Bereavements (28 page)

Two blue-coated stalwart men, their hips bulging with the instruments of death, capture and surrender, caught sight of him several times and finally climbed from their blinking red-eyed car to question the suspect.

Suspect of what? Well, you name it. Murder, robbery, arson, rape. Yes, even the latter. It takes strength (an enormity of which dwarfs are known to possess) not size, to seize, overpower, subdue (drag the kicking victim into cellar, alley or bush) then consummate that most heinous of crimes.

Bruno had adequate credentials in his wallet, as well as money, and was indeed well-dressed. He was not drunk, or high on dope, and didn’t carry (not yet) a weapon of any kind.

Could they charge him with indecent exposure, loitering, committing a nuisance? Littering? Crossing the street against a red light?

They had to let him go with ambiguous warnings, mysterious threats that they were aware of his presence, that crime was rampant, and that if he was an insomniac (as he claimed) and liked to walk at night, how come he was so far from home? Wouldn’t it be a good idea—much safer—if he confined himself to his neighborhood where people (including the police) were accustomed to seeing him?

Bruno agreed (yes, of course; yes, they were right) with vigorous nods of his weighty head. Then, without being aware of it, or why, the officers did not turn and walk the few steps to their car; they backed away.

“Jeeze!” said one, smiling weirdly at the other’s weird smile as they drove off.

What was troubling and entertaining them so, was that they’d had to stare down at a face and head that clearly, because of its size, belonged at least six inches above their own.

For once, to Martin’s surprise and satisfaction, Mrs. Evans seemed to have an enjoyable time. She had actually eaten more than two-thirds of her entree and a green salad, followed by a cream custard covered with a burnt sugar sauce. Instead of champagne, she’d wanted a sparkling burgundy and between them they finished off a bottle.

A concert followed, Boulez conducting at Lincoln Center. Stravinsky was featured, the principal piece
Sacre du Printemps.
And it really had been good, the way Martin liked it: strident, loud, the sound all but bursting his eardrums,

Glancing now and then at the boy’s absorbed, so-serious caught-up face, Mrs. Evans found herself smiling.

The applause was thunderous, the audience on its feet. She could feel the live, raw enthusiasm erupting. More than a sundry assembly of diverse individuals, it became an immense mass-creature, a voracious army of army ants, the Frankenstein sum being infinitely more than its many parts.

Martin was flushed and excited, forgetting her momentarily, all adulation for the little man with the baton who was bowing modestly and smiling with the satisfaction of a lickingly-whiskered well-fed cat.

“Wasn’t it wonderful!” Martin murmured as Dori drove them home. And he reached for her hand.

It was the first time, the very first time he had ever touched or held her that way, and she was undecided whether artfully to withdraw or not. Clearly, there was not only method to his not-so-mad madness, but, like the theater of the ancients, there was the necessity of a beginning, a middle and an end to his play. And this was the beginning of a love-story she could not only not endure but could barely contemplate.

Still, it would be an insult to pull back her hand instantly. He wasn’t exactly a lovesick priest touching a startled nun, so rather than imply a rejection, anything unpleasant in his touch, she let her hand rest in his a few tasteful moments, then, on the pretext of adjusting an earring, took it away.

However, the maneuver wasn’t quite over; but even at best, would have been ill-timed. They stood on her doorstep a few minutes, she being too tired and the hour too late, to ask him in, while—begun in the car—he finished another of his “anecdotes about famous people,” the supply of which was inexhaustible.

“It’s true,” he said, “Nijinsky was working out the choreography for
Sacre
when he went insane. Some blame the music— how savage it is! And keeping to its spirit, he danced without shoes, using flat pounding rhythms with his bare feet. But it is also said—” (how long his stories went on!) “—that it was a kind of over-reach on his part, an immensity of desire, a will to perfection that could not be humanly achieved. Not even by the fabulous Nijinsky! And so his mind snapped.”

All of which may or may not have been true. Besides countless anecdotes describing events that had actually taken place, she’d discovered that Martin wouldn’t hesitate to make one up, forgivably so, because like everything he did, it was for her pleasure, her diversion, her entertainment.

But now (of course)—after the quasi-successful “hand-holding” came “the kiss.” Being the first, he was gentlemanly enough not to force himself on her or even take her by surprise, but to ask permission; standing there as straight and attentive in the shadows as a Prussian soldier waiting for orders.

She hesitated. But why make a fuss? Perhaps her own silly mind was putting more ardor and ambition in him than really existed. A kiss? A brief light touch of the lips? Why not, between friends.

But of course Martin had something more and much different in mind. Hardly in mind at all. He was what he was: a healthy, profoundly sexual young man, his body aroused, and a back-logged accumulation of towering lust that had taken months in its making.

Regardless: he grabbed her roughly about the waist, forced his body to all he could find of hers between the soft open fall of her mink, while his mouth crushed bruisingly against hers, ready to devour her, to the last crumb, on the spot.

It was moments before she could free herself, and in those moments had to acknowledge that she experienced a sensation that, while perfectly controlled, implied a hunger that may have been as keen as the boy’s.

But then she was free and his face lightly slapped, both of them knowing it was an idle gesture, a bourgeois cliche of innocence outraged.

“Goodnight, Carma,” he said, his manly voice—as the dirty books would have it—husky with emotion.

She murmured a doubtful goodnight, withholding his name as punishment and threat, watching him walk slowly, without backward glance, down the street.

Hadn’t she known all along that what had happened
would?
It was simply that she hadn’t thought about it directly and intentionally. And she wouldn’t think about it now. If she didn’t want to see him again, she wouldn’t. And if she did, she would.

She saw Dori coming back after garaging the car, and waved as he opened the alley gate to go into the house through the service entrance.

Even in the faint light from the street lamp, she could see him smiling. Was it because he approved of Martin? No, it couldn’t be that. Martin wasn’t anyone who could be approved of at all. It was simply that he was probably happy to see her appear less sad, less grieved, beginning to take an interest, however slight, in the real world, and not the morbid one that had been slowly killing her for so long. Indeed, if she had gone out with the bony, hook-nosed sanitation man who, with his wheeled trash can and broom, she sometimes saw cleaning the street, Dori would have approved.

What she hadn’t noticed, nor had Martin, or even Dori who usually kept a sharp eye on the premises as he went in and out of the house, was that crowded into the shadows, flat against the wall at the side of the stairs where a locked, iron-barred door led to the basement, was . . . Well, what was it?

Not a man; it was far too small. Not a child; though that was possible but unlikely so late at night, unless it was lost, or drugged, or mad and wandering. Perhaps it was an animal, Certainly it had an animal’s stealth and cunning. It had hidden itself so well: to listen, to watch.

But animals never wear coats, nor carry straight-edge razors in inner breast pockets.

This particular razor had a beautiful white porcelain handle, and was decorated with cornflowers, some pale, worn away, others the bluest of blues.

It takes courage and the kind of insanity that is totally careless and destructive of self to be able to use a razor, neither of which Bruno possessed for a long while.

Crimes of passion are sometimes quick, sometimes slow. In Bruno’s case, the growth was progressive. It took time, this becoming. Time to grow senselessly wild, to grow mad.