I walked for several blocks, concocting stories. I couldn't tell Richard and Winifred what had really happened to my car: it would be used as one more piece of evidence against Laura. I'd say instead that I'd had a breakdown and the car had been towed to a garage, and they'd called a taxi for me, and I'd got into it and been driven all the way home before I'd realized I'd left my purse in the car by mistake. Nothing to worry about, I'd say. It would all be set straight in the morning.
Then I really did call a taxi. Mrs. Murgatroyd would be at the house to let me in, and to pay the taxi for me.
Richard wasn't home for dinner. He was at some club or other, eating a foul dinner, making a speech. He was running hard by now, he had the goal in sight. This goal - I now know - was not just wealth or power. What he wanted was respect - respect, despite his new money. He longed for it, he thirsted for it; he wished to wield respect, not only like a hammer but like a sceptre. Such desires are not in themselves despicable.
This particular club was for men only; otherwise I would have been there, sitting in the background, smiling, applauding at the end. On such occasions I would give Aimee's nanny the night off and undertake bedtime myself. I supervised Aimee's bath, read to her, then tucked her in. On that particular night she was unusually slow in going to sleep: she must have known I was worried about something. I sat beside her, holding her hand and stroking her forehead and looking out the window, until she dozed off.
Where had Laura gone, where was she staying, what had she done with my car? How could I reach her, what could I say to put things right?
A June bug was blundering against the window, drawn by the light. It bumped over the glass like a blind thumb. It sounded angry, and thwarted, and also helpless.
Escarpment
Today my brain dealt me a sudden blank; a whiteout, as if by snow. It wasn't someone's name that disappeared - in any case that's usual - but a word, which turned itself upside down and emptied itself of meaning like a cardboard cup blown over.
This word was escarpment. Why had it presented itself? Escarpment, escarpment, I repeated, possibly out loud, but no image appeared to me. Was it an object, an activity, a state of mind, a bodily defect?
Nothing. Vertigo. I tottered on the brink, grabbed at air. In the end I resorted to the dictionary. Escarpment, a vertical fortification, or else a steep cliff-face.
In the beginning was the word, we once believed. Did God know what a flimsy thing the word might be? How tenuous, how casually erased?
Perhaps this is what happened to Laura - pushed her quite literally over the edge. The words she had relied on, building her house of cards on them, believing them solid, had flipped over and shown her their hollow centres, and then skittered away from her like so much waste paper.
God. Trust. Sacrifice. Justice.
Faith. Hope. Love.
Not to mention sister. Well, yes. There's always that.
The morning after my tea with Laura at Diana Sweets, I hovered near the telephone. The hours passed: no word. I had a luncheon date, with Winifred and two of her committee members, at the Arcadian Court. It was always better with Winifred to stick to agreed plans - otherwise she got curious - and so I went.
We were told about Winifred's latest venture, a cabaret in aid of wounded servicemen. There would be singing and dancing, and some of the girls were putting on a can-can routine, so we must all roll up our sleeves and pitch in, and sell tickets. Would Winifred herself be kicking up her heels in a ruffled petticoat and black stockings? I sincerely hoped not. By now she was on the wrong side of scraggy.
"You're looking a bit wan, Iris," said Winifred, her head on one side.
"Am I?" I said pleasantly. She'd been telling me lately I wasn't up to par. What she meant was that I was not doing all I could to prop up Richard, to propel him forward along his path to glory.
"Yes, a bit faded. Richard wearing you out? That man has energy to burn!" She was in high good spirits. Her plans - her plans for Richard - must have been going well, despite my laxness.
But I could not pay much attention to her; I was too anxious about Laura. What would I do if she didn't turn up soon? I could scarcely report that my car had been stolen: I didn't want her to be arrested. Richard wouldn't have wanted that either. It was in nobody's interests.
