The Blind Assassin

  Despite this, there was some food left over - half a ham, a small heap of cookies, various ravaged cakes - and Laura and I had been sneaking into the pantry on the sly. Reenie knew we were doing it, but she didn't have the energy right then to stop us - to say, "You'll spoil your supper" or "Stop nibbling in my pantry or you'll turn into mice" or "Eat one more smidgen and you'll burst" - or to utter any of the other warnings or predictions in which I'd always taken a secret comfort.

  This one time we'd been allowed to stuff ourselves unchecked. I'd eaten too many cookies, too many slivers of ham; I'd eaten a whole slice of fruitcake. We were still in our black dresses, which were too hot. Reenie had braided our hair tightly and pulled it back, with one stiff black grosgrain ribbon at the top of each braid and one at the bottom: four severe black butterflies for each of us.

  Outside, the sunlight made me squint. I resented the intense greenness of the leaves, the intense yellowness and redness of the flowers: their assurance, the flickering display they were making, as if they had the right. I thought of beheading them, of laying waste. I felt desolate, and also grouchy and bloated. Sugar buzzed in my head.

  Laura wanted us to climb up on the sphinxes beside the conservatory, but I said no. Then she wanted to go and sit beside the stone nymph and watch the goldfish. I couldn't see much harm in that. Laura skipped ahead of me on the lawn. She was annoyingly light-hearted, as if she didn't have a care in the world; she'd been that way all through Mother's funeral. She seemed puzzled by the grief of those around her. What rankled even more was that people seemed to feel sorrier for her because of this than they did for me.

  "Poor lamb," they said. "She's too young, she doesn't realize."

  "Mother is with God," Laura said. True, this was the official version, the import of all the prayers that had been offered up; but Laura had a way of believing such things, not in the double way everyone else believed them, but with a tranquil single-mindedness that made me want to shake her.

  We sat on the ledge around the lily pond; each lily pad shone in the sun like wet green rubber. I'd had to boost Laura up. She leaned against the stone nymph, swinging her legs, dabbling her fingers in the water, humming to herself.

  "You shouldn't sing," I told her. "Mother's dead."

  "No she's not," Laura said complacently. "She's not really dead. She's in Heaven with the little baby."

  I pushed her off the ledge. Not into the pond though - I did have some sense. I pushed her onto the grass. It wasn't a long drop and the ground was soft; she couldn't have been hurt much. She sprawled on her back, then rolled over and looked up at me wide-eyed, as if she couldn't believe what I'd just done. Her mouth opened into a perfect rosebud O, like a child blowing out birthday candles in a picture book. Then she began to cry.

  (I have to admit I was gratified by this. I'd wanted her to suffer too - as much as me. I was tired of her getting away with being so young.)

  Laura picked herself up off the grass and ran along the back driveway towards the kitchen, wailing as if she'd been knifed. I ran after her: it would be better to be on the spot when she reached someone in charge, in case she accused me. She had an awkward run: her arms stuck out oddly, her spindly little legs flung themselves out sideways, the stiff bows flopped around at the ends of her braids, her black skirt jounced. She fell once on the way, and this time she really hurt herself - skinned her hand. When I saw this, I was relieved: a little blood would cover up for my malice.

  The soda

  Sometime in the month after Mother died - I can't remember when, exactly - Father said he was going to take me into town. He'd never paid much attention to me, or to Laura either - he'd left us to Mother, and then to Reenie - so I was startled by this proposal.

  He didn't take Laura. He didn't even suggest it.

  He announced the upcoming excursion at the breakfast table. He'd begun insisting that Laura and I have breakfast with him, instead of in the kitchen with Reenie, as before. We sat at one end of the long table, he sat at the other. He rarely spoke to us: he read the paper instead, and we were too in awe of him to interrupt. (We worshipped him, of course. It was either that or hate him. He did not invite the more moderate emotions.)

