Nemesis

by Joyce Carol Oates

  After work and on Thursdays, his day off from the car wash, Brendan jotted down what he had composed in his imagination; when he could he went to a rehearsal room at the Conservatory where he had the use of a piano. (Several times, Maggie had been kind enough to offer him the use of her piano, but Brendan had not wanted to impose himself further upon her generosity. He dreaded becoming a nuisance to her and halfway feared he was.) As he’d told her, boasting a bit, he seemed to be writing more music, and more interesting music, than he had ever written before in his life.

  So Rolfe Christensen had done that much for him, at least.

  How could the police prove that Brendan Bauer had committed the murder? For, in fact, Brendan Bauer had not committed the murder.

  He had not. He had voluntarily taken a lie detector test, and though the results (as a consequence of his extreme nervousness) were inconclusive, there was no evidence that he was lying because in insisting upon his innocence he was not lying but telling the truth.

  Voluntarily, even cheerfully, he had provided police with numberless samples of his handwriting: primer block letters done carefully, in black ink. Perhaps they resembled the letters inked onto the wrapping paper containing the package of poisoned chocolates but, if so, that was hardly proof that Brendan had hand-lettered the address on that package (or on the other package, sent to Maggie Blackburn), let alone poisoned the chocolates that killed Rolfe Christensen. That cruel filthy-minded unconscionable pervert Rolfe Christensen whom he had loathed and of whom he could not even now think without emitting a sob of fury and disgust and grief. That man whom, yes, Brendan might have wished dead but had not in fact killed.

  Thus, how could they prove he had done so?

  Thus, how could Detective Sergeant Miles, for all the man’s dogged industry, build a case against Brendan linking him with even so much as the innocent purchase of two boxes of chocolates from Heidi’s Imported Chocolates in Manhattan, on the afternoon of November 29, 1988? How could he, when Brendan had never glimpsed the façade of that shop, or even appeared in its vicinity, in the neighborhood of East 60th Street, in his entire life? And when, for most of the afternoon of November 29, 1988, Brendan had been working at the Book Mark, at 44 South Main Street, Forest Park, Connecticut? How link agent to action in that instance, let alone agent to action in the calculated poisoning of one of the boxes of chocolates? And how could Detective Miles link Brendan with the purchase or acquisition of several ounces of the toxic compound sodium cyanide when thus far he had failed to determine where, or when, the sodium cyanide had been purchased? He could not, since in fact Brendan had not bought the chocolates, or poisoned the chocolates, or mailed the chocolates to Rolfe Christensen with the intention of killing him. He had not.

  It was said that the police investigation, five weeks after the victim’s death, was still “in progress.” Which might or might not mean “progressing.”

  The few people in Forest Park who knew Brendan Bauer, and who must have, therefore, believed in his innocence, urged him to continue with a normal life: to begin classes at the Conservatory with the summer session (when the composer-in-residence was to be Ned Rorem, whose work, in fact, Brendan much admired), or at the very least in the fall. To these well-intentioned people Brendan would say quietly, “Yes, but until the actual m-m-m-murderer is found … who exactly am I?”

  On Monday, January 16, 1989, Brendan Bauer left Ajax Car Wash at his usual time of 6 P.M.; rode with one of his coworkers to the intersection of Route 1 and Trimble Avenue, North Waldrop; walked a block or so to Ollie’s, a popular local restaurant, where he had a quick evening meal; returned to his apartment, 5-B, in the Highgate Arms, a building on the corner of Highgate Avenue and Stadium Drive; and remained there until the telephone call came that summoned him out, to Forest Park, and to that place he had cause to dread and to loathe above any place on earth, 2283 Littlebrook Road.

  This telephone call came at approximately 11:10 P.M., and it was from Nicholas Reickmann.

  According to Brendan’s sworn testimony, the young composer had spent the hours from 7:30 P.M. to the time of Reickmann’s call alone in his apartment. He telephoned no one during this interim, and no one telephoned him. He was working on a composition first envisioned as a string quartet that had grown into a piece for a small orchestra. During breaks from the intensity of composing he’d tried to read and to listen to a classical music station broadcast out of New York City; he’d even tried to write a letter long owed to a young woman friend in Seattle. Since his experience with Rolfe Christensen, Brendan had virtually cut himself off from his former friends, even from members of his immediate family. He reasoned that he could not call them or write to them to report that he was well; he could not report to them, even, that he was studying at the Conservatory as he’d planned; and he could hardly report that he had been sexually assaulted by a madman and was now a prime suspect in that madman’s murder.

  The Bauers were not, in any case, a very close-linked, communicative family. Were he to be interviewed upon some future occasion, as the recipient of, say, a Young Composer’s Award or, indeed, Christensen’s much bragged-of Pulitzer Prize, Brendan Bauer could truthfully say that he had been moved to create music in order to replace silence; he’d learned to sing because he had not been much encouraged to talk. Through his undergraduate years at Indiana, and even more markedly since then, he had often been out of touch with his parents for months at a time. He could not escape the unhappy thought that, fundamentally, his father did not like him … though as a dutiful Catholic father Mr. Bauer loved his youngest son. Mrs. Bauer, being a woman, was more forthcoming because (Brendan could not escape thinking) she was less critical. Yet even Mrs. Bauer was not very demonstrative in her affection for him, or for any of her sons. Stiffly, she embraced Brendan, kissed him on the cheek; stiffly, he embraced her in return and allowed himself to be kissed. During that period of intoxication when he had believed it was his fate to become a Roman Catholic priest, Brendan had not touched his mother at all. Noli me tangere.

