The Night of Trees Read online

  “He’s dying,” Ruth said in an ugly whisper. She took a step toward Richard and pointed a thick hand at him, her gray, muscular arm quivering, her mouth twisted across her teeth. “How do you like it?” Sound came into her voice, low and ragged with accusation. “Look at him, the killer! Straight from murder he comes in his red clothes. My God! He’s got blood on him, and he comes to this house!”

  “Ruth!” Mae said.

  “Ruth!” Orson Gelb said, and turned to Richard. “She’s all broken up. Don’t mind what she says.” But Ruth had always ignored him.

  “Murderer,” Ruth whispered. “Men like you killed him, you know that? He couldn’t stand it because you savages have to kill.” Again into her whisper had come voice, grinding and vicious. Richard held his hand up in front of his face as if to ward off all that noise, and looked at Rachel. She wore a dress he knew, an old one. She had gained just a little weight, and somehow looked younger. She looked as she had ten years before.

  “Rachel,” he said, and because he had no tender voice the word sounded harsh. He tried to wave away the constant noise from Ruth. He could hardly hear himself. “Rachel, I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to tell you something.”

  She looked at him once, her pale face unnaturally determined, then looked away and said, in the soft voice she could never change: “I’m not supposed to see you. It’s not good for me.”

  He couldn’t touch her, but he took a step closer, and she quivered nervously and shook her head.

  “I can’t talk to Saul. Is that true?” he asked. She wouldn’t answer.

  “Leave her alone! Do you want to destroy her?”

  He tried to protect himself from that noise.

  “Ruth! For God’s sake!” Mae said.

  “Rachel, I’ve got something I have to tell you. Murray…”

  “He’s taken the boy and made a killer out of him!“

  “Ruth, please!” Orson Gelb said.

  Between Richard and his tall wife the gray woman postured and bared her teeth, and kept them from understanding each other.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked. Rachel shook her head: No, no, it’s all over. Along the line of her jaw, perhaps, there was the slight softening of age, and yet she was so beautiful. The mother of his son. And with this thought the walls of the high room turned concave, and the lines of the borders of things bent. The wave, that bell-like waste. In his neck the knife twisted, and he tried to breathe. When he got a breath he turned toward Saul’s room. Maybe Saul was awake; there must be some little gift left for him, some kind of amelioration. In spite of himself, his body made signals to him in the form of terrible pain, and let him know that the two natures were still bound together, and if one couldn’t stand it, neither could the other.

  The hallway to the bedroom: Mae was frightened, and moved out of his way. Saul might at least touch his hand, and nod to him.

  And then between him and the distant door the gray woman threw herself, making her worst faces and grinding her teeth. That coarse, snapping sow in front of him, threatening and jawing, that lead-colored bitch bumping her bladdered dugs against him. He reached down and grabbed the side of her clayey neck. But he was not mad, and so he asked her for a little consideration.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said reasonably. He should have known, however, that she was alien to reason. Her mouth opened and her teeth appeared. Her eyes were upon his waist where his hunting knife hung in its sheath, and she began to scream as though she were impaled, a shrill, inhuman sound, but quite familiar to him—it was precisely the one sound a rabbit ever made with its throat, and then made only when jaws closed upon its body.

  “A dagger!.” Ruth screamed when her voice returned. “He’s got a dagger! All covered with blood! To this house he brings a dirty knife!“

  Too far. Suddenly these were his only words. A man could be pushed only so far—those too: so far. Too far. There was a sweetness in that logic, a sweet, sweet hatred which could find its objects so near. The walls of the room sorted themselves into a little square in which he faced all at once the only makers of his grief. His voice grew strong with this perfect hatred, and was steady, and would be believed. How best destroy his enemies? He needed a word to use with his new voice, and of course it came to him. It came deadly and ready out of an arsenal he hadn’t known was his, and would strike them all away from him.

  “You dirty kike bitch!” he said, and turned with so much cold force that Ruth, who had been pressed against him, fell thumping against the wall and to the floor.

  Now he had triumphed over them all, and his victory over ambivalence and complication was perfect. His body was hard again as he walked to the foyer. If Orson Gelb had got in his way he would have smashed him until he splattered. He reached the door and went out, taking care to close it softly; man was so good at his hatred, and made those scenes with beautiful skill.

  He would wait for the elevator this time. Oh, he had done a wonderful job. Gloating, freezing, he took several steps toward the stairwell and inexplicably fell down. There was the thick carpet, like pepper in his nose. Quickly he rolled over: thank God they hadn’t caught him in this strange weakness!

  But one of them had. It was Sophie Gelb, who must have followed him out. Now she knelt down—he tried to get up, and knew that in a moment he would be able to. He cursed his arms that wouldn’t push him up. Her flat shoes creaked as she knelt, and her knee pressed the side of his face. She was very strong, and pulled him over so that his back leaned against the wall.

  “Oh, you poor man,” she said. Her homely face shone at him.

  “I just tripped,” he said. “I’ll be all right!”

  “She was so mean to you. Both of them.”

  “Don’t pity me,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”

  “I know how you love grandfather too.”

  “Stop being kind to me!” he said angrily. He tried to get up, but couldn’t. “I don’t want to be weak like this.” In his voice he heard some petulance, and he was afraid of it. Her big, uncontrollable eyes were moist with pity. Her dark face didn’t even try to protect itself—even the pores in her nose were too big and open. “Why don’t you leave me alone?” he said. “Christ, what next?” And then the question became larger and larger in his mind. “What next?” He didn’t know whom he asked: “God, what next? What are You going to do to me next?”

  —Because her face was suddenly unimportant, translucent, a shell which gave her a name, and behind its homeliness he saw a blinding generosity that was beyond his understanding. Murray looked out of her eyes, as alien to his own violent humanity as if he were a horned beast looking upon the face of an angel.

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