Samedi the Deafness

by Jesse Ball

  You've been in on it, too, haven't you? thought James. You should have warned me.

  Just then a man came up.

  —Excuse me, he whispered.

  James looked at him. He recognized the servant as a man he did not like. The man had brought drinks when James had been playing rovnin, and had laughed when James made a bad move. Both of them had laughed, the man James was playing against and the servant.

  He must be in on it, too, thought James.

  —What do you want? he asked suspiciously.

  —I just think you should know, said the man, be careful whom you talk to. That maid, Grieve, she's not to be trusted. She's not on your side. I've seen her talking to Stark and the others. They planted her so they could know what you're up to.

  James couldn't believe his ears. How transparent. It was just like them to try to make him distrust the one person who had been true to him.

  —I won't listen to this, said James. Your little trick hasn't worked.

  Go tell your master, whoever he is, whoever she is, that I'm on to you.

  He stormed off down the hall.

  James walked in his anger out onto the lawn. He stood in the bright sun and felt how miserable he was. It was no good trusting anyone, he thought. What a fool they must think him. And he had been a fool.

  He sat down in the grass and drew breath.

  All this time he had been so sure something was going on. They'd just been fooling him. He would have to come up with a new plan for himself. It was no good being here. He would have to leave the country. Could he go to his firm for help? He wondered how far they would extend themselves for him. After all, they had a lot to lose by helping an accused criminal. The business ran on its reputation alone. No, they would not help him. He felt sure of it.

  I could try to leave by myself, he thought. But who would drive the car? He wished that Grieve had not cheated on him. She had been so wonderful. He remembered what she had said about leaving the country together. How fine that would have been. He pulled the grass up with his fingers. The autumn had already yellowed it. The grass was all dying, all withering.

  He stood up again. He would stay here as long as he had to. But he would have nothing to do with Grieve.

  He went back into the house. Down the hall, he saw her. She must have come looking for him. She turned. She saw him too. He ducked down another hall. The last thing he wanted was to speak with her now.

  Down this hall was the room where they played rovnin. He could hear voices. He opened the door and went in.

  The young James undertook then a description of his own circumstances.

  I am young, he wrote.

  * * *

  My youth is still before me. I live in a fine house among genial, indeed kindly, outspoken hills and dales. My mother is perished. My father as well. Did I have a brother? I did, but he was drowned by a felon. Who keeps me? An old couple, claiming to be my grandparents. I do not understand what this means, and so I cannot examine for myself the truth of their claims. Instead I go silent at supper or stare mornings through glassed windows and thinly paneled doors.

  On bright days I go to play in the fields. If it is early and the sun is convincing, I go to the woods, where a darker watch is kept and mosses conspire with badgers' wakes and the tresses of muskrats. Believe me, I tell them, and they do. How many times I have been admitted to their companionship only to wake at the wood's edge with dusk laying a street over the hills, a street like a Roman road, stone for centuries, and myself beneath the hills, spurred by the touch of strange cloth.

  And Cecily, and sometimes Cecily. Sometime-Cecily, sometimes she comes in and out the trees from that far house. We never arrange to meet, and never speak as though we've seen each other ever before. She holds my hands and I hold hers and we climb the climbingest trees and lie out upon thick branches. She says small things in small ways and talks mostly of the season and the coming night. She draws with her thin hands on the surface of water, and I swear to her—she makes me swear—that I can see the things she draws, though she never asks me what, and I would never say.

  * * *

  McHale and Graham were playing. James came over. They nodded to him. He sat. It was soon clear that they were both very skillful. The first man had not been lying about James having a miserable standing in the house. The whole thing was very surprising. He hadn't even met anyone in years who knew what the game was, and now he was in the midst of a slew of experts. Had they all been playing together for years? He supposed that it was so, and lost himself in the game, watching as move by move they interlaced their objectives, their assaults, defenses. Clearly McHale was the better of the two, but Graham was allowing nothing. There was a knock at the door, three knocks.

  —Come in, said Graham.

  The door opened. Grieve was standing there. Her face was covered in tears.

  —James, she said. Come talk with me.

  James turned his back on her.

  —James, she said.

  Graham and McHale had turned to stare at them.

  —Come with me. Come talk with me.

  —I won't, said James. Leave me alone.

  Grieve burst out crying again and ran out of the room.

  Graham and McHale exchanged glances. McHale got up.

  —We can finish later, he said.

  He gave James a disapproving look, and hurried off after Grieve.

  Graham and James were left then together in the room.

  —What was that? asked Graham.

  James rubbed his forehead.

  —I caught her cheating on me this morning, in bed with some man, someone from the hospital.

  Graham's face had a puzzled look.

  —I saw Carlyle earlier, he said carefully. He told me about this. He said he'd told you it wasn't Grieve; it was her sister.

  He too seemed disapproving.

