The Black House (18 page)

When the McIntyres returned from the Mitchells' the following Saturday night, or rather Sunday morning at nearly 1
A.M
., all was well in their house. Only the living room light was on, as they had left it, the TV murmured in the Forsters' room as usual, and the Forsters' light was off. Herbert went into their room, switched off the TV, and tiptoed out with their dinner tray. He was feeling pleasantly mellow, as was Lois, because the Mitchells had given them a good dinner with wine, and the Lowenhooks had been there too.

Herbert and Lois had a nightcap in the kitchen while Lois washed up the Forsters' dinner dishes. They were making it, weren't they? In spite of the jokes tonight from the Lowenhooks. What had they said?
What if Mamie and Albert outlive you both?
Herbert and Lois managed to laugh heartily in their kitchen that night.

On Sunday, Mamie asked Lois where they had been last evening, though Lois had left the Mitchells' name and telephone number with the Forsters. The phone had rung “a dozen times,” said Mamie, and she had not been able to answer it quickly enough before it stopped ringing, and neither had Albert been able to reach the phone in the McIntyres' bedroom in time, though he had tried when Mamie got tired of trying.

Lois didn't believe her. How could they hear a ring with their TV on so loud? “Funny it hasn't rung at all today.”

One evening in the next week, when Lois and Herbert came home together from their offices, they found a large pot of dwarf rhododendrons upset on the living room floor, though the pot was not broken. No one could have knocked over such a big pot by merely bumping into it, and they both knew this but didn't say it. Herbert got to work with broom and scoop and righted the pot, leaving Lois to admire the new item in the living room, a vaguely hexagonal knitted thing—if it was a doily, it was pretty big, nearly a yard in diameter—which lay over one arm of the sofa. Its colors were turquoise, dark red, and white, and its surface undulated.

“Peace offering?” asked Herbert with a smirk.

It was on a Friday in early autumn, around seven, when the McIntyres drove home, that they saw smoke coming out of one of the Forsters' room windows. The window was open very little at the top, but the smoke looked thick and in earnest.

“F' God's sake!” said Herbert, jumping out of the car, then stopping, as if for a few seconds he didn't know what to do.

Lois had got out on the passenger side. Higher than the poplars the gray smoke rose, curling upward. Lois also felt curiously paralyzed. Then she thought of an unfinished article, the first four chapters of a book she was not working on now, but would soon, which were in the downstairs front room, below the Forsters' room, and a need for action took hold of her. She flung her handbag onto the front seat of the car. “Got to get our
things
out!”

Herbert knew what she meant by things. When he opened the front door, the smell of smoke made him step back, then he took a breath and plunged forward. He knew that leaving the door open, creating a draft, was the worst thing to do, but he didn't close the door. He ran to the right toward his workroom, then realized that Lois was in the house too, so he turned back and joined her in her study, flung open a window, and tossed outside to the grass the papers and folders and boxes that she handed to him. This was achieved in seconds, then they dashed across the living room to Herbert's workroom, which was comparatively free of smoke, though its door was open. Herbert opened a French window, and out onto the lawn went his boxes and files, his spare portable typewriter, reference books, current reading, and nearly half of a fourteen-volume encyclopaedia. Lois, helping him, finally paused for breath, her mouth wide open.

“And—upstairs!” she said, gasping. “Fire department? Not too late, is it?”

“Let the goddamn thing burn!”

“The Forsters—”

Herbert nodded quickly. He looked dazed. He glanced around in the sunroom to see if he had forgotten anything, then snatched his letter-opener from his desk and pocketed it, and slid open a drawer. “Traveler's checks,” he murmured, and pocketed these too. “Don't forget the house is insured,” Herbert said to Lois with a smile. “We'll make it. And it's
worth
it!”

“You don't think—upstairs—”

Herbert, after a nervous sigh, crossed the living room to the stairs. Smoke was rolling down like a gray avalanche. He ran back to Lois, holding part of his unbuttoned jacket over his face. “Out!
Out
, darling!”

When they were both on the lawn, the window top of the Forsters' room broke through in flames that curled upward toward the roof. Without a word, Lois and Herbert gathered the items they had tossed onto the lawn. They stowed their possessions away rather neatly, in spite of their haste, on the back seat and in the boot of the car.

