The Black House

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Don’t nobody strike a match!” Cassie said the evening of the party. “You know what they say about flaming cellophane!”

  The potato soup, in two huge cauldrons (one borrowed from a girl who was coming to the party), steamed discreetly over low gas flames, the parsley stood ready, and there was one measly six-pack of beer in the fridge, two jugs of the Italian table wine, and six sticks of Italian bread. People were supposed to bring their own drink, after all. A shoe box labeled ALMS sat on the trestle worktable near the door, and Georgie voiced his disapproval of its being so near the door, because someone could depart hastily and be down the stairs with the box before anyone knew what had happened. But the box stayed there, because people were not to be admitted without their three dollars, and Ben and Cassie agreed that it would be silly to open the door and go off somewhere like the little bedroom to stick three dollars into the shoe box.

  Stereo boomed and throbbed, and people trickled in. Coats and jackets even shoes got tossed in a heap on the double bed in the little bedroom, and then on the floor in the corner by the trestle table. On the pushed-together double beds, Cassie had placed a folded bridge table plus the ironing board to provide surfaces for bowls of potato chips, pretzels, popcorn and olives.

  Olives! Black and green olives. Ralph suddenly remembered that he had bought them. A touch of elegance. He had spent about ten dollars on them. Ralph, in a clean shirt, cleanish jeans, boots which he had given a wipe, felt nervous, as if he alone were giving the party. He kept watching the door, expecting his father, feeling relieved though a bit sweaty when each time the door opened strange kids, or faces he barely recognized, came in. It was nearly eleven. Had his father changed his mind?

  You ain’t forgotten mee-ah . . .

  You ain’t forgotten mee-eee . . .

  sang the male voice on the blaring hi-fi.

  Ralph tossed back a paper cupful of distasteful red wine. Why was he drinking the stuff? He preferred beer any time.

  Even Ben’s uncle was here. Ralph saw him standing at the foot of the beds, paper cup in hand, conspicuous because he wore a tweed jacket with a white scarf at the neck in contrast to the blue denim everywhere. Had Ralph met him before? Ralph made his way toward Ben’s uncle, stepping aside from or forging through the hopping dancers.

  “Hello!” Ralph yelled. “You’re Ben’s uncle!”

  “Yes. Right!” said Ben’s uncle with a smile. “Huey! That’s my name!”

  Ralph wasn’t sure he’d heard it aright. Huey? Louie? “Ralph!” Ralph yelled, rocked back on his boot heels, and once more glanced at the door.

  It was impossible to talk, and so what? For a few moments, Ralph and Huey shouted things at each other, then a fellow in black leather and a cowboy hat, stoned to the gills, came up, to Ralph’s relief, and tried to start a conversation with Ben’s uncle. Ralph found himself laughing. Then Ralph looked again at the door, and there was his father!

  Ralph saw Steve smile at a girl—who was she? long blonde hair and a black dress—who was asking him for the three dollars’ admission fee. His father stuck a bill into the ALMS box, probably a ten, a fiver anyway. Ralph swallowed with difficulty, felt cold sober for an instant, then plunged toward his father, crashing through dancers.

  “Dad!” Ralph and his father shook hands, each unable to hear what the other was saying.

  His father gestured toward his shirt and tie apologetically, and Ralph thought he said something about having had to spend the evening with a business colleague. Ralph escorted his father around the edge of the dancers toward the kitchen, where if there was not a beer, there was at least instant coffee. Vaguely yet persistently, like a deep conviction, Ralph felt that the kitchen, the mere existence of a kitchen, would prove to his father that this was a household. But the kitchen was jammed with people, as if half the party had taken refuge in this appendix of the establishment to stand still and upright, even if they were packed as tightly as people on a subway train at rush hour.

  “My dad!” Ralph yelled on a note of pride. “Is there a beer?”

  “Beer, hah!” said a fellow with a little brown bottle in his hand, waggling the bottle upside down to show it was empty.

