Samedi the Deafness (25 page)

—No, James, Grieve cried. Get away!

Her face was bruised all over, black and blue and yellow. Her dress had been ripped nearly in half.

The door slammed shut. Another man had been hidden behind it, one of Torquin's accomplices from the first day. Torquin came towards him.

—Don't try to get smart, he said.

James pulled out the pistol and leveled it at Torquin. He unlevered the safety.

—Don't, he said.

Torquin kept coming.

James gulped. The room drew in on him. Torquin swung a fist. James ducked. He stuck the gun in Torquin's face and pulled the trigger.

The gun did not go off.

Torquin was on top of him.

Furious, James tried to throw him off. They'd fixed the pistol. Of course, they'd fixed the pistol. He was such a fool.

He fell over with Torquin on top of him, but his elbow caught the bigger man in the face. Torquin rolled away, clutching his nose. James jumped up and ran for the door. The other man stood in front of it. Wielding the pistol like a tomahawk, James swung at the man's head. The man threw up his hand, but was too slow. The heavy pistol butt caught him above the eye, and he dropped to the ground like a sack of flour. James turned. Torquin was rising.

James opened the door and ran out. There was nothing to do now but find Grieve and escape.

It was a long, far distance down the well, a long distance down the slope beside it. Who would build a well at the top of a steep and narrow hill? thought James. He seated himself with his small back square against the well's wall, took out a small wooden figure, and began to carve. And off before him the whole of that country.

Yes, once I touched her face, my Cecily's. We had gone into a sett, for we had observed the badger on his way elsewhere, wherever badgers go in early hours. Down into the sett on hand and knee, along a warm tunnel, and then in the dim fastness she was beside me, and we lay close together, still, our faces touching. We lay so long I do not think the rest has any bearing, all this life since. I mean to say, I am still lying there, and feel about me as much the brown-kept walls of the sett as I do this light of afternoon.

Down one hall, then another. Grieve had told him where her room was, on the landing below her father's suite. He took the stairs two at a time. He reached her door, no. 3. It was unlocked. He went in,

and instantly was struck by how much it reminded him of her. Some people have rooms that are consumed by utility, others by elegance or decoration. Hers reflected clearly some essential part of her character. It was a fine room, thought James, looking at the bed, which was built into the wall like children's beds in old Scandinavian drawings. Scenes of animals, trees and plants, flowers and stars, had been carved by hand into the walls, and stood there in relief.

On racks her clothes hung. And on the table, a rovnin set.

Then he remembered why he had come.

He looked around the room for signs that she had been there recently. The basin before the mirror bore traces of water. And in the basket by the door there was a note.

Come in fifteen minutes. The nasturtium room. I have something to say to everyone.

Damn it, thought James. The nasturtium room? He went out the door warily. But no one was outside. Plainly, he had lost Torquin in the halls.

A nurse was coming up the stairs. James pulled the bell out of his pocket and rang it. She froze. They counted slowly to fifteen.

—Where is the nasturtium room? asked James.

—Second staircase, third landing, fifth room from the end.

James thanked her.

When as a boy, he went often to the trees
where he could not be found

he thought of his owl, who had one day ceased to join him, ceased to go about on his shoulder. This is the trouble, he had realized, the trouble with an invisible owl. When he does not care to come, he cannot be found. So then there were two of them that could not be found, he and the owl, and though they were not beside each other in truth, they were beside each other in this.

The saddest thing, of course, and he cut it with a knife into the bough of the tree in which he sat:

Ansilon was pledged to be his only friend. Now he might never have another, and he had lost the first.

And he thought too that Ansilon most probably had not gone away on purpose, but had become lost in a storm or a fire. He pictured the little owl's tiny form on the forest floor. Would it have, he wondered, become visible at last in death?

He went through the house, looking around each corner before attempting passage. Soon he was up the stairs and before the door of the nasturtium room. His hands were trembling. He listened at the door, and this is what he heard.

—. . . and so there's nothing else to be done?

—Nothing except to wait and go into the bunker. We have all been waiting some time, I know. But we must only wait one more day.

The first voice had sounded like Carlyle's. The second was Stark's.

Stark spoke again.

—You all must remember that what we do is a gift. It is a difficult gift, but a necessary one. Henceforth such gifts must be occasionally be made, or history will not flow as it should. No longer do we allow rivers to go where they like. We dam them, we lay them into canals, we run them through pipes, and take of them in our living rooms. Why then should history, should the course of events be left loose like an untended line?

There was quiet in the room. A long pause. Stark began to speak again, but his voice had changed slightly, as voices do when reading from a book.

—All our learned teachers and educators are agreed that children do not know why they want what they want; but no one is willing to believe that adults too, like children, wander about this earth in a daze and, like children, do not know where they come from or where they are going, act as rarely as they do according to genuine motives, and are as thoroughly governed as they are by biscuits and cake and the rod. And yet it seems palpably clear to me.

Another pause then.

—Men govern each other not through regimes, not through dynasties. These are the housekeepers of history. They tidy up eras, and maintain ideas that have been made for them by other, better men. Who are those who truly govern history? The makers of the great religions, the greatest of the scientists, the greatest of the theorists. It is by thought alone that history is altered. By thought, and by its commensurate physical example.

James tried to understand what it was Stark meant. He seemed to want what he was saying to be understood by his children. It mattered to him that the world continue. Whatever he does, thought James, is at least done with good intention.

At that moment, James was struck from behind with a blackjack. He dropped useless to the ground. As his vision swam, he saw two figures standing over him: Torquin and the maid, Grieve. She was holding the blackjack and her face was clear and pale, not bruised at all.

James came to in Stark's chamber. He recognized first the painted glass above. Then he smelled a smell he knew: Grieve's skin. She was beside him. She smiled down, and as he looked up at her, she touched her ear with her hand and winked. He nodded.

—Has he woken? asked a voice.

It sounded very far away.

He could hear Grieve reply. She sounded far away, too, but he could feel her hand on his arm.

—Yes, I think so.

The voices came closer together, in a pair, winding and intertwining. He thought of colors in a string, and how light wasn't really what they said, wasn't really a ray, but more a substance, like water, that could be gathered and kept.

—James, James.

Grieve was shaking him.

He opened his eyes again.

—Hello, he said.

—I'm sorry, said a woman's voice. I hit him a bit harder than I should have.

—Next time, said a man, you leave that to me.

—Yes, said Stark. Leave all knocking down of people to Torquin. He is our expert.

—Some expert, said the woman, who he realized was Grieve.

They had really tricked him, he thought, making her up like she'd been knocked around.

—Hey, you, hey.

It was his Grieve now.

—Wake up.

He could feel her lift him up. He drew a breath and opened his eyes again. He looked across the room. Stark was there, and Grieve, the maid, and Torquin.

She mustn't have been a maid at all.

But why would they send me the note about Estrainger? That didn't make any sense. And then he remembered: that note had not been in the pillowcase like the others. It had been under the door. Someone else must have given it to him. Then he remembered the servant who had told him not to trust Grieve. Oh, he should have listened to him. What had he said? Something mean. All along he'd conducted himself in the worst possible way, never thinking about the consequences of things, or who was behind what.

He leaned back against Grieve. Stark had come over and stood now in front of him. He was a large man, especially in that overcoat.

—Why are you going to do it? he asked Stark.

It was a useless question. He knew the answer.

—Come now, said Stark. You've read that book, the one you took down from the ceiling. There's no need for further speech.