Ursula K. Le Guin

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  Sara had been polite to him for three days running. Distrustful, he sought to provoke her, but she saved her tantrums for Volf and Albrekt, left the matches where Sanzo could find them, asked him if he didn’t want a few kroner back from his pension so he could go to the tavern, and finally asked him if he wouldn’t like somebody to come in and read to him now and then.

  “Read what?”

  “The newspaper, anything you like. It wouldn’t be so dull for you. One of the Benat children would do it, Lisha maybe, she’s always got a book. You used to read so much.”

  “I don’t any more,” he said with stupid sarcasm, but Sara sailed on, talking about Mrs Benat’s laundry business, Lisha’s losing her job, where Sanzo’s mother’s old books might have got to, she had been a great reader too, always with a book. Sanzo half listened, made no reply, and was not surprised when Lisha Benat turned up, late the next afternoon, to read to him. Sara usually got her way. She had even dug out, from the closet in Volf’s room, three books that had belonged to Sanzo’s mother, old novels in school editions. Lisha, who sounded very ill at ease, started in promptly to read one of them, Karantay’s The Young Man Liyve. She was husky and fidgety at first, but then began to get interested in what she was reading. She left before Sara and Albrekt came home, saying, “Shall I come back tomorrow?”

  “If you want,” Sanzo said. “I like your voice.”

  By the third afternoon she was quite caught in the spell of the long, gentle, romantic story. Sanzo, bored and yet at peace, listened patiently. She came to read two or three afternoons a week, when her mother did not need her; he took to being at home by four, in case she came.

  “You like that fellow Liyve,” he said one day when she had closed the book. They sat at the kitchen table. It was close and quiet in the kitchen, evening of a long September day.

  “Oh, he’s so unhappy,” she said with such compassion that she then laughed at herself. Sanzo smiled. His face, handsome and rigidly intent, was broken by the smile, changed, brought alive. He reached out, found the book and her hand on it, and put his own hand over hers. “Why does that make you like him?”

  “I don’t know!”

  He got up abruptly and came round the table till he stood right by her chair, so that she could not get up. His face had returned to its usual intent look. “Is it dark?”

  “No. Evening.”

  “I wish I could see you,” he said, and his left hand groped and touched her face. She started at the very gentle touch, then sat motionless. He took her by the arms, a groping touch again but followed by a hard grip, and pulled her up to stand against him. He was shaking; she stood quiet in his arms, pressed against him. He kissed her mouth and face, his hand struggled with the buttons of her blouse; then abruptly he let her go, and turned away.

  She caught a deep breath, like a sob. The faint September wind stirred around them, blowing in from the open window in another room. He still did not turn, and she said softly, “Sanzo—”

  “You’d better go on,” he said. “I don’t know. Sorry. Go on, Lisha.”

  She stood a moment, then bent and put her lips against his hand, which rested on the table. She picked up her kerchief and went out. When she had closed the door behind her she stopped on the landing outside. There was no sound for some while, then she heard a chair scrape in the apartment, and then, so faint she was not certain it came from behind that door, a whistled tune. Somebody was coming up the stairs and she ran down, but the tune stayed in her head; she knew the words, it was an old song. She hummed it as she crossed the courtyard.

  Two tattered beggars met on the street,

  “Hey, little brother, give me bread to eat!”

  After two days she came again. Neither of them had much to say, and she set to reading at once. They had got to the chapter where the poet Liyve, ill in his garret, is visited by Countess Luisa, the chapter called “The First Night.” Lisha’s mouth was dry, and several times her breath stuck in her throat. “I need a drink of water,” she said, but she did not get it. When she stood up he did, and when she saw him reach out his hand she took it.

  This time in her acceptance of him there was one obscure moment, a movement suppressed before it was made, before she knew she had resisted anything. “All right,” he whispered, and his hands grew gentler. Her eyes were closed, his were open; they stood there not in lamplight but in darkness, and alone.

  The next day they had a go at reading, for they still could not talk to each other, but the reading ended sooner than before. Then for several days Lisha was needed in the laundry. As she worked she kept singing the little song.

