The Curfew (7 page)

THE STONEMASON

had a few small houses by the cemetery, with a yard around and between them. The whole thing was walled in, as you can imagine, with a high stone wall. The grass was short and yellow and patchy. The trees were old and august.

Smoke rose from the chimney of one of the houses. To that one William went.

—Mercer, he said, a good day’s work done.

—I’d expect no less.

Mercer, a man of about fifty years with a ruddy face and thick clever hands, was grinding a piece of granite. He stopped his work and went with William into the next room, where the fireplace was. They sat.

—Let’s see it.

William handed him the notebook.

He read slowly through it, nodding sometimes, sniffing, narrowing his eyes.

—I see, he said.

He set the notebook in his lap.

—Can the girl be trusted? This could be trouble, and for nothing.

—Not for nothing.

—No, not for nothing. But can she?

—I believe so.

—Good work, then. These will be attended to. And how is Molly today?

—Seemed happy.

—You know, the rhyme she made me, I say it every day. The paper she wrote it on is gone. But I remember it.

—When was that?

—Last winter. She was here the whole day while you went around.

—I remember.

—She came to me, and I was chiseling away, in the midst of it, you know, and she had a scrap of paper. It said Mercer on it, and underneath, to be said on mornings, and under that the thing.

—I asked you what it was and you wouldn’t say, and I asked her, and she wouldn’t either.

Mercer grinned.

—It’s a thing like that. Not to be bandied about.

He set to coughing again. Finally he settled.

—On the way here this morning, I saw a woman killed.

One of the gnarled hands was gripping the other.

William waited.

—I was under the walking bridge on Seventh. There was a shout and then she came down, hit not twenty feet in front of me. Then right there where she fell from, a face looking down.

—Did she look like a cop?

—What does a cop look like, these days?

—So, the body was there, and you walked past it.

—Looked to see if she was dead, and she was. Twice over. People don’t fall like cats, you know. Even cats don’t always fall like cats. Have you ever seen it? When a cat does something it
knows
a cat shouldn’t have done? There’s nothing like the embarrassment of cats.

He laughed.

There was a little stove, and William made a pot of tea. The two men sat there while the water boiled, and then Mercer made the tea.

—I do prefer good tea leaves, he said. In a fine tin.

—If I saw any, I’d bring it. These days it can’t be bought.

There was a book there, of old tombstone designs. William leafed through it.

There were many there he liked, and he showed them to Mercer. These were also ones that Mercer liked. They sat there, then, together, liking them.

The mason picked up his chisel. It was a splendid tool, an old tool, extremely heavy. William was very fond of Mercer and of all the things that Mercer owned. There are a few people one meets whom one can approve of entirely, and such was he.

—You keep that chisel sharp.

—I like to think I could cut the heart out of a sheep without it knowing. Just the tap of a hammer, and a slight twist.

—But you’ve always been fond of sheep.

—And am, and am. I’m speaking of the chisel, you understand.

There was the humming of an airplane overhead, but neither man looked up or made as if to notice.

—Tomorrow’s list is by the door, said Mercer finally.

He handed William the notebook. William tore the pages out of it and set them down. White marble for the last, he said. And leave room, she says.

—We’re all planning our own death these days.

—Tomorrow, then.

At six o’clock, he picked up Molly and they had a glass of lemonade by the lake.

*Can we rent a boat and go out to the island?

*No.

*But what about tomorrow? Can we tomorrow?

*No.

Molly played in the enormous gnarled oaks that had stood in the park for more than a century. Their limbs were long and bowed and many. Nearly every one could be climbed easily, and Molly had climbed nearly every one.

There was a man selling newspapers. William bought a newspaper, but did not read it. It looked bad to avoid the newspaper; one bought it, but one didn’t actually have to read it.

He had not performed violin in over four years. There were no musical performances anymore. There were no performances of any kind. There was a new ideal, and one could sit in an audience and listen to people talk about the new ideal, but that was the extent of it.

Much of his life in the past years was a matter of making it so that things could not get worse. He tried to, through a series of habits, insulate and barricade the life that he and Molly lived, so that it could not be invaded or altered.

He had done this in a series of ways. First, he bought an apartment in an area of town that was known to be very quiet. He established a policy of having no friends, none at all. He ceased to speak to the friends he had had before. He got a job as a mason’s assistant. He and Molly lived cheaply, and wore old clothes. They did simple things together quietly. They learned sign language together, for Molly couldn’t speak. He taught her to read by himself, and he taught her mathematics by himself. He taught her to use an abacus. He taught her everything that she would need to know in school, and he did this when she was five and six, before she went to school. Therefore, school would have no difficulties for her, and her muteness would not be a problem.