“
They
could've rung the fire department, don't you think?” Herbert said with a glance up at the flaming window.

Lois knew, and Herbert knew, that she had written
FIRE DEPT.
and the number on the upstairs telephone in her and Herbert's bedroom, in case anything did happen. But now the Forsters were certainly overcome by smoke. Or were they possibly
outdoors
, hidden in the dusk behind the hedges and the poplars, watching the house burn? Ready to join them—now? Lois hoped not. And she didn't think so. The Forsters were up there, already dead. “Where're we going?” she asked as Herbert turned the car onto the road, not in the Hartford direction. But she knew. “The Mitchells'?”

“Yes, sure. We'll telephone from there. The fire department. If some neighbor hasn't already done it. The Mitchells'll put us up for the night. Don't worry, darling.” Herbert's hands were tense on the wheel, but he drove smoothly and carefully.

And what would the Mitchells say?
Good
, probably, Lois thought.

When in Rome

I
sabella had soaped her face, her neck, and was beginning to relax in the spray of deliciously warm water on her body when suddenly—there he was again! An ugly grinning face peered at her not a meter from her own face, with one big fist gripping an iron bar, so he could raise himself to her level.

“Swine!” Isabella said between her teeth, ducking at the same time.

“Slut!” came his retort. “Ha, ha!”

This must have been the third intrusion by the same creep! Isabella, still stooped, got out of the shower and reached for the plastic bottle of yellow shampoo, shot some into a bowl which held a cake of soap (she removed the soap), let some hot shower water run into the bowl and agitated the water until the suds rose, thick and sweet-smelling. She set the bowl within easy reach on the rim of the tub, and climbed back under the shower, breathing harder with her fury.

Just let him try it again! Defiantly erect, she soaped her facecloth, washed her thighs. The square recessed window was just to the left of her head, and there was a square emptiness, stone-lined, between the blue-and-white tiled bathroom walls and the great iron bars, each as thick as her wrist, on the street side.

“Signora?” came the mocking voice again.

Isabella reached for the bowl. Now he had both hands on the bars, and his face was between them, unshaven, his black eyes intense, his loose mouth smiling. Isabella flung the suds, holding the bowl with fingers spread wide on its underside.

“Oof!” The head disappeared.

A direct hit! The suds had caught him between the eyes, and she thought she heard some of the suds hit the pavement. Isabella smiled and finished her shower.

She was not looking forward to the evening—dinner at home with the First Secretary of the Danish Embassy with his girlfriend; but she had had worse evenings in the past, and there were worse to come in Vienna in the last week of this month, May, when her husband Filippo had to attend some kind of human-rights-and-pollution conference that was going to last five days. Isabella didn't care for the Viennese—she considered the women bores with nothing on their minds but clothes, who was wearing what, and how much did it cost.

“I think I prefer the green silk tonight,” Isabella said to her maid, Elisabetta, when she went into her bedroom, big bathtowel around her, and saw the new black dress laid out on her bed. “I changed my mind,” Isabella added, because she remembered that she had chosen the black that afternoon. Hadn't she? Isabella felt a little vague.

“And which shoes, signora?”

Isabella told her.

A quarter to eight now. The guests—two men, Filippo had said, besides the Danish secretary, who was called Osterberg or Ottenberg, were not due until eight, which meant eight-thirty or later. Isabella wanted to go out on the street, to drink an espresso standing up at the bar, like any other ordinary Roman citizen, and she also wanted to see if the Peeping Tom was still hanging around. In fact, there were two of them, the second a weedy type of about thirty who wore a limp raincoat and dark glasses. He was a “feeler,” the kind who pushed his hand against a woman's bottom. He had done it to Isabella once or twice while she was waiting for the porter to open the door. Isabella had to wait for the porter unless she chose to carry around a key as long as a man's foot for the big outside doors. The feeler looked a bit cleaner than her bathroom snoop, but he also seemed creepier and he never smiled.

“Going out for a cafè,” Isabella said to Elisabetta.

“You prefer to go out?” Elisabetta said, meaning that she could make a cafè, if the signora wanted. Elisabetta was forty-odd, her hair in a neat bun. Her husband had died a year ago, and she was still in a state of semi-mourning.

