An American Dream (7 page)

It had been when all was said a bitch of a brawl. She lay for a minute half in sleep, half in stupor, and her tongue licked idly at my ear. Like a mother cat she was teaching a new kitten how to listen. “Mr. Rojack,” she said at last with her gutty fleshy Berlin speech, “I do not know why you have trouble with your wife. You are absolutely a genius, Mr. Rojack.”

“A doctor is no better than his patient,” said I.

There was a wicked look of amusement in her face. “But you are a
vache
,” she said. “You must not pull my hair. Not even for that.”

“
Der Teufel
asked me to visit.”

“Der Teufel!”
She laughed. “What can a rich man like you know about
der Teufel?
”

“Doesn’t
der Teufel
like the rich?”

“No,” she said, “God protects the rich.”

“But at the end I could not have paid my respects to God.”

“Oh, you are dreadful,” she said, and pinched me a good mean German pinch where my belly was soft. Then she started uneasily.

“Do you think your wife heard?” she asked.

“I doubt it.”

“Are the walls so good?” She sat up now, her tricky breasts lolling nicely. “No, I feel not so easy now,” she said, “your wife could come in on us.”

“She would never do something like that. It’s not her style.”

“I think you know a woman better than that,” said Ruta. She pinched again. “You know, at the end, you stole something from me.”

“Half.”

“Half.”

We liked each other. That was fine. But again I could feel a stillness from the room above. Ruta was nervous.

“When you walked in on me,” she said, “you looked pretty.”

“So did you, I fear.”

“No, but I never do something like that. At least,” she added with a malicious grin, “not unless I lock the door.”

“And tonight you didn’t.”

“No, I was asleep. After I let you in, I went to sleep. I was thinking how unhappy you looked. When you came to visit.” She put her head to one side as if to inquire whether I had been already
with my wife in the bed above her, and then didn’t ask. “Of course,” she said, “you and Mrs. Rojack had a reconciliation.”

“Of sorts.”

“What a bad man you are. That’s what woke me up—making your reconciliation with Mrs. Rojack. I was awake, and I was so excited—I can’t explain it.” Her bold pointed spiteful nose made everything she said seem merry.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

She was probably twenty-eight. “You’re a charming twenty-three,” I said.

“And you are still a
vache
.”

Her fingers were beginning to play with me.

“Let’s sleep another minute,” I said.

“Yes.” She started to light a cigarette, then stopped. “Your wife thinks you’ve gone home.”

“Probably.”

“I hope the walls are good.”

“Let’s try to sleep,” I said. I wanted the light out. I had a rendezvous in the dark. Something was waiting for me. But the moment I turned the switch, it was very bad. The darkness came over like air on a wound when the dressing is removed. My senses were much too alert. Everything which had passed from her body to mine was now alive inside, as if a horde of tourists, pokey and inquisitive, were wandering through my body. I had one of those anxieties which make it an act of balance to breathe: too little air compresses the sensation of being throttled, but too much—one deep breath—and there is the fear of a fall. There was something in the room besides Ruta and myself, something which gathered force. It was approaching now, but there were no eyes, no claws, just a sense of oppression waiting. I felt vile. “Do you have a drink?” I asked of Ruta.

“No.” She gave a laugh and whispered, “When I drink I go out to look for men who will beat me.”

“Crazy,” I said, and got up.

She could hear me putting on my clothes in the dark. The oppression had lifted on the moment I was free of her bed and my fingers were quick. They seemed to float onto each piece of clothing as I needed it.

“When will you be back?”

“Before morning.”

“And you will tell your wife you took a walk and came back and woke me up to let you in?”

“No, I will tell her I left the door unlocked.”

“Don’t give all the good things to your wife. Save a present for me.”

“Maybe I will bring back a diamond.”

“I love you a little bit.”

And I was thinking of that empty womb, of that graveyard which gambled a flower and lost.

“I like you, Ruta.”

“Come back, and you will see how much you are going to like me.”

I had a thought then of what had been left in her. It was perishing in the kitchens of the Devil. Was its curse on me?

“
Der Teufel
is so happy,” she said, and a perfect spitefulness of attention came to a focus in her eye. Small cheer that she could read my mind.

Was that the cloud of oppression which had come to me in the dark? That the seed was expiring in the wrong field?

“Next time,” said Ruta, “you must take care of little Ruta.”

