Shadow Traffic (32 page)

Serena had left, claiming she had an appointment in Lenox, and now he was alone with Greta. For a moment he had the feeling that he was being set up, that it had all been planned so that he'd be left alone with her. But a bigger part of him thought of Serena as too guileless to be part of a scheme like that. Besides, while he half-heartedly offered to go, too, and said something to Greta about not wanting to “monopolize her time,” she all but insisted he stay, which he realized was what he wanted to do anyway. In fact, in an odd way he felt powerless to leave. It was not that he was attracted to her in a conventional way. Sexually, he couldn't picture it—yet some force seemed to keep him rooted to his chair, and to their conversation. Was there really such a thing as a compelling personality? All he knew was that he couldn't stop talking to her. So far she'd been asking him most, if not all, the questions, but he wanted to find out many things about her life. Such as what she did with her free time? How did she get to this point in life? What exactly had happened to her husband? Did she have any children? (He thought Serena told him she didn't but that her house was often filled with guests.) Perhaps, most
of all, what was it like to inhabit such a huge house, one that he couldn't yet fit into his theoretical model of a town? It was as if her home was somehow larger, or at least more complicated, than the rest of Interlaken put together, and yet she didn't seem, sitting there so serenely, to have the energy and dedication to detail to make it all run smoothly.

He wanted to know all this with an urgency that surprised him yet found himself still answering questions that she apparently wanted to know about him. It wasn't unlike a game of tennis, he thought, where one player (in this case, Greta) keeps the other pinned to the backcourt with a barrage of hard, deep ground strokes, forcing the other player into a defensive posture, which he can only break out of by an extremely powerful and well-placed shot of his own.

Finally his moment came. He had just answered her question about where he lived before retiring and moving to Stockbridge, answered her so succinctly that she was still sipping from a glass of water. At that precise moment he heard a strange sound, both muted and persistent, that lasted perhaps two seconds. That's when he took his “shot” by asking if she had any guests staying with her.

“No, I'm afraid there's no one here but us, and Andrew, of course.”

“Oh,” he said, nodding. He couldn't speak about the sound again—it would be rude. “I only ask because Serena told me that you often have many visitors.”

“Oh my,” she said, smiling broadly—a blush even appearing on her very pale white cheeks, as if he'd just flattered her in an extraordinarily deft and satisfying way. “If that's true, it's only because I've stopped going out … as much as I should.”

“Why so?”

“Oh, just laziness, I suppose.”

“It must be quite challenging to maintain the quality of your home,” he said, a little awkwardly, “much less entertain people in it.”

“One gets used to it,” she said, her smile oddly contracted now. “I've little else to do. I'm not writing a fascinating book like you are.”

“But I understand you're editing a fascinating magazine.”

At least he would find out something about that.

“I'm really just providing some support. They forced me to accept the title of publisher, but others are really doing the work.”

He wouldn't let it end that quickly and continued to question her. She never precisely refused to answer his questions—rather was masterful in evading any connection between her answers or anything else that might reveal a sense of narrative about her life. He did confirm that she was indeed divorced (here she made it clear by her facial expression alone that she wouldn't welcome any follow-up questions). She also said that she had no children but showed no sign of regret when she told him. She had inherited the house—it had simply always been here. When she was younger she traveled through Europe and South America, but now she rarely left the house. Would he, perhaps, like to see more of it? And so began his house tour. Even before they finished seeing the first three adjoining rooms he thought, “she's married to the house and the rooms are her children.”

He saw a music room, in which there was a harpsichord and a glockenspiel. He saw a large room she called the Visitors Art Gallery, which contained art given to or bought by her from her many guests over the years, a few of whom were quite prominent painters. The library was not as large as he thought or feared and yet the books, most of which had brown or dark green leather
covers, seemed to multiply as he looked at them, creating the impression that the room itself was expanding while he examined it. He noticed that the mahogany shelves gave an outdoors look to the room, although, like all libraries, it was the quintessence of the indoors.

“May I look for a moment?” he said, approaching the shelves before she said, “Of course.”

He saw
The Collected Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
, Unamuno's
The Tragic Sense of Life
next to P. D. Ouspensky's
Tertium Organum
, Sartre's
Being and Nothingness
, next to Norman O. Brown's
Life against Death
, and next to that, a bevy of books about various kinds of black magic. He realized now that all the books had been repackaged in their leather covers. The cost in labor as well as money must have been astronomical, yet clearly the books weren't in alphabetical order.

“Your library is extraordinary. Is it organized according to any principle?”

“The books have been here for generations. I've long ago given up trying to alphabetize them … as new books keep coming in.”

Next they saw a seemingly endless procession of bedrooms, half of which were decorated in a more traditionally feminine way, half in a more masculine manner. Somewhere during the flow of rooms she spoke to someone in her kitchen via an intercom. Turning to Tyler she said, “Do you prefer fish or meat for dinner?”

“Meat,” he said automatically, but surely it wasn't time for dinner yet? Before he could check his own unreliable watch, a grandfather clock he hadn't yet seen next to him in the hallway struck six times.

“Would you mind shortening our tour and ending it at the dining room?” she asked.

“It's terribly kind of you, but I feel I've already stayed too long … I simply lost track of time.”

“Don't be silly, of course you'll stay, for dinner. Time is all in our minds anyway, don't you think?”

The dining room (or at least the one she took him to) was neither as large as he'd thought nor as ornate. The mahogany table had a white linen tablecloth and a bowl of freshly cut pink roses in its center. The lamps were dimly lit, but two tall black candles near each place setting helped create a semblance of light. He wondered why it wasn't brighter in this room—there should still have been light outside—and then realized the windows in the dining room were atypically small, if indeed they weren't faux windows. A single painting, a skillful copy of
The Last Supper
, dominated the wall he was facing. It was perhaps the first work of art he'd seen in the house with overtly religious allusions.

