Samedi the Deafness

by Jesse Ball

He took a deep breath. Beneath the desk, James could see his hands clench and unclench. A good person, which he may be, thought James, must be torn apart by doing what he's doing. Has any man ever believed he was this right?

  Stark was still talking. James realized he had drifted off; he had not been listening.

  —We have balloons hidden in hundreds of caches across the country. They will be released up into the atmosphere mechanically, from a remote location. When they reach the proper height, they will burst, and the gas inside will disperse and alter, as it meets with the atmosphere. Then the clouds will form. They will begin to drift and sing. The entire continental nation will be affected. The clouds will maintain themselves for two to three days, long enough to affect the greater part of the population.

  Grieve and James were silent for a minute, then another minute, watching him.

  Finally, James spoke.

  —How do you know how it works? Have you tested it?

  —On one person, said Stark. My partner in the laboratory. Morris, Andrew Morris. We drew straws. I would have done it if I had drawn the straw. But he was the expert. He was the one who made the gas.

  He smiled vaguely, unsettlingly, as though he were looking at something far away.

  —I have his description of the experience, of what it's like to hear the tone from the cloud. In fact, it's the last thing I wanted you to memorize. I've been looking for it all day. I just found it.

  He held up a transcript.

  —I'll read it aloud.

  —And then we'll be done? asked Grieve.

  —Then we're done, said James.

  What was to come felt so vague and unreal that he did not feel any guilt yet at being a part of it. He remembered McHale's death. That had been real. These people had done that. He remembered the picture of Estrainger in the newspaper. How could he have been such a fool? He had been standing there outside the building talking to Estrainger himself, and hadn't known it. He could still see the scornful turn to Estrainger's lip. Where had all his scorn gone now?

  Stark began:

  —Eight February, nine P.M. Test of the effects of Gas E-thirty-eight. I was tied to a chair in the clean room. All precautions were taken to limit the sound to that room alone. The duration was one hour. As soon as the gas was released a visible cloud formed near the ceiling of the room. I heard nothing at first, but after a while had a feeling of dizziness. This feeling grew. If I had not been strapped to the chair, I would have lost my balance and fallen to the ground. A noise began, a quiet tone, like a single harp string. It grew in volume, but then faded. Colors swam in my sight. The dizziness was overwhelming. I began to vomit and a shuddering pain came in back of my eyes. The colors in my sight blended together and I began to hear a sort of music. It sounded like voices singing, voices underwater. I realized what it was, abstractly, but was drawn away from my own thought, and took up the sound again. The music was the memory of past sound filling the sudden void made by my loss of hearing. As the hour passed, the music faded and was gone, and I was left in a silence more profound than any I had known. I have lived with that silence nine days, and know now I shall never hear again.

  At the Small Ferris Wheel Abandoned in the Woods

  James blinked in the harsh light. Where was Ansilon? He felt along his shoulder with a free hand. Yes, the owl was there.

  Ansilon strained slightly against his hand in greeting. Both were deathly quiet, for had they not come at last to the Small-Ferris-Wheel-Abandoned-In-The-Woods of which they had so often heard?

  There it was on the far side of the clearing, all rusted and bent. The clearing was in a deep, deep depression of land, and the trees around were all very old, so although the Ferris Wheel was in fact of an incredible height, it did not rise above the highest height of trees, but stood among the treetops, veiled from any distant sight.

  —Up we must go, said Ansilon.

  and also,

  —My friend, I have brought a gift for you, a final gift of my friendship.

  For indeed, James had not seen Ansilon for many a year, he having been presumed dead and most certainly gone away.

  —What is it? asked James. I have got something for you, too.

  Ansilon laid on the ground a little piece of hay woven into a ribbon.

  —Tie this in among your locks of hair and you will know the sound of lying when you hear it; you will know the sound of truth.

  James took it and tied it in his hair.

  —What then for me? asked Ansilon.

