Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (24 page)

 
          
 
Krovitch sat in a chair for a full minute
after Fabian stopped talking. Finally he said, "I see. And your
wife?"

 
          
 
"Alyce? She was my second assistant, of
course. She worked very hard and, God help her, she loved me. It's hard now to
know why I ever married her. It was unfair of me."

 
          
 
"What about the dead man—Ockham?"

           
 
"I never saw him before you showed me his
body in the theater basement yesterday."

 
          
 
"Fabian," said the detective.

 
          
 
"It's the truth!"

 
          
 
"Fabian."

 
          
 
"The truth, the truth, damn it, I swear
it's the truth!"

 
          
 
"The truth." There was a whisper
like the sea coming in on the gray shore at early morning. The water was ebbing
in a fine lace on the sand. The sky was cold and empty. There were no people on
the shore. The sun was gone. And the whisper said again, "The truth."

 
          
 
Fabian sat up straight and took hold of his
knees with his thin hands. His face was rigid. Krovitch found himself making
the same motion he had made the day before—looking at the gray ceiling as if it
were a November sky and a lonely bird going over and away, gray within the cold
grayness.

 
          
 
"The truth." Fading. "The
truth."

 
          
 
Krovitch lifted himself and moved as carefully
as he could to the far side of the dressing room where the golden box lay open
and inside the box the thing that whispered and talked and could laugh
sometimes and could sometimes sing. He carried the golden box over and set it
down in front of Fabian and waited for him to put his living hand within the gloved
delicate hollowness, waited for the fine small mouth to quiver and the eyes to
focus. He did not have to wait long.

 
          
 
"The first letter came a month ago."

 
          
 
"No."

 
          
 
"The first letter came a month ago."

 
          
 
"No, no!"

 
          
 
"The letter said, 'Riabouchinska, born
1914, died 1934. Bom again in 1935.' Mr. Ockham was a juggler. He'd been on the
same bill with John and Sweet William years before. He remembered that once
there had been a woman, before there was a puppet."

 
          
 
"No, that's not true!"

 
          
 
"Yes," said the voice.

 
          
 
Snow was falling in silences and even deeper
silences through the dressing room. Fabian's mouth trembled. He stared at the
blank walls as if seeking some new door by which to escape. He half rose from
his chair. "Please . . ."

 
          
 
"Ockham threatened to tell about us to
everyone in the world."

 
          
 
Krovitch saw the doll quiver, saw the
fluttering of the lips, saw Fabian's eyes widen and fix and his throat convulse
and tighten as if to stop the whispering.

 
          
 
"I—I was in the room when Mr. Ockham
came. I lay in my box and I listened and heard, and I know." The voice
blurred, then recovered and went on. "Mr. Ockham threatened to tear me up,
bum me into ashes if John didn't pay him a thousand dollars. Then suddenly
there was a falling sound. A cry. Mr. Ockham's head must have struck the floor.
I heard John cry out and I heard him swearing, I heard him sobbing. I heard a
gasping and a choking sound."

 
          
 
"You heard nothing! You're deaf, you're
blind! You're wood!" cried Fabian.

 
          
 
"But I hear!" she said, and stopped
as if someone had put a hand to her mouth.

 
          
 
Fabian had leaped to his feet now and stood
with the doll in his hand. The mouth clapped twice, three times, then finally
made words. "The choking sound stopped. I heard John drag Mr. Ockham down
the stairs under the theater to the old dressing rooms that haven't been used
in years. Down, down, down I heard them going away and away—down . . .”

 
          
 
Krovitch stepped back as if he were watching a
motion picture that had suddenly grown monstrously tall. The figures terrified
and frightened him, they were immense, they towered! They threatened to
inundate him with size. Someone had turned up the sound so that it screamed.

 
          
 
He saw Fabian's teeth, a grimace, a whisper, a
clenching. He saw the man's eyes squeeze shut.

 
          
 
Now the soft voice was so high and faint it
trembled toward nothingness.

 
          
 
"I'm not made to live this way. This way.
There's nothing for us now. Everyone will know, everyone will. Even when you
killed him and I lay asleep last night, I dreamed. I knew, I realized. We both
knew, we both realized that these would be our last days, our last hours.
Because while I've lived with your weakness and I've lived with your lies, I
can't live with something that kills and hurts in killing. There's no way to go
on from here. How can I live alongside such knowledge? ..."

 
          
 
Fabian held her into the sunlight which shone
dimly though the small dressing-room window. She looked at him and there was
nothing in her eyes. His hand shook and in shaking made the marionette tremble,
too. Her mouth closed and opened, closed and opened, closed and opened, again
and again and again. Silence.

 
          
 
Fabian moved his fingers unbelievingly to his
own mouth. A film slid across his eyes. He looked like a man lost in the street,
trying to remember the number of a certain house, trying to find a certain
window with a certain light. He swayed about, staring at the walls, at
Krovitch, at the doll, at his free hand, turning the fingers over, touching his
throat, opening his mouth. He listened.

