Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

It was early afternoon and Rebecca had been working for hours. She was bare-legged, stockingless. Damned if she would wear ridiculous stockings because the hotel management wanted her to. In this heat! She would not, and did not. If Amos Hrube had noticed, he hadn’t yet reprimanded her.

The Schwart girl Hrube spoke of her. Not to her face but within her hearing. He didn’t like her but he had come to respect her, as Leora had predicted.

She was a good worker. Her arm-and shoulder-muscles were small, hard, and compact. She could lift her own weight. She rarely complained. In her sobriety and concentration on her work she appeared older than her age. In hot weather she partially plaited her thick hair and wrapped it around her head to keep it out of her face and off her neck, that was strangely sensitive in the heat as if the skin had been burnt. Now her white-rayon uniform was sticky with sweat and a film of sweat shone on her upper lip. She was very tired and there was a sharp ache between her shoulder blades and a sharper ache beginning between her eyes.

The man in room 557 had introduced himself to Rebecca as a frequent guest at the General Washington who was on “friendly terms” with the management and staff including several of the chambermaids for whom he left generous tips-“When merited, of course.”

Rebecca had noted the sweet sickish odor of whiskey on his breath. And a quivering of his hands, making exaggerated nervous motions as he spoke. Another time he’d tried to waylay her when Rebecca was cleaning the room next to his, eager to inform her that he had crucial business in the Chautauqua Valley-“Some of it family, some of it purely financial, and none of it of the slightest value .”

Pronouncing the word value he’d fixed Rebecca with a yellow-tinged stare. As if this should mean something to her, suggest some link between them.

Baumgarten had been barefoot, which looked very wrong, very offensive to Rebecca’s eye, in this setting. He’d worn a festive Hawaiian-print shirt partly unbuttoned to show grizzled-gray chest hairs. His soft, flaccid jaws had been clumsily shaved, with a myriad of tiny cuts. A man in his forties, a drinker, unsteady on his feet and his yellowish eyes snatching at her in shameless yearning. “My name is Bumstead, dear. You have seen me in the comic pages. I am not an actual man which is why I am smiling. Would you believe, dear, I was once your age?” He chuckled, and swiped at his flushed pug nose.

It was then that Rebecca saw, Baumgarten’s rumpled trousers were only partway zipped. He must have been naked beneath for boiled-looking flesh and pubic hairs were visible. Disgusted, Rebecca ducked past him pushing her maid’s cart into the room and quickly shut the door behind her so that Baumgarten couldn’t follow. Yet he dared to rap on the door for some minutes, speaking to her in a plaintive, pleading voice, words she couldn’t hear as she began work in the bathroom.

She hadn’t yet cleaned Baumgarten’s room. His privacy please card was always looped over his doorknob. Rebecca dreaded the pigsty that would await her. But so long as the sign was up, she could not enter the room even if she knew that Baumgarten was out; and she would not enter it, so long as Baumgarten was in the vicinity, even when he invited her. She had hoped that Baumgarten would be checking out that morning, but he’d hinted he might be staying longer.

Now, the following day, Baumgarten was playing another of his games. No escaping him!

As Rebecca approached room 557 she saw that the door was still ajar. But Baumgarten had stepped back from it. (Unless he was hiding behind it, to leap out at her.) A fattish hulking figure she dreaded glimpsing naked. Yet she had no choice but to glance inside the room.

“Mister? Is anyone…?”

The room was a pigsty, as she’d expected. God damn there were clothes and towels scattered everywhere, a single man’s dress shoe overturned on the carpet just inside the door. Though it was midday the heavy brocaded drapes were drawn tightly shut. A lamp with a crooked shade was lighted. A smell of whiskey and hair pomade prevailed. The man himself lay on the bed, on his back. He was breathing with difficulty, eyes shut and arms flung out at his sides; he was wearing trousers, haphazardly zipped up, and beltless, and a thin cotton undershirt; again, he was barefoot; his head was turned at an awkward angle and his mouth gaped open, damp with spittle. On the bedside table was an empty glass and a near-empty bottle of whiskey. Rebecca stared, seeing what looked like blood dribbled across Baumgarten’s throat and torso.

“Mister! Is something…”

On the floor near the bed several objects had been arranged as in a store window display: a man’s wallet, a man’s gold stretch-band wristwatch, a woman’s ring with a large pale-purple stone, a leather change purse and a matching leather toiletry kit. Several bills had been pulled partway out of the wallet so that their denominations were visible: twenties, a single fifty.

For me Rebecca thought calmly.

Yet she could not touch these items. She would not.

She had come to stand close beside the bed, uncertain what to do. If Baumgarten had seriously injured himself with a razor or a knife, there would have been more blood, she knew. Yet: maybe he’d cut himself in the bathroom, and staggered back into the bedroom. Maybe there were wounds she couldn’t see. And maybe he’d drunk so much, he had lapsed into a coma and might be dying, she must call the front desk…

Rebecca made a move toward the phone, to lift the receiver. But she would have to come very close to the man, if she did. And maybe this was a game of his. Baumgarten would open his yellowish eyes, he would wink at her…

“Mister, wake up! You need to wake up.”

Rebecca’s voice rose sharply. She saw veins on the man’s ruined face, like incandescent wires. The greasy pug nose, damp gaping mouth like a fish’s. Thin gray hair lay in disheveled strands across the bumpy crown of his head. Only his teeth were perfect, and must have been dentures. His eyelids fluttered, he moaned and breathed noisily, erratically. In that instant, Rebecca felt pity for him.

If he is dying I am his final witness .

If he is dying there is no one except me .

She was about to lift the phone receiver and dial the front desk when the stricken man slyly opened one eye, and grinned at her. The porcelain-white dentures gleamed. Before Rebecca could draw away, Baumgarten grabbed hold of her wrist with surprisingly strong fingers.

“Eh! My dear! What a pleasant surprise.”

Rebecca screamed and pushed at him, struggling to get free. But Baumgarten gripped her tight.

“Let me alone! God damn you-”

She clawed at Baumgarten’s hands. He cursed her, sitting up now, having swung his legs around; using his legs, as a wrestler would do, to grip Rebecca around the hips. In their struggle Baumgarten managed to pull Rebecca onto the bed beside him, wheezing, laughing. She would afterward recall the harsh whiskey smell of his breath and a fouler, darker smell beneath of something fetid, rotting. She would recall how close she’d come to fainting.

“Hey: what the hell’s going on here?”

A tall man with stiff, nickel-colored hair had entered the room. Like a bear on its hind legs he moved with startling swiftness. Baumgarten protested-“Get out! This is a private room, this is a private matter”-but the man paid no heed, seized him by a flabby shoulder and began to shake him, hard. “Let the girl go, fucker. I’ll break your ass.” Rebecca slipped from Baumgarten’s grasp. The men struggled, and the stranger struck Baumgarten with his fists even as Baumgarten tried feebly to defend himself. With one blow of the stranger’s fist, Baumgarten’s nose was broken. With another blow, the gleaming-white dentures were broken. Whatever Baumgarten had dribbled on himself must not have been blood because there was now a sudden spray of fresh blood, very red blood, on his grimacing face and torso.