THE STORY OF THE STABBING
Four years old she’d begun to hear in fragments and patches like handfuls of torn clouds the story of the stabbing in Manhattan that was initially her mother’s story.
That morning in March 1980 when Mrs. Karr drove to New York City alone. Took the New Jersey Turnpike to the Holland Tunnel exit, entered lower Manhattan and crossed Hudson and Greenwich Streets and at West Street turned north, her usual route when she visited an aunt who lived in a fortress-like building resembling a granite pueblo dwelling on West Twenty-seventh Street—but just below Fourteenth Street traffic began abruptly to slow—the right lane was blocked by construction—a din of air hammers assailed her ears—vehicles were moving in spasmodic jerks—Madeleine braked her 1974 Volvo narrowly avoiding rear-ending a van braking to a stop directly in front of her—a tin-colored vehicle with a corroded rear bumper and a New York license plate whose raised numerals and letters were just barely discernible through layers of dried mud like a palimpsest. Overhead were clouds like wadded tissues, a sepia glaze to the late-winter urban air and a stink of diesel exhaust and Madeleine Karr whose claim it was that she loved Manhattan felt now a distinct unease in stalled traffic amid a cacophony of horns, the masculine aggressiveness of horns, for several blocks she’d been aware of the tin-colored van jolting ahead of her on West Street, passing on the right, switching lanes, braking at the construction blockade but at once lurching forward as if the driver had carelessly—or deliberately—lifted his foot from the brake pedal and in so doing caused his right front fender to brush against a pedestrian in a windbreaker crossing West Street—crossing at the intersection though at a red light, since traffic was stalled—unwisely then in a fit of temper the pedestrian in the windbreaker struck the fender with the flat of his hand—he was a burly man of above average height—Madeleine heard him shouting but not the words, distinctly—might’ve been Fuck you! or even Fuck you asshole!—immediately then the van driver leapt out of the van and rushed at the pedestrian—Madeleine blinked in astonishment at this display of masculine contention—Madeleine was expecting to see the men fight together clumsily—aghast then to see the van driver wielding what appeared to be a knife with a considerable blade, maybe six—eight—inches long—so quickly this was happening, Madeleine’s brain could not have identified Knife!—trapped behind the steering wheel of the Volvo like a child trapped in a nightmare Madeleine witnessed an event, an action, to which her dazzled brain could not readily have identified as Stabbing! Murder!—in a rage the man with the knife lashed at the now stunned pedestrian in the windbreaker, who hadn’t time to turn away—striking the man on his uplifted arms, striking and tearing the sleeves of the windbreaker, swiping against the man’s face, then in a wicked and seemingly practiced pendulum motion slashing the man’s throat just below his jaw, right to left, left to right causing blood to spring instantaneously into the air—A six-foot arc of blood at least as Madeleine would describe it afterward, horrified—even as the bleeding man kept walking, staggering forward. Never had Madeleine Karr witnessed anything so horrible—never would Madeleine Karr forget this savage attack in the unsparing clarity of a morning in late March—the spectacle of a living man attacked, stabbed, throat slashed before her eyes and what was most astonishing He kept walking—trying to walk—until he fell. The victim wore what appeared to be work clothes—work-boots—he was at least a decade older than his assailant—late thirties, early forties—bare-headed, with steely-gray hair in a crew cut—only seconds before the attack Madeleine had seen the victim visibly seething with indignation—empowered by rage—the sort of rough-hewn man with whom, alone in the city in such circumstances on West Street just below Fourteenth Street, Madeleine Karr would never have dared to lock eyes. Yet now the burly man in the windbreaker was rendered harmless—stricken—sinking to his knees as his assailant leapt back from him—dancer-like, very quick on his feet—though not quick enough (Madeleine had to suppose) to avoid being splattered by his victim’s blood. Fucker! Moth’fukr!—the van driver mouthed words Madeleine couldn’t hear but comprehended. In the righteousness of his fury the driver made no attempt to hide the bloody knife in his hand—in fact he appeared to be brandishing the knife—ran back to his vehicle, climbed inside and slammed shut the door and in virtually the same instant propelled the van forward head-on and lurching—Madeleine heard the protesting shriek of rubber tires against pavement—reckless now the fleeing man aimed the van into a narrow space between another vehicle and the torn-up roadway where construction workers in safety helmets had ceased work to stare—knocking aside a sawhorse, a series of orange traffic cones scattering in the street and bouncing off other vehicles as in a luridly colorful and comic simulation of bowling pins scattered by an immense bowling ball; by this time the stricken man was kneeling on the pavement desperately pressing both hands—these were bare hands, Madeleine could see from a distance of no more than twelve feet—against his ravaged throat in a gesture of childlike poi-gnancy and futility as blood continued to spurt from him Like water from a hose—horrible!
