A Widow for One Year

by John Irving

  Ruth instantly regretted that she’d not unzipped her jacket; it was stifling in the wardrobe closet, but Rooie had already admitted her customer to the small red room. Ruth didn’t dare move; besides, the zipper would have made a sound.

  The man seemed disconcerted by all the mirrors. Ruth had only the briefest glimpse of his face before she deliberately looked away. She didn’t want to see his face; there was something inappropriately bland about it. Ruth watched Rooie instead.

  The prostitute removed her bra; today it was black. She was about to remove her black panties, but the man stopped her. “It’s not necessary,” he said. Rooie appeared to be disappointed. (Probably for my benefit, thought Ruth.)

  “It costs the same, whether you look or touch,” Rooie told the blandfaced man. “Seventy-five guilders.” But her customer apparently knew what it cost—he had the money in his hand. He’d been carrying the bills in his overcoat pocket; he must have taken the money out of his wallet before he came into the room.

  “No touching—just looking,” the man said. For the first time, Ruth thought that he spoke English with a German-sounding accent. When Rooie reached for his crotch, he sidestepped her hand; he didn’t let her touch him.

  He was bald and smooth-faced with an egg-shaped head and a nondescript body—not very big. His clothing was nondescript, too. The charcoal-gray trousers of his suit were loose-fitting, even baggy, but the pants were crisply pressed. The black overcoat had a bulky appearance, as if it were a size too large. The top button of his white shirt was unbuttoned, and he’d loosened his tie.

  “What do you do?” Rooie asked him.

  “Security systems,” the man mumbled. “SAS,” Ruth thought he added—she couldn’t be sure. Did he mean the airline? “It’s a good business,” Ruth heard him say. “Lie on your side, please,” he told Rooie.

  Rooie curled herself up on the bed like a little girl, facing him. She drew her knees up to her breasts, hugging herself, as if she were cold, and gazing at the man with a coquettish smile.

  The man stood over her, looking down. He’d dropped his heavylooking briefcase in the blow-job chair, where Ruth could no longer see it. It was a misshapen leather briefcase of the kind a professor or a schoolteacher might carry.

  As if in reverence of Rooie’s curled figure, the man knelt on the rug beside her bed, his overcoat trailing on the broadloom. A long sigh escaped him. It was then that Ruth heard him wheeze; his breathing was distinguished by a bronchial-sounding whistle. “Straighten your legs, please,” the man said. “And reach over your head, as if you’re stretching. Pretend you’re just waking up in the morning,” he added, almost breathlessly.

  Rooie stretched—fetchingly, Ruth thought—but the asthmatic wasn’t satisfied. “Try yawning,” he suggested. Rooie faked a yawn. “No, a real yawn—with your eyes closed.”

  “Sorry—I don’t close my eyes,” Rooie told him. Ruth realized that Rooie was afraid. It was as sudden as knowing a door or a window had been opened because of a change in the air.

  “Perhaps you could kneel?” the man asked, still wheezing. Rooie seemed relieved to kneel. She knelt on the towel on her bed, resting her elbows and her head on the pillow. She peered sideways at the man; her hair had fallen a little forward, partially hiding her face, but she could still see him. She never took her eyes off him.

  “Yes!” the man gasped enthusiastically. He clapped his hands, just twice, and swayed from side to side on his knees. “Now shake your head!” the man told Rooie. “Toss your hair all around!”

  In an opposing mirror, on the far side of the prostitute’s bed, Ruth caught a second, unwanted glimpse of the man’s flushed face. His small, squinty eyes were partially closed; it was as if his eyelids were growing over his eyes—like the blind eyes of a mole.

  Ruth’s own eyes darted to the mirror opposite the wardrobe closet; she was afraid she would see some movement behind the slightly parted curtain, or that there would be a detectable tremble in her shoes. The clothes in the closet seemed to gather themselves around her.

  Rooie, as instructed, shook her head—her hair falling over her face. For not more than a second— maybe two or three—her hair covered her eyes, but that was all the time the moleman needed. He lunged forward, his chest dropping on the back of Rooie’s head and neck, his chin on her spine. He clamped his right forearm across her throat; then he grabbed hold of his right wrist with his left hand, and squeezed. He slowly got off his knees, coming to his feet with the back of Rooie’s head and neck pressed to his chest—his right forearm crushing her throat.

