Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09

by The Small Assassin (v2. 1)

  He tried the forbidden door again. Locked.

  Had he really gone up? Had he really discovered those half-green, half-blue vastnesses? Had God seen him? Edwin trembled. God. God, who smoked mysterious black pipes and wielded magical walking sticks. God who might be watching even now!

  Edwin murmured, touching his cold face.

  “I can still see. Thank you, thank you. I can still see!”

  At nine-thirty, half an hour late, he rapped on the school door.

  “Good morning, Teacher!”

  The door swung open. Teacher waited in her tall gray, thick-clothed monk’s robe, the cowl hiding her face. She wore her usual silver spectacles. Her gray-gloved hands beckoned.

  “You’re late.”

  Beyond her the land of books burned in bright colors from the hearth. There were walls bricked with encyclopedias, and a fireplace in which you could stand without bumping your head. A log blazed fiercely.

  The door closed, and there was a warm quiet. Here was the desk, where God had once sat, he’d walked this carpet, stuffing his pipe with rich tobacco, and scowled out that vast, stained-glass window. The room smelled of God, rubbed wood, tobacco, leather, and silver coins. Here, Teacher’s voice sang like a solemn harp, telling of God, the old days, and the World when it had shaken with God’s determination, trembled at his wit, when the World was abuilding under God’s hand, a blueprint, a cry, and timber rising. God’s fingerprints still lay like half-melted snowflakes on a dozen sharpened pencils in a locked glass display. They must never never be touched lest they melt away forever.

  Here, here in the Highlands, to the soft sound of Teacher’s voice running on, Edwin learned what was expected of him and his body. He was to grow into a Presence, he must fit the odors and the trumpet voice of God. He must some day stand tall and burning with pale fire at this high window to shout dust off the beams of the Worlds; he must be God Himself! Nothing must prevent it. Not the sky or the trees or the Things beyond the trees.

  Teacher moved like a vapor in the room.

  “Why are you late, Edwin?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll ask you again. Edwin why are you late?”

  “One—one of the forbidden doors was open. . . .”

  He heard the hiss of Teacher’s breath. He saw her slowly slide back and sink into the large hand-carved chair, swallowed by darkness, her glasses flashing light before they vanished. He felt her looking out at him from shadow and her voice was numbed and so like a voice he heard at night, his own voice crying just before he woke from some nightmare. “Which door? Where?” she said. “Oh, it must be locked!”

  “The door by the Dali-Picasso people,” he said, in panic. He and Teacher had always been friends. Was that finished now? Had he spoiled things? “I climbed the stair. I had to, I had to! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, don’t tell Mother!”

  Teacher sat lost in the hollow chair, in the hollow cowl. Her glasses made faint firefly glitters in the well where she moved alone. “And what did you see up there?” she murmured.

  “A big blue room!”

  “Did you?”

  “And a green one, and ribbons with bugs running on them, but I didn’t, I didn’t stay long, I swear, I swear!”

  “Green room, ribbons, yes ribbons, and the little bugs running along them, yes,” she said, and her voice made him sad.

  He reached out for her hand, but it fell away to her lap and groped back, in darkness, to her breast. “I came right down, I locked the door, I won’t go look again, ever!” he cried.

  Her voice was so faint he could hardly hear what she said. “But now you’ve seen, and you’ll want to see more, and you’ll always be curious now.” The cowl moved slowly back and forth. Its deepness turned toward him, questioning. “Did you—like what you saw?”

  “I was scared. It was big.”

  “Big, yes, too big. Large, large, so large, Edwin. Not like our world. Big, large, uncertain. Oh, why did you do this! You knew it was wrong!”

  The fire bloomed and withered on the hearth while she waited for his answer and finally when he could not answer she said, as if her lips were barely moving, “Is it your Mother?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Is she nervous, is she mean, does she snap at you, does she hold too tight, do you want time alone, is that it, is that it, is that it?”

  “Yes, yes!” he sobbed, wildly.

  “Is that why you ran off, she demands all your time, all your thoughts?” Lost and sad, her voice. “Tell me . . .”

