Carrion Comfort (74 page)

Often we would end our nights out on the town with a visit to Simpl, the finest cabaret in Vienna. The establishment’s full name was Simplicissimus and I can clearly recall that it was run by two Jews— Karl Frakas and Fritz Grunbaum. Even later, when the Brownshirts and storm troopers were raising havoc on the streets of the old city, these two comics would have the patrons pealing with laughter at their satirical sketches of Nazi ste reo types blundering their way through a social encounter or arguing fine points of fascist doctrine while Sieg Heiling dogs, cats, and pass-ersby. I remember Willi roaring with laughter until tears ran down his red cheeks. Once he laughed so hard that he choked until Nina and I patted him resoundingly on the back and offered our glasses of champagne to him. Some years after the war, Willi idly mentioned during one of our Reunions that either Frakas or Grunbaum— I cannot remember which one— died in one of the camps Willi had administered briefly before his transfer to the Eastern Front.

Nina was very beautiful in those days. Her blond hair had been cut and curled in the most current fashion and because of her inheritance she could afford the finest silk dresses from Paris. I especially remember one green gown, cut very low in front, the soft material clinging to her small breasts, and how magnificently the green brought out the delicate blush of her peaches and cream complexion while oddly complementing the blue of her eyes.

I do not remember who formally proposed that we play the Game that first summer, but I remember our excitement and the thrill of the vicarious chase. We took turns Using different catspaws— acquaintances of ours, friends of our intended targets— a mistake that we did not make again. The next summer we played the Game even more earnestly, sitting together in our hotel rooms on Josefstadterstrasse and Using the same instrument— a dull-witted and thick-necked working-class peasant who was never caught but who Willi disposed of later— and the act of the three of us present in that same mind, and sharing the same sharp experiences was somehow more intimate and thrilling than any sexual ménage we might have experimented with.

I remember the summer we spent at Bad Ischl, Nina made a joke about the station where we had our single train change from Vienna . . . a small village named Attnang-Puchheim. Repeated at a quickening rate, Attnang-Puchheim soon became the sound of the train itself. We laughed until we could laugh no more and then would begin again. I remember the scolding glances of an old dowager across the aisle from us.

It was in Bad Ischl that I found myself alone in the Cafe Zauner one early afternoon. I had gone off for my voice lessons as always, but the instructor was ill and when I returned to the café where Willi and Nina always waited for me, our usual table was empty.

I returned to the hotel where Nina and I were staying on the Esplanade. I remember being slightly curious as to what impromptu excursion my friends had embarked on and why they had not waited for me. I had unlocked the door and walked halfway through the sitting room before I heard the sounds from Nina’s bedroom. At first I took them for noises of distress, and I ran toward her room with some naive notion of offering assistance to the chambermaid or whoever was in trouble.

It was Nina and Willi, of course. They were not in trouble. I remember how pale Nina’s thighs and Willi’s thrusting flanks were in the dim light filtering through the maroon drapes. I stood there for a full minute, watching, before turning and silently leaving the suite. During that long minute, Willi’s face remained turned away, hidden in Nina’s shoulder and the eiderdown pillow, but Nina turned her face and clear blue eyes toward me almost at once. I am sure she saw me. She did not stop, however, nor did she cease the rhythmic grunt of animal sounds that came from her open, pink, and perfect mouth.

By mid-March I decided that it was time to leave the hospital and Philadelphia and go home.

I had Howard Warden take care of the details of moving. Even with his savings, however, Howard could scrape together only about $2,500. The man would never have amounted to anything. Nancy, on the other hand, closed out the savings account started from her mother’s estate and it came to a comfortable $48,000. It had been put aside for the children’s college expenses, but that was no longer a concern now.

I had had Dr. Hartman visit the castle. Howard and Nancy waited in their rooms while the doctor visited the girls’ bedroom with his two syringes. Afterward, the doctor took care of the details. I had remembered a pleasant little clearing in the forest of Fairmont Park a mile toward the railroad bridge. In the morning, Howard and Nancy fed five-year-old Justin and— due to the strength of my conditioning— noticed nothing unusual except for an occasional flash of recognition not too dissimilar from those dreams where one suddenly realizes that he or she has forgotten to dress and is sitting naked in school or some other public place.

