Wall of Eyes

Chapter 18

“I’m sorry,” Sands said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry,” Alice said dully. “A stupid word to say.”

“Yes.”

They sat in the twilight and the room was hushed like a museum and except for their moving mouths they were wax figures in a timeless world. At any moment a group of school children might come in with their teacher. “That was how they dressed in nineteen hundred and forty-two,” and some of the children would giggle and others would make notes.

“That first night,” Alice said, pausing to give herself time to go into the closet and take out the yellow dress and slip it over her head again, feel it, smell it.

“That first night when he came with Johnny — I remember his eyes. They were unhappy, seeking eyes and they never changed. I never knew what he was seeking, what he was trying to find in this world!”

“Security,” Sands said, but her head moved a little. She didn’t want Philip to have been seeking security. Too easy and simple, Sands thought. She would like to think he was chasing a rainbow, something unattainable and worth dying for, not security which she had and which meant nothing to her.

“Restless,” she said. “You could tell it when he played, brilliant, savage, like a lion in a cage.”

This was the cage, Sands thought, but she won’t want to know that. Let her walk around in a fog for a while until she bumps into something.

“I think he was proud. That was why he didn’t stay from the beginning when mother asked him to. He had to go away twice before he came to stay. And even then he’d be away a lot, he’d stay in the room he rented to practice in.”

“He didn’t rent the room...”

“Stop it,” she said, without anger. “Let me dream a little. He went to concerts, even to New York. Mother gave him an allowance, and when she died Kelsey kept it up.”

“He had to go to her for the money?” Sands said.

“Yes. We all did. He didn’t mind. He was always very pleasant. He never went out with Johnny, to parties or nightclubs or anything, he didn’t like that kind of good time, he didn’t require it. When he wasn’t practicing he stayed at home and we talked.”

They talked, Sands repeated silently, with bitterness. They talked a hundred billion words, they taught him how to talk and what to think without giving him any foundations. They taught him a whole foreign language without telling him what the words meant or giving him a dictionary or a grammar book.

“I thought he was happy here,” Alice said. “I didn’t think he needed to blow off steam, or if he did need it I thought he could do it by playing, you see.” She half-closed her eyes as if the lids were mirrors to reflect herself and her family. “We are cramped people here in this house, cramped and cramping. If we had been different he would never have become...”

“No,” Sands said quietly. “No, don’t fool yourself. He didn’t become anything, he stayed as he was. He was never Philip James, not for an instant. He began to look a little like a man called Philip James might look. He got fatter and began losing his hair. He lost that cocky defiant look you can see on his pictures, his police pictures, and he didn’t get anything to replace that look so his face was formless, soft. I didn’t recognize him from the pictures. You don’t recognize a man by his skin color or his eyes but by his expression and his bones. And the expression had changed and the bones were padded with fat living.”

“No,” Alice said. “I don’t want to hear...”

“He was never Philip James,” Sands said again. “Maybe he got the name from a movie while he watched and played the piano. The name must have meant something to him. It’s a book name not a real one, it sounds like upper-class English or Scotch, and he was an Italian.”

“No. No, he wasn’t...”

“A wop,” Sands said. “A wop with some talent and no money. Twenty years of that, you see, twenty years of being a poor wop and then Johnny Heath brought him home. He had the name ready, probably. Perhaps it was the name he intended to use when he got rich peddling marihuana or picking pockets. Even the petty criminals have dreams and Murillo’s dream must have crystallized when he came into this room and saw you and Kelsey and the piano. His feet must have felt funny on this soft rug, that was why he went away and came back again. Here was the dream but he must have been smart enough to see that it had cracks in it. But he came back anyway and tried to live it out and be Philip James. He couldn’t do it. When he came back the second time he had it figured out. He could live in the dream but he could still be Murillo some of the time until he got used to being James. Then he could make the break completely. He didn’t intend to go on being Murillo all of his life. But he met this girl.”

“Don’t tell me about the girl,” Alice said.

