The Mysteries of the Faceless King, page 15
I slept on a bench once, and dreamt that I was the old man, standing in the rain outside my house, slowly dissolving in that rain like a candy man, a figure of hard sugar discarded in a gutter. And I dreamt that my daughter sat up suddenly in her darkened bedroom, and called out, “Daddy, are you there?” I tried to answer, but my voice was lost in the rain, in the rushing water, and I seemed to be falling away from the front of the house. Again my daughter called out, and again, and I could not reply, until the front of the house rippled and blurred, like something seen through rain streaming down an automobile windshield. Then there was only darkness, and a sense of drifting, and my daughter’s name, and her face, and all my memories of her began to slip away. I could not cling to them.
It was then that I awoke to the touch of a gentle hand on my shoulder. I sat up abruptly, with a startled grunt, and found a woman standing over me. She was probably in her early twenties, and she wore blue jeans and an army jacket and a stocking cap. A knapsack hung from one shoulder.
She was a traveler, I thought. Yes, someone who travels far, who travels without ever stopping to rest, or to find a home. I could tell all that about her, somehow, as if I were developing a new sense.
“Perhaps I can help you,” she said, and as we beheld one another, we both understood, she why I was there, and I why she had selected me among all the shabby denizens of the train station benches.
She had done so because I was a traveler too, and she had that same special sense, which enabled her to recognize one of her own kind.
“Come,” she said. I rose and followed her, out into the enormous main hall of the station.
It took me a moment to recognize what was different: there had been a war memorial inside the station, a colossal bronze statue of a winged Victory lifting a fallen soldier out of flames. That was how I remembered it. Now the figure was a charging World War I doughboy.
Outside, on the bridge over the river, the old man was waiting for us. He, too, knew me for what I was, and I knew him.
“There are not many like us yet,” he said, “but we are like you, all of us. Like you, we move on. We never stay in one place very long.”
We are a family, the young woman and the old man, and the others I met in a cellar, where our band gathers at certain times, when each of us knows deep inside that it is time for another meeting. Sometimes the meeting place is not a cellar at all, but an inn or a courtyard or a field or even the deck of a ship at sea. But always the faces are there, twenty or so familiar to me, and always one or two new ones.
My eyes are newly opened. I see for the first time.
The woman’s name is Mara. She reached into her pocket once and showed me a Woodrow Wilson dime. The old man is Jason, and he is eighty-two and our chieftain and priest and rememberer. It is he who keeps and reads aloud from the book of our lives, in which is written all that can be recalled and preserved. I lived in Philadelphia. Jason was born in New Orleans long ago, shortly after the triumphal entry of the emperor Napoleon IV.
We are alone, but we are together, and the true things about us are written and remembered. The rest drifts away like mist rising from a perfectly still lake.
Remember. That’s all we have. Cling together and remember.
THE SPIRIT OF THE BACK STAIRS
BUT FIRST, SARAH DIED.
At the very end, impossibly huge tropical butterflies covered my wife’s outstretched hands, materializing out of the air as I watched, as if she had called them into existence merely by thinking, by her last, confused thoughts in those final moments: iridescent blue Morphos from the Amazon, gleaming under the streetlights, and great swallowtails and something the color of twilight on the upper side, with the serene face of an owl underneath. This particular butterfly perched on the tip of her finger, its underside as inscrutable as Sarah was just then, as we both were, filled with wonder and dread and sadness, unable to find the right words.
But first she died.
And the butterflies swarmed, their greedy tongues flickering over what little remained of her decaying flesh; and she turned to me, as if trying to speak once more, and her face was only a mass of dark wings rippling across her skull, a thing of dream, impossible even for New York, but what is one more incongruous detail among so many?
“I’m back,” she said.
But first she died, suddenly—snap!¬—the jaws of the city closing impersonally over her. There I was, at home, committing literature, what my own mother had once called the next worst thing to Allen Ginsberg, when a phone call told all: that Sarah had died on the subway not an hour before, in a freak accident as the press of a crowd of unruly teenagers just out from a rock concert had quite randomly, with no malice aforethought or even recognition, shoved her off the platform at the very moment the train arrived—which proceeded to cut her in half.
“I’m back,” she said.
I went to the morgue to see her. I had to do that eventually. A policeman was waiting for me, and two morgue attendants, and they asked me lots of grim questions, but politely, as if they were trying to be supportive and didn’t quite know how. No one accused me of anything.
Sarah had, once. We’d had our screaming fights. We were talking divorce half-seriously.
I had done my share of accusing too, and things worthy of accusation. Neither of us could claim innocence. But that was over now. All the uncertainties resolved honorably, neatly.
“There’s enough left for an open-casket ceremony,” one of the attendants said softly.
How thoughtful.
Her face wasn’t touched. Somehow, there on the slab, she lacked even the red, soaking waistline I had been expecting. Possibly they had wrapped plastic around her middle, to contain the mess.
How very tidy.
