Evil Eye (2 page)

At the Institute, in his public guise, Austin Mohr had to be attentive to many people, in his warm, gregarious manner. If he failed to smile, a heart might be broken. If he seemed to forget a name, or a face—a heart would certainly be broken. But with Mariana, in the privacy of their home, his emotions were frank, sincere.

“As for Ines—she's a particular sort of Hispanic woman: emotional, but coolly so. Emotions, too, can be premeditated—­rehearsed. Ines likes to stir emotion in others, like tossing a match to see where it will land. She's reckless and headstrong and has made some unfortunate mistakes in her life but on the whole she's quite happy I think. In her world,
Ines Zambranco
has a small renown. You know about our son, I think?”

Austin's ebullient tone was subsiding. There was no way for him to speak of this new subject except somberly.

“Your son? Yes, you've mentioned. . . .”

Or maybe Mariana had heard. One of the facts of Austin Mohr's life repeated by others, who scarcely knew him, in hushed tones as one might speak of a great man, wounded.

“He was four months old. His name was Raoul. He was put to bed by his mother, in his crib—in this house. When we'd first moved in, before the house was renovated and an entire new wing added. The room—the baby's room—was adjacent to ours, with a door between. That room doesn't exist any longer—you won't see it. Ines lay the baby in his crib for a nap—a quite ordinary nap—and he never woke up.”

Awkwardly Mariana said: “I'm so sorry. . . .”

“Ines discovered him. She'd been out of the room only a few minutes, she always claimed. But it had to have been more—a half hour, at least. We had a Danish au pair girl but she had the afternoon off. I was—away. Ines hadn't really wanted a baby and she'd had a difficult pregnancy. She'd been just starting to get good film offers, and pregnancy and a new baby sabotaged her career. I think it was a Polanski project she'd had to decline—just a supporting role; but the pregnancy happened, she didn't ‘believe' in abortion, nor did I—at that time, in such circumstances. Yet after Raoul was born, Ines was devoted to him, though very superstitious, wearing amulets against the ‘evil eye' on a silver anklet. Ines also cultivated a neurotic fear of the number thirteen—do you know there's a word for this phobia, which isn't uncommon?—
triskaidekaphobia
—as if that could explain anything! There was—there is—no explanation for this sudden infant death—‘crib death'. . . .” Austin spoke rapidly, as Mariana had never heard him speak before. His ruddy face was damp with perspiration and heat seemed to exude from his fleshy chest. He'd been pacing about the room and now he seemed to have wandered out into the corridor just as a phone began to ring in his study; Mariana didn't know if she should follow him into the study. She thought
But this happened twenty-five years ago.
But she thought
I am his wife, I must comfort him.

But when she caught up with Austin in his study he'd thrown himself into a leather swivel chair in his usual way and was laughing into the phone. When Mariana tried to touch him he pushed her away without glancing at her.

“Henry! Bloody hell! Are you still in—is it Dubrovnik?”

Quickly Mariana retreated. Such conversations Austin had with old friends could last a long time.

And she had preparations to do: Ines and the “cellist” niece were due to arrive in two days, the first houseguests of Mariana's married life.

“Mariana. You must not be alone for now, my dear.”

So Austin Mohr had told Mariana, simply. And so it was.

She'd been midway through her first-year residency as a fellow at the Institute when her life collapsed.

First her father had died in December. Then her mother had died in early March.

The first death had not been entirely unexpected, but it had come far more swiftly than anyone might have predicted: Mariana's father had had surgery to remove a malignant growth from his prostate, but he'd contracted a hospital infection from which he had never recovered.

Mariana had had to leave the Institute to spend time with her grieving mother. She'd taken work home with her to Connecticut and immersed herself in her work as a distraction when she wasn't in her mother's immediate company. Gradually, her mother had seemed to be recovering—she'd urged Mariana to return to San Francisco. But after Mariana returned to the Institute in early March, her mother had a collapse of some kind, possibly a mild stroke, followed a week later by a massive stroke that had killed her.