  “Up yours!” Ralph retorted unheard, and lunged forward and downward, unsettling at least two standing girls, but the girls didn’t mind, only giggled. Ralph was acutely aware of his father, standing more or less in the doorway, and aware also of people’s surprised expressions upon seeing an older man among them. But Ralph found what he was after, Ben’s precious beer cache behind the fridge, tepid, but still one small beer. Only one had been left there, and Ralph told himself to replace it tomorrow, otherwise Ben would be annoyed. He found an opener and got the top off. The paper cups were already gone.

  “A beer!” said Ralph, proudly handing his father the bottle.

  Then they were both in the big living room again, not quite together, because the dancers, the yelling people, somehow kept them apart, though Ralph pushed toward his father, who was now near the two-bed buffet spread. Someone—probably Georgie—had created a phallic symbol made of a banana plus a couple of oranges, which looked like a cannon on wheels or a sexual organ, whichever way you wanted to take it, underlaid and surrounded by purple grapes. This eye-catching display occupied the center of the gray-covered ironing board, and Ralph saw his father turn his eyes from it.

  . . . yeeowr a wing-ding-ding . . .

  yeeowr a wing-ding-ding . . .

  the electronic voices were saying, not exactly human voices, but Ralph inevitably thought of those words when he heard this particular tape. Worse was to come on this tape, if by worse one meant porn. Ralph was fixated by his father’s eyes, his expression. His father’s eyes were wary, almost frightened, and he looked around, blinking a couple of times, then abruptly turned his head as if to try to change his view. These people, to his father, were the enemy, Ralph realized.

  Damn that particular pair of faggots, smooching not for the first time as they danced in slow rhythm to music that was fast. Of course a lot of boy and girl couples were doing the same thing, but that would be okay from his father’s point of view. Ralph heard a collective “Oooh!” and laughter, and saw a flame run up one of the film twists and burn itself out in a top corner, as the red scarf in the center fell and the other twists of film got yanked by, lost among, the dancers.

  Ralph found Cassie and dragged her over to meet his father, intending to present her as their housemother—at least this respectable and maybe slightly funny term stuck in his head. Ralph hadn’t reached his father, when somebody fell on the floor just in front of him and Cassie, causing another couple to fall also. The couple got up, but the one who had fallen first did not. He was a stranger to Ralph, in black trousers, red vest, white shirt with cufflinks, skinny and unconscious. A fellow in jeans dragged him by the heels, yelling for clearance, toward the trestle table, where there was a little clear space. Ralph pushed on with Cassie in hand.

  “My father Steve! Cassie!” Ralph yelled.

  Steve nodded and said, “Good evening!” loudly, but Cassie might as well not have heard it.

  Cassie was tired, very tired, her eyes rolled toward the ceiling. She wore a fresh white shirt with big starched collar and cuffs, neat black trousers and stiletto heels, and she was standing up straight, too, but Ralph knew she was exhausted, and she’d plainly had a snort of something.

  “Cassie cooks for us all!” Ralph shouted to his father, supporting Cassie with a firm grip. “She’s tired from all the work today!”

  “Not tired!” Cassie said. “It’s a rectangle! Not a square, a rectangle! Same as—”

  While Cassie sought for a word, and Ralph’s father tried to hear, Ralph shook Cassie’s arm. It shook Cassie’s whole body, but she kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling and continued:

  “. . . saw it yesterday too in the bathroom basin. It’s every
where! Where I was washing my hair this afternoon!—It’s a dim-diminishing TV screen, I swear to God! And it’s a window! A window, too, Ralphie. Y’know what I mean? Outlined in silver!”

  “Yep,” Ralph said curtly, grinding his teeth for an instant. Cassie was in a trance. What had she had? She’d call it her mantra in a minute, the vision she’d had, or was having. “Okay, Cassie, very good!” Laughing, Ralph shook Cassie’s arm again.

  “And it’s heaving,” she assured Steve. “Going up and down in the basin, y’know?”

  “The water, you mean,” said Ralph. “It’s going down, the water!”

  “Up—and down!”

