The Black House

by Patricia Highsmith

  So Saturday morning while Reg worked on the nonelectric typewriter which they kept at the shack, Diane went for a walk on the beach with the basket. She had put a piece of newspaper in the basket, and she collected a greater number than usual of colored pebbles, a few larger smooth rocks—one orange in color, making it almost a trompe l’oeil for a mango—plus an interesting piece of sea-worn wood that looked like a boomerang. Wouldn’t that be odd, she thought, if it really were an ancient boomerang worn shorter, thinner, until only the curve remained unchanged? As she walked back to the shack, the basket emitted faint squeaks in unison with her tread. The basket was so heavy, she had to carry it in two hands, letting its side rest against her hip, but she was not at all afraid that the twigs of the bottom would give. Her work.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  When she began to empty the basket on the porch’s wooden table, she realized she had gathered too many stones, so she dropped more than half of them, quickly choosing the less interesting, over the porch rail onto the sand. Finally she shook the newspaper of its sand, and started to put it back in the basket. Sunlight fell on the glossy reddish-brown apple twigs. Over and under, not every one secured by twine, because for some twigs it hadn’t been necessary. New work, and yet—Diane felt the irrational fear creeping over her again, and she pressed the newspaper quickly into the basket, pressed it at the crib-shaped edges, so that all her work was hidden. Then she tossed it carelessly on the floor, could have transferred some potatoes from a brown paper bag into it but she wanted to get away from the basket now.

  An hour or so later, when she and Reg were finishing lunch, Reg laughing and about to light a cigarette, Diane felt an inner jolt as if—What? She deliberately relaxed, and gave her attention, more of it, to what Reg was saying. But it was as if the sound had been switched off a TV set. She saw him, but she wasn’t listening or hearing. She blinked and forced herself to listen. Reg was talking about renting a tractor to clear some of their sand away, about terracing, and maintaining their property with growing things. They’d drawn a simple plan weeks ago, Diane remembered. But again she was feeling not like herself, as if she had lost herself in millions of people as an individual might get lost in a huge crowd. No, that was too simple, she felt. She was still trying to find solace in words. Or was she even dodging something? If so, what?

  “What?” Reg asked, leaning back in his chair now, relaxed.

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “You were lost in thought.”

  Diane might have replied that she had just had a better idea for a current project at Retting, might have replied several things, but she said suddenly, “I’m thinking of asking for a leave of absence. Maybe just a month. I think Retting would do it, and it’d do me good.”

  Reg looked puzzled. “You’re feeling tired, you mean? Just lately?”

  “No. I feel somehow upset. Turned around, I don’t know. I thought maybe a month of just being away from the office . . .” But work was supposed to be good in such a situation as hers. Work kept people from dwelling on their problems. But she hadn’t a problem, rather a state of mind.

  “Oh . . . well,” Reg said. “Heyningen getting on your nerves maybe.”

  Diane shifted. It would have been easy to say yes, that was it. She took a cigarette, and Reg lit it. “Thanks. You’re going to laugh, Reg. But that basket bothers me.” She looked at him, feeling ashamed, and curiously defensive.

  “The one you found last weekend? You’re worried a child might’ve drowned in it, lost at sea?” Reg smiled as if at a mild joke he’d just made.

  “No, not at all. Nothing like that. I told you last weekend. It simply bothers me that I repaired it so easily. There. That’s it. And you can say I’m cracked—I don’t care.”

  “I do not—quite—understand what you mean.”

  “It made me feel somehow—prehistoric. And funny. Still does.”

  Reg shook his head. “I can sort of understand. Honestly. But—another way of looking at it, Di, is to realize that it’s a very simple activity after all, mending or even making a basket. Not that I don’t admire the neat job you did, but it’s not like—sitting down and playing Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, for instance, if you’ve never had a piano lesson in your life.”

  “No.” She’d never had a basket-making lesson in her life, she might have said. She was silent, wondering if she should put in her leave of absence request on Monday, as a gesture, a kind of appeasement to the uneasiness she felt? Emotions demanded gestures, she had read somewhere, in order to be exorcised. Did she really believe that?