The stress of grief
Mariana was told.

Your mother has died of a broken heart.

Mariana wondered if her mother's use of prescription drugs had contributed to her death. Barbiturates to help her sleep, tranquilizers to help her endure the day, sometimes washed down with the remains of her husband's small cabinet of whiskey and bourbon.

Neither of Mariana's parents had ever drunk much. The bottles were old, dating back for years. Yet several had obviously been depleted. Mariana told no one, nor did Mariana's mother's doctor or anyone in the family bring up the subject.

Now Mariana, too, was stricken in the heart. Her grief was sharpened by her sense of incredulity—
This can't have happened! Both my parents
. . .
gone.

Wandering her parents' house as if looking for them. Yet in terror of glancing into a room and seeing them.

Once, after her father had died, she'd happened to see her mother—forlorn, hesitant, standing just inside the doorway of her bedroom, staring at something in the palm of her hand which, as Mariana approached, she'd quickly hidden in her fist, thrust into a pocket of her rumpled bathrobe.

Pills, Mariana supposed. She'd pretended not to see.

And now it was a shock to Mariana to discover herself so —
weak.

Yet she was determined to tell relatives that she was fine. She did not need their help, she was fine.

Like a zombie, barely functioning only when she was in the presence of others, Mariana had lived in her parents' house for several weeks, having taken a leave of absence from the Institute. There was so much to do, so suddenly—the list of “death duties” was endless—and she had so little energy with which to do it. And when finally she returned to the Institute, her soul had seemed to have drained from her body. When she forced herself to come to the Institute, to sit at her computer in her carrel as she'd done previously, with such enthusiasm, now she was unable to work; she was unable to concentrate; she avoided her colleagues, her new friends, and stayed away from Institute seminars, for the effort to speak to others was too great. Her thesis adviser spoke of her situation to the director of the Institute, who summoned Mariana to see him at once.

She'd thought
He will tell me to quit. He will see I am hopeless.

What a relief this would be! Eagerly then Mariana would follow her mother, as her mother had followed her father. All this seemed premeditated, utterly natural.

Certainly, Mariana couldn't complete her first-year project by May 15, she would tell the director. Nor did she see much point in requesting an extension because at the present time, she didn't see much point in completing the project.

How insignificant Mariana's work seemed to her now, what had been so thrilling to her before her father's death! She'd come to the Institute with the intention of examining archival materials relating to the films of Ida Lupino in the 1940s and 1950s: Lupino, a Hollywood actress, but also one of the first American women film directors. In the Institute archives were drafts of screenplays, personal notes, journals, letters, countless photographs and snapshots. But Mariana no longer had energy for research; the effort of examining stacks of faded typescripts and handwritten letters and pictures held together by frayed rubber bands, all of this quasi-precious material related to individuals dead for decades, was too depressing. Her discovery was that this first, gifted woman director was a pioneering feminist whose films depicted the Male as the demonic
noir
figure, and not, as usual, the Female—but even this discovery seemed trivial to her now, in the face of her terrible loss.

When Austin Mohr saw Mariana hesitating in the doorway to his office, looking as if she were about to faint, quickly he rose to his feet and came to her. “‘Mariana'—is it? Come in, please.”

He'd heard about her parents, he told her. He offered his condolences.

Immediately he said of course she could have an extension through the summer at least, to complete her project. That was understood: there was no need for her to file a formal request.

Mariana was stunned. She had not expected such a sympathetic reception.

She wasn't pretty—she wasn't sexually attractive. She'd never thought so.

And now in the aftermath of her parents' deaths her skin was deathly pale and her cheeks thin, her eyes raw-looking, bloodshot.

Her dark chestnut hair, which was usually wavy and glossy, falling past her shoulders, was limp, wan, in need of shampooing. Her fingernails were broken and uneven and ridged with dirt—her clothing had grown too large for her, unflattering on her lanky frame.

She'd lost ten to twelve pounds: she weighed hardly more than one hundred pounds, at five feet six.

