Samedi the Deafness

day the fifth

When James woke, it was dark. He was still lying in the tiny room. A small light came down from the moon, found purchase in the glass of the window, and met with him and with the walls.

Grieve was gone. James was naked. In fact, his clothes were gone as well.

He went over to the wall where the listening and seeing apparatuses hung. He flicked open the seeing apparatus and looked through it. He was looking at his own bed, on which Grieve lay sleeping soundly.

The devil, he thought. She got up and left me here sleeping. What kind of girl would do that?

And across the end of the bed he saw his clothes, neatly folded. That's not right, he said. That girl is not right in the head.

He thought of the walk he would have to make, along the hallway and up the stairs. It wasn't far. He could make it if he hurried, perhaps, at this hour, without seeing anyone.

He would try. He had better, he thought. Otherwise he would be stuck until she took mercy on him. Somehow he thought that it would not do to be at the mercy of Grieve Cochrane.

James raced along the passage, padding softly on his bare feet. He came to the hall door and eased it open. Out it he looked carefully. No one was there.

Good, he thought, this is going to work.

He stepped out into the hall and cautiously made for the stairs.

A cough, then, from the shadows.

One of the maids, an older woman, perhaps forty-five or fifty, stood holding a broom.

— Good evening, she said. Are you lost?

— No, said James. Good-bye.

— Good-bye, said the maid softly, as if she were patting a kept field mouse upon its furry head before closing the cardboard box of its home. Good-bye.

Back in the room, James slid into bed beside Grieve. She too was still naked. His arrival did not seem to disturb her, however.

There was a note in the pillowcase. James climbed back out of bed and went to the window. The light that had entered the small room returned to him there and then, and he looked with it upon the note.

James Leslie is the same as James Carlyle.

He and Grieve (Lily Violet) were once promised to each other.

Well, I knew that already, thought James. Though not the first bit. On the back of the note there was more writing.

Carlyle gave me a note which I delivered to Grieve's father. I couldn't read the note, since it was in cipher, but I recognized your name.

I'm sorry about before. But what was I to do? And it isn't true anyway. I just want to help you.

James thought this over. He returned to bed and curled against Grieve's warm sleep, which crept over him even as he surrendered himself to it. It was like a wooden puzzle, and all the people were distinct oblong shards of wood jutting out. Pull one, pull all, and none would move. But there was one, one special shard, that could be pulled. And after that, another, and after that, another. But who to trust?

He could hear Grieve mumbling in her sleep. She had done it last night too. But the words didn't make any sense. He listened now, and marked well in his mind what she said.

James lay on his side and looked at Grieve. He turned onto his back and looked at the ceiling. His eyes crept about the room. No. 17, he thought. The room I have been given, complete with observatory.

He wondered whether all the rooms had such observatories. No, of course not. Of course not.

He realized suddenly that he had left the elephant drawing of himself on the floor in the tiny room. This worried him immensely. A gift like that certainly should not be left on the floor.

But that room is composed solely of floor. Floor and pillows and nothing in between. There was nowhere else I could have put it, he thought.

But he knew that this logic would not hold up. The man must not see that James had left his drawing discarded on the floor. Yes, he would go first thing in the morning to fetch the drawing. What he would do with it, he could not say. He would like to bury it along with the mask. But apparently the police had the mask.

He pictured in his mind the sallow man climbing out of bed, opening the door that was almost as large as the room itself, going out into the hall, turning left, opening the door to the passage, going along the passage, up the ladder, and finding then his drawing discarded. It was terrible, terrible.

And then he would be at the aperture, listening and watching. James looked towards where the fourth window should have been. There was no way to know if the man was there now watching him.

I will walk about in the halls and see what comes of it, he thought.

An afternoon and wind in fields. He knelt in the middle of a path.

Something or someone had set off the trap. The metal teeth were closed tight. James tested its action, opening it with all his strength, cocking it, laying it again on the ground, and shoving a long stick through to the trigger.

SNAP! The stick was snapped clean through.

James set the trap once more, satisfied with its workings, between an oak and a sycamore, in a little drop of land.

— They won't see that, he said. Not though they're standing over it. Not till they're in it.

And the little boy danced off chuckling and stomping along the road and looked back twice from the crest of each increasing hill.

— To speak of observation, and observation holes, I was watching you through the argot, said Grieve. What were you doing in the kitchens last night?

— I was looking for a bit of chocolate and a bowl of milk, said James.

— Not on your life, said Grieve. You can't lie to me.

— All right, said James. I was looking for the egg room.

— The egg room! said Grieve, exclaiming. The egg room, the egg room!

— But what were you, said James, doing in the room beneath the argot?

— It's a cemetery, said Grieve. We call it Mount Auburn. My brother is there in a fold of grass. I covered him with thirty-nine stones but one went missing. Where could it be?

James drew from his pocket a book, drew from the book a pressed flower, and shook from the flower a bit of stone shaped like a crescent moon.

— Here it is, he said. I found it in the passage by the cellar.

They were both silent. Grieve took the stone.

— You mustn't go there again, she said. You might meet me there, and then we would be through.

A dark name like a walking stick broken in anger.

— When I am out on the wind, said Grieve, I wear four arms and the trails of my dress consume me.

— Before you say any more, said James, say no more.

And so no more was said.

The fact of the matter, James decided, was that a theory was not a good theory because it was right or wrong. A theory was good for entirely other reasons. Because it presumed to be right? Presumed to be wrong? A theory could be very good that presumed to be wrong. And certainly there were theories that presumed only to be helpful in small ways. So many theories are peculiar to their centuries, and never get a second go around the merry-go-round.

My theory, James thought, is that SAMEDI decided long ago to do whatever it is he is going to do and that nothing can stop it. The trigger has already been pulled, the knife set in motion, somewhere far from here. And though we here may be affected by it, we can do nothing to alter it, nothing to stop it.

James felt very much that this was a correct theory. Of course, it was not a useful theory.

What theory would be useful? James thought for a moment.

A useful theory, ah — that Grieve's father was not Samedi, and that everyone in the house was delightful because this was the beginning of a new and unexplainable life.

