Jesse Ball: The Lesson

— There will be, he said, only one feat today.

He pulled a lever in the wall, and section of the ceiling opened. A gallows descended and took up the entire stage. I am going to be hanged by the neck until I am unconscious. Then, I will free myself with the aid of birds and music. At the end of the performance, I will remain alive.

He snapped his fingers.

The doorman hurried over and handed Loring and Stan a couple handbills.

They read:

1. Hanged by the neck

2. Freed by divine intervention

3. Remains, therefore, Alive

— First, said Menduus, I am going to meditate. My assistant will tie my hands at some point, and the show will begin in truth.

He sat down on the stage with his back to them. The import of his costume was suddenly clear — it was the garb of a convict. The assistant had donned executioner’s robes. The lights dimmed.

Stan grabbed Loring’s hand.

— I am so excited, he said. Do you think he will do it?

— I haven’t the slightest idea, said Loring, what on earth will happen.

She looked down at Stan and thought, wrap your arms tightly around yourself and rock back and forth. Do this the whole performance.

Stan, beside her, he wrapped his arms around himself. He began to rock back forth.

The bell rang again. The executioner dragged Menduus to his feet, and pulled him up the stairs of the gallows. At the top, they reached the rope, which lay flat on the trapdoor. The executioner bound Menduus’s hands behind his back with a smaller rope. He lifted the noose and set it around the old man’s neck, then tightened it until it stood on its own, stiff in a line, back and up towards the window.

He stepped away from Menduus, who stood with eyes shut, muttering to himself.

— He isn’t ready, said Stan. He doesn’t look ready.

The executioner knelt and took hold of the trapdoor switch. He looked to Menduus, then out into the audience.

— It is earned and it is given, he intoned, and he pulled the switch.

Out dropped the floor, down fell Menduus. The rope jerked tight, and he hung there, hanged, before them, feet jerking back and forth, body taut as a rictus grin. A spasm of the body, another, and then it was still.

One moment, then another.

Stan gasped. He was crying. He was holding his body with his arms and rocking back and forth, and crying.

Loring could scarcely look at him. Her eyes were on the stage.

For of a sudden, the hanged man’s arms had come unbound. His arms came around, one from the left and one from the right, and in his right hand he held a flute.

He hung by the rope and with the flute he began to play. It was a light melody, a song of fields and dew, of starlight — something like the bubbling of a creek, or the patter of rain. The song swelled, and it was darker now, more insistent. The color was that of courts, of troubadors. He was calling now. What was he calling for?

A fluttering of wings behind them. A powerful stirring of wings, and then two birds, overhead. They circled the room, they circled the room and they dove. Between them was a line of metal, a wire of sorts. It was razor sharp and they dove, holding it between them, they dove beneath the gallows, one on each side of Menduus, and severed the hanging rope.

The magician dropped to the ground, landing nimbly on his feet. He blew a last salute to the pair, who disappeared into the darkness, and bowed to his awestruck audience.

Loring jumped to her feet, and Stan as well. They were both clapping and clapping. Loring called out,

— You are a prince among men!

— I have been told that, said Menduus, bowing once more.

He called his assistant on stage, and they bowed together. Then he went away and out a door in the back. The assistant stood watching them.

— It’s over, he said. You can go. But you mustn’t speak of it.

— Oh, I won’t, said Loring.

— I didn’t mean you.

— I know, said Stan. Not a word.

The assistant let them out the front door, which was much nearer the bus station. It was only four-thirty, but the bus was already waiting for them.

— I was about to leave, said the driver, but then I saw you coming.

Loring sat with a cup of tea and her head in her hands, drinking in this one thing: her eyes sidelong seeing the boy rocking, with knit cap and brown quilted coat. It was so nearly there. She could so nearly feel Ezra’s life in the boy. But it flickered. It was there and gone. A lilt to a particular vowel, an angle to the face. She counted on her hands all the things she longed for, and there was simply one. One thing — to have the freshness of that first encounter once again when she had seen him in the boy.

— I will see you again, she said to herself. I know I will.

was to give Stan some sheets of paper on which she’d written things Ezra had said. Read these, she said, if you would be like him. These are the sorts of things he would say. And here is how he would say them. She had set him up on the floor and show him how he would stand. This is how he would stand, she had said. This is where he would like while he spoke. I will see you in a week, she said. In a week, we will have our next visit.

Loring had left the door open this time.

The mother let Stan run up the stairs and into the house, and she went off into her own day, and whether she heard the door shut or not, who can say?

For Stan closed it, and went into the parlor, and that is where we go, to where Loring is waiting, her eyes radiant.

— In our game, she said, I am going to call you Ezra.

He set down his things.

— Yes, dear, he said.

— In our game, I am going to take you places in the house. There we will do things to see how they are, to see how they feel. Do you know what I mean?

Raise your hand to your cheek, she thought. Brush at something that isn’t there.

He raised his hand to cheek. He brushed at something that wasn’t there.

— We won’t play chess today, she said. That was something we used to do. We don’t do that anymore.

— No we don’t, he said. We are through with that.

They walked hand in hand through the house. They walked in the kitchen. She led him there.

She said,

— You are getting old. You are almost as old as I am.

— I feel old, he said.

She laid her hand on his cheek. It was cold.

— I don’t see you where you are, she said. I think about where you will be.

— I am a long way from where I was when I first came.

She took a book down from a shelf in the kitchen. In it were old photographs.

— Do you know who this is? she asked.

— That’s James Len.

— And that?

— That’s Myra Lossen.

— What house is that?

— That’s the house on Faring Road where you broke your arm.

— And how did I break it?

— I broke it.

— How did you break it?

— We were cutting down a tree. I cut off the branch and it landed on your arm. It was an accident.

— And you were sorry. What did you do?

— I bought you a yellow flower every day for seven years, and we kept the dead ones. At the end of it, we burned them all in a fire, and laughed that your arm was good as new.

Loring led Stan into the hall. She led him up the stairs.

— I have clothing for you here, she said.

Laid out on the bed was a full set of clothing.

— But you, said Stan. You must change too.

He went to the closet and opened it. He found a dress, a pale dress with lace at the edges. He found gloves and he found a veil.

— These, he said, these you should wear.