“She had been around a lot with other men before she knew Murillo,” Sands said. “That’s probably how he met her. And they must have come together the way two people like that would, right away without any thinking or shunting back and forth or planning. I don’t suppose they even talked about love, they just started to live together and she was his woman. He’d come down to Charles Street to her room every time your mother packed him off to a concert out of town. Every chance he got he went back to his other life, his woman, his doped cigarettes, his clothes that he kept there in her room, the black fedora and the bright silk shirts and pointed yellow shoes. I think the clothes were important to him, not because they were different and emphasized his other life, but because they were the kind of clothes he liked to wear. He was still a wop. He never felt at ease in those baggy tweeds and English brogues that he wore here.

“As soon as he left this house he must have started to change, gradually, block by block, crossing from one world into another, like a man flying from here to the moon, knowing there was a point where the earth’s gravity stopped and the moon’s hadn’t begun, a vast sinking and falling into nowhere. Perhaps he had a special street which was this point and after he’d passed it he could have something under his feet again. Once he was there he was all right, he was Murillo, there was no need for pretense. Every humiliation he had suffered in this house he could take out on Mamie.”

“Mamie,” Alice said. “Mamie.”

“And everything he learned in this house he could teach to Mamie. He must have taught her some things because when Joey’s opened she got a job in the chorus and later on she became the singer. He didn’t go to Joey’s much except to call for Mamie a few times. He was scared he might meet Johnny there or one of Johnny’s friends, so he stayed in the background. Only one or two of the people at Joey’s knew him by sight: Stevie Jordan, Joey himself, and a girl called Geraldine Smith who was Mamie’s friend.

“He didn’t let his two lives merge. The only way they touched each other was that as Murillo he worked off the repressions he suffered as James. It was as if he set up a rigid set of rules for himself so that the two men he was were as different as possible. Mr. James was pleasant, earnest, did not drink, and paid no great attention to women.”

“Except Kelsey,” Alice said bitterly. “My sister. My sister and a prostitute called Mamie.”

“How he became engaged to Kelsey I don’t know,” Sands said.

“She was used to him, and she felt sorry for him.”

“And she loved him.”

“No, no, never!”

“Yes, I think she did,” Sands said. “I think you both did.”

She hung onto the arms of the chair. “I! I love a man with a woman like that, a murderer, a thief!”

“You didn’t know he was a murderer and a thief. Mamie did, and she loved him. I think that sometimes it must have pleased him to have Kelsey here and Mamie waiting for him down there. Yes, there’d be a lot of satisfaction in that. Probably it was his happiest period, when he was engaged to Kelsey before the accident. He didn’t even have to choose, you see, he could have both his women and both his lives, his tweeds and his pointed yellow shoes, his music and his dope.”

“A dope fiend!”

“Not a dope fiend. A lot of musicians use marihuana and some need it all the time, but Murillo didn’t. As Philip James, marihuana was even distasteful to him, incongruous, like using the sheets from Mamie’s bed on the bed he had here. Yes, I think for a time he was almost happy, until one night Johnny made a date from a restaurant downtown. Kelsey and Philip waited in the car and when Johnny came out of the house with the girl he had phoned, the girl was Geraldine Smith.

“He had only a little time to work things out. He knew that Geraldine would have to die and die soon before she could say anything. The road was slippery and the car skidded a little. He was Murillo then, gambling on his life. He took the wheel and the car ran off the road and crashed. It was his only chance. James would have muffed it, but Murillo didn’t. The girl, Geraldine, had been flung from the car. Johnny was still in the rumbleseat, Kelsey was unconscious on the road. He dragged Geraldine away from the road in case a passing car should come along. He was bleeding badly where the glass from the windshield had struck his chest. That may have given him the idea.

“He took a piece of glass and cut her throat and face and threw the glass away and came back to the car.”

“He did it,” Alice said dully. “You thought it was Johnny and he did it.”