I was offered a ride home, but I walked, and it didn’t even become real to me until I had gone quite a ways along the west side of Central Park, past one, two, three gaping mouths of the hungry subway; and I tried to think, not selfishly of myself, but of her, of the loss of her career, of the actress she would never become and the sets she would never design, and of the Off-Off-Broadway production of something called Macbeth: Moor of Mantua, which would now look very different if it ever got as far as opening night. The script had sounded awful, pretentious, and trivial—she had died for nothing, for less than nothing, for someone else’s verbal garbage, and life went on, the city went on, thank you, its great, glaring heart never missing a beat.
I didn’t feel anything at that. I was acting myself, forcing myself into the expected role of grieving husband.
The hurt came slowly, wordlessly, a fog of pain, and by the time I reached our building I was weeping softly.
“I’m back,” she said.
I sat in the apartment, my apartment now, no her apartment—still littered with pieces of her life, her hairbrush by the sink, her unfinished set design sketches on her drawing board, her books on the shelves, her cat hiding under the bed, somehow vaguely aware that something was terribly wrong. I sat there on the bed staring at her things, only beginning to feel the loss, like a soldier who’s shot in battle, and it’s only like a punch at first, a hard tap that knocks the wind out of him for a second or two before his nervous system can sort out the astonishing discovery that half his guts have been blown away.
I think hours passed. After a while, it was dark. The phone didn’t ring. No one, it occurred to me—no one who mattered anyway—was in on the secret yet. I hadn’t called relatives. I hadn’t made arrangements.
I could still pretend. I did something silly.
The black cat, Pazuzu, scratched my leg ever so gently, then hissed and scooted back under the bed. I looked down. Sarah’s white slippers were at my feet.
I thought of the guy on Soap who could only talk through a dummy, and when the other characters hid that, he had to resort to half a grapefruit to voice the otherwise unspeakable.
I wasn’t laughing as I put the slippers on either hand, working them like puppets.
It seemed the correct, even reverent thing to do.
“She really is dead,” said the right slipper. “You saw.”
“No,” said the left. “If we deny it, if we tell a really huge lie long enough—who knows?”
“You do,” said the right.
“Deny it. Moment by moment. That’s all any of us have anyway, ever. Just the splinter of time we call now. We never know if we’re going to live another minute, long enough to say that certain word, or even to exhale. So, deny it with every breath while you still can.”
“You had a lot you still wanted to say. A lot you never got around to,” said the right slipper.
“Yes, I did. I do,” said the left.
“Never wait. If you love someone, if you hate them, if you want to be excused to go to the bathroom, say it now. Not later.”
“It’s easy enough to tell me that now.”
“Words are easy,” said the right slipper. “It’s the timing that trips you up.”
I dropped my hands into my lap.
“Oh God, I want her back!” I said. “I want her to come back. That’s all.”
“Dead people don’t come back,” said the right slipper.
“Just this once—”
“Wish it,” said the left. “Wish it very hard. Lie to yourself. Dream it. Very hard. Day by day, second by second. Fool yourself. In the end it won’t matter. Imagine how it might be—”
“Things like that don’t happen in the real world,” said the right.
“This is New York,” said the left.
I was sobbing out loud then, and I heard something stirring in the apartment, behind things, under things; I thought it was the cat at first; pans clanged in the kitchen.
“Peter. I’m back.”
I bolted up, tripped, and fell flat on my face with a sound that was almost a scream; terrified, puzzled, unbelieving, convinced I was crazy all at once. I recognized her voice. I knew it. Her voice.
The apartment was empty, of course. A pan had fallen out of the cupboard.
It was only much later, as I had sobbed for what seemed like hours, rolling on the bed, tearing at the sheets, amazing myself with the depth and intensity of my own feelings, only then was it all true, really, really true that she was gone, not here, had not returned; only then that my outraged nervous system had figured out what all the signals meant—
Eventually I slept, and imagined, and dreamed, and lied to myself very hard—and Sarah was there, lying on her back beside me, tall and thin and pale, her blonde hair almost white. She still wore her street clothes and high heels, her purse clutched firmly in her immaculate hands. She looked more like an investment broker than a theater person, spotless, proper, ideal—
I leaned up on my elbow and whispered to her: fond little jokes, funny things we’d said to one another when we were both twenty, telephone pickup lines, including the ever popular We can’t go on meeting like this, the perennial classic Doctor Mbogo’s office. Less-ay! Less-ay!, plus the inevitable Spooch!, the word which is inherently funny on a syllabic level.
But she did not answer. She just lay there, perfectly still. Moonlight and city light streamed in through Venetian blinds, making the bedroom a grillwork of bright and dark, the colors muted, and Sarah a statue of flawless marble.
A single black butterfly revealed itself on her chin, opening its wings suddenly, then darted off.
I reached out to touch her, in my dream, and my right hand went through her, cutting her in half, and came up warm and wet.
I drew back, disgusted. I felt the fear rising slowly within me, the helpless dread. I gagged myself with my other hand, to stifle a scream.
Then the image rippled and was gone, and I ran my hand over the bedspread and felt only dust and dirt and a few coarse hairs.
I was aware that I was dreaming then, unable to wake up, listening to traffic noises that surged outside the window like a restless sea.
