The Gravedigger's Daughter

by Joyce Carol Oates

  This damned note had been so hard to write! Rebecca tried, and tried, and could come up with only:

  Dear Miss Lutter,

  Thank you for all that you have given me.

  I wish that

  This was stiffly written in the schoolgirl “Parker Penmanship” that Miss Lutter had instilled in her pupils in grade school. Rebecca tried to think of something further to say and felt sweat break out in all her pores, damn she was ashamed of herself and she resented this, wasting time on Rose Lutter while her friends were eagerly awaiting her in their place on Ferry Street and she was impatient to join them for already it was past midnight. She was taking with her only her special possessions: the prize dictionary she’d won, and a very few items of clothing Miss Lutter had purchased for her that still fit her, and weren’t too young-looking, and silly on her tall rangy frame.

  At last she ripped up the note she’d written, and tried again.

  Miss Lutter,

  Thank you for all that you have given me.

  Jesus will be nicer to you than I can be. I am sorry!

  Rebecca Esther Schwart

  30

  “First time I saw you, girl. I knew.”

  These would be Niles Tignor’s words. Delivered in Tignor’s blunt deadpan manner. So that you gazed up at the man knowing yourself off-balance as if he’d reached out to poke you, not hard, but hard enough, his big forefinger into your breastbone.

  It was August 1953. A sultry afternoon and no air-conditioning in most parts of the General Washington Hotel and the interior corridors airless, stifling. Rebecca was pushing her maid’s cart heaped with soiled linens and towels on the fifth floor when she saw, to her annoyance, a door at the far end of the corridor being pushed open with teasing slowness. This was room 557, she knew: the man in that room, registered as H. Baumgarten, was one who’d been giving her trouble. Baumgarten had paid for several nights at the hotel in advance, which wasn’t typical of most guests, but then Baumgarten wasn’t typical. He seemed to have little to do apart from lingering in his room, and drinking in the cocktail lounge and Tap Room on the first floor. Always he was lurking in the corridor hoping to speak with Rebecca who tried to be courteous with him though she hated such men, she hated such games! If she complained of Baumgarten to the hotel manager, he would want to blame her, she knew. From prior experience, she knew.

  “Bastard. You have no right.”

  Rebecca was seventeen years old, three months. Not so young any longer. Not the youngest of the female workers at the General Washington any longer.

  She liked her work less. Brainless labor it was, mechanical and repetitive and yet the solitude was still a kind of drug to her, she could move through her days in a waking sleep like an animal that has no need to glance up from the ground before it. Except when she was wakened rudely by the unwanted interference of another, like the man in room 557.

  She saw that the door had ceased opening, at a space of about two inches. Baumgarten must have been watching her from inside. And he would want Rebecca to know, to be uneasily aware of him watching her and her not able to see him not knowing if he was fully clothed or in his underwear, or worse yet naked. Baumgarten would be enjoying the chambermaid’s embarrassment, her very dislike of him.

  It was early afternoon and Rebecca had been working for hours. She was bare-legged, stockingless. Damned if she would wear ridiculous stockings because the hotel management wanted her to. In this heat! She would not, and did not. If Amos Hrube had noticed, he hadn’t yet reprimanded her.

  The Schwart girl Hrube spoke of her. Not to her face but within her hearing. He didn’t like her but he had come to respect her, as Leora had predicted.

  She was a good worker. Her arm-and shoulder-muscles were small, hard, and compact. She could lift her own weight. She rarely complained. In her sobriety and concentration on her work she appeared older than her age. In hot weather she partially plaited her thick hair and wrapped it around her head to keep it out of her face and off her neck, that was strangely sensitive in the heat as if the skin had been burnt. Now her white-rayon uniform was sticky with sweat and a film of sweat shone on her upper lip. She was very tired and there was a sharp ache between her shoulder blades and a sharper ache beginning between her eyes.

  The man in room 557 had introduced himself to Rebecca as a frequent guest at the General Washington who was on “friendly terms” with the management and staff including several of the chambermaids for whom he left generous tips�“When merited, of course.”