In a kindly voice altogether different from the public personality that was eloquent, playful, and “witty,” Austin Mohr asked Mariana about her parents. Her father, her mother.

Gravely he listened as she spoke. And tentatively, then with more emotion, Mariana spoke as she had not spoken since her mother's death.

Stumbling, faltering. Trying not to cry. But telling Austin Mohr something of what had happened, that still seemed to be unbelievable, unfathomable.

He asked her about how she was taking care of herself.

Mariana had no idea how to reply. Her
self
was of little interest to her now, a flimsy remnant of a time now past, extraneous, worthless.

“It's a dangerous time for you now, Mariana. The pull of the ‘other' is so strong.”

Mariana knew that Austin Mohr meant
the other world
.

“You must not be alone, my dear. I hope you know that.”

Mariana wept, pressing a wadded tissue against her eyes. Austin Mohr spoke gently yet forcibly.

“We all have losses we think we can't survive. And sometimes, some of us can't. So we need help. We need emergency help. I will provide you what I can of ‘emergency' help—first, I will cancel the rest of my appointments for the afternoon.”

“But—”

“Of course. I will. I have.”

“Just talk to me. Tell me more about yourself. Your work. Why you'd come to the Institute last fall. We have many applicants, you know—we can accept only one in ten—and so you're very special to us, Mariana. To me.”

Mariana hadn't known she'd had so much to say, or the energy with which to say it.

It was said of the director of the Institute that in addition to the numerous essays and books he'd written on the subject of twentieth-century cinema, both American and European, he'd virtually memorized classic films and could recite long passages of dialogue. And so it seemed to Mariana that Austin knew as much, or more, about the
noir
films of Ida Lupino as she herself knew. He succeeded in distracting her from her grief to discuss the directorial strategy of Lupino's major films, as well as an obscure
Twilight Zone
episode Lupino had directed called “The Masks” in the 1950s. Together, Mariana and Austin analyzed the parable-like plot of this TV drama in which craven individuals at Mardi Gras in New Orleans are obliged to don masks whose ugly features reveal their inner selves—and, when they remove the masks at midnight, their faces bear the imprint of the ugly masks.

“It's a brilliant little moral fable, worthy of Poe. The mask deforms the face—the mask reveals the soul. So convincing is Lupino's presentation of the fantastical material, it hardly seems surreal. And hardly like typical television in the 1950s or even now.”

Mariana was amazed that Austin knew so much about her thesis subject, that others thought to be obscure if not of questionable relevance. And that he seemed so clearly, so sincerely to care about her.

Though he was somewhere in the vicinity of sixty Austin spoke with the animation of a young person excited by films. Almost, there was a kind of naïveté in the man's enthusiasm, Mariana recognized as very like her own, until recent months.

Austin Mohr was a large gregarious man with gingery-silver hair still thick, wiry. At times—though not today—he wore this slightly long hair in a little ponytail, or pigtail; he had about him a Latino sort of swagger, though he didn't have Hispanic features; he wore crisply ironed dazzling-white cotton shirts open at the throat, showing tufts of gingery-silver hair on his chest. His eyes were alert, intense, unnerving in their intensity. On his left wrist was a large beautifully designed watch, on his right wrist a bracelet of small gold links.

Mariana's hands were limp and chill. Austin held her hands, and warmed them. Like a fussing father he murmured to her, chided her. “I insist—you must not be alone right now. And you must take better care of yourself. I will see to that, my dear.”

Mariana hadn't been comforted in such a way since childhood. She felt her stiffness melt, a physical melting, she began to love the man then, love for Austin Mohr swelled in her, the first
feeling
she'd had since the news had come to her shortly before Christmas, her father was gravely ill, comatose, and would probably not ever regain consciousness.

In the early evening Austin drove Mariana to his house in the Berkeley hills, and prepared a meal for her, a classic chicken tajine made with dried fruits, almonds, couscous. It had been weeks—months—since Mariana had been able to eat a substantial meal, but she found herself eating now, hungrily.