The Blind Assassin
Page 27
He checks his watch and then the window again, and here she comes, loping diagonally across the park, in a wide-brimmed hat today and a tightly belted houndstooth suit, handbag clutched under her arm, pleated skirt swinging, in her curious undulating stride, as if she's never got used to walking on her hind legs. It may be the high heels though. He's often wondered how they balance. Now she's stopped as if on cue; she gazes around in that dazed way she has, as if she's just been wakened from a puzzling dream, and the two guys picking up the papers look her over. Lost something, miss? But she comes on, crosses the street, he can see her in fragments through the leaves, she must be searching for the street number. Now she's coming up the front steps. The buzzer goes. He pushes the button, crushes out his cigarette, turns off the desk light, unlocks the door.
Hello. I'm all out of breath. I didn't wait for the elevator. She pushes the door shut, stands with her back against it.
Nobody followed you. I was watching. You've got cigarettes?
And your cheque, and a fifth of scotch, best quality. I pinched it from our well-stocked bar. Did I tell you we have a well-stocked bar?
She's attempting to be casual, frivolous even. She's not good at it. She's stalling, waiting to see what he wants. She'd never make the first move, she doesn't like to give herself away.
Good girl. He moves towards her, takes hold of her.
Am I a good girl? Sometimes I feel like a gun moll - doing your errands.
You can't be a gun moll, I don't have a gun. You watch too many movies.
Not nearly enough, she says, to the side of his neck. He could use a haircut. Soft thistle. She undoes his four top buttons, runs her hand in under his shirt. His flesh is so condensed, so dense. Fine-grained, charred. She's seen ashtrays carved out of wood like that.
The Blind Assassin: Red brocade
That was lovely, she says. The bath was lovely. I never pictured you with pink towels. Compared to the usual, it's pretty opulent.
Temptation lurks everywhere, he says. The fleshpots beckon. I'd say she's an amateur tart, wouldn't you?
He'd wrapped her in one of the pink towels, carried her to the bed wet and slippery. Now they're under the nubbly cherry-coloured silk bedspread, the sateen sheets, drinking the scotch she's brought with her. It's a fine blend, smoky and warm, it goes down smooth as toffee. She stretches luxuriously, wondering only briefly who will wash the sheets.
She never manages to overcome her sense of transgression in these various rooms - the feeling that she's violating the private boundaries of whoever ordinarily lives in them. She'd like to go through the closets, the bureau drawers - not to take, only to look; to see how other people live. Real people; people more real than she is. She'd like to do the same with him, except that he has no closets, no bureau drawers, or none that are his. Nothing to find, nothing to betray him. Only a scuffed blue suitcase, which he keeps locked. It's usually under the bed.
His pockets are uninformative; she's been through them a few times. (It wasn't spying, she just wanted to know where things were and what they were, and where they stood.) Handkerchief, blue, with white border; spare change; two cigarette butts, wrapped in waxed paper - he must have been saving them up. A jackknife, old. Once, two buttons, from a shirt, she'd guessed. She hadn't offered to sew them back on because then he'd know she'd been snooping. She'd like him to think she's trustworthy.
A driver's licence, the name not his. A birth certificate, ditto. Different names. She'd love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out.
He sings gently, in an oily voice, like a radio crooner: A smoke-filled room, a devil's moon, and you -
I stole a kiss, you promised me you would be true -
I slid my hand beneath your dress.
You bit my ear, we made a mess,
Now it is dawn - and you are gone -
And I am blue.
She laughs. Where'd you get that?
It's my tart song. It goes with the surroundings.
She's not a real tart. Not even an amateur. I don't expect she takes money. Most likely she gets rewarded in some other way.
A lot of chocolates. Would you settle for that?
It would have to be truckloads, she says. I'm moderately expensive. The bedspread's real silk, I like the colour - garish, but it's quite pretty. Good for the complexion, like pink candle-shades. Have you cooked up any more?
Any more what?
Any more of my story.
Your story?
Yes. Isn't it for me?
Oh yes, he says. Of course. I think of nothing else. It keeps me awake nights.
Liar. Does it bore you?
Nothing that pleases you could possibly bore me.
God, how gallant. We should have the pink towels more often. Pretty soon you'll be kissing my glass slipper. But go on, anyway.
Where was I?
The bell had rung. The throat was slit. The door was opening.
Oh. Right, then.
He says: The girl of whom we have been speaking has heard the door open. She backs against the wall, pulling the red brocade of the Bed of One Night tightly around herself. It has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide: the dried fear of those who have gone before her. Someone has come in; there's the sound of a heavy object being dragged along the floor. The door closes again; the room is dark as oil. Why is there no lamp, no candle?
She stretches her hands out in front of her to protect herself, and finds her left hand taken and held by another hand: held gently and without coercion. It's as if she's being asked a question.
She can't speak. She can't say, I can't speak.
