Jesse Ball - Samedi the Deafness

It was very small. Just a porcelain sink recessed in the wall, a porcelain toilet with a chain pull, and a window in a roof that slanted down, halving the room. Grieve opened the window with a practiced gesture.

— This is the way.

Out then the window onto the roof that proved to be only an initial roof. Many roofs stretched in all directions, some up, some down, most across, all away.

— I want to have sex with you right now, said James, for Grieve's dress was being blown very tightly against her by the wind.

— You shall not, she said. At least, not while he's watching.

James looked over his shoulder. The cat had come up with them, had entered the bathroom unseen, and now was limping across the roof, dragging its hind leg.

— Oh, Mephisto, she said. What a darling you are.

She scooped up the cat.

— I thought its name was something else, said James.

— Around here, said Grieve, we think about naming a little differently than you do. As you understand it, people have names; things have names. But the weather. . if it is sunny you call it a clear day , and if it rains you complain of a storm . But it's the weather; it's one thing. Around here we have names for people, and for Mephisto, for instance, that, like the names for the weather, change along with the object's behavior. When Mephisto is being bad, or at the very least, daring, acting without compunction in preposterous affairs like the one in which we are now involved, he is called Mephisto . When he is good, sitting quietly in the sun in a window seat or sill, he is called Xerxes . When he is terrified of someone new, hiding under chairs, scurrying in shadow, then he is Benvolio .

— But he was never scared of me, said James.

— No, said Grieve, not in the least. But that's because he could tell that I liked you so much. It's really all that matters to him.

— How did he break his leg?

— It was terrible, said Grieve. He was my one real friend when I was a girl. Back then he used to talk to me. You wouldn't believe the things he'd say.

— I daresay not, said James.

Mephisto jumped then out of Grieve's arms and made his way in a half trot, half drag across the shingled roof.

— One day, said Grieve, Mephisto went into the egg room by mistake. My father was furious. No one is to go there, no one at all.

James said nothing about the egg room.

— So, he took Mephisto in his arms, at that time we called Mephisto Cavendish, and held Cavendish's paw up. Cavendish, said my father. Never in the egg room, Cavendish. And he broke the cat's leg by bending it back and forth quickly. During all this Cavendish neither cried out nor tried to escape, but sat watching my father with a still sort of patience. When he had broken the cat's arm to his satisfaction, he dropped him to the ground and the cat ran off, dragging its broken leg. He is no longer Cavendish, said my father. Now he is Benvolio. And from then on, Benvolio would not speak to me or tell me things. He stayed out of the egg room, though, and was mostly close by my side as before.

She kicked at the shingles of the roof.

— It seems that talking was a part of Cavendish, not a part of Benvolio or Mephisto or Xerxes. As soon as Cavendish went away, the cat became dumb. I felt I had to speak for him.

She smiled, a delicate smile like a bookish otter.

— You know, he used to say the most ingenious things. Anyway, I felt that if he was no longer going to be saying them, then someone should. So I began. I talk for both of us. I got so used to making things up for Gone-Away-Cavendish to say that I have never been able to change the habit. Besides, I don't see why I should.

— That is not, said James, why you really lie.

— No, she agreed. That's not why at all.

They walked along the roof to a place where the next roof began. Up it they went to another roof, and another after that. Slowly they ascended the house until they reached a sort of gazebo set at the highest point. There was a fine wooden rail about it, a lovely cupola above, and benches within. Yes, benches and a table.

— Is this the only way up here? James asked.

— Yes, everyone who comes up comes out that bathroom window.

— It's nice, said James, to discover this upper world, a place complete in itself. Yet the window to the bathroom has been left open and there, our little foothold in the old world is preserved. The door to the bathroom is locked. Someone might even now be standing there waiting. They think we are in there, and we are! It's as though all of this, everything that takes place up here, all these roofs, all these vantages, are all shuttered together in that tiny bathroom. We'll go back inside, unlock the door, and present ourselves to the person just beyond. My, we'll say, how the time passes.

— But if that's true, said Grieve, then when a fellow sneaks out his bedroom window at night in order to go wandering in the country and meet his girl on a covered bridge beneath which some slow water passes and passes again, when he leaves and returns before daybreak back through the window, shutting it tight and climbing neatly into bed, before dressing and going back out the bedroom door into the actual world when the cock crows, then, then the countryside, the whole countryside, the covered bridge, the slow river, the girl, the running through the night, all of it, is within that room, as if it all climbed back in the window with him, to sit there as dawn returned in morning's clothes, with an old stick and a stone it keeps rubbing for a reason no one will ever know.

— Well, said James. I don't see what you're getting at. I would agree with that. That doesn't contradict anything.

Grieve moved her face close to his, then lunged down and bit him quite hard on the shoulder.

— Ay! he cried out, and fell from the bench onto the wooden slats of the gazebo.

Then she was upon him and bit him again.

But why had she begun to lie in the first place?

As James went about the house, he noticed that all the maids were crying. One maid crying. Another maid crying. All the maids, crying. He rang his bell. The maid at the end of the hall froze. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. He approached her.

— What are you crying about?

— It's Grieve, she said, turning. She's killed herself.

James felt a cold shock over him. Had she killed herself?

— Grieve, he said slowly. She's killed herself?

— Yes, said the maid. And the baby, too. She drowned herself in the bath. And her eight months pregnant. No one can say who the father is.

She began to cry.

Pregnant, thought James. Which Grieve was this?

— Do you mean, he said, a young girl, about. .

He described the maid, Grieve, to this maid.

— Oh, said the maid, drying her eyes. Not her. No. Why, she is named Grieve also. That's why you thought that she had. . Oh, no. I mean, I'm named Grieve too, but I haven't done myself in, now, have I?

— No, said James. You haven't.

He explained that he would have to be going.

— But you mark my words, said the maid. There'll be a penalty for this.

She shook her head violently from side to side like a bird in a leather trap.

— Mark my words.

Within a short while all the water had drained from the bath. The room was quiet. No room can be so quiet as a quiet bathroom in an empty house. Everyone has left for the country, James thought, though he knew it wasn't true. Everyone has left for the country and I am still here. And he remembered small things he had done wrong here and there throughout his life and felt that this was some accounting of blame — he was being paid back in kind. And then he thought of kind voices reading old stories. He thought of the ease of paper boats on a Victorian pond. He thought of marzipan and weasels, of Easter on easels and trees shed of last year's leaves. Many were present then in him, and one was his brother. I will say, said he, that the lily when it blossoms is the name of four-fold ovens. But that's meaningless. No, no. Four-fold ovens and the cleverness of hands. A man with the skill of setting traps. A bird with one eye because he has been painted only in profile. We shall not let him turn, not until he has sung his supper.