It was the smell that woke me.
I rolled over, sat up, and choked. The apartment air was thick with a putrid stench I could almost see in the filthy air.
I brushed hair and dust off the bed beside me, looking around angrily for the cat, wondering just what decaying treasure the little dear had dragged in. But I saw nothing.
Sarah’s workroom was a mess, papers scattered over the floor, the drawing table knocked over, ink smeared over the oddly Egyptian set designs, as if some spastic infant had attempted finger-painting.
The inky handprints were small and thin, but distinctly adult, distinctly feminine.
The smell was strongest there, around the drawing table and the toppled stool.
I spent the rest of the morning cleaning up, disinfecting, wiping, spraying. The phone rang again and again. I ignored it.
Then I sat for hours at my own typewriter, telling myself the big lie, conducting a continuation of the dialogue of the slippers.
How shall I my true love know from the other one...?
She is dead and gone—
No she isn’t.
I want her back.
You might not like it.
No?
Yes, the inherent shortcoming of living on lies is that you lose touch with the truth.
Holy platitudes, Batman. That’s really profound.
Meaning, did you really love her as much as you now think you did?
Yes. Goddamnit. Yes.
Wanna find out?
The phone rang and rang. Finally I rose, went into the bedroom, and answered it. Everyone had found out somehow, already. There were outpourings of sympathy from relatives I hardly knew existed. Levelheaded uncles took over, made plans. The funeral was tomorrow. Should someone come and stay with me?
No, I told them. No. It isn’t necessary, because she isn’t really dead.
You’re crazy with grief, they said.
No. I’ve never been more clear-headed. She is here, with me now.
We’ll be right over, they said.
It was then, as I still spoke, that Sarah put her hand on my shoulder and said softly, “I’m back.”
I dropped the phone. She turned me around gently. She was there, in the evening twilight, as I had seen her in my dream, immaculately dressed, her purse over one arm, her polished nails, glistening in the semidarkness.
She didn’t flinch when I turned on the lights, but raised her head slowly and said, “Hello, Peter.”
“Hello, Sarah.”
The stench was horrible. She drew me toward her, toward a kiss. I gulped, tried to find something to say, tried to pull away. “No, please, no—”
“What are you afraid of, Peter? That I want to eat you? It isn’t like that.”
She let go of me. I sat down in a stuffed chair. She sat on the edge of the bed.
I turned off the lights again.
“What are you thinking, right now?” she said.
“I don’t know what to think. I can’t deal with this.”
“You wished it. You wished it very hard. You must have had a reason, a clear idea of what you were doing.”
I thought I knew then. For a flickering instant I was certain that somehow our whole life together was summed up in this instant, the lines of our existence converging to this pinnacle, this incredible reprieve, in which I would give everything meaning, heal all the hurts, demand satisfaction, make good every bit of neglect, anger, selfishness each of us had ever inflicted on the other. It was as if I were drowning and with everything flashing before me—
And I couldn’t find the words. I only felt numb, empty.
“This is just too...strange. I’m afraid,” I said at last, almost weeping for the feebleness of that excuse.
She smiled. I felt a twinge of hope just then. I tried to convince myself that she had actually returned to life, that we could go on as before and maybe do better; but, as I watched, her face seemed to crack slightly. The lines around her eyes were, ever so minimally, disturbingly, different.
“How do you think I feel?” she said. She laughed softly. It was real laughter, her real voice.
The phone rang again and kept on ringing. I turned out the light. The two of us sat there in the deepening gloom, staring at the phone. She nodded at last, and I reached over and picked it up.
The police sergeant I had met at the morgue spoke, his voice obviously straining for calm. He seemed in shock, unable to say what he had to say.
“Mister Riley...there has been a...desecration—I don’t know how to put it any other way.”
“A what?”
“Your wife’s body has disappeared.”
“But that’s impossible,” I said. “Body snatchers in this day and age? Ghouls?”
“We don’t know, Mister Riley. We haven’t got much to go on.”
“Well how about this? How about, she got up and walked away, and she’s here in my apartment with me right now—”
“Please, sir. You’re understandably upset. It is very hard, I know. If there is anything I can do—”
“She got up and walked!” I screamed, and threw the phone away.
“Walked,” said Sarah softly. “I don’t remember.”
I sat back, staring at her. She was no more than an outline in the dark now. The stench was worse than ever.
Tell yourself the big lie.
No. Believe it.
“You’re the esprit de l’escalier,” I said.
“The what?”
“The French have an expression, the spirit of the back stairs, meaning the right words that come to you after the situation is over. When you’re leaving, going down the back stairs, you suddenly know what you should have said, what you should have done, only it’s too late.”
She reached over and took my hand in hers. Even after those few minutes, her touch had changed. Now it was cold and hard. The smell was overwhelming. It was all I could do not to strike out frantically, not to run screaming and choking out of the apartment.
Instead, I sat there, trembling, and she held me, and she said, “Don’t leave me now. I think we have only a little time. This isn’t a return. It’s just a visit. Let’s use it well. So, please, just for this little while, accept me as I am.”
