A Fine and Private Place

by Peter S. Beagle

  Mr. Rebeck nodded. Surprisingly enough, he had always been able to keep track of Mrs. Klapper's relatives, a thing she herself was not always able to do. More, he enjoyed hearing about them. They were the only people outside the cemetery he knew anything about, and he had decided that he liked them very much, except for the two cousins that Mrs. Klapper couldn't stand.

  "So fine," Mrs. Klapper went on. "I came over about six, and my sister and brother went to the concert and I played with Linda. Such a doll, that one, it's a privilege to sit with her. She's supposed to go to bed at seven, but I let her stay up till seven-thirty, we're having such a good time. Anyway, I'm putting her to bed, tucking her in, good night, Linda, and she grabs me and says, 'Tell me a story.'"

  Now she was both herself and Linda, switching from character to character, woman to child to woman, with the electric ease of a traffic light changing colors. "A story? All right, God help me, what kind of a story? And she says, 'The little red hen.' Thank God, this one at least I know. I'm the only woman in the world doesn't know 'Sleeping Beauty,' but the little red hen I know like my hand. So I start telling her about the little red hen, she lives on a farm with all the other animals, and she gets it into her head she's got to bake a loaf bread. You know the one I mean?"

  "Yes," Mr. Rebeck said. "I can't tell it very well, but I know it."

  "Well, I'm going along, I'm telling the story, and suddenly this Linda, she sits up and gives me a big look like you can't trust anybody any more, and she says, 'That's not the little red hen!' Now, she's a lovely girl and all that, but this fairy tale I know, so I say, 'Sure it's the little red hen. Would I lie to you, Linda?' And she says, 'That's not the little red hen!' and I think, Gevalt, in a minute she's going to start crying, what'll I do? So I say, 'Okay, maybe there's two stories about the little red hen. You tell me the one you know.' So she doesn't cry, thank God, she starts telling me this big story about the little red hen, she's got this deal where she has to lay an egg every day or off with the head, we'll buy our egg from the A & P. A whole story she tells me, I never heard it before, I'm sitting there with my mouth open."

  She spread her arms and looked helplessly at Mr. Rebeck. "Rebeck, tell me, are there maybe two stories about the little red hen, or is she making the whole thing up? I don't know. I just sat there."

  Mr. Rebeck was laughing. He had begun to laugh midway through the story, accompanied her to the end, and showed no immediate signs of stopping. He laughed quietly and happily, like a man remembering a funny thing that happened a long time ago.

  "I only know the story you know," he said when he finally stopped laughing. "I think Linda got it confused with some other fairy tale."

  Mrs. Klapper shook her head doubtfully. "She told it like she knew it by heart. She went right straight through it, and, boom, she fell asleep." She shook her head again and began to laugh. "Ai, is that a Linda. Next time I come to sit for her, she says, 'Tell me a story,' I'll say, 'Okay, but decide, your way or mine?' "

  When they stopped laughing, and they did not stop suddenly, but let it trail away, silence for a moment and then a snort of new laughter from one, in which the other promptly joined, but when the laughter was finally used up, then they looked almost shyly at each other and said nothing. Once Mr. Rebeck chuckled reminiscently to himself, but Mrs. Klapper did not join in again. He looked away from her and had stopped laughing when he looked back. There was still nothing to say. Mrs. Klapper smoothed her dress again with a nervous, patting motion.

  "Rebeck," she began, "I was thinking—"

  "Why do you always wear gloves?" Mr. Rebeck forestalled her. "I never understood it. How can you wear gloves in weather like this?"

  "I bite my nails sometimes." Mrs. Klapper kept her hands firmly in her lap. "Since Morris died, I catch myself biting my nails, like a little girl. I don't know why."

  "I was wondering," Mr. Rebeck said.

  Mrs. Klapper looked down at her hands. She took a quick, shallow breath. "Rebeck. About the raincoat."

  "Are we back to that?" Mr. Rebeck asked sadly. "I thought you said we'd talk about it later."

  "So I'm a big liar. Rebeck, I'm asking you, take the raincoat. Do me a favor, take the raincoat. Why make such a big thing out of it?"