 
          
 
Miles away in a cave, a single wave came in
from the sea and whispered down in foam. A gull moved soundlessly, not beating
its wings—a shadow.

 
          
 
"She's gone. She's gone. I can't find
her. She's run off. I can't find her. I can't find her. I try, I try, but she's
run away off far. Will you help me? Will you help me find her? Will you help me
find her? Will you please help me find her?"

 
          
 
Riabouchinska slipped bonelessly from his limp
hand, folded over and glided noiselessly down to lie upon the cold floor, her
eyes closed, her mouth shut.

 
          
 
Fabian did not look at her as Krovitch led him
out the door.

 
          
 
"A fool," I said. "That's what
I am."

 
          
 
"Why?" asked my wife. "What
for?"

 
          
 
I brooded by our third-floor hotel window. On
the
Dublin
street
below, a man passed, his face to the lamplight,

 
          
 
"Him," I muttered. "Two days
ago . . ."

 
          
 
Two days ago, as I was walking along, someone
had hissed at me from the hotel alley. "Sir, it's important! Sir!"

 
          
 
I turned into the shadow. This little man, in
the direst tones, said, "I've a job in Belfast if I just had a pound for
the train fare!"

 
          
 
I hesitated.

 
          
 
"A most important job!" he went on
swiftly. "Pays well! I'll—I'll mail you back the loan! Just give me your
name and hotel."

 
          
 
He knew me for a tourist. It was too late, his
promise to pay had moved me. The pound note crackled in my hand, being worked
free from several others.

 
          
 
The man's eyes skimmed like a shadowing hawk.

 
          
 
"And if I had two pounds, why, I could
eat on the way."

 
          
 
I uncrumpled two bills.

 
          
 
"And three pounds would bring the wife,
not leave her here alone."

 
          
 
I unleafed a third.

 
          
 
"Ah, hell!" cried the man.
"Five, just five poor pounds, would find us a hotel in that brutal city,
and let me get to the job, for sure!"

 
          
 
What a dancing fighter he was, light on his
toes, in and out, weaving, tapping with his hands, flickering with his eyes,
smiling with his mouth, jabbing with his tongue.

 
          
 
"Lord thank you, bless you, sir!"

 
          
 
He ran, my five pounds with him.

 
          
 
I was half in the hotel before I realized
that, for all his vows, he had not recorded my name.

           
 
"Gah!" I cried then.

 
          
 
"Gah!" I cried now, my wife behind
me, at the window.

 
          
 
For there, passing below, was the very fellow
who should have been in Belfast two nights ago.

 
          
 
"Oh, I know him," said my wife.
"He stopped me this noon. Wanted train fare to Galway."

 
          
 
"Did you give it to him?"

 
          
 
"No," said my wife simply.

 
          
 
Then the worst thing happened. The demon far
down on the sidewalk glanced up, saw us and damn if he didn't wave!

 
          
 
I had to stop myself from waving back. A
sickly grin played on my lips.

 
          
 
"It's got so I hate to leave the
hotel," I said.

 
          
 
"It's cold out, all right." My wife
was putting on her coat.

 
          
 
"No," I said. "Not the cold.
Them."

 
          
 
And we looked again from the window.

 
          
 
There was the cobbled Dublin street with the
night wind blowing in a fine soot along one way to Trinity College, another to
St. Stephen's Green. Across by the sweetshop two men stood mummified in the
shadows. On the comer a single man, hands deep in his pockets, felt for his
entombed bones, a muzzle of ice for a beard. Farther up, in a doorway, was a
bundle of old newspapers that would stir like a pack of mice and wish you the
time of evening if you walked by. Below, by the hotel entrance, stood a
feverish hothouse rose of a woman with a mysterious bundle.

 
          
 
"Oh, the beggars," said my wife.

 
          
 
"No, not just 'oh, the beggars,' " I
said, "but oh, the people in the streets, who somehow became
beggars."

 
          
 
"It looks like a motion picture. All of
them waiting down there in the dark for the hero to come out"

 
          
 
"The hero," I said. "That's me,
damn it."

 
          
 
My wife peered at me. "You're not afraid
of them?"

 
          
 
"Yes, no. Hell. It's that woman with the
bundle who's worst. She's a force of nature, she is. Assaults you with her
poverty. As for the others—^well, it's a big chess game for me now. We've been
in Dublin what, eight weeks? Eight weeks I've sat up here with my typewriter,
studying their off hours and on. When they take a coffee break I take one, run
for the sweetshop, the bookstore, the Oympia Theatre. If I time it right,
there's no handout, no my wanting to trot them into the barbershop or the
kitchen. I know every secret exit in the hotel."

           
 
"Lord," said my wife, “you sound
driven.”

 
          
 
"I am. But most of all by that beggar on
O'Connell Bridge!"

 
          
 
"Which one?"

