Jesse Ball: The Way Through Doors

The guess artist slipped past him and threw open the door to the closet.

Within, an odd sight greeted their eyes. A half-naked woman, her skirt pulled up to her waist and her blouse pulled down, was rocking in the embrace of a coarse-looking man similarly unclothed. They looked displeased at having been disturbed.

— Who are you? asked Selah. What are you doing here?

The woman and man did not stop what they were doing, or respond. Their noises were both grueling and unkempt. Selah looked away.

— I asked you what you were doing here, said Selah again.

The coarse-looking man whispered something in the ear of the woman. She giggled. He reached out of the closet, still rocking the girl back and forth, and took the door boldly out of the guess artist’s hand. Turning to look at Selah, he spat once upon the ground and then slammed shut the closet. Immediately then, a sort of moaning began.

— How awful, said the guess artist.

— Have you ever seen such…? asked Selah.

— Not in a hundred years of Sundays, said the guess artist.

They checked the other closets on the upper floor, but there wasn’t much to be found other than:

LIST of THINGS they FOUND

1. a Colt Navy revolver from 1851, loaded, with holster

2. a child’s boomerang

3. a mask from commedia dell’arte

4. a mechanical bird

5. a box with something wriggling inside of it

6. a spyglass

Selah went to the window in the tiny room where the spyglass had been found. In the distance the rolling hills continued. Here and there a homestead or farmhouse might be seen, with perhaps a trail of smoke rising.

He put the spyglass to his eye.

— Mora! he said.

For in the spyglass he saw the inn, and through a window of the inn he saw Mora standing with a stunningly beautiful woman who could only be Ilsa Marionette, Loren Darius’s wife.

— There you are, he said.

He watched her moving about the room, twisting and turning, speaking with her back to him, and going sometimes to the window.

She is looking for me upon the road, thought Selah. Mora! he wanted to cry out, I’m here in the inn. But it was no use. He set the spyglass down a moment and looked out again at the landscape. Then he picked it up and looked through again. This time it only magnified the distant hills. He shook it.

The guess artist was standing in the door watching him.

— I found this, he said, holding up the pistol.

— Give it here, said Selah.

He belted the pistol on. It was rather heavy.

— Do you know how to use one of those things? asked the guess artist.

— Can I hit a target a hundred feet off? asked Selah in reply. No. Can I point it at someone’s head and say something desperate, inevitable, and disastrous? Yes. Can I shoot a horse with a broken leg in order to put it out of its misery? No. Can I shoot a man in the leg in order to cause him misery? Yes.

— I thought as much, said the guess artist. Also, there was this.

He put a box onto the table. It was wriggling.

— What do you think is in there? asked the municipal inspector.

— I have an idea or two, said the guess artist. Should we open it?

— We’d better not, said Selah. Anyway, there are more fiddles downstairs.

The two returned to the common room. They piled up all the fiddles in one place and pulled up chairs. The guess artist broke the first fiddle that was to hand across his knee. A photograph was in it. The guess artist held it up, examined it, and then passed it to Selah. The picture was of Selah, clad in his municipal inspector garb, holding on his arm a very pretty girl.

— That’s Sif, said the municipal inspector. She’s a girl I know.

On the back of the photograph there was some writing. It said:

If you don’t think of me at least once each day, then I will disappear entirely and no one will ever see me again.

Sif

— Do you think it’s true? Selah asked the guess artist.

— It’s just a threat. Nothing to worry over.

The guess artist broke open the next fiddle. This note was covered in sheet music.

Selah picked up one of the unbroken fiddles. Many bows were lying about, one for each fiddle. He took one.

— Hold that music up, he said to the guess artist.

The guess artist held up the music.

— Do you play violin? asked the guess artist.

— Sometimes, said Selah. But badly.

Yet somehow this fiddle would not allow poor playing. Selah drew the bow over the strings, and the little melody that was writ upon the note sprang forth with a shimmering beauty. It was a simple little tune, but quite fine. Selah played it several times. On the third time, one of the fiddles at the bottom of the pile burst open. Selah put down the one he was holding, pushed the other fiddles aside, and found the broken one. An envelope was inside. Within that, there was a folded newspaper article, a thick one. It was yellowed around the edges.

He held it up.

— This is the one, he said.

On the envelope it said:

For the Lucky Fool who Comes This Way Unknowingly

The guess artist nodded and took it from him. He began to read out loud:

KLEIN EXHIBIT AT THE METROPOLITAN

Mora Klein was one of the true phenomena of twentieth-century art. Born in obscurity on the North Face, in Barrow, Alaska, in the 1970s, she made her first mark at the age of four, when it was discovered that she could draw a straight line. As it was the first documented case of a human having the ability to draw a straight line, she gained instant fame. The little girl would be brought by her parents into scientific laboratories and given the most perfect and expensive styli that could then be found or produced, and she would be given paper of the finest and most perfect grade. Upon this paper she would draw a simple line, stretching from one side to the other. Yet the straightness of the line was astounding! Even with the most powerful microscopes and the most advanced measuring equipment, no deviation could be found in her lines. Even the best machines at that time (and indeed since) deviate. But not Mora Klein.

Scientists thus spent a great deal of time studying her nervous system and the muscles of her arm and hand. But they could not come up with an explanation short of dissecting the little girl on the spot. And many, in fact, in the scientific community were in favor of such a course. If the girl had not received the media attention that she had, it is likely that such a thing would have come to pass.

In any case, Mora continued to grow and draw straight lines. She did not follow her first feat with another for eighteen years. Then, at the age of twenty-two, she made a drawing. It was her first drawing. Prior to that she had only ever drawn lines and done handwriting. It had never occurred to her to do a drawing. She has stated in interviews that she had attempted very carefully in her handwriting to make each writing of her letters change slightly so that it would appear as the handwriting of others, where the shape of letters deviates wildly from occasion to occasion. Yet in her drawing, she brooked no such deviation. She drew the drawing for the first time upon a canvas with a large stylus and a bottle of ink. Instantly it was taken up by the art community.