  The sun coming through the stained-glass windows threw coloured lights all over him, as if he'd been dipped in drawing ink. I can still remember the cobalt of his cheek, the lurid cranberry of his fingers. Laura and I had such colours at our disposal as well. We'd shift our porridge dishes a little to the left, a little to the right, so that even our dull grey oatmeal was transformed to green or blue or red or violet: magic food, either charmed or poisoned depending on my whim or Laura's mood. Then we'd make faces at each other while eating, but silently, silently. The goal was to get away with such behaviour without alerting him. Well, we had to do something to amuse ourselves.

  On that unusual day, Father came back from the factories early and we walked into town. It wasn't that far; at that time, nothing in the town was very far from anything else. Father preferred walking to driving, or to having himself driven. I suppose it was because of his bad leg: he wanted to show he could. He liked to stride around town, and he did stride, despite his limp. I scuttled along beside him, trying to match his ragged pace.

  "We'll go to Betty's," said my father. "I'll buy you a soda." Neither of these things had ever happened before. Betty's Luncheonette was for the townspeople, not for Laura and me, said Reenie. It wouldn't do to lower our standards. Also, sodas were a ruinous indulgence and would rot your teeth. That two such forbidden things should be offered at once, and so casually, made me feel almost panicky.

  On the main street of Port Ticonderoga there were five churches and four banks, all made of stone, all chunky. Sometimes you had to read the names on them to tell the difference, although the banks lacked steeples. Betty's Luncheonette was beside one of the banks. It had an awning of green-and-white stripes, and a picture of a chicken pot pie in the window that looked like an infant's hat made of pastry dough, with a frill around the edge. Inside, the light was a dim yellow, and the air smelled of vanilla and coffee and melted cheese. The ceiling was made of stamped tin; fans hung down out of it with blades on them like airplane propellers. Several women wearing hats were sitting at small ornate white tables; my father nodded to them, they nodded back.

  There were booths of dark wood along one side. My father sat down in one of them, and I slid in across from him. He asked me what kind of soda I would like, but I wasn't used to being alone with him in a public place and it made me shy. Also I didn't know what kinds there were. So he ordered a strawberry soda for me and a cup of coffee for himself.

  The waitress had a black dress and a white cap and eyebrows plucked to thin curves, and a red mouth shiny as jam. She called my father Captain Chase and he called her Agnes. By this, and by the way he leaned his elbows on the table, I realized he must already be familiar with this place.

  Agnes said was this his little girl, and how sweet; she threw me a glance of dislike. She brought him his coffee almost immediately, wobbling a little on her high heels, and when she set it down she touched his hand briefly. (I took note of this touch, though I could not yet interpret it.) Then she brought the soda for me, in a cone-shaped glass like a dunce cap upside down; it came with two straws. The bubbles went up my nose and made my eyes water.

  My father put a sugar cube into his coffee and stirred it, and tapped the spoon on the side of the cup. I studied him over the rim of my soda glass. All of a sudden he looked different; he looked like someone I had never seen before - more tenuous, less solid somehow, but more detailed. I rarely saw him this close up. His hair was combed straight back and cut short at the sides, and was receding from his temples; his good eye was a flat blue, like blue paper. His wrecked, still-handsome face had the same abstracted air it often had in the mornings, at the breakfast table, as if he were listening to a song, or a distant explosion. His moustache was greyer than I'd noticed before, and it seemed odd, now that I considered it, that men ha
d such bristles growing on their faces and women did not. Even his ordinary clothes had turned mysterious in the dim vanilla-scented light, as if they belonged to someone else and he had only borrowed them. They were too big for him, that was it. He had shrunk. But at the same time he was taller.

  He smiled at me, and asked if I was enjoying my soda. After that he was silent and thoughtful. Then he took a cigarette out of the silver case he always carried, and lit it, and blew out smoke. "If anything happens," he said finally, "you must promise to look after Laura."

  I nodded solemnly. What was anything? What could happen? I dreaded some piece of bad news, though I couldn't have put a name to it. Maybe he might be going away - going overseas. Stories of the war had not been lost on me. However he did not explain further.

  "Shake hands on it?" he said. We reached our hands across the table; his was hard and dry, like a leather suitcase handle. His one blue eye assessed me, as if speculating about whether I could be depended on. I lifted my chin, straightened my shoulders. I wanted desperately to deserve his good opinion.

