Jesse Ball: The Lesson

Of course, in this case, it happened that the boy arrived, and she had seen that he would come and left the note that he might enter on his own. And now there he was, standing in the doorway, and his mind too was on the box.

— You may pick it up, she said. But be careful.

He went to the table, to the top of which he could barely reach. She reached out and got hold of him under his armpits, and with great effort tried to lift him up. She got him partway up but then dropped him back down and sank herself to a knee and then sat flat on the floor.

— Are you all right?

— I’m, I’ll be fine. Just, give me a second.

She managed to find her feet and went out of the room. In a few minutes she returned with a stool. He clambered up onto the stool, and from there to the table, where he sat on the edge. Then he took ahold of the box and moved it towards himself.

This in itself was a rather tumultuous event for Loring, as the box had not been moved since Ezra placed it there. She never permitted herself to touch it, not wanting to know what it weighed, or whether the contents shook.

Stan leaned over the box and examined it closely. It was made of dark ebon wood, and hardly any grain was perceptible. It was about the size of a hat box — large, in fact. Almost anything could be in there.

He looked at Loring. She was making a gesture that she often made, pressing the tips of her fingers in turn with the thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand.

— Can we open it?

Loring shook her head. The boy sitting there, holding the box, hovering over it; with his corduroy pants and clean white shirt, his small scrunched face and unkempt hair, he bent and swelled in her mind’s eye. It was very hard to look at him, and she imagined so much what he might be, or had been. His voice was not entirely the voice of a child. But was this just because he was a prodigy? But why was he a prodigy, and why had he come to her?

— What do you know about my husband? she asked.

Tilting his face like the moon-shaped window on the stair, the boy earnestly answered,

— He lived in this house. He was better at chess than you or I. He would stand for long periods of time; he preferred not to sit. I don’t believe that would be very comfortable. Do you?

— It is not comfortable, said Loring. What else do you know?

— He gave you this box?

— I didn’t tell you that.

— What is this? Did you put it here?

— Wax. No, I didn’t.

— Hmmmm. Did someone else then, not him, give you the box? Do you think he would have been a good teacher to have, if he was the one here, and you had died?

— No, said Loring. He wasn’t really a good teacher at all. He never had any idea why he did things. Let’s go downstairs.

Remember, of course, that there are many sorts of houses. In some houses, more things can happen than in others. In certain, special houses, virtually anything at all can happen. If you have perhaps at some time been in a house of this sort, then you will know exactly what I mean. One feels an enlarging of the self in these places — because our personalities, our selves, border on the possible, and when the possible grows, well, so then do we.

Of course, it should be clear by now that this house, no. 32 Oaken Lane, was such a place.

— I have a question.

— Yes?

— Will you read to me from one of these books?

He was standing by a large bookshelf in the hall. Loring had gone on ahead into the parlor.

— I can’t see all the titles, it is too dark.

— There is no light in the hall, said Loring. It was an idea my husband had — that halls should only be lit by light coming through doors. I still hold to it.

— How about this one? asked the boy.

He started to pull out a large volume, and it began to tip. It was far too heavy for him, and it fell heavily, splaying open.

The page it opened to had an illustration of a vulture sitting in a barber’s chair. Beside the picture it said, the history of barbers is the history of blood and hair.

— I haven’t read this book, said Loring. That’s something to know: owning books is not the same as having read them, although I suppose for some people it is.

— I have read all the books that I own, said Stan, and some that my parents have.

— Perhaps this one, said Loring.

She took down a thin book from a high shelf. It was called The Hour Is Late & Therefore Early. The author was C. P. Dodds.

— I believe you will enjoy this, she said.

— Why do you close your eyes so much when I am here?

— I am trying to hear what you’re saying, she said. Very carefully, I am trying.

— Would it help for me to speak louder?

— No, no.

She laughed.

— I can hear you perfectly well. I am simply trying to hear exactly what you’re saying. It’s not easy, you know, to pay real attention to what people say. It isn’t always exact the same as the words they are saying.

— Your eyes are closed right now.

She opened her eyes.

— We will now play one game, and then I will read from this book a little. But, you mustn’t tell your parents that we are reading. That is not why they are sending you here.

The boy put his finger over his lips.

So it was that a portion of their bargain was fulfilled: before the day was through, the boy would be read to, which apparently was what he wanted. They played a game of chess, and he lost, this time miserably. Perhaps it was that she simply tried a bit more than usual, or perhaps he was thinking of something else. In any case, it was a disapproving look that Loring gave him, and he appeared to feel it keenly.

— Let’s read in the kitchen, said Loring. That was another of Ezra’s rules, that the kitchen is a good place for reading aloud. Whether it is true or not, or whether it was just so for him and for me, is something else.

— I am ready to be read to in the kitchen.

— Well, good, let’s go then.

And so into the kitchen they went. To get there, one proceeds down the dark hall (for although it is day, all the shutters are closed), to the very end, where there is a quick right turn and then a left. One opens a door and goes into the pantry, a small room, and through the pantry into the kitchen, which occupies the rear of the house.

Loring remembered a poem about kitchens that went like this:

Let me die in a kitchen,

Where bread is baking,

and the hour is nigh to three.

For in the marshes,

a little house goes running

on long legs,

and I begin to remember

the places I have been

when things are newly made.

One might say, and I cannot object, that this is not really a poem about kitchens. But it mentions a kitchen, and does so in the very first line.

Where the table was, in relation to the pantry, one could not see beneath it, but a child might.

What a child would see is this: a trap door !

How that had come to be there no one could say, but both Ezra and Loring had dearly loved it. It led to the basement of the house, which, behind, projected out of a hill, and so was an alternate first floor on one side. That room will not be discussed at this time, but it is there the trapdoor led. If Stan saw it, he said nothing.

And indeed, it is quite likely that he did not see it, for there was little light in the room. That is the first thing Loring set about fixing, for as she would have said, if asked, another of Ezra’s rules was that one ought not be in a dark kitchen, as it tempts fate.