Blind Assassin (98 page)

People sat at their tables watching her and listening to her, and having opinions about her—free to like or dislike her, to be seduced by her or not, to approve or disapprove of her performance, of her dress, of her bottom. She however was not free. She had to go through with it—to sing, to wiggle. I wondered what she was paid for doing this, and whether it was worth it. Only if you were poor, I decided. The phrase
in the spotlight
has seemed to me ever since to denote a precise form of humiliation.
The spotlight
was something you should evidently stay out of, if you could.

After the singer, there was a man who played a white piano, very fast, and after him a couple, two professional dancers: a tango act. They were in black, like the singer. Their hair shone like patent leather in the spotlight, which was now an acid green. The woman had one dark curl glued to her forehead, and a large red flower behind one ear. Her dress gored out from mid-thigh but was otherwise like a stocking. The music was jagged, hobbled—like a four-legged animal lurching on three legs. A crippled bull with its head down, lunging.

As for the dance, it was more like a battle than a dance. The faces of the dancers were set, impassive; they eyed each other glitteringly, waiting for a chance to bite. I knew it was an act, I could see that it was expertly done; nonetheless, both of them looked wounded.

The third day came. In the early afternoon I walked on the deck, for the fresh air. Richard didn’t come with me: he was expecting some important telegrams, he said. He’d had a lot of telegrams already; he would slit the envelopes with a silver paper knife, read the contents, then tear them up or tuck them away in his briefcase, which he kept locked.

I didn’t especially want him to be there with me on the deck, but nonetheless I felt alone. Alone and therefore neglected, neglected and therefore unsuccessful. As if I’d been stood up, jilted; as if I had a broken heart. A group of English people in cream-coloured linen stared at me. It wasn’t a hostile stare; it was bland, remote, faintly curious. No one can stare like the English. I felt rumpled and grubby, and of minor interest.

The sky was overcast; the clouds were a dingy grey, and sagged down in clumps like the stuffing from a saturated mattress. It was drizzling lightly. I wasn’t wearing a hat, for fear it might blow off; I had only a silk scarf, knotted under my chin. I stood at the railing, looking over and down, at the slate-coloured waves rolling and rolling, at the ship’s white wake scrawling its brief meaningless message. Like the clue to a hidden mishap: a trail of torn chiffon. Soot from the funnels blew down over me; my hair came unpinned and stuck to my cheeks in wet strands.

So this is the ocean, I thought It did not seem as profound as it should. I tried to remember something I might have read about it, some poem or other, but could not
Break, break, break
Something began that way. It had cold grey stones in it
Oh Sea

I wanted to throw something overboard I felt it was called for. In the end I threw a copper penny, but I didn’t make a wish.

The Blind Assassin: The houndstooth suit

He turns the key. It’s a bolt lock, a small mercy. He’s in luck this time, he has the loan of a whole flat. A bachelorette, only one large room with a narrow kitchen counter, but its own bathroom, with a claw-footed tub and pink towels in it. Ritzy doings. It belongs to the girlfriend of a friend of a friend, out of town for a funeral. Four whole days of safety, or the illusion of it.

The drapes match the bedspread; they’re a heavy nubbled silk, cherry-coloured, over wispy undercurtains. Keeping a little back from the window, he looks out. The view—what he can see through the yellowing leaves—is of Allan Gardens. A couple of drunks or hobos are passed out under the trees, one with his face under a newspaper. He himself has slept like that. Newspapers dampened by your breath smell like poverty, like defeat, like mildewed upholstery with dog hairs on it. There’s a scattering of cardboard signs and crumpled papers on the grass, from last night—a rally, the comrades hammering away at their dogma and the ears of their listeners, making hay while the sun don’t shine. Two disconsolate men picking up after them now, with steel-tipped sticks and burlap bags. At least it’s work for the poor buggers.

She’ll walk diagonally across the park. She’ll stop, look too obviously around her to see if there’s anyone watching. By the time she’s done that, there will be.

On the epicene white-and-gold desk there’s a radio the size and shape of half a loaf of bread. He turns it on: a Mexican trio, the voices like liquid rope, hard, soft, intertwining. That’s where he should go, Mexico. Drink tequila. Go to the dogs, or go more to the dogs. Go to the wolves. Become a desperado. He sets his portable typewriter on the desk, unlocks it, takes off the lid, rolls paper in. He’s running out of carbons. He has time for a few pages before she arrives, if she arrives. She sometimes gets hung up, or intercepted. Or so she claims.

He’d like to lift her into the ritzy bathtub, cover her with suds. Wallow around in there with her, pigs in pink bubbles. Maybe he will.

