Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

3

The Author is sixty-eight years old, in good health, most of his teeth, half his hair, not dead yet, though lately he hasn’t been sleeping well. He’s always been a light sleeper, the slightest sound jostles him awake, but this is different: he falls asleep with a book on his chest, then wakes up for no damn reason and strains his neck to look at the green glow of his digital clock, where it’s always some soul-crushing time like 2:16 or 3:04 in the miserable morning. Hell time, abyss time, the hour of no return. He wonders whether he should turn on his bedside lamp, try to read a little, relax, but he knows the act of switching on the light will wake him up even more, and besides, there’s the problem of what to read when you wake up at two or three in the godforsaken morning. If he reads something that interests him he’ll excite his mind and ruin his chance for sleep, but if he reads something that bores him he’ll become impatient, restless, and incapable of sleep. Better to lie there and curse his fate, like a man with a broken leg lying in a ditch. He listens to the sounds of the dark: hsssh of a passing car, mmmm of a neighbor’s air conditioner, skriiik of a floorboard in the attic — a resident ghost. Things drift through your mind at doom-time in the morning, and as he listens he thinks of the boy in the house in Stratford, the bed by the two windows, the voice in the night. He thinks of the boy a lot these days, sometimes with irritation, sometimes with a fierce love that feels like sorrow. The boy tense, whipped up, listening for a voice in the night. He feels like shouting at the boy, driving some sense into that head of his. Oil your baseball glove! Jump on your bike! Do chin-ups on the swing set! Make yourself strong! But why yell at the boy? What’d he ever do to you? Better to imagine the voice calling right here, right now: Hello, old atheist, have I got news for you. Sorry, pal. Don’t waste your time. You should’ve made your pitch when I was seven. Had the boy really expected to hear his name in the night? So long ago: Bobby Benson and the B-Bar-B Riders on the radio, his father at dinner attacking McCarthy. War in Korea, the push to Pusan. Those old stories got to you: Joseph in the pit, the parting of the Red Sea, David soothing the soul of Saul with his harp. In Catholic working-class Stratford, he was the only boy who didn’t make the sign of the cross when they passed Holy Name Church on the way to school. Girls with smudges of ash on their foreheads. His God-scorning father driving him to Sunday school but taking him home when the others went to Hebrew class. No bar mitzvah for him. His father mocking his own rabbi for making boys jabber words they didn’t understand. “Pure gibberish.” A new word: gibberish. He liked it: gibberish. Still: Sunday school, “Rock of Ages,” the story of Samuel, why is this night different from all other nights. The boy lying there listening, wanting his name to be called. Had he wanted his name to be called? Through the window the Author hears the sound of a distant car, the cry of the crickets. Sixty years later, upstate New York, and still the cry of the crickets in the summer in Stratford. Time to sleep, old man.

1

Samuel wakes again. This time he’s sure: Eli has called his name. The voice stands out sharply, like a name written on a wall. “Samuel!” He throws off the goat’s-hair blanket and steps onto the straw mat on the floor by his bed. He has lived with Eli in the temple of Shiloh for as long as he can remember. Once a year his mother and father visit him, when they come up from Ramah to offer the annual sacrifice. When he was born, his mother gave him to the Lord. She had asked the Lord for a son, and that’s why his name is Asked-of-the-Lord. That’s why he wears a linen ephod, that’s why his hair flows down below his shoulders: no razor shall ever come upon his head. Samuel: Asked of the Lord. He enters Eli’s chamber, where he expects to find Eli sitting up in bed, waiting impatiently for him. Instead, Eli is lying on his back with his eyes closed, like a man asleep. Should he wake Eli? Did Eli call Samuel’s name and then fall back to sleep? Samuel hesitates to wake a man who’s old and filled with worries. Though Eli is the high priest of the temple, his sons are wicked. They are priests who do not obey. When flesh is offered for sacrifice, they take the best part for themselves. They practice iniquities with women who come to the doors of the temple. “Here am I!” Samuel says, in a voice a little louder than he intended. Eli stirs and opens his eyes. “For thou didst call me,” Samuel says, more softly. The old priest raises his head with difficulty. “I called not, my son. Lie down again.” Samuel doesn’t protest, but lowers his eyes and turns away with the uneasy sense of having disturbed an old man’s sleep. As he enters his own chamber, he tries to understand. Why has Eli called his name twice in the night? He called out in a loud, clear voice, a voice that could not be mistaken for some other sound. But Eli, who speaks only truth, has denied it. Samuel lies down on his bed and pulls the blanket up to his shoulders. Eli is very old. Does he call out Samuel’s name and then, when Samuel appears beside him, forget that he has called? Old men are forgetful. The other day, when Eli spoke to Samuel of his own childhood, he could not remember a name he was searching for and grew troubled. Samuel has seen an old man at the temple whose body trembles like well-water in a goatskin bucket. His eyes are unlit lamps. Eli is old, his eyesight is growing dim, but his body doesn’t tremble and his voice is still strong. On the shoulder of his purple and scarlet ephod are two onyx stones, each engraved with the names of six tribes of Israel. When he stands in sunlight, the stones shine like fire. Slowly Samuel drifts into sleep.