  Several seconds passed before Ruth realized that Rooie couldn’t breathe. The man’s bronchial whistle was the only sound Ruth could hear. Rooie’s thin arms flailed silently in the air. One of her legs was bent beneath her on the bed, and the other leg kicked straight out behind her so that her left high-heeled shoe shot off her foot and struck the partially open door to the WC. The sound got the strangler’s attention; he wheeled his head around, as if he expected to see someone sitting on the toilet. At the sight of Rooie’s far-flung shoe, he smiled with relief; he returned his attention to suffocating the prostitute.

  A rivulet of sweat ran between Ruth’s breasts. She thought of bolting for the door, but she knew the door was locked and she had no idea how to unlock it. She could imagine the man pulling her back into the room, his forearm collapsing her windpipe, too, until her arms and legs were as limp as Rooie’s.

  Involuntarily, Ruth’s right hand opened and closed. (If only she’d had a squash racquet, she would later think.) But Ruth’s fear so immobilized her that she did nothing to help Rooie—a memory of herself that she would never forget or forgive. It was as if the clothes in the prostitute’s closet had held her.

  By now Rooie was no longer kicking. The ankle of her one bare foot dragged on the rug as the wheezing man appeared to dance with her. He’d released her throat so that her head was thrown back in the crook of his arm; his mouth and nose nuzzled the side of her neck as he shuffled back and forth with her in his arms. Rooie’s arms hung at her sides, her fingers brushing her bare thighs. With an extreme gentleness, as if he were doing his utmost not to wake a sleeping child, the moleman returned Rooie to her bed and once more knelt beside her.

  Ruth could not help feeling that it was with intense recrimination that the prostitute’s wide-open eyes stared at the narrow part in the wardrobe-closet curtain. Apparently the murderer didn’t like the look in Rooie’s eyes, either. He delicately closed them with his thumb and index finger. Then he took a tissue from the box on Rooie’s bedside table, and, with the tissue as a barrier between himself and some imagined disease, he poked the prostitute’s tongue back inside her mouth.

  The problem was that the dead prostitute’s mouth would not stay shut; her lips had remained parted, and her chin had dropped down to her chest. The wheezing man impatiently turned Rooie’s face to one side, propping up her chin with the pillow. The unnaturalness of the prostitute’s pose obviously vexed him. He sighed a short, irritated sigh, followed by a high-pitched, rasping wheeze, and then he tried to attend to the matter of Rooie’s sprawling limbs. But he could not bend her into the position he desired. Either an arm slid here or a leg flopped there. At one point, the moleman became so exasperated that he sunk his teeth into Rooie’s bare shoulder. His bite broke the skin, but Rooie bled very little—her heart had already stopped.

  Ruth held her breath; almost a minute later, she realized that she shouldn’t have. When she needed to breathe again, she had to take a big breath; and for several breaths thereafter, she virtually gasped for air. By the way the murderer stiffened, Ruth could tell that he’d heard her; at least he’d heard something . The killer instantly stopped fussing over Rooie’s most desirable pose; he stopped wheezing, too. He held his own breath and listened. Although Ruth had not coughed for several days, her cough was now threatening to come back; there was a telltale tickle at the back of her throat.

  The moleman slowly stood up, scanning all
the mirrors in the red room. Ruth knew very well what the killer thought he had heard: he’d heard the sound of someone trying not to make a sound— that’s what he’d heard. And so the murderer held his breath, and stopped wheezing, and looked all around. The way his nose twitched, it appeared to Ruth that the moleman was sniffing for her, too.

  To calm herself, Ruth didn’t look at him; instead, she stared at the mirror opposite the wardrobe closet. She tried to see herself in the narrow slit where the curtain was parted; she picked out her shoes among the shoes pointed toes-out beneath the curtain. After a while, Ruth could make out the bottom hem of her black jeans. If she looked hard enough, she could see her feet in one pair of those shoes. And her ankles and shins . . .

