by Ray Bradbury
The producer lifts himself up through the trapdoor and sits on the plankings, the gun cradled more easily in his hand. He seems to be looking at the old man first with one eye, then the other, listening to him with one ear, then the other, shaking his head a little to himself.
The night watchman continues:
‘And somehow, after the extras and the men with the cameras and microphones and all the equipment walked away and the gates were shut and they drove off in big cars, somehow something of all those thousands of different people remained. The things they had been, or pretended to be, stayed on. The foreign languages, the costumes, the things they did, the things they thought about, their religions and their music, all those little things and big things stayed on. The sights of far places. The smells. The salt wind. The sea. It’s all here tonight if you listen.’
The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky to these two men who stand listening and apart.
The producer laughs shortly and shakes his head.
‘You heard,’ says the night watchman. ‘You did hear, didn’t you? I see it in your face.’
Douglas shoves the gun in his coat pocket. ‘Anything you listen for you can hear. I made the mistake of listening. You should have been a writer. You could throw six of my best ones out of work. Well, what about it – are you ready to come down out of here now?’
‘You sound almost polite,’ says the night watchman.
‘Don’t know why I should. You ruined a good evening for me.’
‘Did I? It hasn’t been that bad, has it? A bit different, I should say. Stimulating, maybe.’
Douglas laughs quietly. ‘You’re not dangerous at all. You just need company. It’s your job and everything going to hell and you’re lonely. I can’t quite figure you, though.’
‘Don’t tell me I’ve got you thinking?’ asks the old man.
Douglas snorts. ‘After you’ve lived in Hollywood long enough, you meet all kinds. Besides, I’ve never been up here before. It’s a real view, like you say. But I’ll be damned if I can figure why you should worry about all this junk. What’s it to you?’
The night watchman gets down on one knee and taps one hand into the palm of the other, illustrating his points. ‘Look. As I said before, you came here years ago, clapped your hands, and three hundred cities jumped up! Then you added a half-thousand other nations, and states and peoples and religions and political setups inside the barbed-wire fence. And there was trouble! Oh, nothing you could see. It was all in the wind and the spaces between. But it was the same kind of trouble the world out there beyond the fence has – squabbles and riots and invisible wars. But at last the trouble died out. You want to know why?’
‘If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting up here freezing.’
A little night music, please, thinks the old man, and moves his hand on the air like someone playing the proper and beautiful music to background all that he has to tell.…
‘Because you got Boston joined to Trinidad,’ he says softly, ‘part of Trinidad poking out of Lisbon, part of Lisbon leaning on Alexandria, Alexandria tacked onto Shanghai, and a lot of little pegs and nails between, like Chattanooga, Oshkosh, Oslo, Sweet Water, Soissons, Beirut, Bombay, and Port Arthur. You shoot a man in New York and he stumbles forward and drops dead in Athens. You take a political bribe in Chicago and somebody in London goes to jail. You hang a Negro man in Alabama and the people of Hungary have to bury him. The dead Jews of Poland clutter the streets of Sydney, Portland, and Tokyo. You push a knife into a man’s stomach in Berlin and it comes out the back of a farmer in Memphis. It’s all so close, so very close. That’s why we have peace here. We’re all so crowded there has got to be peace, or nothing would be left! One fire would destroy all of us, no matter who started it, for what reason. So all of the people, the memories, whatever you want to call them, that are here, have settled down, and this is their world, a good world, a fine world.’
The old man stops and licks his lips slowly and takes a breath. ‘And tomorrow,’ he says, ‘you’re going to stomp it down.’
The old man crouches there a moment longer, then gets to his feet and gazes out at the cities and the thousand shadows in those cities. The great plaster cathedral whines and sways in the night air, back and forth, rocking on the summer tides.
‘Well,’ says Douglas at last, ‘shall – shall we go down now?’
Smith nods. ‘I’ve had my say.’
Douglas vanishes, and the watchman listens to the younger man going down and down through the ladders and catwalks of the night. Then, after a reasonable hesitation, the old man takes hold of the ladder, breathes something to himself, and begins the long descent in shadow.
The studio police and the few workers and some minor executives all drive away. Only one large dark car waits outside the barbed-wire gate as the two men stand talking in the cities of the meadow.
‘What are you going to do now?’ asks Smith.
‘Go back to my party, I suppose,’ says the producer.
‘Will it be fun?’
‘Yes.’ The producer hesitates. ‘Sure, it’ll be fun!’ He glances at the night watchman’s right hand. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve found that hammer Kelly told me you were using? You going to start building again? You don’t give up, do you?’
‘Would you, if you were the last builder and everybody else was a wrecker?’
Douglas starts to walk with the old man. ‘Well, maybe I’ll see you again, Smith.’
‘No,’ says Smith, ‘I won’t be here. This all won’t be here. If you come back again, it’ll be too late.’