Isabella flung a cape over her shoulders, barely nodded, and left. She crossed the cobbled court, whose stones slanted gently toward a center drain, and was met at the door by one of the three porters who kept a round-the-clock guard on the palazzo, which was occupied by six affluent tenants. This porter was Franco. He lifted the heavy crossbar and opened the big doors enough for her to pass through.

Isabella was out on the street. Freedom! She stood tall and breathed. An adolescent boy cycled past, whistling. An old woman in black waddled by slowly, burdened with a shopping bag that showed onions and spaghetti on top, carelessly wrapped in newspaper. Someone's radio blared jazz through an open window. The air promised a hot summer.

Isabella looked around, but didn't see either of her nuisances, and was aware of feeling slightly disappointed. However, there was the bar-cafè across the street and a bit to the right. Isabella entered, conscious that her fine clothes and well-groomed hair set her apart from the usual patrons here. She put on a warm smile for the young barman, who knew her by now.

“Signora!
Buona sera!
A fine day, no? What is your wish?”

“Un espress', per piacere.”

Isabella realized that she was known in the neighborhood as the wife of a government official who was reasonably important for his age, which was still under forty, aware that she was considered rather rich, and pretty too. The latter, people could see. And what else, Isabella wondered as she sipped her espresso. She and Filippo had a fourteen-year-old daughter in school in Switzerland now. Susanna.

Isabella wrote to her faithfully once a week, as Susanna did to her. How was Susanna going to shape up? Would she even
like
her daughter by the time she was eighteen or twenty-two? Was Susanna going to lose her passion for horses and horseback riding (Isabella hoped so) and go for something more intellectual such as geology and anthropology, which she had shown an interest in last year? Or was she going to go the usual way—get married at twenty before she'd finished university, trade on her good looks and marry “the right kind of man” before she had found out what life was all about? What
was
life all about?

Isabella looked around her, as if to find out. Isabella had had two years of university in Milan, had come from a rather intellectual family, and didn't consider herself just another dumb wife. Filippo was good-looking and had a promising career ahead of him. But then Filippo's
father
was important in a government ministry, and had money. The only trouble was that the wife of a man in diplomatic service had to be a clotheshorse, had to keep her mouth shut when she would like to open it, had to be polite and gracious to people whom she detested or was bored by. There were times when Isabella wanted to kick it all, to go slumming, simply to laugh.

She tossed off the last of her coffee, left a five-hundred-lire note, and turned around, not yet leaving the security of the bar's counter. She surveyed the scene. Two tables were occupied by couples who might be lovers. A blind beggar with a white cane was on his way in.

And here came her dark-eyed Peeping Tom! Isabella was aware that her eyes lit up as if she beheld her lover walking in.

He grinned. He sauntered, swaggered slightly as he headed for the bar to a place at a little distance from her. He looked her up and down, like a man sizing up a pick-up before deciding yes or no.

Isabella lifted her head and walked out of the bar-cafè.

He followed. “You are beautiful, signora,” he said. “I should know, don't you think so?”

“You can keep your filthy ideas to yourself!” Isabella replied as she crossed the street.

“My beautiful lady-love—the wife of my dreams!”

Isabella noticed that his eyes looked pink. Good! She pressed the bell for the porter. An approaching figure on her left caught her eye. The bottom-pincher, the gooser, the real oddball! Raincoat again, no glasses today, a faint smile. Isabella turned to face him, with her back to the big doors.

“Oh, how I would like to . . .” the feeler murmured as he passed her, so close she imagined she could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek, and at the same time he slapped her hip with his left hand. He had a pockmark or two, and big cheekbones that stuck out gauntly. Disgusting type! And a disgusting phrase he had used!

From across the street, Peeping Tom was watching, Isabella saw; he was chuckling silently, rocking back on his heels.

Franco opened the doors. What if she told Filippo about those two? But of course she had, Isabella remembered, a month or so ago, yes. “How would
you
like it if a psychopath stared at you nearly every time you took a shower?” Isabella had said to Filippo, and he had broken out in one of his rare laughs. “If it were a
woman
maybe, yes, I might like it!” he said, then he had said that she shouldn't take it so seriously, that he would speak to the porters, or something like that.

Isabella had the feeling that she didn't really wake up until after the dinner party, when the coffee was served in the living room. The taste of the coffee reminded her of the bar that afternoon, of the dark-haired Peeping Tom with the pink eyes walking into the bar and having the nerve to speak to her
again
!

