by Jesse Ball
An hour passed, and the sun weakened by the gate. In the long afternoon, people of every kind passed by.
A young woman with a very short skirt and a thin blouse came out of a building in the distance. Because she was so beautiful, he saw her from far away, and for the same reason, he watched her as she came all down the road and through the gate. She wore her beauty very carelessly, and she left no one unaffected.
She was on the verge of dropping some of the things she was carrying, and in fact did drop them, at various points in her approach to the gate. But each time, someone came and picked up whatever it was, and handed it to her, and she accepted it, and appeared surprised each time that something should fall from her hand.
When she came closer, William saw that one side of her face was horribly deformed. That was why she had been dropping things—she had to walk in a very special way in order to keep one side of her face hidden from the crowd on the sidewalk.
To the next appointment he went hurriedly. He did not hurry out of worry that he would be late, but because it was the appearance of virtuous citizens—hurrying.
He found the house near the rail station. It was a large building with many apartments. Outside there was a huge signboard. It said,
VERACITY IS UNAVOIDABLE
in thirty-foot-high letters. Underneath in small letters, it said, Government Ministry 6. William had often wondered where the Government Ministries were situated. Their locations were not publicly known. The system was virtually invisible.
He was waved on by the doorman, who wore a remarkable gold-stitched uniform. There was no elevator. Instead—a grand staircase usually reserved for descending.
Many fine lamps here and there. Apartment 3L. He knocked.
A girl in a dressing gown opened the door.
—Come in, Mr. Drysdale.
William nodded.
—We are aware of you, she said, and walked ahead of him to the living room.
There, an elderly couple, her parents, sat amidst lavish furnishings. She sat, and he did the same.
The elderly couple inspected him quietly.
—He was her husband, you see.
—Our son-in-law.
—Died in the night, two weeks ago.
—Two weeks, three days, said the girl.
—There is no body. The body was taken. He has been …
—Accused, said the girl. It is unlikely that we will bury him. Nonetheless, we would like a stone.
—For her to visit, said the father.
—We will go with her, of course, said the mother.
William took out his notebook. He took out a pencil and his knife. He sharpened the pencil.
At the top of the page he wrote:
?
He looked up.
—The name?
—Jacob Lansher.
—Have you considered what you would like the stone to say?
Meanwhile, he wrote on the page:
Jacob Lansher.
The state of the room really was remarkable. It was full of contraband things. It was, in short, the house of a government minister, or seemed so. And yet, the disappearance of the husband.
—He was a writer, said the girl.
—Not exactly, said her father.
—He was.
—Dora, said her mother sharply. You agreed.
Dora looked away.
The mother handed William a piece of paper. It said:
Jacob Lansher
Dutiful Husband, Devoted Son.
—We’ve agreed upon this.
—I refuse, said Dora. He would have hated that.
—He made his decision, said the father.
Dora was on her feet.
—You know more than you’ll say.
—If I do, said her father, then you’re lucky.
The girl stormed out of the room. William was left staring at the parents.
—We make no apologies for her, said the mother. She is a grown woman.
—He was a dissenter, said the father. He couldn’t change. He was always thinking of how things were. It was the end of him.
William wrote on the page:
Jacob Lansher
Dutiful Husband, Devoted Son.
He closed the notebook. He set the pencil carefully in his pocket.
—It will be as you say.
—Thank you. Have them send the bill around.
He stood up, nodded to them, and went back along the hallway to the door. He opened it and closed it behind him. He proceeded to the staircase
and stood
for one
minute,
then
another.
The door to the apartment opened. The girl came out. She joined him by the staircase.
William took the pencil from his pocket and opened the notebook.
—There will be two stones, he said. The first will be as they say. You determine the second. You cannot go to it, unless you are sure you are not followed. Do you understand?
Dora murmured yes.
William wrote on a new page:
Jacob Lansher
then beneath it
John ACBLASER
then
John Cable Ras
John Carables
John Sarcable
—Sarcable, he said.
—That’s good.
William leaned against the rail and squinted his eyes. He wrote on the page.
—That’s good, said the girl again. John Sarcable. Elsewhere and beloved.
She smiled.
—One thing, and thank you. White marble, and leave room for his wife, when she dies.
He broke the pencil in half and put the pieces in his pocket.
—Goodbye.
William stopped on the final step, and thought for a moment of the stairs he had been thrown down as a child. It was an accident. A woman thought that he was her son in the darkness of the building and, in great anger, had hurled him headlong. The actual boy was there too, but did not get thrown.
William had broken both his hands, and they had healed in a rather odd way. It was later thought by aficionados that this breaking of his hands was an advantage in his violin playing, and there was an ill-advised spate of hand breaking that went on until it was seen the accident could not be successfully replicated.