In a paralysis of horror Madeleine observed the stricken man now fallen—writhing on the pavement in a bright neon-red pool—still clutching desperately at his throat, as if the pressure of his hands could staunch that powerful jet-stream—vaguely Madeleine was becoming aware of a frantic din of horns—traffic was backed up for blocks on northbound West Street as in a nightmare of mangled and thwarted movement like snarled film. Help me! help me out of here!—nothing so mattered to Madeleine Karr as escaping from this nightmare—she was thinking not of the stricken man a short distance from the front bumper of the Volvo—not of his suffering, his terror, his imminent death—she was thinking solely of herself—in raw animal panic yearning only to turn her car around—turn her damned car around, somehow—reverse her course on accursed West Street back to the Holland Tunnel and out of New York City—to the Jersey Turnpike—and so to Princeton from which scarcely ninety minutes before she’d left with such exhilaration, childlike anticipation and defiance Manhattan is so alive!—Princeton is so embalmed. Nothing ever feels real to me here, this life in disguise as a wife and a mother of no more durability than a figure in papier-mâché. I don’t need any of you!
But that was ninety minutes before. Driving along leafy Harrison Street over the picture-book canal to Route 1 north in blustery skidding patches of winter sunshine.
Through a constricting tunnel—as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope—Madeleine became aware of other people—other pedestrians cautiously approaching the dying man—workmen from the construction site—a young patrolman on the run—a second patrolman—there came then a deafening siren—sirens—emergency vehicles approached on a side-street peripheral to Madeleine’s vision—now there were figures bent over the fallen man—the fallen man was lifted onto a stretcher, carried away—until at last there was nothing to see but a pool of something brightly red like old-fashioned Technicolor glistening on the pavement in cold March sunshine. And the nightmare didn’t end. The police questioned all the witnesses they could find. They came for me, they took me to the police precinct. For forty minutes they kept me. I had to beg them, to let me use the women’s room—I couldn’t stop crying—I am not a hysterical person but I couldn’t stop crying—of course I wanted to help the police but I couldn’t seem to remember what anything had looked like—what the men had looked like—even the “skin color” of the man with the knife—even of the man who’d been stabbed. I told them that I thought the van driver had been dark-skinned—maybe—he was “young”—in his twenties possibly—or maybe older—but not much older—he was wearing a satin kind of jacket like a sports jacket like high school boys wear—I think that’s what I saw—I couldn’t remember the color of the jacket—maybe it was dark—dark purple?—a kind of shiny material—a cheap shiny material—maybe there was some sort of design on the back of the jacket—Oh I couldn’t even remember the color of the van—it was as if my eyes had gone
blind—the colors of things had drained from them—I’d seen everything through a tunnel—I thought that the van driver with the knife was dark-skinned but not “black” exactly—but not white—I mean not “Caucasian”—because his hair was—wasn’t—his hair didn’t seem to be—“Negroid hair”—if that is a way of describing it. And how tall he was, how heavy, the police were asking, I had no idea, I wasn’t myself, I was very upset, trying to speak calmly and not hysterically, I have never been hysterical in my life. Because I wanted to help the police find the man with the knife. But I could not describe the van, either. I could not identify the van by its make, or by the year. Of course I could not remember anything of the license plate—I wasn’t sure that I’d even seen a license plate—or if I did, it was covered with dirt. The police kept asking me what the men had said to each other, what the pedestrian had said, they kept asking me to describe how he’d hit the fender of the van, and the van driver—the man with the knife—what had he said?—but I couldn’t hear—my car windows were up, tight—I couldn’t hear. They asked me how long the “altercation” had lasted before the pedestrian was stabbed and I said that the stabbing began right away—then I said maybe it had begun right away—I couldn’t be sure—I couldn’t be sure of anything—I was hesitant to give a statement—sign my name to a statement—it was as if part of my brain had been extinguished—trying to think of it now, I can’t—not clearly—I was trying to explain—apologize—I told them that I was sorry I couldn’t help them better, I hoped that other witnesses could help them better and finally they released me—they were disgusted with me, I think—I didn’t blame them—I was feeling weak and sick but all I wanted to do was get back to Princeton, didn’t even telephone anyone just returned to the Holland Tunnel thinking I would never use that tunnel again, never drive on West Street not ever again.