  —You have to be gentle with Grieve, he said. She's very attached to you. You can't go doing this to her.

  —It wasn't her sister, said James. Her sister is six years older and looks nothing like her; that's what Stark said.

  Graham narrowed his eyes.

  —Stark said that to you?

  —Yes, said James. He also told me you've all been trying to trick me into thinking you're part of the conspiracy Estrainger was part of.

  Graham drummed his fingers on the table and thought for a moment.

  —James, I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but . . .

  At that moment, a maid poked her head through the open door.

  —Sir, she said to Graham. There's a man at the door, says he's a detective.

  —Oh, dear, said Graham. This again.

  He got up and left without a word.

  An Addition to the Record

  They permit me, these wards of mine, to go out where I will. They do not require school of me. They give me things, a butcher knife, a javelin, the poems of Keats in leather miniature. I say these to myself, my feet in water off the old dock. Grandfather says it was once an ocean, that all the plains and this were once beneath water. I look upward then through the water to the sky beyond. The only safety, I suppose, is to build one's house upon a mountaintop.

  Do people who live on mountaintops live forever? Or only nearly so?

  James returned to his room. Grieve had gone. Some of her things were still there, however, a dress laid over the back of a chair, a handbag, a notebook.

  He picked up the notebook and opened it.

  It had just been begun the day before. There was only one entry.

  * * *

  I can't believe how wonderful he is. The others like him, and it seems even he and my father get along. I'm looking forward so much now to this life. I have so many things to tell him. He doesn't mind my odd habits, my lying. I knew when I saw him in the diner. I knew we would be right.

  * * *

  James put the notebook down. There was more, but he didn't read on. He felt awful. Could it have been true? Graham seemed like h
e had been about to tell James that Stark was lying to him. But then he had gone.

  James saw that a note had been slipped underneath the door. He must have walked over it when he came in.

  He went over and picked up the note.

  * * *

  Three days ago, Estrainger came to the house. I was told to go and tell Stark that he was here. I did. Then Stark gave me a note to bring to Estrainger. It was a strange note. I copied it down to show you. It said:

  Overthrows that are necessary cannot occur easily; secret plots must unfold of themselves, unconscious, like the multitudinous fan of a peacock. And like the peacock, it is never certain of the toll its passing has taken in the world. We must all die unconscious of the good, the evil we have done. That's why there's only hope, hope beyond good and evil.

  When I gave it to Estrainger, he went away. I thought nothing of it, and decided not to show you this. But then Estrainger killed himself. And now, Stark has tricked you again. You can't believe them. Do you know the story of the kingdom of foxes? A man goes to live in the kingdom of foxes and he survives only by believing that which is not told him.

  * * *

  Stark had been lying! The police were downstairs. James could go there now. He could alert them. Even if he were dragged away too, there would at least be a chance that the plot could be stopped.

  He ran out of his room and down the stairs. As he drew closer to the front entrance, he could hear through the foyer door the sound of voices.

  He peeked through.

  Stark was standing talking to a man in a suit. There was a bulge under the man's left armpit—that must be the detective, thought James.

  —Yes, Stark was saying, Estrainger was a patient here. But we released him due to an overwhelming belief in his capability to live an independent life. We have a very strict system here, a very strict system. He had to pass three different boards of evaluation before he was released. What happened since then, whom he met, et cetera, I can't say. But when he left here, he was perfectly sane.

  The detective said something that James didn't hear.

  James pressed back against the wall. The man was so close. All James had to do was jump out and speak. Then he thought of Grieve. If Stark had been lying about Estrainger, he must have been lying about Grieve and her sister. They were twins. Why would he lie about that?

  James thought of Grieve's face, of how wronged she looked. At the time it had filled him with hate, but now he was overcome by remorse. He thought of her crying, of her standing outside the rovnin room, calling to him. And him with his back turned . . . It was more than bore thinking of.

  He went back into the hall. He realized he could not give up Grieve's father, Grieve's family. By doing so, he would be betraying her. And he had hurt her so much already.

  I have to find her and apologize, he thought.

  An Item in the News

  On the table in the hall, he saw the newspaper. He picked it up and glanced over the front page.

  There had been another suicide. This time it had been a man dressed as a police officer, who had managed to penetrate the security surrounding the White House. The uniform had been traced to a District of Columbia station nearby, where it had been stolen from a storeroom.

  Impersonating a police officer, the article noted, was a serious crime in its own right. This man, Spiers Jones, had been a prominent writer on civil liberties, as well as a noted lawyer in the Dallas area. His involvement in the conspiracy had sent waves through the liberal community.

  The note he was bearing was the shortest yet. It was only one word long, and that word was Samedi.

  James shook his head. He loved Grieve; he knew now that he did. But she was only one woman. How many people would die if James did nothing?

