In a paralysis of horror Madeleine observed the stricken man now fallen — writhing on the pavement in a bright neon-red pool — still clutching desperately at his throat, as if the pressure of his hands could staunch that powerful jet-stream — vaguely Madeleine was becoming aware of a frantic din of horns — traffic was backed up for blocks on northbound West Street as in a nightmare of mangled and thwarted movement like snarled film. Help me! help me out of here! — nothing so mattered to Madeleine Karr as escaping from this nightmare — she was thinking not of the stricken man a short distance from the front bumper of the Volvo — not of his suffering, his terror, his imminent death — she was thinking solely of herself — in raw animal panic yearning only to turn her car around — turn her damned car around, somehow — reverse her course on accursed West Street back to the Holland Tunnel and out of New York City — to the Jersey Turnpike — and so to Princeton from which scarcely ninety minutes before she’d left with such exhilaration, childlike anticipation and defiance Manhattan is so alive! — Princeton is so embalmed. Nothing ever feels real to me here, this life in disguise as a wife and a mother of no more durability than a figure in papier-mâché. I don’t need any of you!
But that was ninety minutes before. Driving along leafy Harrison Street over the picture-book canal to Route 1 north in blustery skidding patches of winter sunshine.
Through a constricting tunnel — as if she were looking through the wrong end of a telescope — Madeleine became aware of other people — other pedestrians cautiously approaching the dying man — workmen from the construction site — a young patrolman on the run — a second patrolman — there came then a deafening siren — sirens — emergency vehicles approached on a side-street peripheral to Madeleine’s vision — now there were figures bent over the fallen man — the fallen man was lifted onto a stretcher, carried away — until at last there was nothing to see but a pool of something brightly red like old-fashioned Technicolor glistening on the pavement in cold March sunshine.
And the nightmare didn’t end. The police questioned all the witnesses they could find. They came for me, they took me to the police precinct. For forty minutes they kept me. I had to beg them, to let me use the women’s room — I couldn’t stop crying — I am not a hysterical person but I couldn’t stop crying — of course I wanted to help the police but I couldn’t seem to remember what anything had looked like — what the men had looked like — even the “skin color” of the man with the knife — even of the man who’d been stabbed. I told them that I thought the van driver had been dark-skinned — maybe — he was “young” — in his twenties possibly — or maybe older — but not much older — he was wearing a satin kind of jacket like a sports jacket like high school boys wear — I think that’s what I saw — I couldn’t remember the color of the jacket — maybe it was dark — dark purple? — a kind of shiny material — a cheap shiny material — maybe there was some sort of design on the back of the jacket — Oh I couldn’t even remember the color of the van — it was as if my eyes had gone blind — the colors of things had drained from them — I’d seen everything through a tunnel — I thought that the van driver with the knife was dark-skinned but not “black” exactly — but not white — I mean not “Caucasian” — because his hair was — wasn’t — his hair didn’t seem to be — “Negroid hair” — if that is a way of describing it. And how tall he was, how heavy, the police were asking, I had no idea, I wasn’t myself, I was very upset, trying to speak calmly and not hysterically, I have never been hysterical in my life. Because I wanted to help the police find the man with the knife. But I could not describe the van, either. I could not identify the van by its make, or by the year. Of course I could not remember anything of the license plate — I wasn’t sure that I’d even seen a license plate — or if I did, it was covered with dirt. The police kept asking me what the men had said to each other, what the pedestrian had said, they kept asking me to describe how he’d hit the fender of the van, and the van driver — the man with the knife — what had he said? — but I couldn’t hear — my car windows were up, tight — I couldn’t hear. They asked me how long the “altercation” had lasted before the pedestrian was stabbed and I said that the stabbing began right away — then I said maybe it had begun right away — I couldn’t be sure — I couldn’t be sure of anything — I was hesitant to give a statement — sign my name to a statement — it was as if part of my brain had been extinguished — trying to think of it now, I can’t — not clearly — I was trying to explain — apologize — I told them that I was sorry I couldn’t help them better, I hoped that other witnesses could help them better and finally they released me — they were disgusted with me, I think — I didn’t blame them — I was feeling weak and sick but all I wanted to do was get back to Princeton, didn’t even telephone anyone just returned to the Holland Tunnel thinking I would never use that tunnel again, never drive on West Street not ever again.