by Doon Arbus
After offering brief replies to a few questions from his more inquisitive visitors, the caretaker retires to a corner to watch over the members of his little group — fragmented now into random couplings, a threesome, a pair of solitary stragglers — as they probe about among the objects of their respective curiosities. They peer at the photographs, some in silver frames stationed on the shelves like impromptu bookends or crowded together on an end table in the manner of those accumulated family portraits that decorate a piano, boasting of happiness. The image of Dr. Morgan is everywhere, like a stocky cutout figure deftly inserted into one scene after another, apparently unaffected by his surroundings or by the passage of time. His unmistakable large head with its proud unruly hair makes his companions — the balding contemporaries and doomed starlets, the politicians, celebrated writers, musicians and other over-achievers of his era posing beside him with feigned gaiety or gravity — look as insignificant as props.
In spite of — or because of — efforts to the contrary, Dr. Morgan’s absence permeates the room. It emanates from the orphaned chairs with their plump, uninflected seat cushions and empty arms, from the immaculate, dustless surfaces, the unlit lamps, unopened windows, unread books, from the signs of order or disorder. Even the cultivated tokens of ordinary life are of no avail: the pair of well-worn velvet slippers positioned neatly by the hearth waiting in vain to welcome a familiar pair of tired feet; the uncapped fountain pen, abandoned by its writer, lying useless on a sheaf of papers while its ink dries up; the reading glasses languishing beside an open dictionary; the half-smoked, recently extinguished Cuban cigar, its tip apparently still moist, resting in an ashtray, as if poised there hoping to be reclaimed.
These hapless clues bristle with false promises. Isn’t it conceivable, they keep hinting in a sly whisper, that the former resident, now dead for more than a quarter century, might still be inhabiting his study as a persistent ghost and, having only just been unexpectedly called away, could return at any moment to retrieve his cigar and catch these trespassers in the act of violating his private sanctuary. Of course, the nine trespassers in question happen to be rational, sophisticated people for the most part, unlikely to be troubled by such subtle intimations of the supernatural. The vicissitudes of daily life have sharpened their need to detect the trick lurking behind every miracle. Skepticism is their god. And yet the past couple of hours lingering under the spell of Dr. Morgan’s museum, with its insistent demands on the imagination, has apparently undermined their usual capacity to dismiss without question the existence of certain unseen things and left them abnormally vulnerable to the pleasures and terrors of illusion. All sorts of dubious possibilities begin to infiltrate the tidy certainties embedded in their minds.
Their absorption in the things laid out before them — things redolent of secrets long withheld, of buried answers to unasked questions — prevents them from registering, beyond a subtle sympathetic vibration in the chest, the tremulous orchestral flourish that finally overwhelms the contentious duet playing itself out at subdued volume on the stereo, or from noticing how the orchestra, once it has achieved this end, continues to hover with monotonous uncertainty on the brink of an unfulfilled crescendo.
What does succeed in distracting them from their investigations is the sudden, unexpected stirring of the caretaker in his forgotten corner. As if propelled forward by the portentous musical cue subliminally accentuating the drama of the moment — or by some other force disconnected from his will — he abandons his refuge and approaches the center of the room, moving stiffly, laboriously, like someone wading out into the sea against a strong opposing current. On reaching his destination, he assumes the awkward pose of a mannequin. All natural physical grace has sacrificed itself to the burden of his strange attire, and his body, no longer entirely his own, is now voluntarily enslaved to its clothing in a complex symbiosis that obscures which entity — the body or the clothes — may actually be responsible for animating the other, which is lending the other life.
He stands there, feet firmly planted, confronting the newly reassembled audience whose attention he has now succeeded in capturing, and begins slowly rotating his torso from right to left on the axis of his hips, providing each onlooker a brief, but optimal view of the virtues of his borrowed ensemble. These include the subtleties of its wool and cashmere blend, its expert seaming, genuine horn buttons, and the shocking contrast of its chartreuse silk lining, a hidden asset, waiting for a convivial moment to reveal itself whenever the jacket got removed. The formal, studied manner of his presentation suggests months of preparation leading up to the event, months of planning, choreography, and solitary rehearsals in the mirror to determine how the thing might best be done. At last, with a grandiloquent gesture in the direction of his own person, he begins to speak.
“What you have before you here is an original, custom-made, double-breasted, three-piece suit belonging to — ” he places an open palm reverently against his chest in the vicinity of the wide, old-fashioned lapels “ — to Dr. Charles Alexander Morgan, one of twenty-four produced for him on order by his personal London tailor. The other twenty-three, as you will soon be able to see for yourselves, are still hanging safely in his bedroom closet. This particular one, however, far from being selected at random, has a unique — one might even say, tragic — history.”
He extends an arm in the direction of the onlookers, an arm so rigid in its woolen casing that it does not appear to belong to him at all, having more in common with a prosthesis than the actual limb of a living creature. His hand is cocked at the wrist, fingers splayed, briefly exposing for those in his audience curious enough to look, the little mound of tortured flesh at the center of his palm, the souvenir of his old disgrace. “Here, touch it, if you like,” he says, offering the foreshortened sleeve for their inspection. “Come on. Please. I need you to make it real for yourselves.” But the move only causes those nearest him to flinch and draw back involuntarily, as if they’d mistaken the invitation for a threat. Nonetheless, their reaction fails to staunch the flow of his prepared discourse.