The blind assassin lets his woman's veil fall to the floor. Holding the girl's hand, he sits down on the bed beside her. He still intends to kill her, but that can come later. He's heard about these impounded girls, kept hidden away from everyone until the last day of their lives; he's curious about her. In any case she's a gift of sorts, and all for him. To refuse such a gift would be to spit in the face of the gods. He knows he should move swiftly, finish the job, vanish, but there's lots of time for that still. He can smell the scent they've rubbed on her; it smells of funeral biers, those of young women who've died unwed. Wasted sweetness.
He won't be ruining anything, or nothing that's been bought and paid for: the fraudulent Lord of the Underworld must have been and gone already. Had he kept his rusty chainmail on? Most likely. Clanked into her like a ponderous iron key, turned himself in her flesh, wrenched her open. He remembers the feeling all too well. Whatever else, he will not do that.
He lifts her hand to his mouth and touches his lips to it, not a kiss as such but a token of respect and homage. Gracious and most golden one, he says - the beggar's standard address to a prospective benefactor - rumour of your extreme beauty has brought me here, though simply by being here my life is forfeit. I can't see you with my eyes, because I'm blind. Will you permit me to see you with my hands? It would be a last kindness, and perhaps for yourself as well.
He hasn't been a slave and a whore for nothing: he's learned how to flatter, how to lie plausibly, how to ingratiate himself. He puts his fingers on her chin, and waits until she hesitates, then nods. He can hear what she's thinking: Tomorrow I'll be dead. He wonders if she guesses why he's really here.
Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don't have time, by those who truly understand the word helpless. They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they're forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however - if I may use such an overworked word - miraculous. What we mean by that is, Against all odds.
And so it is, this night.
The blind assassin begins very slowly to touch her, with one hand only, the right - the dexterous hand, the knife hand. He passes it over her face, down her throat; then he adds the left
hand, the sinister hand, using both together, tenderly, as if picking a lock of the utmost fragility, a lock made of silk. It's like being caressed by water. She trembles, but not as before with fear. After a time she lets the red brocade fall away from around her, and takes his hand and guides it.
Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.
This is how the girl who couldn't speak and the man who couldn't see fell in love.
You surprise me, she says.
Do I? he says. Why? Though I like to surprise you. He lights a cigarette, offers her one; she shakes her head for no. He's smoking too much. It's nerves, despite his steady hands.
Because you said they fell in love, she says. You've sneered at that notion often enough - not realistic, bourgeois superstition, rotten at the core. Sickly sentiment, a high-flown Victorian excuse for honest carnality. Going soft on yourself?
Don't blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have. Anyway, I said he was lying.
You can't wiggle out of it that way. The lying was only at first. Then you changed it.
Point granted. But there could be a more callous way of looking at it.
Looking at what?
This falling in love business.
Since when is it a business? she says angrily.
He smiles. That notion bother you? Too commercial? Your own conscience would flinch, is that what you're saying? But there's always a tradeoff, isn't there?
No, she says. There isn't. Not always.
You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn't he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn't know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven't said he didn't kill her afterwards. As I've pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.
So you've got cold feet, she says. You're backing down, you're chicken. You won't go all the way. You're to love as a cock-teaser is to fucking.
He laughs, a startled laugh. Is it the coarseness of the words, is he taken aback, has she finally managed that? Restrain your language, young lady.
Why should I? You don't.
I'm a bad example. Let's just say they could indulge themselves - their emotions, if you want to call it that. They could roll around in their emotions - live for the moment, spout poetry out of both ends, burn the candle, drain the cup, howl at the moon. Time was running out on them. They had nothing to lose.
He did. Or he certainly thought he did!
All right then. She had nothing to lose. He blows out a cloud of smoke.
Not like me, she says, I guess you mean.
Not like you, darling, he says. Like me. I'm the one with nothing to lose.
She says, But you've got me. I'm not nothing.
The Toronto Star, August 28, 1935
SOCIETY SCHOOLGIRL FOUND SAFE
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Police called off their search yesterday for fifteen-year-old society schoolgirl Laura Chase, missing for over a week, when Miss Chase was found safely lodged with family friends Mr. and Mrs. E. Newton-Dobbs at their summer residence in Muskoka. Well-known industrialist Richard E. Griffen, married to Miss Chase's sister, spoke to reporters by telephone on behalf of the family. "My wife and I are very relieved," he said. "It was a simple confusion, caused by a letter which was delayed in the post. Miss Chase made holiday arrangements of which she believed us to have been aware, as did her host and hostess. They do not read the newspapers while on vacation or this mix-up would never have occurred. When they returned to the city and became aware of the situation, they rang us immediately."
Questioned about rumours that Miss Chase had run away from home and had been located in curious circumstances at the Sunnyside Beach Amusement Park, Mr. Griffen said he did not know who was responsible for these malicious fabrications but he would make it his business to find out. "It was an ordinary misunderstanding, such as might happen to anybody," he stated. "My wife and I are grateful that she is safe, and sincerely thank the police, the newspapers, and the concerned public for their help." Miss Chase is said to have been unsettled by the publicity, and is refusing interviews.
