The Open Curtain (26 page)

Leaving the apartment door ajar, he went to the door across the landing and listened, holding his ear close. There was a dull murmur from within. He knocked and the murmur ceased. After a brief silence, it resumed. He knocked again, louder, and the murmur stopped again, followed by footsteps, the creaking of floorboards. Realizing he was still holding the stiletto, he slid it into his pocket.

“Who is it?” a voice asked.

He cleared his throat. “It’s me,” he claimed.

Was “me” enough? In any case he could hear the door rattle and a moment later it was cracked slightly open to show a man in a cravat and a tweed topcoat.

“Ah,” said the man, and opened the door wider. “It’s you, William. Why didn’t you say so?”

“Call me Hooper,” he said. “Yes. It’s me.”

“Well,” the other said. “What is it, Hooper? Everything satisfactory? Do you care to come in?”

“Satisfactory?”

“Across the hall,” he said.

“What,” he said slowly, “is there to be satisfactory or not across the hall?”

The man regarded him oddly. “The apartment, of course.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yes, of course.”

“Are you certain you feel well?” the man said. “Please, come have a seat.”

Confused, Hooper stepped deeper into the apartment, allowed himself to be seated on a horsehair sofa. Close by, in a wing chair, sat another man
in cravat and shirtsleeves, his coat laid across his knees. Upon it was an open book.

“Hello,” the man said.

“Hello,” said Hooper.

“We were just reading aloud,” said the man. “The Scriptures.” He smiled. “Begin the day with the word of God and end it with such.”

Hooper nodded. “It is not my apartment, is it?”

“Which?” he said. “Why, what an odd question.”

The other man came back in to offer Hooper some water. It was tepid. He drank it slowly.

“Elder,” the seated man said. “William just asked me the oddest question.”

“He’s not feeling himself, Elder,” said the other. “And he prefers to be called Hooper. Perhaps he just awoke and hasn’t yet a foothold, as it were.”

“Perhaps not, Elder,” said the first. He turned to Hooper. “In answer, no it is not your apartment. It belongs to your father. As does this apartment, as does the house as a whole. As you well know.”

“My father?” said Hooper. “But my father is dead.”

The two men exchanged glances. “Nonsense, Hooper,” the seated one said. “He is only abroad.”

“Abroad?”

Both men nodded. “In Europe. You occupy his apartment until his return.”

“Ah yes,” Hooper lied, shaking his head. “I remember now. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me.”

“Are you certain you’re all right?” asked one of the two.

“There hasn’t been anyone coming and going in the house today, has there?” asked Hooper.

The standing man shook his head. “Not to my knowledge. Only you,” he said.

“Do I live alone?”

“Hooper, have you been drinking?”

Back in the apartment, he draped the corpse with the coverlet, arranging it so that no portion was visible. He sat down on the chair but found the stiletto to be needling through his trouser pocket and into his thigh. He stood and plucked it out and put it again on the bedside table just as he had first found it.

Only me,
he thought. And then added,
Hooper.

And only then did it occur to him to be surprised at the name. Hooper? If he had been asked if that were his name he would not have said so. It did not feel altogether the right name for him. But it was the name his tongue had uttered, in preference to the other name the Elder had offered.
William.
His father too, named John, that didn’t sound right, and Young not right as a family name, or as part of his own full name: William Hooper Young. Why was it he felt so alienated from his proper names—names that his tongue could give, apparently out of habit, as correct, even if he could not get his mind around them. And his father alive? He had been certain that his father was dead, his mother had said as much, over and over, he had seen his father dead in his coffin, but no, no, why had he thought that? He had gotten confused; he had made that up: it was apparently his father who was alive and his mother, not his father, who was dead.

And this woman, what was he to do about her? This corpse in his bed, in a bed that technically belonged to a vanished father, dead. Certainly it was understandable that his mind was running a little ragged. He should be, he thought, even more distraught than he was. Perhaps it was even worrisome that he was not.

Only me,
he thought again.
Then perhaps I am the one responsible for this poor creature’s death.

But why?
he wondered.

But even if I’m not,
he thought,
it may appear to others as if I were.
Though he realized his mind was taking a turn into dubious territory he could not stop himself. He was sorry that the woman was dead but he did not know her; how could he be responsible? And yet the police, he knew, were likely to ferret out the easiest solution to the problem, and the easiest solution to the problem, particularly with the Mormon missionaries across the hall claiming that nobody had entered the house, was the inhabitant of the apartment: he himself. The missionaries would not be blamed: there were two of them, it was not their apartment. They would support each other’s witness. No, if anyone were to be blamed, it would be he.

He sat on the bed. Reaching out, he stroked the woman’s hair. Did she look familiar?

But perhaps if I speak now I’ll at least have a chance,
he thought. For what else was he to do? Hush up the crime? Take charge of the body himself and dispose of it? This would serve not only to cover the crime and protect the
murderer but, if the disposal of the corpse were ever to be traced back to him, implicate him. No, he must speak with the police, lay down for them all he knew, all he understood, and then allow them to do as they would. At least his conscience would be appeased, and perhaps his forthrighteousness would do much, or at least something, to convince them of his innocence.

He was still, he realized, stroking her hair, as if she were a lapdog. He took his hand away, and stood, pacing into the kitchen and back again. At last he tightened his coat and, feeling in his waistcoat pocket for a coin, left the apartment.

