Дэймон Найт - Orbit 7

Up, up by the spherical huts of the sphairikoi, bawling and stumbling in the dark. Up to a hut that had a certain fame he could never place, to the hut that had its own identity, that sparkled with identity.

“Open, open, help me!” the Dookh-Doctor cried out at the last hut on the hill.

“Go away, man!” the last voice protested. “All my clients are gone, and the night is almost over with. What has this person to do with a human man anyhow?”

It was a round twinkling voice out of the roweled dark. But there was enduring identity there. The twinkling, enduring-identity colors, coming from the chinks of the hut, had now reached the level of vision. There was even the flicker of the I-will-know-me-if-I-meet-me-again color.

“Torchy Twelve, help me. I am told that you have the special salve that solves the last problem, and makes it know that it is always itself that is solved.”

“Why, it is the Dookh-Doc! Why have you come to Torchy?”

“I want something to send me into kind and everlasting slumber,” he moaned. “But I want it to be me who slumbers. Cannot you help me in any way?”

“Come you in, the Dookh-Doc. This person, though promiscuous, is expert. I help you—”

Getting his little coat down off the hook, then his arms into it, not easy because he’s so excited and he always turns the wrong way anyhow. And all the time he’s looking up at you with those blue eyes. We go park Papa, he says. We go see gulls. Straining for the door. The gulls are a favorite; he discovered them on the boat coming across and can’t understand, he keeps looking for them in the park.

Wrap the muffler around his neck. Yellow, white. (Notice how white the skin is there, how the veins show through.) They call them scarves here don’t they. Stockingcap—he pulls it down over his eyes, going Haha. He hasn’t learned to laugh yet. Red mittens. Now move the zipper up and he’s packed away. The coat’s green corduroy, with black elastic at the neck and cuffs and a round hood that goes down over the cap. It’s November. In England. Thinking, the last time I’ll do this. Is there still snow on the ground, I didn’t look this morning.

Take his hand and go on out of the flat. Letting go at the door because it takes two hands to work the latch, Mary rattling dishes in the kitchen. (Good-bye, she says very softly as you shut the door.) He goes around you and beats you to the front door, waits there with his nose on the glass. The hall is full of white light. Go on down it to him. The milk’s come, two bottles, with the Guardian leaning between them. Move the mat so we can open the door. We go park Papa, we see gulls. Frosty foggy air coming in. Back for galoshes, all the little brass-tongue buckles? No the snow’s gone. Just some dirty slush. Careful. Down the steps.

Crunching down the sidewalk ahead of you, disappointed because there’s no snow but looking back, Haha. We go park? The sky is flat and white as a sheet of paper. Way off, a flock of birds goes whirling across it, circling inside themselves—black dots, like iron filings with a magnet under the paper. The block opposite is lined with trees. What kind? The leaves are all rippling together. It looks like green foil. Down the walk.

Asking, Why is everything so still. Why aren’t there any cars. Or a mailtruck. Or milkcart, gliding along with bottles jangling. Where is everyone. It’s ten in the morning, where is everyone.

But there is a car just around the corner, stuck on ice at the side of the road where it parked last night with the wheels spinning Whrrrrrr. Smile, you understand a man’s problems. And walk the other way. His mitten keeps coming off in your hand. Haha.

She had broken down only once, at breakfast.

The same as every morning, the child had waked them. Standing in his bed in the next room and bouncing up and down till the springs were banging against the frame. Then he climbed out and came to their door, peeking around the frame, finally doing his tiptoe shyly across the floor in his white wool nightshirt. Up to their bed, where they pretended to be still asleep. Brekpust, brekpust, he would say, poking at them and tugging the covers, at last climbing onto the bed to bounce up and down between them until they rolled over: Hello. Morninggg. He is proud of his g’s. Then, Mary almost broke down, remembering what today was, what they had decided the night before.

She turned her face toward the window (they hadn’t been able to afford curtains yet) and he heard her breathe deeply several times. But a moment later she was up— out of bed in her quilted robe and heading for the kitchen, with the child behind her.

He reached and got a cigarette off the trunk they were using as a night-table. It had a small wood lamp, a bra, some single cigarettes and a jarlid full of ashes and filters on it. Smoking, listening to water running, pans clatter, cupboards and drawers. Then the sounds stopped and he heard them together in the bathroom: the tap ran for a while, then the toilet flushed and he heard the child’s pleased exclamations. They went back into the kitchen and the sounds resumed. Grease crackling, the child chattering about how good he had been. The fridge door opened and shut, opened again, Mary said something. He was trying to help.

He got out of bed and began dressing. How strange that she’d forgotten to take him to the bathroom first thing, she’d never done that before. Helpinggg, from the kitchen by way of explanation, as he walked to the bureau. It was square and ugly, with that shininess peculiar to cheap furniture, and it had been in the flat when they moved in, the only thing left behind. He opened a drawer and took out a shirt. All his shirts were white. Why, she had once asked him, years ago. He didn’t know, then or now.

He went into the kitchen with the sweater over his head. “Mail?” Through the wool. Neither of them looked around, so he pulled it the rest of the way on, reaching down inside to tug the shirtcollar out. Then the sleeves.

“A letter from my parents. They’re worried they haven’t heard from us, they hope we’re all right. Daddy’s feeling better, why don’t we write them.”

The child was dragging his high-chair across the floor from the corner. Long ago they had decided he should take care of as many of his own needs as he could - a sense of responsibility, Mary had said - but this morning Jim helped him carry the chair to the table, slid the tray off, lifted him into it and pushed the chair up to the table. When he looked up, Mary turned quickly away, back to the stove.

Eggs, herring, toast and ham. “I thought it would be nice,” Mary said. “To have a good breakfast.” And that was the time she broke down.

The child had started scooping the food up in his fingers, so she got up again and went across the kitchen to get his spoon. It was heavy silver, with an ivory K set into the handle, and it had been her own. She turned and came back across the tile, holding the little spoon in front of her and staring at it. Moma cryinggg, the child said. Moma cryinggg. She ran out of the room. The child turned in his chair to watch her go, then turned back and went on eating with the spoon. The plastic padding squeaked as the child moved inside it. The chair was metal, the padding white with large blue asterisks all over it. They had bought it at a Woolworths. Twelve and six. Like the bureau, it somehow fit the flat.

A few minutes later Mary came back, poured coffee for both of them and sat down across from him.

“It’s best this way,” she said. “He won’t have to suffer. It’s the only answer.”

He nodded, staring into the coffee. Then took off his glasses and cleaned them on his shirttail. The child was stirring the eggs and herring together in his bowl. Holding the spoon like a chisel in his hand and going round and round the edge of the bowl. “Jim …”