The Curfew
Page 2
He looked at the couple.
—The stone is for your daughter, I believe?
—Yes.
—She was, nine years old?
—Just nine.
—I’m sorry to hear it.
The couple looked then the one at the other.
William continued,
—You see, I have a daughter who is nine.
The woman flinched as if hit.
—Be careful with her, she said. Our Lisa seemed indestructible, fearless, invincible. But all it takes, all it takes is …
Her voice was drowned out by her own crying. Her husband put his arms around her.
—It was a roof slate that did it. Right here in the street. The wind blew it. She had gone out to play and an hour passed, two hours, three. We just thought she was with a friend, or, well, I don’t know what we thought. Anyway, Joan went out front to see if Lisa was coming, and …
The room was empty except for the three chairs. There weren’t any pictures, there wasn’t a table, just bare walls and this long narrow window of exactly square panes. Each of the panes was square, William observed for the third time. He looked at them in turn, yes, all square, leaded glass.
The man was trying to continue, but it took him a little while.
—You see, she was just there, right in front of the house, on the ground. The rest of her was fine, it was her head that, well, it had sailed down, the slate, and, the wind must have really sent it. I guess it didn’t make any noise as it came.
—I’m sorry, said William. It is a terrible thing.
—We want it to mean something, said the woman. We thought about it, and this is a place where it can be made to mean something, don’t you think?
—I’m sure of it.
—We thought it would begin with the name, that’s how they go, and then,
—So … Lisa Epstein. Did you want the name in capital letters?
—Yes, clear large lettering.
The man broke in,
—Perhaps, perhaps, She was walking in the street by our house, and it was almost evening.
—We thought of it, you know, several different ways. What do you think?
They looked at him then, very intently.
—I think, perhaps, well, let’s look at it. How old, exactly?
—Nine years, twenty-four days.
He leaned over his little book.
Lisa Epstein.
She was walking in the street by our house,
and it was almost evening.
He took a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. He closed his eyes, opened them, looked at it again. He looked up and around the room, avoiding the eyes of the couple. Wherever he tried to look, his eyes were drawn to this narrow ledge of light, this eighteen-paned window. It was the room’s nature, and the three chairs were the expression of that nature. That wasn’t right, though, not exactly. There weren’t three chairs. There were two chairs, and then one that wouldn’t be used. He wondered if he was sitting in the chair that the girl used to sit in. It could even be that the room had changed completely, that the girl had never entered the room under these conditions.
—Do you sit here often?
—We sit here in the evening.
He looked again at his book. Lisa Epstein. Lisa Epstein.
He went to a new page.
LISA EPSTEIN
9 years, 24 days.
In the street by our house, it was almost evening.
He showed it to them.
A thing that develops in a child—that which must occur particularly, precisely, if great success is to be had in some field—is not the prefiguring of that excellence, no! It is not the ability to produce great things of a lesser sort leading upwards like a ladder. It is rather a vague listlessness that infects other matters, leaving the single matter clear.
But then, of course, there is the matter of RIDDLES which must be learned by hand or with great violence of tutelage. Why, I shouldn’t mind being beaten with a stick if it meant I could solve all riddles without exception. Yes, William had been whipped until he had the whole Exeter book by heart. No wonder then, the rise of this second profession, epitaphorist.
There is a theory that the sun is made up of thousands of suns arranged in a war each against the others. It is a discredited theory, but it has never been disproven.
He took an oblique route to the next place, and passed through several alleys, which were themselves connected to other alleys. Here, the backs of things could be seen, unrepaired, unconstructed, unrepentant. Still, one was not unwatched. Faces could be seen beneath ruined stairwells and from the mouths of makeshift tents.
Down the first side-alley he saw a man running, and several men in pursuit. The man who was running ran in an odd way, the way one runs only if one’s hands are tied. Of those who chased him, one had a catch pole with a wire on the end. It ducked towards the first man’s head again and again, but he kept ahead and shot around a corner. The others raced on, relentlessly, and all were gone from sight.
How could the government’s people know one another? The simple answer, and the truth of it, as far as William could tell, is they did not. Government men were often caught by other government men and taken into the huge death cell rumored to be in the city center (no one had ever seen it). Once captured, the truth or falsehood of their claims could be decided. It was a small difficulty that permitted them to go at large without uniforms, operating with impunity.
The next place was a business. It was a butcher’s shop, a huge one. As he entered, he emerged into a place for standing before a long counter, perhaps ninety feet in length. Behind it stood ten or fifteen men dressed in long white aprons. The counter was wood on top with glass, and William had never in his life seen so much meat in one place.
