The Stories of Paul Bowles (69 page)

I
FIRST MET HER
just after she’d bought the big villa overlooking the valley Saudis have it now they’ve got most of the good properties I remember she asked Anton and me to tea we hadn’t been married very long then she seemed very much interested in him she’d seen him dance years ago in Paris before his accident and they talked about those days it was all very correct she had delicious petits fours strange how that impressed itself on my mind of course at that time you must remember we were frightfully poor living on the cheapest sort of food fortunately Anton was a fantastic cook or we should have starved he knew how to make a meal out of nothing at all I assure you well it wasn’t a fortnight later that she invited us to lunch terribly formal a large staff everything perfect and afterward I remember we were having coffee and liqueurs beside the fireplace and she suddenly offered us this little house she had on the property there were several extra cottages hidden around you know guest houses but most of them were up above nearer the big house this one was way down in the woods far from everything except a duck pond I was absolutely stunned it was the last thing I should have expected of her then she took us down to see it very simple but charming tastefully furnished and a rather primitive kitchen and bath but there
were heaps of flowers growing outside and lovely views from the windows we were enchanted of course you understand there was nothing to pay we were simply given the use of the house for as long as we wished I admit it was a very kind gesture for her to make although at the time I suspected that she had her eye on Anton I was quite wrong as it happened in any case having the house made an enormous difference to us it was a gift from the gods there was as a matter of fact one drawback for me Anton didn’t seem to mind them but there were at least twenty peacocks in an enormous aviary in the woods not far away and some nights they’d scream you know how hair-raising the sound is especially in the middle of the night it took me weeks to get used to it lying there in the dark listening to those insane screams eventually I was able to sleep through it well once we’d moved in our hostess never came near us which was her privilege naturally but it did seem a bit peculiar at least she wasn’t after Anton the months went by and we never caught sight of her you see we had a key to the gate at the bottom of the estate so we always used the lower road to come and go it was much easier than climbing up past the big house so of course in order for us to see her she’d have had to come down to our part of the property but she never ventured near us time went on then all at once we began to hear from various directions a strange rumor that whenever she spoke of us she referred to us as her squatters I was all for going up and having it out with her on the spot is that why you invited us here so you could ridicule us wherever you go but Anton said I’d got no proof it could simply be the typical sort of malicious gossip that seems to be everywhere in this place he said to wait until I heard it with my own ears well clearly she wasn’t likely to say it in front of me then one morning I went to take a little walk in the woods and what should I see but several freshly painted signs that had been put up along the paths all saying
DEFENSE DE TOUCHER AUX FLEURS
obviously they’d been put there for us there was no one else isn’t it extraordinary the way people’s minds work we didn’t want her beastly flowers we’d never touched them I don’t like cut flowers I much prefer to see them growing Anton said best pay no attention if we have words she’ll put us out and he was right of course but it was very hard to take at all events you know she had lovers always natives of course what can one expect that’s all right I’m not so narrow-minded I’d begrudge her that dubious pleasure but there are ways and ways of doing things you’d expect a woman of her age and breeding to have a certain
amount of discretion that is she’d make everything as unnoticeable as possible but no not at all in the first place she allowed them to live with her quite as if they were man and wife and that gave them command over the servants which is unthinkable but worse she positively flourished those wretched lovers of hers in the face of the entire town never went out without the current incumbent if people didn’t include him she didn’t accept the invitation she was the sort of woman one couldn’t imagine ever having felt embarrassment but she could have managed to live here without alienating half the Europeans you know in those days people felt strongly about such things natives couldn’t even enter the restaurants it wasn’t that she had lovers or even that her lovers were natives but that she appeared with them in public that was a slap in the face for the European colony and they didn’t forgive it but she couldn’t be bothered to care what anybody felt what I’m leading up to is the party we never caught a glimpse of her from one month to the next you understand and suddenly one day she came to call on us friendly as you please she said she had a favor to ask of us she was giving this enormous party she’d sent out two hundred invitations that had to be surrendered at the gate she said there were always too many gate-crashers at her parties the tourists would pay the guides to get them in and this time nobody was to get in excepting the ones she’d invited what she wanted us to do was to stand in a booth she’d built just outside the gate it had a little window and a counter Anton was to examine the invitations and give a sign to one of the policemen stationed outside to admit the holder I had a big ledger with all the names alphabetically listed and as Anton passed me the invitation I was to make a red check opposite the name she wanted to be sure later who had come and who hadn’t I’ve got ten servants she said and not one of them can read or write it’s discouraging then I thought of you and decided to ask this great favor of you is everything all right in your little house do you enjoy living here so of course we said oh yes everything is lovely we’d be glad to help you what fools we were it won’t take long she said two hours at most it’s a costume party drinks dinner and dancing by moonlight in the lower garden the musicians begin to play at half past seven after she’d gone I said to Anton two hundred invitations indeed she hasn’t got twenty friends in this entire city well the night of the party came and we were up there in our little sentry box working like coolies the sweat was pouring down my back sometimes a dozen people came all together half of them already drunk