I returned home, to be told by Mrs. Murgatroyd that Laura had been there during my absence. She hadn't even rung the doorbell - Mrs. Murgatroyd had just happened to run across her in the front hall. It was a jolt, to see Miss Laura in the flesh after all these years, it was like seeing a ghost. No, she hadn't left any address. She'd said something, though. Tell Iris I'll talk to her later. Something like that. She'd left the house keys on the letter tray; said she'd taken them by mistake. A funny thing to take by mistake, said Mrs. Murgatroyd, whose pug nose smelled a fish. She no longer believed my story about the garage.
I was relieved: all might yet be well. Laura was still in town. She would talk to me later.
She has, too, though she tends to repeat herself, as the dead have a habit of doing. They say all the things they said to you in life; but they rarely say anything new.
I was changing out of my luncheon outfit when the policeman arrived, with news of the accident. Laura had gone through a Danger barrier, then right off the St. Clair Avenue bridge into the ravine far below. It was a terrible smash-up, said the policeman, shaking his head sadly. She'd been driving my car: they'd traced the licence. At first they'd thought - naturally - that I myself must be the burned woman found in the wreck.
Now that would have been news.
After the policeman had left I tried to stop shaking. I needed to keep calm, I needed to pull myself together. You'll have to face the music , Reenie used to say, but what kind of music did she have in mind? It wasn't dance music. A harsh brass band, a parade of some kind, with crowds of people on both sides, pointing and jeering. An executioner at the end of the road, with energy to burn.
There would of course be a cross-examination from Richard. My story about the car and the garage would still hold if I added that I'd seen Laura for tea that day, but hadn't told him because I hadn't wanted to upset him unnecessarily just before a crucial speech. (All his speeches were crucial, now; he was approaching the brass ring.)
Laura had been in the car when it had broken down, I'd say; she'd accompanied me to the garage. When I'd left my purse behind, she must have picked it up, and then it would have been child's play for her to go the next morning and reclaim the car, paying for it with a forged cheque from my chequebook. I'd tear out a cheque, for verisimilitude; if pressed for the name of the garage, I'd say I'd forgotten. If pressed further, I'd cry. How could I be expected to remember a trivial detail like that, I'd say, at a time like this?
I went upstairs to change. To visit the morgue I would need a pair of gloves, and a hat with a veil. There might be reporters, photographers, already. I'd drive down, I thought, and then remembered that my car was now scrap. I would have to call a taxi.
Also I ought to warn Richard, at his office: As soon as the word got out, the corpse flies would besiege him. He was too prominent for things to be otherwise. He would wish to have a statement of grief prepared.
I made the phone call. Richard's latest young secretary answered. I told her the matter was urgent, and that no, it could not be communicated through her. I would have to speak with Richard in person.
There was a pause while Richard was located. "What is it?" he said. He never appreciated being phoned at the office.
"There's been a terrible accident," I said. "It's Laura. The car she was driving went off a bridge."
He said nothing.
"It was my car."
He said nothing.
"I'm afraid she's dead," I said.
"My God." A pause. "Where has she been all this time? When did she get back? What was she doing in your car?"
"I thought you needed to know at once, before the papers get hold of it," I said.
"Yes," he said
. "That was wise."
"Now I have to go down to the morgue."
"The morgue?" he said. "The city morgue? What the hell for?"
"It's where they've put her."
"Well, get her out of there," he said. "Take her somewhere decent. Somewhere more . . ."
"Private," I said. "Yes, I'll do that. I should tell you there's been some implication - from the police, one of them was just here - some suggestion . . ."
"What? What did you tell them? What suggestion?" He sounded quite alarmed.
"Only that she did it on purpose."
"Nonsense," he said. "It must have been an accident. I hope you said that."
"Of course. But there were witnesses. They saw . . ."
"Was there a note? If there was, burn it."
"Two of them, a lawyer and something in a bank. She had white gloves on. They saw her turn the wheel."
