by Rice, Anne
He laughed. He didn’t flinch as I faded back into my horrid self.
“Then tell me your name,” he said.
I did.
“Armand,” said Sybelle. “Tell us, what can we do? If not silk scarves, ointments then, aloe, yes, aloe will heal your burns.”
I laughed but only in a small soft way, meant to be purely kindly.
“My aloe is blood, child. I need an evil man, a man who deserves to die. Now, how will I find him?”
“What will this blood do?” asked Benji. He sat right down beside me, leaning over me as though I were the most fascinating specimen. “You know, Armand, you are black as pitch, you are made out of black leather, you are like those people they fish from the bogs in Europe, all shiny with all of you sealed inside. I could take a lesson in muscles from looking at you.”
“Benji, stop,” said Sybelle, struggling with her disapproval and her alarm. “We have to think how to get an evil man.”
“You serious?” he said, looking up and across the bed at her. She stood with her hands clasped as if in prayer. “Sybelle, that’s nothing. It’s how to get rid of him afterwards that’s so hard.” He looked at me. “Do you know what we did with her brother?”
She put her hands over her ears and bowed her head. How many times had I done that very thing myself when it seemed a stream of words and images would utterly destroy me.
“You are so glossy, Armand,” said Benji. “But I can get you an evil man, like that, it’s nothing. You want an evil man? Let’s make a plan.” He bent down over me, as though trying to peer into my brain. I realized suddenly that he was looking at my fangs.
“Benji,” I said, “don’t come any closer. Sybelle, take him away.”
“But what did I do?”
“Nothing,” she said. She dropped her voice, and said desperately, “He’s hungry.”
“Lift the covers off again, will you do that?” I asked. “Lift them off and look at me and let me look into your eyes, and let that be my mirror. I want to see how very bad it is.”
“Hmmm, Armand,” said Benji. “I think you are crazy mad or something.”
Sybelle bent down and with her two careful hands peeled the cover back and down, exposing the length of my body.
I went into her mind.
It was worse than I had ever imagined.
The glossy horror of a bog corpse, as Benji had said, was perfectly true, save for the horror of the full head of red-brown hair and huge, lidless bright brown eyes, and the white teeth arrayed perfectly below and above lips that had shriveled to nothing. Down the tightly drawn wrinkled black leather of the face were heavy red streaks of blood that had been my tears.
I whipped my head to the side and deep into the downy pillow. I felt the covers come up over me.
“This cannot go on for you, even if it could go on for me,” I said. “It’s not what I would have you see another moment, for the longer you live with this, the more like you are to live with anything. No. It cannot continue.”
“Anything,” Sybelle said. She crouched down beside me. “Is my hand cool if I lay it on your forehead? Is it gentle if I touch your hair?”
I looked at her from one narrow-slitted eye.
Her long thin neck was part of her shivering and emaciated loveliness. Her breasts were voluptuous and high. Beyond her in the lovely warm glow of the room, I saw the piano. I thought of these long gentle fingers touching the keys. I could hear in my head the throb of the Appassionata.
There came a loud flick, a crackle, a snap, and then the rich fragrance of fine tobacco.
Benji strode back and forth beyond her, with his black cigarette on his lip.
“I have a plan,” he declared, effortlessly holding forth with the cigarette firmly grasped between his half-open lips. “I go down to the streets. I meet a bad, bad guy in no time. I tell him I’m alone here in this apartment, up here in the hotel, with a man who is drunk and drooling and crazy and we have all this cocaine to sell and I don’t know what to do and I need help with it.”
I started to laugh in spite of the pain.
The little Bedouin shrugged his shoulders and held up his palms, puffing away on the black cigarette, the smoke curling about him like a magical cloud.
“What you think? It will work. Look, I’m a good judge of character. Now, you, Sybelle, you get out of the way, and let me lead this miserable sack of filth, this bad guy whom I lure into my trap, right to the very bed, and pitch him down on his face, like this, I trip him with my foot, like this, and he falls, boink, right into your arms, Armand, what do you think of it? ”
“And if it goes wrong?” I asked.