These passed. Howard and Nancy adjusted nicely to having only one child and I was pleased that I had decided not to Use Howard in the necessary actions. Conditioning is always easier and more successful if there is no vestigial trauma or resentment.

The wedding of Dr. Hartman and Head Nurse Oldsmith was a small affair, officiated by a Philadelphia justice of the peace and witnessed only by Nurse Sewell, Howard, Nancy, and Justin. I thought that they were a good-looking couple, although some say that Nurse Oldsmith has a harsh and humorless face.

When the move was set, Dr. Hartman contributed to the collective fund. It took him awhile to sell certain stocks and real estate interests, as well as to get rid of that absurd new Porsche he so prized, but when trusts were set aside to continue alimony to his two ex-wives, he was still able to bring $185,600 to our venture. Considering that Dr. Hartman would, in effect, be entering early retirement, it was enough for basic expenses during the immediate future.

It did not, however, offer enough to settle the problem of purchasing either my old home or the Hodges’ place. I no longer had any interest in allowing strangers to live across the courtyard from me. Foolishly, the Wardens had taken out no life insurance on their children. Howard retained a $10,000 policy on his own life, but this was laughable in light of real estate prices in Charleston.

In the end it was Dr. Hartman’s mother, eighty-two, in perfect health, and living in Palm Springs, whose estate offered the best solution. It was on Ash Wednesday the doctor was in surgery when the word came about his mother’s sudden embolism. He flew to the West Coast that same afternoon. The funeral was on Saturday, March 7, and because there were several legal details to settle, he did not fly home until Wednesday, the eleventh. I saw no reason why Howard should not return on the same flight. The initial cash settlement of the estate came to a little over $400,000. We moved south a week later, on St. Patrick’s Day.

There were a few final details to take care of before we left the north. I was comfortable with my little family— Howard, Nancy, and young Justin, as well as with our future neighbors, Dr. Hartman, Nurse Oldsmith, and Miss Sewell, but I felt that a certain security aspect was missing. The doctor was a small man, five feet five and thin, and while Howard was substantial in height and girth, he was as slow moving as he had been slow thinking and much of his weight had gone to fat. We needed one or two more members of our group to help me feel more secure.

Howard brought Culley into the hospital on the weekend before we left. He was a giant of a man, at least six-feet-five, weighing at least 280 pounds, all of it that was visible compacted into slabs of muscle. Culley was dim-witted, almost unable to speak coherently, but as quick and nimble on his feet as a jungle cat. Howard explained that Culley had been an assistant foreman in Park Grounds Maintenance before being sent away for manslaughter seven years earlier. He had returned the year before to work on the lowest, toughest level of Maintenance— clearing stumps, tearing down old structures, paving asphalt trails and lanes, clearing snow. Culley had worked without complaint and was no longer on parole.

Culley’s head tapered from its broadest point at juncture of jaw and neck to its narrowest at the crest of an almost pointed skull stubbled with a crew cut so short and rough it looked as if it had been administered by a blind sadist of a barber.

Howard had told Culley that there was a unique employment opportunity open to him, although he had used simpler words. Bringing him to the hospital had been my idea.

“This will be your boss,” Howard said, gesturing to the bed that held my husk of a body. “You will serve her, protect her, give your life for her if you must.”

Culley made a sound like a cat clearing its throat. “That old bag still alive?” he said. “She looks dead to me.”

I entered him then. There was little in that pinched skull except basic motivations— hunger, thirst, fear, pride, hate, and an urge to please based on a vague sense of wanting to belong, to be loved. It was that final need that I enlarged upon, built upon. Culley sat in my room for eighteen consecutive hours. When he left to help Howard with the packing and other trip preparations, there was nothing of the original Culley left except his size, strength, quickness, and need to please. To please me.

I never found out whether Culley was his first or last name.

When I was young I had a weakness whenever I traveled; I could not resist picking up souvenirs. Even in Vienna with Willi and Nina, my compulsive souvenir shopping soon became a source of humor for my companions. Now it had been some years since I had traveled, but my weakness for souvenirs had not totally disappeared.

