Strangers on a Train

by Patricia Highsmith

Of course he was. Guy felt his shoulders relax, and his breathing grow easier. Yet at this moment, it was hard to believe she was his. She was like a goddess who descended to pluck him from battles that would certainly have killed him, like the goddesses in mythology who saved the heroes, yet introduced an element at the end of the stories that had always struck him, when he read them as a child, as extraneous and unfair. In the nights when he could not sleep, when he stole out of the house and walked up the rock hill in pajamas and overcoat, in the unchallenging, indifferent summer nights, he did not permit himself to think of Anne. “Dea ex machina,” Guy murmured.

  “What?”

  Why was he sitting here with Bruno, eating at the same table with him? He wanted to fight Bruno and he wanted to weep. But all at once he felt his curses dissolve in a flood of pity. Bruno did not know how to love, and that was all he needed. Bruno was too lost, too blind to love or to inspire love. It seemed all at once tragic.

  “You’ve never even been in love, Bruno?” Guy watched a restive, unfamiliar expression come into Bruno’s eyes.

  Bruno signaled for another drink. “No, not really in love, I guess.” He moistened his lips. Not only hadn’t he ever fallen in love, but he didn’t care too much about sleeping with women. He had never been able to stop thinking it was a silly business, that he was standing off somewhere and watching himself. Once, one terrible time, he had started giggling. Bruno squirmed. That was the most painful difference he felt separating him and Guy, that Guy could forget himself in women, had practically killed himself for Miriam.

  Guy looked at Bruno, and Bruno lowered his eyes. Bruno was waiting, as if for him to tell him how to fall in love. “Do you know the greatest wisdom in the world, Bruno?”

  “I know a lot of wisdoms,” Bruno smirked. “Which one do you mean?”

  “That everything has its opposite close beside it.”

  “Opposites attract?”

  “That’s too simple. I mean—you give me ties. But it also occurred to me you might have the police waiting for me here.”

  “F’ Christ’s sake, Guy, you’re my friend!” Bruno said quickly, suddenly frantic. “I like you!”

  I like you, I don’t hate you, Guy thought. But Bruno wouldn’t say that, because he did hate him. Just as he would never say to Bruno, I like you, but instead, I hate you, because he did like him. Guy set his jaw, and rubbed his fingers back and forth across his forehead. He could foresee a balance of positive and negative will that would paralyze every action before he began it. Such as that, for instance, that kept him sitting here. He jumped up, and the new drinks splashed on the cloth.

  Bruno stared at him in terrified surprise. “Guy, what’s the matter?” Bruno followed him. “Guy, wait! You don’t think I’d do a thing like that, do you? I wouldn’t in a million years!”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Guy!” Bruno was almost crying. Why did people do these things to him? Why? He shouted on the sidewalk: “Not in a million years! Not for a million dollars! Trust me, Guy!”

  Guy pushed his hand into Bruno’s chest and closed the taxi door. Bruno would not in a million years betray him, he knew. But if everything were as ambiguous as he believed, how could he really be sure?

  thirty-four

  “What’s your connection with Mrs. Guy Haines?”

  Bruno had expected it. Gerard had his latest charge accounts, and this was the flowers he had sent Anne. “Friend. Friend of her husband.”

  “Oh. Friend?”

  “Acquaintance.” Bruno shrugged, knowing Gerard would think he was trying to brag because Guy was famous.

  “Known him long?”

  “Not long.” From his horizontal slump in his easy chair, Bruno reached for his lighter.

  “How’d you happen to send flowers?”

  “Feeling good, I guess. I was going to a party there that night.”

  “Do you know him that well?”

  Bruno shrugged again. “Ordinary party. He was one of the architects we thought of when we were talking about building a house.” That had just popped out, and it was rather good, Bruno thought.

  “Matt Levine. Let’s get back to him.”

  Bruno sighed. Skipping Guy, maybe because he was out of town, maybe just skipping him. Now Matt Levine—they didn’t come any shadier, and without realizing it might be useful, he had seen a lot of Matt before the murder. “What about him?”

  “How is it you saw him the twenty-fourth, twenty-eighth, and thirtieth of April, the second, fifth, sixth, seventh of March, and two days before the murder?”