  "I'm not," Mr. Rebeck said. "You are. Gertrude, let's forget the whole thing. Let's talk about something else. Maybe you could bring some cookies someday. I like cookies, and I haven't had any in years. Now that would be a favor."

  He spoke lightly, hoping to make her laugh again, but the effort failed, as he knew it would. He had been afraid that something like this would happen one day, but he had avoided thinking about what he would do when the day came. Forewarned, knowing that something very good in his life was changing, quite possibly for the worse, he blamed himself for being unprepared, for having been always unprepared. He had foreseen every such change in his fortune, ignored it always, and called the refusal innocence.

  "I wake up at night," Mrs. Klapper said softly. "I look out the window and it's raining and I think, Rebeck's out there and it's raining on him. What is he, a bum, a thief, he should run around in the rain without even a coat? I lie awake and I worry."

  "I wish you wouldn't," Mr. Rebeck said. "You don't have to worry about me. I don't."

  "All right, you don't. I worry. Forgive me, I'm an old woman. So I say to myself, What's the matter, you can't give him anything to keep warm? You're bankrupt, you're burning the furniture to cook dinner? Klapper, you've got a house full of raincoats, bring him one and stop losing sleep. So I look around in the closet and I pick out a nice raincoat, and I think, This one looks good, Morris won't mind if I take it to Rebeck, it's clean—" She stopped abruptly, even before Mr. Rebeck spoke.

  "Oh," he said, mildly enough. "This was your husband's coat?"

  "Sure. What's wrong?" A defensive note had crept into Mrs. Klapper's voice. "Mine wouldn't fit you. Morris's coat is just right, a little big, maybe. It looks brand new. Try it on, see how good it looks." She held it out again. "Try it on."

  "I don't want it," Mr. Rebeck said. He pushed it away, without force but completely without gentleness.

  "Why? What is this? Something's bad about wearing Morris's raincoat? Tell me, Rebeck. Morris wore it a little, so it's no good?"

  "I am not going to wear your husband's clothes," Mr. Rebeck said. "I am not going to wear anybody's clothes but my own. Most of all, I am not going to wear Morris's clothes. Not his raincoat, not his hat, not his pants, not his shoes. Nothing." He spoke faster, getting angrier as he went along. "And while we're talking about it, I am beginning to get tired of hearing about your husband."

  "I see," Mrs. Klapper said. A calmer man might have noticed the storm warnings flying over her quiet voice. In all probability Mr. Rebeck, who was a calm man, did notice them and took pleasure in ignoring them.

  "The first time you saw me," he said, "you thought I was your husband's ghost. Since then, I've had a lot of moments when I wished I was. We spend most of our time talking about Morris, we visit his mausoleum, which has everything for him except a hot plate in case he gets hungry, we speculate on what he might have become if he hadn't died. You tell me how wonderful he was, you tell me how much like him I look, and now you bring me his clothes to wear."

  "His raincoat," Mrs. Klapper said. Her voice was a tight and humming wire. "One raincoat."

  "That isn't important. I don't want to look like him, not even a little, and I don't want you ever to mistake me for him again, even for a second. I don't care how wonderful he was—in fact I hope to God that he wasn't as great a man as you think he was. He'd have been unhuman and unbearable."

  On an impulse, he took her white-gloved hand in his own and gripped it tightly. "Gertrude, I'm sure he was a fine man, or you wouldn't have married him. He was probably better at a great many things than I, better than most people. But he's dead"—he felt her hand buck and wrench in his, but he held it as tightly as he could—"and it is no honor to the dead to remember them as they wer
e not, to think of them as better than they were. I don't want his clothes or his face. I don't want anything that belongs to him."

  Mrs. Klapper pulled her hand free then, as though his hand were a hook from which her own had to be torn with one terrible wrench.

  "What do you want?" she cried. "You want me to forget him? You want it to be like there never was any Morris? You want that?"

  "No, I don't want that, and you know it. I want you to stop talking about him as if he were alive and listening. I want you to stop kidding yourself!"

  "Kidding myself?" Mrs. Klapper's laugh was strident and forced, not so much a laugh as an amplified gasp of anguish. "I'm kidding myself?" She swept her arm in an arc that took in all the cemetery they could see from where they sat. "Look who's talking! Look who lives in a grave, like a dead one, and tells me I shouldn't kid myself! Come out of the grave and tell me again, Rebeck."