  “Go to the baker’s house, ask him for the key,

  If he won’t hand it over, say you were sent by me!”

  Stooping over the laundry tub, her mother took up the song with her. Lisha stopped singing.

  “Can’t I sing it too, since I’ve got it in my ears all day?” Mrs Benat plunged her red, soap-slick arms into the steaming tub. Lisha cranked the wringer on a stiff pair of overalls.

  “Take it easy. What’s wrong?”

  “They won’t go through.”

  “Button caught, maybe. Why are you so jumpy lately?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I’m not Sanzo Chekey, I can see you, my girl!”

  Silence again, while Lisha struggled with the wringer. Mrs Benat lifted a basket of wet clothes to the table, bracing it against her chest with a grunt. “Where’d you get this idea of reading to him?”

  “His aunt.”

  “Sara?”

  “She said it might cheer him up.”

  “Cheer him up! Sara? She’d have turned him and Volf both out by now if it wasn’t for their pensions. And I don’t know as I could blame her. Though he looks after himself as well as you could expect.” Mrs Benat hoisted another load onto the table, shook the suds off her swollen hands, and faced her daughter. “Now see here, Alitsia. Sara Chekey’s a respectable woman. But you get your ideas from me, not from her. See?”

  “Yes, mother.”

  Lisha was free that afternoon, but did not go to the Chekeys’ flat. She took her youngest sister to the park to see the puppet-show, and did not come back till the windy autumn evening was growing dark. That night, in bed, she composed herself in a comfortable but formal position, flat on her back, legs straight, arms along her sides, and set herself to think out what her mother had been saying. It had to do with Sanzo. Did Sara want her and Sanzo to be together? What for? Surely not for the same reason she herself wanted to be with Sanzo. Then what was wrong with it, did her mother think she might fall in love with Sanzo?

  There was a slight pause in her mind, and then she thought, But I am. She had not really thought at all, this last week, since the first time he had kissed her; now her mind cleared, everything falling into place as if it had been that way all along. Doesn’t she know that? Lisha wondered, since it was now so obvious. Her mother must understand; she always understood things sooner than Lisha did. But she had not been warning Lisha against Sanzo. All she had said was to stay clear of Sara. That was all right. Lisha did not like Sara, and willingly agreed: she wouldn’t listen to anything Sara had to say. What had she to say, anyhow? It was nothing to do with her.

  “Sanzo,” Lisha said with her lips only, not her voice, so that her sister Eva beside her in the bed wouldn’t hear; then, content, she turned on her side with her legs curled up and fell asleep.

  The next afternoon she went to the Chekeys’ flat, and as they sat down as usual at the kitchen table she looked at Sanzo, studying him. His eyes looked all right, only his intent expression gave away his blindness, but one side of his forehead had a crushed look, and you could follow the scarring even under his hair. How queasy did it make her? Did it make her want to get away, as from hydrocephalic children and beggars with two huge nostrils in place of a nose? No; she wanted to touch that scar, very lightly, as he had first touched her face; she wanted to touch his hair, the corners of his mouth, his strong, beau
tiful, relaxed hands resting on the table as he waited for her to read, or to speak. The only thing that bothered her was a passivity, an unconscious submissiveness, in the way he sat there so quietly waiting. It was not a face or a body made for passivity.

  “I don’t want to read today,” she said.

  “All right.”

  “Do you want to walk? It’s lovely out today.”

  “All right.”

  He put on his jacket and followed her down the long dark stairs. Out on the street he did not take her arm, though he had not brought his stick; she did not dare take his.

  “The park?”

  “No. Up the Hill. There’s a place I used to go to. Can’t make it by myself.”

  The Hill was the top edge of Rákava; the houses there were old and large, standing in private parks and gardens. Lisha had never walked there before, though it was only about a mile from her own quarter. A broad wind blew from the south along the quiet, unfamiliar streets. She looked about with wonder and pleasure. “They’ve all got trees on them, all the streets, like a park,” she said.

  “What are we on, Sovenskar Street?”