What he’s been working on is an idea, or the idea of an idea. It’s about a race of extraterrestrials who send a spaceship to explore Earth. They’re composed of crystals in a high state of organization, and they attempt to establish communications with those Earth beings they’ve assumed are like themselves: eyeglasses, windowpanes, Venetian paperweights, wine goblets, diamond rings. In this they fail. They send back a report to their homeland:
This planet contains many interesting relics of a once-flourishing but now-defunct civilization, which must have been of a superior order. We cannot tell what catastrophe has caused all intelligent life to become extinct. The planet currently harbours only a variety of viscous green filigree and a large number of eccentrically shaped globules of semi-liquid mud, which are tumbled hither and thither by the erratic, currents of the light, transparent fluid that covers the planet’s surface. The shrill squeaks and resonant groans produced by these must be ascribed to fractional vibration, and should not be mistaken for speech.

It isn’t a story though. It can’t be a story unless the aliens invade and lay waste, and some dame bursts out of her jumpsuit. But an invasion would violate the premise. If the crystal beings think the planet has no life, why would they bother to land on it? For archeological reasons, perhaps. To take samples. All of a sudden thousands of windows are sucked from the skyscrapers of New York by an extraterrestrial vacuum. Thousands of bank presidents are sucked out as well, and fall screaming to their deaths. That would be fine.

No. Still not a story. He needs to write something that will sell. It’s back to the never-fail dead women, slavering for blood. This time he’ll give them purple hair, set them in motion beneath the poisonous orchid beams of the twelve moons of Arn. The best thing is to picture the cover illustration the boys will likely come up with, and then go on from there.

He’s tired of them, these women. He’s tired of their fangs, their litheness, their firm but ripe half-a-grapefruit breasts, their gluttony. He’s tired of their red talons, their viperish eyes. He’s tired of bashing in their heads. He’s tired of the heroes, whose names are Will or Burt or Ned, names of one syllable; he’s tired of their ray guns, their metallic skin-tight clothing. Ten cents a thrill. Still, it’s a living, if he can keep up the speed, and beggars can hardly be choosers.

He’s running out of cash again. He hopes she’ll bring a cheque, from one of the P.O. boxes not in his name. He’ll endorse it, she’ll cash it for him; with her name, at her bank, she’ll have no problems. He hopes she’ll bring some postage stamps. He hopes she’ll bring more cigarettes. He’s only got three left.

He paces. The floor creaks. Hardwood, but stained where the radiator’s leaked. This block of flats was put up before the war, for single business people of good character. Things were more hopeful then. Steam heat, never-ending hot water, tiled corridors—the latest of everything. Now it’s seen better days. A few years ago when he was young, he’d known a girl who’d had a place here. A nurse, as he recalls: French letters in the night-table drawer. She’d had a two-ring burner, she’d cooked breakfast for him sometimes—bacon and eggs, buttery pancakes with maple syrup, he’d sucked it off her fingers. There was a stuffed and mounted deer’s head, left over from the previous tenants; she’d dried her stockings by hanging them on the antlers.

They’d spend Saturday afternoons, Tuesday evenings, whenever she had off, drinking—scotch, gin, vodka, whatever there was. She liked to be quite drunk first. She didn’t want to go to the movies, or out dancing; she didn’t seem to want romance or any pretense of it, which was just as well. All she’d required of him was stamina. She liked to haul a blanket onto the bathroom floor; she liked the hardness of the tiles under her back. It was hell on his knees and elbows, not that he’d noticed at the time, his attention being elsewhere. She’d moan as if in a spotlight, tossing her head, rolling her eyes. Once he’d had her standing up, in her walk-in closet. A knee-trembler, smelling of mothballs, in among the Sunday crepes, the lambswool twin sets. She’d wept with pleasure. After dumping him she’d married a lawyer. A canny match, a white wedding; he’d read about it in the paper, amused, without rancour.
Good for her,
he’d thought.
The sluts win sometimes.

Salad days. Days without names, witless afternoons, quick and profane and quickly over, and no longing in advance or after, and no words required, and nothing to pay. Before he got mixed up in things that got mixed up.

He checks his watch and then the window again, and here she comes, loping diagonally across the park, in a wide-brimmed hat today and a tightly belted houndstooth suit, handbag clutched under her arm, pleated skirt swinging, in her curious undulating stride, as if she’s never got used to walking on her hind legs. It may be the high heels though. He’s often wondered how they balance. Now she’s stopped as if on cue; she gazes around in that dazed way she has, as if she’s just been wakened from a puzzling dream, and the two guys picking up the papers look her over.
Lost something, miss?
But she comes on, crosses the street, he can see her in fragments through the leaves, she must be searching for the street number. Now she’s coming up the front steps. The buzzer goes. He pushes the button, crushes out his cigarette, turns off the desk light, unlocks the door.

