Her desire to understand the killer had been fighting against more vengeful longings. A part of her believed that the act of taking a life was never trivial, always profound, wanted to believe it even in an age of interminable slaughter, a primitive age in which hard-won ideas, the sovereignty of the individual, the sanctity of life, were dying beneath the piles of bodies, buried beneath the lies of warlords and priests, and this part wanted to know in full the why of it, not to excuse the deed but at least to comprehend, to know the other who had with such finality altered the condition of her self. For another, possibly larger part, the memory of her father subsiding in blood was all the knowledge that was required. What was justice? Was comprehension necessary before judgment could be made and sentence passed? Had Shalimar the clown understood the man he killed? And if he felt he had, would that make his actions defensible? Did understanding drag justice in its wake? No, she told herself, understanding and justice were unrelated things, like repentance and forgiveness. An understanding man could also be unjust. A woman might see her father’s killer repent, truly repent, and still be unable to forgive.
He had no answers for her. He was inchoate, contradictory, storm clouded. He was a hunted animal living in a ravine, like a coyote, like a dog. He was starving and thirsty. He was venom and blood. Is my mother here too, she asked him, over and over again. Did you bring her with you, is she waiting for you somewhere, holed up in some cheap freeway motel, to celebrate my father’s death. What do you do to celebrate your kills, do you drink yourself stupid, no, you wouldn’t drink, or is it sex, is that how you release your brutal delight, or do you pray, you and my mother, will you both get down on your knees and bang your joyful foreheads against the floor. Where is she, take me to her, let me look her in the face. She has to look me in the face. She cut me loose and never looked back and she has to look me in the face. She’s here, isn’t she. She wouldn’t miss this. She’s here, in a neon motel, waiting. Did she ask you to cut off his head. Did she want him decapitated but he was too tough for you, he didn’t give you that satisfaction. His head stayed on his shoulders and thwarted your obscene aims, your attack against humanity. Where is she. If she sent you she has to face me.
This isn’t over. I’m still here. I have to be reckoned with. I will call you to account. Blood will have blood. Sooner or later I will have to be faced.
He had no answers for her. He faded, like a dream. The sudden silence in her head was like a theft. For a moment she could not breathe, and gasped asthmatically for air. Then she cried. She thrust her face into her pillow and wept the first tears she had shed since her father’s death, wept for three hours and seventeen minutes without stopping and then fell into a deep sleep, from which she was only awakened fifteen and a quarter hours later by Olga Simeonovna, who had let herself into the apartment with her master key, accompanied by a specter from the past. Massed choruses encircled her in her dreams, but the dreams were not frightening, they were entertaining, she watched them like movies and forgot them when she awoke. India Ophuls had no need for nightmares anymore. The waking world was nightmarish enough.
The cassocked chorus of gossipy old women moved clockwise around her, keening softly, Ah, the orphaned princess, what will she do now, she’s a little crazy, we think, she may have all the money in the world but it won’t buy back what she lost, she’s just human like the rest of us, she’ll have to deal with that, she’ll have to come down to earth; we fear she’s planning to take a terrible revenge, but beware!, princess, beware!, this guy is a bad guy!, the worst!, and you’re not even in the family business, you can’t fight him, you’re Kay Corleone. Around the first circle, the chorus of the widows, she could see a second circle, moving widdershins, the flaccid unhappy torsos of sack-bellied police officers, the hard-bodied Chippendales élite had disappeared, leaving these middle-aged Tonys and Elvises behind, We’re closing in, ma’am, they chanted, a definite sighting on Ventura Boulevard, his days are numbered, uh-huh, uh-huh, a hundred percent make in a computer store on Pico, he may run ma’am but he can’t hide, reports of a vagrant in Nichols Canyon, reports of a vagrant near Woodrow Wilson, reports of a vagrant on Cielo Drive, uh-huh, uh-huh, it’s just a matter of time. And again the cassocked women raised their voices, Justice would be meaningless without injustice, they first intoned, and then, secondly, Justice is strife. War makes us what we are. Even though she was asleep she recognized Heraclitus speaking through the widows’ mouths-Heraclitus the Greek Buddha, the lost poet of broken wisdom, part philosopher, part fortune cookie, bubbling up from the days when she read such things, the days when she read, to add his two cents’ worth. Now, around the Eastern crone and the sagging policemen, she perceived a third circle, an outer circle made up of her friends, who were moving clockwise, like the old women, and singing in electronic voice-mail voices a yearning beseeching song. Come back, her friends sang in tinny harmony, baby, come back. Her friends singing the old Equals hit, Oh won’t you please! Come back. I’m on my knees! Come back. Baby come back.
Olga Simeonovna was shaking her. “Wake up,” Olga Volga said. “And don’t say you tell me no visitors, because this is different, okay? Here is good news. Here is your mother who has crossed an ocean and a continent to be beside her daughter when trouble comes. Wake up, India, please. Here your mother waits.” Was this a part of the dream, she wondered. No, she was awake, the pounding in her chest could not be dreamed. Excitedly she turned toward Olga and saw the trousered, septuagenarian woman who stood behind her and a little to one side, her hair an unkempt grey haystack under which a rat might safely hide. The sucker punch of disappointment hit India hard. She turned away and pulled the comforter over her head, ignoring Olga the abandoned parent’s frown of disapprovaclass="underline" Olga, for whom, in spite of all her abuse of her departed children, an embrace between a long-separated mother and daughter was a cherished fantasy. “Ha! A fine welcome, I must say,” chided Margaret Rhodes. “You may not like it, my dear, but-ahah! hah!-it’s true, your darling mother’s in town.”
Ratetta, sweet Ratetta. Peggy Rhodes had returned to England with a baby girl in her arms and a look on her face that made it impossible for anyone to ask after her husband or even to speak his discarded name. The adopted child was baptized India Rhodes and, as her mother’s work with orphanages was well known, there was little need to explain her provenance. The Rumplestiltskin truth, that she had disposed of a husband and taken his love child in his place, was so strange that nobody suspected it. She had forced Max to swear to keep the secret, to relinquish all parental rights and responsibilities, and to stay away from mother and child alike. She was cleaning up his mess, she told him, and she didn’t want him making things messy again. Hanging his head, ashamed, he did not argue. He tried to express his feelings. “Don’t apologize, for God’s sake,” she said. “D’you imagine an apology can make up for what you did?” He was silenced. For seven years he vanished from her life.