It was late in the morning when James woke. Grieve was still there. She was reading from the newspaper.

— You won't believe it, she said. This wacko has sent another suicide.

There was an odd tone to her voice.

— What? asked James carefully.

— This madman, said Grieve, this Samedi. It just means Saturday in French; what kind of name is that? Anyway, he's sent men to suicide in the capital, one every day this week.

— What does the note say? James asked.

— It's the same thing every day, said Grieve. He's going to murder us all, somehow.

She turned a little pale. That was odd, thought James.

— What do you think? he asked.

Grieve said nothing, but looked down at her feet. Her face had gone blank. She had been trying to play a game, but the gravity of it had gotten the better of her. James was sure now. She knew. She knew what her father was going to do. Now if only she would tell him.

He started to say something.

She tossed the paper on the floor and slid up on top of him. He started to kiss her, and he could feel the length of her against him. He thought of days then in October when he was a boy and he had seen in the windows of houses candles lit at night, and how happy it had made him. There were waters in the middle of the ocean that met having come great distances, dispersing through great distances but keeping still some character, some inimitable character of water, and then, to have that, and meet, in the midst of a great ocean, water from a far place, and mingle with it in the midst of the ocean's lapsing. He felt her tongue along his chest, her legs wrapped tight around his legs. She tightened and he could feel himself like the sound in a room when a door is opened, rushed out into intervening space, unable to counter anything, accepting all, expanding, meeting, taking upon itself all space, all motion, trembling, entering other rooms, other bodies. Grieve was trembling, and her face was hot against his. She kissed and kissed him.

— I was lying, she whispered. What can I tell you?

And then he was inside of her and they were together in the lost deep ground where no one had gone until they, and where no one could go, where everyone had gone, of course, and did go, but not at once, just one pair and then another, never passing one another on the way, each taking of its own accord a seldom path that cannot be found by the eye, but is traced irrevocably in pageants of color and light. She was saying something, talking and talking. He could hear her but he could not.

And then they slept.

And afterwards it was late morning, and the light had not left or been made less by clouds. His arms about her, James wondered again if someone was watching. He wondered if someone had been watching the whole time.

It would have been quite a show, he thought, and pictured Sermon and Leonora Loft kneeling in the small room and winking to each other.

And also, he wondered, in the broad vagueness of his thought, what did Grieve know? What could she tell him?

A note beyond the door:

Meeting canceled.

James rubbed his eyes — it was a good thing the meeting was canceled. He'd forgotten to go in the first place.

What was the origin, James wondered, of Grieve's lying? He remembered she had said something about the matter. What had it been? He thought back. They had been standing on the roof of the house. First they had gone up the stairs into the upstairs bathroom. Grieve had gone in. She had waved to him. He had gone in. She had locked the door with a key from the inside.

— Here we are, he said, in the bathroom.

It was very small. Just a porcelain sink recessed in the wall, a porcelain toilet with a chain pull, and a window in a roof that slanted down, halving the room. Grieve opened the window with a practiced gesture.

— This is the way.

Out then the window onto the roof that proved to be only an initial roof. Many roofs stretched in all directions, some up, some down, most across, all away.

— I want to have sex with you right now, said James, for Grieve's dress was being blown very tightly against her by the wind.

— You shall not, she said. At least, not while he's watching.

James looked over his shoulder. The cat had come up with them, had entered the bathroom unseen, and now was limping across the roof, dragging its hind leg.

— Oh, Mephisto, she said. What a darling you are.

She scooped up the cat.

— I thought its name was something else, said James.

— Around here, said Grieve, we think about naming a little differently than you do. As you understand it, people have names; things have names. But the weather. . if it is sunny you call it a clear day, and if it rains you complain of a storm. But it's the weather; it's one thing. Around here we have names for people, and for Mephisto, for instance, that, like the names for the weather, change along with the object's behavior. When Mephisto is being bad, or at the very least, daring, acting without compunction in preposterous affairs like the one in which we are now involved, he is called Mephisto. When he is good, sitting quietly in the sun in a window seat or sill, he is called Xerxes. When he is terrified of someone new, hiding under chairs, scurrying in shadow, then he is Benvolio.

— But he was never scared of me, said James.

— No, said Grieve, not in the least. But that's because he could tell that I liked you so much. It's really all that matters to him.

— How did he break his leg?

— It was terrible, said Grieve. He was my one real friend when I was a girl. Back then he used to talk to me. You wouldn't believe the things he'd say.

— I daresay not, said James.

Mephisto jumped then out of Grieve's arms and made his way in a half trot, half drag across the shingled roof.

— One day, said Grieve, Mephisto went into the egg room by mistake. My father was furious. No one is to go there, no one at all.

James said nothing about the egg room.

— So, he took Mephisto in his arms, at that time we called Mephisto Cavendish, and held Cavendish's paw up. Cavendish, said my father. Never in the egg room, Cavendish. And he broke the cat's leg by bending it back and forth quickly. During all this Cavendish neither cried out nor tried to escape, but sat watching my father with a still sort of patience. When he had broken the cat's arm to his satisfaction, he dropped him to the ground and the cat ran off, dragging its broken leg. He is no longer Cavendish, said my father. Now he is Benvolio. And from then on, Benvolio would not speak to me or tell me things. He stayed out of the egg room, though, and was mostly close by my side as before.

She kicked at the shingles of the roof.

— It seems that talking was a part of Cavendish, not a part of Benvolio or Mephisto or Xerxes. As soon as Cavendish went away, the cat became dumb. I felt I had to speak for him.

She smiled, a delicate smile like a bookish otter.

— You know, he used to say the most ingenious things. Anyway, I felt that if he was no longer going to be saying them, then someone should. So I began. I talk for both of us. I got so used to making things up for Gone-Away-Cavendish to say that I have never been able to change the habit. Besides, I don't see why I should.

— That is not, said James, why you really lie.

— No, she agreed. That's not why at all.

They walked along the roof to a place where the next roof began. Up it they went to another roof, and another after that. Slowly they ascended the house until they reached a sort of gazebo set at the highest point. There was a fine wooden rail about it, a lovely cupola above, and benches within. Yes, benches and a table.

