wanted to laugh, to shout!—wanted to proclaim to the world what he had done and the justice of it! At the same time he wanted to get out of there as quickly as he could and had to resist the panicky instinct to run (for what if someone should step out of the elevator, push open the door to the stairs? What if the parking attendant below should have heard the sounds of struggle and was coming up to investigate?), but he had plans, he had a method, he had a discipline that could not be violated. So he willed himself to perform those acts that in his imagination he had already performed, calmly, even coolly, despite his pounding heart and the sweat running in tiny tickly streams down his sides, despite his shaking hands: the appropriation of certain items of clothing and jewelry, and of course the wallet (thick with bills and credit cards), to the victor go the spoils, and he had time too for punishing in certain requisite ways, the eyes that had given her insult, the groin, the fat cock, no matter the heaviness of the body in death, mere insensate deadness. For the revenge was hers, and must be exacted in full.

  “I am the mere agent.”

  Then he placed the ticket stub he’d shrewdly acquired earlier that evening (at a porno movie house showing the double New Year’s Day feature Boys of the Night and Secrets of the Nazi Storm Troopers) deep in the dead man’s trouser pocket; then he heaved the body up and into the Lincoln, positioning it behind the wheel, head back against the headrest as if, indeed, merely resting, and stiffening arms crossed in the bloody lap. Then he removed from its Saran Wrap wrapper a wadded rag soaked in paint thinner, which he tossed into the back seat of the car; then he placed, in the car’s trunk, beneath a rubber mat, three fag porn magazines purchased several weeks before, when he had first fashioned his plan—one of them dated January 1988, the others older, stained and rumpled, secondhand.

  The genius of the Baffle is simplicity: give the fuckers one main thing to think and they will think it.

  These actions Colin Asch performed deftly and pleasurably in less time in fact than it would afterward require him, in his aunt’s home, sitting Indian-fashion on his bed, to record them, codified, in the Blue Ledger.

  And then he took the stairs swiftly down to the ground level of the parking structure, encountering no one, being seen by no one, and on the ground level he waited patiently, perhaps ten minutes, until the attendant was occupied with a customer, and then he walked unhesitatingly out onto Providence Street—a free man. At this late hour (the dead man’s watch, slipped on Colin Asch’s wrist, read 3:20) the street was deserted except for a scattering of parked cars and a solitary police car easing through the intersection. By now Colin Asch felt so cleansed of all emotion, so pure, so childlike, so righteous, so spiritually replenished—XXX performed to balance injustice, “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”—that the sight of the patrol car made no special impression. And, in any case, it was headed in the opposite direction.

  7

  On a snowy Monday in early February, Mr. Howard Morland, tanned and rested from a protracted vacation in Barbados, dropped by Dorothea Deverell’s office at the Institute to invite her, as if impulsively, to have lunch with him at his club that day. “The two of us have,” he said, with the faintest of embarrassed smiles, “a little catching up to do.”

  Dorothea Deverell said without thinking, “Oh, but I’m afraid I can’t, Howard—not today. I really have too much work to do. I wasn’t intending to go out for lunch at all.” Seeing Mr. Morland’s look of gentlemanly disappointment—or was it, yet more subtly, a look of commingled pity and impatience—Dorothea felt her face begin to burn, as if she had been caught out in a social error. Yet she persisted. “I mean,” she said, in a faltering voice, “there really is so much that should be done.”

  Mr. Morland merely laughed and backed off, with a dapper little salute. “Of course, Dorothea,” he said, “I understand. But perhaps you could see me in my office? Sometime this morning? I promise not to encroach upon your time.”

  “I can,” Dorothea said, swallowing hard. For of course this was the summons she had been awaiting. “I mean, I will.”

  When, an hour later, Dorothea entered the director’s office, ushered inside by his smiling secretary, she found Mr. Morland seated not at his desk but in a black leather recliner with a raised footrest; he unwound himself from it and made a sort of belated gesture of getting to his feet, even as Dorothea told him not to bother. They were old associates after all: never intimate, but perhaps familial. “How lovely you look today, Dorothea!” Mr. Morland said, as he almost always did, shaking Dorothea’s hand, as he almost always did, with a boyish vigor that never seemed less than genuine. Standing hardly taller than Dorothea Deverell at five feet five inches, Howard Morland was the sort of smallish compactly wiry man who, adept at such ferocious games as squash, racquetball, and handball, enjoys making larger men, and some women, wince at the strength of his handshake. But Dorothea had long ago learned to brace herself against it.

  The first several minutes of any conversation with Mr. Morland in his capacity as director of the Brannon Institute were invariably given over to obfuscatory chatter, involving an exchange of social information: health, recent activities, news of mutual friends. Dorothea complimented Mr. Morland on his tan and asked an apposite question or two about the Morlands’ house in Barbados. Where usually this preliminary ritual of talk chafed at Dorothea’s nerves, for Mr. Morland with his feckless aristocrat’s poise seemed to consider everything with equal seriousness, this morning she was grateful for it. Though she smiled readily and laughed a
t Mr. Morland’s jokes—for Dorothea Deverell too had poise—the blood had drained out of her fingers and toes with startling abruptness, and she suspected that she looked rather pale. She was uneasy about the conversation to follow and could not imagine what course it would take.

  She knew, however, that Roger Krauss’s name would never be mentioned. It had never crossed Mr. Morland’s lips in the past, when Krauss was so pointedly alive, and it would never cross his lips now that Krauss was dead.

  Howard Morland’s office, originally a drawing room in the Brannon mansion, was half again as large as Dorothea’s, with the same elegantly high ceilings, tall narrow windows, and fine woodwork. In addition, Mr. Morland’s office had antique furnishings from the estate, including, on the walls, costly works of art—an exquisite sun-drenched Bonnard, a small murky Corot oil. There were long Spanish lace curtains framed by heavy velvet drapes, there was an Irish crystal chandelier, there was a stately travertine marble fireplace of the hue and seeming texture of curdled cream. A model of the old ideal of connoisseurship, Mr. Morland’s office was less an “office”—with vulgar connotations of practicability, routine, work—than a self-regarding display of wealth and taste. Entering it, seated in it, Dorothea Deverell had never once thought, in her six years as Howard Morland’s assistant, that she might some day inherit it; her hopes for advancement had always been abstract. For certainly she did not deserve such splendor.