  “Really, Di, the leave of absence is one thing, but that basket—It’s an interesting basket, sure, because it’s not machine-made and you don’t see that shape any more. I’ve seen you get excited about stones you find. I understand. They’re beautiful. But to let yourself get upset about—”

  “Stones are different,” she interrupted. “I can admire them. I’m not upset about them. I told you I feel I’m not exactly myself—me—any longer. I feel lost in a strange way—Identity, I mean,” she broke in again, when Reg started to speak.

  “Oh, Di!” He got up. “What do you mean you told me that? You didn’t.”

  “Well, I have now. I feel—as if a lot of other people were inside me besides myself. And I feel lost because of that. Do you understand?”

  Reg hesitated. “I understand the words. But the feeling—no.”

  Even that was something. Diane felt grateful, and relieved that she had said this much to him.

  “Go ahead with the leave of absence idea, darling. I didn’t mean to be so abrupt.”

  Diane put her cigarette out. “I’ll think about it.” She got up to make coffee.

  That afternoon, after tidying the kitchen, Diane put another newspaper in the basket, and unloaded the sack of potatoes into it, plus three or four onions—familiar and contemporary objects. Perishable too. She made herself not think about the basket or even about the leave of absence for the rest of the day. Around 7:30, she and Reg drove off to Truro, where there was a street party organized by an ecology group. Wine and beer and soft drinks, hot dogs and jukebox music. They encountered the Gartners and a few other neighbors. The wine was undrinkable, the atmosphere marvelous. Diane danced with a couple of merry strangers and was for a few hours happy.

  A month’s leave of absence, she thought as she stood under the shower that night, was absurd and unnecessary. Temporary aberration to have considered it. If the basket—a really simple object as Reg had said—annoyed her so much, the thing to do was to get rid of it, burn it.

  Sunday morning Reg took the car and went to deliver his Black & Decker or some appliance of it to the Gartners, who lived eight miles away. As soon as he had left, Diane went to the side porch, replaced the potatoes and onions in the brown paper bag which she had saved as she saved most bags that arrived at the shack, and taking the basket with its newspaper and a book of matches, she walked out onto the sand in the direction of the ocean. She struck a match and lit the newspaper, and laid the basket over it. After a moment’s hesitation, as if from shock, the basket gave a crack and began to burn. The drier sides burned more quickly than the newer apple twigs, of course. With a stick, Diane poked every last pale withe into the flames, until nothing remained except black ash and some yellow-glowing embers, and finally these went out in the bright sunshine and began to darken. Diane pushed sand with her feet over the ashes, until nothing was visible. She breathed deeply as she walked back to the shack, and realized that she had been holding her breath, or almost, the entire time of the burning.

  She was not going to say anything to Reg about getting rid of the basket, and he was not apt to notice its absence, Diane knew.

  Diane did mention, on Tuesday in New York, that she had changed her mind about asking for a leave of absence. The implication was that she felt better, but she didn’
t say that.

  The basket was gone, she would never see it again, unless she deliberately tried to conjure it up in memory, and that she didn’t want to do. She felt better with the thing out of the shack, destroyed. She knew that the burning had been an action on her part to get rid of a feeling within her, a primitive action, if she thought about it, because though the basket had been tangible, her thoughts were not tangible. And they proved damned hard to destroy.

  Three weeks after the burning of the basket, her crazy idea of being a “walking human race” or some such lingered. She would continue to listen to Mozart and Bartók, they’d go to the shack most weekends, and she would continue to pretend that her life counted for something, that she was part of the stream or evolution of the human race, though she felt now that she had spurned that position or small function by burning the basket. For a week, she realized, she had grasped something, and then she had deliberately thrown it away. In fact, she was no happier now than during that week when the well-mended basket had been in her possession. But she was determined not to say anything more about it to Reg. He had been on the verge of impatience that Saturday before the Sunday when she had burned it. And in fact could she even put any more into words? No. So she had to stop thinking about it. Yes.