  Suddenly the killer began to cough; he made a terrible, sucking sound that convulsed his entire body. By the time the moleman stopped coughing, Ruth had regained control of her own breathing.

  The secret to absolute stillness is absolute concentration. “In the whole rest of your life,” Eddie O’Hare had told her when she was a little girl, “if you ever need to feel brave, just look at your scar.” But Ruth couldn’t see her right index finger without moving either her head or her hand. Instead she concentrated on A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound . Of her father’s stories, all of which she knew by heart, she knew this one best. There was also a moleman in it.

  “Imagine a mole twice the size of a child, but half the size of most adults. This mole walked upright, like a man, and so he was called the moleman. He wore baggy pants, which hid his tail, and old tennis shoes that helped him to be quick and quiet.”

  The first illustration is of Ruth and her father coming in the front door of the Sagaponack house; they are holding hands as they cross the threshold into the front hall, which is flooded with sunlight. Ruth and her father don’t even glance at the coat tree in the corner. Standing there, partially hidden by the coat tree, is the big mole.

  “The moleman’s job was hunting little girls. He liked to catch them and carry them back underground with him, where he kept them for a week or two. The little girls didn’t like it underground. When the moleman finally let them go, they would have dirt in their ears and dirt in their eyes—and they would need to wash their hair every day for ten days before they stopped smelling like earthworms.”

  The second illustration is a medium close-up of the moleman hiding under a standing lamp in the dining room while Ruth and her father are eating their supper. The moleman has a curved head that comes to a point, like a spade, and no external ears. The small, vestigial eyes are nothing but subtle indentations in his furry face. The five broad-clawed toes of his forepaws make his paws resemble paddles. His nose, like the nose of a star-nosed mole, is composed of twentytwo pink tentacle-like touch organs. (The pink of the moleman’s starshaped nose is the only color other than brown or black in any of Ted Cole’s drawings.)

  “The moleman was blind, and his ears were so small that they fit inside his head. He couldn’t see the little girls, and he could barely hear them. But he could smell them with his star-shaped nose—he could smell them especially well when they were alone. And his fur was velvety—you could brush it in any direction without resistance. If a little girl stood too close to him, she could not resist touching his fur. Then, of course, the moleman would know she was there.

  “When Ruthie and her daddy finished dinner, Ruthie’s daddy said: ‘We’re out of ice cream. I’ll go to the store and get some ice cream, if you clear our dishes from the table.’

  “ ‘Okay, Daddy,’ Ruthie told him.

  “But that meant she would be alone with the moleman. Ruthie didn’t realize that the moleman was in the dining room until after her daddy had gone.”

  The third illustration is of Ruth carrying some dishes and silverware into the kitchen. She keeps a wary eye on the moleman, who has emerged from under the standing lamp, his star-nosed snout thrust forward—sniffing for her.

  “Ruthie was careful not to drop a knife or a fork, because even a mole can hear a sound as loud as that. And although she could see him, she knew that the moleman couldn’t see her. At first Ruthie went straight to the garbage; she tried putting old eggshells and coffee grounds in her hair, so that she wouldn’t smell like a little girl, but the moleman heard the eggshells cracking. And besides, he liked the smell of coffee grounds. Something smells like earthworms! the moleman thought, sniffing closer and closer to Ruthie.”

  There is a fourth illustration of Ruth running up the carpeted stairs, the coffee grounds and eggshells falling out of her hair behind her. At the foot of the stairs, staring blindly after her—his star-nosed snout pointed up the stairwell—is the moleman. One of his old tennis shoes has already crept onto the bottom step of the stairs.

  “Ruthie ran upstairs. She had to get rid of the coffee grounds and eggshells. She had to try to smell like her daddy instead! And so she dressed herself in his unwashed laundry, she put his shaving cream in her hair. She even rubbed her face with the soles of his shoes, which she realized was a bad idea. Moles like dirt. She scrubbed the dirt off and put on more shaving cream, but she had to hurry—it would be a very bad idea to be trapped upstairs with the moleman. And so she tried to sneak past him on the stairs.”