"Trick of the light," he said. "Or else they were drunk. I'll call the lawyer. I'll handle it."
I set down the telephone. I went into my dressing room: I would need black, and a handkerchief. I'll have to tell Aimee, I thought. I'll say it was the bridge. I'll say the bridge broke.
I opened the drawer where I kept my stockings, and there were the notebooks - five of them, cheap school exercise books from our time with Mr. Erskine, tied together with kitchen string. Laura's name was printed on the top cover, in pencil - her childish lettering. Underneath that: Mathematics. Laura hated mathematics.
Old schoolwork, I thought. No: old homework. Why had she left me these?
I could have stopped there. I could have chosen ignorance, but I did what you would have done - what you've already done, if you've read this far. I chose knowledge instead.
Most of us will. We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive: love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead: we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us - who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.
But what about those who plant such clues, for us to stumble on? Why do they bother? Egotism? Pity? Revenge? A simple claim to existence, like scribbling your initials on a washroom wall? The combination of presence and anonymity - confession without penance, truth without consequences - it has its attractions. Getting the blood off your hands, one way or another.
Those who leave such evidence can scarcely complain if strangers come along afterwards and poke their noses into every single thing that would once have been none of their business. And not only strangers: lovers, friends, relations. We're voyeurs, all of us. Why should we assume that anything in the past is ours for the taking, simply because we've found it? We're all grave robbers, once we open the doors locked by others.
But only locked. The rooms and their contents have been left intact. If those leaving them had wanted oblivion, there was always fire.
XIV
The golden lock
I have to hurry now. I can see the end, glimmering far up ahead of me, as if it's a roadside motel, on a dark night, in the rain. A last-chance postwar motel, where no questions are asked and none of the names in the front-desk register are real and it's cash in advance. The office is strung with old Christmas-tree lights; behind it a clump of murky cabins, the pillows fragrant with mildew. A moon-faced gas pump out front. No gas though, it's run out many decades ago. Here's where you stop.
The end, a warm safe haven. A place to rest. But I haven't reached it yet, and I'm old and tired, and on foot, and limping. Lost in the woods, and no white stones to mark the way, and treacherous ground to cover.
Wolves, I invoke you! Dead women with azure hair and eyes like snake-filled pits, I summon you! Stand by me now, as we near the end! Guide my shaking arthritic fingers, my tacky black ballpoint pen; keep my leaking heart afloat for just a few more days, until I can set things in order. Be my companions, my helpers and my friends; once more, I add, for haven't we been well-acquainted in the past?
All things have their place, as Reenie used to say; or, in a fouler mood, to Mrs. Hillcoate, No flowers without shit. Mr.Erskine did teach me a few useful tricks. A well-wrought invocation to the Furies can come in handy, in case of need. When it's primarily a question of revenge.
I did believe, at first, that I wanted only justice. I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else. But as Mr. Erskine also pointed out, Eros with his bow and arrows is not the only blind god. Justitia is the other one. Clumsy blind gods with edged weapons: Justitia totes a sword, which, coupled with her blindfold, is a pretty good recipe for cutting yourself.
You'll want of course to know what was in Laura's notebooks. They're as she herself left them, tied up with their grubby brown string, left for you in my steamer trunk along with everything else. I haven't changed anything. You can see for yourself. The pages torn out of them were not torn out by me.
What was I expecting, on that dread-filled May day in 1945? Confessions, reproaches? Or else a diary, detailing the lovers' meetings between Laura and Alex Thomas? No doubt, no doubt. I was prepared for laceration. And I received it, though not in the way I'd imagined.
I cut the string, fanned out the notebooks. There were five of them: Mathematics, Geography, French, History, and Latin. The books of knowledge.
She writes like an angel, it says of Laura, on the back of one of the editions of The Blind Assassin. An American edition, as I recall, with gold scrollwork on the cover: they set a lot of store by angels in those parts. In point of fact, angels don't write much. They record sins and the names of the damned and the saved, or they appear as disembodied hands and scribble warnings on walls. Or they deliver messages, few of which are good news: God be with you is not an unmixed blessing.
