Jesse Ball - Samedi the Deafness

All this time he had been so sure something was going on. They'd just been fooling him. He would have to come up with a new plan for himself. It was no good being here. He would have to leave the country. Could he go to his firm for help? He wondered how far they would extend themselves for him. After all, they had a lot to lose by helping an accused criminal. The business ran on its reputation alone. No, they would not help him. He felt sure of it.

I could try to leave by myself, he thought. But who would drive the car? He wished that Grieve had not cheated on him. She had been so wonderful. He remembered what she had said about leaving the country together. How fine that would have been. He pulled the grass up with his fingers. The autumn had already yellowed it. The grass was all dying, all withering.

He stood up again. He would stay here as long as he had to. But he would have nothing to do with Grieve.

He went back into the house. Down the hall, he saw her. She must have come looking for him. She turned. She saw him too. He ducked down another hall. The last thing he wanted was to speak with her now.

Down this hall was the room where they played rovnin. He could hear voices. He opened the door and went in.

The young James undertook then a description of his own circumstances.

I am young, he wrote.

My youth is still before me. I live in a fine house among genial, indeed kindly, outspoken hills and dales. My mother is perished. My father as well. Did I have a brother? I did, but he was drowned by a felon. Who keeps me? An old couple, claiming to be my grandparents. I do not understand what this means, and so I cannot examine for myself the truth of their claims. Instead I go silent at supper or stare mornings through glassed windows and thinly paneled doors.

On bright days I go to play in the fields. If it is early and the sun is convincing, I go to the woods, where a darker watch is kept and mosses conspire with badgers' wakes and the tresses of muskrats. Believe me, I tell them, and they do. How many times I have been admitted to their companionship only to wake at the wood's edge with dusk laying a street over the hills, a street like a Roman road, stone for centuries, and myself beneath the hills, spurred by the touch of strange cloth.

And Cecily, and sometimes Cecily. Sometime-Cecily, sometimes she comes in and out the trees from that far house. We never arrange to meet, and never speak as though we've seen each other ever before. She holds my hands and I hold hers and we climb the climbingest trees and lie out upon thick branches. She says small things in small ways and talks mostly of the season and the coming night. She draws with her thin hands on the surface of water, and I swear to her — she makes me swear — that I can see the things she draws, though she never asks me what, and I would never say.

McHale and Graham were playing. James came over. They nodded to him. He sat. It was soon clear that they were both very skillful. The first man had not been lying about James having a miserable standing in the house. The whole thing was very surprising. He hadn't even met anyone in years who knew what the game was, and now he was in the midst of a slew of experts. Had they all been playing together for years? He supposed that it was so, and lost himself in the game, watching as move by move they interlaced their objectives, their assaults, defenses. Clearly McHale was the better of the two, but Graham was allowing nothing. There was a knock at the door, three knocks.

— Come in, said Graham.

The door opened. Grieve was standing there. Her face was covered in tears.

— James, she said. Come talk with me.

James turned his back on her.

— James, she said.

Graham and McHale had turned to stare at them.

— Come with me. Come talk with me.

— I won't, said James. Leave me alone.

Grieve burst out crying again and ran out of the room.

Graham and McHale exchanged glances. McHale got up.

— We can finish later, he said.

He gave James a disapproving look, and hurried off after Grieve.

Graham and James were left then together in the room.

— What was that? asked Graham.

James rubbed his forehead.

— I caught her cheating on me this morning, in bed with some man, someone from the hospital.

Graham's face had a puzzled look.

— I saw Carlyle earlier, he said carefully. He told me about this. He said he'd told you it wasn't Grieve; it was her sister.

He too seemed disapproving.

— You have to be gentle with Grieve, he said. She's very attached to you. You can't go doing this to her.

— It wasn't her sister, said James. Her sister is six years older and looks nothing like her; that's what Stark said.

Graham narrowed his eyes.

— Stark said that to you?

— Yes, said James. He also told me you've all been trying to trick me into thinking you're part of the conspiracy Estrainger was part of.

Graham drummed his fingers on the table and thought for a moment.

— James, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but. .

At that moment, a maid poked her head through the open door.

— Sir, she said to Graham. There's a man at the door, says he's a detective.

— Oh, dear, said Graham. This again.

He got up and left without a word.

An Addition to the Record

They permit me, these wards of mine, to go out where I will. They do not require school of me. They give me things, a butcher knife, a javelin, the poems of Keats in leather miniature. I say these to myself, my feet in water off the old dock. Grandfather says it was once an ocean, that all the plains and this were once beneath water. I look upward then through the water to the sky beyond. The only safety, I suppose, is to build one's house upon a mountaintop.

Do people who live on mountaintops live forever? Or only nearly so?

James returned to his room. Grieve had gone. Some of her things were still there, however, a dress laid over the back of a chair, a handbag, a notebook.

He picked up the notebook and opened it.

It had just been begun the day before. There was only one entry.

I can't believe how wonderful he is. The others like him, and it seems even he and my father get along. I'm looking forward so much now to this life. I have so many things to tell him. He doesn't mind my odd habits, my lying. I knew when I saw him in the diner. I knew we would be right.

James put the notebook down. There was more, but he didn't read on. He felt awful. Could it have been true? Graham seemed like he had been about to tell James that Stark was lying to him. But then he had gone.

James saw that a note had been slipped underneath the door. He must have walked over it when he came in.

He went over and picked up the note.

Three days ago, Estrainger came to the house. I was told to go and tell Stark that he was here. I did. Then Stark gave me a note to bring to Estrainger. It was a strange note. I copied it down to show you. It said:

Overthrows that are necessary cannot occur easily; secret plots must unfold of themselves, unconscious, like the multitudinous fan of a peacock. And like the peacock, it is never certain of the toll its passing has taken in the world. We must all die unconscious of the good, the evil we have done. That's why there's only hope, hope beyond good and evil.

When I gave it to Estrainger, he went away. I thought nothing of it, and decided not to show you this. But then Estrainger killed himself. And now, Stark has tricked you again. You can't believe them. Do you know the story of the kingdom of foxes? A man goes to live in the kingdom of foxes and he survives only by believing that which is not told him.