King Coffin: A Novel

by Conrad Aiken

  —Not so easy. But there might be ways——

  —What.

  —If you want to go into the house, you could pretend to be canvassing for something. There’d be a risk in it but not much—if you went in the daytime, which you would, you’d see only his wife, or whoever lives there, and even if——

  —What.

  —Even if in your supposed role as an eventual murderer you later kill her husband she would have, presumably, no special reason for connecting you with it, or even for recalling your visit.

  —Not a bad idea. But for one thing, I’m beginning to be uneasy about appearing in that neighborhood too much—as you’ve probably noticed, there is always a postman about, or a policeman. What about that.

  —Yes, I know. It’s not too easy. Have you thought of using a car?

  —A car?

  —Yes, a car. It’s of course one of the recognized devices—you sit in the car a little way off, it prevents your having to dodge about behind telephone poles day after day, and so on. I told you I used one that time in Brookline.

  —I hadn’t thought of it—it might be a good idea. You mean, hire one.

  —Yes.

  —I’ll keep it in mind.

  —Or if there happens to be an apartment vacant across the street——

  —There isn’t.

  —How long do you propose going on with it, anyway? After all, there isn’t much to gain after a certain point——

  —My dear Toppan you’re sometimes very stupid. In a pure study of this sort there can be no limit.

  —Incidentally, that time you had him call you on the telephone—isn’t there a weakness there?

  —You mean he’d have a record of the number? No. The occupant of that apartment has been carefully instructed, if Kazis calls again, to say that the whole project is off, and without mentioning any names. It would be a dead end in any inquiry—completely.

  —Do you think it’s quite fair to use Gerta for that?

  —Did I say it was Gerta?

  —It’s fairly obvious.

  —You’re quite mistaken. It isn’t.

  —In that case I’m relieved.

  —Keep the change.

  There was a pause—he walked to the piano, touched one note, felt a little defrauded, the thing was not going exactly as planned, the tone was wrong, as out of key—somehow—as this too-vibrant c-sharp. He said:

  —I’m afraid you’re not much help, but thanks just the same. There’s one thing further—I must remind you that I expect you to treat all this in the strictest confidence. And since you mention Gerta, I’ll repeat what I said to you before, I think perhaps you’re forgetting it a little—I don’t want any interference there. I won’t go into details, but there is a very delicate and peculiar situation between Gerta and me, of great importance to both of us, and I don’t want any meddling with it—is that clear?

  —Perfectly.

  —Then why do you blush?

  —As I said once before, that’s my innocence.

  —All right. Keep it. And keep out.

  —Just as you say, professor!

  —If you don’t, I shall know it—I shall make it my business to know it. And I don’t think you’d enjoy the consequences.

  —My dear fellow——

  —Thanks for the smell of whisky. Good night.

  Arrived on the top floor, he felt a little breathless, a little stifled, he suddenly discovered that he was holding his pipe too hard, and with a perspiring hand. The whole thing had been somehow forced—it had not come naturally, was not natural now; the effect was of a slight jangling. The map still hung there, with its marginal notes, the list of dates and scenes, it was all just as clear as before, just as orderly; but there was also a queer something which was changing. For one thing, he had not, as he now saw he had intended, presented Jones to Toppan, and this had seemed important. He had wanted—that was it—to make Toppan vividly aware of him—as vividly as he was aware himself. He had wanted to photograph him for Toppan—tweed hat, fur collar, ash can, and all: the mole, the perpetual smirk, the mustache, the jaunty little vulgarity of bearing. Curious he hadn’t seen that—his purpose had not been so much to ask advice as simply to talk about Jones; and in talking about him—was that it?—to take further possession of him. But for some reason, this project had broken down; Jones seemed if anything farther off than before; the excitement had cooled.

  It must be simply that he was tired.

  From the window he looked obliquely down at the deserted and lamp-lit stillness of Massachusetts Avenue, then, as always, lifted his eyes to the one mysterious light which always burned nightlong in an upper room of Boylston Hall. What secret was in that room——?

