Nemesis

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “He isn’t dead enough!”

  Brendan spoke with such childlike savagery, Maggie was almost moved to laugh.

  Still he seemed reluctant to let her go. He leaned on the door of her Volvo as she sat in the driver’s seat, key in hand. “I want to forget, sure. But they have the tape … my voice saying things I don’t remember … ‘I love you’ and ‘Don’t hurt me!’ and ‘Let me go, I won’t tell anybody’ … and screams, and the rest. It’s evidence, I guess. It’s me … unmistakably. When they played it, I broke down. Just cried and cried and cried and they were waiting for a confession, I guess, but I didn’t do anything. Not to either of those men. And whatever is missing from Christensen’s archive, a diary, or letters, or other tapes—nobody knows what they are or whom they might implicate. The actual murderer, he’s safe.”

  As if this were the true issue, Maggie said quickly, “But is that evidence? Admissible evidence? How could it establish anything about your guilt?”

  Brendan shrugged. “I don’t know. The one thing I know is, I’m not gay. Whatever the police think, and my family, and—everyone: I am not gay. I am not,” he said defiantly, squinting down at Maggie, “sexual at all. Is that crazy? Is that sick? I could live without what’s called desire. I don’t know what I am, only what I’m not. I am a male biologically, I suppose, but I don’t think male; I never have, really. I’m … neuter, nothing … just a person.”

  So astonished was Maggie by this vehement outburst, she smiled up at her young friend, one of her sudden, dazzling smiles. She said, “Why, Brendan, the same thing is true of me.”

  21

  Of the mysterious incidents that occurred at the Forest Park Conservatory of Music during the academic term 1988–89, none was more mysterious than the disappearance, on the evening of February 12, of the cellist William Queller.

  Queller was standing with the pianist Maggie Blackburn, head bowed, expression muted, accepting applause from an audience of approximately three hundred in the Conservatory’s concert hall for his technically flawless if somewhat tight performance of the cello part of Beethoven’s Sonata in D major for cello and piano, op. 102, no. 2; he stood clutching his beautiful instrument and his bow in a posture of cringing acquiescence, not smiling toward the audience as he customarily did but simply standing there, enduring the waves of seemingly genuine applause, and it was noted by some sharp-eyed observers that a flamelike blush rose up into his face just before he turned abruptly on his heel and walked off, leaving Maggie Blackburn, tall and slender and gracious in her long black velvet dress, glancing startled after him. Queller’s exit seemed ungentlemanly: should he not have waited for the pianist and accompanied her offstage?

  Maggie’s performance at the piano had been technically precise as well, though arguably richer and more subtle in feeling than Queller’s cello playing. The Beethoven sonata itself was a riddlesome work: melodic and lushly romantic in part, then again abrasive and markedly “intellectual.” Heard once, it was the sort of musical piece that required being heard a second time, immediately. Perhaps the cellist Queller, a perfectionist, had been unhappy with his own performance and impatient with the protocol of applause, especially in so musically refined and critical a community as Forest Park; thus he’d walked offstage without a backward glance, unsmiling, cello and bow in hand, bald head gleaming with a film of perspiration … and must have slipped out of one of the rear exits of the concert hall, unseen.

  At least, afterward, no one could testify to having seen him leave.

  The next work on the program was a Brahms sonata for violin and piano, played by Ardis Manning and Maggie Blackburn and warmly received by the audience—for Ardis Manning was a gifted violinist who played her instrument with an air of sensuous attentiveness, and she and the pianist complemented each other ideally. And then there was a ten-minute intermission; and then there was to be a Mendelssohn trio for violin, cello, and piano, except for the embarrassing fact that the cellist Queller was nowhere to be found: not backstage, not in any of the dressing rooms, not in the men’s room, not in any of the corridors of the concert hall, or in the foyer, or in the audience.… After some minutes of unexplained delay, during which a rumor began to circulate through the audience that something had happened to one of the performers (after the murders of Christensen and Reickmann, such rumors commonly circulated in Forest Park), the program director Stanley Spalding appeared onstage to make the announcement that, due to sudden, changed circumstances, the Mendelssohn trio would not be played that evening but that Ardis Manning and Maggie Blackburn had consented to substitute a Mozart sonata (a brisk virtuoso piece in A major, K. 526, which the two women had presented together several seasons before and had all but memorized). Spalding said not a word about the cellist, and though his affable manner suggested that nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, it was clear that something quite extraordinary had occurred and that Spalding himself did not know what it was.