“Next time will be an event,” I said. I wanted to blow her a kiss but there was nothing in me to send her way. So I closed the door, and went back up the stairs, up the aisle of that padded
jungle, and entered Deborah’s bedroom again with the expectation that somehow she would be gone.
There
was the body. It struck my sight like a shelf of rock on which a ship is about to smash. What was I going to do with her? I felt a mean rage in my feet. It was as if in killing her, the act had been too gentle, I had not plumbed the hatred where the real injustice was stored. She had spit on the future, my Deborah, she had spoiled my chance, and now her body was here. I had an impulse to go up to her and kick her ribs, grind my heel on her nose, drive the point of my shoe into her temple and kill her again, kill her good this time, kill her right. I stood there shuddering from the power of this desire, and comprehended that this was the first of the gifts I’d plucked from the alley, oh Jesus, and I sat down in a chair as if to master the new desires Ruta had sent my way.

My breath was bad again. What in hell was I to do with Deborah? I had no solution. If the messenger was on his way, he gave no hint of being near. A first rat’s panic began to gnaw. “Keep cool, you swine,” said a contemptuous voice in me, all but an echo from Deborah.

Let me tell you the worst. I had a little fantasy at this moment. It was beyond measure. I had a desire to take Deborah to the bathroom, put her in the tub. Then Ruta and I would sit down to eat. The two of us would sup on Deborah’s flesh, we would eat for days: the deepest poisons in us would be released from our cells. I would digest my wife’s curse before it could form. And this idea was thrilling to me. I felt like a doctor on the edge of a thunderous new medicine. The details fell into place: what we did not choose to devour we could grind away in the electric Disposall beneath the sink, all the impure organs and little bones. For the long bones, for the femur and the tibia, the fibula, the radius and the ulna, the humerus, I had another plan. I would bind them in a package and hurl them out the window, out across the East River Drive and into the water. No, four lanes of traffic and a pedestrian walk to clear,
too long a throw, I would have instead to go out in the street and take a taxicab and then another and then another until I ended at last in the marshes of Canarsie or the stench flats near City Island; there I could fling them in a swamp. With luck those long horsewoman’s bones might disappear forever, or would I know for sure? Would I have instead to fill a box with plaster of Paris and imbed the bones, and her teeth as well? But no, the teeth must be disposed of separately, and not in any sewer or trash can, no, they must be buried securely, but where? Not Central Park, not by half, one tooth found, and I was dead: as in a movie I could see the police talking to Deborah’s dentist—and bones in plaster of Paris dropped at sea, that was not good either, for how was I to rent a boat in March without drawing attention?
Heiress Is Missing!
the tabloids would scream on the following day and people would remember my face, my heavy package, no, this wasn’t going to work: worst of all was Ruta in it with me, for she could yet cause trouble. Now the fantasy approached the vanishing point: I saw myself alone beside the tub with Ruta’s body in cadaver—there was a tonic humor at the thought which made me smile. No, this was done, this idea was done, and I lay back weakly in my chair as if a spasm of illness which should have discharged itself from my mouth had lifted instead to my brain. What gifts this girl had given me, what German spice!

Then it came simple as that, the simplest solution of all. The messenger had slipped into the tower. And I smiled in terror, for it was also the boldest choice. Was I brave enough? Something in me lingered back—I had a panicked minute of argument in which I tried to find some other way. Perhaps I could take Deborah to the elevator (my poor wife is drunk) or sneak her down the stairs, no, altogether impossible, and then I sighed: if I missed on this one, it was the electric chair for sure, I had a wistful sadness now I had not tried to cast a baby into Ruta—she might be the last woman for me—and then I stood up from my seat, went to look at Deborah,
knelt beside her again, and put my hand under her hips. Her bowels had voided. Suddenly I felt like a child. I was ready to weep. There was a stingy fish-like scent in the air, not unreminiscent of Ruta. They were mistress and maid and put their musk in opposite pockets. I hesitated, and then since there was nothing to do but go on, I went to the bathroom, took some paper, and cleaned Deborah. It was a discipline to be thorough. Then I disposed of the waste, listening to the hound’s sigh of the closet water, and came back to look out the open window. No. Not yet. First I turned off the brightest lights. Then in a panic of strength, like the desperation to get out of a burning room, I lifted her up, at what a cost I lifted her up, for her body was almost too heavy (or I was that empty with fright) and balanced her feet on the ledge, it was harder than I thought, and with a fever that no one see me at the open window now, not this instant, no, I took a breath and thrust her out and fell back myself to the carpet as if she had shoved me back, and lying there, I counted to two, to three, how fast I do not know, feeling the weight of her flight like a thrill in my chest, and heard a sound come up from the pavement all ten stories below, a flat, surprisingly loud and hollow thump as car brakes screamed and metal went colliding into metal with that howl of a shape which is suddenly collapsed, and I stood up then and leaned out the window and looked and there was Deborah’s body half beneath the front of a car and a pile-up of three or four behind and traffic screaming to a stall on back, all the way half a mile back, and I howled then in a simulation of woe, but the woe was real—for the first time I knew she was gone—and it was an animal howl.

