The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  At last Seigl lifted his fierce mask of a face. Only then realizing who the woman must be.

  He would blame the sleep-seizures. For his mind was so lucidly clear otherwise.

  Annoying and embarrassing and (he had to concede) dangerous when he was driving his car especially. Overcome suddenly by a morbid fatigue, and then by sleep striking like a hammer blow. Hardly time to pull over to the side of the street before his heavy head fell forward like a guillotined head.

  Dangerous, and mysterious. But unrelated (he was sure) to his (non-existent) illness.

  At La Maisonette. With Sondra Blumenthal and her son, Ethan, who turned out to be a brightly quizzical eleven-year-old with an interest in solid geometry. Sondra in vivid red, the effort of a woman of conservative tastes in fashion to appear festive, sexy; Ethan with fawn-colored hair and delicate features who lapsed into shy/sullen silences, who knows why. And near the end of the lavish meal Seigl began to feel the encroaching drowsiness, his head begin to lurch as if about to topple into his lap. At the same time shoving his fingers into the romantic candle flame to wake yourself up, Seigl before either of his guests noticed.

  He was sure, he’d prevented the narcoleptic attack in time.

  Yet there was Sondra regarding her friend Joshua with tender worried eyes. For there’d been the misunderstanding that began the evening. (Seigl hadn’t wanted to confess he’d totally forgotten the engagement that he himself had so insisted upon. Nor had he made reservations at the restaurant. All he could think to say was, he’d written the wrong date down on his calendar.)

  “Please don’t ask, Sondra. Whatever it is you’re preparing to ask.”

  Seigl’s private life had always been his private life. His health was his private life.

  Sondra said hesitantly, “Joshua, I’d been hearing . . .”

  “Really. Gossip is beneath you, Sondra, I’d thought.”

  But Seigl was smiling. Clean-shaven Seigl, in a parrot-bright necktie, smiling.

  “. . . you’ve had some tests? At the medical center . . . ?”

  Seigl signaled for the waiter. As if not hearing. Through the meal he’d done most of the talking and the remainder of the time had listened attentively to Sondra and to Ethan but would recall little of what he’d heard so perhaps even then he’d been not-hearing.

  Sondra fell silent, rebuffed. Ethan, a polite child through the ninety-minute dinner, began to squirm in his corner of the leather booth and noisily sucked up the remainder of his Coke through a straw.

  Seigl said warmly, “Sondra: I am well.”

  Seigl reached over and between thumb and forefinger pinched the child’s straw to cease the noisy sucking.

  HE DROVE SONDRA and the boy home. He drove faster than Sondra considered safe. She invited him inside for coffee but he’d already had coffee at the restaurant. She sent Ethan inside and turned to speak to him, she took his hand in hers, twice the size of her hand nearly, she began to appeal to him Joshua, this isn’t fair. You draw me to you, then you push me away. For years this has happened. You know that I care for you. On the phone, you seemed to say you cared for me . . . but Seigl cut her off before he could speak by framing her face in his hands and kissing her.

  And kissing her.

  “SEIGL! WHAT THE HELL’VE you done to your face?”

  It was goateed Fen who addressed Seigl so bluntly. But Fen had had some beers by this hour of the evening, and was in a mood nearly as edgy and sparky as Seigl’s own.

  The chess players, by nature a subdued, withdrawn lot, appeared relieved to see their old companion Seigl of whom perhaps they’d heard dire rumors. They saw that he was walking without a cane and that his face was youthful and his manner was confident if not brash. They’d missed him, as the staff of The Café had missed him. Seigl’s kindly eyes and sharp wit and intermittently inspired chess playing and his generosity in standing drinks for all.

  The Café was unchanged since October. Christmas decorations had come and gone. Seigl was relieved. For he’d changed, and for the better; yet he liked it that the rear of The Café was as always, the rough exposed brick, black-painted windows, unadorned wooden tables. And chessboards inset in the tables. The thought came to him In chess we are perpetually the age we were when we first began playing. No wonder there was such comfort here.

  And there was the booth near the kitchen door where he’d first seen Alma Busch.

  “Joshua, hello! Welcome back.”

