Specimen Days

by Michael Cunningham

  Broadway might have been a toy for a giant child. It was like a gift to lay before a sultan, a turbaned invader who had refused all other offerings, who had been indifferent to a forest full of mechanical nightingales, who had yawned over golden slippers that danced on their own.

  But the shops on Broadway were closed, too. At this hour it was only cafés and taverns and the lobbies of the hotels. He went down Broadway as far as Prince Street, and saw a boy standing at the corner, offering something to those who passed. The boy was ragged, older than Lucas. He wore breeches half again too large for him, cinched with a rope. A limp felt hat, the color of a rat’s pelt, was pulled down over his head. From it a single lock of lank orange hair protruded like a secret he couldn’t keep.

  He held in his hand a small white bowl. He displayed it to passersby, who ignored him. Was it an alms bowl? No, it seemed that he was offering it for sale.

  Lucas stopped near the ragged boy, who had of course stolen the bowl and was trying to sell it, as people did. Lucas knew how it must be for him. His bowl was a prize, and it was a burden. Something more common would be easier to sell; a turnip, in its way, would be more valuable. The people of the boy’s neighborhood wouldn’t want a thing like the bowl, and those who walked on Broadway might want it but wouldn’t buy it from a boy like this. He extended the bowl to passersby in his outstretched hands with weary hopefulness, like a priest offering the holy cup. Lucas thought the boy had been here a long time, had begun by shouting out a price and had declined, as the hours passed, to this condition of mute resignation.

  He approached the boy, looked more closely at the bowl. The boy drew away from Lucas, cradled his prize to his breast. Lucas could see it well enough, though. It was a white china bowl, undamaged. It bore along its rim a band of pale blue figures.

  Lucas said, “How much?”

  The boy regarded him nervously. He would naturally suspect a trick.

  To allay him Lucas said, “I want it for my sister. How much?”

  The boy’s eyes were as shrewd and avid as a cat’s. He said, “A dollar.”

  A dollar and three pennies was what Lucas had in his pocket. It seemed for a moment that the boy somehow knew that, that he was a sprite who haunted Broadway with his treasure and asked in payment all that everyone had.

  Lucas said, “That’s too much.”

  The boy compressed his lips. The bowl was worth more than a dollar, and he might get a dollar if he stayed longer on the street, but he was tired, he was hungry, he wanted to go home. Lucas felt a pang of sympathy for the boy, who was wily and cunning, a thief, but who wanted, as everyone did, to be finished with his work, to be restored to himself, to rest.

  The boy said, “You can have it for seventy-five cents.”

  “That’s still too much.”

  The boy settled his mouth. Lucas knew: he would go no further. He was a thief, but he was someone; he had a private realm inside him, and he would not let himself be any poorer than this.

  He said, “That’s the last price. Take it or leave it.”

  Lucas was filled with sympathy and rage. He knew how much seventy-five cents would mean to the boy. But the bowl had cost him nothing. He could give it to Lucas, who needed it, and in so doing be no worse off than he’d been before. Lucas felt, briefly, the turning of the inscrutable world, in which a bowl that had cost nothing, a bowl he might have stolen himself (though he never stole; he was too nervous for that), would cost him most of what he’d earned by a week’s labor.

  He glanced up and down the street, as if he hoped another bowl, or something better, might lie ahead or behind. There was nothing. He might walk all night to find only someone selling a few leeks or a half bottle of ale.

  He said, “All right, then.”

  He took the money from his pocket and counted out seventy-five cents. He and the boy paused over who would relinquish first and found a way to exchange bowl for coins so that neither was empty-handed. Lucas felt the money taken from him by the boy’s calloused fingers. He felt the bowl settle into his palm.

  The boy ran off, fearful that Lucas might change his mind. In a panic, Lucas examined the bowl. Was it false? Had it turned to wood? No, it was in fact a bit of finery. It seemed, in his hands, to emit a faint white light. The figures inscribed along its rim were mysterious. They appeared to be tiny blue suns, icy disks from which rays emanated, finer than hairs.

  The bowl was good, then. But he had only twenty-eight cents left, which was not enough for a week’s food for three. Still, he had a gift to take to Catherine. He would think about food and money later.

  He returned to Fifth Street and knocked at the door until the tiny woman opened it. She wondered that he was back again but admitted him more easily, because he was becoming visible to her. She warned him again that there was to be no mischief. He agreed and mounted the stairs to Catherine’s apartment.

  Catherine answered the door. She seemed neither pleased nor sorry to see him. He wondered if he’d changed again, if he was unrecognizable to her again, though he wore the same clothes and the same dirt he’d worn yesterday.

  He said, before he could help himself, “Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt.”

  She said, “Hello, my dear. How are you?” Tonight she wore her new face, the wearied one.

  Lucas heard a sound from within the apartment, a strange sort of wailing laughter that sounded like Alma’s. It was followed by a man’s voice, deep and urgent, saying something undecipherable.

  Catherine stepped out into the hallway, closed the door behind her. “Lucas,” she said, “it’s not a good time to call, just now.”