Hello. I’m all out of breath. I didn’t wait for the elevator. She pushes the door shut, stands with her back against it.

Nobody followed you. I was watching. You’ve got cigarettes?

And your cheque, and a fifth of scotch, best quality. I pinched it from our well-stocked bar. Did I tell you we have a well-stocked bar?

She’s attempting to be casual, frivolous even. She’s not good at it. She’s stalling, waiting to see what he wants. She’d never make the first move, she doesn’t like to give herself away.

Good girl. He moves towards her, takes hold of her.

Am I a good girl? Sometimes I feel like a gun moll—doing your errands.

You can’t be a gun moll, I don’t have a gun. You watch too many movies.

Not nearly enough, she says, to the side of his neck. He could use a haircut. Soft thistle. She undoes his four top buttons, runs her hand in under his shirt. His flesh is so condensed, so dense. Fine-grained, charred. She’s seen ashtrays carved out of wood like that.

The Blind Assassin: Red brocade

That was lovely, she says. The bath was lovely. I never pictured you with pink towels. Compared to the usual, it’s pretty opulent.

Temptation lurks everywhere, he says. The fleshpots beckon. I’d say she’s an amateur tart, wouldn’t you?

He’d wrapped her in one of the pink towels, carried her to the bed wet and slippery. Now they’re under the nubbly cherry-coloured silk bedspread, the sateen sheets, drinking the scotch she’s brought with her. It’s a fine blend, smoky and warm, it goes down smooth as toffee. She stretches luxuriously, wondering only briefly who will wash the sheets.

She never manages to overcome her sense of transgression in these various rooms—the feeling that she’s violating the private boundaries of whoever ordinarily lives in them. She’d like to go through the closets, the bureau drawers—not to take, only to look; to see how other people live. Real people; people more real than she is. She’d like to do the same with him, except that he has no closets, no bureau drawers, or none that are his. Nothing to find, nothing to betray him. Only a scuffed blue suitcase, which he keeps locked. It’s usually under the bed.

His pockets are uninformative; she’s been through them a few times. (It wasn’t spying, she just wanted to know where things were and what they were, and where they stood.) Handkerchief, blue, with white border; spare change; two cigarette butts, wrapped in waxed paper—he must have been saving them up. A jackknife, old. Once, two buttons, from a shirt, she’d guessed. She hadn’t offered to sew them back on because then he’d know she’d been snooping. She’d like him to think she’s trustworthy.

A driver’s licence, the name not his. A birth certificate, ditto. Different names. She’d love to go over him with a fine-toothed comb. Rummage around in him. Turn him upside down. Empty him out.

He sings gently, in an oily voice, like a radio crooner:

A smoke-filled room, a devil’s moon, and you—

I stole a kiss, you promised me you would be true—

I slid my hand beneath your dress.

You bit my ear, we made a mess,

Now it is dawn—and you are gone—

And I am blue.

She laughs. Where’d you get that?

It’s my tart song. It goes with the surroundings.

She’s not a real tart. Not even an amateur. I don’t expect she takes money. Most likely she gets rewarded in some other way.

A lot of chocolates. Would you settle for that?

It would have to be truckloads, she says. I’m moderately expensive. The bedspread’s real silk, I like the colour—garish, but it’s quite pretty. Good for the complexion, like pink candle-shades. Have you cooked up any more?

Any more what?

Any more of my story.

Your
story?

Yes. Isn’t it for me?

Oh yes, he says. Of course. I think of nothing else. It keeps me awake nights.

Liar. Does it bore you?

Nothing that pleases you could possibly bore me.

God, how gallant. We should have the pink towels more often. Pretty soon you’ll be kissing my glass slipper. But go on, anyway.

Where was I?

The bell had rung. The throat was slit. The door was opening.

Oh. Right, then.

He says: The girl of whom we have been speaking has heard the door open. She backs against the wall, pulling the red brocade of the Bed of One Night tightly around herself. It has a brackish odour, like a salt marsh at low tide: the dried fear of those who have gone before her. Someone has come in; there’s the sound of a heavy object being dragged along the floor. The door closes again; the room is dark as oil. Why is there no lamp, no candle?

She stretches her hands out in front of her to protect herself, and finds her left hand taken and held by another hand: held gently and without coercion. It’s as if she’s being asked a question.

She can’t speak. She can’t say,
I can’t speak.