  The evening’s concert had been designated as a benefit performance for a scholarship fund just established in memory of Nicholas Reickmann: tickets were priced fairly high, for a local Conservatory production. Thus Bill Queller’s unexplained departure was felt to be the more rude, for even if he’d been taken suddenly ill, he could have informed someone.

  Under duress, the violinist and the pianist acquitted themselves admirably, and the Mozart piece received a gratifying amount of applause. But at the reception following, both women were perceived to look distinctly troubled. Students gathered about them to ask worriedly, “Where did Mr. Queller go? Is he sick?” Friends and colleagues inquired, “Where on earth did Bill go? Didn’t he say anything to you?” Maggie was thinking that Bill might have been annoyed with her, for the way she’d played the adagio movement of the Beethoven sonata, or distressed with the cramped style of his own playing. He had not been satisfied with their several rehearsals and had said half jokingly that perhaps they should postpone the performance another time—“out of respect for poor Nicky, at least.” But it was unlike Bill to behave so impulsively and so publicly. No matter his weaknesses and biases as a man, he was a thoroughly professional musician. Something was certainly wrong.

  Several friends, Maggie among them, tried to contact Bill Queller that evening, but his telephone rang unanswered. Nor was his car in the driveway of his home. Nor did he appear next morning for an eleven o’clock class he was scheduled to teach. By this time rumors were fierce: Bill Queller, longtime friend of Rolfe Christensen, friend too of Nicholas Reickmann, had fled Forest Park out of terror of being arrested for their murders or out of terror of being the next to die; or had he fled Forest Park out of shame for being a member of the “gay sex ring”? Days passed, and no one had word of him, and calls were made to relatives of his, who professed to know nothing of his whereabouts; and on the Wednesday following the Sunday of his disappearance, police detectives again appeared on the Conservatory campus, making inquiries into Bill Queller’s life—his friends, his acquaintances, his work, his habits, his talk of real or imagined enemies, his plans for the future, his connections with the late Christensen and the late Reickmann. No one knew where he had gone except that he had not closed out his bank account, nor had he stopped by his home on Sunday evening to take any belongings with him. He had simply gone. He had disappeared.

  22

  “What do you make of Maggie Blackburn these days?”

  “I don’t know: what do you make of her?”

  Amid that prolonged winter of shocks and surprises in Forest Park it was a minor theme, but a persistent one, that Maggie Blackburn, whom friends and colleagues would have sworn they knew, knew thoroughly, with perhaps more certainty than they knew themselves, had, subtly yet unmistakably, “changed.”

  It was observed that Maggie, always so patient, so agreeable, so self-effacing, had become quite abruptly a woman with an air of secret determination; she was never rude, or even impolite, but she was frequently in a hurry, thus hadn’t time to take on, as she’d al
ways so uncomplainingly done, others’ problems and responsibilities. When Katherine Nash, also a piano instructor at the Conservatory, was away for two weeks in mid-February, performing in the Southwest, Maggie deeply regretted being unable to take on a single one of her piano pupils; when Fritzie Krill invited her to give her unofficial annual and unpaid lecture in his popular course “The Opera,” Maggie deeply regretted being otherwise engaged at that time—in fact, out of town. When the dean’s office called to arrange for emergency meetings of one or another committee, or to conscript faculty members for new committees, Maggie deeply regretted being unavailable and could not be swayed from her decision. She made up her mind, unequivocally, that she would not oversee the Conservatory’s ambitious summer session. She disappointed Portia MacLeod, who had been counting on her to help organize a reception for two hundred guests following a recital the soprano was giving in March at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as, so often in the past, Maggie had helped organize such events, with unfailing energy and good humor. “Don’t you at least intend to be involved, Maggie?” Portia demanded, rather hurt, and Maggie replied, in her new tone of regret and finality, “Portia, you must know I am involved—with other things.”

