The King in the Tree

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The King in the Tree Page 5

by Steven Millhauser


  They say murderers always return to the scene of the crime. And look: here you are! Now all we need is a judge—and an executioner. Come on, sister! I’m almost done showing the house.

  ATTIC

  Look: my old cradle.

  Sometimes I think everything in my life is up here. If I could just find it, if I could just put it in order, then I could reconstruct my entire life, day by day, minute by minute. . . . Bookcases. Over there too. One of them used to be in the living room . . . years ago. People talk about finishing their attics, but how can you finish an attic? Things keep accumulating. That’s the whole point of attics. They’re never finished. That’s why houses are different from ancient civilizations—the oldest layer is always on top. We did have it insulated, about five years ago. It was supposed to save on heating bills, but I don’t think it saved all that much. I don’t remember. That’s what you get for trying to be practical. You would never call us worldly people, Robert and me. It was one of the good things about us. Intermittently worldly, at best. Half in, half out. Of the world, I mean. Every summer I mount an exhaust fan in that window. It gets blazing up here in the summer. You wouldn’t believe how hot it gets. My old dollhouse. My red parasol. I used to stand by a window with the sun coming in and watch my forearm turn brilliant red under my parasol. Robert’s eighth-grade science project: optical illusions. You know: is that a vase, or is it two profiles? Hoarders, both of us. You see that beam? Scene of my suicide. Did I mention that I committed suicide up here? Well. I came up here with a rope. It was after Robert’s accident—a few days after the phone call. I kept trying to talk to him. That’s one thing about the dead: they don’t talk to you. They listen, but they don’t talk back. It can make you angry. I found the rope in the cellar and brought it up here. I had some confused idea, from the movies . . . I didn’t even know how to make a slipknot. So you might say I didn’t kill myself, after all. Still, when you come up to your attic carrying a rope, when you try to swing it over a beam, when you have every intention, then can’t it be said that actually . . . in a real sense . . . despite appearances. . . . And here I stand before you, a living dead woman, come back to tell the tale. A creepy place, really. You can hear things moving around in the dark. Wings. Weensy little feet. Children are right. Stay out of the attic. It’s like walking around in the head of a madwoman.

  CELLAR

  Personally I’ve always preferred cellars. Careful, this rail’s a little wobbly. There’s something about going down to a place, don’t you think? Watch your head. Robert used to clonk himself all the time. It’s a lot like falling, really—you can feel a sort of tug, and you hang on just to keep from tumbling head over heels. And another thing is knowing you’re headed under the ground, like a . . . like a rodent. Of course, cellars can be creepy too. In my parents’ house there were these big barrels under the stairs, full of who knew what. Rats. Bats. Dead men’s bones. That’s what I used to say, on the way down. Rats, bats, dead men’s bones. Rats, bats, dead men’s bones. Even here, things can surprise you. Once I reached into that pile of wood over there and a mouse ran over my hand. Do you know what it feels like, having a mouse run over your hand? It feels like you’re being nibbled by lots of tiny mouths. That would be a good punishment, don’t you think? Tie a person up and let mice run over them. Look: bookcases. Five, no less. Robert would sometimes talk about building a room down here to hold all the books in the house—a cellar library. He might as well have talked about building a subway station in the back yard. That’s practically a new furnace. The old one broke down two years ago. It’s got one of those automatic whatsits— you know, to regulate the water level. Copper water pipes. Washer/dryer hookup. Heck, we’ve got it all. Sink. Old bicycle. Dead refrigerator. Look at this clothesline, will you? It must be forty years old. Over here’s where I murdered you. Oh yes: many times. Attics for suicide, cellars for murder. It makes sense. A quick blow to the head with a shovel or hammer. Cellars are full of hiding places, you know. Your head’s in that trunk, eyes wide open. Your legs are in that metal cabinet, leaning up like oars. You stay right here. I’m not done with you. Don’t play Little Miss Innocent with me. Haven’t you ever murdered anyone? We all do it, you know. Lure them into cellars, hack off their limbs, stab those evil people until tears of joy pour down my face. See that cabinet? Your head again, hanging on a hook. Lovely she was, even in death. I buried you here, under the floor. Under that ratty rug. And don’t look in the woodpile. This place is nothing but a graveyard, and all the corpses are you. Look! Over there. Over there. And there. But you know, a time comes when it doesn’t really work anymore . . . the shovel too heavy . . . the ax handle broken . . . the voices quiet . . . the cellar empty. Do you know what I think? I think you lack imagination. I’ve always thought that about you. You don’t murder people, you don’t think about things. Did you ever imagine me? Did you? The irritating little wife left at home? Of course it was all a secret. You didn’t want to hurt anyone. Above all, Robert, I don’t want to hurt anyone. That’s why Robert never told you he told me. He knew that at the first sign of trouble you’d head for the hills. The arrangement must have struck you as perfect. A perfect adultery: no pain. Safe for everyone. The golden-girl special.

  That’s the old Ping-Pong table. We used to play quite a lot, in the old days. Ping. Pong. Ping. Pong. A ridiculous game, really. My only sport. Robert took it very seriously, the way he took most things. His backhand was so-so, but he had a very good forehand smash. Did you know that about Robert? A very good forehand smash.