— Is this the only way up here? James asked.

— Yes, everyone who comes up comes out that bathroom window.

— It's nice, said James, to discover this upper world, a place complete in itself. Yet the window to the bathroom has been left open and there, our little foothold in the old world is preserved. The door to the bathroom is locked. Someone might even now be standing there waiting. They think we are in there, and we are! It's as though all of this, everything that takes place up here, all these roofs, all these vantages, are all shuttered together in that tiny bathroom. We'll go back inside, unlock the door, and present ourselves to the person just beyond. My, we'll say, how the time passes.

— But if that's true, said Grieve, then when a fellow sneaks out his bedroom window at night in order to go wandering in the country and meet his girl on a covered bridge beneath which some slow water passes and passes again, when he leaves and returns before daybreak back through the window, shutting it tight and climbing neatly into bed, before dressing and going back out the bedroom door into the actual world when the cock crows, then, then the countryside, the whole countryside, the covered bridge, the slow river, the girl, the running through the night, all of it, is within that room, as if it all climbed back in the window with him, to sit there as dawn returned in morning's clothes, with an old stick and a stone it keeps rubbing for a reason no one will ever know.

— Well, said James. I don't see what you're getting at. I would agree with that. That doesn't contradict anything.

Grieve moved her face close to his, then lunged down and bit him quite hard on the shoulder.

— Ay! he cried out, and fell from the bench onto the wooden slats of the gazebo.

Then she was upon him and bit him again.

But why had she begun to lie in the first place?

As James went about the house, he noticed that all the maids were crying. One maid crying. Another maid crying. All the maids, crying. He rang his bell. The maid at the end of the hall froze. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. He approached her.

— What are you crying about?

— It's Grieve, she said, turning. She's killed herself.

James felt a cold shock over him. Had she killed herself?

— Grieve, he said slowly. She's killed herself?

— Yes, said the maid. And the baby, too. She drowned herself in the bath. And her eight months pregnant. No one can say who the father is.

She began to cry.

Pregnant, thought James. Which Grieve was this?

— Do you mean, he said, a young girl, about. .

He described the maid, Grieve, to this maid.

— Oh, said the maid, drying her eyes. Not her. No. Why, she is named Grieve also. That's why you thought that she had. . Oh, no. I mean, I'm named Grieve too, but I haven't done myself in, now, have I?

— No, said James. You haven't.

He explained that he would have to be going.

— But you mark my words, said the maid. There'll be a penalty for this.

She shook her head violently from side to side like a bird in a leather trap.

— Mark my words.

Within a short while all the water had drained from the bath. The room was quiet. No room can be so quiet as a quiet bathroom in an empty house. Everyone has left for the country, James thought, though he knew it wasn't true. Everyone has left for the country and I am still here. And he remembered small things he had done wrong here and there throughout his life and felt that this was some accounting of blame — he was being paid back in kind. And then he thought of kind voices reading old stories. He thought of the ease of paper boats on a Victorian pond. He thought of marzipan and weasels, of Easter on easels and trees shed of last year's leaves. Many were present then in him, and one was his brother. I will say, said he, that the lily when it blossoms is the name of four-fold ovens. But that's meaningless. No, no. Four-fold ovens and the cleverness of hands. A man with the skill of setting traps. A bird with one eye because he has been painted only in profile. We shall not let him turn, not until he has sung his supper.

Is this the broom closet? wondered James. He took a piece of paper out of his coat pocket. The paper was very flat. It said:

Broom closet, Floor 3, Stair 7, Rear of Hospital.

He had made it through the hospital without incident. He had made it up the stairs without incident. Now he was before a closet. He presumed it was a closet. All the other rooms had numbers painted in neat black paint over dark wood. It must be, he thought.

And he opened the door.

Begin with me, said the bird. James reached out, took hold of the bird's neck and head, and gently but firmly twisted it off.

Within the little metal bird was a rolled-up piece of parchment.

It said:

I anticipate you as farmland anticipates the wilderness to come when all that's ordered is the sum of thought in a white wren's head as it flutters among red apples. Red red apples and the smell of blood.

— I saw in the distance a harbor approaching, a harbor walking arm in arm with the sea, and upon the sea great catastrophes of ships, constellations of storm and fright. Distances. How much then I knew that distance was always our greatest enemy; distance was always the obstacle that could not be overcome. Steam trains bring us closer. Airplanes. Elevators. Rockets. But how can we be beside the one we love on that particular day when it would suddenly, inexplicably, mean the most? For small distances, a street, a room, the length of an arm, these divide like a sword. They are the worst, the most devilish, the most puzzling. Ask me again when I go into the hall, will I hate to be parted from you, will I call out the moment I am finished with what I must do? Instead, my love, arrive. Arrive quietly as I finish. Surely that is within your power.

James put the book down. Carlyle was looking at him.

— That is beautiful, he said. What happens next?

— It's the book's end, said James. But I think it is a suicide. The woman is speaking to her lover who is far away.

— This taking leave of life, said Carlyle. For many it is not easy.

Carlyle was wearing a short brown jacket with dark wool pants and a white cotton shirt. He had a hat on indoors, slouched across his head, and had been writing in a book when James arrived.

— I finished reading the manual, said James. It's fascinating.

— Ah, the manual, said Carlyle. There are many opinions, like insects, about the manual. Some flutter but do not fly; some fly but do not flutter. Some stay close to the ground unmoving. It is an old book, you know. From the nineteenth century. The idea had been put into practice once, in England. But not since then, until Stark discovered it and realized it was the perfect way of treating today's illness of chronic lying. And, he thought, a sort of lovely way of living in general. At any rate, he likes it.

— Do you have all the rules memorized? asked James.

— God, no, said Carlyle. But one gets a sense of what one ought and ought not to do. After a while it becomes instinctive. Of course, every now and then there is a transgression, and when one is excited, one often doesn't count to fifteen, et cetera, but mostly, yes, the rules work just fine. It is very difficult, of course, to train the maids. But they like it very much here, I think. Certainly they get paid well. Everyone who comes into contact with this place is rewarded for it in some way.

