Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  But I suppose from the outside I looked perfectly normal. Well, normal for me. I was still rather exotic looking here in Levant. They were all so ruddy and pale, Irish, I guessed. I looked like an old Gypsy in comparison. Nobody had a face like mine. In the black, starry sky of the computer screen, I regarded myself. I was still me, I was still Vesta, with all her beauty and funniness. Walter used to play a game when we sat across from each other at dinner. He’d take whatever book he’d lain aside on the table and use it to cover up the bottom half of my face, just covering the tip of my nose. “Breathtaking!” he’d say. And he was right. My eyes, my hair—soft and black back then—the contours of my cheekbones and eye sockets, my high nose, my surprising blue eyes, I was gorgeous. People would stop me in the street when I was young, in the city. I used to dress in such a way, people wanted to take my picture. These days, judging from the ads in the supermarket magazines, one has to be seven feet tall and have the face of a two-year-old to get anyone’s attention. And time has wrinkled my skin enough so that the sharp edges of my skull—which used to be so fascinating—have softened, like a blanket thrown over a carved mahogany chair. After admiring my eyes, Walter would raise his book to cover the top half of my face so that only the bottom half showed. It was like a completely different face then: only the tip of my nose, which is a bit hooked, and my cheeks cinched down with frown lines—they were there even when I was young—and my tiny mouth, “so tiny, I must feed you like a sparrow,” Walter said, picking a little pea off his plate—my jaw, long and exaggerated, like “the blade of a hockey stick.” I had a slight underbite, the dentist told me. “Who is this witch and where has she buried my wife?” Walter would say, gently stroking my throat. But it wasn’t that the top of my face was good and bottom half was bad. It was just that they seemed so misaligned. The miracle was that when Walter took the book away, my face—both halves—would settle in so well together. “Perfection.” There were children’s books I’d seen that played the same game. You’d have a laugh trying to match up this bearded pirate’s torso with that princess’s shoulders with a lion’s head, and so forth. I pictured my head on a man’s body, my legs like the finned tail of a fish. Imagining this mishmash, I suddenly felt very uneasy. My face on the screen wobbled for a moment, and then the moving image went from northern lights to a flashing bright blue with a twisted white line of words swirling around it. I knew the name for this: “screensaver.”

  I should go, I thought. Charlie was waiting for me in the car, curled up, I imagined, on the backseat, the heat of his breath fogging up the windows. All I had to do was stand, cross the carpet into the foyer of the library, where the desk was, and exit through the old red door, watch my footing down the uneven brick path to the car in the parking lot. But it felt impossible. I felt glued down, as though fate had put me in that seat in front of that computer. I tried to set my eyes on the swirling words. Just a second of following around the bright glare made my head spin. A wave of heat, then a kind of slow thud in my chest like something falling, like a marble candlestick off a mantel hitting the carpeted floor. My heart. “Did you forget something?” The words were twisting across the screen, taunting me. Who had written such a thing? The computer next to me had by then gone black, dead. I thought of the aborted fetus again and felt sick to my stomach. I was probably hungry, my blood sugar low. But I felt very emotional there. I felt a bit like I’d been abandoned in a bad dream. The words swirled by again. My hands began to shake. What was this? What was I forgetting? Magda? Is this you? What a strange responsibility it was, to hold someone’s death in your hands. Death seemed fragile, like crumpled paper, a thousand years old. One false move and I could crush it. Death was like old, brittle lace, the appliqué about to separate from the fine mesh threads, nearly shredded, hanging there, beautiful and delicate and about to disintegrate. Life wasn’t like that. Life was robust. It was stubborn. Life took so much to ruin. One had to beat it out of the body. Even just the slightest seed of life, a fertilized egg, took payment, an expert, a machine, and an industrial vacuum, I’d heard. Life was persistent. There it was, every day. Each morning it woke me up. It was loud and brash. A bully. A lounge singer in a garish sequin dress. A runaway truck. A jackhammer. A brush fire. A canker sore. Death was different. It was tender, a mystery. What was it, even? Why did anybody have to die? Walter, the Jews, how many innocent children . . . my thoughts lost their train. How did people go on with their lives as though death weren’t all around them? There were theories—heaven, hell, rebirth, and so forth. But did anybody really know? Was there an answer? How unfair it seemed to send the living off into death, into the unknown, so cold. Blake must have understood as well what a tragedy this was. It was right there, in his words, Nobody will ever know who killed her. Why, God? I’d been too hard on Blake, I thought. Blake had given my poor Magda a place to rest. He’d tried his best with all that he had—a pen, a spiral notebook, the little black rocks, which I now remembered were still in the pocket of my coat. I stuck my hand in and felt them, sharp and gritty between my fingers. They were a comfort. They gave me some strength. Her name was Magda. Yes, Blake, we must insist on life, acknowledge it, never turn away from the dead.