  "What can you buy for a nickel?" he said then. I was caught offguard by this question, tongue-tied: I didn't know. Laura and I were not given any money of our own to spend, because Reenie said we needed to learn the value of a dollar.

  From the inside pocket of his dark suit he took out his memorandum book in its pigskin cover and tore out a sheet of paper. Then he began talking about buttons. It was never too early, he said, for me to learn the simple principles of economics, which I would need to know in order to act responsibly, when I was older.

  "Suppose you begin with two buttons," he said. He said your expenses would be what it cost you to make the buttons, and your gross revenues would be how much you could sell the buttons for, and your net profit would be that figure minus your expenses, over a given time. You could then keep some of the net profit for yourself and use the rest of it to make four buttons, and then you would sell those and be able to make eight. He drew a little chart with his silver pencil: two buttons, then four buttons, then eight buttons. Buttons multiplied bewilderingly on the page; in the column next to them, the money piled up. It was like shelling peas - peas in this bowl, pods in that. He asked me if I understood.

  I scanned his face to see if he was serious. I'd heard him denounce the button factory often enough as a trap, a quicksand, a jinx, an albatross, but that was when he'd been drinking. Right now he was sober enough. He didn't look as if he was explaining, he looked as if he was apologizing. He wanted something from me, apart from an answer to his question. It was as if he wanted me to forgive him, to absolve him from some crime; but what had he done to me? Nothing I could think of.

  I felt confused, and also inadequate: whatever it was he was asking or demanding, it was beyond me. This was the first time a man would expect more from me than I was capable of giving, but it would not be the last.

  "Yes," I said.

  In the week before she died - one of those dreadful mornings - my mother said a strange thing, though I didn't consider it strange at the time. She said, "Underneath it all, your father loves you."

  She wasn't in the habit of speaking to us about feelings, and especially not about love - her own love or anyone else's, except God's. But parents were supposed to love their children, so I must have taken this thing she said as a reassurance: despite appearances, my father was as other fathers were, or were considered to be.

  Now I think it was more complicated than that. It may have been a warning. It may also have been a burden. Even if love was underneath it all, there was a great deal piled on top, and what would you find when you dug down? Not a simple gift, pure gold and shining; instead, something ancient and possibly baneful, like an iron charm rusting among old bones. A talisman of sorts, this love, but a heavy one; a heavy thing for me to carry around with me, slung on its iron chain around my neck.

  IV

  The Blind Assassin: The cafe

  The rain is light, but steady since noon. Mist rises from the trees, from the roadways. She comes past the front window with its painted coffee cup, white with a green stripe around it and three steam trails coming up out of it in wavering lines, as if three clutching fingers have slid down the wet glass. The door is marked CAFE in peeling gold letters; she opens it and steps inside, shaking her umbrella. It's cream-coloured, as is her poplin raincoat. She throws back the hood.

  He's in the last booth, beside the swing door to the kitchen, as he said he'd be. The walls are yellowed by smoke, the heavy booths are painted a dull brown, each with a metal hen's-claw hook for coats. Men sit in the booths, only men, in baggy jackets like worn blankets, no ties, jagged haircuts, their legs apart and feet in boots planted flat to the floorboards. Hands like stumps: those hands could rescue you or beat you to a pulp and they would look the same while doing either thing. Blunt instruments, and their eyes as well. There's a smell in the room, of rotting planks and spilled vinegar and sour wool trousers and old meat and one shower a week, of scrimping and cheating and resentment. She knows it's important to act as if she doesn't notice the smell.

  He lifts a hand, and the other men look at her with suspicion and contempt as she hurries towards him, her heels clacking on the wood. She sits down across from him, smiles with relief: he's here. He's still here.

  Judas Priest, he says, you might as well have worn mink.

  What did I do? What's wrong?

  Your coat.

  It's just a coat. An ordinary raincoat, she says, faltering. What's wrong with it?

  Christ, he says, look at yourself. Look around you. It's too clean.

  I can't get it right for you, can I? she says. I won't ever get it right.

  You do, he says. You know what you get right. But you don't think anything through.