  Rebecca had noted the sweet sickish odor of whiskey on his breath. And a quivering of his hands, making exaggerated nervous motions as he spoke. Another time he’d tried to waylay her when Rebecca was cleaning the room next to his, eager to inform her that he had crucial business in the Chautauqua Valley�“Some of it family, some of it purely financial, and none of it of the slightest value.”

  Pronouncing the word value he’d fixed Rebecca with a yellow-tinged stare. As if this should mean something to her, suggest some link between them.

  Baumgarten had been barefoot, which looked very wrong, very offensive to Rebecca’s eye, in this setting. He’d worn a festive Hawaiian-print shirt partly unbuttoned to show grizzled-gray chest hairs. His soft, flaccid jaws had been clumsily shaved, with a myriad of tiny cuts. A man in his forties, a drinker, unsteady on his feet and his yellowish eyes snatching at her in shameless yearning. “My name is Bumstead, dear. You have seen me in the comic pages. I am not an actual man which is why I am smiling. Would you believe, dear, I was once your age?” He chuckled, and swiped at his flushed pug nose.

  It was then that Rebecca saw, Baumgarten’s rumpled trousers were only partway zipped. He must have been naked beneath for boiled-looking flesh and pubic hairs were visible. Disgusted, Rebecca ducked past him pushing her maid’s cart into the room and quickly shut the door behind her so that Baumgarten couldn’t follow. Yet he dared to rap on the door for some minutes, speaking to her in a plaintive, pleading voice, words she couldn’t hear as she began work in the bathroom.

  She hadn’t yet cleaned Baumgarten’s room. His privacy please card was always looped over his doorknob. Rebecca dreaded the pigsty that would await her. But so long as the sign was up, she could not enter the room even if she knew that Baumgarten was out; and she would not enter it, so long as Baumgarten was in the vicinity, even when he invited her. She had hoped that Baumgarten would be checking out that morning, but he’d hinted he might be staying longer.

  Now, the following day, Baumgarten was playing another of his games. No escaping him!

  As Rebecca approached room 557 she saw that the door was still ajar. But Baumgarten had stepped back from it. (Unless he was hiding behind it, to leap out at her.) A fattish hulking figure she dreaded glimpsing naked. Yet she had no choice but to glance inside the room.

  “Mister? Is anyone…?”

  The room was a pigsty, as she’d expected. God damn there were clothes and towels scattered everywhere, a single man’s dress shoe overturned on the carpet just inside the door. Though it was midday the heavy brocaded drapes were drawn tightly shut. A lamp with a crooked shade was lighted. A smell of whiskey and hair pomade prevailed. The man himself lay on the bed, on his back. He was breathing with difficulty, eyes shut and arms flung out at his sides; he was wearing trousers, haphazardly zipped up, and beltless, and a thin cotton undershirt; again, he was barefoot; his head was turned at an awkward angle and his mouth gaped open, damp with spittle. On the bedside table was an empty glass and a near-empty bottle of whiskey. Rebecca stared, seeing what looked like blood dribbled across Baumgarten’s throat and torso.

  “Mister! Is something…”

  On the floor near the bed several objects had been arranged as in a store window display: a man’s wallet, a man’s gold stretch-band wristwatch, a woman’s ring with a large pale-purple stone, a leather change purse and a matching leather toiletry kit. Several bills had been pulled partway out of the wallet so that their denominations were vi
sible: twenties, a single fifty.

  For me Rebecca thought calmly.

  Yet she could not touch these items. She would not.

  She had come to stand close beside the bed, uncertain what to do. If Baumgarten had seriously injured himself with a razor or a knife, there would have been more blood, she knew. Yet: maybe he’d cut himself in the bathroom, and staggered back into the bedroom. Maybe there were wounds she couldn’t see. And maybe he’d drunk so much, he had lapsed into a coma and might be dying, she must call the front desk…

  Rebecca made a move toward the phone, to lift the receiver. But she would have to come very close to the man, if she did. And maybe this was a game of his. Baumgarten would open his yellowish eyes, he would wink at her…

  “Mister, wake up! You need to wake up.”