The blind assassin lets his woman’s veil fall to the floor. Holding the girl’s hand, he sits down on the bed beside her. He still intends to kill her, but that can come later. He’s heard about these impounded girls, kept hidden away from everyone until the last day of their lives; he’s curious about her. In any case she’s a gift of sorts, and all for him. To refuse such a gift would be to spit in the face of the gods. He knows he should move swiftly, finish the job, vanish, but there’s lots of time for that still. He can smell the scent they’ve rubbed on her; it smells of funeral biers, those of young women who’ve died unwed. Wasted sweetness.

He won’t be ruining anything, or nothing that’s been bought and paid for: the fraudulent Lord of the Underworld must have been and gone already. Had he kept his rusty chainmail on? Most likely. Clanked into her like a ponderous iron key, turned himself in her flesh, wrenched her open. He remembers the feeling all too well. Whatever else, he will not do that.

He lifts her hand to his mouth and touches his lips to it, not a kiss as such but a token of respect and homage. Gracious and most golden one, he says—the beggar’s standard address to a prospective benefactor—rumour of your extreme beauty has brought me here, though simply by being here my life is forfeit. I can’t see you with my eyes, because I’m blind. Will you permit me to see you with my hands? It would be a last kindness, and perhaps for yourself as well.

He hasn’t been a slave and a whore for nothing: he’s learned how to flatter, how to lie plausibly, how to ingratiate himself. He puts his fingers on her chin, and waits until she hesitates, then nods. He can hear what she’s thinking:
Tomorrow I’ll be dead.
He wonders if she guesses why he’s really here.

Some of the best things are done by those with nowhere to turn, by those who don’t have time, by those who truly understand the word
helpless.
They dispense with the calculation of risk and profit, they take no thought for the future, they’re forced at spearpoint into the present tense. Thrown over a precipice, you fall or else you fly; you clutch at any hope, however unlikely; however—if I may use such an overworked word—miraculous. What we mean by that is,
Against all odds.

And so it is, this night.

The blind assassin begins very slowly to touch her, with one hand only, the right—the dexterous hand, the knife hand. He passes it over her face, down her throat; then he adds the left hand, the sinister hand, using both together, tenderly, as if picking a lock of the utmost fragility, a lock made of silk. It’s like being caressed by water. She trembles, but not as before with fear. After a time she lets the red brocade fall away from around her, and takes his hand and guides it.

Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.

This is how the girl who couldn’t speak and the man who couldn’t see fell in love.

You surprise me, she says.

Do I? he says. Why? Though I like to surprise you. He lights a cigarette, offers her one; she shakes her head for no. He’s smoking too much. It’s nerves, despite his steady hands.

Because you said they fell in love, she says. You’ve sneered at that notion often enough—not realistic, bourgeois superstition, rotten at the core. Sickly sentiment, a high-flown Victorian excuse for honest carnality. Going soft on yourself?

Don’t blame me, blame history, he says, smiling. Such things happen. Falling in love has been recorded, or at least those words have. Anyway, I said he was lying.

You can’t wiggle out of it that way. The lying was only at first. Then you changed it.

Point granted. But there could be a more callous way of looking at it.

Looking at what?

This falling in love business.

Since when is it a business? she says angrily.

He smiles. That notion bother you? Too commercial? Your own conscience would flinch, is that what you’re saying? But there’s always a tradeoff, isn’t there?

No, she says. There isn’t. Not always.

You might say he grabbed what he could get. Why wouldn’t he? He had no scruples, his life was dog eat dog and it always had been. Or you could say they were both young so they didn’t know any better. The young habitually mistake lust for love, they’re infested with idealism of all kinds. And I haven’t said he didn’t kill her afterwards. As I’ve pointed out, he was nothing if not self-interested.

So you’ve got cold feet, she says. You’re backing down, you’re chicken. You won’t go all the way. You’re to love as a cock-teaser is to fucking.

He laughs, a startled laugh. Is it the coarseness of the words, is he taken aback, has she finally managed that? Restrain your language, young lady.

Why should I? You don’t.

I’m a bad example. Let’s just say they could indulge themselves—their emotions, if you want to call it that. They could roll around in their emotions—live for the moment, spout poetry out of both ends, burn the candle, drain the cup, howl at the moon. Time was running out on them. They had nothing to lose.

He did. Or he certainly thought he did!

All right then.
She
had nothing to lose. He blows out a cloud of smoke.

Not like me, she says, I guess you mean.

Not like you, darling, he says. Like me. I’m the one with nothing to lose.

She says, But you’ve got me. I’m not nothing.