Carlyle said this with a real belief.

I wonder if that's true, thought James.

— How did Stark make his money? he asked.

— I believe he inherited it. He's always had it, and there's never been an explanation, as long as I've known. Where he lived as a boy, these sorts of things are a mystery. He doesn't talk about himself very often. He's the kind of man who obsessively controls the work that he is upon, and thinks of it and only it.

— What is his work?

— Well, psychology, to start. But his writings are complicated and verge into social theory and other realms. He is the acting head of this hospital, the one that we are on the edge of here. It runs partly into the house, as Graham tells me you discovered in an unfortunate way.

Carlyle laughed when he said this.

— I was just trying to get some supper, said James. I didn't know where to go.

— The few of us who live here and are not patients generally eat in our rooms, or in the private dining rooms. But you know that if you've finished the manual.

James nodded.

Carlyle looked at his watch.

— I have to go. I have to meet someone.

He looked quickly at James, quickly away, and stood.

— Sorry to run off, he said.

— No worries, said James. He stood too.

Carlyle put his arm on James's shoulder.

— I like you, he said. I think we could be friends.

— I think so, said James.

— If you like, said Carlyle, I'm having supper with McHale and Grieve tonight in my room. You can come. I'll send a note.

— That would be fine, said James.

Next to the chair where Carlyle had been sitting was a pile of newspapers.

I should have a look, thought James.

Both yesterday's and today's were there. The Samedi matter was front-page news on both. There had been two more suicides and two more notes. The area of the White House was now sealed off for ten blocks in every direction.

The two men who had died were American citizens. The first, an Alfred Mitchell, had also shot himself in the face. The second name James recognized, and a chill ran up his spine.

Good God, he thought. I have been right all along.

The second man, who had poisoned himself, then staggered three blocks to die on the White House lawn, was Marvin Estrainger.

James went to the sideboard and poured himself a glass of whiskey. He downed it, poured himself another, and downed that. Then he began to cough. He looked around the room. He had taken the curtains off the windows and laid them all across the section of wall he knew to be the observation panel.

Let them try to look now, he thought.

and also

Why are they doing it? Why are they sending these men to die?

The two notes had been more of the same, a strange sort of puzzling rhetoric. Martin Stark, thought James. Martin Stark is Samedi.

What good was the information?

He walked to the door, opened it, shut it, walked back to the bed. The information was only useful to him if he could use it, and he realized how well they had trapped him. They knew that he would never go to the police now that he was implicated in Mayne's death.

Then a thought occurred to him. Had Mayne been ordered by Samedi to suicide just as the others had been?

But this thought passed quickly. It would have been just as easy for them to take him, James Sim, away, as to arrange the suicide of a random man. No, he had just happened to play into their hands. What a fool he'd been.

Of course, he thought, even if I decide now to go to the police, they'll never let me leave the house. I'm sure of that.

There was a knock at the door. James stepped towards it. But it was not followed by another. He reached the door, opened it. On the shelf was a note.

Supper, 9: rm. 73.

Now, thought James to himself, the only question is, who here knows what's going on, and who doesn't? Grieve seems to know. But does she know because they've told her, or because she's found out on her own? With Estrainger dead, the cat must be out of the bag for more people than just Sim. It must be obvious to everyone.

And if they know Stark's handwriting, they'll have seen the facsimiles in the papers, with the posted notice: Have You Seen This Handwriting Before, and a number to call. They'd know it was him.

Everyone, thought James. Everyone here must know that Stark is Samedi.

What day is today? he thought to himself absently. Thursday. Then there're only two days left.

I have to find out, he thought. Even if I can do nothing about it, I have to find out what's going to happen.

He Opened the Window and Saw a Woman Below With Her Hat Just So

and it reminded him irresistibly of a day in April when he had just left home. April all through the day, like a skein of cloth. Warmth upon the hands, the feet. The first day of spring is like the first principle. Life ought always to be like that. Perhaps it could be. He wondered if that was what life was like at all times for someone who'd been enlightened, a saint, someone with perfect equanimity. To be called out of yourself so entirely, it required the orchestration of every living thing. For half the world to have died in winter and be reborn at the saying of spring's name.

Another knock brought James out of his reverie. It was followed by two, and then by two, and then by one.

What does that mean? thought James. That's not on the chart.

The door opened before he could say anything. Grieve came in, carrying a cat.

— It's broken its leg, she said. We have to fix it.

The cat looked perfectly fine.

He said so.

— No, no, she said. Something has to be done.

She deposited the cat in his hands, kissed him on the cheek, took off her coat, and threw it on the bed.

— Let's have a look, she said.

James turned the cat onto its back and cradled it like a child. Three of its legs were fine, but the third did look a bit odd. The cat was quite friendly, and licked James's nose when it came in range. It was purring softly.

Hmmm, he thought. Is this Cavendish, Xerxes, Mephisto, or Benvolio? Not Cavendish. Not Benvolio.

He put the cat down on the floor. It trotted over to Grieve, and as it ran he could see that it did indeed drag the one leg.

— Grieve, he said. Xerxes' leg has been like that a very long time.

— I know that, she said. It's my cat. Of course I know that.

He shook his head.

— Then what do you mean, we have to operate? You don't make any sense.

Grieve got up and came over. She was dressed in a light blue cotton slip that covered her down to her knees. A small black scarf was tied stylishly around her neck, and another around her wrist.

— Sweetheart, she said. It was just something to say. You know how I like entrances.

— I can't imagine for a moment, she said after a long silence, that it would be the same man. James was holding up the newspaper. There was a photograph of Estrainger. He looked precisely as McHale had described him, a small man.

James said this to Grieve.

— Everyone looks small in death, she said. Didn't you know that?

The window was still open. Grieve went and leaned out it. She had not seen the paper. He had surprised her with the information.

James came up behind her. He ran his hand along the line of her shoulders, and pulled at one of the straps aimlessly.

— Grieve, he said. I don't understand. Why is your father doing this?

She turned and looked up at him.

— They don't want me to tell you anything. They won't tell me anything. But I know.

He touched her face. She was crying.