  “But I’ve brought you something,” he answered.

  He produced the bowl. He extended it toward her on outstretched palms.

  She looked at it uncertainly, as if she could not quite discern its nature. Lucas found he couldn’t speak, not as himself or as the book. He was the bowl and his hands. He was only that.

  Presently she said, “Oh, Lucas.”

  Still he couldn’t speak. He was a bowl and a pair of hands offering a bowl.

  “You mustn’t,” she said.

  He answered, “Please.” It was what he had to say.

  “How have you come by this?”

  “I bought it. For you. I was paid today.”

  It was not as he’d expected. He had imagined her glad and grateful.

  She bent toward him. She said, “It’s sweet of you. But you must return it.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Did you pay for it? Truly?”

  She suspected he’d stolen it, then. He could think of nothing to tell her but the truth.

  “I bought it from a man on Broadway,” he said. “He was selling them from a tray.” It seemed better to have bought it from a man with a tray. It seemed truth enough.

  “My dear. You can’t afford this.”

  He trembled, filled with rage and confusion and blind, desperate hope. Somehow he’d made himself poorer by bringing her a gift.

  “Please,” he said again.

  “You’re the sweetest boy in the world. You truly are. And tomorrow you must return it to the man on Broadway and get your money back.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Would you like me to go with you?”

  “What is a man anyhow? What am I? And what are you?”

  “Please, Lucas. I’m touched, I truly am. But I can’t accept it.”

  “The man is gone.”

  “He’ll return tomorrow.”

  “No. This was his last bowl. He said he was going away.”

  “Oh, poor boy.”

  How could he tell her, what could he say, here in the dark of the hallway (where the goat’s skull still grinned), holding out to her the only treasure he could find, a treasure she didn’t want?

  He said, “The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel.”

  “Hush. Hush, now. You’ll disturb the neighbors.”

  He
hadn’t meant to speak so loudly. He didn’t mean to speak again, more loudly still.

  “The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly.”

  “Stop. Please. Come inside, you mustn’t rant like this in the hallway.”

  “The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck. The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing.”

  Catherine paused. She looked at him with a new recognition.

  “What did you say?”

  He didn’t know. She had never before seemed to hear him when he spoke as the book.

  “Lucas, please repeat what you just said.”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “You spoke of a spinning-girl. You spoke of a bride, and…a prostitute. And a woman about to give birth.”

  “It was the book.”

  “But why did you say it?”

  “The words come through me. I never know.”

  She leaned closer, gazing into his face as if words were written there, faint but discernible, difficult to read.

  She said, “You really don’t know, do you? Oh, Lucas. I fear for you.”

  “No. Please. You mustn’t fear for me. You must fear for yourself.”

  “You have some gift,” she said softly. “You have some terrible gift, do you know that?”

  He thought for a moment that she meant the bowl. It was in fact a terrible gift. It should have cost nothing, but he’d paid for it with money meant for food. And what use did Catherine have for a bowl like this? Lucas stood with his blood racketing and his hands outstretched. He was the boy who had bought the bowl, and he was the boy who had sold it. Would that boy, the other, be now returning to his own family with food? Lucas could be only this, the one who had bought it. He could only stand before Catherine with a terrible gift in his hands.

  Gently (he thought he had never known such gentleness) she took the bowl from him. She held it in her own hand.

  “What are we to do with you?” she said. “How will your mother and father live?”

  He said, “This hour I tell you things in confidence, things I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

  “Hush, hush.”

  “The dead sing to us through machinery. They are with us still.”

  “Stop. Speak as yourself.”

  “Simon wants to marry you in the land of the dead. He wants you there with him.”

  Sadly, she shook her head. “Listen to me,” she said. “It’s wonderful of you to want to buy me a gift like this. You are a sweet, generous boy. I’m going to keep the bowl safe tonight, and tomorrow I am going to sell it and give you the money. Please, don’t be offended.”

  “You must not trust your sewing machine. You must not listen if it sings to you.”

  “Shh. If we make such a racket every night, we’ll be thrown out.”

  “Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Or the early redstart twittering through the woods?”

  “Go home now. Come to me tomorrow, after work.”

  “I cannot leave you. I will not.”

  She put her hand on his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Be careful until then.”

  “It’s you who must be careful.”

  She seemed not to hear or understand. With a rueful smile she opened the door and went back inside.

  Lucas remained for a while before the door, like a dog waiting to be let in. Then, because he could not bear being like a dog, he went away. He passed the tiny woman, who said, “No mischief, then?” He told her there had been no mischief. But there had been mischief, hadn’t there? There was the bowl and what the bowl had cost. There were other crimes.

  He made his way home, because he had money now (he had some left), and his mother and father must eat. He bought a sausage from the butcher and a potato from an old woman on the street.

  The apartment was as always. His mother slept behind her door. His father sat at table, because it was time to do so. He put his lips to the machine, breathed Simon’s ghost song into his lungs.

  “Hello,” Lucas said. His voice was strange in the quiet room, like a bean rattling in a jar.