  “Did I?” he smiled. Gerard had had only three dates the last time. Matt didn’t like him either. Matt had probably said the worst. “He was interested in buying my car.”

  “And you were interested in selling it? Why, because you thought you’d get a new one soon?”

  “Wanted to sell it to get a little car,” Bruno said obliviously. “The one in the garage now. Crosley.”

  Gerard smiled. “How long have you known Mark Lev?”

  “Since he was Mark Levitski,” Bruno retorted. “Go back a little farther and you’ll find he killed his own father in Russia.” Bruno glared at Gerard. The “own” sounded funny, he shouldn’t have said it, but Gerard trying to be smart with the aliases!

  “Matt doesn’t care for you either. What’s the matter, couldn’t you two come to terms?”

  “About the car?”

  “Charles,” Gerard said patiently.

  “I’m not saying anything.” Bruno looked at his bitten nails, and thought again how well Matt matched Herbert’s description of the murderer.

  “You haven’t seen Ernie Schroeder much lately.”

  Bruno opened his mouth boredly to answer.

  thirty-five

  Barefoot, in white duck trousers, Guy sat cross-legged on the India’s forward deck. Long Island had just come in sight, but he did not want to look at it yet. The gently rolling movement of the ship rocked him pleasantly and familiarly, like something he had always known. The day he had last seen Bruno, in the restaurant, seemed a day of madness. Surely he had been going insane. Surely Anne must have seen it.

  He flexed his arm and pinched up the thin brown skin that covered its muscles. He was brown as Egon, the half-Portuguese ship’s boy they had hired from the Long Island dock at the start of the cruise. Only the little scar in his right eyebrow remained white.

  The three weeks at sea had given him a peace and resignation he had never known before, and that a month ago he would have declared foreign to him. He had come to feel that his atonement, whatever it might be, was a part of his destiny, and like the rest of his destiny would find him without his seeking. He had always trusted his sense of destiny. As a boy with Peter, he had known that he would not merely dream, as he had somehow known, too, that Peter would do nothing but dream, that he would create famous buildings, that his name would take its proper place in architecture, and finally—it had always seemed to him the crowning achievement—that he would build a bridge. It would be a white bridge with a span like an angel’s wing, he had thought as a boy, like the curving white bridge of Robert Maillart in his architecture books. It was a kind of arrogance, perhaps, to believe so in one’s destiny. But, on the other hand, who could be more genuinely humble than one who felt compelled to obey the laws of his own fate? The murder that had seemed an outrageous departure, a sin against himself, he believed now might have been a part of his destiny, too. It was impossible to think otherwise. And if it were so, he would be given a way to make his atonement, and given the strength to make it. And if death by law overtook him first, he would be given the strength to meet that also, and strength besides sufficient for Anne to meet it. In a strange way, he felt humbler than the smallest minnow of the sea, and stronger than the greatest mountain on earth. But he was not arrogant. His arrogance had been a defense, reaching its height at the time of the break with Miriam. And hadn’t he known even then, obsessed by her, wretchedly poor, that he would find an
other woman whom he could love and who would love him always? And what better proof did he need that all this was so than that he and Anne had never been closer, their lives never more like one harmonious life, than during these three weeks at sea?

  He turned himself with a movement of his feet, so he could see her as she leaned against the mainmast. There was a faint smile on her lips as she gazed down at him, a half-repressed, prideful smile like that of a mother, Guy thought, who had brought her child safely through an illness, and smiling back at her, Guy marveled that he could put such trust in her infallibility and rightness and that she could still be merely a human being. Most of all, he marveled that she could be his. Then he looked down at his locked hands and thought of the work he would begin tomorrow on the hospital, of all the work to come, and the events of his destiny that lay ahead.

  Bruno telephoned a few evenings later. He was in the neighborhood, he said, and wanted to come by. He sounded very sober, and a little dejected.

  Guy told him no. He told him calmly and firmly that neither he nor Anne wanted to see him again, but even as he spoke, he felt the sands of his patience running out fast, and the sanity of the past weeks crumbling under the madness of their conversing at all.