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “We must be. Is there a grey wall with glass on top across the street, ahead there? We ought to go on up past that.”

  They reached thus a big unwalled garden, gone wild, at the end of an unpaved drive. Lisha was faintly anxious about trespassing on these silent domains of the wealthy, but Sanzo walked unhesitating, as if he owned them. The drive became steep and the garden widened on up the slope, its lawns and brambles following the contours of the formal park it had once been. At the end of the drive, built almost against the city wall, a square stone house with empty windows stood staring out over the city below.

  They sat down on a slope of uncut grass. The low sun was hot, striking through a grove of trees to their left. Smoke or haze overhung the plains beyond the city. All Rákava lay below them. Here and there among the roofs a column of smoke rose till the south wind sheared it off. The dull, heavy sound of the city underlay the stillness of the garden. Sometimes a dog barked far away or they heard for a moment, caught by an echo off the housefronts, the clap of horse-hooves or a calling voice. At the north and east of the city, where the wall was gone, the factories bulked like big blocks set down among toy houses.

  “The place still empty?”

  Lisha turned to look up at the house with its black, glassless windows. “Looks like it’s been empty forever.”

  “Gardener at one of the other places told me when I was a kid it’s been empty for fifty years. Some foreigner built it. Come here and made a fortune with some machinery of his in the mills. Way back. Never sold the place, just left it. It’s got forty rooms, he said.” Sanzo was lying back in the grass, his arms under his head and his eyes shut; he looked easy, lazy.

  “The city’s queer from up here. Half all gold and half dark, and all jammed up together, like stuff in a box. I wonder why it’s all squeezed together, with all the room around it. The plains go on forever, it looks like.”

  “I came up here a lot when I was a kid. Liked to look down on it like that. . . . Filthy city.”

  “It does look beautiful though, from up here.”

  “Krasnoy, now, there’s a beautiful city.”

  He had lived a year in Krasnoy, in the Veterans’ Hospital, after the land mine had blinded him. “You saw it before?” she asked, and he understanding nodded: “In ’17, just after I was drafted. I wanted to go back. Krasnoy’s big, it’s alive, not dead like this place.”

  “The towers look queer, the Courts and the old prison, all sticking up out of the shadows like somebody’s fingers. . . . What did you do when you used to come here?”

  “Nothing. Wandered around. Broke into the house a few times.”

  “Does it really have forty rooms?”

  “I never counted. I got spooked in there. You know what’s queer? I used to think it was like a blind man. All the black windows.”

  His voice was quiet, so was his face, kindled with the strong reddish light of the low sun. Lisha watched him awhile, then looked back at the city.

  “You can tell that Countess Luisa is going to run out on Liyve,” she said, dreamily.

  Sanzo laughed, a real laugh of amusement or pleasure, and reached out his hand towards her. When she took it he pulled her back to lie beside him, her head on his shoulder. The weedy turf was as soft as a mattress. Lisha could see nothing over the curve of Sanzo’s chest but the sky and the top of the chestnut grove. They lay quiet in the warm dying sunlight, and Lisha was absolutely happy for almost the first time and probably the last time in her life. She was not about to let that go until she had to. It was he who stirred at last and said, “Sun must be down, it’s getting cold.”

  They went back down the wide, calm streets, back into their world. There the streets were noisy and jammed with people coming home from the mills. Sanzo had kept hold of Lisha’s hand, so she was able to guide him, but whenever somebody jostled him (no oftener in fact than they jostled her) she felt at fault. Being tall he had to stride, of course, but he did plow straight ahead regardless, and keeping a bit ahead of him to fend off collisions was a job. By the time they got to their building he was frowning as usual, and she was out of breath. They said good night flatly at his entrance, and she stood watching him start up the stairs with that same unhesitating step. Each step taken in darkness.

  “Where’ve you been to?” said a deep voice behind her. She jumped.

  “Walking with Sanzo Chekey, father.”

  Kass Benat, short, broad, and blocky in the twilight, said, “Thought he got about pretty good by himself.”

  “Yes, he does.” Lisha smiled widely. Her father stood before her, solid, pondering. “Go on up,” he said finally, and went on to wash himself at the pump in the courtyard.