  Oh and another thing about you. Another thing. You don’t like it when I use coarse words—I can see it in your face—your mouth—but you also don’t like it when I go the other way— use words that are way up there, like—oh, like ecstasy. It bothers you. I can see it does. Do you want to know something? You live in the flatlands of language. No dizzy mountain views, no hellish undergrounds—just: flat. The Kansas of things. No attic or cellar in your house of words.

  How often I lured you down here and accused you of your crimes! Because you broke my heart, you must surely die. Because you turned my husband into a ghost, you must surely die. Because you stole my body from me, you must surely die. Because you lack imagination, you must surely die. Heart-wrecker! Wifekiller! Manslayer! Then I cracked open your head with that shovel, stabbed you with those gardening shears, strangled you with my own hands . . . the sweet feel of your neck crushed under my thumbs. You have to hate very hard to do that. Have you ever hated anyone hard enough to want to kill them? I thought about it a lot, my hatred. Love, for me, turned out to have a limit: Robert’s faithfulness. But my hatred for you breathed the pure air of infinity.

  The trouble with hatred is that it doesn’t really take you very far. It takes you quickly to a certain point, and then you can’t get beyond it. Do you know why that is? I can tell you. It’s because when you hate someone, when you really hate someone, you always turn them into a caricature. The Lady in Black Lace Underpants. The Girl with the Golden . . . but you fill in the missing blank. Even as I hated you I knew—I knew—that I wasn’t really seeing you—at all. I was guilty of your crime: lack of imagination. I knew I had to be calm—calmer. I had to get at you a different way. And so, little by little, I began to make an effort, a painful effort. I began to imagine you.

  Don’t misunderstand me. It was never a matter of being fair to you—of being nice. It was simply a question of getting a more accurate picture. So that I would know what to do.

  My insight—my stroke of genius—because I’d become brilliant through hatred, brilliant—was this: to imagine that you weren’t so different from me, after all. Not different from me! You! Of course I struggled violently against it. It wasn’t bearable. You! And there were dangers—serious dangers. If you weren’t all that different from me, if you weren’t just a body, then I might be threatened from a new direction, one that I— but it was a risk worth taking. Slowly I gave way to it—I welcomed it—I abandoned myself to it completely. Ima
gining you! Yes, that was the stroke, the liberating blow! That was my deepest revenge! Because once you were like me, once you were more or less human, then you were capable of—well, of whatever I was capable of. Suffering, for example. Suffering! Unhappiness like fire! Maybe you weren’t a witch. Maybe you were—oh, who knew, lonely, bereft, at the end of your rope. An unhappy woman. Sure, why not? In love: that, too. Fine! Wonderful! A woman in love. A woman in love would be capable of . . . feelings. Sympathies. She might even be capable of imagining me.

  That’s when I decided to put my house up for sale. There was a chance you would come. . . . You had to come. Because really, how could you resist? A guided tour—and what a guide!—of those unreal rooms . . . in the haunted mansion. . . . Of course you’d already invaded the house and rolled around in my sheets. Did you like it? Was it thrilling? I cut up the sheets the next day, tore them to shreds. The appalling brash-ness of that visit—whatever else it said about you—suggested a taste for . . . shall we call it adventure? It told me you might jump at a chance to break in again. And maybe you hadn’t had time to look around, on that occasion. I imagined Robert leading you through the dark to keep you from attracting attention, as you held his hand and moved through dream landscapes of foglike furniture flashing out at you here and there in the light of a streetlamp. You were returning my visit, though you didn’t know it at the time. And of course you never did get to see her—the famous wife—me. So there was that. To attract you. It must be—oh, it must be an almost irresistible pleasure, I imagined, to see the wife of your lover: to sympathize with the poor woman, as I felt you beautifully would, while secretly triumphing over her. To say nothing of comparing your body to hers, as you’d surely want to do. Robert’s wife. That’s his wife. Why didn’t he just kill her? But maybe you were searching for higher pleasures—the pleasure of guilt . . . the thrill of remorse . . . and other sophisticated pleasures of that kind. Because I think we can agree, you and I, that you are a woman who likes her little pleasures. Of course there was a pleasure in it for me too. Your visit would tell me something I desperately had to know: whether or not Robert had told you about his confession to me. Because if he had told you, then you would never come. But I knew you would come. I wanted you to come. I was banking on it. I would advertise—like a spider—and you would come—like a fly. And I would show you my house. I would tell you my story. Then, when you’d seen everything, when you’d understood what you’d done— you, a woman of feeling, a woman like me—then you would know what to do. You would do the right thing.

