Yet this peace did not last long. The rumors of sickness grew more and more loud, until it seemed like the ocean tide rising over the town, and one day the Postmen came from door to door, shouting and giving orders, and saying that beginning on the next day, no man would be allowed to leave his house, not even to take his needs and his money to the marketplace, but rations of fish and grain would be taken from house to house; and also the servants of the masters would be locked behind the wall, so they might not carry contagion with passing back and forth. And when Kia heard this she said she must go to the market at once, and Mirrah went with her; and when they had gone, and I thought of the confinement ahead, I ran out the door to have freedom while I could.
I went to Leren’s without thought, my feet slipping over the cobbles in that direction from habit. And when I came to his house he was leaving it, brooding behind his beard as he closed the door. He was bound for the greater town, and at first he did not want my company. His hard hands were nervous, his eyes kept straying toward the town; I thought he had a burden on his back, but looked again, and saw that if he bore a weight it must be of the mind. “This is no stroll for pleasure!” he said, but my eagerness to follow him was great, and in the end he gave in to stop my begging.
So we set out at a quick pace, and soon left behind all the streets of small houses, and came to the first rows of giant barracks, where families lived crammed together in single rooms, and ate and bathed together in a crowd. These were a larger and permanent version of the forest camp I had come from, and I told Leren that had been worse, for here those who loved one another lived together. But Leren said I was wrong, he said it roughly; his mood that day was grim.
“It’s maybe no better there,” he said, “but no worse either, as you’d find soon enough if you tried living in one of those—” He pointed at a structure we passed: a heap of dirty brick with a few scant windows like clouded eyes. “There’s no love in there,” he said. “It dies with the crowding. Take a man and a maid young enough for the juices to flow in spite of the work: they find a way to get out of the reach of eyes, and he gets her with child. Then they get a room; it’s the only way to get one, to get out of the men’s barracks, or the women’s. So far it’s a change for the better. The child comes, and maybe it lives and maybe not, and maybe the mother lives and maybe not. There’s little enough care beforehand, and she works right up to her time, unless she’s sick near death. Now there’s three of them there. The child gets bigger and the room gets smaller. They’re tired with work and maybe the mother’s mother gets too old to work, or too sick—well, the old one comes to that room, too, and the care of her is visited on the family’s head. There’s no quiet, no room or time for thought, and any love there might have been gets trodden underfoot until it dies. A man raises his hand ’gainst his wife, both raise their hands ’gainst the child, and maybe the poor old grandmother is beaten, too. You know nothing about it. What could you know, coming from the freedom of the fields?”
My heart shrank, and now there was no talking as we walked on, and I tried to imagine how it would have been, Pavah and Mirrah and Carmina and me all together in one tiny room, but I could not, nor could I think of Pavah striking me, I could not imagine it at all. And while I thought, we passed through the ring of barracks, not in a straight line but zigzagging toward the north, passing those places one by one and passing between pairs of them—they rose up more sheer than the mountains and were dark against the sky, which was gray with snow, and I tried not to look at them, for it seemed they might fall on me. And when at last we broke out of them, I was glad—only where we went then, was worse, for we plunged into the ring of factories and warehouses. I had never been there before, for that part of the town was silent and deserted at night, when I did my wandering; but sometimes in the days I had seen clouds of black smoke rising over it, to be blown away inland by the wind from the sea. I followed Leren in silence, my eyes being busy enough without making work for my mouth. The structures here did not all look alike; most were made of brick, but here and there was metal, and there were turrets, troughs, wires, and pipes in great variety and abundance. After its fashion it was not even ugly, but looked as if a giant had gone mad and thrown his toys about—and then set them afire, for some of these places spouted smoke. It was not beautiful, no, not that, unless there be a kind of beauty in desolation, for desolate it was: the ground was covered with grit, and nothing grew there, nor did it seem that anything could grow there again. But also it seemed that words like “beauty” and “ugliness” did not apply here, that this place was a thing in itself and like nothing else, and so could not be compared with anything.
Now Leren turned into one of these places, still moving swiftly, and we plunged into a maze of hallways and chambers, all dirty and dark; but there was no one inside, and it was silent, though I had expected the place to be filled with noise and machines and men working.
“Where is everybody?” I asked, and Leren answered: “Many of the factories are idle. They have little to work with; the mines were at half-strength all autumn long, and spring and summer, too. But this one has had work, until now. It was working yesterday, and there was no plan to close it.”
“What do they make here?” I said.
“Plate,” he said with loathing. “Plate for the masters’ tables, finer than my bread will ever see! Well, they’d best take care not to break any more; there’s none new being made.”