  Bruno knew that Gerard had not spoken to Guy yet. He did not think Gerard would question Guy more than a few minutes. But Guy sounded so cold, Bruno could not bring himself to tell him now that Gerard had gotten his name, that he might be interviewed, or that he intended to see Guy strictly secretly from now on—no more parties or even lunches—if Guy would only let him.

  “Okay,” Bruno said mutedly, and hung up.

  Then the telephone rang again. Frowning, Guy put out the cigarette he had just lighted relievedly, and answered it.

  “Hello. This is Arthur Gerard of the Confidential Detective Bureau....” Gerard asked if he could come over.

  Guy turned around, glancing warily over the living room, trying to reason away a feeling that Gerard had just heard his and Bruno’s conversation over tapped wires, that Gerard had just captured Bruno. He went upstairs to tell Anne.

  “A private detective?” Anne asked, surprised. “What’s it about?”

  Guy hesitated an instant. There were so many, many places where he might hesitate too long! Damn Bruno! Damn him for dogging him! “I don’t know.”

  Gerard arrived promptly. He fairly bowed over Anne’s hand, and after apologizing for intruding on their evening, made polite conversation about the house and the strip of garden in front. Guy stared at him in some astonishment. Gerard looked dull, tired, and vaguely untidy. Perhaps Bruno wasn’t entirely wrong about him. Even his absent air, heightened by his slow speech, did not suggest the absent-mindedness of a brilliant detective. Then as Gerard settled himself with a cigar and a highball, Guy caught the shrewdness in the light hazel eyes and the energy in the chunky hands. Guy felt uneasy then. Gerard looked unpredictable.

  “You’re a friend of Charles Bruno, Mr. Haines?”

  “Yes. I know him.”

  “His father was murdered last March as you probably know, and the murderer has not been found.”

  “I didn’t know that!” Anne said.

  Gerard’s eyes moved slowly from her back to Guy.

  “I didn’t know either,” said Guy.

  “You don’t know him that well?”

  “I know him very slightly.”

  “When and where did you meet?”

  “At—” Guy glanced at Anne—“the Parker Art Institute, I think around last December.” Guy felt he had walked into a trap. He had repeated Bruno’s flippant reply at the wedding, simply because Anne had heard Bruno say it, and Anne had probably forgotten. Gerard regarded him, Guy thought, as if he didn’t believe a word of it. Why hadn’t Bruno warned him about Gerard? Why hadn’t they settled on the story Bruno had once proposed about their having met at the rail of a certain midtown bar?

  “And when did you see him again?” Gerard asked finally.

  “Well—not until my wedding in June.” He felt himself assuming the puzzled expression of a man who does not yet know his inquisitor’s object. Fortunately, he thought, fortunately, he had already assured Anne that Bruno’s assertion they were old friends was only Bruno’s style of humor. “We didn’t invite him,” Guy added.

  “He just came?” Gerard looked as if he understood. “But you did invite him to the party you gave in July?” He glanced at Anne also.

  “He called up,” Anne told him, “and asked if he could come, so—I said yes.”

  Gerard then asked if Bruno knew about the party through any friends of his who were coming, and Guy said possibly, and gave the name of the blond woman who had smiled so horrifically at Bruno that evening. Guy had no other names to give. He had never seen Bruno with anyone.

  Gerard leaned back. “Do you like him?” he smiled.

  “Well enough,” Anne replied finally, politely.

  “All right,” Guy said, because Gerard was waiting. “He seems a bit pushing.” The right side of his face was in shadow. Guy wondered if Gerard were scanning his face now for scars.

  “A hero-worshiper. Power-worshiper, in a sense.” Gerard smiled, but the smile no longer looked genuine, or perhaps it never had. “Sorry to bother you with these questions, Mr. Haines.”

  Five minutes later, he was gone.

  “What does it mean?” Anne asked. “Does he suspect Charles Bruno?”

  Guy bolted the door, then came back. “He probably suspects one of his acquaintances. He might think Charles knows something, because he hated his father so. Or so Charles told me.”

  “Do you think Charles might know?”

  “There’s no telling. Is there?” Guy took a cigarette.