  Oh, you wouldn’t do it at once, that very day. But one day, or say one night, at three in the morning, when you wake up for no reason and can’t fall back to sleep, when every little thing in your life feels wrong, when you look into your heart and see rats, bats, and dead men’s bones, when your soul is nothing but a lump of black ice, then, if you listen closely, you will hear my voice whispering in your ear. Then you’ll get up your courage. It isn’t difficult, you know. So many ways! In every room a sharp instrument, a blunt object, dangerous devices of all kinds. Pills in the cabinet, poison in the basement, knives in the kitchen drawer. A rope. A high window. Simple as ABC. Easy as pie. Did you know there’s a gun shop in town? A woman like you would have no trouble. The temple. The mouth. The heart. The smooth place between the eyes. Think of it! Your arm outstretched on the bed, your head flung back, your hair strewn across the pillow. Very becoming, very . . . romantic. You do like to think of yourself that way, don’t you? I mean, a romantic woman. A woman in a movie—windswept hair, dress blown against your legs. But no—no—now that I think of it, maybe other endings are more your style. Here’s one. The ice on the road, the sudden curve, the wildly turning wheel. Is that a good one? Do you like it? That was no accident, you know. Did you really think it was an accident? An accident? Come on. You know what it was? It was Robert’s way of solving the problem. Yes! If it hadn’t been for you. . . . Yes! You! Murderer! You! Coming to my house! And that awful telephone. Robert’s what? He’s what? Black ice? I hate telephones . . . voices without faces . . . ghosts in dead houses . . . talking to you in the dark. Whispering. Shhh. I knew you’d come back. I knew you would. Did you know I knew? About you and Robert? Deep down did you know? I think you knew. I think you did. Or peaceful scenes . . . on the rug beside the fire, the small brown bottle beside you . . . or slumped in a favorite chair. Peace, at long last. Because you’ll never have it any other way, you know. I’ll never have it any other way. You did wrong, my dear. I’m afraid so. Of course you never meant to hurt anyone. Of course not. You were very, very considerate. But there you have it: Robert dead, and me . . . as you find me. I’m afraid you made a real mess of it. There’s no escaping it. So you might as well get it over with. I think so. Do it. Do it. Do it. Why don’t you? Of course you can probably get by, for a while. There are crossword puzzles, and mystery novels with nice big blood drops on the cover, and men with . . . oh, what’s that word . . . it’s on the tip of my . . . oh, I have it. Desire. But sooner or later. One day or another. Somewhere down the line. That sudden uneasiness as you look out a window. That moment of panic as you climb the stairs. What will you do? How can you live? Where will you go? There’s nowhere to go. There’s nothing to do. No one to see. Don’t you know? Why go on? And always the little voice whispering in my ear, always the sad ghost rustling in the dark. That is why I wanted to show you my house. To tell you who we are. So that we would know. What to do.

  And now my story’s done. I never dreamed I’d be so tired! But I wanted us to hear it. People don’t get to hear stories much anymore, and that’s a shame. Mine even has a moral, just the way a story should.

  Tired . . . I really am, you know. It takes it out of you, showing a house to strangers. And planning to go . . . to some far-away place. A journey . . . out of here. That would be nice. Peaceful, and . . . nice. Don’t you think? I feel as if I haven’t slept for a long time. I haven’t, you know. I haven’t slept for nearly a year.

  Remind me to show you the heating bills. I’ve got them all in some folder somewhere, going back ten years.

  Here’s a question for you. If you were a ghost, if you were a ghost in this house, if you were dead and came to live in this house, where would you hide? In the attic? Or in the cellar?

  Watch it. Watch your head.

  TOP OF THE STAIRS

  Back from the dead. Oh, look: it’s dark out. Imagine.

  FRONT HALL

  Your coat. Have I said how much I admire it? I need a new spring coat myself, mine’s practically a rag. I’ll just put the porch light on for you. They say the weather’s going to be a little warmer tomorrow: sun mixed with clouds. Last time they said that, it rained for two days. I’m hoping my jonquils will pull through. I ought to tell you that someone’s coming to see the house tomorrow at four, or is it four-thirty: just for you to know. You think it over. Think over what we talked about, down there. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision. And I meant what I said about the appraisal: I won’t budge. Not a penny less, not a penny more. You let me know. I’ve lived here a long time, and now I don’t want to live here anymore. You let me know. You just let me know.

  An Adventure of Don Juan

  I

  A time came when Don Juan could no longer bear his life. He was thirty years old, hot-blooded and handsome as a god, fiercely healthy except for a dueling scar on his left shoulder that troubled him a little in damp weather; when he walked the streets or the marble halls of still another city, the great plumes on his broad-brimmed hat trembled, his cape lifted behind him, and the jeweled hilt of his sword swinging in its scabbard against his leg seemed ready to leap out at the end of a blade of fire. He was an expert swordsman, a skilled horseman, a strong swimmer who once on a dare swam across the Ebro, where he ravished a handsome washerwoman before swimming back to complete the seduction of a countess. In his brief life he had bedded more than two thousand women and killed fourteen men—five in duels, eight in self-defense, and
one by mistake, through a curtain at which he was thrusting in sheer high spirits. He feared no man, mocked the machinery of heaven, and was heard to say that the devil was a puppet invented by a bishop to frighten children in the nursery. Men envied him, women of stainless virtue stood in the window to watch him ride by. And yet this man, who walked the earth like an immortal, who did whatever was pleasing to him and who satisfied his every desire, felt that a darkness had fallen across his spirit.

 

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