  His hands had gone sticky with tears. “Yes!” He bit his fingers and the backs of his hands. “Yes!” It was wrong to admit such things, but he didn’t have to say them now, she said them, she said them, and all he must do is agree, shake his head, bite his knuckles, cry out between sobs.

  Teacher was a million years old.

  “We learn,” she said, wearily. Rousing from her chair, she moved with a slow swaying of gray robes to the desk where her gloved hand searched a long time to find pen and paper. “We learn, Oh God, but slowly, and with pain, we learn. We think we do right, but all the time, all the time, we kill the Plan. . . .” She hissed her breath, jerked her head up suddenly. The cowl looked completely empty, shivering.

  She wrote words on the paper.

  “Give this to your mother. It tells her you must have two full hours every afternoon to yourself, to prowl where you wish. Anywhere. Except out there. Are you listening, child?”

  “Yes.” He dried his face. “But—”

  “Go on.”

  “Did Mother lie to me about out there, and the Beasts?”

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’ve been your friend, I’ve never beaten you, as your mother sometimes must. We’re both here to help you understand and grow so you won’t be destroyed as God was.”

  She arose, and in rising, turned the cowl such a way that color from the hearth washed over her face. Swiftly, the firelight erased her many wrinkles.

  Edwin gasped. His heart gave a jolting thump. “The fire!”

  Teacher froze.

  “The fire!” Edwin looked at the fire and back to her face. The cowl jerked away from his gaze, the face vanished in the deep well, gone. “Your face,” said Edwin numbly. “You look like Mother!”

  She moved swiftly to the books, seized one down. She talked to the shelves in her high, singing, monotonous voice. “Women look alike, you know that! Forget it! Here, here!” And she brought him the book. “Read the first chapter! Read the diary!”

  Edwin took the book but did not feel its weight in his hands. The fire rumbled and sucked itself brilliantly up the flue as he began to read and as he read Teacher sank back down and settled and quieted and the more he read the more the gray cowl nodded and became serene, the hidden face like a clapper gone solemn in its bell. Firelight ignited the gold animal lettering of the shelved books as he read and he spoke the words but was really thinking of these books from which pages had been razored, and clipped, certain lines erased, certain pictures torn, and leather jaws of some books glued tight, others like mad dogs, muzzled in hard bronze straps to keep him away. All this he thought while his lips moved through the fire-quiet:

  “In the Beginning was God. Who created the Universe, and the Worlds within the Universe, the Continents within the Worlds and the Lands within the Continents, and shaped from His mind and hand His loving wife and a child who in time would be God Himself . . .

  Teacher nodded slowly. The fire fell softly away to slumbering coals. Edwin read on.

  Down the banister, breathless, he slid into the Parlor. “Mom, Mom!”

  She lay in a plump maroon chair, breathless, as if she, too, had run a great way.

  “Mom, Mom, you’re soaking wet!”

  “Am I?” she said, as if it was his fault she’d been rushing about. “So I am, so I am.” She took a deep breath and sighed. Then she took his hands and kissed each one. She looked at him steadily, her eyes dilating. “Well now, listen here,
I’ve a surprise! Do you know what’s coming tomorrow? You can’t guess! Your birthday!”

  “But it’s only been ten months!”

  “Tomorrow it is! Do us wonders, I say. And anything I say is so is really so, my dear.”

  She laughed.

  “And we open another secret room?” He was dazed.

  “The fourteenth room, yes! Fifteenth room next year, six-teenth, seventeenth, and so on and on till your twenty-first birthday, Edwin! Then, oh, then we’ll open up the triple-locked doors to the most important room and you’ll be Man of the House, Father, God, Ruler of the Universe!”

  “Hey,” he said. And, “Hey!” He tossed his books straight up in the air. They exploded like a great burst of doves, whistling. He laughed. She laughed. Their laughter flew and fell with the books. He ran to scream down the banister again.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she waited, arms wide, to catch him.