2

It’s the next night, and the boy in Stratford again lies awake, listening. He doesn’t really believe he’ll hear his name, but he wants to be awake in case it happens. He doesn’t like to miss things. If he knows something important is coming, like a trip to the merry-go-round and the Whip at Pleasure Beach, he’ll wait for it minute by minute, day after day, as if by taking his attention away from it for even a second he might cause it not to happen. But this is different. He doesn’t know it’s going to happen. It probably won’t happen, how could it happen, but there’s a chance, who knows. What he really needs to figure out is how to answer, if his name is called. In the story, Samuel was told to answer “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” He tries to imagine it: “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” It sounds like a boy in a play. Better to say “Yes?” which is what he’d say if his father called his name. But the Lord is not his father. The Lord is more powerful than his powerful father. He’s more like the policeman in front of the school on Barnum Avenue, with his dangerous stick hanging from his belt. Better to say “Yes, sir,” as he’d say if the policeman called his name. If he hears his name, that’s what he’ll say: “Yes, sir.” Don’t shout it: say it. Yes, sir. A voice in the dark, calling his name. The thought stirs him up again. He’s too old to be scared of the dark, but the fear still comes on him sometimes. He likes to play a scare-game with his sister, the way they did when he was five and she was two. She lies in her dark room pretending to be asleep and he whispers: “Booooo haunt moan. Booooo haunt moan.” Then they both burst into wild, scared laughter. But a voice in the night is not funny. He’s through with witches, ghosts, monsters, isn’t he, they’re not real, so why is he scaring himself with the story of Samuel? It’s only a story. His father has explained it to him: the Bible is stories. Like Tootle or The Story of Dr. Dolittle . Trains don’t leave the tracks to chase butterflies, the pushmi-pullyu with a head at each end isn’t an animal you’ll ever find in the zoo, and the Lord doesn’t call your name in the night. Stories are about things that don’t happen. They could happen, but they don’t. But they could. What if his name was called? He would want to be there. He’d want to know what comes next. What did the Lord say to Samuel? He can’t remember. The most important part, and he can’t remember. That’s one thing about him: he can’t remember the important things. He can remember the prince climbing the hair to the top of the tower but he can’t remember the capital of Connecticut. Is it Bridgeport? The library in Bridgeport has long stone steps and high pillars. It’s what he first thought of when he heard that Samuel was serving the Lord in the temple of Shiloh. A temple is different from a church. Jews go to temple and Christians go to church. But Catholics go to Catholic church. And everybody goes to the library. He’s getting tired. At the backyard hedge, Billy turned to him and said: “Do you believe in Jesus?” His eyes were hard. There’re two answers to that question. One is “No.” The other’s what his father said to him: “Jesus was a great teacher.” But he was a coward and looked down. A door opens and he hears footsteps in the hall. Do his parents know he’s lying awake, listening for his name? He hears the door to the bathroom open and close. Sometimes his father is up in the night. If he opens his door and waits for his father? Tell me about Samuel. Tell me. Tell me about the voice in the night. If you heard that voice, nothing would ever be the same. He pushes the thought away. Tomorrow they’re going to drive out past the Sikorsky plant to Short Beach, where he can wade out to the sandbar.