Keeping all this in mind, yes: Laura wrote like an angel. In other words, not very much. But to the point.
Latin was the notebook I opened first. Most of the remaining pages in it were blank; there were jagged edges where Laura must have ripped out her old homework. She left one passage, a translation she'd made - with my help, and also with the help of the library at Avilion - of the concluding lines of Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid. Dido has stabbed herself on the burning pyre or altar she's made of all the objects connected to her vanished lover, Aeneas, who has sailed away to fulfill his destiny through warfare. Although bleeding like a stuck pig, Dido is having a hard time dying. She was doing a lot of writhing. Mr. Erskine, as I recall, enjoyed that part.
I remembered the day she wrote it. The late sunlight was coming in through my bedroom window. Laura was lying on the floor, kicking her sock feet in the air, laboriously transcribing our scribbled-over collaboration into her book. She smelled of Ivory soap, and of pencil shavings.
Then powerful Juno felt sorry for her long-time sufferings and uneasy journey, and sent Iris from Olympus to cut the agonizing soul from the body that still held onto it. This had to be done because Dido was not dying a natural death or one caused by other people, but in despair, driven to it by a crazy impulse. Anyway Proserpine hadn't yet cut off the golden lock from her head or sent her down to the Underworld.
So now, all misty, her wings yellow as a crocus, trailing a thousand rainbow colours that sparkled in the sunlight, Iris flew down, and hovering over Dido, she said:
As I was told to do, I take this sacred thing which belongs to the God of Death; and I release you from your body.
Then all warmth stopped at once, and her life vanished into the air.
"Why did she have to cut off a piece of the hair?" said Laura. "That Iris?"
I had no idea. "It was just a thing she had to do," I said. "Sort of like an offering." I'd been pleased to discover that I had the same name as a person in a story, and wasn'
t just named after some flower, as I'd always thought. The botanical motif, for girls, had been strong in my mother's family.
"It helped Dido get out of her body," said Laura. "She didn't want to be alive any more. It put her out of her misery, so it was the right thing to do. Wasn't it?"
"I guess so," I said. I wasn't much interested in such fine ethical points. Peculiar things happened in poems. There was no point in trying to make sense of them. I did wonder though whether Dido had been a blonde; she'd seemed more like a brunette to me, in the rest of the story.
"Who is the God of Death? Why does he want the hair?"
"That's enough about hair," I said. "We've done the Latin. Now let's finish the French. Mr. Erskine gave us too much, as usual. Now: Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains."
"How about, don't interfere with false gods, you'll get the gold paint all over your hands?"
"There's nothing about paint."
"But that's what it really means."
"You know Mr. Erskine. He doesn't care what it means."
"I hate Mr. Erskine. I wish we had Miss Violence back."
"So do I. I wish we had Mother back."
"So do I."
Mr. Erskine hadn't thought much of this Latin translation of Laura's. It had his red pencil slashes all over it.
How can I describe the pool of grief into which I was now falling? I can't describe it, and so I won't try.
I riffled through the other notebooks. History was blank, except for the photograph Laura had glued into it - herself and Alex Thomas at the button factory picnic, both of them now coloured light yellow, with my detached blue hand crawling towards them across the lawn. Geography contained nothing but a short description of Port Ticonderoga that Mr. Erskine had assigned. "This middle-sized town is situated at the junction of the Louveteau River and the Jogues River and is noted for stones and other things," was Laura's first sentence. French had had all the French removed from it. Instead it held the list of odd words Alex Thomas had left behind him in our attic, and that - I now discovered - Laura had not burned, after all. Anchoryne, berel, carchineal, diamite, ebonort . . .A foreign language, true, but one I'd learned to understand, better than I ever understood French.
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