The Lesson (4 page)

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.

By this he would never mean that an accident of one sort or another might happen there.

So, the kitchen table at one end, and windows all along, looking out. A stove in a corner, and shelves hanging here and there between windows. Pots, pans, herbs, etc., also hanging. Chairs of a delicate character, long-limbed, thin-armed chairs which drew many compliments always, doubly. That is to say, one complimented first their appearance, and then one sat, and complimented again, saying the appearance, however fine, was no match for the actual experience of sitting.

Sadly, such a thing would be lost on Stan, being that he lacked the appropriate proportion to truly understand the chairs. He clambered up into one as Loring opened the windows and flung out the shutters.

She fetched a cushion from a closet, and gave it him. He, in putting the cushion down, stood on the chair, and had a look around.

Out the window (for now he could see well through the window) there was a fine sight.

an absolute armada of hot air balloons flooding into view from the west.

—Do you see that?

Loring turned.

—Ah, yes, the Jubilee.

She spat on the floor. I suppose in the kitchen, with all the sawdust on the floor, spitting was allowed.

—Many balloons is a jubilee?

—It would not be a bad definition, said Loring.

She continued her small tasks, putting the kettle on for tea, lighting the gas, etc.

Stan watched the procession thread its way through the air. The wind must have changed, or the pilots had decided something, for now the parade led seemingly to the house itself. Balloon after balloon loomed into view and was dragged away out of sight, just when disaster might have come. The people on the balloons were all holding hands and their mouths were shut.

How difficult it is for a child to understand such things!

Finally Loring came over, book in hand.

—Are you ready?

He sat on the cushion, and curled up in the wide chair.

—How many balloons does it take to make a jubilee?

—At least a hundred, said Loring. Any fewer, and it would be paltry. No one would come to see it.

Now, you may imagine that she was testing him by reading from this particular book, which, as anyone who has read a biography of Ezra Wesley knows, was the late master's favorite book. He had read it dozens of times, and this copy was the copy he took with him on long train rides. It was said by some that his compulsive carrying of this book was especially ridiculous on the basis that he had in fact memorized the book. That, though, had never been completely established, for although he had on numerous occasions recited from it, he had never actually recited it in its entirety. In any event, if it was a test, it was a test that began when she started to read, for it was not from the book that she read at all! She had opened another, smaller book, within the first book, and looking down at the boy, who could see none of this, read aloud from it.

—It was a cold day, and the dogs were dying one by one. As they drew farther into the wilderness, the will of the rider seemingly intensified until the dogs obeyed him even before the desperate pleas of their own ragged frames. They had dragged him for days through that bleak landscape, and now, crossing some invisible barrier in the monochrome world, they all at once set to perishing. And so it was that when the last dog died, the man alit from the dogsled, and continued on foot.

—What is a dogsled? interrupted Stan.

—You know what a dog is?

He frowned at her.

—You know what a sled is?

—Of course.

—Make the dogs pull the sled and you have a dogsled. People say that this really happens in the coldest parts of the world, but I have never seen it. Do I believe there are dogsleds? I don't believe it or disbelieve it. It does seem unlikely, though, that dogs could be found who would want to do this.

—Is this the second book of a series?

—No.

—Then, how do we know where the man was before?

—We don't, yet.

—All right. What's monochrome?

—We'll get nowhere if I define everything for you. Just listen and pick things up by what they might seem to mean.

She drew a breath and began again.

—The snows began to end, then, as he ascended that final hill. At its crest, the weather broke, and there was green grass, stretched out like a promise. The man fell to his knees there, and tears ran down his face. Then the dogs were licking at his face again, climbing over their own harnesses, to wake him, and he was leaned over the front of the sled, confused by the cold, biting wind cutting into his eyes, and there were miles still to…

Stan was asleep. He was always falling asleep, this one. She moved closer and put her face near his, listening. A small rasping sound accompanied his breathing.

—Would you have stayed awake for the other book? she asked.

Of course, the boy said nothing.

Customarily, this day was passed by Loring in that upstairs room. Sitting there in the kitchen, with the daylight and the distances the balloons had made just beyond the window, she felt drawn too far out of herself and her habits. She left the boy sleeping and went back upstairs, and sat again.

And now, the problem was before her, presenting itself, like an occasion of laughter, generously and all at once. Should she open the box?

It was in its new place, where the boy had moved it. She did not dare to touch it to move it back. The lines on the table where it had been, faint dust lines, remained. It was almost like there were two boxes now. It troubled her to think of what the difference would be now, in opening it when it had been moved.

She stirred then to open it, but stood instead, and then sat down again. The walls of the little room were a thin color, and she felt that she could see into the distance, despite all evidence to the contrary.

A dog was whining on the street below. She heard its mistress speaking. The woman said,

—The last one is coming. We can see it best from over here. No, no.

And then there was a knocking at the door.

Loring came down the stairs, as swiftly as she could, and looked through the little window to the right of the door, which opened with a flap. There was indeed a woman outside, and holding a dog.

—What do you want?

—Excuse me, excuse me.

—What do you want?

—I live just down the road. I wonder, I know it is far too much to ask, and I would never want to presume, but I have seen this house so many times and thought how lovely it must be inside, and I was wondering, there is the Jubilee, did you know, the Jubilee is this week, and I was wondering if it might be possible to observe the final balloon from your window, as you see, it is heading into the distance there, and can't really be seen from the street and by the time I got to the top of the hill, it would already be gone. Might I?