As it is described it seems very still, but in fact, there were dozens of customers in line, and the men behind the counter were strenuously engaged in great business of cutting, slicing, wrapping, tying. They dodged past one another, and past innumerable blades and cleavers with acrobatic motions.
William bypassed the line, and a young man, also in an apron, approached him immediately.
—You’ll need to wait there.
—I’m not here to buy anything.
—In that case, you certainly need to stand over there. If you just want to look around, come by at some hour when we’re less busy.
—No, no, I’m here on business. Mr. Denton asked me to come.
—Denton? Well, why didn’t you say so? Come with me.
The boy gave the line a stern look before turning away, to make sure everyone stayed exactly where they were.
—Over here.
He walked William down to the end of the shop, where a small stair led to a door.
—I go no farther, said the boy. It had better have been true what you said. Denton doesn’t like soliciting.
He hurried away back down the stairs.
William then opened the door and went into one of the tidiest, most comfortable rooms he had ever been lucky enough to encounter.
There was one very fine leather chair directly in front of a large window that overlooked the shop. All around were bookshelves, full of books of every kind, although he could see that many pertained to butchery and to animal anatomy. A drafting table was against one wall. The whole room was lit by candles, perhaps sixty of them. Before the drafting table, which was meant to be used standing, stood a large man of formidable characteristic.
—Mr. Denton?
—You are from the mason, I assume.
—I am that.
—Sit over there, please. I will fetch a stool.
Denton opened a closet and removed a three-legged stool. He placed it beside the sumptuous leather chair.
—Sit down, he said again.
He was about fifty, with a weathered face and deeply brown, almost black eyes. He wore the same aproned outfit as the men below, but his was the definitive version.
William sat. Out of his pocket, the
notebook. He began to sharpen a new pencil.
—That’s a fine little knife, said Denton. Marzol?
—It is, said William.
—I knew it. Those take quite an edge, quite an edge. I won’t lie to you, I have more than a few of them myself, although substantially larger. The only meat you’ll cut with a knife like that is a man’s throat.
William blinked, and tried not to flinch as the man sat on the stool and rested one burly arm on the armrest of the leather chair.
—So, this is how it is. My father’s dead. He started this business. Made it what it is now. People will always need someone to do their butchering, that’s what he used to say. Do you know he could butcher a cow in any of thirteen different ways? How do you write an epitaph for a man like that?
—Robert Denton, that’s how we’ll start, said William matter-of-factly.
—Robert Denton, that’s right.
—So, any thoughts? Some people like to put something simple, in remembrance, others like to really make the person’s presence felt. Sometimes the epitaph is an inside joke—something only the deceased would understand.
—I do have something like that, said Denton.
The door opened, and a man nearly as big as Denton stepped into the room.
—Wilson fell under an ox, and his leg’s bent.
—Well, call over Hal Sanderson. He’ll put it right. As for the ox, is it dead?
—It was dead. He pulled it off a beam and it dropped on him.
—I see. Well, that’s how it is.
—Right.
The door shut.
—I’ve got something, said Denton. He often said he could skin a pig with the lights off. He even said he did it once, although I never saw it.
—That’s good, said William. That’s really good.
He wrote:
ROBERT DENTON
who could skin a pig in the dark.
—I like it, said Denton.
William went to the door.
The two shook hands.
—They made me think, down there, you might be a hard man to deal with, said William.
—Don’t fool yourself, said Denton. I’m a mean bastard. You just caught me at a tender moment.
—Well, I’ll get to work on this.
Denton nodded.
He was out on the street again. A man jostled his elbow. It was … William looked away.
—Will? the man said.
Will did not stop walking.
—It’s you, isn’t it? he said again, catching up. Well, of course it is. I haven’t seen you in quite a while. It’s, actually, it’s very fortunate to meet like this.
Will continued on, and didn’t look at the man.
—Will, I need to speak to you. Do you hear me?
He grabbed William’s arm and pulled him around.
—Sit down with me, there, in that cafe?
—We mustn’t be seen. Come after five minutes.
—Do you see what I mean? It’s crucial. It’s everyone’s place—everyone is in a position to act, at some point.
A man with a long moustache and a military-style coat was muttering into his soup. This man had come in five minutes after William. He had sat at a table near the front, but then knocked over a bottle of wine and asked for another table. He had been moved to the table next to William. This man was William’s friend. William had not spoken to him in four years.
—I don’t know what you mean, said William.
—Even you, said his friend, even you must have heard of it.
—It seems just like the purges. I’m not interested.
—It’s not the same thing, not at all. That’s them killing us. This is us killing them.