  His hand was energetically shaken. His shoulder was affectionately struck. The absence of his beard was jokily commented upon. The restaurant staff, maître d’ and two waiters still on duty this late in the evening, smiled warmly at their very good customer Mr. Seigl and were greeted by him in turn.

  It seemed that everyone wanted to play chess with Seigl. In his brash mood he decided to take on two opponents at once: the ex-prodigy Fen, and the ex-professor of medieval philosophy John.

  Two opponents? Those two?

  Seigl saw glances exchanged. He laughed, quickly setting up the boards. Though he hadn’t played a game with a serious opponent since the last time he’d played and lost to John, yet he seemed to know he was at the peak of his chess-playing powers. Energy flowed through his fingers awaiting discharge.

  Yet somehow it happened, both Fen (on Seigl’s left) and John (on Seigl’s right) wiped him off the boards.

  “Again! Take me on again.”

  The men exchanged significant looks, and shrugged. Why not?

  And so Seigl began another time. Buoyed by energy like a succession of white-capped waves of the Atlantic. He moved his first piece on Fen’s board, and he moved his first piece on John’s board, and they were different pieces, headed in different directions, yet both toward victory. It has to be. I can’t lose. I’ve dreamt this!

  Seigl had quite liked teaching Ethan to play. Of course, the boy already knew how to play, to a degree. After an intense hour with Seigl, he’d already improved his game. Seigl would make the boy into a champion, he’d promised, as he’d been at that age.

  He would marry the woman, he would adopt the boy, he would make the boy into a chess champion . . . Swiftly it would happen, within the year.

  “Seigl my man. Look sharp.”

  Were Seigl’s eyelids closing? His brain shutting down like a faulty generator?

  In The Shadows he’d dared to follow his grandparents Moses and Rachel Seigl into the gas chamber at Dachau, and by slow and then rapid degrees into death as their terrified brains, battling extinction, snatched at memories. A brash act for a young American writer in his twenties. For which he’d been almost universally praised.

  Evoking death! The deaths of others, whom he’d never known!

  Yet: it had been no more, and no less, impossible than evoking life. If you could do one, you could do the other.

  Why not, when it’s all words.

  Only later had incredulity and self-disgust struck him. Too late, it had seemed.

  “Joshua?” This was John, nudging Seigl with fatherly solicitude.

  His eyelids flew open. Immediately he wakened. He had not been asleep. He’d missed nothing.

  “Is it my move? Both moves? It is?”

  A number of spectators were gathered around. For this was something of a spectacle. Joshua Seigl taking on two seasoned opponents at once. Seigl without his beard, his shirt pulled open at the collar, sweating and breathing audibly. Even the waiters were watching with interest. Seigl’s brain was deliciously blank: he was trusting to intuition, luck: saw his hand moving in one direction, and then in the other. He was thirsty. He’d already downed several beers. He needed a cigarette. (One of the waiters handed him a pack, and matches.) Where was his hand moving now? So many of his (plastic) pieces had been swept from the boards . . . He knew that neither Fen nor John was cheating and yet: he’d seen to the end of each game, and he knew the outcome. Why then wasn’t he winning? Or winning more visibly?

  Endgame was nearing to the left (where Fen was playing wit
h the vicious efficiency of a master butcher wielding his knife) but it was yet mid-game to the right (where elderly Professor Emeritus was playing with a subdued, shaky hand).

  Quickly the beer ran through Seigl’s kidneys. He excused himself to lurch from the tables. In the men’s room he leaned against a wall beside a urinal and fell asleep while urinating and wakened in nearly the same instant splattering urine onto the floor. Confused and ashamed of himself he wetted paper towels and stomped them onto the floor with his feet. Through that day he’d drunk Peking tea at home. Hot black Peking tea charged with caffeine like steroids. His assistant fetched the whistling teakettle to bring to him. Awash in liquids Peking-black and tawny-gold. But it was rare for him to drink so much beer in so brief a period of time. “Mr. S-Seigl?” He heard her meek query that both touched and exasperated him. For he feared that the young woman revered him. As many of his students and numerous others had revered Joshua Seigl, wrongly. He wanted to shout at her For Christ’s sake don’t revere me, I’m not worthy of you. You have lived, and I have never lived.

  Seigl returned to the chess games. Within two moves, Fen checkmated his king. Within three moves, John checkmated his other king.