The woman was imprisoned and drowned herself in a washbasin. William never heard what happened to the son, but he often felt that if his life were a book, the boy would intercede at some point to take some terrible blow meant for William.
On then to his final appointment. For this he went out of the city gates and a little ways down to a waterfront and harbor that stretched there. He passed a woman who was putting up posters that read, MY HUSBAND HAS DISAPPEARED AND I MUST FIND HIM, with a photograph of a middle-aged man standing in a doorway wearing a prerevolutionary suit. William did not meet her eyes as he passed.
By the last pier, there was a shack with a sign that read:
FISH if you WANT THEM.
He knocked on the door of the shack, which made an awful racket.
—Coming!
A young man came to the door.
—Yes?
—I’m from the mason.
—The mason?
—Yes, about the gravestone.
—Ah, the mason … yes, well. I would ask you to come in, but I imagine you wouldn’t like it at all in here. I mean, I live here and I don’t like it at all. We’d be better to just sit over there on that bench.
He pointed to a bench on a hill overlooking the harbor.
—Sure enough.
The young man shook his hand.
—So, you might think this a bit strange, but the tombstone I want is actually for myself.
William nodded.
—Won’t be a problem. Are you intending to … fill it soon?
—Fill it?
The young man blushed.
—Of course not! I just, well, I will explain it.
&n
bsp; They walked up the hill to the bench and sat down. The young man was wearing fisherman’s waxed clothing that was quite dirty. He himself had the sheen of good health and a thin but shining face. He seemed a very happy fellow indeed.
—I have a theory, the young man said, that a person should prepare his or her tombstone at the happiest moment of life. I am right now, for no reason at all, as happy as a person could possibly be, and so I decided, yesterday, to prepare my tombstone. I want nothing of sadness in it. Just rejoicing, you see?
—There is one danger, said William.
—What’s that?
—Well, although you feel now that this is the happiest you can be, what would happen if, in the years to come, you became happier still?
—I would simply make another gravestone! I have done it three times already.
—What did the others say?
—Oh, I can’t tell you that. I don’t want them to influence this one.
—Understood. All right, well, what sort of epitaph are you interested in? Do you want it to be a general address, a private message, a warning, what do you think?
—A warning?
—Well, some people favor something like, Watch Out. Or, Hell Rears Its Head.
The young man burst out in peals of laughter.
—Certainly nothing like that. Perhaps something about my shack. I’ve just gotten it, you know.
William took out his pencil and sharpened it. He opened his notebook. So, your name?
—Stan Milgram.
He wrote:
Stan Milgram
Dweller in shacks
—That’s not quite right, said Stan. It’s just one shack. And anyway, maybe the shack isn’t that important. I just, well, the whole thing came from Death Poems—where some people would prepare a death poem, so that they would know for sure it would turn out well. But then I want it to reflect these brilliant days I have come to now.
—What do you do?
—Fishing, and I sit around there in the shack and read.
—What if it gave a catalog of your day? Tell me about your day, what happened?
Stan told him in detail about the day’s events.
—All right, then.
William turned to a new page.
STAN MILGRAM
4 AM, rose, already dressed, and set out for the boat.
5 AM, out on the water to the shoals.
6 AM, net after net of powerfully squirming fish.
& 7, 8, the same.
9 AM, returned to the docks.
10, 11, read Moore’s Urn Burial; ate an onion, cheese, brown bread.
12, closed eyes for a moment.
4, woke and met with the epitaphorist, and set down this record.
—I would like to see a gravestone like that, said Stan proudly.
—I also, said William.
—The writing will have to be rather small.
—Not in itself a large obstacle.
—It isn’t, is it?
—Nope.
—Let’s settle it, then. Thank you. How did you come by this work, anyway?
—I was always good with puzzles, and I have memorized the complete works of five poets which I can recite on command. Four years ago, when I could no longer do the work that I did before, I saw an advertisement in the paper. It read, Position requiring: ingenuity, restraint, quiet manner, odd hours, impeccable judgment, and eloquence. Unworthy candidates unwelcome. I was the only one to apply.
—That sort of thing, said the young man. That sort of thing I understand effortlessly. It seems the way things should work.
William smiled and shook his hand, broke the pencil in half, tucked away his notebook, and set out back towards the gates.
THE STONEMASON
had a few small houses by the cemetery, with a yard around and between them. The whole thing was walled in, as you can imagine, with a high stone wall. The grass was short and yellow and patchy. The trees were old and august.
Smoke rose from the chimney of one of the houses. To that one William went.
—Mercer, he said, a good day’s work done.
—I’d expect no less.