  Rebecca’s voice rose sharply. She saw veins on the man’s ruined face, like incandescent wires. The greasy pug nose, damp gaping mouth like a fish’s. Thin gray hair lay in disheveled strands across the bumpy crown of his head. Only his teeth were perfect, and must have been dentures. His eyelids fluttered, he moaned and breathed noisily, erratically. In that instant, Rebecca felt pity for him.

  If he is dying I am his final witness.

  If he is dying there is no one except me.

  She was about to lift the phone receiver and dial the front desk when the stricken man slyly opened one eye, and grinned at her. The porcelain-white dentures gleamed. Before Rebecca could draw away, Baumgarten grabbed hold of her wrist with surprisingly strong fingers.

  “Eh! My dear! What a pleasant surprise.”

  Rebecca screamed and pushed at him, struggling to get free. But Baumgarten gripped her tight.

  “Let me alone! God damn you�”

  She clawed at Baumgarten’s hands. He cursed her, sitting up now, having swung his legs around; using his legs, as a wrestler would do, to grip Rebecca around the hips. In their struggle Baumgarten managed to pull Rebecca onto the bed beside him, wheezing, laughing. She would afterward recall the harsh whiskey smell of his breath and a fouler, darker smell beneath of something fetid, rotting. She would recall how close she’d come to fainting.

  “Hey: what the hell’s going on here?”

  A tall man with stiff, nickel-colored hair had entered the room. Like a bear on its hind legs he moved with startling swiftness. Baumgarten protested�“Get out! This is a private room, this is a private matter”�but the man paid no heed, seized him by a flabby shoulder and began to shake him, hard. “Let the girl go, fucker. I’ll break your ass.” Rebecca slipped from Baumgarten’s grasp. The men struggled, and the stranger struck Baumgarten with his fists even as Baumgarten tried feebly to defend himself. With one blow of the stranger’s fist, Baumgarten’s nose was broken. With another blow, the gleaming-white dentures were broken. Whatever Baumgarten had dribbled on himself must not have been blood because there was now a sudden spray of fresh blood, very red blood, on his grimacing face and torso.

  Rebecca backed away. The last she saw of Baumgarten/Bumstead he was begging for his life as the man with the nickel-colored hair gripped his head and slammed it�once, twice, a third time�against the rattling mahogany headboard of the bed.

  Rebecca fled. She left her maid’s cart in the fifth-floor corridor, she would retrieve it another time.

  The man, the stranger: who was he?

  Discreetly, for days after the “savage beating” in room 557, Rebecca would make inquiries about the tall solidly-built man with the nickel-colored hair: who was he, what was his name? She would not involve him with the beating of H. Baumgarten in room 557, which police were investigating. Never would she have involved him, who had intervened on her behalf.

  Let the girl go. Let the girl go…

  So strange, to think of herself as a girl! A girl requiring intervention, protection, in another’s eyes.

  In fact, Rebecca had glimpsed the man with the nickel-colored hair in the General Washington Hotel, from time to time. He must have been a frequent patron of the hotel or the tavern. She’d seen him in the company of the Tap Room bartender Mulingar: he was in his mid-thirties, well over six feet tall, distinctive with his steely hair and deep-chested laughter.

  A man admired by others. And knowing he was admired by others.

  If he’d killed Baumgarten…

  Rebecca would have kept his secret. Wouldn’t have told the hotel management, or the police. Wouldn’t have come forward as a witness to the “savage” beating.

  Baumgarten had lied to police, saying two (male) intruders had broken into his hotel room, beaten and robbed him. Two! He claimed to have been lying on his bed, asleep. Hadn’t seen their faces except to know that they were white men and they were “unknown to him.” Baumgarten’s nose, lower jaw and several ribs were broken. Both his eyes blackened. Bleeding from head wounds, he’d lain helpless for more than an hour before he revived and had the strength to reach for the telephone.

  Baumgarten would claim that “thieves” had taken his wallet, his wristwatch, and other personal items worth approximately six hundred dollars.

  Baumgarten would say nothing about Rebecca. Not a word about the chambermaid he had lured into his room. For a week, Rebecca worried that police would come to question her. But no one did. She smiled thinking He’s ashamed, he wants to forget.