  “Well.”

  His instinct was to strike the few remaining pieces off both the boards. His instinct was to pound with both fists. He’d been cheated of the victory that was his . . .

  Instead, Seigl managed to laugh. Though shinily red-faced as a balloon close to bursting. “Well, you see . . . ‘Hubris.’ ”

  It was so. But hubris has its comical side.

  Magisterial/magnanimous Seigl rose like a cresting dolphin out of the choppy sea to invite “my friends” to have drinks, sandwiches on him. And this extended to the staff of The Café too, of course. “A belated celebration of the New Year. I’ve missed you.”

  (Was this true? You’d certainly have thought so seeing Seigl tremulous with emotion, ruddy-faced, moisture shining in his eyes. One of the lenses of his new glasses appeared to be cracked.)

  Beer, single-malt whiskeys, bourbon, straight gin. Vodka. And beer.

  Roast beef sandwiches, ham and Swiss cheese, grilled chicken breast. Out of the kitchen’s larders.

  Toasts were made to Seigl. Seigl in turn made toasts. One by one the chess players departed. Not all were sociable, though all accepted drinks and several were observed cramming sandwiches into their coat pockets. “Another drink, Mr. Seigl?” The attentive young waiter with slicked-back Valentino hair, white dress shirt tapered to fit his slender torso, gold-glinting cuff links, was close at hand. (What was his name? Something exotic, unlikely: Dmitri? One of the Karamazov brothers?) Elderly professor emeritus of medieval philosophy observed his young friend Joshua with frowning eyes. Casting doubt on whether Seigl should “drive his own car” home that night which struck Seigl as nervy, for Seigl was hardly drunk, hardly was Seigl even mildly drunk, look at the steadiness of his hand holding a drink . . . “You might share my taxi with me. It should be out front right now.” Seigl objected: how’d he get his own car home, then?

  Dmitri the waiter stepped forward. “Sir? I could drive you.”

  For some confused moments it seemed that, yes Dmitri would drive “Mr. Seigl” home. (In Seigl’s car? In his own?) Seigl was resistant, and resentful. And Seigl’s chess friend John was forcibly arguing the good sense of sharing a taxi. And others voiced opinions. Seigl was incensed. He threw off hands meant to comfort/restrain him. “I’ve told you I can drive myself. It’s deeply offensive to me to be discussed as if I’m not present. I’m fucking well.” He swallowed down the last of his drink. Pushed from them to get to the men’s room, and some quiet. God damn! His kidneys were bloated and floating and another time the sinister fatigue dragged at his eyelids but he was able to resist, didn’t fall asleep on his feet, and splashing cold water on his face he saw an astonishing rubefacient face, rubefacient a word rarely employed for rarely is there a rubefacient object encountered in the world, still less one’s own face. And Seigl noted with alarm how his clean-shaven jaws were in fact covered in an ominously glinting stubble, as if he’d neglected to shave for days, and there were his madly lucid Seigl eyes . . .

  “It can’t be. I must be some mistake.”

  He was fully wakeful now. He departed The Café by a rear door eluding his would-be protectors who’d gravely insulted him. Did the bastards think he was a drunk, just because he’d lost at chess? A cripple? He had MS, or worse?

  WOULDN’T ARRIVE BACK at the house until nearly 3 A.M. For he’d made a stop elsewhere, across the river.

  13

  Joshua? This is Sondra. Please will you call me? I need to speak with you . . .

  And,

  Joshua? This is Sondra again. I hope nothing is wrong? I haven’t heard from you, please will you call me? We need to talk.

  “Need to fuck yourself.”

  Savagely the Tattooed Girl struck “3” to erase the urgent messages. Whoever this “Sondra” was, she guessed the Jew was fucking.

  FOR OFTEN SEIGL was away in the evenings now. And into the night. Telling Alma to take the evening off, he wouldn’t be “needing” her.

  Like he was giving some great gift to her! Like there was a life of Alma Busch’s, a place where people awaited her, she could so easily return to.

  Telling him thank you but she guessed she might just stay in.