  And at once, as always, when he thought of it, the vision returned; dimension after dimension rolled off soundlessly to disclose depth above depth, height below height; where vapor had been, the tree of clouds began once again to thrust upward with swirling boughs.

  This was good, he could laugh again, Jones was still there. Let the clocks go as madly as they liked, Jones would still be waiting for him, waiting calmly.

  IX The Stranger Is Gay

  The little procession was monstrous, it was absurd, it was mad and meaningless, and as he watched it from the safe interior of the car, which was filled with tobacco smoke, with his black hat pulled down over his eyes, the pale afternoon sunlight seemed to emphasize and isolate each element in it as grotesquely as if it were merely an outlandish figure in a dream.

  Karl Jones had suddenly become new—he was being seen for the first time.

  Bareheaded, wearing again his old black sweater, grinning a little self-consciously, as if something in the occasion made him shy, and as if he were trying to carry it off with bravado, he came down the wooden steps of the Alpine Street house with a small striped mattress over his shoulder and a worn suitcase in his hand. The suitcase he dropped on the cement sidewalk, where already stood a white-painted chair, such as are seen in hospitals, a Gladstone bag, a porcelain slop bowl, and a brown wicker hamper. He flung the mattress into the back of the open model-T Ford which waited at the curb, balancing it carefully over the child’s cot which reared its white legs and bright brass casters into the air. A middle-aged woman followed him down the steps, bringing a rope; with this they proceeded to knot the mattress into place, first throwing a patchwork quilt over the whole shapeless pile. Then the hamper was with some difficulty wedged into the front, beside the driver’s seat: it was heavy, tied with cord, and what looked like bed linen protruded from the gaping lid. As the woman reascended the steps Jones called after her:

  —Guess we’ll have to carry the rest! Hope you don’t mind!

  What she said was inaudible, she waved a hand, entered the house, and in a moment reappeared accompanied by a man. The man climbed into the front seat, slammed the tin door, started the car and began turning it. Jones lifted the slop bowl by its handle, laughing, his head tilted to one side: the woman seated herself in the white chair on the sidewalk. She too was laughing, leaning forward and clapping her hands on her knees. When Jones said something to her, she got up, took the slop bowl from him, picked up the suitcase, and began walking away towards Reservoir Street. Jones swung the chair up against his shoulder, seized the handle of the Gladstone bag, and followed.

  The whole thing was unreal: it had no existence.

  The woman might be a trained nurse: she was wearing a dark cloak from beneath which, as she walked, flashed the white of what appeared to be a uniform.

  And the child’s cot—what about that? If there was a child, in the Reservoir Street house, why had he seen no sign of it in all this time? And if the child was ill—as the presence of the nurse seemed to suggest—then it was difficult to account for the queer cheerfulness of the scene. The logic was a little wrong.…

  He sat still, watched them turn the far corner at last, vanish out of sight. They had not noticed him, it would be easy enough to drive slowly through Reservoir Street a
nd observe the end of this peculiar ceremony, but for some obscure reason he felt apathetic, indifferent. It hardly mattered: he had already seen more than he expected anyway, he had not really intended to come here at all, had simply made a last-minute detour on his way to meet Gerta. The thing was a windfall, it was in a sense outside the routine, needn’t be too much bothered about. Just the same, it was certainly odd, among other things, that Jones should be here, and not at his office—it was three o’clock.

  And this indifference, this apathy——

  It was a part of the time problem.

