Wearing the glasses and no more, she walked across the room to a bank of windows and pulled the heavy gray drapes a little apart and stood looking down across a side yard at an angle to the street. It was snowing thickly, great wet flakes, and that explained, in part, the oppressive silence. Houses always went silent, it seemed, in a snow, and even if there were talking and laughing and music, the silence was still there on the inside if the snow was outside.
She crossed to the bathroom and went through it and into the bedroom beyond, the room of Aaron’s wife. It gave her a feeling of aggressive pride to be there, a kind of arrogant and insolent sense of triumph to walk naked through the room — a woman wanted, and had, and essential, among the possessions of a woman unwanted and no longer worth having and essential to no one on earth. She sat on the bed, lay back and rolled over on it, got up and went over to the dressing table, and examined the articles on it. If the cosmetics were the right shade, she thought, she might use them to repair the composition of her own face, but they were, of course, much too pastel for her vividness, and she replaced them with an abrupt little gesture of contempt, as if there were necessarily something deficient in a woman who used pastel shades.
Leaning forward, she switched on a light beside the long mirror and studied her body in the shining glass, the high breasts and flat belly and hips that were perhaps a trifle narrow but swelling sufficiently, nevertheless into long clean flanks. Pivoting, she twisted her head arid looked around over her shoulder into the mirror at her backside; and she laughed suddenly and softly and spontaneously at the sight, as if she couldn’t help it in the warm, possessive pleasure she felt in herself. But in this warm reaction there was also an element of sadness, the knowledge not specifically recognized that even self-love and self-possession were not inviolable securities, and that she would in time as surely lose herself — at least herself as she was in the glass — as she had lost and would lose others. This understanding, though not clearly verbalized or accepted, took much of the pleasure from her narcissm, and she turned off the light and went back into the bathroom.
Above the lavatory was a large mirrored door, and she opened it and regarded the articles on the shelves. Most of them were masculine — Aaron’s possessions, a razor, a can of lather, talcum and lotion and styptic. There was also a bottle of aspirin tablets, and this reminded her that she didn’t even have a headache, after having drunk really quite a lot last night, and she felt a little proud that this was the case, as if it were some superiority in herself that made it possible.
Beside the aspirin bottle was a smaller clear cylinder, with cotton under the cork and some very tiny tablets under the cotton. Taking it in her hands, she turned it around and read the word NITROGLYCERIN on the small label that had been turned toward the back of the cabinet. She replaced the cylinder and closed the mirrored door and decided that she would take a shower.
From a drawer of a built-in cabinet she took a towel, and from another she took a rubber cap to keep her hair dry. In the tub, she kept increasing the hot water until it was very hot indeed, and after it was so hot that she thought she could stand it no hotter, she turned it off entirely, leaving only the cold water running, and it was then, for the seconds she stood under it, an excruciatingly delightful torture, like a thousand thin needles piercing her flesh. Out of the tub, she rubbed herself dry and went back into Aaron’s bedroom to get her clothes.
She found them in a pile on the floor at the foot of the bed, and she separated them and examined them now to see if she had done them any real harm, the crimson sheath and the wisps of nylon, and she was relieved to see that she hadn’t. The crimson sheath was rather ridiculous now at mid-morning, but it wouldn’t matter in the house or under her coat when she left, and she would stop by the shop and change back into her own dress on the way home. A more serious problem were her shoes, hardly more than thin soles with narrow strategic straps. They were not at all suitable for snow, and she had no galoshes, but since Aaron would deliver her to the shop, it would only be a matter of a few steps in approaching and leaving the car.
Fully dressed, she found her purse and removed her lipstick and went back into the bathroom to do her lips before the mirror, leaning forward and carefully extending and perfecting their natural outline with the vivid color. In doing this, she noticed for the first time that she had neglected to put her glasses back on again after the shower. They were still lying on the edge of the lavatory, and she put them on and studied her face for a moment in the glass and then returned to the bedroom. Now, having run out of things to do, she was forced to consider again the absence of Aaron.
She could not understand it, she simply could not, and the more she thought about it, the more furious she became. Well, if he thought she was going to sit and sit and wait and wait until he got goddamn good and ready to return, he was crazy. What she was going to do, thin shoes or no shoes at all, was go down and get her coat where she had left it below in the hall, call a taxi, and go to the shop and home by herself — and Aaron, the bastard, could go to hell.
Determined to follow this course of action, she went into the hall and began to descend the stairs, and she was halfway down when she understood at last why it was that he had left, and where he had gone, and why he would not return, not today or tomorrow or ever.
He was lying on the floor of the hall below her. He was obviously and incredibly and terrifyingly dead.
2.
Aaron Burns was born in a town downstate forty-eight years before he died in his home in St. Louis. His father was an old-fashioned orthodox Jew who operated a haberdashery and prospered at it. He was a stern man, adhering strictly to the tenets of his religion and the mores of his people, but he was also compassionate and just, with compassion tempering justice more often than otherwise. Aaron respected his father, and even loved him in a way, but he often could not understand him and later could not follow him.
The Jewish population of the town was quite small, but it supported one synagogue. Aaron went there to worship, and when he was old enough he started attending public school. It was then that his personality began to develop in a certain way and to acquire a particular quality, and the quality that it began to acquire was bitterness. This was not overt and offensive, as it might have been in a boy less naturally gentle; and instead of becoming the basis of aggression it showed in his eyes and attitude more as a kind of inexplicable sadness than anything else. This quality was not the result of persecution, for there was none, but of exclusion. To be sure, he had fully the acceptance of his own people, and even up to a point the acceptance of the non-Jews, but this was for him too narrow on the one hand and too qualified on the other, and on neither hand was it enough.
He was a bright boy and did well in school, and when he was seventeen he went away to the state university. His academic status there Was exceptionally good, but his social status was essentially the same as it had been at home, and while this was comfortable, it was not sufficient. He finished two years and began a third, and then one morning, without any warning, he quietly packed his things and went home. His father did not question the decision nor ever ask afterward why it had been made. He did not feel compelled or qualified to do the one, and it was unnecessary to do the other. He was certain that he knew without asking.