The Curfew (14 page)

ACT THREE: to be conducted by LOTTERY of MEMORY.

The curtain sweeps open. The veiled jester is again upon his floor of clouds.

—I shall explain, he says. It will all soon be clear.

Each time he speaks with a different voice. Now he speaks with the voice of a scholarly nun calling a pupil to task.

—Molly. Molly! Come here.

Molly comes out from the side of the stage. Her tail is very long and gray. She walks on her hind legs and wears very delicately embroidered clothing. Her feet are clad in dancing slippers.

—Will you say a few words for the audience?

*There are certain days that shape a person’s life because they change a person’s understanding about what is possible in a day. This is why it is very important, for instance, as a child, to visit the house of a talented painter. I am speaking of a man or a woman who lives alone, knows no one, and paints while rivers and streams pass effortlessly in the vicinity unimpeded in a country of small bridges, lamps, and messages delivered by hand. My father brought me in secret to such a woman. She lived in the country and, being a hermit, was undetected by the revolution’s machinery. Her house was a series of cottages linked by little paths through the woods. She would sit and watch the light as a hunter watches a deer path—for days before she would act. And then, all at once, the circumstances imprinted upon the paper as if stamped with inked steel. Her work was all shadows and faint colors. My father said she was his violin teacher. She did not play the violin, or any other instrument, and, in fact, could not speak. Here is the painting she gave to me.

Molly opens the secret chamber of a brooch and takes out a square of paper. It unfolds eight times. From the side of the theater, an enormous magnifying glass draws out and slips into place.

One by one the members of the audience rise from their seats and inspect the painting. Molly gazes a long time. The shading, the shadows, the fragile hues: all as she remembered. It is a painting of a collapsed building. Underneath a shattered floor, someone has built a fire. That person’s back is to us, and he is reading a tiny leather book. The book is open on the palm of his hand.

Even the words of the book are visible, and these say:

Your trials will one day finish. You are young and will outlive your torturers
.

CURTAIN

The audience returns to its seats.

THE CURTAIN SWEEPS OPEN

—It was a lovely day and it began well. There was a vendor selling nuts at the edge of the escarpment. They climbed past the ruined fortifications and walked on grassy ridges where small bushes claimed sovereignty. Ants ran like mice about their feet. They were ants! Ants dressed as mice. And in this, the machinery of the puppet show reveals its hand.

William and Molly come out onto the stage. She moves hesitantly. She is young yet, and somewhat fearful. William holds her hand firmly in his own, and is careful when shutting doors to be sure her tail is all the way through.

Up the slope of the fort they go, and there indeed is the nut vendor. They buy nuts and walk some distance to the shade of a single tree. There are ants, then, with little bits of fur glued to their carapace, that scurry about on the stage.

*Do you think, says Molly to her father, that this fortress repelled any grand attacks? Or was it always just landscape without human function?

—Look around for bones, says William. Then you’d know.

*Not if they were very neat about caring for their dead.

—There is no agency of neatness capable of finding all the casualties after a battle, declaims William.

Reaching behind the tree, Molly produces a long bone. A fateful impression comes over her. Even when this bone was the leg of a man, it nevertheless was awaiting its intended use. It was privy to this knowledge from the beginning.

William takes out a little knife. He holds the bone gently on his knee and sets to carving. He carves awhile and then rubs delicately with a small gray cloth and then carves awhile more. He is very fine in his motions, as if he has done this before. This is one of his talents—to appear accomplished when just beginning.

Molly runs about.

He presents the bone finally to Molly. On it is a long series of arcane directions.

—This is how to find a thing we hid, your mother and I. Keep it safe. These directions will not be accurate for another fifteen years. Then they will lead you straight where you need to go.

Molly tucks the bone under her arm. William hefts her up onto his shoulder and, taking the bag of nuts under one arm, walks homeward.

CURTAIN

A chair has been continually scraping. Molly turns around. It is a large pheasant puppet in a topcoat. He looks Molly right in the eye and sniffs.

She waves to Mrs. Gibbons. The pheasant is removed immediately.

Despite her quick action, Mrs. Gibbons appears somehow complicit.

AND

OH

HOW

TIME

HAS

PASSED!