Mercer, a man of about fifty years with a ruddy face and thick clever hands, was grinding a piece of granite. He stopped his work and went with William into the next room, where the fireplace was. They sat.
—Let’s see it.
William handed him the notebook.
He read slowly through it, nodding sometimes, sniffing, narrowing his eyes.
—I see, he said.
He set the notebook in his lap.
—Can the girl be trusted? This could be trouble, and for nothing.
—Not for nothing.
—No, not for nothing. But can she?
—I believe so.
—Good work, then. These will be attended to. And how is Molly today?
—Seemed happy.
—You know, the rhyme she made me, I say it every day. The paper she wrote it on is gone. But I remember it.
—When was that?
—Last winter. She was here the whole day while you went around.
—I remember.
—She came to me, and I was chiseling away, in the midst of it, you know, and she had a scrap of paper. It said Mercer on it, and underneath, to be said on mornings, and under that the thing.
—I asked you what it was and you wouldn’t say, and I asked her, and she wouldn’t either.
Mercer grinned.
—It’s a thing like that. Not to be bandied about.
He set to coughing again. Finally he settled.
—On the way here this morning, I saw a woman killed.
One of the gnarled hands was gripping the other.
William waited.
—I was under the walking bridge on Seventh. There was a shout and then she came down, hit not twenty feet in front of me. Then right there where she fell from, a face looking down.
—Did she look like a cop?
—What does a cop look like, these days?
—So, the body was there, and you walked past it.
—Looked to see if she was dead, and she was. Twice over. People don’t fall like cats, you know. Even cats don’t always fall like cats. Have you ever seen it? When a cat does something it knows a cat shouldn’t have done? There’s nothing like the embarrassment of cats.
He laughed.
There was a little stove, and William made a pot of tea. The two men sat there while the water boiled, and then Mercer made the tea.
—I do prefer good tea leaves, he said. In a fine tin.
—If I saw any, I’d bring it. These days it can’t be bought.
There was a book there, of old tombstone designs. William leafed through it.
There were many there he liked, and he showed them to Mercer. These were also ones that Mercer liked. They sat there, then, together, liking them.
The mason picked up his chisel. It was a splendid tool, an old tool, extremely heavy. William was very fond of Mercer and of all the things that Mercer owned. There are a few people one meets whom one can approve of entirely, and such was he.
—You keep that chisel sharp.
—I like to think I could cut the heart out of a sheep without it knowing. Just the tap of a hammer, and a slight twist.
—But you’ve always been fond of sheep.
—And am, and am. I’m speaking of the chisel, you understand.
There was the humming of an airplane overhead, but neither man looked up or made as if to notice.
—Tomorrow’s list is by the door, said Mercer finally.
He handed William the notebook. William tore the pages out of it and set them down. White marble for the last, he said. And leave room, she says.
—We’re all planning our own death these days.
—Tomorrow, then.
At six o’clock, he picked up Molly and they had a glass of lemonade by the lake.
*Can we rent a boat and go out to the island?
/> *No.
*But what about tomorrow? Can we tomorrow?
*No.
Molly played in the enormous gnarled oaks that had stood in the park for more than a century. Their limbs were long and bowed and many. Nearly every one could be climbed easily, and Molly had climbed nearly every one.
There was a man selling newspapers. William bought a newspaper, but did not read it. It looked bad to avoid the newspaper; one bought it, but one didn’t actually have to read it.
He had not performed violin in over four years. There were no musical performances anymore. There were no performances of any kind. There was a new ideal, and one could sit in an audience and listen to people talk about the new ideal, but that was the extent of it.
Much of his life in the past years was a matter of making it so that things could not get worse. He tried to, through a series of habits, insulate and barricade the life that he and Molly lived, so that it could not be invaded or altered.
He had done this in a series of ways. First, he bought an apartment in an area of town that was known to be very quiet. He established a policy of having no friends, none at all. He ceased to speak to the friends he had had before. He got a job as a mason’s assistant. He and Molly lived cheaply, and wore old clothes. They did simple things together quietly. They learned sign language together, for Molly couldn’t speak. He taught her to read by himself, and he taught her mathematics by himself. He taught her to use an abacus. He taught her everything that she would need to know in school, and he did this when she was five and six, before she went to school. Therefore, school would have no difficulties for her, and her muteness would not be a problem.
Every night he and Molly ate supper at a little cafe some distance from their home. Molly sometimes played with a boy who lived in the same building, and while she was doing that, William would sit at the window and read, or play through a volume of old chess games with a small wooden chess set. He loved the games of Tchigorin and also of Spielmann. Neither one had been the greatest chess player of his time, but their games were full of sacrifices and wild, inventive play. For such things, William would say to himself, for such things …
