The Opposite of Fate. Amy Tan

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СКАЧАТЬ We were placed on a waiting list for a one-bedroom apartment in the same building; for now we kept the apartment in Danville. Pete had few possessions: a bed, a TV set and a stereo, a small table and a chair, his guitar and camera, books, and an expensive calculator that he had purchased with my credit card. There was also a .22 automatic, which he had bought to defend himself in Danville.

      Lou and I stayed at Pete’s his first night in Oakland, in a sleeping bag on the floor. I recall Pete reiterating his feeling that something bad was going to happen, that someone might break in and kill him. We assured him that there was no way the thugs would know where he had moved. Nor were they industrious enough to want to follow us. Nevertheless, Pete placed the gun between the mattress and the box spring, within easy reaching distance. We kidded him for being paranoid.

      The next morning was my twenty-fourth birthday. I can admit now that I was deflated that nothing special was mentioned or offered from the start: no profusion of beautifully beribboned presents, no announcement that plans had been made for going on a lark or winding up at a banquet. But perhaps this seeming lack of preparation really meant that an even more elaborate scheme was in the works, and I would have to be patient to see what it was. Lou suggested we go for a drive, and Pete declined the invitation. He was going to unpack, settle in, and nurse a cold he had just developed. A ruse, I thought. He would be behind the scenes, getting the surprise party under way. As we left, I mentioned we might stop by later, but we would be unable to call ahead of time, since he did not yet have phone service.

      As it turned out, my twenty-fourth birthday was a cobbled assortment of activities, spontaneity being the key and “Why not?” being the answer. Lou and I had an impromptu lunch at a restaurant, a drive through the country later, and then we took up an invitation from a friend in Marin County to have dinner with her parents. We spent the night in their driveway, sleeping in our Volkswagen bus. So there was no grand party. The day had been pleasant, but not as eventful as I had secretly hoped.

      The next day, back at the apartment in Danville, an acquaintance called. He lived in the building Pete had moved into—we had learned of the vacancy there from him. I greeted him cheerfully.

      “Oh,” he said flatly, “then you haven’t heard the news.”

      What news?

      “Pete’s dead. Two guys broke into his place last night and killed him.”

      “That is the worst joke I’ve ever heard,” I responded angrily. But later Lou and I learned that, indeed, two men had entered through the bathroom window; according to a witness’s report, they did not resemble our thugs from Danville. These men had used Pete’s .22 to bash him over the head, then hogtied him stomach down, the rope lashed around his neck and ankles so that the soles of his feet faced the back of his head. When he could no longer hold his muscles taut, he let go and slowly strangled.

      In one imagined version—I’ve played them a thousand times—the robbers stand and watch as Pete struggles to stay alive. That’s the worst. In another version, they leave him while he is still struggling. The police arrive, but seconds too late. Actually, that is the worst. They are all the worst. As to what happened after Pete was tied up, I have only these facts: The two men ran out of Pete’s studio with his gun and went to pound on the door of the apartment manager, demanding to be let in. When the manager refused, they blasted the door with bullets, then ran out of the building toward their car. A man on the sidewalk had the misfortune of being there; they shot and killed him on the spot. A newspaper story identified the man on the sidewalk as a business student from India who attended Armstrong College. I don’t remember his name, and I regret that, for no one killed in that manner should be nameless and forgotten.

      I’ve often thought of that young man from India, and of his family, who must think of his death, as I do, every anniversary of that February night in 1976. “Today,” I imagine them saying, “our son would have been fifty years old. Can you imagine? That’s older than we were when he died.”

      The next day, Lou and I went to the Oakland Police Department to identify Pete on behalf of his family in Wisconsin. The police showed us only photographs, but what I saw is too obscene to relay in words. Since then, whenever I read stories of wars, or earthquakes, or murders, I have imagined those who have seen what I have, the face of a loved one, not in peaceful slumber as morticians might have devised, but as it appeared at the moment of death, a body unwashed, ungroomed, not prepared, in any conceivable way, to be viewed by another human being, let alone someone who loved that person.

      After collecting the Saint Christopher’s medal that Pete always wore around his neck, we drove to his apartment to assist detectives in identifying what might have been taken. I remember seeing everything as in a TV documentary filmed in close-up, with no possibility of pulling away: the door, dusted for fingerprints, and the yellow tape; the opening of the door and my recoiling at the smell. It was the pungent scent of fear, a wild-animal smell of nervous sweat, and it was as potent as if Pete and his assailants had still been in the room, the torment happening in front of me. To the right was further evidence of who had been there, the powdery impressions of fingertips and palms on the doorjamb. Littering the floor were used tissues: so the cold had not been a ruse at all. On the table were the remnants of a dinner—a can of stew (what a poor last meal!)—and a bottle of NyQuil, half empty. Had he been too lethargic to hear the robbers breaking the bathroom window? Was he slow to react? Did he think it was Lou and I who were trying to get back in, looking for a place to stay after a night of birthday-partying? Why didn’t he use his gun?

      Also on the table was a letter he had written to a friend. I read the page facing up. In it, he described a dream he had had, similar to the one he had recounted the week before: He found himself enmeshed in wads of thick cotton. Soon it became as light as cotton candy, and when he broke free, he saw his wife and others, people whom he did not recognize but who seemed warmly familiar. It was a good dream, the letter said. It felt like a premonition. So that was the second dream. At last, Pete was reconciled with his wife.

      When I turned to the left, I saw the rappelling ropes that had been used to strangle him, the bed with a large bloodstain from the blow to his head.

      Lou and I listed what had been taken: a stereo; a small television set; a $600 Hewlett-Packard calculator, the prize of any bioengineering student; and a .22 automatic. I wondered whether a birthday present for me must also have been stolen. We were good friends, after all, and so of course he would have bought me something. But whatever it might have been, it was not there, and it pained me that I would never know.

      When we returned to Danville that night, we held a wake with a small group of friends. We sat on the floor, on the gold shag carpet, and because we could not talk, we drank. I downed a lot of vodka to block out the images of death, the odor of fear. Soon I vomited, and when my mind became clearer, I heard Pete’s voice. By that I mean that it sounded as if he were speaking out loud. It was no doubt grief preying on my imagination, drunken thinking taking voice. Yet I could not help relaying aloud what I had just heard: “The names of the guys who killed him are Ronald and John.” My friends stared at me. “Pete just told me,” I said. Cracked, their looks implied. She’s really cracked.

      Four days later, two men were apprehended in a robbery in Oakland. In the backseat of their car were items that had been taken from Pete’s apartment, including the calculator that he had purchased on my credit card. The serial number on the receipt matched the one on the calculator. The police told us the names of the men in their custody: Ronald and John.

      Lou and I were stunned to hear the names I had blurted the night before. The police guessed that the two had targeted Pete after watching him move into the apartment; robberies often occur around the time of such transitions, they said, as criminals size up victim and possessions. Other than that, the choice of Pete as victim was random, a bit of bad luck. Both men had long arrest records, for robbery, and assault and battery, СКАЧАТЬ