  Under a Dark Angel’s Eye

  Now he was on the last leg of his journey, the bus stretch from the airport to Arlington Hills. There would be nobody to meet him at the bus terminal, and Lee didn’t mind in the least. In fact he preferred it. He could walk with his small suitcase the four or five blocks to the Capitol Hotel (he assumed it was still functioning), check in, then telephone Winston Greeves to say he had arrived. Maybe they could even wind up the business with the lawyer today, because it would be only four in the afternoon by the time Lee would be phoning Winston. It was a matter of signing a paper in regard to the house where Lee Mandeville had been born. Lee owned it, and now he had to sell it, because he needed the money. He didn’t care, he wasn’t sentimental about the two-story white house with the green lawn in front. Or was he? Lee honestly didn’t think so. He’d had some nasty, unpleasant hours in that house, as well as a few happy ones—a barefoot boyhood, tossing a football with chums from the neighborhood on the front lawn. He had lost Louise there, too.

  Lee shifted in his seat, rested his cheek against his hand which was lightly closed in a fist, and stared out the window at the Indiana landscape that drifted past. He barely recognized a small town they were going through. How long had it been, nine, no ten years since he had been to Arlington Hills. Ten years ago he had come to visit his mother in the nursing home called the Hearthside, and she had either not recognized him or pretended not to, or had really thought he was someone else. At any rate she had managed to come out with “Don’t come back!” just as he had been going out the door of her room. Winston who had accompanied Lee had chuckled and shaken his head, as if to say, “What can you do with the old folks—except put up with them?”

  Yes, they lived on forever these days. Doctors didn’t let old people die, not as long as there were pills, injections, kidney machines, new drugs, all costing dearly. That was why Lee had to sell the house. For twelve years, since his mother had entered the nursing home, the house had been rented to a couple whose two children were in their teens now. Lee had never charged them much rent, because they couldn’t afford a high rent, and Lee valued their reliability. But Lee’s mother was now costing between five and six hundred dollars a week, her savings had run out five years ago, and Lee had borne the burden ever since, though Medicare paid some of it. His mother Edna wasn’t ill, but she did need certain pills, tranquilizers alternating with pick-ups, plus checkups and special vitamins. Lee paid little attention to his mother’s health, because it stayed the same year after year. She was ambulant but crochety, and never wrote to Lee, because he didn’t write to her. Even before the nursing home, she had cursed Lee out by letter for imaginary faults and deeds, so Lee had washed his hands of his mother, except to pay her bills. An offspring owed that to a parent, Lee believed, just as a parent owed to a child love, care, and as much education as the parent could afford. Children were expensive and time-consuming, but the parents certainly were repaid when they became elderly and imposed the same burdens on their children.

  Lee Mandeville was fifty-five, unmarried, and had a modestly successful antique shop in Chicago. He dealt in old furniture, a few good carpets, old pictures and frames, brass and silver items and silverware also. He was by no means a big wheel in the antique business, but he was known and respected in Chicago and beyond. He was trim of figure, not balding, and without much gray in his hair. His face was clean shaven, with a crease in either cheek, and he had rather heavy eyebrows above friendly, thoughtful blue-gray eyes. He liked meeting strangers in his shop, summing them up, finding out whether they wanted to buy something because it would look nice somewhere in their house or because they really fell in love with an object.

  As the bus rocked and lumbered into Arlington Hills, Lee tensed himself, already uneasy, and unhappy. Well, he did not intend to see his mother this trip. He didn’t want to see her, and he didn’t have to. She was so far gone mentally that Lee had had power of attorney for nearly ten years. Winston had at last obtained his mother’s signature for that. She had held out for months, not for any logical reason but out of stubbornness, and because she enjoyed making difficulties for other people. Twenty minutes to four, Lee saw from a glance at his wristwatch. He stood up and hauled his suitcase down from the rack before the bus had quite stopped.

  “Lee!—How are you, Lee?”

