The Kindest Eyes, a short story

Setting Things Right

He had a nose that would scare children. It was half a large pear, red and pockmarked. He was bald but for a grayish sprinkling along the sides and back of his head. Almost, but not quite, monkish. He could often be heard mumbling to himself. He was not considered underweight. But he was considered strange.

He had the kindest eyes—doglike, wet.

He lived three flights up in the elevator-less building on the corner of Madison and Hoover. It was a five story apartment house owned by ghosts and managed by invisible and unreachable proxy. Who, in turn, worked through their own heartless proxy when rents were overdue or when evictions took place.

It was a friend-less building. Of twenty tenants only two were close. Only five knew each other by name. The rest were a collection of strangers. Their only bond was the payee on rent checks. And considering him strange.

His fingers were clean, pink sausages. His lips were near blue but quite full. He smelled of soap.

He puffed after the first flight of stairs and was nearly out of breath altogether by the time he reached his brown apartment door where the bronze letters 3A greeted him. He wore a vest and always kept the apartment key in its left hand pocket, attached to a thin but strong silver chain. He always knew where to find the key as he always wore the vest. He never locked himself out.

He rarely saw his neighbors. Occasionally he would hear a door slam and hear feet scrape across the dirty tile floor of his landing, and he would lean up against his door sometimes and press a squinting eye to the spy hole. What he mostly saw were backs or tops of heads proceed down the stairway leaving him embarrassed for having intruded on their owners’ privacy.

He cooked his own meals except for Fridays when he ate one large serving of roast beef and two baked potatoes at Zimmy’s between seven and eight. He over-tipped.

“How was the roast tonight?”

“Oh, thanks. Wonderful, thanks,” he’d answer and smile at Cindy, the waitress his age but not of his planet. His voice was weak, feminine. He did not look at her, but somewhere to her right, taking her in peripherally. Eye to eye would be confrontational. Not kind.

He did not own a television set. The radio was his next best friend. Silence, his best. He spent hours every day in his living room reclined in a large, beige arm chair where he leaned his head against the darker than beige head rest, greasy from years of listening. Listening. To the city outside—to the coughing of heat pipes inside. To the rush of water as showers were taken and toilets were flushed (which always embarrassed him, both from a sense of propriety and from his own visits being ordeals). To movements upstairs and below by large and small feet. To muffled conversations, to fights and other violence. To love-making both tender and brutal (which did not embarrass him for he was not exactly sure what was taking place). To television programs, near and distant. To buses breaking, cars moving, street arguments. To the discussions of birds. To occasional and late singing as some tenant arrived drunken from a night out. To mice. To doorbells—though never his own.

At first he was unsure. Had he actually heard it? Something had sounded like help but faint and he couldn’t make out where it had come from, if indeed it had come from anywhere. He listened hard but when he did not hear it again he decided it had been from the television next door where he could now hear a commercial.

But then he heard the whisper again, and there was no doubt this time. “Help,” it said, faint, strained. “Help,” from the apartment next door. “Help.” It was not the television for he could hear it too. Then there was only the television again.

Then couple upstairs turned on their television too and somewhere else a toilet flushed. Although he listened for it the call for help didn’t return. As the evening wore on and dinners were cooked and eaten, and as showers were taken, and televisions were enjoyed, and days discussed he forgot about it.

The building was settling down for the night when he heard it again. “Help. Help me.” Sure now: it came from the apartment next door. He’d seen her a few times, descending or climbing the stairs. Met her once on the landing, when she had scowled at him. She was an older, black woman. Religious. He could sometimes hear her pray in the mornings. She rarely left her apartment.

Her television set was still on. Same channel. He could tell. And there it was again. “Help.” Like a little rodent. “Help.” But he was tired and fell asleep in his arm chair.

When he awoke the next day, he’d forgotten about it. There were other sounds now. Cars starting up as the traffic lights changed to green at the corner, delivery trucks honking at the shop keepers, the city waking up. Cooking breakfasts. Morning toilets. Also, he had to go shopping today. It was Wednesday. Much to do.

It was not until he noticed that her television set was turned on that he remembered. He could not remember her ever watching the television in the morning. Still, there it was. And still tuned to ABC, he recognized the newscaster. It was out of the ordinary. He sat down to listen. Then he heard it again. A faint “help.” No more than a whisper. Close to his wall.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine why the old woman would be saying this at seven in the morning. She looked strong. Quarrelsome and strong. What would she be saying that for? And there she said it again, “Help.”