  You didn't tell me. I've never been down here before - to a place like this. And I can hardly rush out the door looking like a cleaning woman - have you thought of that?

  If you just had a scarf or something. To cover your hair.

  My hair, she says despairingly. What next? What's wrong with my hair?

  It's too blonde. It stands out. Blondes are like white mice, you only find them in cages. They wouldn't last long in nature. They're too conspicuous.

  You're not being kind.

  I detest kindness, he says. I detest people who pride themselves on being kind. Snot-nosed nickel-and-dime do-gooders, doling out the kindness. They're contemptible.

  I'm kind, she says, trying to smile. I'm kind to you, at any rate.

  If I thought that's all it was - lukewarm milk-and-water kindness - I'd be gone. Midnight train, bat out of hell. I'd take my chances. I'm no charity case, I'm not looking for nooky handouts.

  He's in a savage mood. She wonders why. She hasn't seen him for a week. Or it might be the rain.

  Perhaps it isn't kindness then, she says. Perhaps it's selfishness. Perhaps I'm ruthlessly selfish.

  I'd like that better, he says. I prefer you greedy. He stubs out his cigarette, reaches for another, thinks better of it. He's still smoking ready-mades, a luxury for him. He must be rationing them. She wonders if he's got enough money, but she can't ask.

  I don't want you sitting across from me like this, you're too far away.

  I know, she says. But there's nowhere else. It's too wet.

  I'll find us a place. Somewhere out of the snow.

  It isn't snowing.

  But it will, he says. The north wind will blow.

  And we shall have snow. And what will the robbers do then, poor things? At least she's made him grin, though it's more like a wince. Where have you been sleeping? she says.

  Never mind. You don't need to know. That way, if they ever get hold of you and ask you any questions, you won't have to lie.

  I'm not such a bad liar, she says, trying to smile.

  Maybe not for an amateur, he says. But the professionals, they'd find you out, all right. They'd open you up like a package.

  They're still looking for you? H
aven't they given up?

  Not yet. That's what I hear.

  It's awful, isn't it, she says. It's all so awful. Still, we're lucky, aren't we?

  Why are we lucky? He's back to his gloomy mood.

  At least we're both here, at least we have...

  The waiter is standing beside the booth. He has his shirt sleeves rolled up, a full-length apron soft with old dirt, strands of hair arranged across his scalp like oily ribbon. His fingers are like toes.

  Coffee?

  Yes please, she says. Black. No sugar.

  She waits until the waiter leaves. Is it safe?

  The coffee? You mean does it have germs? It shouldn't, it's been boiled for hours. He's sneering at her but she chooses not to understand him.

  No, I mean, is it safe here.

  He's a friend of a friend. Anyway I'm keeping an eye on the door - I could make it out the back way. There's an alley.

  You didn't do it, did you, she says.

  I've told you. I could have though, I was there. Anyway it doesn't matter, because I fill their bill just fine. They'd love to see me nailed to the wall. Me and my bad ideas.

  You've got to get away, she says hopelessly. She thinks of the word clasp, how outworn it is. Yet this is what she wants - to clasp him in her arms.

  Not yet, he says. I shouldn't go yet. I shouldn't take trains, I shouldn't cross borders. Word has it that's where they're watching.

  I worry about you, she says. I dream about it. I worry all the time.

  Don't worry, darling, he says. You'll get thin, and then your lovely tits and ass will waste away to nothing. You'll be no good to anybody then.

  She puts her hand up to her cheek as if he's slapped her. I wish you wouldn't talk like that.

  I know you do, he says. Girls with coats like yours do have those wishes.

  The Port Ticonderoga Herald and Banner, March 16, 1933

  CHASE SUPPORTS RELIEF EFFORT

  BY ELWOOD R. MURRAY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

  In a public-spirited gesture such as this town has come to expect, Captain Norval Chase, President of Chase Industries Ltd., announced yesterday that Chase Industries will donate three boxcars of factory "seconds" to the relief efforts on behalf of those parts of the country most hard-hit by the Depression. Included will be baby blankets, children's pullovers, and an assortment of practical undergarments for both men and women.