The Exquisite (8 page)

It was so strange to see my aunt sitting beside my bed, her great fat face simultaneously beaming and anxious, that I sat up, swung my bare legs over the side of the bed, and clapped her on the arm. This felt so good that I leaned forward and clapped her on the side of the head.

Go and tell them I need a shot, tell them that, then we can talk, I said.

My aunt shook her fat head, stood, walked a little way toward the door, looked back at me, and said, you’re a schmuck, Henry boy, you always were, and was gone.

A minute later she was back. She came at me so fast all I had time to do was start to raise my arm before she had slapped me, good and hard like the old days, across my face.

Jesus, Aunt Lulu, I said.

I’ll give you a shot, boy, you little schmuck, she said.

She raised her hand like she was going to slap me again but instead sat down, and after a couple of seconds the beaming, anxious look was back on her face.

Where you been, Henry? You left me, she said.

I shrugged.

I been worried, Henry.

I didn’t say anything.

So now you live in boxes on the street. Now you do bad, bad things and you hit your aunt when she isn’t looking out for it.

I’m sorry, Aunt Lulu.

Yeah, you better be sorry, Henry. I’m your aunt. I’m your Goddamn aunt, and I raised you, Henry. You’re the one who put an end to that. You’re the one with the special way of saying thank you. Don’t forget it.

I am sorry, I said.

She reached out one of her big fat hands and touched my knee with it. I suppressed a shudder.

I’m sorry too, boy, she said.

Why did you come, Aunt Lulu? I said.

She pulled her hand back and, though her eyes were still shining, frowned.

You know anything about these buildings falling down?

They didn’t just fall, Aunt Lulu.

She smiled. Extremely brightly.

Call me Mother, like you used to when you were little, she said.

I didn’t answer. I thought of her sitting slumped at the kitchen table, barely moving, that last time, her long, greasy hair covering her face. I thought of her in her dirty blue housedress feeding the cats, kicking the cats, washing the cats. Then I thought about buildings, buildings all over the city, falling down.

The hospital called you, Aunt Lulu? I said.

I told them I’m not paying a cent for any of this. I’m not paying a damn red nickel for you to live in a box and piss on the street and do bad things to people. I got nothing to do with it.

They can’t make you pay anything, Aunt Lulu.

I’m not, boy. Believe me. I’ve got bills.

We sat there. My aunt’s big fat face was beet red and she was breathing hard and I thought she might lean forward and slap me again, maybe pull the old spoon out of her bag and apply it medicinally to my skin, but somehow she was still beaming, like a smiling virus had infected her face.

I heard from that girl, she said.

What girl?

You tell her not to call me. Not ever. I got nothing to say to such as her. She was too fancy for you, Henry boy. The whole world you fell out of was too fancy.

Wait, who called you?

Aunt Lulu didn’t answer. Instead she smiled hard, winked at me, and began mumbling. As she was mumbling, Mr. Kindt poked his head in the door and gestured for me to come over. I pointed at Aunt Lulu. He threw his shoulders back, dropped his head, and began moving his lips and prancing around. I slipped out of bed. Mr. Kindt was waiting for me in the hallway.

My aunt, I said.

Ah, said Mr. Kindt. Well, I’m very sorry to interrupt. I just stopped by to see if you were interested in having a smoke. I was just sitting in my room remembering my Plato and thinking about justice and right conduct and so forth. I thought you might be interested in discussing it.

Well, any other time, I said, pointing back into my room, where Aunt Lulu was still sitting by the bed, still mumbling.

Of course, said Mr. Kindt. I suspect you are very happy to see her. What is her name?

Lulu.

That’s interesting.

I raised my eyebrows, flared my lips a little, and started back into the room.

One just wonders where all the wreckage gets piled, he said, where the dump trucks of history, as it were, unload the corpses they have accumulated, that they will keep accumulating. Right conduct or wrong, when a just or unjust man helps a friend or harms an enemy, the end result, if it is in any way remarkable, ends up in the dump truck. Everything else gets ground under the wheels.

That’s a little grim, I said, pausing at the door.

Oh, but it is grim, Henry, Mr. Kindt said. It’s very grim.

I squeezed Mr. Kindt’s arm, smiled apologetically, and went back into the room. I managed to slip back into my bed without disturbing Aunt Lulu. It was strange to see her sitting there, strange and somehow reassuring. It was part of our curious fate, Mr. Kindt had said to me that very afternoon, that we should so readily keep company with our most resilient horrors.