  And James sang quietly a little rhyme for owls that have gone away. This Ansilon took gladly into his heart, and he perched happily on James's shoulder, sometimes moving this way and sometimes that.

  Then up they climbed on the Ferris Wheel, sometimes out onto a tree limb and up and back onto the wheel, so complicated proved the ascent, yet after some minutes of climbing, they found themselves far above the ground seated in a lovely iron car.

  —Here we are, said Ansilon, and here we'll stay.

  —What ever do you mean? asked James. I must go back after a little while.

  Must you? asked Ansilon. Must you?

  And James knew then that all children at some time mistake themselves and choose to leave childhood. Yet once it is done, it cannot be undone, for it is a very small door that shuts in a long, long wall.

  —Good-bye, said James.

  —Good-bye, said Ansilon.

  And then it was pouring rain, and James was standing in the street with his grandparents, wearing a rain slicker, many years later, and he felt clearly that he had lost all that was best.

  But who has the means to preserve such as that? he thought. And the world continued.

  James and Grieve were standing in the hall. They had left Stark still seated at his desk, just a single lamp lit in the long room.

  —What happened to Andrew Morris? James asked.

  Grieve turned away from him; her face stiffened.

  —He was a sort of uncle to us. It was partly his idea, the whole thing. He's the one, he's . . .

  —What? said James, turning her by the shoulder back towards him.

  —He's the one, James. Right now, he's waiting in a hotel room in Washington. Tomorrow is his day. He has the final message.

  A Burgeoning Sense of

  grayness was the gift of the greatest draftsmen. In a way they saw color as a series of progressing grays, gray moving to black, to white, gray in blue, gray in yellow, gray in purple and green. The direction of lines provoked the imagining of color, the sweep of shading. James was no good at drawing, but he loved master drawings, and went often to the museums as a young man.

  He didn't care for painting. It was too easy, too mannered. In drawing, there is the pencil and the paper. Two things, distinct. There is the black of the lead, and the white of the page, and together, anything can be created, can be called to mind. Painting was like a flourish, an unnecessary flourish thrown back in the world's teeth. There isn't time, thought James, for everything to be drawn, but only once all things in the world had been drawn, that would be the time for painting to begin.

  James stood outside Grieve's door. She had asked that they sleep there, and he had wanted to. She had asked that he stay outside the door a moment, for what reason he did not know.

  The halls were quiet, the stairwell long. He went to the landing and looked down and up. Mirrors were on the ceiling at the top, and on the floor at the bottom, so that the stair appeared to progress forever farther into itself.

  A place for ridding people of chronic lying, thought James. It was scarcely that. He had never met such a bunch of liars in his life.

  The man had said, a kingdom of foxes. In a kingdom of foxes, you must believe only what you are not told.

  Grieve opened the door to her room. She was standing there in a long nightgown, with the straps loose on her arms. Her shoulders were bare, and her mouth was parted slightly.

  He stepped forward.

  —I'm sorry, but—


  He caught her chin in the palm of his hand and turned her head to one side. With his other hand he lifted her ear. There was indeed behind her ear the lily-violet.

  —Am I proven? she asked.

  He shut the door with his foot.

  —There are fifteen lies, and you can tell them all, he said. I will listen carefully.

  Then they sat together by the window where she had lain as a child, and she told him many of the things she had thought and done. For in the gathering of hours towards this seventh day, it was clear that whoever they would be together, they would not be the same, and could never say to each other the things they might say now. For things go out of the world and things come into it, and one cannot account for, suppose, or presuppose these vanishings and their whereabouts. One can only speak slowly all the things one has thought while out drowsing in a world broken up not as we think, into places, separated by space, but broken up solely by time, which moves fast then slow then fast again, while all else holds still.

