Jesse Ball - A Cure for Suicide

The younger woman answered,

— Yes, Emma, yes. I,

Examiner 2387 sat down opposite the older examiner, whose number she did not recall.

— I, they told me you asked for me. I want to thank you for that.

— I will call you Hilda, said the examiner. You may call me Emma Moran, as you did. The names for this next town are different, but we will get to that.

They sat looking at one another, the younger patiently waiting for the older to continue, the older looking curiously at the younger as if to see who it was that sat there, right there, in the seat across from her.

— Hilda, she said. Do me a favor. Please give me the dialogue from outside the house, the night you left.

HILDA CLOSED HER EYES for a moment. She straightened her shoulders, turned her head slightly to one side.

— Martin! I look very different, don’t I? I can see it in your eyes. You thought that the person you were going to meet was just like Hilda, the Hilda you knew. And then here there is this other person standing on the street looking at you. She snuck out of her house at night to come and see you and you don’t know why. Now you don’t even know who this person is, but you can’t stop looking at her.

Hilda shook her head,

— No, no, that was the first time we met alone. Sorry, getting jumbled.

She thought for a second.

Emma watched her, smiling slightly.

— Okay, okay. Here goes.

— They took me away, they took me away, darling. Oh. I waited for you and waited for you, and you never came, and then I went back to the house, and Martin was there, and he was angry — he was so angry…

She shifted her voice.

— And then he said,

She spoke with a slightly deeper register, in a voice rather like the claimant’s.

— Took you away? Who?

— Then, I said,

— I woke up in the back of some kind of closed truck. They were moving the bed that I was in. I was lying there, and we were stopped for some reason. I jumped out the back and hid, and the truck drove on without me.

— Then he asked me how I found my way back, and I said,

— There isn’t anything out there. Just a road. It’s just a road. I went the opposite direction the truck was going. As you approach the town, the waste turns slowly green. There are trees and grass, and then the town begins. I can show you. I don’t know if there’s time.

The older examiner laughed loudly and clapped.

— Just right, just right. Your performance in Case 42395D was indeed marvelous. It was perfect. I was very moved by it, and I can tell you that it was completely convincing. Do you know where I am coming from? I am returning from the board at which I presented the case. The fluency of your Hilda role was, well, as I said, marvelous. There were some there who interpreted this sudden excellence one way. They believe it is the flowering of a talent. You came to us, as you may remember, as a claimant, and one day, became an examiner-elect. Now, on the success of this role, you may continue on. I congratulate you. I did not tell the panel, however, what it is that I really think. Why? Because it is a thing that is for you, for your ears alone.

The train rattled and shook as they crossed pilings that supported the way over a series of small streams. They were entering a sort of marshland. Nothing but quiet in the compartment, and beyond the window, the train’s heaving bustle, and the noise of insects and wind. A bird cried out from the twisted bracken, and its call pierced Hilda. She moved in her seat.

— Emma, what do you mean?

The older examiner spoke as if out of a long sleep.

— We were there together, I was with you, we two examiners, dealing with a man in dire difficulty. It seems to me possible that you acted, that you were an actress, in this case, that the man called then Martin Rueger, was nothing to you. It is possible, of course it is. In fact, just that, that alone was your job. But it is not what I believe.

She ran her finger along the wooden molding of the window.

— Some people forget, do you know — they forget what it is like to be young, to feel things ruthlessly, terribly. If you forget that much of life, well, I don’t know.

She turned toward the younger woman and took her hand. She seemed to be weighing something. A minute passed, then another. The noise of someone in the passage coming closer, then going away, past, away.

— What is it you think?

— I believe, Hilda, you fell into the role so thoroughly because indeed you did love him. I believe that you really wanted to help him escape, despite your position, despite your role as an examiner in his case, despite all. There is something in you, Hilda, that wants to rise up and ruin the world. You are the sort, I think, who, when pouring water into a glass, will let the pitcher overflow the glass, will pour it all out onto the table, if no one has the sense to say, enough, enough, Hilda. If no one says anything, a person like you will just pour the pitcher out. This is my feeling.

They sat quietly a moment.

— I do not mean it as a criticism, she continued. Not at all. Indeed, in some aspects, I also am this way. Yet, it does, if true, present us with an interesting situation. It is for this reason that I asked for you, that I called you back to this case, the case of Martin Rueger. I have just moved him to another town. He has a new identity, that of Henry Caul. He is settling, finally. Soon, he will finally be settled. I wonder, examiner 2387 who masquerades so well as a Hilda, I wonder — do you want to join him?

The young woman raised an eyebrow.

The examiner coughed.

— I suppose it is in some way disingenuous of me to ask in that way. Of course, you have been given the task. You have your orders. You’re on this train heading to the village. You will do it. But, there are two ways in which it might be done. That is the essence of the offer I make to you. Two ways.

— I can tell you about it. I can tell you what it was like for me, and,

— Please don’t speak, said the old woman. I will know it all by your choice. Be patient. The world isn’t the place we are told to live in. It is another place entirely. We have both more choice, and less, than we are supposed to have. I will tell you a story about a play I once saw. Perhaps it will make things clear.

THE PLAY I ONCE SAW; OR, THE ONION KNIFE

Once, I saw a play in a city that no longer stands. This was the city of my birth. It was entirely demolished in the war. Every last brick of every last building was actually made to vanish by a single bomb. There is a sort of crater there now. I’m not joking. There is a kind of viewing platform, a boardwalk of sorts. You take the train to a little hotel town — a set of hotels that are perched where the boardwalk begins. Then, you go off down this wooden pier, out over the crater. The boardwalk extends all the way to the very center. It is far — maybe six or seven hours’ walk, so most people ride bicycles. At the very center there is a little shop that serves drinks and sandwiches. You can sit and look down into the crater. There isn’t anything to be seen there at all of what was. The city itself is clearly gone. In fact, when I went, I had a feeling similar to when I saw the Grand Canyon. I thought, my, how the world can be. This destruction was so bloodless it has come to feel like one of the great works of man. Of course, thirteen million people died beneath that bomb.

In any case, I lived in that city, and on one of the old streets that ran down by the courthouse, there was a theater, the Chamber Pot. I used to go there to see plays. I was a young woman, quite your age, actually, and I enjoyed seeing plays. I felt that there was in them the power to change the world. In such a mood, I went with a young man to see The Onion Knife, a new play.