and they didn’t at all like having to wait and be admitted one at a time they kept arriving on and on I thought they’d never stop coming at midnight we were still there finally I told Anton this is too much I don’t care who comes I’m not going to stand here another minute and Anton said you’re right and he spoke to the guard and said that’s it no more people are coming don’t let anybody else in and good night and so on and we went down to where the party was the costumes were very elaborate we stood for a few minutes at the end of the garden watching them dancing suddenly a tall man in robes with a false beard and a big turban came up to us I had no idea who he was but Anton claimed he recognized him at once anyway it was her lover if you please she’d sent him to tell us that if we were going to come to the party would we please go and put on our costumes as if we had any costumes to put on I was staggered after getting us to stand for almost five hours in a suffocating little box she has the infernal gall to ask us to leave yes and not even the common courtesy to come and speak to us herself no she sends her native lover to do it I was starved there was plenty of food on the buffet but it was a hundred feet away from us at the other end of the garden when we got back down to our house I told Anton I hate that woman I know it’s wrong but I really hate her to make things worse the next day she came down to see us again not as you might think to thank us far from that on the contrary she’d come to complain that we’d let in people who had no invitations what do you mean I cried look at the cards and look at the book they tally what are you talking about and she said the Duchesse de Saint Somethingorother was missing her evening bag where she’d put her emerald earrings and I said just what has that got to do with us will you please tell me well she said we’d left our post our post she called it as though we were in the army and after we’d gone some other people had arrived and the police let them in Anton asked if they’d presented their invitations well she said she hadn’t been able to get hold of that particular policeman so she didn’t know but if we’d been there it wouldn’t have happened my dear lady I said do you realize we were in that booth for five hours you told us it wouldn’t take more than two I hope you’re aware of that well it’s most unfortunate she said I’ve had to call in the police that made me laugh
eh bien madame
I said since according to you it was the police who let the thief in it ought to be very simple I don’t see that we have anything to do with it then she raised her voice all I can say is I’m sorry I was foolish enough to count on you I shall know better another
time and she went out it was then that I said to Anton look we can’t go on living in this woman’s house we’ve got to find somewhere else he was earning a little at that time working in an export-import office practically nothing but enough to pay rent on a small cottage he thought we should hang on there and hope that things would return to normal but I began to go out by myself nearly every day to look for somewhere we could move to this turned out later to have been very useful at least I’d seen a good many houses and knew which ones were possible you see the party was only the prelude to the ghastly thing that happened less than a month afterward one night some teenage hoodlums got into the big house the lover had gone to Marrakech for the weekend so she was alone yes she made the servants sleep in cabins in the upper garden she was alone in the house and you know these people they’re always convinced that Europeans must have vast sums of money hidden about the premises so they tortured her all night long trying to make her tell where it was she was beaten and burned and choked and cut and both her arms were broken she must have screamed I should think but maybe they covered her face with pillows at all events no one heard a thing the maids found her in the morning she was alive but she died in hospital that afternoon we knew nothing about it until the police suddenly arrived two days later and said the property was being padlocked and everybody had to leave immediately meaning the servants and gardeners and us so out we went with all our things it was terrible but as Anton said at least we lived for more than a year without paying rent he always insisted on seeing the positive side of things in a way that was helpful later when I heard the details I was frightfully upset because you see the police traced the hooligans through a gold cigarette case and some other things they’d taken the night they tortured her and then it was discovered that they also had the Duchess’s evening bag one of the criminals had arrived late the night of the party and slipped in along with a group of Spaniards after Anton and I had left the gate and of course that gave him the opportunity of examining the house and grounds for the break-in later so I felt terribly guilty of course I knew it wasn’t my fault but I couldn’t keep myself from thinking that if we’d only stayed on a little longer she’d still have been alive I was certain at first that the lover had had some part in it you see he never left her side she wouldn’t hear of it and all at once he goes off to Marrakech for a weekend no it seemed too pat it fitted too well but apparently he had nothing
to do with it besides he’d had every chance to make off with whatever he wanted and never had touched a thing so he must have been fairly intelligent at least he knew better than to bite the hand that was feeding him except that in the end he got nothing for his good behavior poor wretch I’ve tried to think back to that night and sometimes it seems to me that in my sleep maybe I did hear screams but I’d heard those blasted peacocks so many times that I paid no attention and now it makes my blood run cold to think that perhaps I actually did hear her calling for help and thought it was the birds except that the big house was so far away she’d have had to be screaming from a window that looked over the valley so I keep telling myself I couldn’t possibly have heard her they wouldn’t have let her get near a window but it’s upsetting all the same