“Then my beautiful Sybelle cracks him over the head with her hammer.”
“I have a better thought,” I said, “though God knows that what you’ve just devised is unsurpassingly brilliant. You tell him of course that the cocaine is under the coverlet in neat little plastic sacks all stretched out, but if he doesn’t take this bait and come here to see for himself, then let our beautiful Sybelle simply throw back the cover, and when he sees what truly lies in this bed, he’ll be out of here with no thought to harm anyone!”
“That’s it!” Sybelle cried. She clapped her hands together. Her pale luminous eyes were wide.
“That’s perfect,” Benji agreed.
“But mark, don’t carry a copper penny into the streets with you. If only we had but a little bit of the evil white powder with which to bait the beast.”
“But we do,” said Sybelle. “We have just that, a little bit which we took from my brother’s pockets.” She looked down at me thoughtfully, not seeing me but running the plan through the tight coils of her soft and yielding mind. “We took everything out so that when we left him to be found, they’d find nothing with him. There are so many who are left that way in New York. Of course it was an unspeakable chore to drag him.”
“But we have that evil white powder, yes!” said Benji, clasping her shoulder suddenly and then bolting out of my sight to return within the instant with a small flat white cigarette case.
“Put it here, where I can smell what’s inside,” I said. I could see that neither of them knew for certain.
Benji snapped open the lid of the thin silver box. There, nestled in a small plastic bag, folded with impeccable neatness, was the powder with the very exact smell that I wanted it to have. I needn’t put it to my tongue, on which sugar would have tasted just as alien.
“That’s fine. Only empty out half of that at once down a drain, so that there’s just a little left, and leave the silver case here, lest you run into some fool who’ll kill you for it.”
Sybelle shivered with obvious fear. “Benji, I’ll go with you.”
“No, that would be most unwise,” I said. “He can get away from anyone much faster without you.”
“Oh, so right you are!” said Benji, taking the last drag from his cigarette and then crushing it out in a big glass ashtray beside the bed, where a dozen other little white butts were curled waiting for it. “And how many times do I tell her that when I go out for cigarettes in the middle of the night? Does she listen?”
He was off without waiting for an answer. I heard the rush of water from the tap. He was washing away half the cocaine. I let my eyes roam the room, veering away from the soft blood-filled guardian angel.
“There are people innately good,” I said, “who want to help others. You are one of them, Sybelle. I won’t rest as long as you live. I’ll be at your side. I’ll be there always to guard you and to repay you.”
She smiled.
I was astonished.
Her lean face, with its well-shaped pale lips, broke into the freshest and most robust smile, as if neglect and pain had never gnawed at her.
“You’ll be a guardian angel to me, Armand?” she asked.
“Always.”
“I’m off,” Benji declared. With a crackle and snap, he lit another cigarette. His lungs must have been charcoal sacks. “I’m going out into the
night. But what if this son of a bitch is sick or dirty or—.”
“Means nothing to me. Blood’s blood. Just bring him here. Don’t try this fancy tripping with your foot. Wait till you have him right here beside the bed, and as he reaches to lift the cover, you, Sybelle, pull it back, and you, Benji, push on him with all your might, so the side of the bed trips his shins, and he’ll fall into my arms. And after that, I’ll have him.”
He headed for the door.
“Wait,” I whispered. What was I thinking of in my greed? I looked up at her mute smiling face, and then at him, the little engine puffing away on the black cigarette, with nothing on for the fierce winter outside but the damned djellaba.
“No, it has to be done,” said Sybelle with wide eyes. “And Benji will choose a very bad man, won’t you, Benji? An evil man who wants to rob and kill you.”
“I know where to go,” said Benji with a little twisted smile. “Just play your cards when I come back, both of you. Cover him up, Sybelle. Don’t look at the clock. Don’t worry about me!”