As I thought about this and looked at her, a familiar image came to mind, of Aunt Lulu and a friend playing pinochle. It was the week of Halloween and I was sitting on the little rocker in the corner looking at them through the poorly cut rubber eyeholes of a Creature from the Black Lagoon mask. My face stung. It was also hot. Every now and then I would growl and lift my arms. They both had on smeared costume makeup. Neither of them spoke. Earlier they had sent me out into the backyard with a trowel to “dig for the devil.” A cracked Coke bottle lay dripping in the middle of the floor where my father had thrown it. Before he left, for good as it turned out, he had come out to the backyard, taken the trowel from me, and told me first that he was going to go try to find my mother and second about a soda shop in the Bronx where ice-cold Coke ran nonstop out of a spigot attached to the wall.

I yawned, leaned back against my pillows, looked at the clock: Job wouldn’t be back for a while. Aunt Lulu was still mumbling. She had once attended a church that encouraged its members to speak in tongues. She had not forced me to attend, but she had tried to teach me the proper technique. I went around the house after her lesson talking with my tongue sticking out. When I spoke in tongues to her, she pinched my ear and told me it wasn’t something that was supposed to be done casually. Mumbling was fine though. There was a good deal of it around our household. Aunt Lulu liked to mumble to her cats. She also liked to sit in the kitchen, slightly hunched forward, and mumble to herself. Like she was doing now. Like she had been doing that day when I had stood in the doorway and, well aware that she had poured enough vodka and orange juice down her throat onto the palmful of Halcion she swallowed every day to take out a small stegosaurus, watched her head droop slowly downward toward her plate of macaroni and cheese.

After a while she took a deep breath, put her hands on her knees, and looked up.

They tell me you’re in trouble, boy.

It’s not that bad, Aunt Lulu.

That’s a lie, boy.

I’m not lying to you, Aunt Lulu. They’re doctors—they exaggerate. I’m getting good help. I’ve got friends here. It’s under control.

I watched her take this in, turn it around once or twice, then forget it.

I’m leaving now, boy. I just came to tell you I’m not paying for you to live like a dog and do more bad things and lie in a hospital bed reading books.

Good-bye, Aunt Lulu, I said.

Good-bye, boy, she said. She smacked me again, not so hard this time. Then stood and walked out.

My ears still ringing, I put the note in my pocket and walked across the park to Mr. Kindt’s. On my way, I stopped to watch some kids slugging it out over access to an open swing. It was a pretty good fight, as far as fights involving small kids go—there were actually some punches thrown and a couple of kicks—and I was a little sorry when a tall woman with a large mouth and hands the size of coffee cakes came over and broke it up. For a second it occurred to me to say something to her, to tell her to relax a little, let the kids fight, a swing, for God’s sake, was worth fighting about, but then I realized I was about to pass out. I went over to a bench and sat very still, then leaned over and put my head between my knees, then, when I felt a little better, sat up and sneezed.

You’ve got blood all over your face and shirt, said a green-haired, well-pierced woman walking by with a three-legged wrinkle-faced dog.

I know, I just got murdered, I said.

She looked at me, the golden hoop in her right eyebrow rising significantly.

What’s your dog’s name? I said.

He doesn’t have a name.

Does he bite?

Yes, he probably does.

Look, I’m in an interesting line of work. If I had a business card, I’d give you one, I said.

Yes, she said. I bet you would.

Can I have your number?

No.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see a woman and a young girl tilting and gently shaking what I realized was a kind of trap when I saw two mice fall out of it onto the soft dirt next to an evergreen.

What you see in this city, I said.

Every day, the woman with the three-legged dog said.

Then I left the park and went to Mr. Kindt’s.

Oh, let’s get you cleaned up, he said.

When we were out of the bathroom and sitting over cups of Lapsang souchong in the living room, he asked me how the meeting had gone. I said it had gone well. My head felt like someone had started a lobotomy on it, and I felt like throwing up, but otherwise it had been very pleasant and extremely informative.

I don’t know her terribly well myself, but Cornelius recommends her highly, Mr. Kindt said.

I can see why he does.

I’ve had the privilege of seeing her at her work. She’s very good. She is able to lull her victims into acquiescence merely, it seems, by speaking to them.

She’s bald, I said.

I watched the corners of Mr. Kindt’s mouth rise then fall, but just slightly. We sipped at our tea. Mr. Kindt asked me if, in light of the meeting, that is, he said, in light of being insulted by a beautifully, if artificially, proportioned young woman and getting shot at by same with a blank plus paint pellet in the face, I was interested in committing further murders. I told him that I was on again that very night.

Excellent, he said, wincing a little. I asked him what was wrong. He said Tulip had been “drawing” on him. That the drawings—there were more than one of them—were rather large. That I could see them when they were finished, that they didn’t look like much just now.

Do you think it’s going to be the knockout again? Because I’d love to take another crack at killing her.

The knockout? he said. That’s actually quite funny and rather appropriate, isn’t it, my boy? he said. I am told that she very much enjoys applying the odd blunt object to people’s nerve endings when she invites them into unconsciousness at the end of her sessions.