  “Hello,” his father said. Had his voice changed slightly, from his chest being filled with Simon? It might have. Lucas could not be sure. Was his father turning into a machine, with Simon inside him?

  Lucas cooked the sausage and the potato. He gave some to his father, took some in to his mother, who slept fitfully but slept. He decided it was best not to disturb her. He left the food on the bedside table, for when she awoke and wanted it.

  After his father had finished, Lucas said, “Father, it’s time for bed.”

  His father nodded, breathed, nodded again. He rose. He took the machine with him.

  Lucas left his father in the doorway to the bedroom. His mother murmured within. His father said, “She cannot stop dreaming.”

  “She sleeps. It’s what’s best for her.”

  “She doesn’t sleep. She only dreams.”

  “Hush. Go to sleep now. Good night, Father.”

  His father went into the dark. The machine’s little feet scraped on the floorboards after him.

  I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,

  And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

  What do you think has become of the young and old men?

  And what do you think has become of the women and children?

  Lucas read his passage. He put out the light and went to sleep.

  He dreamed he was in a room, an enormous room and clangorous. It was the works but not the works. It was full of silvery dusk like the works but empty of all save the noise, a deafening sound, not like what the machines produced, not quite that sound, though it resembled it. Lucas understood that the machines were gone but would return soon, as cattle return to a barn. He was to wait here. He was to see them home. He looked up—something told him to look up—and saw that the ceiling was covered in stars. There were the Great Horse, the Hunter, the Pleiades. He knew then that the stars were machinery, too. There was nowhere to go that was not the world, that was not the room. The stars moved mechanically, and something was descending, a dark shape from high in the night sky…

  He turned and looked into a face. Its eyes were black pools. Its skin was stretched taut over its skull. It said, “My boy, my boy.”

  His mother’s face was pressed to his. He was dreaming of his mother. He struggled to speak, but couldn’t speak.

  The face said again, “My poor boy, what they done to ye.”

  He was awake. His mother crouched beside his bed, with her face to his face. He felt her breath on his lips.

  “I’m all right, Mother,” he said. “Nothing’s been done to me.”

  She held the music box, cradled close. She said, “Poor child.”

  “You’re dreaming,” Lucas told her.

  “My poor, poor boys. One and then another and another.”

  “Let me take you back to bed.”

  “It’s greed that done it. Greed and weakness.”

  “Come. Come back to bed.”

  He rose and took her arm. She yielded, or did not resist. He led her out of the bedroom and through the parlor, where the faces watched. Her feet shuffled on the floor. He took her into the other bedroom. His father wheezed and gagged in his sleep.

  Lucas helped his mother into bed, pulled the blanket up. Her hair was spread over the pillow. In the fan of dark hair her face was impossibly small, no bigger than his fist.

  She said, “I should be dead with him.”

  Lucas thought—he could not help thinking—of the bowl he’d bought. There were nineteen cents now, to keep them until Friday next. There wouldn’t be food for the week.

  He said, “You’re safe. I’m here.”

  “Oh, safe. If anyone were safe.”

  “You must sleep now.”

&
nbsp; “Do ye think sleeping is safe?”

  “Shh. Just be quiet.”

  He sat with her. He couldn’t tell if it was better to stroke her hand or refrain from stroking her hand. He rocked slightly, to calm himself. There was nothing so frightful as this. There was nothing, had been nothing, as terrible as sitting on his parents’ mattress, wondering if he should or should not touch his mother’s hand.

  He knew he had to take the music box away. But what of Simon’s other point of ingress, their father’s breathing machine? Father needed the machine. Or did he?

  Lucas didn’t know if the machine was crucial to his father or merely helpful. He hadn’t been told. It was possible, it was not impossible, that the breathing apparatus, which had been given as a gift, was in fact a bane. Could it be sucking his father’s life away, when it pretended to help him? Did any machine seem to want the good of its people?

  Lucas stood, went as quietly as he could to his father’s side of the bed, and took up the machine. Its iron pole was cool to his touch. It was full of its song, as steady and unmistakable as the mice inside the walls. Gingerly, as he would take up a mouse by its tail, he carried the machine through the parlor and put it in the hallway. Was that far enough away? He hoped it was. In the twilight of the hall the machine was as indistinct as the goat’s skull. Its bladder, the size and shape of a turnip, was gray but subtly luminous. Its tube and mouthpiece dangled.

  He would leave it there overnight. He would bring it back in the morning, when he’d seen how his father fared without.

  He went into the parlor for the music box. He took it and put it in the hallway, beside his father’s machine, then returned to the parlor and locked the door. He checked to make sure it was fast.

  When sleep found him again, it brought its dreams, though he recalled upon awakening only that they had involved children and a needle and a woman who stood far away, calling out across a river.

  In the morning his father had not yet risen. Lucas went to his parents’ bedroom and cautiously opened the door. They were quieter than usual. His mother murmured over her dreams, but his father, who was ordinarily given to deep snorts and coughings, was silent.