Jesse Ball - A Cure for Suicide

— We shall go for a walk, she repeated. During the walk, I will suddenly begin a story. Will you know how to act?

— WHEN I WAS A YOUNG WOMAN, she said to the claimant, I lived a very wild life.

He sat beside her in the square at the center of the town. There was a carousel, and they sat on its edge, leaning on the poles from which rose the horses, the carriages, the leaping fish.

— Oh, I could tell you, she said, a story or two from that time. I had an old uncle who had fought in a war. Did we speak about that? People killing each other for land or money? Yes? War. Anyway, this was before the republic, so there were still wars. He said he and his fellow soldiers were set to guard a road. So, that is — anyone who came down the road was to be killed. They had tools, guns, with which to do it. Well, there was a general who was trying to escape the province. Apparently he had been hemmed in, and was surrounded. They were intent on capturing him. Anyway, they were sitting there at the crossroads, and it was a hot day, and they were feeling a bit sleepy, and a man comes down the road out of the distance, a fiddler, playing away as he walks. He comes right up to them, a real ragamuffin, and plays for them awhile. Then off he goes on up the road. Thing is — the next day, the orders come down for the general’s capture, and they include a picture of him. Guess what?

The old woman slapped her leg.

— The fiddler was the general. He had put on some old clothes and used a musical talent everyone had forgotten he had. Thing is — my uncle and his fellow soldiers were petrified. They figured the news of his escape would come out and they’d all be court-martialed. But it didn’t happen that way.

— How did it happen?

— How did what happen?

— Things — how did they go?

— Oh, ha, well, no one ever heard of the general again. So, here’s my opinion. I think the general found out that it was a better life being an itinerant fiddler than it was being a general, and I think he didn’t want to go back.

The claimant thought about that for a while.

— Anyway, said the old woman, I always consider that, I always do, whenever I try out a new role, or put on some costume, even if it’s just a new way of thinking about something. There are some doors — when you go through them, they close behind you.

In the square, it was becoming dark. The claimant liked the carousel, and so, he and the examiner would go there every evening. Every afternoon when the sun was by the trees, they would walk down, and they would sit there talking until the lights were on in all the houses and the street lamps were pulsing. Then they would walk back along the street and look into the houses. Sometimes they would see people inside, and they would talk about them, and about how their lives seemed.

The claimant had been surprised to see that there was only ever one person in any given house. None of the people ever went beyond the fence that surrounded each house, and he never saw them speaking or calling out. The examiner said that it was natural. There are people, she said, who require no more than that it rains sometimes.

He asked her if it was like this everywhere. To that, she replied, where is this everywhere? And when he had been quiet for a while, she said, there are many places where people live together with other people. It is to a place like that — it’s to such a place you are headed.

ONE DAY, the examiner came into the claimant’s room as he was turning down the lamp.

— Shall I tell you about tomorrow, she asked.

— Please.

— Tomorrow we will wake. You will wake and I will wake. You will dress and I will dress. We will convene downstairs in the kitchen, and whoever is there first will put the kettle on to boil. We will sit and listen for the kettle, and make tea, and have some small breakfast. Then we will go out on the porch, where a great business will occur. Tomorrow, we shall speak about names.

— Names?

— For now, I will say no more, save this: think as you go off to sleep — why does any thing have any particular name?

— NAMES, SAID THE EXAMINER. Names. What is this?

— A spoon.

— And this?

— A shoe.

— And what of me?

— You are the examiner.

— Is that my name?

The claimant waited.

— What is your name? she asked.

— I don’t have a name.

— You once had a name, she said. When you were sick, you had a name. But that name was forfeited — given up. Now you shall have a new name, but not a real name, a practice name. Do you know why you shall have a practice name? It is because tomorrow we shall go to another village. We are going to live in a new place, and there you will meet people.

She saw his expression change, and altered her tone.

— Oh, don’t worry about that. You are concerned. You have become tied to this house, is that it?

He nodded.

— Well, what if I were to tell you that we have already moved twice in the time that I have known you? What if I were to tell you that this is the third village we have been in — and now we are going to the fourth?

— The third? But…

— In the first village, there was just a house. The first village is just a single house. When we were there, we never left. It is called the gentlest village, because it is a house, and everything that can be seen from that house. The second village was the place from which we walked out one day. You may remember it — you picked a daisy and cried when I told you that you’d killed it. Then we put it in a vase in the kitchen and it lived for a week very beautifully before shriveling to nothing. Do you remember that?

He nodded.

— Well, in that place, you recall, we occasionally saw a person through a window. How is it that things are here?

— We see people through windows, and in the yards.

— That’s so. And do you not see that there are many many more people than there were before?

He nodded.

— Even, once, he said, I spoke to someone.

— You did, she said. You approached one of the gardeners where he was working, and you spoke out loud to him. Do you remember what happened then?

— He didn’t reply.

— No, he didn’t, he couldn’t reply. He was a person who no longer wants to speak. His labor is enough for him. But, listen. In the next village, the people you speak to, they will speak back to you. But, listen, she said again. This is how it will be in the next village: you shall be called Martin Rueger. That is your name. It is not your final name. It is a name for you to wear like a fine new coat. If it is ill suited, or if you spoil it, we shall go to another place and try again with another name. We are testing the waters and learning things. We are learning how you may do with others. Do you see?

— Martin, he said. Martin Rueger. It is a good name. And…

— Yes?

— What is your name?

— For now it will be Emma Moran.

— If someone looks like me, does that mean it is likely their name…

He sat a moment, working the thought out in his head.

— Does it mean their name will be somewhat like mine? Like spoons or knives?

— Each person has a name. The point of it is this — to make it easier to talk about things, especially things that aren’t present. Names are much less important than people think. They aren’t really important at all. You and I get by for instance most of the time without talking at all — isn’t that so?

The claimant nodded.

— But for you, it is a very nice thing now, to receive a name. That’s because it is the occasion of our move to a new village where you will meet other people. The name is a symbol of your progress.