The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Señora. The wife felt this as an insult, subtle and devastating.

  Though some of the others were probably sympathetic with the wife’s argument, they did not support her. In any case, such a sentimental argument was hopeless, as the wife knew. Any scientist, like the husband, would side with the Galapagos Park strategy—you did not come to the Galapagos without understanding the nature of the environment, how fragile it was, and how it had to be maintained against invasions from the outside world.

  “Well—thank you! I understand a little more now. The Galapagos wouldn’t exist, except if time is made to stand still.”

  Shortly after, it was time for the dinghy to depart, as it was time for another dinghy to arrive. Like clockwork the Galapagos was organized; you could see how coordinated the staff was, and how crucial that no one interfere with the precise schedule.

  The wife was about to take her place in the boat when she heard cries a short distance away. Those several individuals who’d gamely hiked to the top of the rock-strewn trail were returning, and one of them seemed to have fallen—the wife stared in dismay, for the fallen person was her husband.

  In that instant the wife thought—No! God please no—don’t let him be hurt.

  Desperately she made her way to Henry, to help him. It was horror to her, that her husband might be injured, and she’d been nowhere near him! Even as others were helping him rise to his feet the wife came to him—“Henry! Oh, Henry . . .”

  Fleet-footed as a boy, Eduardo had gotten to the fallen man before her. “Can you stand, señor? Did you turn your ankle? Lean on me, please.” The guide was gracious, gentlemanly—if Eduardo was alarmed that one of his Albatross charges had fallen, he knew to disguise such alarm.

  The husband was smiling ruefully. A strained, stricken smile of acute surprise, and embarrassment.

  Both the wife and Eduardo were helping Henry stand. He seemed to have turned his right ankle, or to have banged his leg hard—he swayed, and panted, and for a moment seemed unable or unwilling to ease his weight onto his right leg. Then, the guide’s young assistant came running with a walking stick which the husband had no choice but to accept with gratitude.

  Quickly the wife slipped her arm around the husband’s waist, the first time in their years together she’d ever done such a thing—a gesture of sudden, and now public, intimacy. But Henry didn’t want her assistance, at least not in the presence of others. Still smiling, and still wincing, he nudged her away.

  “I said, I’m fine. Gracias.”

  Familiar with the self-deceptions of his affluent American charges, Eduardo knew to stand discreetly aside even as he kept a sharp eye on the hobbling man, who was in his fifties, or older: silvery-haired, distinguished-looking, very articulate, self-assured—a professor or a scientist—Eduardo knew the type, and knew that such a man must be treated with dignity, or he would punish his native guide with a complaint to the Galapagos Park authorities.

  “The rocks are very slippery here”—the wife offered the limping man this remark, to placate him; she knew how humiliated he was to have fallen in such a way, before witnesses.

  Slowly, using the walking stick, the husband made his way back down the treacherous trail. In nearby rocks sea lions cavorted and brayed as if in mockery of human clumsiness.

  The wife was close beside the husband, prepared to help him if he slipped again. The husband cast her a sidelong look of—was it fury?—hatred? That she had witnessed his humbling, before strangers?

  The strangers he didn’t hate, for he didn’t know them. And the canny Eduardo knew to be respectful of the husband, and to call him señor.

  Only the wife was vulnerable to his dislike, his hatred. She who saw the man too intimately, she who was always there.

  This had been the fatal deficiency in the previous wives, she supposed. This wifely intimacy, that could not be borne.

  “Henry, I love you. Please don’t be angry with me.”

  So softly the wife pleaded, into the husband’s reddened ear, it was not inevitable that he’d heard her. But he relented, and squeezed her hand. “Darling! Of course I’m not angry with you.”

  In the dinghy, the husband was more reasonable. He’d had a shock, and he was in pain, but he would be stoic, uncomplaining. He would make a joke of it, to a degree—talking and laughing with fellow passengers who commiserated with him claiming to have had mishaps on the excursions themselves. The wife was surprised, and the wife was vastly relieved. Her senses were dazed by the bright heaving waves, the equatorial sun, the physical proximity of strangers, and the disturbing proximity of the man who was the husband.