  “Good lord.” Anne stood looking at the corner of the sofa, as if she still saw Bruno where he had sat the night of the party. She whispered, “Amazing what goes on in people’s lives!”

  thirty-six

  “Listen,” Guy said tensely into the receiver. “Listen, Bruno!” Bruno was drunker than Guy had ever heard him, but he was determined to penetrate to the muddled brain. Then he thought suddenly that Gerard might be with him, and his voice grew even softer, cowardly with caution. He found out Bruno was in a telephone booth, alone. “Did you tell Gerard we met at the Art Institute?”

  Bruno said he had. It came through the drunken mumblings that he had. Bruno wanted to come over. Guy couldn’t make it register that Gerard had already come to question him. Guy banged the telephone down, and tore open his collar. Bruno calling him now! Gerard had externalized his danger. Guy felt it was more imperative to break completely with Bruno even than to arrange a story with him that would tally. What annoyed him most was that he couldn’t tell from Bruno’s driveling what had happened to him, or even what kind of mood he was in.

  Guy was upstairs in the studio with Anne when the door chime rang.

  He opened the door only slightly, but Bruno bumped it wide, stumbled across the living room, and collapsed on the sofa. Guy stopped short in front of him, speechless first with anger, then disgust. Bruno’s fat, flushed neck bulged over his collar. He seemed more bloated than drunk, as if an edema of death had inflated his entire body, filling even the deep eye sockets so the red-gray eyes were thrust unnaturally forward. Bruno stared up at him. Guy went to the telephone to call a taxi.

  “Guy, who is it?” Anne whispered down the stairway.

  “Charles Bruno. He’s drunk.”

  “Not drunk!” Bruno protested suddenly.

  Anne came halfway down the stairs, and saw him. “Shouldn’t we just put him upstairs?”

  “I don’t want him here.” Guy was looking in the telephone book, trying to find a taxi company’s number.

  “Yess-s!” Bruno hissed, like a deflating tire.

  Guy turned. Bruno was staring at him out of one eye, the eye the only living point in the sprawled, corpselike body. He was muttering something, rhythmically.

  “What’s he saying?” Anne stood closer to Guy. />
  Guy went to Bruno and caught him by the shirtfront. The muttered, imbecilic chant infuriated him, Bruno drooled onto his hand as he tried to pull him upright. “Get up and get out!” Then he heard it:

  “I’ll tell her, I’ll tell her—I’ll tell her, I’ll tell her,” Bruno chanted, and the wild red eye stared up. “Don’t send me away, I’ll tell her—I’ll—”

  Guy released him in abhorrence.

  “What’s the matter, Guy? What’s he saying?”

  “I’ll put him upstairs,” Guy said.

  Guy tried with all his strength to get Bruno over his shoulder, but the flaccid, dead weight defeated him. Finally, Guy stretched him out across the sofa. He went to the front window. There was no car outside. Bruno might have dropped out of the sky. Bruno slept noiselessly, and Guy sat up watching him, smoking.

  Bruno awakened about 3 in the morning, and had a couple of drinks to steady himself. After a few moments, except for the bloatedness, he looked almost normal. He was very happy at finding himself in Guy’s house, and had no recollection of arriving. “I had another round with Gerard,” he smiled. “Three days. Been seeing the papers?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a fine one, don’t even look at the papers!” Bruno said softly. “Gerard’s hot on a bum scent. This crook friend of mine, Matt Levine. He doesn’t have an alibi for that night. Herbert thinks it could be him. I been talking with all three of them for three days. Matt might get it.”

  “Might die for it?”

  Bruno hesitated, still smiling. “Not die, just take the rap. He’s got two or three killings on him now. The cops’re glad to have him.” Bruno shuddered, and drank the rest in his glass.

  Guy wanted to pick up the big ashtray in front of him and smash Bruno’s bloated head, burn out the tension he felt would grow and grow until he did kill Bruno, or himself. He caught Bruno’s shoulders hard in both hands. “Will you get out? I swear this is the last time!”

  “No,” Bruno said quietly, without any movement of resistance, and Guy saw the old indifference to pain, to death, that he had seen when he had fought him in the woods.