  Rebecca resented it, that Baumgarten told lies about having been robbed. The man who’d beaten him certainly wasn’t the type to have robbed him! Baumgarten must have hidden away his things, to make a false claim. He could sue the hotel management, perhaps. He could file an insurance claim.

  Too injured to walk, Baumgarten had been carried on a stretcher to an ambulance waiting outside the hotel entrance, and by ambulance he had been taken to the Chautauqua Falls General Hospital. He would not return to the General Washington Hotel, Rebecca would not see him again.

  “Niles Tignor.”

  As Leora Greb said, no mistaking Tignor for anyone else.

  He was a brewery representative, or agent. He traveled through the state negotiating with hotel, restaurant, and tavern owners on behalf of the Black Horse Brewery of Port Oriskany. His salary depended upon commissions. He was said to be the most aggressive and overall the more successful of the brewery agents. He passed through Milburn from time to time and always stayed at the General Washington Hotel. He left generous tips.

  It was said of Tignor that he was a man with “secrets.”

  It was said of Tignor that he was a man you never got to know�but what you did know, you were impressed by.

  It was said of Tignor that he liked women but that he was “dangerous” to women. No: he was “gallant” to women. He had women who adored him scattered through the state from the eastern edge of Lake Erie to the northwestern edge of Lake Champlain at the Canadian border. ( Did Tignor have women in Canada, too? No doubt!) Yet it was said of Tignor that he was “protective” of women. He’d been married years ago and his young wife had died in a “tragic accident”…

  It was said of Tignor that he trusted no one.

  It was said of Tignor that he’d once killed a man. Maybe it was self-defence. With his bare hands, his fists. A tavern fight, in the Adirondacks. Or had it been Port Oriskany, in the winter of 1938 to 1939 during the infamous brewery wars.

  “If you’re a man, you don’t want to mess with Tignor. If you’re a woman…”

  Rebecca smiled thinking But he wouldn’t hurt me. There is a special feeling between him and me.

  It was said that Tignor wasn’t a native of the region. He had been born over in Crown Point, north of Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, his ancestor was General Adams Tignor who had fought to a draw the British general John Burgoyne, in 1777, when Fort Ticonderoga was burnt to the ground by the departing British army.

  No: Tignor was a native of the region. He’d been born in Port Oriskany, one of a number of illegitimate sons of Esdras Tignor who was a Democratic party official in the 1920s involved in smuggling whiskey from Ontario, Canada, into
the United States during Prohibition, gunned down in a Port Oriskany street by competitors in 1927…

  It was said of Tignor that you must not approach the man, you must wait for him to approach you.

  31

  “Somebody wants to meet you, Rebecca. If you’re the ‘black-haired Gypsy-looking chambermaid’ who works on the fifth floor.”

  This was the first Rebecca heard, that Niles Tignor was interested in her. Amos Hrube with his smirky, insinuating smile.

  Later that day, Mulingar, beefy and mustached, bartender in the Tap Room. “R’becca! Got a friend who’d like to meet you, next time he’s in town.”

  It was Colleen Donner, a switchboard operator at the hotel, a new friend of Rebecca’s, who made the arrangements. Tignor would be in town the last week of October. He would be staying at the hotel for just two nights.

  At first Rebecca could not speak. Then she said yes, yes I will.

  She was sick with apprehension. But she would go through with it. For she loved Niles Tignor, at a distance. There was no man Rebecca had loved in all her life, and she loved Niles Tignor.

  “Only I know. I know him.”

  So she consoled herself. In her loneliness, she was fervent to believe. For Jesus Christ had long since ceased to appear to her, wraith-like and seductive in the corner of her eye.

  Since leaving Miss Lutter, Rebecca had ceased to think of Jesus Christ, altogether.

  Let the girl go, fucker.

  I’ll break your ass.

  This loud furious voice she heard almost continuously. In her thoughts it was always present. Cleaning rooms, pushing her maid’s cart, smiling to herself, avoiding the eyes of strangers. Miss? Miss? Excuse me, miss? But Rebecca was courteous and evasive. All men she kept at a distance as she kept her distance from all hotel guests, including women, whom she could not trust, in their authority over her. For it was the prerogative of any hotel guest to accuse any member of the staff of rudeness, poor performance, theft.