Douglas stops. ‘Hell, hell! What do you want me to do?’
‘A simple thing. Leave all this standing. Leave these cities up.’
‘I can’t do that! Damn it. Business reasons. It has to go.’
‘A man with a real nose for business and some imagination could think up a profitable reason for it to stay,’ says Smith.
‘My car’s waiting! How do I get out of here?’
The producer strikes off over a patch of rubble, cuts through half of a tumbled ruin, kicking boards aside, leaning for a moment on plaster façades and strutworks. Dust rains from the sky.
‘Watch out!’
The producer stumbles in a thunder of dust and avalanching brick; he gropes, he topples, he is seized upon by the old man and yanked forward.
‘Jump!’
They jump, and half the building slides to ruin, crashes into hills and mountains of old paper and lathing. A great bloom of dust strikes out upon the air.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes. Thanks. Thanks.’ The producer looks at the fallen building. The dust clears. ‘You probably saved my life.’
‘Hardly that. Most of those are papier-mâché bricks. You might have been cut and bruised a little.’
‘Nevertheless, thanks. What building was that that fell?’
‘Norman village tower, built in 1925. Don’t get near the rest of it; it might go down.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ The producer moves carefully in to stand by the setpiece. ‘Why – I could push this whole damn building over with one hand.’ He demonstrates; the building leans and quivers and groans. The producer steps quickly back. ‘I could knock it down in a second.’
‘But you wouldn’t want to do that,’ says the watchman.
‘Oh, wouldn’t I? What’s one French house more or less, this late in the day?’
The old man takes his arm. ‘Walk around here to the other side of the house.’
They walk to the other side.
‘Read that sign,’ says Smith.
The producer flicks his cigarette lighter, holds the fire up to help him squint, and reads:
‘“THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK MELLIN TOWN.”’ He pauses. ‘“ILLINOIS,”’ he says, very slowly.
The building stands there in the sharp light of the stars and the bland light of the moon.
‘On one side’ – Douglas balances his hands like a scales – ‘a French tower. On the other side—’ He walks seven steps to the right, seven steps to the left, peering. ‘“THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK.” Bank. Tower. Tower. Bank. Well, I’ll be damned.’
Smith smiles and says, ‘Still want to push the French tower down, Mr Douglas?’
‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, hold on,’ says Douglas, and suddenly begins to see the buildings that stand before him. He turns in a slow circle; his eyes move up and down and across and over; his eyes flick here, flick there, see this, see that, examine, file, put away, and re-examine. He begins to walk in silence. They move in the cities of the meadow, over grasses and wild flowers, up to and into and through ruins and half-ruins and up to and into and through complete avenues and villages and towns.
They begin a recital which goes on and on as they walk, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering.
‘What’s this over here?’
‘A Buddhist temple.’
‘And on the other side of it?’
‘The log cabin where Lincoln was born.’
‘And here?’
‘St. Patrick’s church, New York.’
‘And on the reverse?’
‘A Russian Orthodox church in Rostov!’
‘What’s this?’
‘The door of a castle on the Rhine!’
‘And inside?’
‘A Kansas City soda fountain!’
‘And here? And here? And over there? And what’s that?’ asks Douglas. ‘What’s this!? What about that one!? And over there?’
It seems as if they are running and rushing and yelling all through the cities, here, there, everywhere, up, down, in, out, climbing, descending, poking, stirring, opening-shutting doors.
‘And this, and this, and this, and this?’
The night watchman tells all there is to tell.
Their shadows run ahead in narrow alleys, and avenues as broad as rivers made of stone and sand.
They make a great talking circle; they hurry all around and back to where they started.
They are quiet again. The old man is quiet from having said what there was to say, and the producer is quiet from listening and remembering and fitting it all together in his mind. He stands, absentmindedly fumbling for his cigarette case. It takes him a full minute to open it, examining every action, thinking about it, and to offer the case to the watchman.
‘Thanks.’
They light up thoughtfully. They puff on their cigarettes and watch the smoke blow away.
Douglas says, ‘Where’s that damned hammer of yours?’
‘Here,’ says Smith.
‘You got your nails with you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Douglas takes a deep drag on his cigarette and exhales. ‘Okay, Smith, get to work.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Nail what you can back up, in your own time. Most of the stuff that’s already torn down is a complete loss. But any bits and pieces that fit and will look decent, put ’em together. Thank God there’s a lot still standing. It took me a long time to get it through my head. A man with a nose for business and some imagination, you said. That is the world, you said. I should have seen it years ago. Here it all is inside the fence, and me too blind to see what could be done with it. The World Federation in my own back yard and me kicking it over. So help me God, we need more crazy people and night watchmen.’
‘You know,’ says the night watchman, ‘I’m getting old and I’m getting strange. You wouldn’t be fooling an old and strange man, would you?’