  Edwin lay on his moonlit bed and his fingers pried at the Jack-in-the Box, but the lid stayed shut; he turned it in his hands, blindly, but did not look down at it. Tomorrow, his birthday—but why? Was he that good? No. Why then, should the birthday come so soon? Well, simply because things had gotten, what word could you use? Nervous? Yes, things had begun to shimmer by day as well as by night. He saw the white tremor, the moonlight sifting down and down of an invisible snow in his mother’s face. It would take yet another of his birthdays to quiet her again.

  “My birthdays,” he said to the ceiling, “will come quicker from now on. I know, I know. Mo m laughs so loud, so much, and her eyes are funny. . . .”

  Would Teacher be invited to the party? No. Mother and Teacher had never met. “Why not?” “Because,” said Mom. “Don’t you want to meet Mom, Teacher?” “Some day,” said Teacher, faintly, blowing off like cobwebs in the hall. “Some . . . day. . . .”

  And where did Teacher go at night? Did she drift through all those secret mountain countries high up near the moon where the chandeliers were skinned blind with dust, or did she wander out beyond the trees that lay beyond the trees that lay beyond the trees? No, hardly that!

  He twisted the toy in his sweating hands. Last year, when things began to tremble and quiver, hadn’t Mother advanced his birthday several months, too? Yes, oh, yes, yes.

  Think of something else. God. God building cold midnight cellar, sun-baked attic, and all miracles between. Think of the hour of his death, crushed by some monstrous beetle beyond the wall. Oh, how the worlds must have rocked with His passing!

  Edwin moved the Jack-in-the-Box to his face, whispered against the lid. “Hello! Hello! Hello, hello . . .”

  No answer save the sprung-tight coiled-in tension there. I’ll get you out, thought Edwin. Just wait, just wait. It may hurt, but there’s only one way. Here, here . . .

  And he moved from bed to window and leaned far out, looking down to the marbled walk in the moonlight. He raised the box high, felt the sweat trickle from his armpit, felt his fingers clench, felt his arm jerk. He flung the box out, shouting. The box tumbled in the cold air, down. It look a long time to strike the marble pavement.

  Edwin bent still further over, gasping.

  “Well?” he cried. “Well?” and again, “You there!” and “You!”

  The echoes faded. The box lay in the forest shadows. He could not see if the crash had broken it wide. He could not see if the Jack had risen, smiling, from its hideous jail or if it bobbed upon the wind now this way, that, this way, that, its silver bells jingling softly. He listened. He stood by the window for an hour staring, listening, and at last went back to bed.

  Morning. Bright voices moved near and far, in and out the Kitchen World and Edwin opened his eyes. Whose voices, now whose could they be? Some of God’s workmen? The Dali people? But Mother hated them; no. The voices faded in a humming roar. Silence. And from a great distance, a running, running grew louder and still louder until the door burst open.

  “Happy Birthday!”

  They danced, they ate frosted cookies, they bit lemon ices, they drank pink wines, and there stood his name on a snowpowdered cake as Mother chorded the piano into an avalanche of sound and opened her mouth to sing, then whirled to seize him away to more strawberries, more wines, more laughter that shook chandeliers into trembling rain. Then, a silver key flourished, they raced to unlock the fourteenth forbidden door.

  “Ready! Hold on!”

  The door whispered into the wall.

  “Oh,” said Edwin.

  For, disappointingly enough, this fourteenth room was nothing at all but a dusty dull-brown closet. It promised nothing as had the rooms given him on other anniversaries! His sixth birthday present, now, had been the schoolroom in the Highlands. On his seventh birthday he had opened the play-room in the Lowlands. Eighth, the music room; Ninth, the miraculous hell-fired kitchen! Tenth was the room where phonographs hissed in a continuous exhalation of ghosts singing on a gentle wind. Eleventh was the vast green diamond room of the Garden with a carpet that had to be cut instead of swept!

  “Oh, don’t be disappointed; move!” Mother, laughing, pushed him in the closet. “Wait till you see how magical! Shut the door!”

  She thrust a red button flush with the wall.

  Edwin shrieked. “No!”

  For the room was quivering, working, like a mouth that held them in iron jaws; the room moved, the wall slid away below.