Every night he and Molly ate supper at a little cafe some distance from their home. Molly sometimes played with a boy who lived in the same building, and while she was doing that, William would sit at the window and read, or play through a volume of old chess games with a small wooden chess set. He loved the games of Tchigorin and also of Spielmann. Neither one had been the greatest chess player of his time, but their games were full of sacrifices and wild, inventive play. For such things, William would say to himself, for such things …

There was no difference between any one day and any other. The weekend had been abolished. It had been a sick way of going about things, that was the idea, a sort of illness that had led to widespread moral decay. Many of the ways that things had been gone about were weak, and had to be changed.

*There was a new teacher in school today.

—A woman?

*A man.

—Old?

*Rather not.

—Handsome?

Molly made a face.

—That bad?

*He wrote a book about history. The history of the country.

—And how did that go over?

*Jim spat on him and then they took Jim in the next room for a while.

—So, Jim, he’s a history lover?

Molly did the thing that she did when she would have laughed but wasn’t laughing.

William laughed as well.

*He just spits on teachers.

A ripple came and then subsided in the lake, as though a fish had surfaced, but none did.

—There is a game, William said, where you try to throw a stone high up in the air and have it make just that noise, the noise of a fish at the water’s surface. It is not easy to do.

William threw a stone high up in the air, but when it hit the water it made a decidedly stone-like sound.

*You see, he gestured.

*Read to me from the newspaper.

She nudged his arm.

*Don’t want to.

*Come on. Over here. It’s very nice, look.

—All right, all right.

He sat down by the tree. This was a game they had. He unfolded the newspaper. Molly sat with her back against him.

—On the fourteenth of July, a man was discovered walking about in a daze near the courthouse. He claims to have been asleep
inside a hill
for the last fifteen years.

*Twenty is better.

—All right, twenty years, the last twenty years. He was greatly confused by the gray banners everywhere, and by the change in administration. He has been taken by the police for questioning. It is believed he is pretending, and that he didn’t actually sleep inside a hill.

*That’s no good, said Molly. Don’t have it be pretending.

—All right, let’s try it again.

He removed his hat and set it on the ground next to him, then cleared his throat.

—On the fifteenth of July, a man was found in a confused state near the courthouse building. He claims to have been asleep
inside a hill
for the last twenty years. Upon further investigation into the matter, authorities have discovered the hill in question, and, within it, a sort of foxhole. The man refused to comply with any questioning, and escaped through the faucet of a sink. Beware!

Molly smoothed her dress, but did not smile. It wasn’t her habit to smile at things that were funny.

*That’s the news, then.

And all of a sudden it was becoming dark. The lights bloomed automatically all along the streets, and at the edges of the lake. A bell rang, and it was a shift change. Workers could be seen exiting houses, and beginning on their way to the factories at the outskirts of the town.

*I wish you could play for me a piece where you can hear the curtains blowing. Where you scrape the strings and the curtains move.

—Don’t talk like that.

Molly pushed against him.

They threaded a path in a homeward direction, he murmuring, she gesturing, he peering at her hands in the dim evening.

When they reached the street there was a crowd formed around a man who seemed to be asleep on the ground. He was in a mime’s regalia, with painted face and thin gloves. Suddenly he sprang up and froze at attention.

In the street, another mime, marching as a soldier, passed by. Marching, marching, marching, and on the sixteenth step, he went on all fours and loped as a pack of wolves does, grimacing and showing row after row of teeth. He turned upon the crowd and made for them! Shouting and confusion. The single mime began to conduct an orchestra, and of a sudden, the soldier-mime was playing instruments of every description, alternating in rows on invisible seats with invisible instruments. The conductor mime sat in the invisible audience, dabbing a handkerchief at tear after tear.

A shout then,

—They are coming!

—Watch out! Run!

The orchestra threw its instruments in the air and careened madly off into the park. Yes, two men in shabby clothing ran off into the trees.

*Will they get away?

Molly’s hand was very tight clutching at William’s coat.

*Will they get away?

—They have gotten away. That’s how they did it in the first place. That’s why, even if they get caught, they can’t be caught. It wouldn’t mean anything, other than to show that they are what they say they are.

Molly frowned.

—They are students, said William. It is their resistance and has at its heart their youth. Catching them only makes others join them. So, in a sense, they want to be caught. Or be at the edge of being caught, always.

*They don’t want to get away?

—No, not really.

*But if they were caught, wouldn’t they be …

—Yes, it is a choice they are making, to be alive and unrepentant.

*Unrepentant?

—They don’t want to have to ask permission for anything, least of all for being alive.

*But could they win? What would that be, if they won?

Molly looked at William inquisitively.

—There are always different types of resistance. These are of one type. Their resistance is both to the government and to the world in general, to existence, to just being, also. There are others who want to …

He leaned in close and whispered in Molly’s ear.

—overthrow the government directly and put something else in its place. That’s why so many people have been dying.

*What would they change?

—For one thing, you wouldn’t have to go to that particular school anymore.

Molly clapped her hands together excitedly.

*When do you think it will happen?

—Oh, I don’t know. Something terrible would have to happen first.

Molly thought about that a little and then she thought about that some more, and then they were back at the apartment and William was moving about, switching on the lamps.