‘I’ll make no promises I can’t keep,’ says the producer. ‘I’ll only promise to try. There’s a good chance we can go ahead. It would make a beautiful film, there’s no doubt of that. We could make it all here, inside the fence, photograph it ten ways from Christmas. There’s no doubt about a story, either. You provided it. It’s yours. It wouldn’t be hard to put some writers to work on it. Good writers. Perhaps only a short subject, twenty minutes, but we could show all the cities and countries here, leaning on and holding each other up. I like the idea. I like it very much, believe me. We could show a film like that to anyone anywhere in the world and they’d like it. They couldn’t pass it up, it would be too important.’
‘It’s good to hear you talk this way.’
‘I hope I keep on talking this way,’ says the producer. ‘I can’t be trusted. I don’t trust myself. Hell, I get excited, up one day, down the next. Maybe you’ll have to hit me on the head with that hammer to keep me going.’
‘I’d be pleased,’ says Smith.
‘And if we do the film,’ says the younger man, ‘I suppose you could help. You know the sets, probably better than anyone. Any suggestions you might want to make, we’d be glad to have. Then, after we do the film, I suppose you won’t mind letting us tear the rest of the world down, right?’
‘I’d give my permission,’ says the watchman.
‘Well, I’ll call off the hounds for a few days and see what happens. Send out a camera crew tomorrow to see what we can line up for shots. Send out some writers. Maybe you can all gab. Hell, hell. We’ll work it out.’ Douglas turns toward the gate. ‘In the meantime, use your hammer all you want. I’ll be seeing you. My God, I’m freezing!’
They hurry toward the gate. On the way, the old man finds his lunch box where he abandoned it some hours ago. He picks it up, takes out the thermos, and shakes it. ‘How about a drink before you go?’
‘What’ve you got? Some of that amontillado you were yelling about?’
‘1876.’
‘Let’s have some of that, sure.’
The thermos is opened and the liquid poured steaming from it into the cup.
‘There you are,’ says the old man.
‘Thanks. Here’s to you.’ The producer drinks. ‘That’s good. Ah, that’s damned good!’
‘It might taste like coffee, but I tell you it’s the finest amontillado ever put under a cork.’
‘You can say that again.’
The two of them stand among the cities of the world in the moonlight, drinking the hot drink, and the old man remembers something: ‘There’s an old song fits here, a drinking song, I think, a song that all of us who live inside the fence sing, when we’re of a mind, when I listen right, and the wind’s just right in the telephone wires. It goes like this:
‘We all go the same way home,
All the same collection, in the same direction,
All go the same way home.
So there’s no need to part at all,
And we’ll all cling together like the ivy on the old garden wall …’
They finish drinking the coffee in the middle of Port-au-Prince.
‘Hey!’ says the producer suddenly. ‘Take it easy with that cigarette! You want to burn down the whole darn world?’
They both look at the cigarette and smile.
‘I’ll be careful,’ says Smith.
‘So long,’ says the producer. ‘I’m really late for that party.’
‘So long, Mr Douglas.’
The gate hasp clicks open and shut, the footsteps die away, the limousine starts up and drives off in the moonlight, leaving behind the cities of the world and an old man standing in the middle of these cities of the world raising his hand to wave.
‘So long,’ says the night watchman.
And then there is only the wind.
The Kilimanjaro Device
I arrived in the truck very early in the morning. I had been driving all n
ight, for I hadn’t been able to sleep at the motel so I thought I might as well drive and I arrived among the mountains and hills near Ketchum and Sun Valley just as the sun came up and I was glad I had kept busy with driving.
I drove into the town itself without looking up at that one hill. I was afraid if I looked at it, I would make a mistake. It was very important not to look at the grave. At least that is how I felt. And I had to go on my hunch.
I parked the truck in front of an old saloon and walked around the town and talked to a few people and breathed the air and it was sweet and clear. I found a young hunter, but he was wrong; I knew that after talking to him for a few minutes. I found a very old man, but he was no better. Then I found me a hunter about fifty, and he was just right. He knew, or sensed, everything I was looking for.
I bought him a beer and we talked about a lot of things, and then I bought him another beer and led the conversation around to what I was doing here and why I wanted to talk to him. We were silent for a while and I waited, not showing my impatience, for the hunter, on his own, to bring up the past, to speak of other days three years ago, and of driving toward Sun Valley at this time or that and what he saw and knew about a man who had once sat in this bar and drunk beer and talked about hunting or gone hunting out beyond.
And at last, looking off at the wall as if it were the highway and the mountains, the hunter gathered up his quiet voice and was ready to speak.
‘That old man,’ he said. ‘Oh, that old man on the road. Oh, that poor old man.’
I waited.
‘I just can’t get over that old man on the road,’ he said, looking down now into his drink.
I drank some more of my beer, not feeling well, feeling very old myself and tired.
When the silence prolonged itself, I got out a local map and laid it on the wooden table. The bar was quiet. It was midmorning and we were completely alone there.