“This is the suit Dr. Morgan chose to wear on that cool overcast fatal Monday, the 11th of January, in the city of Karachi in 1988, when he ventured out from his hotel into a busy street on the way to what notations in his pocket calendar — this calendar,” he announces, lowering his voice for emphasis, as he withdraws a slim brown leather notebook from an inside breast pocket and thumbs through the contents for their benefit — an action that manages to reveal almost nothing in the process and proves merely tantalizing, since most of its pages are blank — before secreting it back in place and resuming his account. “An entry on the critical date in question, January the 11th, indicates he must have been headed for a three o’clock appointment with a local dealer in antiquities and archeological contraband, a scheduled appointment which, as fate would have it, he could not keep. What you are now looking at, ladies and gentlemen, is the last suit Dr. Morgan ever wore. The suit he died in.”
The caretaker takes a deep breath that might easily be mistaken for a sigh and surveys the nine stupefied faces of his spectators. Five mouths are agape. Twelve out of eighteen disbelieving eyes are staring back at him — or at the suit, he can’t be certain. One woman’s long manicured fingers are pressed against her lips, stifling whatever is threatening to emerge. A bearded man is glowering. “What sort of sick game is this?” someone asks. A girl bows her tawny head in a futile attempt to become invisible while, a few feet to her left, a couple exchanges conspiratorial glances and begins inching backwards toward the door, contemplating escape. “Not yet,” the caretaker says quietly, stopping them in mid-flight with nothing but the chastening power of his voice. “There are things you need to know.” Some sort of trial seems to be in progress that everyone now present will be required to endure.
Apparently persuaded by the reactions of his audience that his initial sally has achieved its aim, the caretaker ventures further. Ben
ding over his right leg, he points out a dark stain on the fabric between shin and thigh where the threads have given way, leaving a tear just large enough to provide — when the knee is flexed, as his is now — a glimpse of the flesh beneath. “This is where the full weight of his body first made contact with the grimy pavement when he fell. And here, too, at the shoulder — see? The dirt of the Karachi street still remains embedded in the cloth, along with what is probably a little Dr. Morgan blood.”
An isolated passing cloud has suddenly extinguished the sunlight from the room and the captive witnesses, their vision momentarily baffled by the change, can barely distinguish what they actually see from what they are being invited to imagine. The caretaker’s mellifluous, hypnotic voice flows on unabated. “History owes a great debt to the anonymous hospital worker who, sometime after four forty-seven p.m. local time, when Dr. Morgan was officially pronounced dead — although the medical records confirm that he had long since surrendered consciousness and irretrievably ceased to be himself, ceased to be anyone, for that matter — gathered up the patient’s personal effects and, being either too principled or too cowardly to succumb to the temptation to pocket a few valuables on the chance no one would miss them, inventoried the whole lot.”
He enumerates the contents for them in a kind of chant: “The Cartier watch, still keeping perfect time; the double-buckled Lobb shoes, an English size 10, specially made to order to accommodate each unique bunion, protrusion, or misshapen toe; the monogrammed blue silk Charvet shirt and matching tie; the linen handkerchief probably used earlier in the day to wipe a brow or daub away the dampness from an upper lip; the engraved fountain pen that went everywhere with him, even though it had been known to leak from time to time and stain the inside jacket pocket it was kept in — Look!” Once again, with a triumphant gesture, he shows off the chartreuse lining, this time pointing out a small inky blemish resembling a squashed bug.
He proceeds with his inventory. He tells them about the passport, less than three months short of its expiration date at the moment of its sudden obsolescence, the pages covered in official stamps documenting a decade’s worth of international travel in pursuit of the next elusive treasure. He describes the standard issue color portrait of the bearer, the way the formidable head challenges the edges of the picture frame and how the studiously solemn expression, presumably defying the photographer’s ritual insistence on a smile, is permanently pockmarked and distorted by the imposition of the embossed seal of the United States.
The litany goes on. No item escapes mention. “The marcasite cufflinks (Dr. Morgan’s own design, of course); the alligator belt; a wallet housing a disorganized accumulation of bills in multiple currencies, along with two travelers’ checks, a single credit card, and a couple of receipts stuffed in at random; a plastic pocket comb with two four-inch silvery hairs still tangled in its teeth; a folding map of the city bearing three x’s marked in pen to indicate, we must presume, intended destinations; the tortoiseshell eyeglasses he must have been wearing when he fell because one lens is cracked and the left earpiece bent hopelessly out of shape . . .” The caretaker is savoring each word as if it were the incarnation of the object itself that he was in the process of caressing. “Nine loose coins amounting to thirty-nine rupees; a matchbook from a local dive with some figures scribbled on the inside flap; a pair of silk socks, these socks, the socks I’m wearing now . . .” Pinching a bit of trouser leg between thumb and forefinger with a kind of professional delicacy, he thrusts a toe toward the leery onlookers as evidence while he continues his remorselessly exhaustive list. “A silver case for business cards, a leather one belonging to the damaged eyeglasses; the appointment calendar I showed you; some bits of pocket lint (as proof of thoroughness, I suppose); a sticky crumpled paper candy wrapper; a ribbed cotton undershirt — you know, the sleeveless kind; blue boxer shorts, size medium according to the label; a toothpick, a used one, I suspect; and a single piece of jewelry, the thin gold Tiffany wedding band, painstakingly swiveled off the swollen lifeless finger of his left hand by that conscientious hospital employee whose name we’ll never know.” While he spoke, his hands had involuntarily been mimicking the action he was describing, but now that he is done, they fall helplessly to his sides, useless appendages bereft of any function.
