Jesse Ball - Samedi the Deafness

He pictured in his mind the sallow man climbing out of bed, opening the door that was almost as large as the room itself, going out into the hall, turning left, opening the door to the passage, going along the passage, up the ladder, and finding then his drawing discarded. It was terrible, terrible.

And then he would be at the aperture, listening and watching. James looked towards where the fourth window should have been. There was no way to know if the man was there now watching him.

I will walk about in the halls and see what comes of it, he thought.

An afternoon and wind in fields. He knelt in the middle of a path.

Something or someone had set off the trap. The metal teeth were closed tight. James tested its action, opening it with all his strength, cocking it, laying it again on the ground, and shoving a long stick through to the trigger.

SNAP! The stick was snapped clean through.

James set the trap once more, satisfied with its workings, between an oak and a sycamore, in a little drop of land.

— They won't see that, he said. Not though they're standing over it. Not till they're in it.

And the little boy danced off chuckling and stomping along the road and looked back twice from the crest of each increasing hill.

— To speak of observation, and observation holes, I was watching you through the argot, said Grieve. What were you doing in the kitchens last night?

— I was looking for a bit of chocolate and a bowl of milk, said James.

— Not on your life, said Grieve. You can't lie to me.

— All right, said James. I was looking for the egg room.

— The egg room! said Grieve, exclaiming. The egg room, the egg room!

— But what were you, said James, doing in the room beneath the argot?

— It's a cemetery, said Grieve. We call it Mount Auburn. My brother is there in a fold of grass. I covered him with thirty-nine stones but one went missing. Where could it be?

James drew from his pocket a book, drew from the book a pressed flower, and shook from the flower a bit of stone shaped like a crescent moon.

— Here it is, he said. I found it in the passage by the cellar.

They were both silent. Grieve took the stone.

— You mustn't go there again, she said. You might meet me there, and then we would be through.

A dark name like a walking stick broken in anger.

— When I am out on the wind, said Grieve, I wear four arms and the trails of my dress consume me.

— Before you say any more, said James, say no more.

And so no more was said.

The fact of the matter, James decided, was that a theory was not a good theory because it was right or wrong. A theory was good for entirely other reasons. Because it presumed to be right? Presumed to be wrong? A theory could be very good that presumed to be wrong. And certainly there were theories that presumed only to be helpful in small ways. So many theories are peculiar to their centuries, and never get a second go around the merry-go-round.

My theory, James thought, is that SAMEDI decided long ago to do whatever it is he is going to do and that nothing can stop it. The trigger has already been pulled, the knife set in motion, somewhere far from here. And though we here may be affected by it, we can do nothing to alter it, nothing to stop it.

James felt very much that this was a correct theory. Of course, it was not a useful theory.

What theory would be useful? James thought for a moment.

A useful theory, ah — that Grieve's father was not Samedi, and that everyone in the house was delightful because this was the beginning of a new and unexplainable life.

It was late in the morning when James woke. Grieve was still there. She was reading from the newspaper.

— You won't believe it, she said. This wacko has sent another suicide.

There was an odd tone to her voice.

— What? asked James carefully.

— This madman, said Grieve, this Samedi. It just means Saturday in French; what kind of name is that? Anyway, he's sent men to suicide in the capital, one every day this week.

— What does the note say? James asked.

— It's the same thing every day, said Grieve. He's going to murder us all, somehow.

She turned a little pale. That was odd, thought James.

— What do you think? he asked.

Grieve said nothing, but looked down at her feet. Her face had gone blank. She had been trying to play a game, but the gravity of it had gotten the better of her. James was sure now. She knew. She knew what her father was going to do. Now if only she would tell him.

He started to say something.

She tossed the paper on the floor and slid up on top of him. He started to kiss her, and he could feel the length of her against him. He thought of days then in October when he was a boy and he had seen in the windows of houses candles lit at night, and how happy it had made him. There were waters in the middle of the ocean that met having come great distances, dispersing through great distances but keeping still some character, some inimitable character of water, and then, to have that, and meet, in the midst of a great ocean, water from a far place, and mingle with it in the midst of the ocean's lapsing. He felt her tongue along his chest, her legs wrapped tight around his legs. She tightened and he could feel himself like the sound in a room when a door is opened, rushed out into intervening space, unable to counter anything, accepting all, expanding, meeting, taking upon itself all space, all motion, trembling, entering other rooms, other bodies. Grieve was trembling, and her face was hot against his. She kissed and kissed him.

— I was lying, she whispered. What can I tell you?

And then he was inside of her and they were together in the lost deep ground where no one had gone until they, and where no one could go, where everyone had gone, of course, and did go, but not at once, just one pair and then another, never passing one another on the way, each taking of its own accord a seldom path that cannot be found by the eye, but is traced irrevocably in pageants of color and light. She was saying something, talking and talking. He could hear her but he could not.

And then they slept.

And afterwards it was late morning, and the light had not left or been made less by clouds. His arms about her, James wondered again if someone was watching. He wondered if someone had been watching the whole time.

It would have been quite a show, he thought, and pictured Sermon and Leonora Loft kneeling in the small room and winking to each other.

And also, he wondered, in the broad vagueness of his thought, what did Grieve know? What could she tell him?

A note beyond the door:

Meeting canceled.

James rubbed his eyes — it was a good thing the meeting was canceled. He'd forgotten to go in the first place.

What was the origin, James wondered, of Grieve's lying? He remembered she had said something about the matter. What had it been? He thought back. They had been standing on the roof of the house. First they had gone up the stairs into the upstairs bathroom. Grieve had gone in. She had waved to him. He had gone in. She had locked the door with a key from the inside.

— Here we are, he said, in the bathroom.