Yes, he thought, he would choose the righteous thing. He left the landing and started down the stairs. There was nothing else to be done and this way at least his conscience would be gratified. He would be at peace with himself rather than at variance and with his mind moving two ways at once. He would open the door, find a willing boy, send him along to the police.

Yet when he opened the front door there was a man on the step, his face seeming at once old and young. Hooper looked at him, holding the door ajar.

“Hello, Hooper,” the man said, and nodded once.

And suddenly Hooper remembered what he was meant to say.

“Elling,” Hooper said. He opened the door wider. “Would you care to come in?”

Upstairs, Elling stood in the kitchen. He removed his gloves, working them off slowly, finger by finger. When he was done he went to the sink, peered beneath its skirt. The gesture struck Hooper as odd; he had the strange sensation that he had seen it done before.

“She isn’t here,” said Elling.

“What?” said Hooper. “No. She’s on the bed.”

“Certainly you should hide her,” said Elling.

“But why would she be there?” asked Hooper. “I said nothing to suggest that I’d put her there. And how is it that you know that she is in such condition as demands being hidden?”
Unless,
he thought,
she was brought to it by your hand.

“That’s where she goes,” said Elling, and now seemed again young. “Goddammit, how many times do I have to tell you? Bloody sheets in the closet, body under the sink. Can’t you do a goddam thing right?”

Something’s wrong,
Hooper thought. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Shall I go out?” asked Elling. “Shall I go back out and begin again?”

“What do you mean, begin again?”

He had his head in his hands now and was sitting on the edge of the bed. The room around him, what he could see of it through his hands, was beginning to fade, going gray. He watched the walls before him waver, as if underwater, as if coming asunder.

“Shit,” said Elling. “Pull yourself together.”

Hooper nodded. He reached out and touched the bed, pushing his palm down against it until it felt sturdy, authentic, real. He could feel the texture of the tapestry pressing into it. When he lifted his palm away, he found it pebbled from the fibers.

“We’ll start again,” said Elling.

Hooper nodded.

I
t took him a moment to understand where he was. At first there was only a gray space, featureless, unlit, but it opened itself up, began to acquire variance, contour. A room, then. An apartment. He was sitting on a chair beside a bed and in the bed was a woman, facing away. The coverlet was stripped back and he could see that the woman was nude and soaking in her own blood.

Oh, Christ,
he thought.

He stood and tugged the woman onto her back, put his hand against her throat. He could not feel a pulse and her neck had grown stiff, as had her other joints. The skin was growing cold and felt rubbery, holding the imprint of his fingers. One side of her skull was fractured and blood had pooled in her eye socket, but most of it had spilled out when he moved her. Her other temple was broken as well, leaking both blood and brain. Her belly was neatly slit, the gash almost long enough for … for what? He didn’t know. It was a longish gash in any case.

Where am I?
he wondered. Was this his room? No, he didn’t think so. Did he know this woman? No. But how could he say for certain? Perhaps he knew her; she looked familiar but it was hard to say with her skull broken as it was.

Who did this?
he wondered. And then,
Was it me?

His first impulse was to hide the body, move it out of the house somehow, or out of the room, or at least off the bed so he did not have to look at it while he tried to think, tried to remember what had happened. He could hide her in the closet, or perhaps under the skirt of the sink, or perhaps some other place. He could cut her up and place her piece by piece in the stove and burn her until she was gone, but what would his neighbors
think of the smell of burning flesh and bone and hair? And could he himself stand it? Wait, were they
his
neighbors? Was this even his apartment? Perhaps it would be better to simply leave things as they were and slip out and then, at a little distance from the place, try to sort it out. No one need know he had been here. Unless it was here that he belonged.

He had the vague impression that all this had happened before.

Or perhaps, he thought, it was better to go directly to the police and tell them the truth. Say he had returned to his apartment and found the girl dead in his bed but that clearly he had nothing to do with it. Yes, of course. He had seen her lying in the bed, realized suddenly she was dead and then from the shock had passed from consciousness. That too would explain where his memory had gone. And explain too why he had felt at first that he had not known where he was. His consciousness had been returning and he was still muddled and confused. He would go to the police and make a clean breast of it—

Or not, he thought. Would the police be likely to credit his story? And what if he told the story and it
wasn’t
his house, wasn’t his apartment at all, but the girl’s? How, then, to explain his own presence to the officer?

“Your relation to the deceased?”

“None.”

“Then how is it you came to be in her apartment?”

“Was it her apartment?”

The officer would look at him sternly. “This one,” he would say to his recorder, “he’s not telling what he knows. Make a note of it.”

“But I
am
telling all that I know,” he would protest. Yet by then it would already be too late.

And then, sitting in the chair, staring at the unmoved body, he realized that it would be already too late long before that. Indeed, it would be too late the moment after the officer sat down at the table across from him and said:

“Name?”

What was his name? That indeed was the first thing. And the second, he thought, is like unto it: Was this his apartment or was it not? And finally, Who was this girl?

He covered the body with a coverlet. This did not make him queasy and this indeed surprised him; he was made of stronger mettle than he would have believed.

He left the apartment, crossed the hall to knock on the door opposite. But this too, he realized, was probably an error: were this not his apartment, he should not be seen.

He could hear footfalls on the parquet on the other side of the door; lithely he crept back and away and closeted himself in the bathroom on the landing between apartments, leaving the door ajar so as not to give himself away, standing in the dark.

The door opened and he heard a man’s voice.