  Smiling, Ralph steered Cassie back to the kitchen, away from his father, away and safe from the dancers who might bump her. Cassie, however, walked quite well on her own, she was just somewhere else now in her head. Ralph dragged deeply on a limp joint that someone extended, held the smoke in his lungs, swung around to go back to the living room, and banged his forehead against the door jamb.

  Weedjie meenie you like mee-e . . .

  Weedjie weenie ooo-wee-ee mee-ee . . .

  Ralph saw his father and pushed toward him. At that instant, Ralph’s energy gave out, maybe because he was thinking that his father had just nodded good-bye and was leaving. And Ralph had meant to introduce him to Ben and Georgie! Next to impossible in all this crowd!

  Yes, Steve was gone. Over all the people, Ralph could just see the top of the tall door closing.

  Well, that was that. Ralph’s ears were now aching and ringing from the loud music, and he felt slightly deaf. He couldn’t hear what someone was shouting at him, as he headed back for the kitchen. No, maybe there was more space in the little bedroom, and he could close the door on himself for a minute. But when Ralph pushed wider the slightly open door, he saw what looked like at least two fellows and a girl on the bed, wallowing and laughing. Ralph reeled back and closed the door.

  Sometime later, Ralph awakened, jolted by a kick in his leg. A strange girl smiled down at him. Ralph was on the floor near the two pushed-together beds. The music still throbbed, and everything was the same as before. Ralph stood up, thought for a moment that the green-covered bed was rushing toward him with its now empty plates and bowls and its phallic display, but the bed stopped, and Ralph found himself quite upright. Ben was embracing Cassie tightly, swaying among the dancers.

  So was Georgie embracing Cassie. She was a black and white–clad blonde-topped doll between them, and would have fallen without their support, Ralph could see. He felt superior (maybe that little nap or blackout had done him good), and he felt on a different and separate plane from the others.

  “Better plane. Everything is planes,” he murmured to himself. He wanted to say this to anyone near, but everyone looked quite occupied with other people. His father. Yes, for Christ’s sake, his father had been here. Tonight. This party. And his father had left in not such a good mood. Ralph suddenly recalled his father’s pale, shocked face as he had gone out the door. That hadn’t been good.

  Ralph felt like throwing up, surely due to the wine. Best to get to the bathroom, the toilet of course, and Ralph at once headed for the bathroom. The door was not locked, though a fellow and a girl were in there, leaning against the basin, and suddenly Ralph was angry and yelled for both of them to get out. He heard his own voice yelling, and kept on, until with startled faces they slowly made their way out, and then Ralph slid the bolt on the door. He did not have to throw up, though he recalled that this had been his intent.

  “I am on a different plane,” Ralph said aloud, in a calm voice. He felt quite well now. Purposeful. Full of energy. Serious. “A man of intent.” He opened the medicine cabinet over the basin, and took down what he wanted, the communal safety razor. “A man of—intent.”

  The next several seconds represented a geographical trip to Ralph. He thought of a plane ride he had had with his family—mom and dad, yes—over the desert between Dallas–Fort Worth and Albuquerque. Purplish lake-like shapes down there, dried-up lakes or slightly filled ones, ravines twisting like snakes, dry maybe, down there. Little canyons. Beautiful colors, tan and green. And now red. Razor cut through the swollen rivers, and came out red. Now that was colorful! Amusing. Dangerous, maybe, but exciting. And absolutely painless. No pain at all.

  Ralph woke up in a horizontal position, on his back, dry in the mouth. And when he tried to move his arms, he couldn’t, and he thought for a moment that he was imprisoned somewhere. Police, maybe. Then he saw his hands except for fingers were heavily bandaged to halfway up his forearms, and they seemed to weigh a ton each. He could just move them by tugging backward. He was in a room with at least ten beds like his own, and there was a dim blue light over the door.

  “Jesus, is this another dream?” Ralph said in a scared voice that cracked. He looked around again, wide-eyed.

  Then he became aware of the smell: medicine, disinfectant. He was in a hospital. Definitely. What had happened? He tried to move his legs and was relieved to find that he could. Had there been a fight at the dump? Ralph couldn’t remember any. What hospital was this? Where? Ralph felt groggy—they’d surely given him a sedative here—but he felt more angry than sleepy, and his anger grew as he looked around him, and found neither a lamp nor a button to press.