Off he went with the slam of the door, the big heavy lock slipping shut behind him automatically.
So it was coming. Blood, thick red blood. It was coming. It was coming, and it would be hot and delicious, and there would be a manful of it, and it was coming, it was coming within seconds.
I closed my eyes, and opening them, I let the room take shape again with its sky-blue draperies on every window, hanging down in rich folds to the floor, and the carpet a great writhing oval of cabbage roses. And she, this stalk of a girl staring at me and smiling her simple sweet smile, as if the crime of the night would be nothing to her.
She came down on her knees next to me, perilously close, and again she touched my hair with delicate hand. Her soft unfettered breasts touched my arm. I read her thoughts as if I read her palm, pushing back through layer after layer of her conscious, seeing the dark winding road again whipping and turning through the Jordan Valley, and the parents driving too fast for the pitch dark and the hairpin curves and the Arab drivers who came on plunging at even greater speed so that each meeting of headlamps became a grueling contest.
“To eat the fish from the Sea of Galilee,” she said, her eyes drifting away from me. “I wanted it. It was my idea we go there. We had one more day in the Holy Land, and they said it’s a long drive from Jerusalem to Nazareth, and I said, ‘But He walked on the water.’ It was to me always the strangest tale. You know it?”
“I do,” I said.
“That He was walking right on the water, as if He’d forgotten the Apostles were there or that anyone might see Him, and they from the boat, said, ‘Lord!’ and He was startled. Such a strange miracle, as if it was all … accidental. I was the one who wanted to go. I was the one who wanted to eat the fresh fish right out of the sea, the same water that Peter and the others had fished. It was my doing. Oh, I don’t say it was my fault that they died. It was my doing. And we were all headed home for my big night at Carnegie Hall, and the record company was set up to record it, live. I’d made a recording before, you know. It had done much better than anyone ever expected. But that night … this night that never happened, that is, I was going to play the Appassionata. It was all that mattered to me. The other sonatas I love, the Moonlight, the Pathétique, but really for me … it was the Appassionata. My Father and Mother were so proud. But my brother, he was the one who always fought, always got me the time, the space, the good piano, the teachers I needed. He was the one who made them see, but then of course, he didn’t have any life at all, and all of us saw what was coming. We’d talk about it round the table at night, that he had to get a life of his own, it was no good his working for me, but then he’d say that I would need him for years to come, I couldn’t even imagine. He’d manage the recordings and the performances and the repertoire, and the fees we asked. The agents couldn’t be trusted. I had no idea, he said, of how high I’d rise.”
She paused, cocking her head to one side, her face earnest yet still simple.
“It wasn’t a decision I made, you understand,” she said. “I just wouldn’t do anything else. They were dead. I just wouldn’t go out. I just wouldn’t answer the phone. I just wouldn’t play anything else. I just wouldn’t listen to what he said. I just wouldn’t plan. I just wouldn’t eat. I just wouldn’t change my clothes. I just played the Appassionata.”
“I understand,” I said softly.
“He brought Benji back with us to take care of me. I always wondered how. I think Benji was bought, you know, bought with cold cash?”
“I know.”
“I think that’s what happened. He couldn’t leave me alone, he said, not even at the King David, that was the hotel—.”
“Yes.”
“—because he said I’d stand in the window without my clothes, or I wouldn’t let the maid come in, and I’d play the piano in the middle of the night and he couldn’t sleep. So he got Benji. I love Benji.”
“I know.”
“I’d always do what Benji said. He never dared to hit Benji. Only towards the end he started to really hurt me. Before that it was slaps, you know, and kicks. Or he’d pull my hair. He’d grab me by the hair, all my hair in one hand, and he’d throw me down on the floor. He did that often. But he didn’t dare to hit Benji. He knew if he hit Benji I’d scream and scream. But then sometimes, when Benji would try to make him stop—. But I’m not so sure about that because I would be so dizzy. My head would ache.”
“I understand,” I said. Of course, he had hit Benji.