That’s a different kind of knockout than the one I was talking about, I said.

Of course, Henry, he said.

He then said that, even in the case of trial runs, of little tests, as mine had been, Cornelius observed a strict one-murder-per-victim rule. Cornelius was not interested in fetishists. They tended to be somewhat too public about their pastimes.

He told me he murdered you.

I suppose that in a manner of speaking that is true. One could also argue that it was a collaborative effort, a joint exertion. That we both sped me into the other world. But no matter.

How long has he been doing this?

In its current incarnation, it’s a fairly recent development, at least as these things go. My murder, however, the one that planted the seed, occurred a very long time ago.

When you were still living in Cooperstown?

Yes. It must have been.

Mr. Kindt’s voice drifted off a little at the end of this and we sat in a silence that lasted until Mr. Kindt let out a soft belch then said excuse me.

Certainly, I said. Then I asked if Cornelius ever got up to anything besides show murders.

Mr. Kindt laughed, then stopped laughing, then let his thin little lips resolve into the position they had held earlier.

Because Anthony said last night he was just supposed to deliver a warning, but that it turned into a murder.

Mr. Kindt’s lips didn’t move.

What kind of murder was it—the kind I’m getting involved with and just had done to me, or the other kind? I asked.

Ask me something else, dear boy, he said.

It didn’t have anything to do with those guys we bumped into at the Indian restaurant that time, did it?

Mr. Kindt looked confused for a moment, then burst out laughing and said,
really,
Henry! What sort of a person do you take me for?

I told him, in so many words, that I took him for a friend.

That’s absolutely right. I am your friend. Now enough of such silliness. We’ve already established that, with my help, Cornelius murdered me long ago and, as you can see, I’m still very much here.

He bent his arm, held it up, and gestured for me to feel it. I did. It was surprisingly firm and definitely there.

Wow, I said.

Mr. Kindt said that although his general state of health was catastrophic and needed constant surveillance, there had been some slight holdover from his younger days.

When you were a champion swimmer.

I used to slice the water like a serrated spoon.

Is there anything else?

I’m not following you, dear boy.

I don’t know. Friends tell each other things.

Like what?

Like who they are.

But you already know.

I’d love to hear it again.

I am Aris Kindt. I am a businessman. I am Dutch though it has been many years since I have visited those flat lands. I have lived in the city almost longer than I can remember. I keep interesting company. I am old and have health issues. My passions vary. I love art. I love a good bit of fish. I am not against meat. And I am not against helping young ne’er-do-wells who have lost their way and might otherwise end up in the proverbial ditch.

He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

I’m sorry for that last bit—that was unnecessary, he said.

I deserved it, I said. You’ve been very generous. I think it’s just this headache. And all this talk about murder.

Drink some more tea. I’m sure the aspirin will begin doing its job any minute. Aspirin is a wonderful drug. We tend to forget just how effective it is.

I took another drink.

Mr. Kindt apologized again for his comment. I told him again that it was all right, that the tone of my voice had risen without my being aware of it and that I had probably sounded shrill. Mr. Kindt said that I hadn’t sounded shrill, only a touch insistent, and he had always had a hard time with insistence, although he both appreciated and respected it and possessed more than a drop of it himself. It was only natural that I would have questions.

In fact, ask me another question, he said. I shouldn’t have cut you off.

You’re sure?

He nodded.

On the same subject?

Of course.

I thought for a minute.

O.K., why is Cornelius doing this?

Because there is a market for it, certainly, and because he is a businessman. One who knows an opportunity when he sees it and has learned through the rigors of experience to leap when he does.

Like you.

Oh, yes, in many ways. Except perhaps that I never had to learn that particular lesson—that one I knew from the start.

I poured myself some more tea and, while I asked him more questions and he gave me more answers, thought about that one for a while. I decided that, despite the fact that Cornelius wore a hunting cape and said mildly strange stuff and ran a mock and maybe also not-mock murder service, he probably wasn’t really all that much like Mr. Kindt. To use the knockout’s term, it was a question of degree. Mr. Kindt had his own category. I didn’t quite know what that category was, but then I didn’t really know much of anything.

Tulip around today? I asked.

She was earlier. I think she has gone out. I’m sure she’ll be along.

He was right. About five minutes later she walked through the door, went straight across the living room without saying a word to either of us, and disappeared into Mr. Kindt’s bedroom.

Nap time, I said.

Mr. Kindt smiled.

She does so love to sleep, he said.

He then leaned forward and asked me if I wouldn’t mind returning to the subject of murder, that once one was on it, and had gotten over one’s misplaced touchiness, it was hard to stop. Mock murder, he said, could be quite instructive, could help to prepare me, to lend an air of authenticity that would spill over into all aspects of my life, that authenticity even in mock matters was very important, etc.