  "That has nothing to do with what I'm saying," Mr. Rebeck said. "Nothing at all. We're not talking about the way I live."

  "I'm talking about it!" Mrs. Klapper tapped her chest with a forefinger. "You listen to me a minute, you've got the chutzpah to tell me I'm kidding myself. What kind of way is this for a man to live? Since when does a man, a human being, live in a graveyard, eating a couple of sandwiches a day, running around in the night getting soaked to his bones, hiding from people, talking to himself, going crazy alone? You think a man lives like this? You know who lives like this? Animals. Crazy, sad animals. What are you, a crazy animal?"

  Mr. Rebeck opened his mouth to speak, but she waved the words back into his throat. "You think this is a good place to hide?" she demanded, pointing at him. "You think maybe you belong here, the dead people are saying, 'Come on in, Rebeck, where you been, we were so worried'? You don't belong here. You could live here a hundred years, you wouldn't belong here. You're a human being, live like a human being, not like a crazy animal hiding in a hole. Don't tell me I'm kidding myself, Rebeck."

  Her dark hair had become a little awry, and the foolish crescent hat was skidding slowly over her forehead. Her face was very pale, and her eyes seemed blacker and more angrily alive by contrast. When she spoke again, it was in a quieter voice. The movements of her lips were less definite and less scornful.

  "Maybe I do, a little. I wouldn't deny it. Maybe it wasn't always New Year's Eve, being married to Morris. That's not saying he wasn't a great man, understand that. There was nobody like Morris. But all right, so maybe I make it sound a little better than it was, who am I hurting? An old woman remembers things a little bit cockeyed, it's her privilege, she's not hurting anybody, not even herself. But a man tells himself, 'I'm a ghost, I'm a ghost, I'm only happy with dead people,' he's hurting himself, he's hurting his friends. A man should live with men, not in a graveyard where it's cold at night, he's got nothing to keep himself warm. Okay, I'm kidding myself, you're kidding yourself, only it's not the same thing. Don't tell me it's the same thing, because I know better."

  "I live here," Mr. Rebeck snapped. They were standing on the steps now, shouting at each other. He could feel the cool, tickling trickles of sweat sliding down his sides under his shirt. "I like it here. This place, this dark city, is as much my home as any place on earth is ever anybody's home. I can't live anywhere else. I tried. I tried for a long time. Now I live here and I'm happy. A man should live where he fits, and if he doesn't fit anywhere he should try to squeeze himself in somewhere where he won't hurt anyone and where nobody will notice him. I've been lucky in finding a place to live, luckier than a lot of men. They're still looking."

  "You think this is living? This is eating, nothing else." Mrs. Klapper grabbed at the crescent hat a moment before it fell off her forehead and shoved it to the back of her head, where it remained, tipping from side to side, like a seasick bird. "You're like all those yentas where I live, you sit in the sun and wait for your wings to grow. You want to live somewhere, live in a house. That's where people live."

  At any other time, Mr. Rebeck would never have taken advantage of the opening she had unwittingly given him, even had he noticed it, which is doubtful. Now he drove through it, his anger tucked like a skull under his arm.

  "Is it? Then tell me why you keep calling Morris's mausoleum his big house?"

  In the silence they heard the sound of an engine, and they both looked up the path to see the caretakers' pickup truck turning in off Central Avenue. Even at that distance Mr. Rebeck was able to recognize it. It was olive green, for the most part, with rusty fenders and a wide paintless patch on the driver's door—Campos had once managed to get it caught in a funeral motorcade. The engine harrumphed like a Congressman, and the rim of the hood was bent up and out on one side, so that the truck wore an impersonal sneer.

  Mr. Rebeck was not at first alarmed when he saw the truck, because he associated it with Campos, who loved it and drove it most of the time. But he saw Walters' blond head above the steering wheel and, as he had done so often that he no longer thought of it as running, he fled up the steps to the mausoleum door. There he paused with the iron of the doorknob under his hand and turned, expecting to see Mrs. Klapper's face wrinkled with mockery, waiting to hear her voice, that could be like the bitter shriek of knives against each other, jeering at him. He hoped, in a way, that she would, so that he would not miss her when she did not come again. For he was sure she would not return, and he feared remembering her.