  Mornings Seigl was always at work in the dining room before Alma came upstairs. Mornings were precious to him he said. Always now her employer was loud-talking, excitable, a glisten of saliva on his lips. A glisten of craziness in his face. Wearing one of his white dress shirts but it was rumpled and soiled and crookedly buttoned. And maybe a ratty vest sweater dragged down over it half in and half out of his beltless trousers. And his big white bare feet in slovenly bedroom slippers. Alma could smell (she could!) the woman on him from the previous night, the mucky smell of cunt. She was disgusted having to wonder where those fat Jew lips had been.

  HE WAS IN some state! Her Jew employer. Think she couldn’t see? He was coked to the gills. His eyes. You can tell by the eyes. Except he’d been in this weird state for weeks. By now a cokehead or crystal meth user would’ve crashed. Crashed bad. Not the Jew. His brain was frying. You could feel heat coming off him like a radiator at six feet.

  In remission it was, maybe. Like her grandfather Busch, with his Parkinson’s. In remission means you aren’t sick right now. But it can return any time.

  14

  DMITRI”—THE NAME was magic to her. Never in Akron Valley had there been a Dmitri, or anybody like him.

  In the movies, maybe. Tom Cruise. Brad Pitt. Sexy guys who didn’t mind you knowing how they loved themselves best. And, loving you, it’s maybe themselves they are loving.

  “Babe, see if the Jew owns a gun. Check it out.”

  “A gun? Like . . .”

  “A gun for Christ’s sake. G-U-N. He’d have it in his bedroom maybe. In a drawer by the bed. In some cupboard or closet. Maybe in a safe.”

  The Tattooed Girl asked what she should do, if she found the gun.

  “Just leave it. If you find it. For now.”

  So the Tattooed Girl looked through her employer’s house. She spent the most time looking through his bedroom. And his study. The basement and the attic, she hadn’t bothered with. Figuring if the Jew owned a gun it wouldn’t be in those places because how could you get to it in time? Her father, Delray Busch, had kept his rifles and shotgun close at hand, like all the men in Akron Valley.

  There was no safe in the house, that she’d discovered.

  (Was she worried that her employer would catch her or suspect her of searching his rooms? Hell, no. Seigl trusted his assistant so, she could be stealing him blind in front of his eyes and he’d only just smile at her saying, Alma! Good morning.)

  The Tattooed Girl was reluctant to disappoint her lover. Telling him she guessed Seigl wasn’t a man to own firearms. You could sort of figure that by looking at him.

  Som
ehow, this remark pissed Dmitri off. He said, sneering at her logic, “Anybody’s a man to own firearms, babe. Like anybody’s a man to want to use them.”

  15

  I am a child of Hell, I am lonely.

  Listless at 2 A.M. turning the pages of a book. A book!

  What the fuck did the Tattooed Girl care for a book.

  The Jew’s house was filled with books. He’d written some of them himself. So what?

  The Tattooed Girl with greasy hair and hair itchy beneath her arms and between her legs. Belly and big breasts sprawling inside her ratty pink flannel nightie stained from menstrual blood that wouldn’t launder out one hundred percent even when she scrubbed it between her hands.

  What the hell, nobody saw. Like the shitty tattoos straggling across her breasts and back, ruining her face men were always saying was a doll-face, so pretty, pretending her face wasn’t ruined so they could fuck her which they could do without looking at her face. The tattoos she’d given up trying to make sense of. Like stains that are faded but will never fade out. But what the hell.

  So they’d fucked up her life, those guys she’d trusted, for fun. What the hell.

  The witch-book she called it. Always she opened it with a sickish little thrill. Like a nasty comic book her brothers had showed her when she was five or six. Ugly pictures of cut-up female bodies you couldn’t believe you were seeing but every time you looked there they were.

  Seeing Alma’s shocked little face her brothers howled with laughter like hounds.

  Fuckers. She hadn’t seen them for eight years. Since they’d “disowned” her like Daddy had done.

  Alma was propped up against pillows in the creaky old bed in the room—“suite” he called it—the Jew let her sleep in. This room was OK. Fancy furniture she was fearful of soiling or breaking. Other employers, they took it out of your pay if you fucked up. So mostly she only just sat on the bed. Too restless to sleep tonight. The Jew was out. With some woman. Here she was hot-eyed and angry turning the pages of the witch-book.