Эд Макбейн - Learning to Kill - Stories

“No, no, this is his daughter. Truly, a silk purse from a sow’s ear.”

Falco nodded and wet his lips. Panza’s daughter. He couldn’t believe it. Why, Panza was a slob. And this girl... no, it couldn’t be.

“But a sow’s ear is always a sow’s ear,” Donato said sadly.

“What do you mean?” Falco asked.

“A dummy,” Donato said.

“A what?”

“A dummy. She doesn’t speak, Falco. There is something wrong with her tongue. She doesn’t speak.”

“But she hears?”

“Ah, yes, she hears. But there is no voice there, Falco. Nothing. A dummy, truly.”

“That’s too bad,” Falco said slowly. “What’s she doing here?”

Donato shrugged. “To meet the old man, perhaps. I’ve seen her once or twice already.”

Falco wet his lips. “I’ve never seen her,” he said.

“And you like what you see, hah, boy?” Donato said, and chuckled heartily. “Why don’t you go talk to her, Falco? Go ahead. You’re young, boy, and your arms are strong. Go talk to her. Who knows?”

“No, I couldn’t,” Falco said.

“Faint heart...”

“No, no, it isn’t that,” Falco said.

“Then what?”

“I... I would tremble. I don’t think I’d be able to... control myself. She is very beautiful.”

The wind lifted her skirt again. This time she did not notice it at all because Panza’s red boat was pulling up to the dock. She ran to the edge of the dock, and her legs flashed in the deepening dusk, and Falco watched those legs, with his palms sweating again. Panza came out of the boat and embraced his daughter, slobbering a kiss onto her with his fat mouth and his dripping mustache. She hugged him tightly. Falco watched. Panza said something to her, and she nodded mutely in answer, her lips not moving. And then she and Panza walked away from the boat and down the dock, and past Falco’s boat full of mackerel. And Falco watched her as she walked by, and wet his lips again, and kept watching her until she was out of sight, and even then the picture of her was still in his mind.

She came to the dock two, sometimes three, times a week. He learned from the others that her mother was dead, and that she did modeling, a job where she did not need her voice, only her body. She was always dressed like a queen, always with clothes that showed the firmness of her body. She lived alone with Panza, they told him, though she could easily have afforded a high-class apartment uptown. She preferred to look after old Panza in the shack where he lived near the docks.

The voice, they said, was something psychological, and this Falco could not understand. They said it had happened to her when she was a little girl, something that paralyzed her throat muscles, something with a stumblebum who had come down to the docks shortly after her mother had died, and found the young girl alone. The doctors could do nothing for this voice of hers that was missing, it was all psychological, all part of this something that had happened to her long ago.

But he didn’t care about her voice.

He watched her whenever she came to the dock.

Always, he watched.

And then one day, he came in very early because he knew it was a day she would be on the dock and she was there as always, sitting on a crate near the loading platform, her legs crossed with the sun flashing on them, the skirt pulled back over her knees. Her head was thrown back with the blonde hair trailing over her shoulders. She sucked in a deep breath, and he watched and thought suddenly, Why, she knows I’m here. She knows I’m watching her.

He dried his hands on a rag and climbed up out of the boat and onto the rotted, wooden planking of the dock. He walked over to her, and she did not look at him. She kept looking out over the water as if he were not there at all.

He cleared his throat and made a small sound, but she showed no indication of having heard him, and he wondered about her ears, because sometimes dummies could not hear, but everyone said her ears were all right.

He cleared his throat again and then said, “Are you waiting for your father?”

She turned then and looked at him. Her eyes were very cold, her mouth was unsmiling. She did not answer, not by voice which she could not, and not by any movement of her head.

“Are you... are you waiting for your father?” he asked again.

This time her eyes met his squarely, and her mouth curled into obvious distaste. He had seen that look before. He had seen it on the women in the marketplace the times he had gone down to the fish stand his brother operated. It was a look that said, “You are a fish peddler,” and this girl, this Panza’s daughter, did not need any voice when she could cast looks like that one.

He began to feel warm again, but a different kind of warmth this time. He felt blood rise to his face, and when the girl turned her back to him and lifted one knee, cupping that knee with her clasping hands, he stood there like an idiot for a moment longer, and then he turned and walked slowly back to his boat, thinking, I’ve been a fool She’s a model I’ve been a fool.

But he could not take his eyes from her.

And later that afternoon, before the other boats returned, she lifted her skirt as she sat where he could not miss seeing her and she straightened the seams of her stockings, running her long tapering fingers up over her legs, and then fastening the garters. He watched her and the old flame roared higher inside him, and then he saw her smile a superior smile and drop the skirt suddenly and walk to the edge of the dock where the descending sun splashed through the thin dress she wore and showed him the full silhouette of her body.

When Panza’s boat came in, she embraced her father as always, and then they walked past Falco’s boat, and he may have imagined it, but he thought she swung her hips with more abandon when she passed above him, and he listened to the click of her high heels on the dock, and his hands longed for the touch of her flesh.

He tried to speak to her only once again. She was wearing slacks this time, and a tight, full sweater. She walked deliberately to his boat where he was mending his nets, an excuse he’d given himself for coming in early. She stood above him, her hands on her hips, looking down at him. And finally he looked up and said, “Good afternoon.”

She continued looking at him, her hands on her hips.

“What do you want of me?” he asked then, and she did not answer.

“Do you want to torment me? Is that what you want?”

She smiled that superior smile again, the smile one gives to an idiot child.

“Don’t play with me!” he shouted. “Do you hear me? Don’t play with Falco!”

She threw her head back and opened her mouth, and he knew she was laughing, but no sound came from her lips and he understood then the full extent of her voicelessness, and his eyes narrowed a little.

He went back to mending his nets, and she walked away from him, her head still thrown back in that silent mocking attitude of laughter, her blonde hair glinting in the sun.

He went out alone in his boat the next day.

He went out alone, and he talked aloud to the water, because the water would listen and not repeat. Sitting in the stern shortly after dusk, water lapping at the wooden sides of the boat, the sun edging the waterline far off on the horizon, he told the water of his plan.

“I must have this one,” he said. “Can you understand the way I feel?”

The sea said nothing. The sea had listened to men before, and the story Falco told was an old one. The sea only lapped gently at the sides of the boat.

“She’s a witch, I know that,” he said. “She’s truly a witch. But she’s here, ” he said, and hit his heart with his clenched fist, “and she’s also in my mind, and I won’t rest until I have her. I see her at night, when I sleep. She’s always there with those long legs others, and I see her straightening her stockings until I want to scream aloud. And sometimes I do scream aloud, and I wake myself, and she’s there even when I’m awake, in the darkness, with her body there before me all the time. She knows what she’s doing. She’s a witch, and so she knows. But she’s also a dummy.”