  He turned back down the hall, and as he did, Stark and Graham came back in. The sound of a car engine could be heard in the background, then the noise of tires on gravel. The detective was gone.

  Stark and Graham walked past James as if he were not there.

  —Hey, he said. Graham! Graham!

  But Graham did not turn. They continued down the hall.

  It's completely unfair, thought James. It was Stark's fault that he had been confused about Grieve and her sister.

  There was only one thing to do. First he would find Grieve and apologize. Then he would send a letter. He would send the maid, Grieve, with a letter to the police, explaining everything. She was allowed to leave the house, to leave the grounds.

  James paused in his search, midway along a hallway on the third floor. He had no idea where Grieve's room might be. He had asked the maids and servants he had come across, as well as a nurse and two orderlies, whether they had seen Grieve. None had.

  He saw McHale at the far end of the hall, standing by a window, smoking a cigarette. He approached him.

  —Thomas, he said. Do you know where Grieve is?

  McHale turned to look at him. His face became scornful.

  —We should never have helped you out in the first place.

  —I just want to know where she is.

  —She doesn't want to see you. Can't you understand that?

  McHale threw his half-smoked cigarette out the open window and walked off.

  James stood by the window, the smell of smoke still clinging to the air.

  It came to him: she would be where she had first waited for him.

  James paused in the hall. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, wrote on it:

  * * *

  Meet me in my room at 3. Urgent.

  * * *

  He folded the note and tucked it under the carpet at the entrance to the maids' room. Then he went back, past the door of the man who had drawn him the elephant, through the next door and into the thin corridor. I wonder, he thought, if that man ever found the drawing. I never went back for it.

  He came to the end of the corridor, turned, and went to the ladder. He listened carefully, to see if he could hear any sound of breathing. He could not.

  Up the ladder he went, slowly. He could feel the roundness of the rungs, the closeness of this odd room. Grieve must be here. She must be. If she is Grieve, then she is here.

  At the top, there was only darkness. Someone had pulled a shade across the window. In the dark, he could hear someone breathing.

  —Grieve? he said.

  He crossed the tiny room slowly and pulled the shade. Light fell through and he could see Grieve looking at him, Grieve pressed against the wall.

  —I'm sorry, he said.

  Her eyes were red from crying.

  He moved towards her. She sat up, and he put his arms around her. He could feel her shaking.

  Then a voice came from the ladder's top.

  —Lara, what are you doing? Lara, don't you dare!

  James turned, still holding Grieve tight. At the ladder's top, he saw Grieve looking at him, Grieve wearing the dress she had worn the day before.

  He let go of the Grieve who was in his arms.

  —No, James, she shrieked. She's lying. She's lying.

  She began to cry again.

  He looked at the Grieve on the ladder, and then at the Grieve at his side. How could he know which was the right one?

  —James, said the one on the ladder, I'm sorry about what happened before. I should have told you more; I should have explained everything.

  James fought to think. How could he know? He addressed the Grieve on the ladder.

  —At the diner, how many pieces did you cut your ham sandwich into?

  That Grieve answered immediately:

  —Twelve pieces.

  —That's not fair at all, said the first Grieve. Of course she knows how many pieces I cut my sandwiches into. She's my sister. We grew up together. Ask something that she couldn't possibly know, that only I would know.

  —Don't listen to her, said the Grieve on the ladder. I answered the question. Ask her one. You know she's lying. She's the one you saw this morning in bed with the orderly.
>
  James held up his hand.

  —Quiet for a moment, both of you.

  The Grieve he had been holding began to cry again.

  —Don't cry, he said, just wait.

  To the Grieve on the ladder, then:

  —When you stole my wallet, which pocket of my pants was it in?

  Grieve climbed the rest of the way up the ladder.

  —Listen, she said, this is stupid. I love you. No more of these questions. I answered one already. She hasn't.

  —Answer, said James.

  The first Grieve's sniffling could be heard behind him.

  —Answer, he said again.

  Grieve on the ladder unbuttoned the front of her dress and opened it. She was naked beneath, and all was as he remembered it.

  —Don't you recognize me? she said. Don't you remember me?

  The other Grieve let out a wail.

  —I hate you! I hate you.

  —Answer my question, said James, backing away.

  —The back pocket, she said. The right back pocket.

  Aha!

  —But it wasn't in the right back pocket, said James.

  —I meant, right when I'm facing you, she said. Not the other way.

  —It wasn't in my pants at all, he said, drawing the crying Grieve to him and putting his arms around her.

  —It was in his coat, you bitch, said Grieve.

  —God damn it to hell, said Lara, buttoning up her dress. Well, it was worth a try.

  —I hate you, said Grieve. You always try to ruin everything.

  She buried her face in James's shoulder.

  Lara climbed back down the ladder. Her footsteps could be heard away in the corridor.

  —Grieve, said James. I'm sorry about what I said. Your father confused me.