“Yes, I thought it was Johnny. He was the only one who knew the girl, and I didn’t consider that the accident was planned. Very few men would have the almost insane irresponsibility and guts to drive a car deliberately into a ditch unless their lives depended on it. Yet, in a sense, his life did depend on it. With Geraldine dead he could keep going, and for another two years he did keep going.

“They were bad years. Kelsey was blind and he was tied to a blind girl. Geraldine was dead and he had her murder on his conscience.”

“Conscience!” Alice said bitterly.

“Yes, he had one, as all sensitive men have, but it was a subjective conscience. He had no standards except his own personal welfare, and so he wasn’t sorry he had killed the girl, he was merely sorry that he had been forced to kill her. Kelsey, too, had changed in other ways besides her blindness. Her mind had sharpened and splintered and the splinters were like antennae which could pick up and relay to her waves that the rest of you missed. I think that for two years she relived that accident, every detail of it, and I think that at the end she knew.”

“She dreamed of it,” Alice said, “of the girl. She’d scream out in her sleep.”

“For two years,” Sands said, “she kept postponing her marriage, she gave away her ring to a maid, not because she loved him and didn’t want him to be tied to a blind girl, not because she wasn’t sure about the accident. It must have seemed incredible to her at first, or perhaps it came so gradually that it was no shock.”

“She tried to kill herself.”

“Not from shock, from uncertainty. She had all that time to think, to feel it all out, the wheel under her hands, the skidding, the sudden swerve of the car as Philip jerked the wheel, the crash. She thought of it for two years and at the end of two years she wasn’t sure, she knew she could never be sure that it was Philip who had swung the car off the road and killed the girl and blinded her, Kelsey. Even apart from her blindness this uncertainty was enough to twist her mind. And there was no solution to her doubt, she could never bring herself to ask him outright. If he denied it she wouldn’t have believed him. Perhaps she was actually frightened that he’d admit it, and kept trying him out, subtly.”

“The last day,” Alice said, “she said, ‘I can’t trust anyone, can I, Philip?’ He told her, no, she couldn’t.”

“So she asked Ida to bring her the morphine.”

“Why didn’t she confide in me?” Alice said bleakly. “She never hinted...”

“Would you have believed her? Even as it was, didn’t you go to a psychiatrist about her? Only one of you would have believed her, Philip himself. He knew what she was thinking, he saw her reliving the accident day by day. He must have wanted to escape from her, to leave this house and never come back, but he couldn’t go. If he went Kelsey might talk. If he left her he knew she’d realize the truth and be sure of it. So he had to stay and watch her. He couldn’t stop watching her, and she must have felt his eyes. His were the eyes that stared at her, that meant hate and danger, a wall of eyes that must gradually have closed in on her. She had only one way of escape, Mamie’s way.

“While the doctors were working over her you sent Philip out for a walk. It was then that he went to the tavern and sat drinking at the table leaving his fingerprints on the glasses. He didn’t go to Mamie this time, he just sat there in the tavern, falling and sinking into that big hole that always waited for him — caught between two worlds.

“He must have known why Kelsey had tried to kill herself and known too that she wouldn’t die. And if she didn’t die, you’d all be after her asking why? And she’d tell you. He was desperate, he wanted to do something, to fight something. So he got up from the table and tried to get the bartender to hand over the night’s receipts. Crazy, isn’t it? That feeble gesture, that frail little sock at fate, as if by robbing a till he could become the doer and not the doneby.

“The bartender told him to go to hell. He ran then, and a couple of men chased him for a block or so and gave up. After all, nothing had been lost by them. The loss was Murillo’s. He had tried and failed, and failure was to him a living pain through his whole body. He came back to the house. The hall light was on. He went upstairs into Kelsey’s room and switched on the light. He must have been insane with hate standing there and seeing that she was breathing and hadn’t died. Perhaps she woke up and knew who had come to her room and why he had come. Or perhaps he killed her right away, as soon as he saw the knife on the table beside her bed. After he killed her he was calmer, his mind was working again. He took his pocketknife out of his coat — that was when some shreds of marihuana scattered on the rug — and picked the lock on the jewel box. He was going to take some of the jewels to make the murder look like robbery. But Mr. Heath came home then. He went past the door, very slowly, while Philip stood inside the room, knowing that the light was shining under the door, knowing that Mr. Heath might come in and find him there with Kelsey dead.