  But she only looked at the truck and then at him, and she said quietly, "It's too late, Rebeck. He's seen you. Come back."

  And he came down the steps, taking them carefully so as not to stumble, and he stood beside her on the bottom step and waited with her for the oncoming truck.

  Walters brought the truck to a hiccuping stop before them and cut the motor. He leaned out of the cab and demanded, "You people together?"

  "Yes," Mr. Rebeck answered. He hoped that Walters would not recognize him. They had met twice before, and both times Mr. Rebeck had pretended to be a visitor. He tried vaguely to make his voice different.

  "Well, don't you know the place closes at five? It's ten to five now."

  "My," Mrs. Klapper marveled. "Look how the time flies. We just got here a minute ago, it seems like." She narrowed her eyes suspiciously and raised a finger at Walters. "You're sure it's ten to five?"

  "I'm sure, lady," Walters answered, but he looked at his watch. "You don't get down to the gate in a hurry, they'll lock you in. And this ain't no place I'd want to spend the night."

  "Well." Mrs. Klapper turned questioningly to Mr. Rebeck. "I guess maybe we better be going, huh?" Mr. Rebeck nodded.

  Walters looked at his watch again. "You'll never make it in ten minutes. They'll lock you in. Hop in and I'll give you a ride down. Come on."

  Mrs. Klapper glanced quickly at Mr. Rebeck, but no word passed between them. She turned back to Walters and shook her head. "Thanks a lot, but no. You just go and tell the people at the gate we'll be a little bit late, they shouldn't lock up right away."

  "Come on, come on," Walters said impatiently. "It'll take you a half-hour to walk it. They ain't going to wait that long for anybody."

  "So the night man will let us out," Mrs. Klapper replied calmly. "Anyway, we can't ride with you, thank you. I lost something on the way and we have to find it."

  "Yeah? What'd you lose? We got a Lost and Found in the office."

  Mr. Rebeck correctly interpreted Mrs. Klapper's look at him as a howl for help. He remembered having said, "Fear nothing," to her in jest, and he wondered if she remembered too. He had thrown it off very lightly.

  "A ring," he said. "On the way up here, she lost a very small ring. We're going to look for it on the way back. That's why we want to walk."

  Walters slapped his forehead. "Jesus Christ, you can't go looking for a ring now. It'll take you hours, a little thing like a ring. Come back tomorrow."

  "It wasn't that small a ring," Mrs. Klapper said indignantly. "Do I look like the kind of woman would wear a little tiny Woolworth ring? We'll
find it, and it won't take us so long, either. You just tell the people at the gate not to be in such a hurry, we'll be right along."

  "Look, lady—" Walters began, but he did not finish. Mrs. Klapper occasionally had that effect on people, Mr. Rebeck noticed. He felt sorry for Walters.

  "Thank you for offering us a ride," he said. "And don't worry. We won't take long."

  "Yes, thank you very much," Mrs. Klapper said, as if she were daring Walters to make something of it. "You're a very nice young man."

  "Jesus God," Walters said. It sounded almost like a prayer. He turned on the ignition, and the engine snorted with a kind of baleful humor.

  "I'll leave the gate unlocked," he said to the steering wheel. "Tell the man at the gate when you leave. Would you do that for me?"

  "Certainly," Mr. Rebeck said grandly. "We'd be glad to."

  "And watch it with the truck," Mrs. Klapper called as Walters drove away. "Don't go running over the ring, it's very valuable." They watched the truck shudder along the path and out of sight on Central Avenue.

  They had intended to laugh when it was safe, fully intended to sit down on the steps and laugh together, louder than they ever had. Neither one had spoken this intention to the other, but it had been completely understood while they were talking to Walters. But they looked warily at each other and remembered that, five minutes before, each had come very near to destroying the other for the other's Own Good. Neither was quite certain that the destruction had not actually been accomplished, and each cautiously watched the other move and did not dare to speak for fear that one might now have no tongue and the other no ears. They moved as if they were wading or picking themselves out of wreckage.