— Saturday is so soon, she said. And we've only just met.

A Rule

If somebody asks you for something, you have to give it to them.

They get to keep it for as long as they like.

However, if the person knows that they shouldn't have asked for it, then they will be punished. If you know someone shouldn't ask for something, however, that doesn't change the fact that you have to give them the thing in question.

If a person has no idea about whether they should or should not have a thing, and the thing that they ask you for is a thing that they should not have, then you have to give it to them.

The only case where you should not give to someone a thing that they ask for is if it is clear to you that they know they should not be asking for it, and that furthermore, the item is something that is a danger to them.

Also, if you have money you are not to let it be visible within the hospital. You are not to give any to anyone. You are not to explain what it is if the person in question does not know.

James was determined. He went out into the hall, leaving Grieve, crying, on the bed. He had to see Stark. He just had to.

But he didn't know where Stark's rooms were. That should be easy enough, he thought. On the first floor he stopped a nurse, neglecting to use the bell.

— Where is Stark's office? he asked.

— Most out of the ordinary, said the woman.

She started to walk away. He grabbed her arm.

— Tell me, he said.

— Up the fourth stairwell, she said, that way. There's nothing else at the top. The whole floor is his.

She sniffed loudly and walked away.

James continued. He felt out of breath suddenly and realized that he had hardly been breathing since he'd spoken to Grieve.

She was convinced, he thought, that they were all going to die.

He passed two staircases, then another. The house was enormous, he thought, and the arrangement of rooms made no sense. Modern hospitals were laid out for efficiency. Not so this place.

Although he thought of the manual and remembered that there was a sort of efficiency to the place, a cloven, carefree efficiency.

How much hope there has been in the past, all spent like forgotten currencies.

The fourth stair, there it was. UP IT and UP IT. At the top there was a door. A man stood outside of it. He caught sight of the man's face as he rounded the stair. Torquin.

God damn it, thought James. How can I get past him?

As he came up to the door, Torquin was smiling.

— You don't have an appointment, he said.

— But I do, said James. It was made yesterday. Stark told me himself.

— It was made yesterday, said Torquin, and it was canceled this morning. You can't go in. That's that. It's impossible. You'll have to come back tomorrow.

— But tomorrow, said James, will be Friday. That's too late. I have to speak to him now.

The door opened behind Torquin. McHale poked his head out.

— What's all the noise? he asked.

— Nothing, said Torquin. He's trying to push his way in.

He pointed a thick hand at James.

McHale looked at James.

— Sorry, James, he said. Your appointment's been changed. Something came up. Maybe I can help you.

He came out into the hall.

— Let's go for a walk, he said. Some things are clearer when walking.

He began down the stairs. James followed reluctantly. The man he wanted to talk to was Stark, not McHale. But from Torquin's expression he knew there was no chance of admittance.

He followed after McHale.

As He Reached the Stairs He Found in His Pocket

a note. Grieve must have slipped it in at some point.

There's something you don't understand, and I can't explain it. It's a way of thinking. My father has a way of thinking, and it never compromises. His being right is the center of it, and he is right. I can't remember him ever being wrong. His life has been blessed with this rightness that all put together makes for something that can be hard to understand. I don't know. He arranges the lives around him, my life, the life of my family, the life of this place. There's something obscene in it. I wanted to tell you this just now, but I couldn't. I have trouble saying things out loud. Living here has made me want to live fictionally. That's why I am the way I am. My father knows that; he likes it. That's why he doesn't try to change me.

Something else you don't understand is that what's happening, what's going to happen, doesn't have to happen to you. There's a kind of boat, I don't know. I mean, I don't know why you're here in the first place. My father brought you here. He must have a reason.

— Death came then about the houses, the streets, the cities, like a skirt of leaves that could not be cast off.

McHale was talking.

— What? asked James.

— It's from a book, he said.

He held up a thin volume.

— They're poems. My brother wrote them.

He stopped halfway between the first and second floors and looked at James.

— Listen, he said. The pretense is over. You're here and you're not going to go to the police. That much is over for you. Estrainger's dying made things obvious. Now you think things are clear. But things aren't clear. You don't understand anything. Not why Stark is doing it, not how. You don't know anything.

He took a deep breath.

— The trouble is, Grieve's the trouble. She's where the problem with you came in. We had someone else watching you, ever since you found my brother in the park. Someone else was finding out your information. Our man was going to keep you tied up for a week in your house until it was too late and you could do us no harm. But Grieve was listening at the door; this house has too many doors. She got interested in you and went to take a look. She'd been depressed for months, had scarcely moved from her room. When Stark saw her take an interest in someone, he was frozen. I've never seen him not know what to do.

McHale started again down the stairs.

— We'll go outside, he said.

James nodded but kept quiet. He wanted to hear everything.

— And so, our man kept back and Grieve went and saw you in the diner; she went to your house; she sent you the mask. It was soon too much, especially after what happened at Estrainger's apartment. What did you think you were doing with Mayne? Did he get violent? Why did you throw him out the window?

— For the last time, said James. I didn't do anything. He jumped. He thought I was a cop.

— Anyway, said McHale, that brought on way too much heat. The police were looking into the affair. There was nothing to do but bring you here. Or kill you. It was a close bet. But Grieve seemed so changed. Her father made the decision: bring you here and keep you in the dark about everything as long as possible.

They reached the door to a covered porch and went through. There were benches and deep hooded wicker seats for two or three. McHale sat in one of these. James sat beside him. Shadows and light ran along the porch in an odd pattern. James recognized it — it reminded him of

— Rovnin, said McHale.

A smile appeared and disappeared just as fast on his face.

— The screen's woven to make shadows that look like a rovnin game. It's an old design. Stark's obsessed with rovnin. He's written monographs on its political applications.

He shrugged his shoulders.

— The point is, it was Estrainger's turn. Once he died, we knew you would know the truth. At that point, a decision would be made about you.

— And that's why Stark won't see me, said James. He's deciding whether or not you're going to let me live.

