THE HIGH-HEELED SHOES
water, and stick in the new bouquet. But all the time the hands are
occupied with these tokens of arrived Spring and knowing Margari–
ta, the mind recalls unlovely, furtive things.
When Mary lived with us, there was a time she left for work in
the dark hours of the morning. On one of these mornings, about
midway in her lonely walk past the cemetery to the P-ear stop, a
man came from behind and grabbed her, stopped her mouth with
his
hand, and, rather arbitrarily, gave her a choice between one kiss
and rape. Terrified, she indicated what seemed to be the some–
what lesser requirement. He allowed her to go afterwards, warning
her on no account to scream for help or look back, on penalty of
death. When she arnved at her place of work, trembling and pale
green, her office friends asked whether she was
ill,
and she told them
of her encounter. They advised her to go to the police immediately.
She doubted whether that would help, since she had been unable
to see the man. But, persuaded that a report, even incomplete, to
the police was her duty to the rest of womankind, she reluctantly went
to the nearest station with her story. She came back with the im–
pression that the police had been much amused, that they had actually
snickered as she left with their officially regretful shrug over her hav–
ing given them nothing to go on. She told her boss and he called
the police himself and evidently made his influence felt, for we had a
caller that evening.
It was I who answered the knock. A policeman stepped in, and,
without any preliminaries, asked, "Are you the girl that was raped?"
Making up with enough asperity for a sudden inexplicable lack
of aplomb, I said, no, and no one had been raped,
yet,
and called
Mary. She and the officer went out on the porch and talked in near
whispers for a while. Mter he left, Mary identified him and his com–
panion as the night patrol for our section of the city. He had prom–
ised that they would tell the dawn patrol to be hovering around about
the time she left for work each morning. But Mary, nervously trying
the dim walk a couple of more times, caught no sign of any kind of
patrol. Thereafter, she and the rest of the women of the household
took to traveling in style, by taxi, when they were called on to go
forth at odd hours. This not only dented our budgets, but made us
considerably limit our unescorted evening gadding.
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