In that late winter of 1980 when Rhonda was four years old the story of the stabbing began to be told in the Karr household on Broadmead Road, Princeton, New Jersey. Many times the story was told and retold but never in the presence of the Karrs’ daughter who was too young and too sensitive for such a terrifying and ugly story and what was worse, a story that seemed to be missing an ending. Did the stabbed man die?—he must have died. Was the killer caught?—he must have been caught. Rhonda could not ask because Rhonda was supposed not to know what had happened, or almost happened, to Mommy on that day in Manhattan when she’d driven in alone as Daddy did not like Mommy to do. Nothing is more evident to a child of even ordinary curiosity and canniness than a family secret, a “taboo” subject—and Rhonda was not an ordinary child. There she stood barefoot in her nightie in the hall outside her parents’ bedroom where the door was shut against her daring to listen to her parents’ lowered, urgent voices inside; silently she came up behind her distraught-sounding mother as Madeleine sat on the edge of a chair in the kitchen speaking on the phone as so frequently Madeleine spoke on the phone with her wide circle of friends. The most horrible thing! A nightmare! It happened so quickly and there was nothing anyone could do and afterward… Glancing around to see Rhonda in the doorway, startled and murmuring Sorry! No more right now, my daughter is listening.
Futile to inquire what Mommy was talking about, Rhonda knew. What had happened that was so upsetting and so ugly that when Rhonda pouted wanting to know she was told Mommy wasn’t hurt, Mommy is all right—that’s all that matters.
And Not fit for the ears of a sweet little girl like you. No no!
Very soon after Mrs. Karr began to tell the story of the stabbing on a Manhattan street, Mr. Karr began to tell the story too. Except in Mr. Karr’s excitable voice the story of the stabbing was considerably altered for Rhonda’s father was not faltering or hesitant like Rhonda’s mother but a professor of American studies at the University, a man for whom speech was a sort of instrument, or weapon, to be boldly and not meekly brandished; and so when Mr. Karr appropriated his wife’s story it was in a zestful storytelling voice like a TV voice—in fact, Professor Gerald Karr was frequently seen on TV—PBS, Channel 13 in New York City—discussing political issues—bewhiskered, with glinting wire-rimmed glasses and a ruddy flushed face. Crude racial justice! Counter-lynching!