There was an odd clarity to it all. James felt his shoulders tense. There was room to maneuver here. He had the gun upstairs, after all. If he just played it calm and acted unconcerned, he might have a chance to make it to the gun, and then try to get out, to get over the wall like the first McHale had.

And then he remembered what had happened to the first McHale.

— Stark won't see you, said McHale, not because he's deciding about you. You, my friend, are the furthest thing from his mind. He has more to think about than you. No, the decision about you will be made when he has a free moment. Probably after talking with Grieve.

— How could you do it? James asked suddenly. How could you do that to your own brother?

McHale was caught off guard by the question. His face tightened.

— You don't understand anything yet, he said. Once you understand, you'll feel differently, I promise. You'll talk with Stark, and then you'll understand.

They sat, staring out across the porch to the lawn and the grounds. Neither said anything for a long while. Finally McHale spoke. His voice was thick with emotion.

— He was my brother, but he was Stark's son. He's Grieve's brother too. It wasn't easy for anyone; you have to know that. But he was going to leave. He was going to give us all up. No one could convince him not to. We tried. We tried for months.

He stood up.

— I have to go back. We've been talking too long anyway.

James stood.

— Where are you going back to?

— Upstairs, said McHale. There's more to be done. I can't talk about it.

He walked away.

James sat again and looked at his hands. He took Grieve's note out of his pocket and read it through again.

So, he thought. Grieve's the one who's been protecting me.

He thought back in his head and went one by one through every memory he had of her, from the first in the diner, to the last in the room above.

How strange, he thought, for her to fall in love with me at the drop of a hat, in an instant. The wrong instant for everyone else, but the right instant for me.

He wondered too what it was that Stark planned. From the sound of it, it would be horrible indeed. Yet the hospital didn't seem a likely place for housing the mechanisms of some enormous disaster.

I must have been right, thought James. Everything must have been put in place long ago. It must have all been hibernating.

It wasn't so much that James cared what would happen to the people in general. Bad things were constantly happening to people. People were constantly doing bad things to one another. That would be nothing new. But he wanted to understand. He hated that everyone kept telling him that he didn't understand.

He thought of the book that was inscribed on the library ceiling. Maybe that was a clue.

If I could break the cipher. . he thought. And he closed his eyes and thought very very hard.

ANSILON

arrived and removed his coat carefully in the leaden foyer.

— The news? asked James, who stood with a tea service and a stick of wood for the fire.

It was quite cold. Too cold for going out, save gravely.

He hasn't got a chance, not a chance in hell, said Ansilon, who knew very well about chances in hell.

All owls, he had once told James, end up in hell. There they sit in the branches of scalded trees and whisper their wisdom into the blighted ears of vain scholars who are carved in the shapes of kites by smooth-skinned dusk children in trembling tunics of white.

— I will not go there, James had said.

See that you don't, said Ansilon. For I cannot help you then.

Ansilon hung his coat on a hook and followed James into the house. A storm had appeared that afternoon, uncaused. For miles the ground was thick with snow. And was it not July?

There were accidents on the road, said Ansilon.

— Did you take the road? asked James.

Only to see the accidents, said Ansilon. I smelled the disaster through the cold air and came to see. There was a couple trapped in a Studebaker beneath an overturned timber truck. They were speaking to each other very quietly, saying what they supposed were their last things.

— Were they saved, then? asked James.

No, said Ansilon, they were quite right, of course. She kept saying, My hands are bent and broken. How can I sew your clothing for tomorrow? To which the man replied, No tomorrow, no sewing, no clothes.

— What a great fellow you are, said James. People can only talk like that in recounting. No one talks like that anymore.

Once they did, said Ansilon. And not so long ago. If you want the truth, I gave him the figurine and he gave me this.

Ansilon produced a wad of banknotes. James took them.

— That'll do nicely, he said. When shall we leave?

— So you understand, said Carlyle, the nineteenth century was overrun with liars. So many small corners of the world had been left unexplored that fact held no hegemony. Margret Selm, psychological theorist and unacknowledged artistic genius, came up with a strategy for rehabilitating chronic liars. It was based on her country-house experiments, where she would isolate problematic communities or ideas, and see what happened when they operated independent of the world itself.

— How did she fund these experiments? asked James.

They were in the kjoll room. The walls, ceiling, even the doors were painted over with a crowd of women, all in the process of trying on different dresses. So many there were that the scene itself could not be made out. The detail of the dresses was so finely painted that one could approach to within inches and see perhaps a fly that had landed a moment on a woman's shoulder as she bent to straighten a stocking.

— She was born to a wealthy Swiss family, continued Carlyle. At that time, the official position of the Swiss was that there were no liars in Switzerland. Accepting this as gospel, despite the rigor of her genius, she left at first for parts unknown in her quest to study a population of chronic liars. She next appears on a steamer bound up the Mississippi. She is known to have learned English in a miraculous four days with the use of a half-burned Bible and a volume of Christopher Smart. She made her way east and north, and established in the Adirondacks a large and well-stocked manse. To her then she drew many wits and intellects, and they fell all to helping her in her good works. She wrote a book, the manual you have on the table upstairs, that graces in fact every room of this house. As you know, it holds the rules, all the rules by which life here is conducted. She decided that the difficulty with chronic lying is that at some point it begins to efface identity. The reason for this is that the liar's lies are constantly being approached and rebutted by truth. Then they are destroyed and the liar is left with nothing, not even with the original truth, because the original truth has been forgotten, and in any case cannot be accepted once it is the destroyer of his/her own arrived-at fact.

Carlyle leaned against the window casement and lit a cigarette. He nodded slightly to himself, as though fixing the details of his own continuing narrative.

— Because, said he, the truth is, liars are very rooted in identity. Their passion for identity might even be said to be greater than that of honest folk. An honest man is content with his identity, content with the facts of the world. A liar goes past the world's facts and the world's state and says, I am not as has been seen; what I have done is not what I have been seen to have done. They replace what has been seen with what they have supposed, with what they have hoped for, with divergent accounts of greater or lesser fabulousness. This passion for the assertion of identity is like a vessel at sea that sails with great speed and ability in the open ocean. Fetch it up against rocks, however, and it is torn to bits, it, the crew, the captain. So, the idea was to take a population of chronic liars, put them in an isolated environment, Selm's country house, give them a number of complex and arbitrary rules, no one of which prohibits lying, and allow their lies to go unfettered. Out of unfettered lying, in a structure of obeyed regimens and rules, Selm believed new identities would be constructed that could gain a sort of internal integrity that eventually would pass into truth. After all, the facts of yesterday do not always hold more bearing than yesterday's fictions. So she said.

