This Census-Taker

27

Very slowly the light in the cave mouth waned and I was more able to see the entrance itself, now that glow no longer effaced it. It was like an open eye, I thought — then I thought, No, it’s like a closed eye. Abruptly and precisely it was like the oval shape I see when I shut my eyes tight, the ebbing red glow like an opening leading into or out of something. I closed my eyes then but it was too dark to clearly see that vision that my body would conjure out of blood and the inside of skin when light hit it, but I’d seen it so often, examined it so carefully, that it wasn’t hard for me to call to mind.

If I could squeeze my lids so tight that it almost brought me a headache — for long enough, in a bright enough place — the image would open with hazy edges like something living and particular and it would leave within its center a smaller oval presence, floating.

I’d spent years making this appear in my inner eyes, and when I did so I would think myself in a cave looking out at a red sunset. Floating there in the cave mouth, I would imagine a boulder blocking all but the edge of my view.

I opened my eyes in a real cave, for a glimpse at the boulderless entrance beyond the split. It was filled with twilight. I closed my eyes again.

After a time I heard a scuffing, then laborious breaths.

—

“How did you get over there?”

It was the census-taker’s voice. It was strained and not without admiration.

“I see you,” he said.

He hissed as he breathed. I heard his burdened steps.

“Now,” he said. He spoke in little bursts. “Don’t,” he said, “open,” he said, “your eyes.”

He didn’t stagger. He trod slowly and deliberately and with care. “Keep your eyes closed,” he said. “What do you see?”

“The entrance to a tunnel,” I said without hesitation. “Like this one but red.”

“What else?”

“A rock floating in the middle.” This wasn’t true: I couldn’t see that now, only vague dark forms. If I’d been older and seen more things in the world they might have put me in mind of fleeting deep-sea things.

“Tell me about the rock,” he said. He hefted something. I heard a burden fall to the ground. “Now look carefully inside your eyes and tell me what you see there. Don’t look here. Do you promise me?”

“It’s like an egg.” I considered what I’d see floating in the cave mouth behind my eyes. “It’s the shape of an egg…”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

He grunted in satisfaction and exhaled and I heard the scrape of a mass pushed forward.

“Tell me,” he said, “what you want to see.”

That caught me up short. I had nothing to say. Which meant there was a silence during which I could hear him shoving.

“Anything,” he prompted.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe — anything?”

“Anything!” he said. “Wait now,” he said. “Eyes very closed. Quiet now one second.”

He hissed and I heard stones pattering and the sharp ricochets as they bounced below me and then a scraping roll and several hard diminishing thumps and a crack below as something heavy fell.

The last of it was replaced by silence.

I kept my eyes closed. I heard the man softly clap his hands. I heard his feet on the tunnel floor.

“All right,” he said. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes.

—

He stood on the edge of the pit. He held his hands out above it, opening and closing his fingers to rid them of dirt.

He looked at me, perhaps kindly. Patiently.

“How did you get over there?” he said. “Can you get back?”

I went to the cave wall. I didn’t want to hesitate in front of him. I set out to cross it again by those handholds.

The man reached out and plucked me from the wall when I was only halfway done. He made me gasp as he braced himself and snatched me. It was so quick, and there I was, blinking foolishly on his side of things, back where I’d always been before.

He put his hand on my shoulder.

“There,” he said.

There were many things I wanted to say, to ask him, but I couldn’t yet speak.

—

It was fully night. I looked past him at the dark side of the hill and the foliage and stone in the sundown. I heard another whinnying honk.

“Your mule,” I said quickly, so he’d know I was just startled, not afraid.

He gestured down the hill and pursed his lips and before he spoke I said, “There’s no one in town for me,” and it was he who was startled this time. He looked at me with interest and care.

“I had…” I said, and thought of Samma and of Drobe and didn’t know how to explain them. On the bridge, Samma might soon hook for bats, at least. “One can’t do any more for me and one’s gone,” I said. “Drobe’s his name.”

That made the man look away from me, down the dark slopes. He seemed to hold his breath.

At which, though I’d been about to tell him more, I stopped. Wherever he was now I had no more to say about poor Drobe.

“There’s no one,” I said in the end.

The man nodded and released his breath and walked out of the cave and waited where the hill began.

“Do you have food in your house?” he said.

“You can’t come in.”

“I know. You’re good at rules. That’s good. I was thinking of you, for the food. Do you have something?”

“Yes.”

“And you could…” he said, and got lost in thought.

“So,” he said eventually, hurriedly. “Like I said, sometimes there are tasks arising—any jobs that the numbers tell me need doing. It’s my job to do them. We had trouble where I come from. Fighting. What we realized is that the more you know about your people, the better. That’s why I go counting.

“I had someone who worked for me.” He spoke carefully. “But she listened to tattle. About me. And in the end she took off with records and messages that weren’t hers to take. She’s gone now. Papers refiled.

“I need a replacement.

“They told me about your father and mother and they told me about you. Law goes through the blood a bit. I’ll mark you in my books whatever happens, which makes you my business, and makes the books your business too. You could learn them.”

He stopped. I willed him to continue.

“I need an intern,” he said. “Would you like to come with me?”

I said, “Yes.”