What about mock authenticity in real matters? I asked him.

That is an interesting question, but perhaps one for another time, he said.

He then asked what the previous night’s murder weapon had been. I told him. He asked me where I had inflicted the fatal wound. I told him that the fatal wound, a poorly executed zigzag pattern, had involved the throat.

And was there any element of torture involved?

No, I said, in theory it was a clean killing.

Ah, said Mr. Kindt, his voice suddenly dreamy, as was mine.

You mean in Cooperstown? With Cornelius?

Mr. Kindt didn’t answer.

Instead he said, yes, a good clean killing involving the neck and the windpipe, hung in the morning and delivered in the afternoon, and harrowed that night.

Harrowed?

In front of an audience, a learned audience, a group of wealthy spectators, led by a most famous doctor, one who with scalpel and illustrative anatomic manual devoured me. Then it was no longer clean. Then it became, in its combination of spectacle and fervid speculation, quite blurred.

Are you talking about your namesake or the namesake of your namesake? I said.

Finish your tea, my young mock murderer, he said. I feel like talking now, not conversing, perhaps there will be some sense in what I say, please listen to me.

How do you picture death? he asked. Is it a bullet released, perhaps at random, from a mile away, or a bright missile or a balloon out of which a bomb is dropped, or a knife onto which your name has been carved, or a fuel-filled airliner, or an avalanche of lava pouring through the heart of a city, or a bear’s embrace, or a great flood, or a devastating cyclone? Is it a heart that has begun, after many years, to leak, or that has never worked properly, that has been replaced, perhaps, by a simulacrum, or arteries, those dark, sweeping corridors that have begun to clog? Is it a fall from a high and perhaps burning building or from a fence onto your neck or is it a fall within a funicular and you are surrounded by screams? Is disease present, has a virus, have beautifully breeding bacteria, has cellular decay, taken hold? Are you alone? Are you in a dark room alone? Is it late at night and have you drunk bleach and is it spilling out of your mouth, eating away at the soft tissue of your throat and lips? Did it happen today or long ago? Were you, along with what you had hoped was an appropriately padded barrel, swept over the edge of Niagara Falls, or did you, one fine morning in the Middle Ages, accidentally ride your horse into a tree? The Lady of Shalott died of despair. In fact, many, very many, have died of despair, and it is important to point out that although it is poetic to think so, it is not the heart but the brain that gives out. And what of the tiny blood vessels, the small bearers of blood? You are young, you are surrounded by your fellows, you are on your way into Nazareth for the market and some great spectacle two thousand years ago, and such a vessel explodes in your brain. And there are other ways.

One can be hung, he said, beheaded, disemboweled, racked, flogged, broken on the wheel. One could fill a tome with descriptions of all the different shapes and sharpnesses of blades that have been applied in direct or indirect anger, but also accidentally, to the flesh. One can be electrocuted, injected with chemicals, hammered to death. In Japan there was the death of a thousand cuts and in China, until quite recently, one could be killed quite slowly, in a fog of opium, by dismemberment. And then, too, it is possible to kill people while they remain alive.

I asked him what he meant by this.

He spoke then of slaves, of Samos and the tunnel of Pisistratus, of Athens and the silver mines, of Egypt and the pyramids, of the Yucatecan monuments and bone-filled
cenotes,
of the American South and its plantations, of Estaban Gomez, the black Portuguese pilot, who between the brief visit of Verrazano and the arrival of the Dutch took his boat many miles up what he called the Deer and would soon be called the Noort and was now called the Hudson, who brought back fifty-seven native inhabitants for the slave markets in Lisbon. He spoke to me of the Pygmy, taken from the former Belgian colony in Africa and kept for many months, at times with an orangutan that held him tenderly in its arms, in a cage at the Bronx zoo, and of the Sioux warriors, once at home on the endless plains of Nebraska, being paid a pittance to act like “Indians” on a modified dog track in Buffalo Bill’s heralded Wild West Show. I, myself, he said, have felt at times the world becoming very far away and quite reduced and very cold, and while the doctors may have a word for it, I know it is the other thing.

He went on. On and on, talking to me as I sat there watching him and as Tulip slept in the other room, about death and destruction, which words, he said, were simply abstractions of all of these things and the final quieting of the heart, and that these things, these emphatic messengers, were endless, and that our representations of them had fueled rite and ritual since before our ancestors had stopped using their teeth to hold animal hide, and that, while many had sung of the great variety of life, of its rich and fulsome plenitude, if asked to stand and take his turn at the great song of being, he would sing of death and its agents, bright and dark, alone or in company, mock or real, on the earth or in the air or below the seas.