  She did not know if she could trust him, but she knew that he could trust her. She did not know if he loved her, but she knew that she loved him. That would have to be enough.

  On the island she’d had some sort of—was it a revelation? The kind of certitude that came with extreme anxiety, and exhaustion; and the sudden release and reversal of these, as if she’d been suffused with the strength required to take care of another person, fully dependent upon her.

  She thought—There must be some meaning, that I’ve survived so long. I must discover that meaning.

  The wife glanced around, to see where everyone in the small rocking boat was looking—a hundred yards away was the long whitely dazzling Floreana with its several decks and many portholes, its tall chimneys, floating on the sea like a great temple waiting to receive them

  3. Moon Deck

  “Darling, come out onto the deck! It’s a perfect night.”

  He was gripping her hand with unusual eagerness. He urged her out onto the deck, which was the second-level deck, and brightly lit, and crowded, for at the prow of the ship was an open-air bar decorated as if it were a tropical café, where a trio of Ecuadoran musicians and a young woman singer were performing, and a few couples were dancing.

  How festive it was! And above, scarcely visible beyond the bright lights, a sickle moon, which the wife could just manage to see.

  By day, this part of the ship was much quieter. There was a “swimming pool”—(in fact, it was hardly larger than a children’s pool, with bright-aqua water smelling strongly of disinfectant)—surrounded by lounge chairs on which passengers read and dozed in the sun scarcely mindful, as they were continually warned, that the equatorial sun was extremely powerful even when the sky appeared overcast.

  Midway to the prow of the ship, as the music grew louder, and the deck more crowded, the husband changed his mind and pulled the wife back—“No. Wait. Let’s go up to the higher deck, it will be more private there.”

  “But—”

  “It will be more romantic there.”

  The wife had no choice but to obey, though she knew that the higher, third-level deck wasn’t equipped for visitors, at least not as the second-level deck was; it was much smaller, with only a few scattered chairs and rattan tables.

  But the wife had to obey the husband for his will had to be obeyed in all things small and large. They returned to the interior of the ship and the husband pulled the wife up a narrow stairway, to a door marked moon deck; but when they stepped out onto the third-level deck it was unexpectedly deserted, and very dark.

  Elsewhere on the ship were bright-lighted areas for drinking, music, and socializing, but the Moon Deck was not one of these. Here too was a lighted area at the prow of the ship, but it was much smaller than the second-level area; there was no bar, only a few scattered, empty lounge chairs, and there were no musicians. You could hear the music from below but now it sounded frenetic, slightly distorted.

  “I don’t think passengers are wanted here. It isn’t set up for . . .”

  “Of course it is ‘set up’—for us.”

  Henry wanted to turn left, away from the lighted prow, and grope along the railing, in the dark. It was like him to prefer an out-of-the-way place—a deserted place—a place that
, just possibly, might be off-limits. The wife tried to protest, but feebly; she didn’t want to antagonize the husband who was trying to walk normally, and not to limp. (She’d seen, at dinner, at their assigned table, how Henry had lost interest from time to time in conversations he had himself initiated with their dinner companions, his gaze moving restlessly about the crowded dining room. It was his pride that had been injured in the fall, as much as his ankle. She felt sorry for him, and a stab of hope—Maybe he will be less impatient with me now. He will not expect so much of me.)

  But the husband seemed quite recovered from the dinnertime ennui. He had grasped the wife’s hand like an ardent young lover.

  Somehow, within seconds, the pale sickle moon had vanished. A heavy wall of clouds must have obscured it utterly. And now the ocean was so dark on this side of the ship, the sky so dark, you could not even see the waves though you could hear them, and you could feel the rolling power of the waves thrusting against the vessel. The wife protested, she didn’t want to walk along this deck, they couldn’t see anything and it was dangerous—no one else was there . . . The husband laughed scornfully: “What are you afraid of now? You can’t possibly be swept overboard.”