“The shock of Mr. Heath’s footsteps going past the door stunned him. He didn’t notice he hadn’t taken the jewels, he didn’t notice the shreds that had fallen from his pocket, he didn’t think of turning Kelsey’s light off. His only wish was to escape. As soon as he got out of the door he began to run.

“He was always escaping from something, he ran out of the tavern and out of the house, he was running when he was killed. It’s dark in here. Shall I turn on the lights?”

“No.” Alice said. “Not just yet.”

“They’ll have to be turned on sometime.”

“Yes. A little later.”

Their voices throbbed in the hushed room and the Walls threw back echoes of implication.

“You’re as good a runner as he was, in your way,” Sands said. “You sit in the dark, you shut your eyes. The present is a burden to you and the future is a danger. You have only the past, not all happy, but healed.”

“Go on with your story,” she said hoarsely.

Story, Sands thought, it’s a story to her. He’s already unreal and remote because he had Mamie and the yellow shoes.

“He ran down the driveway past the car where Stevie Jordan was sitting and Jordan recognized him. I don’t think he saw Jordan but he must have seen the car, must have realized that he was running and would attract attention, that he’d have to come back to the house and face it out. He did come back and he was calm enough this time to slip back the lock on the door which Mr. Heath had set when he came home and found it unlocked.

“So he left the door unlocked. He had no idea that as James he was building up a case against Murillo. He couldn’t anticipate that irony or the final one, that as James he should die for Murillo.”

“You sent him down there,” Alice said.

“He wanted to go.”

“You knew he was Murillo when you sent him.”

“He wanted to go,” Sands said again. “He had to get down there somehow, to kill her, not knowing she was already dead.”

“Not to kill her,” Alice said.

“Perhaps not. I think so, but perhaps he only wanted to see her again. Anyway, she was dead. She had fixed herself up before she died almost as if she knew he’d be coming to see her and she wanted to look nice for him.

“She had shot Jordan to save Murillo. Jordan is a brittle man in some ways, and I think that when she came into the office after the club was closed he taunted her by telling her about seeing Murillo, and she shot him without thinking or planning. It was the way she did everything, all her thinking was done below the neck. She cried and laughed easily like a child and had a child’s strange loyalty.”

“She knew who he was?” Alice said. “She knew he lived here?”

“Yes, I’m sure she did. She was jealous of him, she wanted to know where he went when he wasn’t with her. It took her a long time to find out, I suppose, because Murillo was shrewd and he didn’t trust her. He never went directly from here to there, he used the room he rented to practice in as a half-way house, and she must have followed him there and asked questions of the landlady. Well, she found out some way.”

“That telephone call,” Alice said. “I answered the telephone this morning and there was someone who hung up as soon as I answered.”

“She was waiting for Murillo to answer it himself,” Sands said. “I think she did get him finally, and that’s why he went down to kill her. She was the only one who knew, he thought.”

“You knew.”

“Yes. His first murder was the best, he got away with it for two years, yet in the end it was Geraldine who gave him away. There were only the three of them who were in the car who could have killed Geraldine. Kelsey was out because she did not know the girl and she was blinded in the accident. Johnny could have killed the girl but you had to scrape the bottom for a motive for him and the motive didn’t suit Johnny’s type. He wouldn’t kill to avoid marrying a girl.”

“No,” Alice said. “He’d walk away. He’d leave it to settle itself, or he’d leave it to me to settle. He’s already forgotten this dancer and in a week he’ll have forgotten Philip.”

“That left Philip James,” Sands said. “It seemed improbable at first but it led me up Mr. James’ alley in the search for Murillo. And little things began to fit — James had had chest cuts from the accident, Murillo had been knifed in the chest by Chinaman, Mamie said. It explained the unlocked door, Murillo’s knowledge of the house and of Kelsey’s blindness, the similarity between the two murders and the motives for both. And it explained, chiefly, why Jordan had seen Johnny and Murillo together. Jordan didn’t know the other side of Murillo’s life, he thought it meant that Johnny had hired Murillo to kill Kelsey.”

