The Lesson

by Jesse Ball

  Of course, this situation had not come about for lack of trying other options. Do you believe that she did not write letters to him after he was dead? Oh, certainly she did, reams and reams of letters, buried in a box. She wrote him a hundred letters, two hundred letters, a letter a day, and buried them in the ground by his grave. She sat on the grass there and spoke to him. She lay awake in their room and whispered, feeling that somehow whispers travel farther than things said outright.

  No proof came that he had heard any of this, that he had read any of the letters. But, of course, neither did there come any proof to the contrary.

  She sat at her desk in the evening time, and began to write a letter. It was not the first letter she had written concerning the boy.

  e.

  He came again, this time for the lesson. I watched him very carefully, and put your sweater in the way, on the chair where he was to sit. When he moved it, he put it on the table on the far side of the room—which is what you always did. I don’t know what that means. Is that just the place where sweaters should go? Or something more?

  I asked him to say your name and he said it the way it used to be said—not the way it is pronounced now. But did I perhaps say it that way unwittingly? I can’t remember.

  Why am I even writing to you? If it is true, and something of you is in him, then is any part of you elsewhere, receiving such missives as these?

  There is no chance of it, I suppose. Then what is this writing? What is it? Is it less purposeless than some other fragile thing?

  I feel there can be no good out of it—out of any of it. But then I feel something else, a certainty that through his eyes you will look at me, and see me, and that I will see you the same. Such a moment—for that I would give the rest, all the rest, all these useless rags, buildings, people.

  Being old is being useless, and having things be useless to you. Because: the world is what is still to come. It isn’t what is or what was.

  For me that what-is-to-come, well, you know, you know what it is, my love. I am reaching out towards you in your narrow space.

  yours,

  l.

  When she had finished writing the letter, she looked at it carefully. She held it in her hands, looking at it carefully, and then she tore it up. The torn-up pieces she left there on the table, as if they might do something for one another in such a state.

  The Second Visit

  Just at the strike of nine, the boy arrived. Loring had left a note on the door. It said,

  LET YOURSELF IN. I AM UPSTAIRS.

  The boy came into the house. Two shoes faced him in the narrow passage, two shoes in the very middle. As many things seem hostile when arrayed in strangeness, so one might imagine the dark hall of this house with its shuttered windows to frighten him, but he was not frightened. He stepped over the shoes, went straight through and found the stair and climbed. These were steep steps, of the sort in old colonial houses. He was by no means assured of an easy time, and stopped halfway up at a little window carved in a half-moon. The glass was warped and the street below was bent into an impossible shape. He sat looking through for quite a while until the voice came from above.

  —Stan?

  —Here on the stairs.

  He went up the rest of the way.

  Loring was sitting in a room off to the left. At the top of the stairs were three rooms. One was the bedroom, one a workroom, and the third, well, she was in it. That room was for nothing at all, and never had been. Loring and Ezra had never liked the room. There was something wrong with it, but they couldn’t say what. They would occasionally put things in there because they felt something would happen. The things that happened were never anything that one could really know about.

  The room was at this time empty save for one chair, and a little table by the window. On that table, sat a box. It was shut, closed with a tiny clasp over which wax had been dripped. The wax was unbroken.

  —Hello, said the boy.

  Loring looked at him and thought, If you are listening, when I ask you this question, you will respond to something else I have said.

  —Did you finish the problems I left you with?

  —Is this the room you were talking about?

  —What did I say about it? asked Loring.

  —You said that it was almost like the room was in this house and in another house, and that was why it didn’t really work to put anything in it, unless you felt like the things in it would also be elsewhere.

  It took him a little while to say this and he got it wrong the first time, but the second time said it straight through with a very serious expression.

  —That’s right, she said. That’s what I said.

  —But why would you sit in a room like that?

  She didn’t reply.

  —Anyway, I can’t feel it. It just feels like a room.

  —The…

  —What is in that box?