  She thought—No, but you can push me overboard. In an instant, it could happen.

  No one would see. No one would hear. The sound of revelry on the lower deck was too loud. Voices, laughter. Here on the third-level deck it was pitch-dark, and smelled of oil. Henry laughed as he slipped his arm around Audrey’s waist, and tugged her to stand beside him at the railing, but she shrank away like a frightened child.

  “Darling, really! I thought you liked ‘romance.’”

  The word romance was spoken with disdain, bemusement.

  “No! Please, Henry—I think I’ll go back down . . .”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re staying here with me. In another moment the moon will be out . . .”

  It was a bizarre, awkward moment: the husband tugged at the wife, to urge her to stand beside him at the railing. The husband outweighed the wife by forty pounds or more, yet in her desperation the wife held firm. Henry laughed sharply. He was being playful, or rather—not so playful. He’d gripped her arm, and was squeezing her elbow. It was the same arm he’d gripped on the stone steps, and it was bruised and sore. The wife understood that his patience with her was wearing thin. She knew: she was a foolish, willful woman. She was a spoiled bourgeois woman, haphazardly educated, naïve. If examined closely, she could not have explained the mechanics of Darwinian evolutionary theory; probably she could do no more than stammer clichés, like a TV quiz contestant. Probably she’d forgotten much of what their Ecuadoran guide had told them that very day, in the Galapagos Islands.

  “Henry, no. Please don’t frighten me . . .”

  She was poised to scream but—would anyone hear her? The sound of the ship’s gigantic ventilators was loud here. And the frantic music from the lower deck, mingled with sounds of revelry . . .

  The wife twisted away from the husband, breaking the grip of his fingers on her arm, as a panicked cat might break free of its captor.

  Panting, frightened, yet exhilarated at having escaped the husband, the wife stumbled back inside the ship, and made her way back down the narrow steps, and into a crowd of revelers spilling out of the ship’s lounge on the second level. How relieved she was!—she intended never to step out onto the Moon Deck again, no matter how Henry cajoled her.

  That night in their oppressively air-conditioned cabin, in their double bed with a protruding rib of mattress down the middle, the wife whispered in the darkness: “I’m sorry, Henry—it was so dark out there, I just couldn’t stay.”

  There was a pause. The husband was not asleep, but chose not to speak. Since he’d returned to the cabin, an hour after the wife, his breath smelling of liquor, he’d had little to say, though his manner was affable, indifferent; he’d read aloud to the wife from the tour program, describing the giant tortoises they were to see the next day, and as he’d undressed he caught her worried eye in the room’s single mirror, and winked. Was this a signal of—forgiveness? Forbearance?

  “I—I’ve been worrying that you don’t love me as much as you did, Henry . . . I—feel—as if I am lost here, in these islands so far from home . . .” The wife’s voice trailed off faintly.

  The ship rolled, creaked. The ventilators hummed like fierce lungs.

  The husband seemed touched by the wife’s stammered words. He groped for her hand, and squeezed it in his quick, comforting way, as if he were embarrassed at having upset her, even as it was a surprise to him, that he had.

  “Darling, we love each other as much as we ever did. Now please, it’s late, let’s drop the subject.”

  Soon after, the husband fell asleep.

  The wife remained awake for some time. It did not seem to her possible that she would ever sleep again for each time she shut her eyes, bright shimmering waves rushed at her, blinding, with a threat of suffocation.

  4. The Intruder

  She recalled: the singular incident that had happened several months before, that remained a mystery to her. She had ceased thinking of it, and had not dared speak of it again to the husband who considered the matter closed.

  They’d had tickets for a production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni—they had dinner beforehand with friends—but when the couples arrived at the theater, to their disappointment they were notified that the evening’s performance was canceled.