A beautiful day, as anyone can see. The light is shining with brave intensity upon the springtime. Molly is older now, and walking ahead of William. She is signing out her multiplication tables and he is nodding or correcting as needed. They pass along the set, and as they do, the set itself changes. First they are in one street, then another. Time passes. The angle of the sun shifts. They arrive at the gates to the cemetery. William unlocks the gate with a long key that hangs like a sword from his belt. In they go. He intends to show her many of the epitaphs he has written. The paths in the cemetery are long and winding. The trees are ancient and well cared for. Moss abounds. Weeping willows are used judiciously to separate sections and give meaning to various points of prominence. Obelisks are strictly banned, or were at some point in the distant past. Those few that are evident predate the ban. They are so old that they can no longer be read. Their greatness shines no light on the ones they were meant to memorialize.

—Here, says William, is one of the very first I did.

A small stone, surrounded by tree stumps.

Elinor Gast

Drowned
.

Molly stares at the stone for a long time.

—It wasn’t true, actually, says William. She died of a heart attack. Her husband felt it would be exciting for the both of them, however, if the stone said
drowned
. It was his idea, entirely. That’s what really established the tone of my epitaphry.

*And the next?

—Over here.

They cross a little bridge over a stream and come to a grove of sycamores. The entire Eldritch family in rows and circles.

*Let me see if I can find it, signs Molly.

She goes around from grave to grave. Finally, she shakes her hand up and down.

She and William inspect the stone together. It reads:

ELDRITCH

Mara Colin

A short, hurtful dream
.

*Who exactly did you speak to about this one?

—The husband’s father, an extremely old man.

*He didn’t care for his daughter-in-law?

William pats Molly affectionately on the shoulder.

—You could say that.

They hold hands and continue through the cemetery. The figure of the veiled jester can be seen watching them from behind a distant tree.

Now they are passing under a ridge of pines. There are small pink stones, roughly square, with little crosses blooming from their tops. Molly pauses and kneels by them. Her tail wraps around one. There is a sound from across the cemetery, the ringing of church bells. Her ears perk up.

—Soldiers, all, says William. Dead in the same blast of gunfire.

And indeed they had all died on the same day.

—But this isn’t my work, says William. Long before my time.

Up the next hill they go. There at the top is a little stone house. In the house, a marble bench and a bare window. The window looks out across a stretch of the cemetery and the river. Part of the old city wall is visible where it once ran.

*Ignazio Porro, who invented prism binoculars
.

—That’s right. I believe that’s actually true.

There is a stone sculpture of a pair of binoculars on the floor near the window.

Molly tries to pick them up. They won’t budge.

—Come on.

—Do you know, says William, when I was a young man I expected that I would never marry.

*Not ever?

—Not even your mother, said William. But your mother, you know, she was always asking me to go with her walking in rainstorms. It was her very favorite thing to do, to feel the rain and see the flashing of lightning.
They are hiding in their houses, see them
, she would say.

And we would go on running over the canal, and there was a song she would shout out.

William’s voice trails away. He is speaking, but the sound has gone.

As they exit the little house, a face peers in from the other side. It is the jester. Molly and her father leave the stage. The jester climbs in the window.

—Molly, he says. Molly. They are all asleep. Look around.

Molly looks behind her. Sure enough, the puppets in the audience are all sleeping. Some have fallen off their chairs. The heads of others lounge oddly upon their chests. Mrs. Gibbons is dozing in the corner.

Molly signs:

*It means nothing. Continue.

The puppet stares at her without understanding.

She writes on a piece of paper:

*CONTINUE.

The puppet laughs.

CURTAIN

Molly is thinking about trees. Her tail curls and uncurls.

*What remains of a tree in a violin?!

—That’s the permission, he says—but it is not in
every
violin.

*Nor perhaps, says Molly carelessly, in every tree.

To the south there is a passage of birds, thin but stretching on. Molly tears at the grass with her hands and the smell is thick and fresh. They are in the shade, these two, and never farther from the world.

—Yes, says William. It is farther than it seems.

They pass along a way through elms and with leaping on the roots of enormous maples—such and soon they are in another place.

Yes, Molly and her father are sitting in a dell, surrounded by pale brown stones.

—This is your mother’s family, says William.

The stones are all in a different language.

*What do they mean?

—I don’t know, says William. I never learned her parents’ language. She didn’t either.

*Strange for her to be here, surrounded by unknown sentiments.

—Well,

*I know, she isn’t really here.

—Not really.

They walk to the last grave on the right. This is the finest one of all. It is as simple as a stone could be, almost rough, but with lovely texture. The letters in it are thin. Even fifty years will be enough to efface them.

Louisa Drysdale

Waiting in the hills, I believe
.

Molly is coughing. She is coughing and coughing and making a peculiar sound. It must be the noise of her crying. Mrs. Gibbons wakes and comes up the aisle, kneels next to her, holding one of her hands.

William and his daughter leave the stage.

CURTAIN