  As he sat her words, her lies, her hopes ran through him, ran beside the running of Stark's words, the thousands which were strung up fresh and wide and somewhat cruel, the Ss like sickles, the Is like gun barrels. Violence, thought James, what is the change. I don't see how violence is any change at all. And Grieve's words blended into a sort of song, and he felt his life, his responsibility was not to the larger world, but to this small one, this thing they were creating. Her words came again, came and went, came again, lies and wishfulness. He peopled the space between her words with things he thought could compose a day. Who could compose a day? A day in all its intricacy, a day like a polished wooden toy made long ago and left in its perfection in the window of a shop . . . And Grieve was with him, and her hands were cold. Her hands were cold; her hands were thin. Who was she? What could it be to them, this catastrophe? There was no doing of things for them, only undoing, only gathering together and bringing forth again.

  In such thoughts they lay, speaking, murmuring, drowsing, and passed into sleep.

  day the seventh

  James woke. He was in his room. Grieve was gone. It was very quiet. As quiet as it had ever been.

  The light through the window was an afternoon light. What happened? he thought. Did they leave me? Did they let me sleep?

  He pulled a shirt over his head and went to the door. He opened it. There were no notes on the shelf.

  The hall too was empty. He went down the stairs. There was no one about, no one at all. He began to run. He ran along the halls; he ran upstairs, downstairs. He went up the fourth staircase to Stark's room. It was empty, the long space replying with the same household quiet.

  —Have they left me?

  The thought came to him: they were in the bunker.

  He ran down the first set of stairs, down the second, the third, the fourth. He turned and made his way down the hall. He found the door and the stairwell down to the wine cellar. The stairs were much longer than he had remembered, and seemed to curve. But at the bottom, the cellar was the same, glowing lights and stretching rows of bottles.

  The door is here somewhere, he thought. I have to find the door. He began methodically to go up and down the rows, looking on the ground for a trapdoor, or on the wall for an entrance. He saw nothing. Row after row and still nothing.

  His head became feverish. His vision swam. It must be here somewhere. Stark said it was here somewhere.

  Then in the second-to-last row, on the far end, far away in the dark, where there were no glow bulbs, he saw the outlines of a door.

  That's it. He ran to it.

  The door was quite wide, one and a half times the width of an ordinary door. There was a handle in the middle. James pulled on it. The door didn't budge.

  They've locked me out, he thought. God damn it.

  He pounded on the door, pounded with his fists, kicked it with his feet.

  They've locked me out.

  He pulled on the door again. He took bottles from the shelves and hurled them at the door, where they shattered and littered the ground with shards.

  It's no good. They won't open it.

  He went to the door, stepping carefully through the broken glass. He put his ear against the door.

  Faintly, faintly, he could make out the sounds of an argument.

  He heard Grieve's voice, and the voice of her father.

  —We have to let him in. If we open it for just a second. We have to.

  —No, said Stark. The door is closed and sealed. It will not be opened again. The matter's closed.

  —But he's out there.

  James could hear Grieve crying. Then he heard the scuffle of feet.

  —NO! Stop her.

  Stark's voice was loud.

  What's happening? thought James. Grieve must be trying to open the door.

  —I've got her.

  It was McHale's voice.

  —Grieve, Grieve. Calm down. It will be all right; I promise.

  —I hate you, she said. I hate you all.

  —You'd better give her a shot, said McHale.

  —Noooooooooo! No!

  Grieve was screaming, and then she was not.

  James pounded and pounded on the door. His hands ached. It was useless.

  James stepped away from the door. It was useless to stand there. He made his way back across the wine cellar and up the stairs. Then he was in the hall.

  Outside, he thought. I shall go see what's outside.

  He went by the front entrance, and out the door.

  The first thing he saw was the city, on fire, in the distance. At least half the city burning. The smoke was everywhere, with a hot red core.

  Dear God, he thought, and looked up.

  Above, pale, wispy clouds covered the sky like ribbons.