  “She’ll get married sometime, you know.”

  “Maybe,” said Mrs Benat.

  “What maybe? She’s turned eighteen. There’s prettier girls but she’s a good one. Any day now, she’ll marry.”

  “Not if she’s mixed up with that Sanzo she won’t.”

  “Get your pillow over on your side, it’s in my eye. What d’you mean, mixed up?”

  “How should I know?”

  Kass sat up. “What are you telling me?” he demanded hoarsely.

  “Nothing. I know that girl. But some of our neighbors could tell you plenty. And each other.”

  “Why do you let her go there and get talked about, then?”

  There was a pause. “Well, because I’m stupid,” Mrs Benat said heavily into the darkness. “I just didn’t think anything about it. How was I to? He’s blind.”

  There was another pause and Kass said, in an uneasy tone, “It isn’t Sanzo’s fault. He’s a good fellow. He was a fine workman. It’s not his fault.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. A big good-looking boy like that. And as steady as you were, too. It doesn’t make any sense, I’d like to ask the good Lord what he’s driving at. . . .”

  “Well, all the same. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I can handle Sara. She’ll give me a handle. I know her. She’s got no patience. But that girl . . . If I talk to her again it’ll just put more ideas in her head!”

  “Talk to him, then.”

  A longer pause. Kass was half asleep when his wife burst out, “What do you mean, talk to him?”

  Kass grunted.

  “You talk to him, if it’s so easy!”

  “Turn it off, old lady. I’m tired.”

  “I wash my hands of it,” Mrs Benat said furiously.

  Kass reached over and slapped her on the rump. She gave a deep, angry sigh. And they settled down close side by side and slept, while the dark rising wind of autumn scoured the streets and courts.

  Old Volf in his windowless bedroom heard the wind prying at the walls, whining. Through the wall Albrekt snored softly, Sara snored deep and slow. After a long time there
were creaks and clinks from the kitchen. Volf got up, found his shoes and ragged padded wrapper, and shuffled into the kitchen. No light was on.

  “That you, Sanzo?”

  “Right.”

  “Light a candle.” He waited, ill at ease in the black darkness. A tin rattled, a match scraped, and around the tiny blue flame the world reappeared.

  “Is it lit?”

  “Down a little. That’s it.”

  They sat down at the table, Volf trying to pull the wrapper over his legs for warmth. Sanzo was dressed, but his shirt was buttoned wrong; he looked mean and haggard. In front of him on the table were a bottle and a glass. He poured the glass full and pushed it towards his father. Volf got it between his crippled hands and began to drink it in large mouthfuls, with a long savouring pause between each. Tired of waiting, Sanzo got himself another glass, poured it half full, and drank it straight off.

  When Volf was done he looked at his son awhile, and said, “Alexander.”

  “What is it?”

  Volf sat looking at him, and finally got up, repeating the name by which no one but Sanzo’s mother, fifteen years dead, had ever called him: “Alexander . . .” He touched his son’s shoulder with his stiff fingers, stood there a moment, and shuffled back to his room.

  Sanzo poured out and drank again. He found it hard to get drunk alone; he wasn’t sure if he was drunk yet or not. It was like sitting in a thick fog that never thinned and never got any thicker: a blankness. “Blank, not dark,” he said, pointing a finger he could not see at no one there. These words had a great significance, but he did not like the sound of his voice for some reason. He felt for the glass, which had ceased to exist, and drank out of the bottle. The blankness remained the same as before. “Go away, go away, go away,” he said. This time he liked the sound of his voice. “You aren’t there. None of you. Nobody’s there. I’m right here.” This was satisfying, but he was beginning to feel sick. “I’m here, God damn it, I’m here,” he said loudly. No one answered, no one woke. No one was there. “I’m here,” he said. His mouth was twitching and trembling. He put his head down on his arms to make that stop; he was so dizzy he thought he was falling off the chair, but he fell asleep instead. The candle near his hand burned down and out. He slept on, hunched over the table, while the wind whined and the streets grew dim with morning.