Unknown - The Genius

He goes to the bathroom. It’s not hard to pee when you want to. He wads up some paper and throws it in the bowl. Then he takes a deep breath and pulls the chain, bringing a roar of water and eight seconds of freedom. He goes.

He does not stop moving until he has reached the fourth-floor landing. He tiptoes down the hall until he comes to two pairs of large, wooden doors, each carved with the family crest, separated by twenty-five feet of satiny wallpaper: the entrances to his parents’ private suites.

Behind one door, his father is talking.

David presses his ear to the door but cannot understand the conversation. The door is too heavy and thick. He must get inside. But how? He remembers that the two suites are connected by an internal passageway. If he enters one suite, he could hide in that passageway and listen. Success depends on whether he chooses the right suite to begin with. Otherwise he will walk straight into them, and he will be in hot water. He listens at the other set of carved doors. The voices sound stronger—still incomprehensible, though—leading him to conclude that his best bet is to go through Mother’s room.

His heart speeds up as he reaches for the doorknob, turns, and pushes.

It is bolted from the inside.

Now what? He scans the hallway for another option, and right away he finds one: a closet. He checks to make sure that he can fit inside. Then he goes to the door of his mother’s suite and presses the buzzer.

The voices inside cease. Footsteps approach. David scampers into the closet and closes the door. He waits in the darkness.

“Damn you,” he hears his father say, “I gave”—the snap of a deadbolt— “instructions”—the squeal of a door—”not to be—”

Silence.

The door closes.

David lets out his breath. He counts to fifty, exits the closet, and goes to the doors, which he prays his father has forgotten to lock.

He has.

In David goes, moving stealthily across the large Persian carpet. From the passageway drifts the sound of his father’s voice. His parents’ suites are enormous, consisting of many rooms—a bedchamber and a bathroom and a sitting room; drawing rooms and Father’s study … and each of those rooms is ten times as big as David’s. In Mother’s suite she keeps her own gramophone and radio, a matched set inlaid with mother-of-pearl. David knows what mother-of-pearl is because he has a toy box with mother-of- pearl on the top. When he asked Delia what it was and she told him, he thought she meant a person. He asked where she lived, Pearl’s mother who made boxes, and Delia laughed at him. Also in Mother’s suite are a grand piano and a small painted harpsichord, neither of which she plays. Atop a carved table sit three dozen glass eggs. He knows the name for them: hand coolers. He picks up a brightly colored one and indeed it helps soothe his sweaty palms. He goes barefoot into the passageway and follows the voices until he reaches the entrance to Father’s sitting room. He gets down on the ground and crawls forward, peeks out through the crack in the door. He cannot see Mother’s face, as it is obscured by a tall vase. All he can see of her is a motionless arm. Father is pacing the room and flinging his hands in every direction. David has never heard voices quite like these: angry whispering, whispers that would be shouts if they were only a bit louder.

Father is saying, “—forever.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then what do you propose. Give me a better idea and I will do it.”

“You know what I think.”

“No. No. Aside from that. I told you already, I will never—never, never— consent to that, never. Can I possibly make myself clearer?”

“I have no other suggestions. I’m already at wit’s end.”

“And I’m not? Do you imagine that this is easier for me than it is for you?”

“Not at all. Frankly, I would think that it has been a great deal more difficult for you. You are vastly more sentimental.”

Father says a word David has never heard before.

“Louis. Please.”

“You aren’t helping me.”

“What would you like me to do?”

“Help me.” Father stops pacing and stares where Mother’s face should be. He looks like he’s on fire. He points up at the ceiling. “Don’t you feel anything.”

“Stop shouting.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it too.”

“I will not have a conversation with you when you’re like this.”

“Answer me.”

“Not if you insist on sh—”

“Look, Bertha. Look up. Look. You can’t feel that? Tell me you cannot, I don’t believe that anyone has so little heart, not even you, to pretend as though you can walk around without being crushed by that weight.” Silence. “Answer me.” Silence. “You have no right to sit there and say nothing.” Silence. “Damn it, answer me.” Silence. “You do not behave like this. Not after everything I’ve given you. I’ve given you everything you’ve asked for, been exactly what you demanded—”

“Not everything, Louis. Not exactly.”

Silence of a different kind: infused with terror.

Father upends a table. Ceramic dishes and a wooden cigar box and crystal figurines sail across the room, producing a mighty crash. The glass tabletop shatters. Mother screams. In the passageway, David cringes, ready to bolt. From another place in the room comes a second, smaller shattering, and when the noise finally subsides, he hears weeping, two different rhythms in two different registers.

HE WORKS OUT THE CLUES. It takes a few days, because he has to wait until he goes to the Park with Delia in order to confirm his hunch. As they return from their walk, David counts windows and discovers that he has been wrong. The house does not have four stories. It has five.

How this could have escaped him until now, he does not know. The house is big, though, and he has often been scolded for wandering into forbidden territory. A whole wing remains off-limits, and David, generally lost in his own head, prone to long bouts of stationary dreaming, has never been one to overstep, not under threat of a whipping.

But to get to the bottom of this, he must break the rules.

The entrance to the rear wing lies through the kitchen, a place thick with steam and hazards. He has never ventured beyond the sink. Four days later, when he is supposed to be in his room, reviewing his German lesson, he sneaks downstairs. The cook is rolling dough. David straightens his backbone, puts on a bold face, and walks past him. The cook never looks up.

Through a swinging door he comes to a second room, where a pile of raw meat lies on a huge, scarred table. With its reek of fat and flesh, its spattered walls, its lakes of blood pooling round the table legs, the room exerts a queer, morbid pull, and David has to remind himself to keep moving, not to stop and examine the heavy, menacing instruments hung on the wall, the bloodstained grout …

He comes to a hallway checked black-and-white. He tries a number of doors before finding the one he wants: an alcove for the service elevator.

He gets in. Unlike the main elevator, this one has a button for a fifth floor.

As the car rises, it occurs to him to worry about who he might run into up there. If the girl is indeed there, what will he do? What if there are other people—a guard, say. Or a guard dog! His heart skips. Too late for worrying. The car bounces to a stop and the doors open.

Another hallway. Here the carpeting is loose and worn, pulling away from the walls. At the end of the hall are three doors, all closed.

The wind sings, and he looks up at a skylight. The sky is cloudy. It might rain.

He walks to the end of the hall and listens. Nothing.

He knocks softly on each of the doors. Nothing.

He tries one. It is a closet full of sheets and towels.