  Lee was surprised by the voice, and it took him a second to spot Win in the little crowd waiting for debarkers. “Win! Hello! I didn’t expect to see you here!” Lee’s smile was broad. They patted each other on the shoulder. “How’re things?”

  “Oh—much the same,” Win replied. “Nothing much changes around here. That’s all the luggage you’ve got? . . . My car’s over here, Lee—and Kate and I expect you to be our guest. All right?” Win already had Lee’s suitcase in his hand. Win was in his early sixties with straight gray hair that looked always windblown. He wore navy blue trousers and a blue shirt with no tie. Win was head of an insurance company that he himself had founded, and the Mande-villes had insured their house and cars with Win for decades.

  “It’s kind of you, Win, but honestly, for one night—I can just as well stay at the old Capitol, you know.” Lee didn’t want to say that he preferred to go to a hotel.

  “Won’t hear of it. Kate’s got your room all ready.”

  Win was walking toward his car, and Lee went with him. After all, Win had been helpful, very, with Edna, and Win seemed really pleased to have him. “You win, Win,” Lee said, smiling, “and thank you. How’s Kate? And Mort?” Mort was their son.

  “Oh—the same.” Win stuck Lee’s lightweight suitcase onto the back seat of his car. “Mort’s working now in Bloomington. Car salesman.”

  “Still married?” Lee recalled some awful trouble with Mort’s wife—she’d run off with another man, abandoned their small child, and then, Lee thought, they had got back together again.

  “No, they finally arranged a—a divorce,” Win said, and started the car.

  Lee didn’t know whether to say “Good” or not, so he said nothing. Now his mother, Lee thought. That was the next question. He didn’t care how his mother was. Instead, Lee said, “I was thinking we might wind this business up this afternoon, Win. It’s just a matter of signing a paper, isn’t it?” The house in Barrett Avenue was sold, to a young couple named Varick—Ralph and Phyllis, Lee remembered from the real estate agent’s letter.

  “Ye-es,” said Win, and his heavy hands opened on the steering wheel for a couple of seconds, then closed tightly. “I suppose we could.”

  Lee gathered that Win hadn’t made an appointment as yet. “It’s still old Graham, isn’t it? He knows us both so well—can�
��t we just barge in?”

  “Sure—okay, Lee.”

  Win Greeves steered the car into Main Street, and Lee glanced at storefronts, shop signs, seeing a lot of change since he had been here last, and for the worse aesthetically. Main Street looked more crowded, both with people and shops. Maybe Graham’s old office hadn’t changed. Douglas Graham was a lawyer and notary public. He had drawn up a power of attorney statement years ago, at Lee’s request, so that Lee could sign checks for his mother’s bills, and Winston Greeves’s name had been added also in executor capacity, because Win was on the scene in Arlington Hills, and even visited his mother sometimes—though his mother didn’t always recognize him, Win said—and in the last years as Edna’s bank account had grown low, Lee sent five hundred dollars or a thousand to bolster it every month or so. Win sent Lee the bank statements for the account now in Lee’s name, and an explanation of the bills.

  “I don’t need the Varicks, I suppose,” Lee said. “To be present when I sign, I mean.”

  “I know Ralph Varick’s already signed,” said Win. “Fine couple, those two. You should meet them, Lee.”

  “Well—not really necessary. Give them my best wishes—if you ever see them.” Lee didn’t want to go near the old house, didn’t want to see it. The nice family, the Youngs, who couldn’t afford to buy the house, were still there for the rest of this month, but Lee didn’t want to visit them even merely to say hello. He felt sorry for them. He forced himself to ask the unavoidable. “And I suppose my mother’s just the same too?”

  Win chuckled and shook his head. “She’s—yes—that’s about it.”

  Don’t they ever kick the bucket, Lee thought bitterly, and nearly laughed at himself. And after he had banked the money for the house, how much longer, how many more years would his mother live, eating up five or six hundred dollars a week? Now she was eighty-six. Couldn’t she go on till ninety and ninety-one? Why not? Lee remembered three grandparents out of four, plus one maternal uncle, who had all died in their nineties.