— Did it work? asked James. Why haven't I heard of it?

— Well, said Carlyle, the manse burned down in a lightning storm. A few studies had been done of the place. They were optimistic but unsubstantiated. Several copies, however, existed of her manual, and also the architectural plan of her ideal country house. Dr. Stark found these, read them, and was fascinated. He thought that the arbitrary rules she had set down were a work of genius, and would bring pleasure to any life. Also, as a psychologist himself, he was interested in the application of the process. So, he had this place built according to her blueprint. He printed many copies of the manual. His mandarin assurance and prowess guaranteed the project some degree of notoriety. Therefore, patients came, not generally of their own free will, of course, but most have been pleased with their stay. In fact, often, they prefer life within our walls.

— The results, though, said James, have shown the experiment to be a success?

— Experiments, said Carlyle, are not ever successful. Or they are always successful. Have it either way. An experiment simply procures information that was hitherto unclear.

— Fine, said James. But does it help cure chronic lying?

— Cure it, no, said Carlyle. But it makes the lives of liars happy, and allows them to live either in the world, or in this closed space as others live in wealth. Stark has theories about the imagination, its prowess, its possibility.

— And you've lived here many years, you and the others who aren't patients, everyone in your family? Here with the rules, the nurses, the orderlies? Is there any countereffect from living in this house? Do you grow used to constant lying?

— Yes, said Carlyle. We do, we do. As I said, lies are often simply stated desires. How can such a thing be untrue? It's untrue only in its reception, not in the manner of its appearance.

He opened the window and threw his cigarette out onto the long green-gray lawn. The sound of laughter and also footsteps on the porch beneath joined them in the room. Carlyle smiled. His eyes met James's.

— Lying is like breathing, he said. When you notice that you're doing it, there's a sudden fear: if I stop, will I die? When I was a child, I had a little wooden boat with a cloth sail. I put a metal figurine of Charlemagne in the cabin, and pushed it out on a lake near the house where I first lived. I held on to it with a long string. Do you know what happened then?

James said that he did not.

— What happened then? he asked.

— A man in a skiff came. I saw him from far away, and thought something bad was about to happen. But I did nothing. Curiosity is often what makes us powerless. I watched as he came closer and closer on the lake. He wore a brown worsted suit and had unkempt hair. His eyes were different colors. He sculled up with a single-minded intensity, right up to my little boat. I stood helpless on the shore, clutching at the string. From his pocket he took a knife. He cut the string, put my boat in his skiff, and sculled away. I was horrified. I stood there, string in hand, and when someone came to fetch me, I could give no answer about what had happened. In fact, I've never spoken of it until now.

The light then in the kjoll room bore the shape of a mansard. Six leaves blew one by one through the window and landed at the feet of the two men.

Should I reach down and pick one up? thought James. If I did so, what would it mean?

A moment, then another moment.

Carlyle shut the window.

— Let's go find the others, he said. Hours of evening are ahead.

James stood on the landing outside of his room. Another note had come. He read it and dropped it into the basket on the floor.

He went into his room. No one was there. There was a note in the pillowcase. He set it on the table next to the bed and did not read it. He went over and shut the window, which was still open.

There was a kind of odd efficiency to his movements. He marked it in himself, but could do nothing to prevent it. What will happen next? he thought.

He changed into a nicer suit, looked at himself in the mirror for a moment, then went back out into the hall. Grieve was standing there. She had been there all along.

— Let's go, she said. I know a shortcut.

Ansilon said something unintelligible.

— What did you say? asked James.

Something I'd forgotten, said Ansilon. I said it in the old language owls used to use when we took the shapes of men and became at times kings and kings' counselors, beggars and troubadours, ladies and saints, viziers and villanelles.

— Did you then? asked James.

He scratched his ear and shifted his weight from right to left.

They were under the pier down at the harbor, and small shafts of light sliced down through the rotting wood. James's pant legs were rolled up, and his feet were in shallow water.

Not I, said Ansilon. That was before my time. But my father did. He sired a family in ancient Rome and died with them. Owls can do that, you know.

— I don't understand, said James. If he was dead in antiquity, then how could you have been born in the Middle Ages?

Where, said Ansilon, does a boy like you get words like antiquity? My mother was pregnant a long while, that's all. She carried me with her for twelve hundred years. That's why I'm the wisest of all.

— What was your father's family like? asked James.

A sailboat could be seen running by in the distance along the surface. Its sail was full with wind, and though it is true that there is nothing in nature that hurries, everything happening of its own accord and in its own time, in this case James felt the wind was hurrying the boat out to sea.

What will it find there? he wondered, and he dreamed of shipwrecks.

Not special, said Ansilon, but he loved them all the same. My mother would come to the window and try to call him away, but he would never come. He told his wife the truth of the matter, and she took to throwing stones at every owl she saw. Her children threw stones. Even my father, yes, he threw a stone or two.

— That's awful, said James. What happened then?

They put a bounty on owls in the neighborhood, and my mother was forced to leave forever. I wish you could have heard the song she sang when she came to his funeral, dressed as the shadow of a gypsy. The gypsy himself had gone away. Only the shadow was there, moving across the grass to the place where my father lay.

The supper was not as expected. No one was there. The table was set, the food had been put out, but only James and Grieve had come. Even Carlyle was absent. A sign had been put on the door.

COME IN, it said. BEGIN WITHOUT US. MY APOLOGIES.

They ate in silence. James's mind kept running back over the cipher book. Things did make more sense now. They had been right about that. But he didn't believe; he wasn't sure that what Stark intended was what ought to be. Had the time come for such a thing? He didn't know. Who could be responsible for so large a decision? he thought.