Now that he was listening for it he heard it quite clearly, despite her television. But it was Wednesday and he had to get ready for his weekly grocery shopping. There was a shower to be taken, cheeks to shave, much to do.

He did not hear it again until late that night. That is, he thought he heard her. It was almost not there. Frankly, he wasn’t sure. He listened again. Really listened. Couldn’t hear. Had she stopped saying that? Her television was still on. But no more helps. No.

Someone started up a shower. There was an argument somewhere on the fifth floor. But no more helps. Only her television.

It was morning again. He remembered right away. He sat down in his armchair and listened. No helps. Only her television. He fell asleep not hearing any helps.

He stirred around lunch time. Looked around him. At the wall between him and the woman. Listened. No helps.

To make sure, he lumbered into the kitchen where he found a tall glass. He brought it back into the living room and pressed it’s top against the wall between them. He put his ear against the bottom of the glass. The television was suddenly much louder. A game show that he recognized. And a “help.” A very small word. Why did she keep saying that? Who could possibly hear it so faint?

He listened for it and there it was again. But he got tired of standing up with his ear pressed to the glass, and he was very hungry. He needed to cook. His legs were tired. He was glad it was Thursday because Thursday is soup lunch day and soups cook quickly. Not so much standing.

He listened again for it that afternoon. Once he thought he could hear her, but then, even with the glass against the wall, there was nothing. He felt relieved. He fell asleep early, in his chair.

It was the wailing that woke him. He looked at the clock on the wall. Seven-thirty. It was light outside—morning.

The ambulance stopped outside, and he heard people come running up the stairs. He struggled up and over to the front door. To the spy hole. A black woman he recognized as his neighbor’s cleaning woman was hysterical and held the door open for the paramedics.

Neighbors from upstairs were there too. Gawking. They had turned her television set off. Finally.

They carried her out. The cleaning woman remained hysterical. They had covered her up. Her face too. Nobody was rushing anymore.

Someone who looked like he worked in a factory said to no one in particular, “The fat geezer probably heard something.” The factory man lived upstairs in Apartment 4B.

He left the door and sat down. He had trouble breathing. The old woman was dead. He realized that.

His doorbell rang at ten-forty-two that morning. There was a uniformed policeman outside who smelled loudly of Old Spice.

“Mr. Wells?”

“Yes.”

“I’m officer Anderson from the police department. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions about Mrs. Stower, your neighbor.”

The officer had a mustache that twitched when he spoke, yellow teeth and a deep voice. A kid from the second floor was looking up at him through the railing. He didn’t like children that much.

“Fine. Yes.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

He stepped back to let the officer in, and they both entered the living room. The officer looked around and then at him.

“She starved to death,” he said.

He didn’t answer.

“She fell and broke her hip about a week ago. Paralyzed her. Couldn’t get up. But that’s not what killed her. She starved to death.”

“I’m so sorry,” he said.

The officer stepped in front of him. “Did you not hear anything? No noise? Did she not ask for help?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

He sat still for a long time after the officer left. Absolutely still. It grew on him from below, this knowledge, like he was slowly lowered into warm water: Starved to death. Starved to death. And he had done it, hadn’t he? He had heard her, hadn’t he? He had heard her starve to death. Her helps fainter and fainter as her life ran out.

His doing.

And the only thing he could remember about setting things right was eye for an eye.

At five that afternoon he was so hungry that he had a hard time listening. At ten that night his hunger was a constant hum.

Since Cindy had the evening off, no one noticed that he did not have dinner at Zimmy’s that Friday.

Cindy worked again the following Friday and knew something was out of place, but she could not put her finger on it. It was not until the following Tuesday that she remembered. She explained to herself that he must have been ill, or out of town, or something, although this was the first Friday in her six years at Zimmy’s that he had not been there at precisely seven o’clock for his dinner.

When he didn’t show up the Friday following she went to the police. She had a hard time convincing them that something was wrong. So it took them another two days to start looking and three more to finally track him down.

They found him only one day dead. He had been a very fat man. There had been layers and layers of stored sustenance to draw from, to keep him alive. It had taken him nineteen days to set things right.

Thoughts? I'd like to hear them.
Ulf Wolf

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