(1983)

R
OUGHLY FOUR DECADES AGO
New York newspapers carried the report of a domestic tragedy, poignant but unexceptional. A middle-aged husband and wife celebrated New Year’s Eve by remaining quietly at home and joining in a suicide pact. They were found lying side by side on the floor of their living room, each with an empty champagne glass nearby. A partially empty bottle of champagne stood on the sink in the kitchen, along with a small amount of the cyanide which they had dissolved in the wine for their holiday libations. There were no explanatory notes.

The Vredens were both employees of the New York Board of Education. They had one son, Julian, not yet twenty, who had left Columbia and was now attending a college in Florida. The police must have entertained suspicions from the outset, but they played a slow game. Young Vreden collected the insurance from his father’s policy, at which point he was unwise enough to appear with his friend Mark from Miami in the Park Avenue salesroom of a firm dealing in imported cars. He made a down payment on a particularly flamboyant Aston-Martin. The two young men were by then living in the apartment formerly occupied by the elder Vredens, both of them having dropped out of college, with no
apparent intention of continuing their education. The police paid them a visit, and had no difficulty in getting Julian to admit that it was he who had administered the lethal champagne cocktails. Indeed, he made it clear that he considered himself amply justified in his behavior.

His story, verified by relatives and neighbors (all of whom maintained a wholly unsympathetic attitude toward him) was one of uninterrupted long-term parental persecution. Rather than being pleased that their son should have spent his spare time reading, they were loudly contemptuous of his literary interests. The reason: Julian read
poetry.
This was unforgivable. The mother had a habit of looking into his room and shouting: “Look at the big sissy with his poetry!” And his father, eyeing him with disgust, would groan: “What a fairy we’ve got for a son!” These constant attacks, year in and year out, had no effect on the boy save to make him increase defiantly the number of volumes of poetry with which he filled his room.

The shift from Columbia to the Florida college clearly was a desirable one from all points of view. The physical distance between them must have served to mitigate somewhat the permanent state of ill-will between parents and son, otherwise the surprise New Year’s Eve telephone call and subsequent visit would have been unthinkable. Perhaps they thought he had changed, and were heartened by the prospect of a possible armistice.

Julian arrived at the apartment alone, friend Mark having agreed to wait outside in the corridor until Julian opened the door for him. He had a bottle of Piper Heidsieck with him which he uncorked in the kitchen and shared with them, along with the conventional toasts to their good health during the coming year. Then he took their empty glasses back into the kitchen and refilled them, this time adding the cyanide. When they staggered and dropped to the floor, he opened the service door and let Mark into the kitchen. It was when the elder Vreden looked up and saw the unfamiliar grinning face behind his son that he uttered the only words Julian remembered his father saying during the ordeal: “Oh God, who’s that?”

When both victims were dead, Julian and Mark pushed the bodies closer to one another, wiped the glasses clean, leaving them on the rug nearby, washed and put away the third glass, and left the apartment to its New Year’s Eve silence. They flew back to Miami immediately.

The case was not one to attract a great deal of publicity: too much
time had elapsed between the murders and the indictment. Julian and Mark were condemned to life imprisonment in a New Jersey hospital for the criminally insane. Criminal?Yes. Insane? Not likely. The desire to avenge acts of injustice committed against one’s person can scarcely be considered a sign of dementia. Julian Vreden’s story is a classical and uniquely American tale of revenge.

(1985)