Jesse Ball - The Curfew

— We’re all planning our own death these days.

— Tomorrow, then.

At six o’clock, he picked up Molly and they had a glass of lemonade by the lake.

*Can we rent a boat and go out to the island?

*No.

*But what about tomorrow? Can we tomorrow?

*No.

Molly played in the enormous gnarled oaks that had stood in the park for more than a century. Their limbs were long and bowed and many. Nearly every one could be climbed easily, and Molly had climbed nearly every one.

There was a man selling newspapers. William bought a newspaper, but did not read it. It looked bad to avoid the newspaper; one bought it, but one didn’t actually have to read it.

He had not performed violin in over four years. There were no musical performances anymore. There were no performances of any kind. There was a new ideal, and one could sit in an audience and listen to people talk about the new ideal, but that was the extent of it.

Much of his life in the past years was a matter of making it so that things could not get worse. He tried to, through a series of habits, insulate and barricade the life that he and Molly lived, so that it could not be invaded or altered.

He had done this in a series of ways. First, he bought an apartment in an area of town that was known to be very quiet. He established a policy of having no friends, none at all. He ceased to speak to the friends he had had before. He got a job as a mason’s assistant. He and Molly lived cheaply, and wore old clothes. They did simple things together quietly. They learned sign language together, for Molly couldn’t speak. He taught her to read by himself, and he taught her mathematics by himself. He taught her to use an abacus. He taught her everything that she would need to know in school, and he did this when she was five and six, before she went to school. Therefore, school would have no difficulties for her, and her muteness would not be a problem.

Every night he and Molly ate supper at a little cafe some distance from their home. Molly sometimes played with a boy who lived in the same building, and while she was doing that, William would sit at the window and read, or play through a volume of old chess games with a small wooden chess set. He loved the games of Tchigorin and also of Spielmann. Neither one had been the greatest chess player of his time, but their games were full of sacrifices and wild, inventive play. For such things, William would say to himself, for such things …

There was no difference between any one day and any other. The weekend had been abolished. It had been a sick way of going about things, that was the idea, a sort of illness that had led to widespread moral decay. Many of the ways that things had been gone about were weak, and had to be changed.

*There was a new teacher in school today.

— A woman?

*A man.

— Old?

*Rather not.

— Handsome?

Molly made a face.

— That bad?

*He wrote a book about history. The history of the country.

— And how did that go over?

*Jim spat on him and then they took Jim in the next room for a while.

— So, Jim, he’s a history lover?

Molly did the thing that she did when she would have laughed but wasn’t laughing.

William laughed as well.

*He just spits on teachers.

A ripple came and then subsided in the lake, as though a fish had surfaced, but none did.

— There is a game, William said, where you try to throw a stone high up in the air and have it make just that noise, the noise of a fish at the water’s surface. It is not easy to do.

William threw a stone high up in the air, but when it hit the water it made a decidedly stone-like sound.

*You see, he gestured.

*Read to me from the newspaper.

She nudged his arm.

*Don’t want to.

*Come on. Over here. It’s very nice, look.

— All right, all right.

He sat down by the tree. This was a game they had. He unfolded the newspaper. Molly sat with her back against him.

— On the fourteenth of July, a man was discovered walking about in a daze near the courthouse. He claims to have been asleep inside a hill for the last fifteen years.

*Twenty is better.

— All right, twenty years, the last twenty years. He was greatly confused by the gray banners everywhere, and by the change in administration. He has been taken by the police for questioning. It is believed he is pretending, and that he didn’t actually sleep inside a hill.

*That’s no good, said Molly. Don’t have it be pretending.

— All right, let’s try it again.

He removed his hat and set it on the ground next to him, then cleared his throat.

— On the fifteenth of July, a man was found in a confused state near the courthouse building. He claims to have been asleep inside a hill for the last twenty years. Upon further investigation into the matter, authorities have discovered the hill in question, and, within it, a sort of foxhole. The man refused to comply with any questioning, and escaped through the faucet of a sink. Beware!

Molly smoothed her dress, but did not smile. It wasn’t her habit to smile at things that were funny.

*That’s the news, then.

And all of a sudden it was becoming dark. The lights bloomed automatically all along the streets, and at the edges of the lake. A bell rang, and it was a shift change. Workers could be seen exiting houses, and beginning on their way to the factories at the outskirts of the town.

*I wish you could play for me a piece where you can hear the curtains blowing. Where you scrape the strings and the curtains move.

— Don’t talk like that.

Molly pushed against him.

They threaded a path in a homeward direction, he murmuring, she gesturing, he peering at her hands in the dim evening.

When they reached the street there was a crowd formed around a man who seemed to be asleep on the ground. He was in a mime’s regalia, with painted face and thin gloves. Suddenly he sprang up and froze at attention.

In the street, another mime, marching as a soldier, passed by. Marching, marching, marching, and on the sixteenth step, he went on all fours and loped as a pack of wolves does, grimacing and showing row after row of teeth. He turned upon the crowd and made for them! Shouting and confusion. The single mime began to conduct an orchestra, and of a sudden, the soldier-mime was playing instruments of every description, alternating in rows on invisible seats with invisible instruments. The conductor mime sat in the invisible audience, dabbing a handkerchief at tear after tear.

A shout then,

— They are coming!

— Watch out! Run!

The orchestra threw its instruments in the air and careened madly off into the park. Yes, two men in shabby clothing ran off into the trees.

*Will they get away?

Molly’s hand was very tight clutching at William’s coat.

*Will they get away?

— They have gotten away. That’s how they did it in the first place. That’s why, even if they get caught, they can’t be caught. It wouldn’t mean anything, other than to show that they are what they say they are.

Molly frowned.

— They are students, said William. It is their resistance and has at its heart their youth. Catching them only makes others join them. So, in a sense, they want to be caught. Or be at the edge of being caught, always.

*They don’t want to get away?

— No, not really.

*But if they were caught, wouldn’t they be …

— Yes, it is a choice they are making, to be alive and unrepentant.

*Unrepentant?