  His relations with women other than his mother were equally uncomfortable. There had been girlfriends, and there had been intimacies of varying degrees of consummation; certainly, from early adolescence; he had suffered pangs of sexual desire—but the “desire” was often objectless, arising from his body’s mere need. How then to attach romance to it, and why?

  Of course, Brendan had romantic interludes. They had all ended, not in bitterness and recriminations but in friendship—a sort of slow waning away. His former girlfriends married, became wives and mothers, or disappeared into the rigors of professional careers. The frequency with which he found himself thinking of Maggie Blackburn, and the pinpricks of hurt, anxiety, even jealousy he felt over the fact (by January 16 it was a fact) that she seemed to have cooled in her regard for him—telephoned him less often, hadn’t invited him over for dinner since before Christmas—suggested that he was developing a romantic attachment for her; if he was not careful he would end by falling in love with her. Like many seemingly artistic people, Brendan tended to crave what could not be his—could not, in these particular circumstances, ever be his.

  As if any normal woman, let alone a woman of Maggie Blackburn’s poise, beauty, and professional achievement, could care for him.

  As if any normal woman, let alone a fastidious, high-minded woman like Maggie Blackburn, knowing of Brendan’s treatment at the hands (and not only the hands) of a sexual pervert, could care for him.

  And wasn’t he too young for her, in any case, six or seven years too young?

  Immature, unmanly. Unworthy.

  (He wondered how, seeing Maggie less frequently now, and transfixed with shyness at the mere thought of bringing up such a subject, he could allow her to know—casually, undramatically—that he had learned, by way of Nicholas Reickmann, that about a month before his death Rolfe Christensen had tested negative for AIDS.)

  “Of course, I don’t really love her. I don’t love anyone.”

/>   These words startled him. He’d spoken aloud; having left off writing his dull uninspired letter to the young woman in Seattle. It was 11:05 P.M. He was exhausted suddenly; he needed to sleep. Tomorrow was Tuesday, another workday. He had to sleep, and he had to sleep hard. Already jets of harsh cleansing water were shooting onto cars’ roofs and hoods and windows, already the rowdy high school boys were shouting good-natured obscenities at one another. Brendan Bauer was of the working class and could no longer afford the middle-class luxury of overmuch thinking, brooding, grieving.

  But then the telephone, silent for days—weeks?—rang.

  The telephone rang: and, by one of those coincidences that cannot bear examination, the caller was Nicholas Reickmann himself.

  Though Nicholas sounded strange. His voice was faint and wooden and he repeatedly cleared his throat.

  “Wonder if you could … come over here, Brendan? Tonight? Right now?”

  “Now? But it’s so—”

  “Crucial. Must talk to you.”

  Brendan was fully awake, now, and astonished.

  “C-can’t it wait until …?”

  Though in the past several weeks Nicholas Reickmann had been friendly toward Brendan, out of sympathy or pity perhaps, the men were hardly on intimate terms: Brendan was not one who would ever be invited to call Reickmann “Nicky.”

  “I … have material. His diary. Tapes. I … I know who his killer is. It will exonerate you … completely.”

  “W-w-what?”

  “Diary. Names names. Everyone. And there’s a tape … you are recorded.”

  “His k-k-killer? You know?”

  Such a flood of relief and happiness rose in Brendan, he feared he might burst into tears. He cried, “Oh, you know? Oh, do you? Oh—” He gripped the receiver hard in sudden apprehension that Nicholas Reickmann would hang up. “W-w-who is it?”

  There was a pause. Brendan thought, Is someone there with Nicholas? but he was envisioning Nicholas Reickmann in Nicholas’s condominium apartment, a stylish sparely furnished white-walled place with an interior courtyard, and the idea could not retain itself, for he was on his feet, breathing quickly, his eyes moistening behind his glasses. On the other end of the line Nicholas cleared his throat and said, “I … will have to show you. In person. You’ll see why. Can you come? Now?”

  It was eleven-fifteen by the clock at Brendan’s bedside.

  Did the buses run at this hour? He had no idea.

  “I’ll have to get a b-b-bus, Nicholas, but I’ll be there!”

  “I’m not at home. I’m … at his house.”

  “His?” For an instant Brendan thought the other must mean the killer’s house.

  “And don’t take a bus, take a taxi.”

  “Oh … I can’t exactly afford a—”

  “I’ll reimburse you, later.”

  “I mean, I can pay, I’ve got at least ten d-d-dollars, but—”

  “Just come here … at once. Hurry.”

  “Yes, but—who is the k-k-killer? You have actual proof? I told everyone it wasn’t m-m-me! I told the police, I swore! And nobody b-b-b-believed!”