“You let him go down there,” Alice said. “You wanted him to be shot.”

“Yes.”

“You... you may even have told them he was coming, ordered them to be ready to shoot him.”

“Maybe I did,” Sands said.

“You did. I know you did.” She was not accusing him, she sounded eager to believe it, slyly happy as if they shared a secret triumph. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me for something I may not have done,” Sands said irritably. “Or if I have, not for you or your family.”

“I could have killed him myself,” she said. “I wish I had killed him.”

He did not answer. He was thinking how wondrous a mixture were the women of Alice’s class. Combining barbarism and decadence in equal parts they passed as civilized and were eager to thrust their philosophies on the weak and unwary, to teach others how to live as Alice had tried to teach Murillo. Doomed and damned. Too weak for this world, and too hard for heaven.

“I wish,” he said, “that I could feel when I walk out of here today that you had learned something in this past week, that you were more humane.”

“Humane?” She sounded surprised and a little contemptuous. “You think it makes you more humane to have your sister murdered and your... your...”

“It could,” Sands said in a tired voice, “but it won’t.”

He got up from the chair. She could see him as a shadow moving, see the outlines of the hat in his hand.

She rose too, reluctant to have him leave, to be abandoned here in the darkness. After he was gone the dark would come alive with ghosts that crawled and slithered and bit with their little teeth, a cellar full of rats. Humane!

“Don’t go,” she said.

“Turn on the lights,” he said.

She switched on a lamp, quickly, as if by Instant obedience she could coax him to stay, to take back what he’d said about her.

“I thought I was humane,” she said.

“Did you? Well, maybe you are,” he said over his shoulder, and she knew from his voice that he meant: You aren’t, but I’m too tired to argue.

She clenched her hands together. What does he know about it? Conceited little — a policeman — just an ordinary policeman — I’ve always done my duty.

Sands shut the door. The hall was brilliantly lighted and he squinted his eyes against the glare. Then he saw that Mr. Heath was standing in the hall waiting for him. He looked as if he’d been waiting a long time.

They smiled at each other and Mr. Heath said, “Well,” in a tone of sad satisfaction.

“Listening?” Sands said.

“Oh, a little.”

Sands squinted again. “You don’t find it a tragedy.”

“No.” Mr. Heath said. “No. He’s dead and the girl’s dead and Kelsey, they have nothing to fear.”

Decadence, Sands though, they all have it, they have none of them a will to live.

“I heard you phoning,” Mr. Heath said, “telling them that Murillo was on his way. You have a lot of courage, and wisdom.”

“Oh, sure,” Sands said. “Oh, hell, yes.” He wanted to get home, back to his familiar loneliness and anonymity, submerge like a submarine for a time.

“Guess I’ll be going,” he said, twisting his hat.

“I... we hope you’ll come back,” Mr. Heath said.

“Oh, I’ll come back,” Sands said.

“This man, Jordan...?”

“He’s getting along fine.” He could no longer keep the impatience out of his voice. “Everything’s fine.”

Oh, hell, yes. Everything is hunky-dory in this hunky-doriest of all possible worlds.

“Don’t be too hard on Alice,” Mr. Heath said. “She hasn’t had enough affection, I’m afraid, enough love. Dr. Loring wants to take her away from here. And when she’s gone I intend to assume control.”

“Do you? That’s fine.”

“You think it’s a good idea?”

“Oh, yes. Well, good-bye.”

“I didn’t thank you.”

“No, you’d better not,” Sands said.

Thanks. He was going to thank me for standing around watching everything work out like an astronomer watching the stars — just about the same control over them.

Thank you kindly, Mr. Galileo.

Oh, that’s all right, I’m sure you’re welcome to move about in the universe.

The door slammed.