Not the horror of the incident was emphasized, in Mr. Karr’s telling, but the irony. For the victim, in Mr. Karr’s version of the stabbing, was a Caucasian male and the delivery-van assailant was a black male—or, variously, a person of color. Rhonda seemed to know that Caucasian meant white, though she had no idea why; she had not heard her mother identify Caucasian, person of color in her accounts of the stabbing for Mrs. Karr dwelt almost exclusively on her own feelings—her fear, her shock, her dismay and disgust—how eager she’d been to return home to Princeton—she’d said very little about either of the men as if she hadn’t seen them really but only just the stabbing It happened so fast—it was just so awful—that poor man bleeding like that!—and no one could help him. And the man with the knife just—drove away… But Mr. Karr who was Rhonda’s Daddy and an important professor at the University knew exactly what the story meant for the young black man with the knife—the young person of color—was clearly one of an exploited and disenfranchised class of urban ghetto dwellers rising up against his oppressors crudely striking as he could, class-vengeance, an instinctive “lynching,” the white victim is collateral damage in the undeclared and unacknowledged but ongoing class war. The fact that the delivery-van driver had stabbed—killed?—a pedestrian was unfortunate of course, Mr. Karr conceded—a tragedy of course—but who could blame the assailant who’d been provoked, challenged—hadn’t the pedestrian struck his vehicle and threatened him—shouted obscenities at him—a good defense attorney could argue a case for self-defense—the van driver was protecting himself from imminent harm, as anyone in his situation might do. For there is such a phenomenon as racial instinct, self-protectiveness. Kill that you will not be killed.
As Mr. Karr was not nearly so hesitant as Mrs. Karr about interpreting the story of the stabbing, in ever more elaborate and persuasive theoretical variants with the passing of time, so Mr. Karr was not nearly so careful as Mrs. Karr about shielding their daughter from the story itself. Of course—Mr. Karr never told Rhonda the story of the stabbing, directly. Rhonda’s Daddy would not have done such a thing for though Gerald Karr was what he called ultra-liberal he did not truly believe—all the evidence of his intimate personal experience suggested otherwise!—that girls and women should not be protected from as much of life’s ugliness as possible, and who was there to protect them but men?—fathers, husbands. Against his conviction that marriage is a bourgeois convention, ludicrous, unenforceable, yet Gerald Karr had entered into such a (legal, moral) relationship with a woman, and he meant to honor that vow. And he would honor that vow, in all the ways he could. So it was, Rhonda’s father would not have told her the story of the stabbing and yet by degrees Rhonda came to absorb it for the story of the stabbing was told and retold by Mr. Karr at varying lengths depending upon Mr. Karr’s mood and/or the mood of his listeners, who were likely to be university colleagues, or visiting colleagues from other universities. Let me tell you—this incident that happened to Madeleine—like a fable out of Aesop. Rhonda was sometimes a bit confused—her father’s story of the stabbing shifted in minor ways—West Street became West Broadway, or West Houston—West Twelfth Street at Seventh Avenue—the late-winter season became midsummer—in Mr. Karr’s descriptive words the fetid heat of Manhattan in August. In a later variant of the story which began to be told sometime after Rhonda’s seventh birthday when her father seemed to be no longer living in the large stucco-and-timber house on Broadmead with Rhonda and her mother but elsewhere—for a while in a minimally furnished university-owned faculty residence overlooking Lake Carnegie, later a condominium on Canal Pointe Road, Princeton, still later a stone-and-timber Tudor house on a tree-lined street in Cambridge, Massachusetts—it happened that the story of the stabbing became totally appropriated by Mr. Karr as an experience he’d ha
d himself and had witnessed with his own eyes from his vehicle—not the Volvo but the Toyota station wagon—stalled in traffic less than ten feet from the incident: the delivery van braking to a halt, the pedestrian who’d been crossing against the light—Caucasian, male, arrogant, in a Burberry trench coat, carrying a briefcase—doomed—had dared to strike a fender of the van, shout threats and obscenities at the driver and so out of the van the driver had leapt, as Mr. Karr observed with the eyes of a front-line war correspondent—Dark-skinned young guy with dreadlocks like Medusa, must’ve been Rastafarian—swift and deadly as a panther—the knife, the slashing of the pedestrian’s throat—a ritual, a ritual killing—sacrifice—in Mr. Karr’s version just a single powerful swipe of the knife and again as in a nightmare cinematic replay which Rhonda had seen countless times and had dreamt yet more times there erupted the incredible six-foot jet of blood even as the stricken man kept walking, trying to walk—to escape which was the very heart of the story—the revelation toward which all else led.
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