Jesse Ball: The Lesson

A man in the background was holding a donkey.

— That’s Glisseau there, sneaking into the picture. He had a sense of humor, too, of course, and liked being in his own pictures.

— I haven’t been photographed, said Stan.

— That is probably not true, said Loring.

She turned another page. There, Ezra was standing with a very beautiful girl in a garland of flowers who was giving him some kind of plate covered in gold. It was raining very heavily in the photograph and the crowd before them bristled with umbrellas. The girl was very wet and laughing. She had committed her whole self to this enterprise of giving him the gold plate. Ezra had no expression whatsoever on his face.

— This is when he won the tournament at Viso.

— Do you think I look at all like him? asked Stan. I would like to look like that.

Loring was looking deeper and deeper into the photograph. Her voice came again, very quiet.

— Viso was a sort of gambit tournament, sponsored by an industrialist. The man, Dubuffet, a napkin-maker, or was it roof tiles, I can’t recall, he fancied himself a skillful player, and had come up with a move in an opening line. No one played it because it was terrible, and he didn’t like that, so what do you think he did? What would you do in that situation?

— Think of another move.

— Well, he liked his move, so he made a big prize fund and set up a tournament in which the players had to alternate taking black and white and playing this same sequence every game. Unfortunately for some of the players, the resulting positions didn’t favor their proclivities. But Ezra enjoyed dubious play in open tournaments. He would play solidly against strong players, but in the opening rounds, he’d often sac unnecessarily. To him it was a joy to see terrific imbalances — he liked nothing better than to have three minor pieces for a queen, if it could be managed. Of course, he would only do such a thing if the pawn structure favored it.

Stan nodded a little uncertainly.

— We have that golden plate upstairs somewhere. Trophies are rather odious, though, and terrible to look at. Especially a golden dish, of all things. Better to just pawn it.

She laughed.

The sound of a crowd came closer suddenly, although it had not been there at all. Suddenly it was there, perhaps ten children and a teacher: a class, out for a walk from the nearby school.

— That is Miss Carnaugh. She is very strict, I hear, said Loring, peering under her hand. Perhaps you will have her as a teacher someday.

— I don’t believe I will go to school, said Stan. I wouldn’t like it.

— Your mother says you will.

The students appeared to be ten or eleven. They were playing some trust game where the students would fall from things and be caught, or get wrapped up in a bag and dragged around and then released.

— I have never understood these games, said Loring. I don’t know why you would want to make children more trusting. That is their principle fault to begin with.

— What do you mean?

Loring shook her head.

And with that, they went back to the house.

Just then, a man was coming out of the house next door.

— I’m sorry to bother you, he said. But I believe this is yours. It was brought to our house yesterday and my daughter accepted the delivery. Of course, she shouldn’t have; it isn’t ours at all. But she did. In any case, here it is now for you.

He handed a long, flat package to Loring.

— Thank you, she said.

If the man was not a mortician, then it is impossible to say anything about him; he spoke soberly and quietly, dressed somberly, made persistent but nonconfrontational eye contact, and wore bifocals. His hair cut was so vague as to be indescribable. In general, one wouldn’t be wrong to mention that he gave the comforting effect of a tree branch.

— Shall we open the package? asked Stan.

— Inside.

They set the package (which was very light) on the floor of the parlor. A scissors was to hand. But first:

The package was not addressed to Loring. As anyone could see, the exterior was entirely blank. Why the man would have thought that it was destined for Loring was a fact completely unexplainable. They might as well open it, then, to see.

Open it they did. Loring handed the scissors to Stan. The boy proceeded to cut here and there enthusiastically. He soon had one end undone, then the other. He put the scissors down and unfolded the cardboard. Inside was the single wing of a large bird.

— But what can it mean? mused Loring.

— What will you do with it?

— Quite right, Stan. What will we do with it?

— It would be a good prize in a contest.

— A jumping contest, said Loring. For people who fall out of planes and survive.

— Do people survive that? asked Stan.

— From time to time. We can call it the Daedalus prize.

She put it back in the box.

— Stick this in the closet for me, Stan. Thank you.

— Did you ask the man to deliver that wing? asked Stan.

He sat on the floor and stared up at Loring, who sat in the chair. They were in the middle of talking about pawn formations.

— Of course, she said. I thought it would be good for you, once in your life, to open a package and find something that you could never predict. It will change how you open packages from now on. The delivery of the package: that was today’s lesson.

— Like all swindlers, Ezra loved magicians, most especially those who escaped from bonds: handcuffs, ropes, boxes, etc. And make no mistake, Ezra was a swindler, even though he was a great master. He made terrible moves all the time! It’s just that it was hard for his opponents to see. But a magic show, have you seen such a performance?

They had been talking about Ezra for the past hour, with Stan asking questions of every sort, and Loring answering. The boy had apparently gotten a biography from someone and was reading it with the help of his oldest sister.

— I haven’t ever been to a show, he said, with as much sadness as he could muster.

— Well, in these, the magician, usually a man, is bound so he can’t possibly get out, and then, miraculously, he does. I am going to read to you from an account written by one such magician. He was a very good one, but they locked him up, and while he was in jail he wrote this book. As soon as he was done, he escaped.

— Did he stay escaped?

— He was stabbed in his sleep by the father of a girl he had taken in. He bled to death while trying to crawl out of the building. It was a boarding house with very long hallways. They rarely make buildings with hallways like that anymore. I suppose they are hazardous, at least for people who have been stabbed.

— All right, said Stan, a bit confused.

— Shall we start?

— Yes.

Stan curled up into something like the shape of a rabbit.

Loring opened a small square volume, shaped to look like a toffee box. One side unlocked, and then the flap opened and the pages might be turned. She rustled about in there for a minute or two before finding the passage she wanted.

— When one is dying, it is easy to grow fearful. And can it be called anything else but dying — being handcuffed, sewn into a bag that is then wrapped in chains and thrown into a river? The first minute, there is tremendous urgency. One feels one must struggle to escape, one tries as hard as one can, even in the smallest things: to grip the lock pick between two knuckles, pointing backwards, to use the slightest bit of razor to cut the bag. But in the second minute, and in the third, time stretches out. One feels no urgency at all, just a drifting lethargic sadness. This is the feeling of parting, and it grows on one as the breath slowly fails in the lungs. One begins to believe that one is saying goodbye — but if it happens that one believes too much, then that’s the end. Then the onlookers can dredge the river for a dead man chained up in a sack. But, if one can believe, in the midst of all that sadness, all that leave-taking, that a small thing and another small thing, each carefully, correctly done, will lead to escape…such a person may be called an escape artist, and for him there is always the tiniest bit of hope.