He stood in one place and shouted a name, but no one answered his call, and the sounds of his voice echoed in the dark. “Gordon!” he cried out. “Gordon! Are you here? Is anybody here?” And at length he gave over shouting and stood silent in that dim place where I could hardly see his eyes, and I wished to ask who Gordon was, but I did not. I thought Leren had forgotten I was there. And he turned and plunged through the dark to where we had come in without a word to me, though he mumbled to himself, and once more in a frozen lane with that tangle of pipes in the sky he walked on ever faster, and I went beside him, half-running to keep up. “The infirmary,” he said, “they must have taken him to the infirmary.” And back we went into the ring of barracks, but through a part I had never seen before, until we turned down another street, at the end of which there was a structure much smaller than most, and all on one level not climbing toward the sky. I saw nothing of the place save the outer door; for a woman came out to greet us, and said the man Leren sought was not there.
“He must be there,” Leren said, “he was taken ill yesterday, word came to me last night, and I would have come then, but curfew was too near.”
“There are other infirmaries,” the woman said. Her skin was dark, but there were blacker pouches under her eyes.
“There are no others near Millside.”
“Millside?” said the woman. “Yes, there are men here from Millside. But none of that name, and none who came as late as yesterday.”
Leren fell silent and stared. And at length the woman made as if to turn away, but he put out his hand and said entreating her, “What is wrong at Millside?”
She answered, “What is wrong everywhere? They have the fever. That is all we do here now: nurse those who have it to recovery or death, and keep them isolated from all others. All the infirmaries are full. Soon the sick must go elsewhere; to the forest, I think.” And she said that all the infirmaries, on the day before, had been ordered to turn out all who were not sick of the new fever; and they were by no means empty, but overflowed.
“But how can they go to the forest?” Leren said. “Will they lie on the ground in the snow?”
“I do not know,” the woman said, the words were slurred and indistinct, and I saw that she was desperately tired. “There is a place, not far, where land is being cleared, and so there are places for the workers to live. It’s said they may be sent there.”
“But there are people there already!” I said, for I knew the place she meant.
The woman gave me hardly a glance. “There are people here, too,” she sai
d. “If it must burn itself out, better there than here, where there are so many more to die. As for me, I do not care where I go. All the nurses have run away, and only I and two others are left. I will die of this fever, I think. I do not care whether I die there or here.”
Now Leren had wildness in his eyes. He said, “Is that where they of Millside have gone?”
“They have not,” the woman said. She looked at Leren, and I saw that she would have had pity for him, had there been any pity left, but it was all burned and worn out of her. “There were too many,” she said. “They brought us a sick man from Millside, then five, then fifteen. Then there was no room. We have babes here, children, mothers. I will not turn out a child so a man full of life may take its place.”
But Leren had another question, only he could not ask it. I saw it tremble on his lips, but he could not get it out. And the woman looked at him with the last shard of her pity, which had come up from some unknown place, and answered it: “They have sealed Millside up. Those who live will come out.”
But that was the last thing I heard her say, for Leren gave a great cry and turned and ran toward the north, I following and soon out of breath, remembering what I had heard before when a place had been sealed. On either hand the rows of brick stood up and were silent and full of pain, and what could it be like closed into those walls in the deadly air without escape?
Leren could not run forever, he had to slow, so I could, too; I walked with him, panting as he panted. And when my breath returned I longed to ask who Gordon was, but I looked at Leren’s face and did not; for it looked like Mirrah’s on the night she learned of Pavah’s death, only Leren did not cry as Mirrah had, but the pain inside was the same, the clawing and eating alive.
At last at noon (but the clouds were thickening and there were no shadows in the gray light), we came to Millside, which stood by itself at a low place in the ground and near a frozen stream; also it was close to the sea. And already when we first saw it, Leren slowed, and slowed and slowed again as we came nearer, for at each of the small mingy doors stood a man in the uniform of the guards of the Post, and they had guns like the one which had killed Pavah. And Leren slowed still more, like a man in a bad dream where the earth turns to water and he cannot make his way through it; for he knew it was no use to approach that place, but was driven all the same. And there seemed no threat in the Postmen who watched us come, they stood at first with their weapons on their backs—and when, as we came close, they took them from their backs, even then they held them loosely in their arms. Only when we came to a certain distance of one of them, then he gripped the weapon more firmly, and so did those on either side of him; then Leren stopped.
He did not speak immediately, as if he were trying to think of what to say. He only looked at the Postman, and the Postman looked at him. But finally he said—it was a voice I had not heard from him before, a low yearning voice without hope—“My brother is inside.”
Now the Postmen were of many sorts, as I had found at the camp, some being cold and others more or less kind, within the limits of their duties, and this one maybe was less unkind than unnerved by Leren’s aspect, which was that of a man in despair—“Go,” he said, bringing up his weapon. “No one can go in. No one can come out.”