The conversation lessened as they sipped their red wine (he pretended to drink more of it than he really did because he didn't like its taste). It was as if the oddness of the room was inhibiting them, Tyler thought, or perhaps they'd just been talking to each other for too long. He was relieved when Andrew brought the food into the room on a rolling cart. It was fun to eat with real silverware, though vaguely unsettling, as Andrew served them, to notice how white Andrew's skin was and how dim his eyes. Why hadn't he noticed that when Andrew first opened the door? Maybe he was too excited about entering the house; excitement often undermined perception. Also unsettling, from an aesthetic point of view, was the reproduction of the last supper painting on their plates, but of this he planned to say nothing. He did praise the food and deservedly so (the squash and artichoke hearts were especially tasty), thinking that might loosen up her conversation. Instead she answered him softly with a minimum
of words, keeping her eyes averted from him. It was as if he'd lost her, or that part of her that seemed so interested in him as they'd talked the afternoon away. It was a definite blow to his ego, as if it hadn't been dented enough already, ever since he retired a year ago and essentially stopped hearing from Melissa, who was out living the high life while trying to make it as an actress in Hollywood, a doomed plan if ever there was one. He was thinking then about just when and how he would leave the house when he heard the noise again.

“What's that?” he blurted, no longer worrying if his question was in poor taste or not.

“I didn't notice, but it must be Andrew, he's the only one here,” she said, looking at him almost indifferently.

A tremor passed through him. A human noise had definitely occurred, and as soon as dinner was over (he prayed there would be no desert), and not a moment longer, he really would leave. In fact, he placed his knife and fork on his plate to indicate that he was already finished.

Meanwhile Greta had rung a bell he hadn't noticed and within seconds Andrew appeared, tall and whiter than ever, as he stooped over his plate like a birch tree slightly bent in the wind.

“Yes, Madam?” he said, eyes focused completely on her.

“You must have made a noise that disturbed Mr. Green. Are you feeling all right?”

“Sorry, Madam, I have a cough.”

“Do take care of it.”

“Yes, thank you. It won't happen again.”

She smiled slightly at Tyler then as if to say, that settles that. But it wasn't settled for Tyler. What he heard definitely wasn't a coughing sound.

“You may clear now, Andrew, and then bring the dessert.”

“Yes, Madam.”

There was no expression on Andrew's face. Tyler waited until the table was cleared before telling Greta that he'd already eaten too much of her food and couldn't possibly eat dessert. She scarcely seemed to acknowledge his remark, as if, once again, as in the case of “Andrew's noise,” she hadn't heard it.

“I'm afraid I really must go now,” Tyler said. He realized that on top of everything else he was starting to feel a little queasy. “You've been such a wonderful hostess,” he added, but again she didn't respond or even look at him.

“It's amazing how much sickness people will tolerate, and still cling to life,” she finally said, gazing into space.

Was she referring to Andrew? This time Tyler didn't respond. He was flabbergasted and starting to feel both extremely tired and vaguely out of focus. Could it have been the wine or else something he ate?

“I can understand people clinging to life if they have some important project, as you do, that they want to complete,” she said, “but otherwise, really, what are they clinging to? After all, we think nothing of killing insects, every one of us is a murderer in that respect, and to me a person without a project is little more than an insect.”

“I'm afraid I really must leave now Greta, I …”

“How is your daughter, by the way, the one who lives in California?”

How did Greta know about her? Had Serena told her? He was going to ask her about this but his dizziness was increasing.

“I'm afraid I'm not feeling very well.”

“Oh dear.”

“I'm dizzy and … I …”

“Don't try to talk,” Greta said, as she once more rang the bell. In a few seconds Andrew reappeared.

“Mr. Green isn't feeling well and needs to lie down. Take him to one of the guest rooms.”

He remembered getting up from his chair. He wasn't sure he'd be able to walk but didn't want Andrew to help or even touch him. They seemed to be going in a different direction than he'd taken before with Greta, and while they walked he thought he heard a new strangely muted medley of sounds, part moan, part wind, part chorus of stifled crickets. Then the hall seemed to suddenly expand in front of him until he couldn't see the end of it. He was just about to ask Andrew about this or at any rate to tell him he really couldn't walk anymore when Andrew stopped in front of a room and started fishing for a key. Then Tyler saw it. Perhaps sixty feet in front of him two or three people dressed in black and flashing by like vampires but with fixated stares more like zombies. It could have been a hallucination, but he heard the sound they made on the floor. He couldn't have imagined or hallucinated that, could he?

“You can lie down in here,” Andrew said, ostensibly as oblivious to the vampire/zombies as to the dark symphony of sounds that preceded them. Tyler was so grateful to see a bed that he simply walked into the room and lay down on it just as Andrew closed the door. Almost immediately he fell asleep.

He must have slept a long time, well into the night, because when he woke up, though there were once again no clocks in the room (and his watch was missing), a dim purplish light was filtering through the windows and he guessed it to be somewhere
between four and five. He felt certain that he'd been poisoned last night and was surprised that he hadn't vomited. He did feel a slight headache and dizziness but still felt a good part of his strength had returned. He was also certain now that he hadn't imagined the “people” he saw in the hallway anymore than he'd imagined those wind-like moans. This is a huge house of madness, he thought, which may well have other prisoners like myself. But was he a prisoner? It would be difficult to prove in a court of law. No one had forced him to stay as late as he did, nor could he prove he was actually poisoned.