“We shall be in Vienna too, at the end of the month,” said the girlfriend of the Danish First Secretary.

Isabella rather liked her. Her name was Gudrun. She looked healthy, honest, unsnobbish. But Isabella had nothing to say except, “Good. We shall be looking forward,” one of the phrases that came out of her automatically after fifteen years of being the wife-of-a-government-employee. There were moments, hours, when she felt bored to the point of going insane. Like now. She felt on the brink of doing something shocking, such as standing up and screaming, or announcing that she wanted to go out for a walk (yes, and have another espresso in the same crummy bar), of shouting that she was bored with them
all
, even Filippo, slumped with legs crossed in an armchair now, wearing his neat, new dinner suit with a ruffled shirt, deep in conversation with the three other men. Filippo was long and lean like a fashion model, his black hair beginning to gray at the temples in a distinguished way. Women liked his looks, Isabella knew. His good looks, however, didn't make him a ball of fire as a lover. Did the women know that, Isabella wondered.

Before going to bed that night, Isabella had to check the shopping list with Luigi the cook for tomorrow's dinner party, because Luigi would be up early to buy fresh fish. Hadn't the signora suggested fish? And Luigi recommended young lamb instead of tournedos for the main course, if he dared say so.

Filippo paid her a compliment as he was undressing. “Osterberg thought you were charming.”

They both slept in the same big bed, but it was so wide that Filippo could switch his reading-light on and read his papers and briefings till all hours, as he often did, without disturbing Isabella.

A couple of evenings later Isabella was showering just before 7
P.M
. when the same dark-haired creep sprang up at her bathroom window, leering a “Hello, beautiful! Getting ready for me?”

Isabella was not in a mood for repartee. She got out of the shower.

“Ah, signora, such beauty should not be hidden! Don't try—”

“I've told the
police
about you!” Isabella yelled back at him, and switched off the bathroom light.

Isabella spoke to Filippo that evening as soon as he came in. “Something's got to be done—opaque glass put in the window—”

“You said that would make the bathroom look ugly.”

“I don't care! It's revolting! I've told the porters—Giorgio, anyway. He doesn't do a damned thing, that's plain!—Filippo?”

“Yes, my dear. Come on, can't we talk about this later? I've got to change my shirt, at least, because we're due—already.” He looked at his watch.

Isabella was dressed. “I want your tear-gas gun. You remember you showed it to me. Where is it?”

Filippo sighed. “Top drawer, left side of my desk.”

Isabella went to the desk in Filippo's study. The tear-gas gun looked like a fountain pen, only a bit thicker. Isabella smiled as she placed her thumb on the firing end of it and imagined her counterattack.

“Be careful how you use that tear gas,” Filippo said as they were leaving the house. “I don't want you to get into trouble with the police just because of a—”

“
Me
in trouble with the police! Whose side are you on?” Isabella laughed, and felt much better now that she was armed.

The next afternoon around five, Isabella went out, paid a visit to the pharmacy where she bought tissues and a bottle of new eau de cologne which the chemist suggested, and whose packaging amused her. Then she strolled toward the bar-cafè, keeping an eye out for her snoops as she went. She was bareheaded, had a bit of rouge on her lips, and she wore a new summer frock. She looked pretty and was aware of it. And across the street, walking past her very door now, went the raincoated creep in dark glasses again—and he didn't notice her. Isabella felt slightly disappointed. She went into the bar and ordered an espresso, lit a rare cigarette.

The barman chatted. “Wasn't it a nice day? And the signora is looking especially well today.”

Isabella barely heard him, but she replied politely. When she opened her handbag to pay for her espresso, she touched the tear-gas gun, picked it up, dropped it, before reaching for her purse.

“
Grazie
, signora!”

She had tipped generously as usual.

Just as she turned to the door, the bathroom peeper—her special persecutor—entered, and had the audacity to smile broadly and nod, as if they were dear friends. Isabella lifted her head higher as if with disdain, and at the same time gave him an appraising glance, which just might have been mistaken for an invitation, Isabella knew. She had meant it that way. The creep hadn't quite the boldness to say anything to her inside the cafè, but he did follow her out of the door. Isabella avoided looking directly at him. Even his shoes were unshined. What could he do for a living, she wondered.