  And while there could be little doubt in Forest Park as to the nature of the things with which, this winter, Maggie Blackburn was involved, no one, not even Brendan Bauer, could have guessed at the depth of her involvement.

  She compiled lists, she wrote letters to strangers, she made bold telephone calls. She traveled, mainly on weekends. She questioned her friends in Forest Park, her acquaintances, her colleagues, anyone and everyone, trying not to seem too obviously a person under a spell; rather, more, a community-minded woman with an interest in seeking out the truth.

  Which was: the truth about who had killed Rolfe Christensen, and who had killed Nicholas Reickmann.

  She supposed there must be a single murderer. But, one night, mulling over the mystery, she seemed to hear her father’s voice admonishing her: There might be a single murderer; there might be more than a single murderer.

  When, compiling her lists, Maggie was reluctant to include certain names—Bill Queller, Si Lichtman, many another—it seemed that the admonitory voice sounded most impatiently: Suspect everyone. It is guilt that should be assumed, not innocence.

  How ironic, she thought, Father is more alive now, more living, in me, than he was when … when he’d been alive.

  And Maggie began to weep, helplessly.

  She had never grieved for her father, really. She had never, in a way, known her father, any more than he had known her. Maggie had forever operated from a position of heedless trust, Mr. Blackburn from a position of mistrust.

  Truth is unsparing.

  Truth is pitiless.

  Truth does not “exist” but must be made to reveal itself.

  First-degree murder, with which Brendan Bauer had been charged in criminal court, was a capital offense in the State of Connecticut. This meant, not automatic sentencing if a jury found for the prosecution, but a second trial, a “penalty-phase” trial, for the purpose of determining whether the crime was grave enough (usually involving an “outrageously or wantonly vile” intention) to justify execution. The means of execution was electrocution.

  Brendan smiled a ghastly smile and said, with the sort of adolescent humor that makes adults flinch, “It is ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ Maggie—they say smoke comes out of the top of your head.”

  Maggie said, quickly, “Of course nothing of the kind will ever happen to you. Mr. Cotler is convinced … there really isn’t any evidence … if the district attorney presents the case to a grand jury … and even if the worst happened … I mean, you went to trial, and were found guilty … there are always appeals.”

  “Oh, sure,” Brendan Bauer said, yawning. “The ultimate appeal is to the empty blue sky. See it up there, waiting?”

  Maggie Blackburn went to Detective Sergeant David Miles to confer, demanding of this seemingly mild-mannered policeman what the actual evidence was, that justified this nightmare of a “case” hanging over the head of an innocent young man. Of course, Miles would tell her very little; and what he told her, Maggie already knew from newspaper accounts. She said, “But it’s so unfair! It’s so unjust!”

  Miles said, bemusedly, “You’ve taken this up, Miss Blackburn, as if your own life were involved and not the suspect’s.”

  Maggie said angrily, “But it is.”

  She came away at least with a hopeful sense that, forensic reports being negative thus far—that is, hair and blood samples submitted by Brendan Bauer had yielded “no conclusive evidence” linking him to Nicholas Reickmann’s death—the police might be obliged, in time, to drop the charges against Brendan.

  She came away too with Detective Sergeant Miles’s card, which contained his telephone number at police headquarters, and upon which, in pencil, he’d jotted down his home number. “If for any reason you want to talk to me, Miss Blackburn,” the policeman said, regarding her with an unreadable look, “don’t hesitate to call. And if you ever believe you’re in danger—please call. At any hour of the day or night.”

  (This card Maggie tacked to the cork bulletin board beside her kitchen telephone, amid a miscellany of similar cards, telephone numbers on scraps of paper, postcards, and memos. She did not want to think what sort of danger David Miles might mean or from what quarter it might come. She succeeded in not thinking of it at all.)

  Weeks before the evening of the recital, when Bill Queller astonished the Forest Park community by so pointedly walking out of its collective life, Maggie had known that he was a disturbed man. Several times he had suggested that they postpone or cancel their program, and when Maggie showed signs of reluctantly agreeing he said, ironically, “And then what? Once you’ve given in to defeat, what then?”