  “His house. You know where?”

  “Chr-Chr-Christensen’s?” Brendan swallowed hard. He halfway wondered if he could bring himself to enter that house another time. He said, in a near whisper, “Oh, Nicholas—I don’t kn-kn-know.”

  But Nicholas Reickmann seemed not to hear. He was saying in his slow, strange, mechanical voice, “Crucial to come at once. The address is 2283 Littlebrook Road. Take a taxi … tell no one. Brendan?”

  “Y-yes?”

  “Tell no one.”

  The Christensen house was a twenty-minute taxi ride from the Highgate Arms, a trip of gradual ascensions, for Forest Park was on a higher plane than working-class Waldrop; and Littlebrook itself was steeper than Brendan had recalled. That nightmare of a street! That house of infamy, of degradation and pain! Not in his most deranged, self-lacerating fantasies could Brendan have anticipated voluntarily returning to it, yet here he was. So eager to hurry to the front door he thrust a ten-dollar bill into the taxi driver’s hand, and told him please keep the change. The fare on the meter was only $6.90.

  Numberless times since the assault, Brendan had tormented himself with the recollection of the innocence, the naïveté, the idiot trust with which he’d originally entered Christensen’s house; the wine-warmed pleasure he’d felt, a deluded sense of invulnerability in imagining himself selected out of the entire group of incoming graduate fellows as special … favored by the distinguished composer. What a baby he’d been! Yet Christensen’s big broad ruddy face had been lit with what seemed a genuine magnanimity; his hand on Brendan’s shoulder as he steered him through the doorway had seemed genuinely avuncular. Rolfe Christensen’s gaily drunken hospitality had been of a piece, Brendan had thought, with the hospitality of Maggie Blackburn.

  He rang the doorbell. And waited.

  He had not been so excited, in a positive sense, in a very long time.

  (And who was the killer? Did Nicholas really have evidence? And what had he said about Brendan himself being on tape? Had Christensen taped some of their—encounter? The actual assaults? Could there be a record of Brendan’s pleas for mercy, his screams of terror, his sobs, moans? It sickened him to think that Nicholas, or anyone, had heard such a tape; but if the tape existed, now would be the time to destroy it.)

  The Christensen house, stately red brick, well-kept, had nonetheless a sepulchral air, for the front rooms were darkened; one might have thought no one was home, except, peering through one of the narrow windows bordering the front door, Brendan could see that the interior, toward the rear, was lit. And he heard, or imagined he heard, voices. Sounds? As of drums?

  He tried the doorbell another time, then turned the doorknob and discovered that the door was unlocked; so, his excitement mounting, he entered and made his way along the central hall leading off the foyer, calling, “Nicholas? It’s m-me: it’s Brendan.” Nicholas must have been in that impressive room with the cathedral ceiling at the rear of the house that Christensen had referred to as his music studio, for it was from that room the music issued, immediately recognizable as Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring: that part in which the doomed chosen one is glorified, with lovely piercing notes on flutes and piccolo, and a rhythm that kept one’s nerves on edge. It was a piece of music Brendan knew with technical thoroughness, yet it never failed to move him; but he wondered why, at such a time, Nicholas would be playing anything so familiar.

  “N-Nicholas? It’s Brendan. Are you in—”

  Entering the room, which was dimly lit, Brendan was assailed by a smell of physical distress before he saw its cause. For a terrified instant he was unable to comprehend what lay before him; he’d expected to see something so very different: the handsome Nicholas Reickmann alive, rising to greet him, raising a hand, smiling.

  Instead, Nicholas lay lifeless upon a kind of chaise longue made of leather and chrome, bound to it with electrical cord. His throat had been savagely cut and there was bright blood everywhere—his clothes were soaked in it, the Moroccan rug beneath him was soaked in it, there were thin streams and a shallow puddle on the hardwood floor close by. It looked as if the room had been hurriedly and carelessly searched: books and records had been swept off shelves, desk drawers had been yanked out, cartons of material were overturned. On the brick wall beside the fireplace the words FAGS DIE had been block-printed in blood.

  Brendan sobbed and called out the dead man’s name; went to him, touched his shoulder timidly as if to rouse him, and his cheek.… Nicholas’s head lay limp against his left shoulder, his lips were parted in a grimace, his eyes were half open and only the whites, discolored, glazed, were visible. It was clear that Nicholas Reickmann, who’d been alive and speaking to Brendan, was dead, and yet … could he be dead? Dead? The body seemed warm, the face still warm, the blood warm, wet, seeping from the wound in the throat—horrible.

  Brendan murmured, “Oh, God
have m-m-mercy. Oh, God—help.”

  There was a telephone set on the carpet beside the chaise longue, slick with dripping blood. He fumbled for it and the receiver slipped from his fingers; he snatched it up, seeing that he was leaving bloody fingerprints on it, but he had no choice, wiped his hands on his clothing, now breathing hard, audibly, praying under his breath, not quite knowing what he did. He must get help: maybe it wasn’t too late to save Nicholas?