She mused, quietly, her eyes large still, and so bright without tears or puckering.
“We’re alike, you and I,” she whispered, looking down at me. Her hand lay close to my cheek, and she very lightly pressed the soft: upper part of her forefinger against me.
“Alike?” I asked. “What in the world can you be thinking of?”
“Monsters,” she said. “Children.”
I smiled. But she didn’t smile. She looked dreamy.
“I was so glad when you came,” she said. “I knew he was dead. I knew when you stood at the end of the piano and you looked at me. I knew when you stood there listening to me. I was so happy that there was someone who could kill him.”
“Do this for me,” I said.
“What?” she asked. “Armand, I’ll do anything.”
“Go to the piano now. Play it for me. Play the Appassionata.”
“But the plan,” she asked in a small wondering voice. “The evil man, he’s coming.”
“Leave this to Benji and me. Don’t turn around to look. Just play the Appassionata.”
“No, please,” she asked gently.
“But why not?” I said. “Why must you put yourself through such an ordeal?”
“You don’t understand,” she said with the widest eyes. “I want to see it!”
22
Benji had just returned below. The distant sound of his voice, quite inaudible to Sybelle, instantly drove back the pain from all the surfaces of my limbs.
“That’s what I mean, you see,” he was talking away, “it’s all underneath the dead body, and we don’t wanna lift it, the dead body, and you being a cop, you know, you being Drug Enforcement, they said you would know how to take care of it …”
I started to laugh. He had really done himself proud. I looked again at Sybelle, who was staring at me with a quiet resolute expression, one of profound intelligence and reflection.
“Push this cover up over my face,” I said, “and move away, far away. He’s bringing us a regular prince of rogues. Hurry.”
She snapped into action. I could smell the blood of this victim already, though he was still in the ascending elevator, talking to Benji in low guarded terms.
“And all this you just happen to have in this apartment, you and she, and there’s nobody else in on this?”
Oh, he was a beauty. I heard the murderer in his voice.
“I told you everything,” Benji said in the most natural of little
voices. “You just help with this, you know, I can’t have the police coming in here!” Whisper. “This is a fine hotel. How did I know this guy was going to die here! We don’t use this stuff, you take the stuff, just get the body out of here. Now let me tell you—.”
The elevator opened to our floor.
“—this body is pretty messed up, so don’t go all slobbering on me when you see it.”
“Slobbering on you,” growled the victim under his breath. Their shoes made soft hastening sounds on the carpet.
Benji fumbled with his keys, pretending to be mixed up.
“Sybelle,” he called out in warning. “Sybelle, open the door.”
“Don’t do it,” I said in a low voice.
“Of course not,” came her velvety answer.
The barrels of the big lock turned.
“And this guy just happens to come up here and die on you with all this stuff.”
“Well, not exactly,” said Benji, “but you made a bargain with me, no, I expect you to stick to it.”
“Look, you little guttersnipe, I didn’t make any bargain with you.”
“Okay, then maybe I call the regular police then. I know you. Everybody in the bar knows you, who you are, you’re always around. What are you going to do, big shot? Kill me?”
The door closed behind them. The smell of the man’s blood flooded the apartment. He was besotted with brandy and had the poison cocaine in his veins as well, but none of this would make a particle of difference to my cleansing thirst. I could scarce contain myself. I felt my limbs tighten and try to flex beneath the coverlet.
“Well, isn’t she the perfect princess,” he said, his eyes obviously having fallen on Sybelle. Sybelle made no answer.
“Never mind her, you look there, under the covers. Sybelle, you come here by me. Come on, Sybelle.”
“Under there? You’re telling me the body’s under there, and the cocaine is under the body?”
“How many times I have to tell you?” asked Benji, no doubt with his characteristic shrug. “Look, what part don’t you understand, I’d like to know. You don’t want this cocaine? I give it away. I’ll be very popular in your favorite bar. Come on, Sybelle, this man says he will help, then he won’t help, talk, talk, talk, typical government sleaze.”