  I looked back at the computer, stared straight at the swirling taunt from beyond. There was a tiny printed sign laminated and taped along the bottom edge of the computer screen saying the same thing: “Did you forget something? We aren’t responsible for lost or stolen objects. Please leave your desk the way you found it.” It seemed to me a cruel message: Yes, yes, be alive, make your mess, but when you die, leave not a trace. Sweep up any evidence of your existence. Reminders will only trouble those who live on. They’ll have to waste their own lives cleaning up yours. It was like Magda’s dead body was some candy-bar wrapper littering the sidewalk.

  I felt exhausted by my own thoughts by now. I wished I could just forget all this, go back to my innocent stroll through the birch woods, fuss with myself, berate myself for not taking the rowboat to the island. “Lazy woman,” I’d called myself. Oh, I’d go soon. I’d go, I’d go. I’d avoided it, out of laziness, but fear, too. There was something lonely about being out there on the water, I had to admit then, watching the screensaver twist around. I wiped the tears from my face and as I did so, I nudged the mouse with my elbow. The northern lights appeared again. I clicked open the browser and Asked Jeeves, not the answer to my prayers—for there to be no death, for Walter to be here, with me, for me to return to my life back in Monlith, my life before Charlie, before any of this—for I knew no computer could deliver that. No, instead I Asked Jeeves for a way to take action, some help in my effort to make the world a better place, death and all. Walter would have been so proud. “How does one solve a mystery?” I typed. And then, for good measure, I added the word “murder” before “mystery,” since this was indeed what I was dealing with.

  I scrolled down the search results.

  Make a list of suspects, one website suggested.

  That seemed easy enough to do. If there is a group of people, each of whom have a reason to want Magda dead, would it stand to reason that the person with the best reason would be the murderer? How would I measure and compare their reasons? “Magda stole my hairbrush,” one girl might say, just for example. How would theft of property hold up against something more intangible, like a personal affront: “Magda called me a bad name.” Or “Magda slept with my boyfriend.” Well, that was real motive there. But how would such a motive compare to “Magda slept with my husband”? Was that worse? Surely it all depended on the quality of the love relationship between the suspect and this man Magda had slept with. And also the sanity level of the person whose hairbrush she’d stolen, the fragility of the spurned girlfriend or wife. I couldn’t imagine Magda would ever insult anybody, ever sleep with anyone. There was something a little coy about her, sure, a little secretive, a little dark—black chipping nail polish, the letterman jacket worn with some irony, some disdain—but she was not a “w
hore.” She was not a “slut.” I imagined the girlfriend or wife calling her such names. Magda was too young to get into all that, mixing herself up with men, making those sorts of messes. Or so I thought. There was a lot to take into consideration. Resentment seemed hardly enough criteria to motivate a murder. There must be more to it than that. The question one ought to ask was “Who would profit most from Magda’s death?” The answer to that could lead, perhaps not directly, but eventually, to the real killer. I felt very smart for having arrived at this question.