One scalding wash of sorrow, and I felt clean. I went to the telephone, dialed O, asked, “What is the number of the police?” The operator said, “Just a minute, I’ll get it for you,” and I waited for eight long rings while my nerve teetered like a clown on a tightrope, and a cacophony of voices rose all ten stories up from the ground. I heard my voice giving my name and Deborah’s address to
the mouthpiece, and that voice of mine then said, “Get over here right away, will you. I can hardly talk, there’s been a frightful accident.” I hung up, went to the door, and shouted down the stairs, “Ruta, get dressed, get dressed quick. Mrs. Rojack has killed herself.”

B
UT NOW
it wasn’t possible to wait in Deborah’s room until the police arrived. An anxiety went off in me like the quiver of electricity when there is a short in the line. My body could have been on a subway, it felt as if it
were
the subway, bleak, grinding at high speed; I was jangled with adrenalin.

I went out the door, down the steps, and came up against Ruta in the hall. She was standing there half-dressed, a black skirt, no stockings yet, no shoes, a white blouse not buttoned. Her breasts were bare, no brassiere yet either, and her dyed red hair now uncombed, still mangled by my fingers, stood up like a bush. Dyed, marcelled, lacquered and then worked over by me, her hair gave off the look of a girl just taken in a police raid. But even at this instant, something relaxed in me. For there was a tough slatternly tenderness in her face, and her prize—those bright little
breasts—kept peeking at me through the open shirt. There was an instant between us, an echo of some other night (some other life) when we might have met in the corridor of an Italian whorehouse on an evening when the doors were closed, the party was private, and the girls were moving from bed to bed in one sweet stew.

“I was dreaming,” she said, “and you called down the stairs.” Suddenly she closed the shirt over her breasts.

“No,” and to my surprise, I gave a pure sob. It was an extraordinary sound. “Deborah killed herself. She jumped through the window.”

Ruta let out a cry, a thin dirty little cry. Something nasty was being surrendered. Two tears flashed down her cheek. “She was an ingenious woman,” Ruta said, and began to weep. There was pain now in the sound, and such a truth in the grief that I knew she was crying not for Deborah, not even quite for herself, but rather for the unmitigatable fact that women who have discovered the power of sex are never far from suicide. And in that sudden burst of mourning, her face took on beauty. A nourishment came off Ruta’s limbs. I was in some far-gone state: no longer a person, a character, a man of habits, rather a ghost, a cloud of loose emotions which scattered on the wind. I felt as if much of me had gathered like a woman to mourn everything I had killed in my lover, that violent brutish tyrant who lived in Deborah. And I groped toward Ruta like a woman seeking another female. We came together, hugged each other. But her breast came out of the open shirt, and slipped into my hand, and that breast was looking for no woman’s touch, no, it made its quick pert way toward what was hard and certain in my hand. It was as if I had never felt a breast before (that gift of flesh) for Ruta was still weeping, the sobs were coming now with the fierce rhythm of a child, but her breast was independent of her. That little tit in my hand was nosing like a puppy for its reward, impertinent with its promise of the sly life it could give to me, and so keen to pull in a life for itself that I was taken
with a hopeless lust Hopeless, because I should have been down on the street already, and yet there was no help for it, thirty seconds was all I wanted and thirty seconds I took, one high sniff of the alley coming from her as I took her still weeping right there in the hall, her back against those velvet flowers while I fired one hot fierce streak of fierce bright murder, fierce as the demon in the eyes of a bright golden child.