The caretaker blinks several times in rapid succession. “All this stuff,” he murmurs. He wears the dazed expression of someone startled out of a dream into an unfamiliar reality, trying to clear his vision in order to ascertain where he is and who he is supposed to be. He looks in the direction of his audience, as if for answers, but they give little back. Since he began his recitation some moments earlier, the surroundings have changed. The stereo has gone quiet except for a low, all but inaudible hum, signaling persistent plaintive readiness. The errant cloud has finally torn itself to shreds and is drifting off, relinquishing its hold on the sun and leaving it behind, depleted by the encounter. The room feels suddenly wan and colorless, like a casualty of too much washing.
The nine people stand before him, penitents held captive not by the usual methods — locked doors, or chains, or prison bars, or brandished weapons — but by the seductive power of their host’s voice, and by their own ambivalence, which keeps vacillating between fascination and revulsion at the unfolding spectacle. Once a group of disparate individuals separated by conflicting impulses, they have formed the instinctive, unspoken alliance of strangers confronted by a common threat. They are breathing in almost perfect unison. A suspicion has been growing in their midst, spreading its contagion from one to the next until it envelops them all. What if the mild-mannered guide they have been following through the house for the past hour or two, whose instructions they have meekly been obeying, and upon whose knowledge and wisdom they have relied, should in fact turn out to be one of those tragic madmen one encounters in lurid news reports who, after years spent nursing unimaginable psychic wounds in silence and successfully masquerading as an ordinary, harmless person, suddenly turns on his neighbors, his co-workers, a schoolyard full of children, and — provoked by nothing more than a wrong word or look — annihilates as many of them as possible before doing away with himself, taking his secrets with him and leaving the rest of us, with the help of volunteer psychiatrists and sociologists, to theorize about his motives and worry over what could have driven him to it; the sort of person, in short, whose whims it would be prudent for strangers to indulge.
“I suppose you could mistake all this for mere ghoulishness,” the caretaker volunteers in response to his audience’s palpable discomfort in his presence. “But there’s a point behind it all, I promise. It goes to the very essence of what Dr. Morgan was aiming at, the reason he created this place and devoted himself to it. How can I make you see?” A note of desperation infects his voice. For the first time that day, he glimpses the possibility that his carefully rehearsed strategy may fail to win converts. This loss of conviction on the part of their putative leader proves even more disconcerting to his visitors than the bravura performance they have just endured. Uncertainty repels them like a bad smell. Their eyes begin darting everywhere, alive with exit strategies.
He might have wanted to tell them more. He might have wanted them to know in detail his version of how all the stuff had eventually made its way back home, neatly wrapped in plain brown paper tied with string, like packaged discards from the friendly local butcher; how, in the manner of a chaperone, the brown parcel of personal effects accompanied the temporary coffin housing the owner’s corpse, two mismatched traveling companions sharing space aboard a cargo plane on the journey back to where they’d started from together a mere two weeks before. He might have wanted to lead them deeper into the recesses of the upstairs sanctuary, into the waiting bedroom and adjoining bath, both so carefully prepared to reveal what they’d been hiding all these years. But having saved the best for last, the reluctance of these chosen people — chosen by chance, perhaps, by some mere accident of timing, but cho
sen all the same — to accept what he is offering, their apparent inability to recognize how deeply they themselves are implicated in it all, dissuades him from proceeding in the direction he had planned.
“You will soon forget me,” he says instead. “And I you. Just as those you love, on whose devotion you so fervently depend and who profess themselves incapable of going on without you will soon begin forgetting, too. Or, worse still, will misremember, only to lose you in a miasma of reverence or remorse. What else can you expect of memory, that flabby capricious muscle, so prone to distractions, self-justification, embellishment, delusion.”
A fidgety little man at the rear of the group can restrain himself no longer. “I think I’ve had enough of this. I’m out of here,” he announces in a startlingly high-pitched voice, cinching up the belt of his safari jacket as a demonstration of resolve and taking a few bold steps towards the door. The words are intended to stimulate action, not just his own, but that of his fellows; a few people go so far as to glance in his direction, but no one makes a move to follow. Paralysis prevails. It’s as if the time they have spent in this place surrounded by Dr. Morgan’s things in the company of Dr. Morgan’s man has gradually instilled in them a state of passivity they are now incapable of throwing off, as if there were something in the vaguely fetid air hostile to free will, depriving them of any desire for independent action.