 
          
 
"Which one indeed. He's a wonder, a
terror. I hate him, I love him. To see is to disbelieve him. Come on."

 
          
 
The elevator, which had haunted its untidy
shaft for a hundred years, came wafting skyward, dragging its ungodly chains
and dread intestines after. The door exhaled open. The lift groaned as if we
had trod its stomach. In a great protestation of ennui, the ghost sank back
toward earth, us in it.

 
          
 
On the way my wife said, "If you held
your face right, the beggars wouldn't bother you."

 
          
 
"My face," I explained patiently,
"is my face. It's from Apple Dumpling, Wisconsin, Sarsaparilla, Maine.
‘Kind to Dogs' is writ on my brow for all to read. Let the street be empty,
then let me step out and there's a strikers' march of freeloaders leaping out
of manholes for miles around."

 
          
 
"If," my wife went on, “you could
just learn to look over, around or through those people, stare them down,"
She mused. "Shall I show you how to handle them?"

 
          
 
"All right, show me! We're here!"

 
          
 
I flung the elevator door wide and we advanced
through the Royal Hibernian Hotel lobby to squint out at the sooty night.

 
          
 
"Jesus come and get me," I murmured.
"There they are, their heads up, their eyes on fire. They smell apple pie
already."

 
          
 
“Meet me down by the bookstore in two
minutes," said my wife. "Watch."

 
          
 
"Wait!" I cried.

 
          
 
But she was out the door, down the steps and
on the sidewalk.

 
          
 
I watched, nose pressed to the glass pane.

 
          
 
The beggars on one corner, the other, across
from, in front of, the hotel, leaned toward my wife. Their eyes glowed.

 
          
 
My wife looked calmly at them all for a long
moment

 
          
 
The beggars hesitated, creaking, I was sure,
in their shoes. Then their bones settled. Their mouths collapsed. Their eyes
snuffed out. Their heads sank down.

 
          
 
The wind blew.

 
          
 
With a tat-tat like a small drum, my wife's
shoes went briskly away, fading.

           
 
From below, in the Buttery, I heard music and
laughter. I'll run down, I thought, and slug in a quick one. Then, bravery
resurgent. . .

 
          
 
Hell, I thought, and swung the door wide.

 
          
 
The effect was much as if someone had struck a
great Mongolian bronze gong once.

 
          
 
I thought I heard a tremendous insuck of
breath.

 
          
 
Then I heard shoe leather flinting the cobbles
in sparks. The men came running, fireflies sprinkling the bricks under their
hobnailed shoes. I saw hands waving. Mouths opened on smiles like old pianos.

 
          
 
Far down the street, at the bookshop, my wife
waited, her back turned. But that third eye in the back of her head must have
caught the scene: Columbus greeted by Indians, Saint Francis amidst his
squirrel friends with a bag of nuts. For a terrific moment I felt like a pope
on St. Peter's balcony with a tumult, or at the very least the Timultys, below.

 
          
 
I was not half down the steps when the woman
charged up, thrusting the unwrapped bundle at me.

 
          
 
"Ah, see the poor child!" she
wailed.

 
          
 
I stared at the baby.

 
          
 
The baby stared back.

 
          
 
God in heaven, did or did not the shrewd thing
wink at me?

 
          
 
I've gone mad, I thought; the babe's eyes are
shut. She's filled it with beer to keep it warm and on display.

 
          
 
My hands, my coins, blurred among them.

 
          
 
"Praise be!"

 
          
 
"The child thanks you, sir!"

 
          
 
"Ah, sure. There's only a few of us
left!"

 
          
 
I broke through them and beyond, still
running. Defeated, I could have scuffed slowly the rest of the way, my resolve
so much putty in my mouth, but no, on I rushed, thinking. The baby is real,
isn't it? Not a prop? No. I had heard it cry, often. Blast her, I thought, she
pinches it when she sees Okeemogo, Iowa, coming. Cynic, I cried silently, and answered.
No—coward.

 
          
 
My wife, without turning, saw my reflection in
the bookshop window and nodded.

 
          
 
I stood getting my breath, brooding at my own
image: the summer eyes, the ebullient and defenseless mouth.

 
          
 
"All right, say it." I sighed.
"It's the way I hold my face."

           
 
"I love the way you hold your face."
She took my arm. "I wish I could do it, too."

 
          
 
I looked back as one of the beggars strolled
off in the blowing dark with my shillings.

 
          
 
"'There's only a few of us left,'" I
said aloud. "What did he mean, saying that?"

 
          
 
"There's only a few of us left.'" My
wife stared into the shadows. "Is that what he said?"

 
          
 
"It's something to think about. A few of
what? Left where?"

 
          
 
The street was empty now. It was starting to
rain.

 
          
 
"Well," I said at last, "let me
show you the even bigger mystery, the man who provokes me to strange wild
rages, then calms me to delight. Solve him and you solve all the beggars that
ever were."