—You want to look at the balloon from my window? That's what you're saying?

—I hope it isn't the wrong thing to say? Did I say that, the wrong thing? I'm terribly sorry if I did. My dog, of course, must come, if I come in. I can't leave him behind. He is so anxious.

Now, here's the thing. It wasn't a dog at all. This woman had her husband on a leash.

Loring stared dumbfounded at the pair. From behind her, in the house, a voice came.

—How long was I asleep for?

Stan was there, rubbing his eyes and looking out at the strange scene.

—For a hundred years! yelled the woman.

—For a thousand, barked her husband.

And then there were more of them in the street, all running together, and the woman and man joined them. It was a circus—they were tumblers. They made a human pyramid in the street right there, and the woman was hoisted all the way up to the top.

—In celebration of the wonderful JUBILEE!!! she shouted.

And they all ran off.

—Now, why do you think that woman would ask such a thing?

—What did she ask?

—She wanted to come in and go upstairs to the window. She said the last balloon might still be seen.

—Was it the truth? asked Stan. I bet she just wanted to see the balloon.

—It could be, but these circus people: one never knows what they are up to.

She spat again on the floor. Some of the spit landed on the arm of her threadbare housedress. She wiped it with her hand until it was absorbed. Her look of disgust, though, was clearly for the circus people, and not for having spit on herself. Spitting on oneself: to her it was of no moment.

—Won't you tell me more about the circus people?

—No.

—Oh, come, Loring, and tell me! If you don't tell me, who will you tell? It will just be lost.

—Well…

She smiled.

—It isn't their vagrancy that bothers me, but their costumes. I can't trust people who wear such clothing. I knew a man once, Lemuel Jeffers. He got into a difficulty with circus people, and it didn't end well. The circus had arrived in the town where he was living, and he went to see it, naturally, for who among us is not curious about a circus, particularly when we live in a town to which a circus comes. There are the posters and the general feeling of excitement, a feeling of excitement that quite possibly precedes the actual arrival of the circus. That is not beyond possibility. So, he went to the circus, and was made a fool of. There was one seat in the circus that the clowns had decided—whoever it is that sits in that seat, he or she will be the butt of all jokes. Lemuel sat there. So, the clowns threw things on him, they tugged at him. He took it all in good grace, but apparently this was the wrong way to behave, for it emboldened them. Finally, they bore him off into the middle of the ring and set a papier-mâché ass's head on his shoulders. They made him cry out like an ass, like a donkey, and say, Oh my but I am an unfortunate one.

She cleared her throat.

—I don't mean to overestimate the effects of this, but anyone can see quite clearly that it ruined Lemuel's reputation in the town. He became very ill thereafter, and retired to a country house owned by his sister. What's worse is this—the circus felt that the gag was so inspired that they found someone who looked like him at the next show, and humiliated that person, and again at the next show, and so forth. So, the persecution went on from him to everyone who looked like him. A sad state of affairs for Lemuel and for those with his visage.

—Of course, she continued. Of course, I like circuses very much. Don't let me prejudice you. I have been to at least twenty different circuses, and they have often brought me great pleasure.

—But this one, said Stan. Why does it do that—in the street?

—Perhaps it is a roving circus that landed with some of the balloons. Or perhaps the town paid for it, and paid them to go about at the Jubilee, up and down the streets in celebration. The mayor is quite capable of such a thing. In any case, let us get to your lesson, for it is almost time for your parents to arrive.

They went in, and she took all the pieces off the board except the knight.

—How well do you know the knight?

—Pretty well.

—Yes?

—Yes.

—Then, let's see you start here and go to every square on the board without repeating a single square. Call me when you have it.

The boy sat staring at the board.

Every now and then in the street came a great rushing sound and the circus passed again. It must have gone up and down the street, up and down all the streets (if one guess at a consistency of sorts) at least a dozen times. When the moment for the thirteenth visit of the circus came, instead there was quiet, and a knocking.

—Your mother, I believe, said Loring.

They went to the door and opened it. Indeed, the mother was there, and with her eight other boys and girls. These were Stan's brothers and sisters, a motley bunch. Many of them wore hand-me-downs and went without food just so they could pay for Stan's chess lessons.

Of course, that's not so. The lessons weren't really very expensive at all, and in fact, these weren't Stan's brothers and sisters. They were just a bunch of children who had taken to following Stan's mother about. She had very fine features and this reassured the street children. They wanted a chance to sit with her and hear her sing. But, of course, she would never sing for them.

—Time to go, she said to Stan, and a hush fell over the children.

The street there by their feet was full of crepe paper and ash from the balloons. Why the balloons would leave a trail of ash was another question entirely. More came, and the group looked up from the doorway. Just ash falling through the open air onto their shoulders! There in the sky, high above, so high one could scarcely make out more than a dot, was the entire flotilla of balloons.

—I wasn't aware balloons could go so high, said Mrs. Wiling.

—They can't, said Loring. It will be the death of them. That's far too close to the sun.

—That's what the ash is, said Stan. It's the end of them!

—Sharp, Stan, said his mother, patting him on the head.

The other children were all crestfallen. Why could they not have seen it at once, and said it, and been praised? What a miserable world it was, where poverty meant not only to wear old clothes, but also to lack the bravery to make keen observations about tragedies involving balloons.

—Next week, then, said Loring.

She went inside. A few moments later, she could be seen at the parlor window, this time with a telescope. What she saw is not reported.