  Maggie was not personally frightened of Bill Queller; though she understood that he might be considered a prime suspect in the Christensen murder (on the night of Reickmann’s death, according to David Miles, Queller had been visiting friends in New York City and had not returned to Forest Park until after midnight), she did not seriously believe him capable of such an act. When they met to rehearse, he was depressed rather than aggressive; his anxiety was transmogrified into a fastidious attentiveness to musical notes, a fierce compulsion to play and play again, until single passages were “perfect.”

  When Ardis Manning was present and they were practicing the Mendelssohn trio, Bill Queller was generally quiet; said nothing out of the ordinary. When he was alone with Maggie, practicing the more demanding and elusive Beethoven sonata, he frequently sighed and laughed to himself, wiping his damp face and fixing Maggie with an inscrutable stare. He said mysteriously, “I am the cello, you are the piano, these notes are the thoughts passing through the dead Beethoven’s mind.” Another time: “I see people watching, I can virtually hear their thoughts. But how dare they think such thoughts about me.” It was the occasion of their final rehearsal, on the afternoon of Saturday, February 11, in Maggie’s living room.

  Seeing Maggie’s startled look Bill Queller continued, “This terrible rumor, these malicious lies. ‘Gay sex ring.’ My life is ruined.”

  Maggie said quickly, “Oh, but Bill, really I don’t think—”

  “Ruined.”

  Bill Queller was wearing inappropriately youthful chino pants that fit his stocky figure snugly, and a pullover velour shirt in green. His plump soft lined face appeared pink not from health, or even from exertion, but from masses of tiny capillaries burst beneath the surface of his skin. His eyelids were red-rimmed and puffy. When Maggie tried to speak, to placate him, he waved her silent. “D’you know I blame Rolfe for all this? His legacy. That vile selfish man. If he had not persisted in his … behavior … if he had not done what it seems he did to that poor boy what’s-his-name … it would not have been done to him what was done to him. Oral vengeance. ‘Chocolate-covered truffles’ indeed. And poor Nicky, poor dear sweet Nicky
, would be alive at this minute.”

  Maggie, sitting at the piano, regarding the cellist with sympathetic yet wondering eyes, said, hesitantly, “Do you … have any idea who …?”

  Bill Queller laughed and waved at Maggie with his bow, as if she were a particularly obtuse child.

  “Do I have any idea who? My dear Maggie, we are legion.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A vile crude selfish man who yet did not deserve … such a fate. For he could be so winning, indeed he’d … won … many hearts. Many … loyalties. D’you know Cal Gould himself dedicated one of his early books to R.C.? Granted, the men were scarcely on speaking terms later. D’you know I once nursed”—and here Bill named a distinguished musician, American, recently deceased, of the generation of Aaron Copland—“back from utter despair, a suicide attempt, in the 1950s, as a result of Rolfe’s fickle behavior? ‘How could you, Rolfe!’ I said to him. ‘That poor man!’ And Rolfe said, ‘I am not a charity—am I?’ and I must confess I dissolved in laughter.” Bill wiped his face another time, sighing, panting, as if preparing to leave Maggie’s house. (Though they had not finished their rehearsal.) “Like Shakespeare’s Falstaff, he had the gift of inspiring in others, not wit exactly, but a startling response to his wit. You laughed at cruel things because, presto! they were not cruel but fun-ny.”

  Maggie did not know how to respond. She saw here an opportunity for some discreet questioning but was overcome suddenly by shyness, or caution. Though the cellist appeared in a benign mood Maggie sensed how precariously close he was to rage.

  “Shall we continue with the second movement?” Maggie asked tentatively. When there was no reply, she asked, as if inspired, “Would you like some coffee, Bill?” and Queller said at once, “Oh, yes, dear, a lovely idea—but no: a drink maybe,” and Maggie rose from the piano like any hostess. “Wine, or—?” and Bill said, “Scotch, my dear. As long as you’re going about it. Scotch, straight. Maggie Blackburn, you are such a dear … a gem … like few of your kind.”