  He tapped a fingernail on his watch, frowned, opened the window to knock the ashes out of his pipe. It had certainly become unexpectedly difficult, unexpectedly vague—the queer thing was the way in which, from the moment when he had actually found Jones, marked him down, begun to learn about him and know him, the element of hurry, of pressure, had begun subtly to dissolve. It was as if abruptly he had stepped out of time into timelessness: what need could there be, any longer, for hurry? Jones was not only there, he was here: Jones had joined him, had joined his life: it was almost, in fact, as if Jones had become a part of his own “self.” He had again that queer feeling of encroachment, as if his image were walking toward him out of a mirror, or his shadow somehow falling on his own body; the feeling was not unpleasant, brought with it a sense of power, a sense of agreeable duplicity; but also in it was something a little disconcerting, or even dangerous. It was all very well for Toppan to say, in his smug insinuating fashion, that there wasn’t any point in going on with it after a certain time—how could Toppan know anything about it? The pure vision—this was (as in the beginning he had of course not been able to foresee) the period of pure vision! To sit back and watch, to wait here now, for instance, actually foregoing his power to watch, was a very nearly perfect thing. It was comparable to the artist’s intuition of the completed work of art: Jones was in the process of becoming an artifact. He remembered saying to Gerta—“an action could have the purity of a work of art. It could be as abstract and absolute as a problem in algebra.…”

  Wasn’t that still true?

  Of course: and more than ever necessary. What must be kept firmly in mind was the inherent necessity. If the world was logical at all, then it must be logical in every item. And if it was despicable, if humanity was despicable, and if one was to sound one’s contempt for it to the bottom, separate oneself from it, then the final and inevitable action in the series would be simply an act of destruction: it would be the only natural purification. It was not, in this sense, dictated so much by hatred as by a need for purification. Was that it? Or not hate only, at all events. It was the need of the superior being to separate himself violently from the one-who-wants-to-be-killed, the inferior, the crowd.…

  He smiled, recapitulating; the whole thing summed itself up neatly and decisively; the constellation of events became once more precise and orderly. Gerta, Sandbach, Toppan, Jones—they were arranged and fell into place, the clock moved them in its geometrical orbit, their voices and faces faded as they passed, became vivid as they approached, faded again. Toppan’s suspicions were powerless to take any shape in action; Sandbach’s guesswork was too far off to find any accuracy of aim, his emotions too confused for any singleness of purpose; Gerta’s devotion would continue, until too late, to constitute for her an effective paralysis. They circled with the clock, they watched as they moved, but their fixed orbit, fixed by himself, would never bring them any nearer to him. They, as much as Jones, were his own creation, they were falling into their grooves, they no longer had any freedom of will. To all intents, they had become puppets.

  Two children, a boy and a girl, ran past him bowling iron hoops, the wooden sticks ringing dully on the metal, clanking regularly, the shrill voices raised in a meaningless and unintelligible gabble. An immense pile of white clouds had come up from the southwest, the sun went out, the afternoon became gray.

  He took Gerta’s letter from his pocket, opened it on his knee.

  Jasper my dear—I suppose you suggested the place in Belmont because you knew I’d be teaching there in the afternoon, but I wish you had taken the trouble to let me know a little sooner, it’s not too convenient—and don’t you take a good deal for granted? I don’t quite know why you should assume—as you appear to—that your plans are of such importance to me. If you had wanted to see me, any time in the past fortnight, you could easily have done so: and why you should now want to be so spectacular—shall I say melodramatic?—about our meeting I confess I don’t see. Don’t you think the whole thing is becoming a trifle absurd? Why on earth should I want to watch you at revolver practice? Don’t be ridiculous! However, I am a little concerned about you, for Julius says you look ill and haven’t been sleeping, and of course I won’t pretend that I wouldn’t like to see you, so I’ll be there as soon as I can get away from Miss Bottrall’s dreadful little life class. I’d be somewhat relieved if you’d kindly forget to bring your revolver. It hardly seems necessary. Gerta.

  They had been talking together again—and Toppan had told her that he looked ill.

  What was more interesting, however, was the note of withdrawal in the letter, which was distinct. This too might be Toppan’s doing, but more likely it was Sandbach’s. Sandbach was beginning to struggle. He was saying to her—that madman Ammen. You must cut yourself off from that madman Ammen. The quarrel in front of the Fogg Museum might have been that—Sandbach had been urging her to drop him, he was frightened and angry, and he disapproved of Toppan’s influence because Toppan didn’t agree with him. That was why he had refused Toppan’s invitation to tea. And also, of course, he probably suspected Toppan of knowing more about the situation than he did himself. He suspected all three of them of keeping him at a distance, keeping him in the dark, he was struggling in a web of which the filaments were maddeningly invisible.… The whole thing was working beautifully.