  The clouds, he thought. Those are the clouds. He recoiled in horror. Then the noise began. He heard it in his ear, in the space behind his eyes; he heard it on the planes of his face, and in his mouth. Singing. A great noise of singing, like a chorus. The sound swelled. It hurt. The pain grew. He fell to his knees. All along the avenues cars were still, smashed into one another, smashed into walls, smashed into houses. Fires grew, consuming buildings, houses. People fled, screaming, lost to the sound of their own voices.

  On the lawn James lay, and the pressure of the sound of singing grew in his head. It grew and grew, and he thought then that he might die. But then it stopped, and everything was silent.

  —James, James! Wake up!

  James opened his eyes. He was lying in a bed built into the wall of a long, airy room with broad windows. They were thrown open and a light breeze was blowing.

  A girl was standing there, beautiful, with short black hair and bright eyes. She was dressed as if to travel, in a wool skirt with knee socks, a short fleece coat, and a scarf. A cat was under her arm. It too was looking at him.

  —James! she said. Everyone's waiting for us. It's time to go.

  She came over to the bed and leaned over him. Her face was very close.

  —Come on, you! Come on. The light is changing. Father says we have only minutes before it begins.

  Nov 2005

  the end

  appendix

  a NOTE on the Naming of Characters

  In Scotland, in a town called Rosewell, there is a small cemetery. I lived for a month nearby.

  I would go sometimes to the cemetery in Rosewell, and for this novel, as a tribute to the land on which I wrote this book, and to the people there, I have named many of my characters out of the cemetery.

  Most of the names I chose were men who died in mining accidents, though some died in the Great War, others in their sleep.

  Nothing in the book has anything to do with the lives these men and women led. I felt a gratefulness to the place, to Hawthornden, Rosslyn, the River Esk, and to this Rosewell graveyard, and it seemed the right thing to do to fill my book with the vague shapes of their letters.

  Here is a list of the names I found there.

 
; * * *

  James Carlyle

  John Sutherland

  Cpl. Arch Renwick, died in France, age twenty-one, 1918

  James Sim

  Pat Jordan, died at Kelty, 16 April 1929

  Grieve Cochrane

  Will Watson, killed at Whitehill Colliery, 10 June 1929

  Andrew Morris, Whitehill Colliery, 1934, age twenty-four

  Samuel Mathieson, Whitehill Colliery, 1940

  Charles Higinson, Whitehill Colliery, 1935, age twenty-one

  Leonora Loft

  James Leslie

  Lily Violet

  Martin Stark, died at Hawthornden, “There is no death”

  Robert Wallace Wight, killed at Bilston Glen Colliery, 1965

  Spiers Jones

  John Clechorn, age twenty-one, “who fell asleep at Midfield Cottages” 12 October 1908

  Thomas McHale, pit accident, 1935

  Thomas McHale, accident, 1933, age twenty-one

  David Graham, Whitehill Colliery, 1937, age thirty-three

  James Abernathy Stewart, Whitehill Colliery, 1932, age forty-seven

  Margret Grieve Cochrane, “Asleep”

  A NOTE on Sources

  One source employed that Stark reads, on the sixth day, is from The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

  I have used the excellent translation of Michael Hulse (Penguin Classics, 1989).

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks be to:

  B. Kingsland

  J. Jackson

  G. Costello

  E. Schreiber

  C. Despont

  Kuhn Projects

  Purple Fashion

  Hawthornden Castle

  Jesse Ball

  Samedi the Deafness

  Jesse Ball (1978– ) was born on Long Island, the second child of Robert and Catherine Ball. Educated at Vassar College and Columbia University, he has lived at times in Europe and has worked as an editor, a croupier, a photographer, and a tutor. His first volume, March Book, appeared in 2004, followed by Vera & Linus (2006). His drawings were published in 2006 in Iceland in the volume Og svo kom nottin. Work of his has appeared in many major domestic and international journals, and was included in Best American Poetry 2006. Jesse Ball was a Spy but has Retired to the Country, a web site (www.jesseball.com), exhibits work of writing and drawing.