For he had figured out the cipher. It was simple, really, a substitution. The only difficulty was realizing what the substitution was. The key had been present at the beginning, in the unciphered epigraph.

Now, passages from the book floated here and there in James's head.

A major fact cannot be avoided any longer — man does not learn from small mistakes, but only from large ones. Man learns only by trial of disaster. History is not clear on this fact because history is the science of looking at events in only one kind of looking glass. The danger of this vagrant causality is that we are blind to other ways that things may have occurred.

James drank a sip of the wine. It was, of course, quite good, and cold. A sweet white, to go with the first course of smoked fish. He ate with his left hand only, a peculiarity that others had always commented on. But Grieve said nothing. Perhaps she had already noticed this, in the diner.

Trial of disaster. . what could the disaster be?

In the book, Stark explained his theory. Mankind had grown to be so skillful in controlling his own environment, in managing his affairs, that nature could no longer govern him as it properly had in the past. Disasters, object lessons on a grand scale, had once been nature's preferred method of lecture. But now they were mitigated, averted. Man had grown to swell the borders of states and lands. There was a chaos of meaning. It was difficult to say for sure what might be learned from this lesson or from that. And through it all, the primacy of certain nations, and their oppression of others.

What must be done is that an artificial catastrophe must be made to take place along with a specifically stated explanation. The method of this explanation must be biblical. Men are used to taking such instructions. Biblical too must be the disaster. The nation that must be humbled is the nation in which the most had once been possible, in which the greatest chance had been squandered. To Deafness, we must send a plague of Deafness, that the world learn the need to hear.

What did that mean? James had read and reread this section. He had gone to the library and checked to be sure he remembered it correctly, a thing he had never done before, for his recall was perfect, his confidence perfect.

To Deafness, we must send a plague of Deafness, that the world learn the need to hear.

What could it mean?

The door opened. McHale entered, along with Carlyle.

— She's back, McHale said.

Grieve sat up straight. Her expression changed.

— How can that be?

— She's upstairs. She's been up with him all day.

— But did she. .

— No, said McHale. She's alone.

— What's going on? asked James.

— Nothing, said Carlyle. I'm sorry to be just a terrible host. I've invited you for supper, and here it is, the day when you learn the truth, and then I come late, and you've already eaten the first course.

— You said, my friend, to begin without you, interrupted Grieve.

— And I meant it, said Carlyle.

An odd environment was being perpetrated, thought James.

— I meant it, he continued.

He looked at James.

— Stark will see you first thing tomorrow. He wants you to come by at seven A.M. There's much to be said, and little time.

— Certainly, there's little time, said McHale.

Grieve kicked James under the table. He looked up at her. Her face was concerned.

Don't worry, he thought. Worry is a thing for those with agency. We who have none of the one can have none of the other. But he did not believe it.

As soon as he returned to his room, he lay

down flat on the floor; flat on his back.

Grieve came in. She saw him lying there.

— I don't like this new James, she said. I didn't want to meet him ever, and now here he is in my bedroom.

— This isn't your bedroom, said James. It's mine.

— The whole place is mine, said Grieve.

— I broke the cipher, James said. I read your father's book.

Grieve looked at him carefully.

James got to his feet. He pulled off his suit coat and threw it over a chair. He took off his vest and his shirt. The window that had been open earlier, that he had closed, he reopened. The air was cold on his chest and arms. Grieve came up behind him, just as he had come up behind her earlier in the day. She put her arms around him.

— No one else has managed to read that particular book, she said. But we have all heard him talk of it. The ideas are in his speech, in his manner.

She breathed slowly in and out. He could feel the curve of her breasts against his back.

— What do you think? she said at last. Please don't judge. Not until he's spoken to you. It's different, I'm sure, when he talks to you.

— I know, said James, that the world is complicated. I know there are problems. I just. . I've never tried to think, How can they be solved? I feel instinctively that they can't be. I don't believe we are moving towards any eventual philosophical end. I don't think anything will be perfected. The world has always been chaotic. Suffering is a fact. I don't see a perfect future anywhere. I can't. People like your father, they act out of some enormous stock of hope. I was never given this. I feel only. .

He tried to think of how to say it.

— You live your life, you try to live compassionately, and that's the end of it. You do a little more than you should have to in order to be a good person, but you don't go making big changes in the world, trying to fix things. It presumes too much to do so. There's only this: if everyone acts quietly, compassionately, things will go a little better than they would have otherwise. But people will still suffer.

— Come to bed, said Grieve.

She took his hands.

James opened his eyes. It was completely dark in the room. That didn't make any sense. The blinds were drawn. Who had drawn the blinds? James turned on the light. A woman was sitting in a chair pulled close up to the bed, looking at him. In the darkness he couldn't see her at all, just a vague outline.

— What are you doing? he asked.

At the sound of his voice, there was a stirring beside him. He looked over. Grieve was still next to him in bed. He looked at the vague figure in the chair, then at the one in bed.

— Grieve, he said, and shook her awake, keeping his eyes on the woman in the chair.

Grieve sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes.

— What is it, James? she said.

And then she noticed the woman. Her voice changed, became harsh.

— You've come back. They told me, but I didn't believe it.

— Oh, believe it, said Grieve's sister.

— So, said Grieve. Has he told you?

— Yes, she said. He told me. I don't like it, but he told me, and he told me too not to try to leave, or that bull of his, Torquin, will sit on me for a week.

— You'd better not, began Grieve.

— Oh, don't worry, said her sister.

She took a cigarette out, lit it, and took a long drag.

— I never like to miss anything big.

She smiled at James.

— Where'd you find him? she asked. He's not so much to look at, is he?

— Leave him alone, said Grieve.

To James she said:

— She always starts that way, insulting boys to get them to like her. Don't pay any attention.

Grieve's sister stood up and moved away towards the door. James still couldn't see her face. She seemed thin, and about Grieve's height.

— I'll see you tomorrow, she said.

— Don't count on it, said Grieve.

The door closed. Grieve leaned across James and turned on the light.

— You can't imagine, she said, what my sister can be like.

— You never told me you had a sister, said James.

— I pretend that she doesn't exist.