  The fifth illustration: on the center landing of the stairs, the moleman is halfway up; Ruth—in her father’s old clothes, and covered with shaving cream—is halfway down. They are close enough to touch each other.

  “The moleman smelled an adult sort of smell, which he shrank away from. But Ruthie had got some shaving cream up her nose. She needed to sneeze. Even a mole can hear a sneeze. Ruthie tried to stop a sneeze three times, which is no fun—it makes your ears feel awful. And each time she made a small sound that the moleman could faintly hear. He cocked his head in her direction.

  “What was that sound? he was thinking. How he wished he had external ears! It had been a sound like someone trying not to make a sound. He went on listening. He went on sniffing, too, while Ruthie didn’t dare move. She just stood there, trying not to sneeze. She also had to try hard not to touch the moleman. His fur looked so velvety!

  “What is that smell? the moleman kept thinking. Boy, did some guy need to change his clothes! The same guy must have been shaving three times a day. And somebody had touched the bottom of a shoe. Somebody had broken an egg, too—and spilled some coffee. Someone is a mess ! the moleman thought. But somewhere, in all of that, there was a little girl who smelled almost alone. The moleman knew this because he could smell her baby powder. After her bath, the moleman was thinking, she puts baby powder in her armpits and between her toes. This was one of those wonderful things that impressed the moleman about little girls.

  “His fur looks so soft, I think I’ll faint—or sneeze, Ruthie thought.”

  In the sixth illustration, a close-up of Ruth and the moleman on the center landing of the stairs, his paddle of a forepaw is reaching out to her; a long claw is about to touch her face. Her small hand is reaching out to him, too—her hand is about to stroke the velvety fur on the moleman’s chest.

  “ ‘It’s me—I’m home!’ Ruthie’s daddy cried. ‘I got two flavors!’

  “Ruthie sneezed. Some of the shaving cream was sprayed on the moleman. He hated shaving cream. And it’s not easy to run when you’re blind. The moleman bumped into the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. He tried to hide behind the coat tree in the front hall again, but Ruthie’s daddy saw him and grabbed him by the seat of his baggy pants, where his tail was, and threw him out the front door.

  “Then Ruthie got a special treat. She was allowed to eat two flavors of ice cream and take a bath at the same time, because no one should go to bed smelling of old laundry and shaving cream and eggshells and coffee grounds—and only a little bit of baby powder. Little girls should go to bed smelling of lots of baby powder, and nothing else.”

  In the seventh illustration—“one for every day of the week,” Ted Cole had said—there is Ruth tucked into her bed. H
er father has left the door open to the master bathroom, so that its night-light is visible. Through a part in the window curtain, we can see the black of night and a distant moon. And on the outside window ledge, the moleman is curled up—as snugly asleep as if he were underground. His paddle-shaped paws with their broad claws hide his face, all but the fleshy-pink star of his nose; at least eleven of the twenty-two pink tentacle-like touch organs are pressed against the glass of Ruth’s bedroom window.

  For months—among the other models posing for her father—a succession of dead star-nosed moles had made Ted’s workroom as unapproachable as the squid ink had ever made it. And once, in a plastic bag, Ruth had found a star-nosed mole in the freezer, where she’d gone looking for a Popsicle.

  Only Eduardo Gomez hadn’t seemed to mind—for the gardener had an implacable hatred of moles of any kind. The job of providing Ted with sufficient numbers of star-nosed moles had soothed Eduardo’s disposition noticeably.

  That had been the long fall after Ruth’s mother and Eddie O’Hare had left.

  The story had been written, and rewritten, over the summer of ’58, but the illustrations had come later. All of Ted Cole’s publishers—and his translators, too—had begged Ted to change the title. They’d wanted him to call the book The Moleman, of course, but Ted had insisted that the book be called A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound, because his daughter had given him the idea.

  And now—in the small red room with Rooie’s murderer—Ruth Cole tried to calm herself by thinking about the brave little girl named Ruthie who had once shared the center landing of the stairs with a mole that was twice her size. At last Ruth dared to move her eyes, just her eyes. She wanted to see what the murderer was doing; his wheezing was driving her crazy, but she could also hear him moving around, and the dim room had become slightly dimmer.