  When they returned to their house, in a rural-suburban residential area, the wife realized immediately that something was wrong: when she tried to open the rear door to the house, which led into the kitchen, and which was the door the Wheelings commonly used, she discovered that the door would not unlock, for it appeared to be double-bolted from inside.

  “I don’t understand. How can the door be bolted? We left by this door.”

  “Give me the key.” The husband took the key from the wife, but failed to open the door also.

  Annoyed, not yet alarmed, they went to the front of the house, and to the front door, but this door, too, appeared to be bolted from the inside. How strange this was! How unexpected . . . The wife peered through vertical windows set beside the door, into the front hall, which was in shadow. But a faint light was burning in the living room, she’d have sworn she had not left on.

  By this time it might have reasonably occurred to the couple that someone had entered their house, and had bolted the doors against them. Yet still, irrationally, the predominant feeling between the wife and the husband seemed to be that there was some sort of physical impediment to their entering their house that had to be overcome by effort, or cunning. And so, as the husband turned the doorknob fruitlessly, muttering to himself—“Damn! God damn”—as if gaining entry to the house were a matter of strength, or skill—the wife made her way through a gauntlet of overgrown bushes at the side of the house, to a screened-in porch at the rear; the outer door to the porch was unlocked, and through the porch the wife had access to a door that led into a corner of the living room, beyond the fireplace; and this door, which no one had used in years, the wife succeeded in opening with her key.

  In triumph the wife called to the husband: “Henry! Stay where you are, I’ll let you in.”

  Calmly the wife was handling the emergency, as she saw it. Household matters were in her domain, rarely the husband’s. Even now it did not occur to the wife that whoever had bolted the doors might still be inside, and might be dangerous.

  Midway to the front door, however, the wife heard a voice from the top of the stairs—a stranger’s voice—and looked up to see, to her astonishment, a young Chinese girl, slender, sleekly black-haired, with a very pale skin, and a red mouth.

  “Ma’am!—hello! I am—I am so sorry—please don’t call the police, ma’am—I will leave right now . . .”

  Despite her agitation there was an air about the
sleekly black-haired girl of poise and self-assurance; clearly, she was not a homeless person, a beggar or an ordinary intruder. She appeared to be in her mid- or late twenties. Her voice was a tremulous murmur and her accent was thoroughly American—“Ma’am, please! I am so sorry for this mistake, I am leaving right now . . . I am not taking anything . . . Please excuse me!”

  Not quite steady on her feet, the girl made her way downstairs, leaning on the railing. She was audibly panting. She didn’t appear to be wearing shoes—she was in (black) stocking feet, and her footsteps made no sound. The wife saw with a stab of shock that her face was young, beautiful—though contorted in a false bright placating smile of the kind a desperate, or manipulative, child might turn upon a baffled parent.

  The wife stammered, weakly—“Just—leave. I won’t call the police but—please just leave.”

  The wife stood out of the way, as the Chinese girl descended the stairs. The wife had no intention of interfering with the frantic fleeing girl. She saw that the girl was wearing stylishly tight-fitting jeans, a denim jacket studded with rhinestones, and a black turtleneck. In her delicate earlobes were tiny gold hoops. Her sleek black hair was disheveled, as if she’d been wakened rudely from sleep, but it was beautiful hair, straight-falling, shining. Her eyes were very black—the pupils were dilated. She was carrying an expensive-looking leather bag snatched up in haste, beneath her arm. At the front door the girl fumbled to unlock the bolt, which she must have locked not long before, and hurried outside into the darkness without a backward glance.

  All this while the wife was staring after the girl in ­amazement—who was this person? What had happened?

  In the meantime, the husband had followed the wife to the screened-in porch at the side of the house, and had entered the house through that door. In an alarmed voice he was calling, “Audrey? Where the hell are you? What’s going on?” He had not seen the intruder, nor even heard her voice. When he encountered the wife in the front hall, at the front door, he saw that she stood stunned and unmoving, as if she’d suffered a great shock.