  “Oh, hush now, darling,” she said. The door drifted down through the floor, and a long insanely vacant wall slithered by like an endlessly rustling snake to bring another door and another door with it that did not stop but traveled on while Edwin screamed and clutched his mother’s waist. The room whined and cleared its throat somewhere; the trembling ceased, the room stood still. Edwin stared at a strange new door and heard his mother say go on, open it, there, now, there. And the new door gaped upon still further mystery. Edwin blinked.

  “The Highlands! This is the Highlands! How did we get here? Where’s the Parlor, mom, where’s the Parlor!”

  She fetched him out through the door. “We jumped straight up, and we flew. Once a week, you’ll fly to school instead of running the long way around!”

  He still could not move, but only stood looking at the mystery of Land exchanged for Land, of Country replaced by higher and further Country.

  “Oh, mother, mother . . .” he said.

  It was a sweet long time in the deep grass of the garden where they idled most deliciously, sipped huge cupfuls of apple cider with their elbows on crimson silk cushions, their shoes kicked off, their toes bedded in sour dandelions, sweet clover. Mother jumped twice when she heard Monsters roar beyond the forest. Edwin kissed her cheek. “It’s all right,” he said, “I’ll protect you.”

  “I know you will,” she said, but she turned to gaze at the pattern of trees, as if any moment the chaos out there might smash the forest with a blow and stamp its Titan’s foot down and grind them to dust.

  Late in the long blue afternoon, they saw a chromium bird thing fly through a bright rift in the trees, high and roaring. They ran for the Parlor, heads bent as before a green storm of lightning and rain, feeling the sound pour blinding showers to drench them.

  Crackle, crackle—the birthday burnt away to cellophane nothingness. At sunset, in the dim soft Parlor Country, Mother inhaled champagne with her tiny seedling nostrils and her pale summer-rose mouth, then, drowsy wild, herded Edwin off to his room and shut him in.

  He undressed in slow-pantomimed wonder, thinking, this year, next year, and which room two years, three years, from today? What about the Beasts, the Monsters? And being mashed and God killed? What was killed? What was Death? Was Death a feeling? Did God enjoy it so much he never came back? Was Death a journey then?

  In the hall, on her way downstairs, Mother dropped a champagne bottle. Edwin heard and was cold, for the thought that jumped through his head was, that’s how Mother’d sound. If she fell, if she broke, you’d find a million fragments in the morning. Bright crystal and clear w
ine on the parquet flooring, that’s all you’d see at dawn.

  Morning was the smell of vines and grapes and moss in his room, a smell of shadowed coolness. Downstairs, breakfast was in all probability, at this instant, manifesting itself in a fingersnap on the wintry tables.

  Edwin got up to wash and dress and wait, feeling fine. Now things would be fresh and new for at least a month. Today, like all days, there’d be breakfast, school, lunch, songs in the music room, an hour or two at the electrical games, then—tea in the Outlands, on the luminous grass. Then up to school again for a late hour or so, where he and Teacher might prowl the censored library together and he’d puzzle with words and thoughts about that world out there that had been censored from his eyes.

  He had forgotten Teacher’s note. Now, he must give it to Mother.

  He opened the door. The hall was empty. Down through the deeps of the Worlds, a soft mist floated, through a silence which no footsteps broke; the hills were quiet; the silver fonts did not pulse in the first sunlight, and the banister, coiling up from the mists was a prehistoric monster peering into his room. He pulled away from this creature, looking to find Mother, like a white boat, drifted by the dawn tides and vapors below.

  She was not there. He hurried down through the hushed lands, calling, “Mother!”

  He found her in the Parlor, collapsed on the floor in her shiny green-gold party dress, a champagne goblet in one hand, the carpet littered with broken glass.

  She was obviously asleep, so he sat at the magical breakfast table. He blinked at the empty white cloth and the gleaming plates. There was no food. All his life wondrous foods had awaited him here. But not today.

  “Mother, wake up!” He ran to her. “Shall I go to school? Where’s the food? Wake up!”

  He ran up the stairs.

  The Highlands were cold and shadowed, and the white glass suns no longer glowed from the ceilings in this day of sullen fog. Down dark corridors, through dim continents of silence, Edwin rushed. He rapped and rapped at the school door. It drifted in, whining, by itself.