Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

The door opened without a sound. She knew it would — she’d gotten that far, at least, on her previous, scrubbed missions. She looked down the hallway to her parents’ room and saw no line of light beneath the door. They were asleep. She paused, knowing that her parents were everywhere, like air, and perhaps possessing bat-powers of hearing. She’d learned about bats and how they hang upside down on clothespin claws when they sleep, and how they have big ears because they have no eyes. She did not hear the springs in her parents’ bed sing as they did when her father heaved himself out of bed to investigate, for example, a little girl’s illegal trespass beyond her door. Creak — the floorboards creaked. With that first blush of courage she stepped into the hall and the floorboards creaked. So loud they’ll be out spanking her any second. But no. Still no sound from their room. If she stepped very slowly with just her little toes first, the floor did not give up creaks. She was brave after four steps, quickening her feet’s pressure on the gullible floorboards after four successful steps, and on the fifth they creaked. She could feel the dirt beneath her toes even though she’d watched her mother sweep that very afternoon, with her sure, strong strokes. There was invisible dirt and she felt it. She did not hear the bed springs sing. When she got to the head of the stairs, she remembered that the stairs were very loud if you stepped on them, but not loud at all if you stepped close to the wall, away from the center where there was less support. Needless to say, she was very thirsty when she finally made it down the stairs, for it took a long time for her to traverse the peril of the stairs. She remembered half a prayer and said that half a prayer to herself all the way down; she could not be bothered to remember that other half of the prayer because she only faked it in church, mouthing the words, only occasionally speaking them so her parents would not spank her. She did not hear any sound from the room upstairs, so maybe half a prayer is enough sometimes. Or has no effect one way or another. She wondered what she had been afraid of all the other times before when she had been thirsty at night and wanted to come downstairs but didn’t. Felt that same wonder as she padded across the parlor rug and slowly opened the door to the kitchen. After feeling her way around the kitchen table and its sharp corners, she reached into the sink for a glass, and that was when her father struck a match, loud and rough, on a leg of the kitchen table and lit the kitchen table candle. She almost wet her nightclothes. Thought, they really are everywhere. She pulled her arm back quickly and stood before her father’s hands.

He’d been sitting in the dark with a glass of his whiskey. The dark grease from his day’s work on his automobile was smeared up his large arms to his elbows. She saw that he was half slumped over the table and making words with his mouth but not making sounds. He looked at her through heavy eyes. Her father pushed the wooden chair away from the table and tapped his lap. He told her to come here. She sat on his lap, hesitating for a second because she thought the machine grease on his pants might stain her nightclothes and she would get in trouble with her mother, but her father said to come so she sat on his broad lap. He tapped the paper on the table and asked her, “They teaching you how to read, girl?”

She nodded, looking at the yellow paper on the table before her. It had drawings on it, and words.

Her father said, “Tell me what that says, then,” tapping the paper again and leaving a portion of black fingerprint on the page.

She peered down at the paper, which was yellow in the candle’s light. Above and below the drawings the words sat in small lumps and taunted her. She thought she would get in trouble. There were a lot of words she had never seen before so she looked for a few reassuring words she did know and found them scattered around. At. The . She struggled. She didn’t know where to start because the words she had learned aready were far apart, not grouped together so that she could pick a spot and begin there. Starting one place was the same as starting any other place. So she picked one of the drawings at the top of the page, the one that looked like her mother’s loom, and drew the tiny letters together, taking them one at a time and drawing them together. Where the white space was, that was the end of the word. The wind still aggravated the windows in their frames, and the leaves chortled. She said haltingly, “On … yon … ho-host-ing …”

Her father said, she felt the words in his chest against her back, “Union Hoisting Engine.” Her father read, “ ‘Arbo’s Patent Double Gear Hoisting Engine, adapted in connection with Safety Platform for Storage Warehouses, Packing Houses, Shipping Docks, Mines and etc. Motion of Platform at will of attendant up to a hundred feet per minute.’ That means it’s strong and fast,” he added. Her father pointed to another drawing that looked like two small water barrels connected by a wooden frame. Her father read, “ ‘Lifting Power-Gear Combination. For Universal Hoisting Machine, as illustrated below, showing the ‘Belt Attachment’ by which the machine is instantly stopped in case the Gearing reaches an unsafe motion from any cause, as in the breaking of a Belt while the machine is in use.’ That means if anything goes wrong, that will hold the elevator up. So it won’t break.” He continued through the Arbo Elevator Co.’s old catalog, reading out to her the names of machines, the Universal Hoisting Machine, the Metropolitan Hoisting Engine, the Relief Hoisting Engine, the Automatic Safety Drum, the Lifting Power-Screw Combination — this last one almost looking like a fat metal bat to her, hanging on the ceiling like it did in the drawing. Her father read every word on the page to her and when he was done he told her, “You better listen to your teacher. You better listen to your teacher and learn what she tells you.”

He shook her off his lap and drank his whiskey. “What’d you come down here for?” he asked her, talking loud now, not like when he was reading and he whispered.

“A glass of water.”

“Then get it and get your ass in bed,” he told her.

She was in the parlor with her glass of water when she heard him blow out the candle in the kitchen. Like he was autumn.

* * *

Everything is a mess. Her bureau rifled, oddly sad stockings hang limp out a drawer. Papers in no stack, their perpendicular corners mapping the better part of 360 degrees across the rug. Her potted plant depotted, an akimbo regret of roots and soil. Her plastic pear, Lila Mae’s one salvo toward knicknackery, dud on the floor. Some of her books are downright gone, Ettinger’s Hoists and Pulleys an agony of broken spine, The Counterweight and Its Effects hiding under the radiator among cobwebs. Cushions overturned and exposing cleaner faces. Window shades askew, indolently slouching in their frames. A mess. Untidy.

Lila Mae closes the door of her apartment. This is not Shush’s style, unless they wanted to underscore her discussion with Chancre. As if her drive out to the warehouse weren’t enough. (Markham had the gall to tip his chauffeur’s cap to her when he dropped her off here.) The two men who were here the other night were religious in their neatness. They’d obviously been here a while before she came upon them, Lila Mae thinks, and had left no mark. Respectful guests. These new men did not need to make a secret of their work, didn’t care. They thought she had it, or had a clue, a scratchmark on a pad, that might lead them to it. The black box.

She hadn’t wanted to go back to Intuitionist House. She wanted to see her apartment, sit on her couch where she has boiled away so many hours, until they lifted away in a fog. Where she feels as much peace as she ever feels in this city. Chancre’s words rippling out, perturbations, even to here. She thinks, he’s trying to get under her skin but does not understand that Reed and Lever do not have her loyalty. Her loyalty is to Fulton, to his words, and she is involved now because she has been wronged. They have sullied her name. He will not confuse her.