Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

8

Though you might not think so to look at us, our town attracts summer visitors. We’re especially sought out by big-city people, who love the idea of getting away from it all, of escaping from the pressures of urban life into what they believe is a peaceful, simple existence. But we’re also well liked by residents in surrounding small towns, who are drawn to our outdoor cafés, our shops and restaurants, and our lively nightlife, with its dance clubs and jazz bars. The summer visitors stay at our two inns, with rooms decorated in period styles, at our renovated nineteenth-century hotel, and at a variety of bed-and-breakfasts and family-friendly motels, or they rent our homes by the month. Everyone likes our tree-lined downtown, with its small, locally owned shops and quaint restaurants, its shady wooden benches and its ice-cream parlors, though we also have our share of luxury boutiques and high-end clothing shops. Burrows Park, with its picnic tables, its stream, and its children’s playground, is always popular; there are outdoor concerts in July. Not far outside our town lies Indian Lake, where you can swim or rent a canoe or walk the trails; a little farther away you can find a wildlife sanctuary, a golf course, and a restored eighteenth-century village with craft shops and a museum. The summer visitors also come for the Place. They walk to the top of the hill, stroll around, admire the view, and go back down. Few return, especially when they learn that no picnics are allowed up there. The summer people can irritate us, but we also find them interesting: they make us wonder what the Place must feel like, to those who can never be anything except what they already are.

9

I don’t know what I expected, the day I went up to the Place alone. I suppose I was hoping to discover whatever it was that had pulled Dan Rivers to it, time after time. It was a hot July morning. I walked around the Place, noticing again that it was no single flatness but a series of small slopes and declines, so that it was possible, even at the top of the hill, to find yourself in a shallow valley. I walked beside the low walls that ran here and there along the rises and dips, stepped through fields of grass showing traces of overgrown paths, passed a man sitting under a tree sketching with charcoal on a large pad that he held on his knees. After a time I sat down against a low stone wall, in warm shade, with the sun behind me. Farther down was another stone wall, broken in places; in the distance I saw blue-green hills. It was peaceful enough up there, though peace wasn’t what I had come for. I didn’t know what I had come for. In the warmth and shade a drowsiness came over me. I did not fall asleep, for I was seventeen years old and filled with energy, but I sat very still and imagined that anyone watching me would think that I had fallen into a deep sleep. I then saw a woman approaching my wall. She wore a white dress that came down to her ankles and a white sun hat tilted low on her face. Although there was nothing peculiar about her, except for the whiteness of her clothes, I had the sense that I was having one of those half-waking dreams, from which at any moment I might awake. She drew near without seeming to see me, then looked down at me from under her hat and began walking away along the wall, glancing back as if she expected me to follow. I rose without hesitation and began walking after her, though with the sensation that I was still sitting there, with one hand resting on the grass, in the warm shade. She soon came to the end of the wall. There she began going down through an opening in the earth. I followed her down the rough stone steps, which changed direction from time to time, and when the steps ended I found myself in a high, narrow corridor, with doors on both sides. The woman in the white dress was walking swiftly along the corridor, toward a closed door at the far end. She opened the door and disappeared inside, but not before glancing at me over her shoulder. I passed through the open door and entered a vast room or hall, trembling with light. On both sides I saw immensely tall windows through which brightness poured. In the hall stood many long tables at which people were seated; their faces and arms were shining, as if illuminated from within. A stern, gentle man in a white robe led me along the side of one of the tables. As I walked behind him, I could scarcely make anything out because of the brightness. Then I seemed to see, on the opposite side, Dan Rivers quivering in the light. In another place I saw my mother, leaning her cheek on the palm of a hand. The man led me to an empty chair with a high back; it was difficult for me to climb onto the seat. Before me he placed an open book with pages so large that I wondered whether I would be able to reach far enough to turn them. The white room, the blazing windows, the open book, filled me with a sense of peaceful excitement, as if I had found a place I hadn’t known I was looking for. As I bent over the white book, which contained words that would explain everything, a stillness came over me, an inner ease, as if I had let go of something, slowly my body began to bend forward, and when my forehead pressed against the page I felt a yielding, a dissolving, I was passing through, at the back of my head a hardness was starting to gather, and I found myself sitting against the stone wall, in the warm shade. Instantly I shut my eyes and attempted to recapture the white dress, the stairway, the brilliant room, but through my closed eyelids I saw only dancing points of sun. I stood up. I felt a new lightness, as if something heavy had drained away. Call it a dream, call it a drowsy sun-vision on a lazy summer day, but it had come to me from up there, it was mine. I spent the rest of the day walking to the far ends of the Place, in search of a white dress that I knew did not exist, though I also knew that the Place had somehow summoned it. It had me now. It had me. Before I left, I carefully examined the end of my wall, where I knew there would be no stairway. Only a few fallen stones among dusty blades of grass, only a yellow wildflower, and a heavy bee hovering above a blossom of clover.

10

We call them the Halfway Climbers. These are the ones who begin the ascent but stop partway, attracted by the wooden benches placed along the paths, or by the small clearings that invite repose. There they sit down, enjoy the view, perhaps take out a small bottle of energy drink concealed in their clothes. Sometimes they spread out towels in the sun, lie down, and close their eyes; sometimes they read the paper or watch their children wade in a stream. After a while they may move farther up to another bench, another clearing, a better view. But they do not climb to the top, and the time always comes when they decide they’ve had enough, and so they return to their cars and drive home. The question we have about the Halfway Climbers is this: Why do they come at all? To be fair, the views along the way are very fine; on a clear day, you can pick out many buildings in our miniature town and look out at the distant villages and hills. But not far above is the Place itself, the very reason to come at all. The Halfway Climbers know that the Place is there, just at the top of the trail. Why do they stop? Can it be that their only desire is to move toward the Place without actually reaching it? It’s tempting to think of the Halfway Climbers as lazy, but this is unlikely to be true, since many of them walk most of the way up and often pass us with vigorous strides. Is it possible that the Place frightens them in some way? Do they fear a change in themselves that they can’t bear to face? Perhaps what they want is only to escape from the town for a short time but not to arrive anywhere else, since to arrive might be to weaken their connection to the town — a connection that escape only strengthens. Another explanation is possible. Do they hope for so much from the Place that, filled with doubt, they refuse to climb all the way, in order to avoid disillusionment? They interest us, these Halfway Climbers. Almost to arrive, almost to experience what is tempting and unimaginable — for them, is it really enough?