On the evening of March 16, I had Howard and Culley drive to Germantown. Those sad streets were like the landscape of a half-remembered dream to me. I believe Howard would have been nervous in that Negro section— in spite of his conditioning— if it had not been for the reassuring presence of Culley.

I knew what I wanted; I remembered his first name and description but nothing else. The first four youngsters Howard approached either refused to respond or did so in colorful epithets, but the fifth one, a scruffy ten-year-old wearing only a ragged sweatshirt despite the freezing weather, said, “Yeah, man, you talking about Marvin
Gayle
. He just got out of
jail
, man, for citin’ riot or some shit. What you want with Marvin?”

Howard and Culley elicited directions to his house without answering that question. Marvin Gayle lived on the second floor of a rotting, shingled town house shoe-horned in between two overhanging tenements. A little boy opened the door and Culley and Howard stepped into a living room with a sagging couch covered with a pink spread, an ancient tele vision where a green-skinned game show host blared enthusiasm, peeling walls with a few religious prints and a photograph of Robert Kennedy, and a teenage girl lying on her stomach staring up vacuously at the visitors.

A large black woman came in from the kitchen, drying her hands on a checked apron. “What do you two want?”

“We’d like to talk to your son, ma’am,” said Howard. “What about?” demanded the woman. “You’re not the police. Marvin hasn’t done anything. You leave my boy alone.”

“No, ma’am,” said Howard unctuously, “it’s nothing like that. We just want to offer Marvin a job.”

“A job?” The woman looked suspiciously at Culley and then back to Howard. “What kind of
job
?”

“It’s all right, Ma.” Marvin Gayle stood in the door to the inside hallway, dressed in nothing but an old pair of shorts and an oversize T-shirt. His face was slack and his eyes were vague, as if he had just awakened.

“Marvin, you don’t have to talk to these people if . . .”

“It’s all right, Ma.” He stared at her with that dead face until she looked down and then he turned the gaze on Howard. “What you want, man?”

“Can we talk outside?” asked Howard.

Marvin shrugged and followed us outside despite the darkness and freezing wind. The door closed on the mother’s protests. He stared up at Culley and then stepped closer to Howard. There was the slightest flicker of animation in his eyes, as if he knew what was coming and almost welcomed it.

“We’re offering you a new life,” whispered Howard. “A whole new life . . .”

Marvin Gayle started to speak then, but from ten miles away I
pushed
and the colored boy’s mouth fell slack and he did not finish the first word. Technically speaking, I had Used this boy before, briefly, in those last, mad minutes before I bid adieu to Grumble thorpe, and that might have made the feat the slightest bit easier. But that did not really matter. I
never
would have been able to do what I did that evening before my illness. Working through the filter of Howard Warden’s perceptions, while simultaneously controlling Culley, my doctor, and half a dozen other conditioned catspaws in as many differing locations, I was still able to project my force of will so powerfully that the colored boy gasped, staggered backward, stared blankly, and awaited my first command. His eyes no longer looked drugged and defeated; they now reflected the bright, transparent stare of the terminally brain damaged.

What ever had been the sad total of Marvin Gayle’s life, thoughts, memories, and pitiful aspirations was gone forever. I had never done this type of total conditioning in a single blow before, and for a long minute my almost forgotten body twitched in the vice of total paralysis on the hospital bed while Nurse Sewell massaged me.

The receptacle that had been Marvin Gayle waited quietly in the freezing wind and darkness.

I finally spoke through Culley, not needing the verbal command but wanting to hear it through Howard’s awareness. “Go get dressed,” he said, “give your mother this. Tell her it is an advance on salary.” Culley handed the young Negro a hundred dollar bill.

Marvin disappeared into the house and came out three minutes later. He was wearing only jeans, a sweater, sneakers, and a black leather jacket. He brought no luggage. That is as I wished; we would prepare an appropriate wardrobe for him when we moved.

In all my years of growing up, I do not remember a time when we did not have colored servants. It seemed appropriate upon my return to Charleston that this again be the case.