Although no lasting harm was done, these are by no means the first serious difficulties to have been caused by faulty postal delivery. The public deserves a service it can rely on unquestioningly. Government officials should take note.
The Blind Assassin: Street walk
She walks along the street, hoping she looks like a woman entitled to be walking along the street. Or along this street. She doesn't, though. She's dressed wrong, her hat is wrong, her coat is wrong. She ought to have a scarf tied over her head and under her chin, a baggy coat worn along the sleeves. She ought to look drab and frugal.
The houses here are cheek by jowl. Servants' cottages once, row on row, but there are fewer servants now, and the rich have made other provisions. Sooty brick, two up, two down, privy out back. Some have the remains of vegetable gardens on their tiny front lawns - a blackened tomato vine, a wooden stake with string dangling from it. The gardens couldn't have gone well - it would have been too shady, the earth too cindery. But even here the autumn trees have been lavish, the remaining leaves yellow and orange and vermilion, and a deeper red like fresh liver.
From inside the houses comes howling, barking, a rattle or slam. Female voices raised in thwarted rage, the defiant yells of children. On the cramped porches men sit on wooden chairs, hands dangling from knees, out of work but not yet out of house and home. Their eyes on her, their scowls, taking bitter stock of her with her fur trim at wrists and neck, her lizard handbag. It could be they are lodgers, crammed into cellars and odd corners to help cover the rent.
Women hurry along, heads down, shoulders hunched, carrying brown paper bundles. Married, they must be. The word braised comes to mind. They'll have been scrounging bones from the butcher, they'll be toting home the cheap cuts, to be served with flabby cabbage. Her shoulders are too far back, her chin too far up, she doesn't wear that beaten-down look: when they raise their heads enough to focus on her, the glances are filthy. They must think she's a hooker, but in shoes like that what's she doing down here? Way below her league.
Here's the bar, on the corner where he said it would be. The beer parlour. Men are gathered in a clump outside it. None of them says anything to her as she goes past, they just stare as if from thickets, but she can hear the muttering, hatred and lust mixed in the throat, following her like the wash from a ship. Perhaps they've mistaken her for a church worker or some other sniffy do-gooder. Poking scrubbed fingers into their lives, asking questions, offering table scraps of patronizing help. But she's dressed too well for that.
She took a taxi, paid it off three blocks away, where there was more traffic. It's best not to become an anecdote: who'd take a cab, around here? Though she's an anecdote anyway. What she needs is a different coat, picked up at a rummage sale, crumpled into a suitcase. She could go into a hotel restaurant, leave her own coat at the check, slip into the powder room, change. Frump up her hair, smudge her lipstick. Emerge as a different woman.
No. It would never work. There's the suitcase, just to begin with; there's getting out of the house with it. Where are you off to in such a hurry?
And so she's stuck doing a cloak-and-dagger number without a cloak. Relying on her face alone, its guile. She's had enough practice by now, in smoothness, coolness, blankness. A lifting of both eyebrows, the candid, transparent stare of a double agent. A face of pure water. It's not the lying that counts, it's evading the necessity for it. Rendering all questions foolish in advance.
There is however some danger. For him too: more than there was, he's told her. He thinks he was spotted once, on the street: recognized. Some goon from the Red Squad, maybe. He'd walked through a crowded beer joint, out the back door.
If caught, she'd renounce him, before the cock crowed even once. She knows that, plainly, calmly. Anyway she'd be let off, her involvement viewed as frivolous dabbling or else a rebellious prank, and whatever turmoil might result would be covered up. She'd have to pay for it privately, of course, but with what? She's already bankrupt: you can't get blood from a stone. She'd close herself off, put up the shutters. Out to lunch, permanently.
Lately she's had the sense of someone watching her, though whenever she reconnoitres there's nobody there. She's being more careful; she's being as careful as she can. Is she afraid? Yes. Most of the time. But her fear doesn't matter. Or rather, it does matter. It enhances the pleasure she feels with him; also the sense that she's getting away with it.
The real danger comes from herself. What she'll allow, how far she's willing to go. But allowing and willing have nothing to do with it. Where she'll be pushed, then; where she'll be led. She hasn't examined her motives. There may not be any motives as such; desire is not a motive. It doesn't seem to her that she has any choice. Such extreme pleasure is also a humiliation. It's like being hauled along by a shameful rope, a leash around the neck. She resents it, her lack of freedom, and so she stretches out the time between, rationing him. She stands him up, fibs about why she couldn't make it - claims she didn't see the chalked markings on the park wall, didn't get the message - the new address of the non-existent dress shop, the postcard signed by an old friend she's never had, the telephone call for the wrong number.
But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion. She renders herself up, is blotted out; enters the darkness of her own body, forgets her name. Immolation is what she wants, however briefly. To exist without boundaries.