  What is in that box?

  It was an ordinary question, and of course, one that troubled Loring to no end. In all the time since her husband’s death, she had puzzled over nothing so much as this. Of course, the permission to open the box had long been received. That it could have been opened at three months is clear. Three months had been the agreement for quite a while before he had suddenly changed it, and in some ways it would make perfect sense to honor the previous agreement. The year’s permission was also long gone, for had not one year, then two, three, four, five, all come and gone? Why then was the box still there, still unopened?

  The truth was this: as long as Loring did not open the box, some mystery still remained, some hint of life, a secret kept—an act still continuing in its efficacy, on the part of Ezra. And so in preserving the shut box, she preserved his living nature, and whenever she pondered opening it, she played with his living will that it be opened, and with what his expectations had been for what she would feel upon opening it. Now necessarily, in order for this to work at all, she had to actually permit herself the possibility of breaking, and opening the box. And so it was, that once a month, she would sit with the box and decide whether or not the time had come to open it, and each time she did so, she did not know whether or not it would be opened.

  Such days were special, and she would dress especially for them. She would close all the shutters of all the windows, and turn all the photographs and portraits to face the wall, even Ezra’s photograph in the parlor.

  She would take off her shoes and put them by the door, pointing out. And then she would walk backwards up the stairs, and into the little room, and there sit in the chair and observe the box. She would do this all at the hour of dawn, leaving the whole day to sit and think.

  Of course, in this case, it happened that the boy arrived, and she had seen that he would come and left the note that he might enter on his own. And now there he was, standing in the doorway, and his mind too was on the box.

  —You may pick it up, she said. But be careful.

  He went to the table, to the top of which he could barely reach. She reached out and got hold of him under his armpits, and with great effort tried to lift him up. She got him partway up but then dropped him back down and sank herself to a knee and then sat flat on the floor.

  —Are you all right?

  —I’m, I’ll be fine. Just, give me a second.

  She managed to find her feet and went out of the room. In a few minutes she returned with a stool. He clambered up onto the stool, and from there to the table, where he sat on the edge. Then he took ahold of the box and moved it towards himself.

  This in itself was a rather tumultuous event for Loring, as the box had not been moved since Ezra placed it there. She never permitted herself to touch it, not wanting to know what it weighed, or whether the contents shook.

  Stan leaned over the box and examined it closely. It was made of dark ebon wood, and hardly any grain was perceptible. It was about the size of a hat box—large, in fact. Almost anything could be in there.

  He looked at L
oring. She was making a gesture that she often made, pressing the tips of her fingers in turn with the thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand.

  —Can we open it?

  Loring shook her head. The boy sitting there, holding the box, hovering over it; with his corduroy pants and clean white shirt, his small scrunched face and unkempt hair, he bent and swelled in her mind’s eye. It was very hard to look at him, and she imagined so much what he might be, or had been. His voice was not entirely the voice of a child. But was this just because he was a prodigy? But why was he a prodigy, and why had he come to her?

  —What do you know about my husband? she asked.

  Tilting his face like the moon-shaped window on the stair, the boy earnestly answered,

  —He lived in this house. He was better at chess than you or I. He would stand for long periods of time; he preferred not to sit. I don’t believe that would be very comfortable. Do you?

  —It is not comfortable, said Loring. What else do you know?

  —He gave you this box?

  —I didn’t tell you that.

  —What is this? Did you put it here?

  —Wax. No, I didn’t.

  —Hmmmm. Did someone else then, not him, give you the box? Do you think he would have been a good teacher to have, if he was the one here, and you had died?

  —No, said Loring. He wasn’t really a good teacher at all. He never had any idea why he did things. Let’s go downstairs.

  The Second Visit, 2

  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.

  The Second Visit, 3

  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.

  To Say a Few Things About the Kitchen

  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.

  Standing upon a Chair, He Beheld

  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 thre
ad 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.

  The Second Visit, 4

  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.