His friend’s moustache moved ornamentally as he spoke in precise, deliberate sentences. It was as if the conversation had been rehearsed.
—Did you rehearse this conversation?
—And if I did?
—It would make me feel like you thought it was important.
—It is important.
—Then did you rehearse it?
—Perhaps.
—If you did, then who did you have as me?
—Whalen.
—No? Whalen? Is he still around?
—Of course.
—It doesn’t matter. I have Molly to think of.
—Come tonight, please. The address is on that sheet. It’s necessary. Louisa would have wanted you to. You know that.
William held his hand close to his face. He didn’t say anything.
His friend’s face, turned away from him, addressing an empty table off to the right, became somehow slightly cruel.
—If nothing else would get through to you, I will say this last, that I intended to save for a place of greater privacy. We have had news of Louisa and what happened to her.
William flinched and involuntarily his eyes fixed on this man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere in sudden frightening focus.
His friend stood, and William watched him walk through a door behind which lay the lavatory. He did not return. This was a typical method of leaving a restaurant. If William was the sort to meet people at restaurants, he might well have employed that same technique, but as it happens, he was not.
He sat there, with the crumpled sheet in his hands. An address. He had not gone to someone’s address in a long time. He didn’t even know how to begin to do such a thing. And this, if he went there at eight, it would mean returning after curfew, a danger in and of itself—such a danger as he had not taken on in years.
Any danger to himself seemed to be a danger to Molly. But wasn’t that just an excuse for cowardice?
And Louisa, if he could learn something of Louisa. He felt again as he had on the day she vanished, and the feeling of waiting, restlessly waiting, was fresh upon him, but tinged now with a dire, hopeless grief. He shook his head as if to cast off a weight.
The day before, Molly had handed Will a piece of paper. That piece of paper did not have an address on it. That piece of paper had said:
I am an elephant today. I will need to have lots of
room and also a bowl of water on the floor.
William had taken the largest mixing bowl from the cupboard, filled it with water, and set it on the floor.
He had found some cardboard also and wrote on it:
ELEPHANTS ONLY.
This he had put near the porcelain bowl.
Was he becoming a coward?
And if he was, then what was the worst of it—
that there is nothing worse than to be the daughter of a coward! or so it seems to the coward.
William ate the rest of his lunch in silence. He put what he had learned in a box and he shut that box. To do otherwise would be to give signs that he had learned something, some new information, and such behavior—indicative of new information—is what alerts those who seek after traitors. He could not even consider having learned that which he had learned, which after all was practically nothing. Just an idea, a hope of an idea. Away with it for now.
He had ordered pea soup with sourdough bread. The pea soup was very peppery and that pleased him, but he was not happy with the spoon he had been given, which was rather shallow for soup eating. He began to dip the bread in the soup, and in between bread dipping he would take spoonfuls. He had measured it out so that when he had the final taste of soup, it would be accompanied by the last bite of bread. However, the spoon’s shallowness made the whole proposition laborious in the extreme.
Unbidden, the thought of Gerard came again. What could he know?
He should not go. He wouldn’t. It was out of the question. But of course, of course, he must go.
Yes, there are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be performed. There is simply an acknowledgment that we will do the thing in question, and then the thing is done, often at considerable personal cost.
The restaurant was quiet. A couple, sitting across from him, was whispering. On the table in front of them sat a decanter full of water. He could see the woman’s face through the decanter, but distorted. It appeared to him that she was crying, but then she moved in her chair, and he saw that she was not.
The waiters were standing together by the door to the kitchen, and they also were conferring quietly.
There was a little breeze, like the movement of a finger, and it came and went.
I was a great violinist, thought William. What does that mean?
He returned the same way. He could see the gate from a ways off, and through the open door, the double chair. The back of Oscar’s head was visible. The light came through the open door, making an oblong area that placed the chair in a sort of spotlight.
There is a space in the playing of a virtuoso piece where the violinist must cease to think about the music, must cease thinking of fingerings, even of hands and violins, where the sound itself must be manipulated directly. At such times even to remember that one has hands, that one is playing, is disastrous.
William had stood many times before an audience, playing such pieces, and it was in this way that he sought to control the very passage of his life, deftly and without forethought, yet precisely and with enormous care. Part of it was to allow what was enormous, what was profound, without limiting it.
And if he should be forced to give up music? He had been. And if he should be forced to lose his wife? He had lost her.
He came closer now, and saw the gate, and the wall, and the gatehouse. The whole thing was simply to have people be watched. To delineate areas in which people felt watched and areas in which they didn’t. It was one more surface on top of the other surfaces.
He paused there by the wall to consider his position.