  As I thought this through, a little window popped up in the lower-right-hand corner of the computer screen. It was an animated advertisement for binoculars. The lenses of the binoculars widened and stretched, like two flaring trumpets. I clicked on it—perhaps stupidly, I was seduced by the animation—and was brought to a page selling hunting gear that camouflaged the wearer according to a variety of backgrounds: military fatigues of all kinds, then full bodysuits of midnight black, head to toe, with masks and netting over the ears, nose, mouth, and eyes. They reminded me of mimes’ costumes. I almost giggled, looked down to my right where Charlie usually sits whenever I sat at my table, but of course he was not there. I was sorry he was stuck out in the car, waiting for me. I would make it up to him somehow. The models were all unisex Styrofoam mannequins with neither breasts nor bulges, straight torsos, and sturdy but shapely legs. I clicked through the selection of patterns on the bodysuits. There were suits for disappearing into different forest landscapes: evergreens, deciduous, coniferous, alpine, jungle, summery green and lush, or wintery silver and gray. They had suits for hiding in fields, in deserts, even in water. I clicked on one that seemed appropriate for the pines: dark, with red patches, light pumpkin-colored feet. They were like zip-up pajamas for children, “onesies.” It had been a long time since I’d bought anything for myself to wear. I’d lived the whole winter in the same thick gray wool sweater, long underwear, and brown corduroy pants. Now that it was spring, I’d moved into light fleece, cotton knits, blue jeans. I kept myself on a budget, but I could afford to splurge now and then. “I’ll skip the donut today,” I reasoned, as though that could offset the cost, and decided to order the cheapest suit they offered. It was just plain black. It cost only twenty dollars plus shipping. I thought I could wear it by the water at night, or even in the water, see if the fish would be able to tell I was there, or if they’d bump into me. Maybe I could take up fishing. That could be very fruitful—a hobby that would keep me fed. Along with my new garden, I’d be nearly self-sufficient. These thoughts cheered me up. “Look, Walter, I’m being both frugal and industrious.” This was what he’d meant by “how to be alive,” wasn’t it? To live life to the fullest? Hatch plans, be spontaneous, put yourself out there, come what may? I took my credit card out of my purse and punched in the numbers. It was rare that I ever received any mail. Usually it was the electric bill, but even that was unnecessary: the monthly costs were automatically withdrawn from my bank account. So to order something for delivery felt especially luxurious. I even paid fifteen cents to print out the receipt that popped up, which the librarian handed me, tight lipped, poor woman, she must have been so bored. In all this excitement, I’d forgotten the window beneath the one for the bodysuit website. It was still up there. “How to Solve a Murder Mystery.”

  I scrolled some more.

  One way of flushing out the guilty suspect is to ask each suspect outright “Why did you murder [victim]?” If the suspect is innocent, he or she might reply “I didn’t,” while the actual murderer will have to use cunning to avoid detection. You can actually use this as a process of elimination.

  Base your strategy around finding the liar. Further information can be found . . . et cetera.

  This was very interesting to me. But people lied all the time. It was part of what kept us whole as individuals. A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was. Of course, some relationships demanded more honesty than others. A husband and wife, for example, ought to try to tell the truth. Too much lying would make for a troubled shared mindspace. But it simply wasn’t true that lying was an indication of guilt. I lied to Charlie all the time. “I’ll be right back,” I had said when I left him in the car in the library parking lot. Well, that wasn’t quite a lie, but it turned out to be. I’d been sitting at that computer nearly thirty minutes by the time I was contemplating all this. So, not every lie was a deception. Sometimes one had to break one’s word. And sometimes, a little lie was good. It was healthy. Not everyone wants to hear the whole truth 100 percent of the time. If Walter hadn’t lied to me occasionally, we’d have had a very different kind of marriage. It was good to have a few secrets here and there. It kept one interested in herself.