And Leren looked up at the Postman some more, and then he lifted his eyes up the side of the building, to the very top, as if he would see Gordon there; but no one was there. He stood there long, looking up at the bricks and then at the Postman and up at the bricks again, seeking as I thought for a face at a window, but in his misery he was dumb. And at last the Postman pointed his gun at Leren’s breast, and the memory of what I had seen happen to Pavah took me, and I pulled at Leren’s arm and called his name, near weeping; at which he looked at the gun for so long that I thought he contemplated taking it away. And he had made no move that might be taken as threat, nor had any but those few words been exchanged, yet the day stretched out like a thread taut and ready to break, and others of the Postmen began to come toward us.
Then Leren walked away. He turned often to look over his shoulder until the place was out of sight and hidden by other barracks that came between, and he was silent; but after a time, as we came near his house, the tears began to run down his face and into his beard, and his shoulders shook with them. I could not comfort him, there was no comfort to give, but when finally he talked I could listen; still what he said had little to do with Gordon.
“It cannot last forever. There must be an end. There are stores enough of guns, and men to fire them, yes, willing men enough, and only a matter of getting the guns. It’s talked of, did you know that? It has been talked of, there is more talk each day, even in Millside, especially there, and close to the wall and even behind it, too. It started at Millside. It started there. But if Millside dies, it will start again somewhere else. Do you hear?” Here he stopped in the street and seized my arm, and stared into my face with the tears still in his eyes and said, “It will start somewhere else!”
“Yes,” I whispered, but he went on without hearing me: “Remember this, remember what you saw, if you live through what comes on us all. Don’t let them buy you. Remember!”
“I will remember,” I said.
He let go of me and gave me a push: “Go home,” he said. “Go home and wait for the fever.” And I looked about and saw that the street was empty.
“I will go,” I said, “but I will come to see you again. And maybe your brother will live.”
“Yes, and maybe the Ring will fall. Go!”
With that he turned for home, and so did I, our ways parting; and I saw no one else until I came to Kia’s door.
* * *
Now the days drew near to the shortest of the year and the hardest of the cold came on us early. There was no more dancing-master, nor did Portia come, and the players ceased their trade. The snow fell, and the world stopped. We did not go anywhere and what we needed was brought to us, though scanty enough, and brought in half-empty carts; but the seeming end of time had more to do with lack of news, which we could not get any more, except sometimes when a neighbor ducked through our door looking over her shoulder to make sure she was not seen. So we heard, but as if at a great distance, of death swelling in the town; how the newly sick might disappear, no one knowing where they were taken; we heard of the sealing of more of the great barracks, and how the inhabitants of one set it afire but were shot as they ran from the flames or forced back to burn alive; and we heard of empty factories, and how fuel might soon be short, as food already was. But these whispers were like tales of events that had happened far away. The Postmen who came with food and fuel would say nothing, and we heard nothing of how things were behind the wall. There might have been no one there, all might have fled from the sickness—yet clearly someone remained to give the orders that kept us in isolation, and other orders that reduced the food the Postmen brought day by day—and our neighbors said the numbers of the fishers, too, had shrunk, so that there were fewer to bring food from the sea. And we weakened, and were often hungry, except Carmina who got shares of all our portions; and I began to think of how it might end.
But one night when I had only begun to think of the end, there came a rattle at the door, and a man put his face into it, and I saw that it was Willem. He spoke a few quick words to Kia which I could not hear, and then was gone without acknowledging my presence. Alban hurried to Kia’s side and she whispered to him, and he said so that I could hear, seeming astounded, “He is running away? Where can he go? Can it be so bad?”
“His head is light with hunger,” Kia said, but she twisted her hands in her skirt, and her brow twisted, too.
She looked at Alban and he said, “In the morning we will try to find out more.”
“Morning will be too late,” she said.
And they began to argue the wisdom of going that same night for news of some kind—of the sickness, I thought, for what else could it be?—and then they spoke of Leren and of streets and passages that
led out of sight, with luck, to his house; and I said I knew all the ways there were to get there.
So they sent me out into the cold with a question: I was to ask Leren what had happened (though I still did not know what they thought that was). I made the journey safely, treading ice in the dark, for the streets were not lighted, and came safely to Leren’s house and asked my question—I did not even go in, he was in no way glad to see me, his mind was on other things, and he stood in the door looking into the dark with fear in his face.
He said, “One of those at Millside wanted to get out. To get out he betrayed us all. He was not satisfied with giving the names of Millside men already doomed with fever; no, he has given them every name he ever heard. I have it from a guard who was one of those named and now runs for his life. I cannot make up my mind to run. It is winter, there is nothing but snow. It will be dying all the same; only the means will be different.”
Then he turned into the room and took a scrap of paper, and wrote some lines and gave them to me for Kia.
The D’neeran Factor Page 83