  So he yelled. “Hey! . . . Where’s anybody? . . . He-ey!”

  A groan came from one of the beds in the room, an unintelligible voice from another. The door opened and a dimly white figure with a white cap came in noiselessly.

  “Hey!” Ralph said, though more softly.

  “You’re to keep quiet, please,” said the girl. She had a flashlight thin as a pencil.

  “Where is this?”

  She told him such-and-such hospital in some street on the East Side. And it was Sunday night, midnight, she replied in answer to his question.

  The party had been Saturday night, Ralph was thinking. And today, yes, today they had been due in the Bronx. Where were his friends? “Got to call my friends,” Ralph said to the nurse, twisting his neck under her fingers. She was trying to check his pulse, but Ralph had thought for a minute that she meant to throttle him.

  “You can’t call anyone at this hour. Two of your friends were here this afternoon. I had to tell them you were sleeping and couldn’t be disturbed.”

  “Well—how long have I got to be here?”

  “Probably two more days,” the nurse whispered. “You lost a lot of blood. You were in a state of shock. You’ve had some transfusions—and you may need more. Now take this, please.” She extended a glass of water in the hand that held the pencil flashlight between its fingers, and on her other palm lay a largish pink pill.

  “What is—”

  “Take it, please. You’ll feel better.”

  Ralph gulped it down, wincing, and when he opened his eyes, the nurse was going out the door.

  In the next seconds, things became a little clearer. He had cut his wrists. That he remembered now with a twinge of shame. Sort of stupid, maybe. It had caused a lot of trouble. Blood on the bathroom floor. All those people! And his father had come to the party! Yes, that was what had made Ralph so sad, disappointed, a little ashamed. But why should he feel ashamed? Ashamed of what? Ralph felt his heart beating faster, belligerently, defiantly. He and his chums had given a party, that was all.

  The pill hit him like a zinging piece of music in his ears. Like electronic cymbals, with faint but deep drums in the background.

  . . . and a zing-zing-zing . . .

  and a wing-ding-ding . . .

  and Ralph slept.

  He got out Tuesday noonish. Ben and Cassie came to fetch him, and treated him to a taxi ride to the dump. The hospital had made a fuss about the bill which was over five hundred dollars, and Ralph had given them his father’s name and address and telephone number. When they had telephoned his fa
ther (home number), his father hadn’t been in, and it hadn’t occurred to Ralph to give them his father’s office number, which Ralph didn’t know by heart, at least he hadn’t at that moment. Ben and Cassie had beer at home, and Ben went out at once for pastrami sandwiches, which were available around the corner. Georgie was out giving a piano lesson. It was great to be home, and Cassie was an angel, sympathetic, gentle, making him put his feet up, removing his shoes for him and putting pillows behind his head.

  “You weren’t the only one, Ralphie dear,” Cassie said. “Two fellows passed out and didn’t wake up till Sunday afternoon, and we thought we’d never get them out. But we took in three hundred and sixty-two dollars! Can you imagine?”

  That sounded good, but it was for the rent, not his hospital bill, and the hospital had given Ralph a piece of paper that looked like a prison sentence or an extremely nasty threat to say the least, and it had a deadline for payment which Ralph had forgotten, but it was a matter of days and he had to see his father.

  Ralph’s father answered the telephone at a few minutes before eight that evening. Ralph had slept and felt better, braced for coolness on the part of his father, braced for his father even to say, “To be honest, Ralph, I don’t ever want to see you again. You’re a grown man now, etc.” Or “My eyes were opened at that party.”

  But to his surprise, his father sounded calm and gentle. Yes, Ralph could come over, even this evening, if he wanted to, but not after ten, please.

  Ralph shaved and washed as best he could. His wrists were still bandaged, of course, but the bandages were lighter. Ralph chose a big loose plastic jacket, hoping that his father might not see the bandages.

  “Good luck, Ralphie,” Cassie said, kissing him on the cheek. “We’re glad you’re still with us, and we can cut that record any old time.”