  Blake had already answered the question that I would have asked my number one suspect: Why did you murder Magda? His reply was right there in the note: It wasn’t me. According to the internet, the actual murderer would be more cunning in his response. He’d tell more of a story to lead me away from the truth. He’d hide under a fiction. “Funny you should ask about Magda,” he’d begin. “Did you know she once loaned me a book about ancient Egypt? The pyramids are such fascinating structures.” Oh, he’d prattle on and on for as long as he had to, to avoid the truth. Furthermore, the real killer wouldn’t put himself up for suspicion, as Blake had done by writing the note. The real murderer would keep far away from the birch woods. He’d be doing something seemingly innocuous, pretending as though that was all that concerned him. He’d be folding his socks in a laundromat. He’d be watching television, sticking his bloodstained fist into a bag of potato chips, licking the grease and salt off his fingers. He’d be watering a lawn, waving to his neighbors, cleaning his gutters, scraping the mud off his boots, picking his teeth, humming. Or he was at work in a butcher shop, cutting meat with an electric saw, I imagined. Maybe I’d seen him through the glass walls of the meat section at Save-Rite. I never quite appreciated those glass walls. I didn’t want to watch an animal being dismembered. That didn’t whet my appetite. Or perhaps being a butcher was too violent, too obvious a profession. Someone with a homicidal temperament might want to pass himself off as gentle and harmless, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That would make for a far more interesting mystery, I thought to myself. I thought of Walter, his kind hands calloused only on the middle finger where he held a pen. He was big and strapping—until the cancer whittled him down, of course—but he looked like he couldn’t kill a fly. Oh, but he could. He once beat a rat to death with a hammer. He ate his steaks bloody. Men were deceitful that way. Even the most delicate of them had that flair for the primitive. In the hearts of men, all are hunters. All killers, were they not? It was in their blood. And yet they could appear so kind. One could never tell a man’s true nature from looks alone. If there was anything I’d learned from Agatha Christie, it was that oftentimes the guilty party is lurking just underneath one’s nose. The killer could be working in that very same library, somewhere in the back room, stocking things, out of sight. Let us hope he’s not presently strangling the lady librarian, I thought. If he was, the mystery would be solved too easily.

  As though she’d heard me, the librarian walked back out just then, proving me wrong. I was relieved, shook my head at my own silliness. But one needed to consider all possibilities. I felt very smart indeed. You see, Vesta, I told myself. In just two seconds flat you eliminated a suspect: the man who works in the back room at the library. And you didn’t even have to question him. You can solve the mystery with little more than your own mind.

  I waved and smiled at the librarian. She grinned at me falsely.

  It had been so long since I’d socialized at all. The winter had been long. And I had no friends, nobody to meet for lunch, to go to the cinema, even to chat to on the phone. I didn’t even have a phone. The note Blake had left me in the birch woods was as close as I’d gotten to a social call in a long time. I’d received no w
elcome pies, no best wishes from my neighbors when I moved in. Only those dreadful policemen who had come to scold me. As if I were some kind of criminal. “That dog licensed?” they had asked. Tyrants. Those cops might get far with bullying, but I would need a subtler, more sophisticated tactic as an investigator. I’d need a more elegant approach, an intelligent method for how to establish—establish?—motive, means, opportunity, whatever else a guilty person had going for him.

  A banner now flashed across the screen. “TOP TIPS FOR MYSTERY WRITERS!” I clicked on it. As I expected, the suggestions were all prescriptive, allowing nothing of inspiration, no real creativity, no real fun.

  Reading lots of mysteries is essential.

  That seemed like ridiculous advice. The last thing anyone should do is stuff her head full of other people’s ways of doing things. That would take all the fun out. Does one study children before copulating to produce one? Does one perform a thorough examination of others’ feces before rushing to the toilet? Does one go around asking people to recount their dreams before going to sleep? No. Composing a mystery was a creative endeavor, not some calculated procedure. If you know how the story ends, why even begin? Yes, a writer needs some direction, some wisdom and knowledge about the mystery she is writing. Or else she is just twiddling her thumbs, scribbling things down to memorialize her mindspace. It seemed to me that doing so was actually rather humiliating; a sign of arrogance and self-conceit. But I supposed it was indeed the job of the writer to belittle the miracles of this Earth, to separate one question out of the infinite mystery of life and answer it in some sniveling way. Walter had always dismissed fiction as a pedestrian pastime, like television. Agatha Christie movies he supported, however. He found them satisfying, I think, because he could always outsmart me when we watched them together. He brought videos home from the university library. “These are very predictable stories. Don’t you see? I can solve it. The killer is always the person just west of center.” He talked like that, and I knew exactly what he meant: the killer wasn’t directly in front of my face, but within reach. I could always see the answer just as clearly as Walter, of course, but he took such pleasure in being right. He loved to feel brilliant. I had to acquiesce, let him outshine me, to keep the peace. But I knew I was savvy, too. Not an expert at anything, but very capable.