  But what should he say to Gerta?

  He became aware that he had been listening to the radio which sounded from an open window, Frankie and Johnnie—“bring on your rubber-tired hearses, bring on your rubber-tired hacks”—the melancholy irony died behind him in a sardonic drawl as the car picked up speed, and in a moment he had passed the house in Reservoir Street and was heading for Concord Avenue. The Ford had gone, no one was in sight, but the cot and bags stood on the porch, and the door was wide open. It was tempting—the opportunity was certainly unusual—but on the other hand to turn back now might be a little risky: some prying neighbor, standing behind curtains, might notice it and think it peculiar, might remember seeing the Buick there before; or remember it later when he came again. Better not. And the day’s work was already good enough.

  But what should he say to Gerta?

  And need it be shaped in advance, or could it be allowed to shape itself, or to be shaped by her?

  As a matter of fact, the necessity wasn’t so much for saying anything as for appearing: the real need, for the moment, was that he should simply be seen, so that the weight of his character and purpose—above all his purpose—should again, and at this critical juncture, be deeply felt. The time had come for a subtle counter-balancing of Sandbach, a sly disturbance of the center of gravity. To do this, it would be sufficient, as it were, simply to cross the stage, to look hard at her for a few seconds, and then vanish. The bonds would be tightened, Sandbach’s work would begin all over again, the shadow on him would have deepened still further, and if in addition Toppan had fed her natural anxiety, so that she was concerned for him, or even had begun to feel sorry for him——

  He laughed, sounded the claxon derisively, once, twice, three times. Sorry for him! And of course it was exactly what was happening. It had been apparent in his last interview with her, she had pressed the point about Kay, she had subsequently tried to discuss the subject with Toppan, and now it was more than ever apparent in her letter. He looked ill, he was not sleeping. There it was, plain as a pikestaff! Accordingly, she would take the initi
ative, she would be inquisitive, she would want to find out exactly where they stood, both with regard to each other and with regard to Sandbach, and this would render her—in the deepest sense—vulnerable. On this pattern, the scene could be allowed to shape itself. She would question—she would stand there questioning—and he would simply be. We ask and ask—thou smilest, and art still outtopping knowledge. The abyss will gaze into thee.

  The details shaped themselves beneath his hands on the wheel, flew in parallels of bright speed, seethed with the wind through the cracks in the glass, rose before him in the grey shape of Belmont. If he got there first, he would leave the car at the edge of the road, in the usual place, would precede her to the familiar little hollow of rocks and grass and junipers, with its wall of cedars and birches, so that before she could see him she would hear him. But if she heard the shots, would she dare to approach?

  That risk must be taken. If she heard him, and decided not to come——

  There was no sign of her at the top of the hill, nor in the path that led to the abandoned racecourse, nor on the grass-grown racecourse itself, where he got out of the car. The gray stillness was profound, it was like the Sabbath, he took the revolver from the pouch in the car door, slipped it into his pocket, also the little red box of cartridges tied with string, then put two fingers to his teeth and gave a long whistle, whip-lashed at the end like a whip-poor-will. There was no answer, no echo from the coppice of white birches, he noticed the dandelions in the short grass at his feet, and it occurred to him that he could leave a note for her. He wrote on the back of Gerta’s letter: Quite safe to approach: firing the other way. Leaving this on the runningboard, with a pebble to hold it in place, he descended the short path of rocks and sprawling juniper which led to the hollow, lifting one elbow before his face as a protection against swinging branches. As he watched the last of the young birch leaves, bright green, slide across his blue sleeve, he heard Gerta’s voice before him, speaking levelly: