The Lesson

by Jesse Ball

  Jesse Ball

  Jesse Ball is the author of five previous novels, including A Cure for Suicide, Silence Once Begun, and Samedi the Deafness, and several works of verse, bestiaries, and sketchbooks. He was named a finalist for the 2015 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award and a 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Ball received an NEA creative writing fellowship for 2014 and the 2008 Paris Review Plimpton Prize for Fiction, and his verse has been included in the Best American Poetry series. He gives classes on general practice in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Master of Fine Arts Writing program.

  ALSO BY JESSE BALL

  A Cure for Suicide

  Silence Once Begun

  The Curfew

  The Way Through Doors

  Samedi the Deafness

  The Lesson

  Jesse Ball

  A Vintage Short

  Vintage Books

  A Division of Penguin Random House LLC

  New York

  Copyright © 2015 by Jesse Ball

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House of Canada Ltd., Toronto.

  Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Vintage eShort ISBN 9781101971345

  Series cover design by Joan Wong

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Also by Jesse Ball

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Vague Feeling

  The Next Day

  The Funeral

  Five Years Later

  The First Visit

  The First Visit, 2

  (And Now Let Us Make Our Way Home)

  The First Visit, 3

  Now, Loring was a most unusual person, you see, for she didn’t like people at all and wanted nothing to do with them.

  The Second Visit

  What is in that Box?

  The Second Visit, 2

  The Second Visit, 3

  To Say a Few Things About the Kitchen

  Standing upon a Chair, He Beheld

  The Second Visit, 4

  The Second Visit, 5

  Now, Why Do You Think…

  A Minor Interpolation

  The Cemetery & Its Environs

  The Weakness of Age

  The Third Visit

  The Third Visit, 2

  Nonetheless, my love, I hold out my hand only to you as the train departs!

  That There Should Be a Game of Sorts

  The Third Visit, 3

  Query

  The Third Visit, 4

  Between Two Sheets of Paper

  The Letter, as You May Imagine

  One day before the Fourth Visit is to happen, a knock comes at the door. It is Stan’s mother, and she is carrying a long metal box full of needles.

  That Evening by the Light of a Candle

  The Fourth Visit

  Interpolation

  The Fourth Visit, 2

  The Fourth Visit, 3

  Three Things Left to Do

  The Fourth Visit, 4

  Blindfold Chess, as Told to Stan

  And then Stan had lost the fourth game and they were speaking about his daydreams.

  The Fourth Visit, 5

  Are You All Right?

  Now, Within the House

  A Grave Is an Empty Field

  A Taper

  Way Back

  Claude Patrick

  Then Loring Sat

  The Fifth Visit

  The Fifth Visit, Proper

  Yes or No

  The Preparations for Traveling by Bus and the Seeing of a Magician in the Next Town and Anticipation Thereof, Also, to the Kitchen Where Lunch Is Put in a Bag, and to the Coatroom for Two Coats and a Hat

  With Coats, Notes, etc., to the Bus They Went

  A Different Account

  At the Show

  **

  The Escape Artist

  All Evening

  What She Did

  The Sixth Visit

  The Seventh Visit

  FIN

  A Vague Feeling

  On that clear and fortunate morning, Ezra Wesley woke with the special gladness of a person who will die within the month. He did not know that he had this gladness, for, of course, the one who has it never knows its source. One mustn’t know—otherwise, one most certainly would not be glad! However that may be, glad he was. His wife, Loring, was watching him. She said nothing. Could she tell how glad he was? She was a very observant person.

  They had lived together, after all, for forty-five years, and she knew his habits. Could she tell that this was the special happiness of one who will soon be departing? She could not.

  But as I said, it was morning, and the sun had risen. So, soon they were walking out by the canal that ran beside their home, walking down into the near district of the town where a fine place was and breakfast might be found. They sat there, this old woman, this old man, and ate something, and had this conversation:

  —There is a little box by the window of the room upstairs, the room we never use.

  —I know the box you mean. It is the box that I once tried to open and you said,

  —I said, do not open that box until I have been dead three months.

  —You did, she said. You said that.

  —Well, now I am thinking, said he. I am thinking that three months was not the right measure. I believe one year to the day.

  —I will keep that in mind, she said. If you die. Of course, if I die first, you and your little box won’t do anyone much good.

  —That much is true, Loring. I suppose that much is true.

  The Next Day

  He complained of a cough. The cough was not a bad one. To listen to him cough, well—it didn’t distress one, as the hearing of some coughs do. Yet, as the days passed, the cough grew worse. Oddly enough, the joy that he felt seemed to intensify, so that the cough was accompanied by a nature gladder and gladder.

  And so things continued. Their life was a simple one. He had been a great chess player. They had both been famous masters, he and she, and both had played in major tournaments in their time. He had been a champion for a period of years. They were not forgotten, not even then, so long after, and would occasionally be visited by old friends, or young people, curious about their accomplishments. As well, they still took students, although at present there were none. Yet, on the street by their door, hung a little sign. Chess lessons by appointment. Inquire within.

  Loring finally went for the doctor when three weeks had passed. There was a red figure of a woodsman in the study. She had been staring at it for at least an hour, trying to decide if she should go. The window was open, and a gust blew such that the figure tipped. This was not uncommon, and, in fact, they had often joked about the woodsman’s sure-footed nature. Yet this time, she took it for a sign, and went immediately for the doctor.

  He came quickly, being that the Wesleys were somewhat important in the town, or perhaps it was simply his way, to come quickly when called. Perhaps he was an old family friend. Who can say? In any case, there he was, and he examined Ezra, and found that he was very ill indeed. The manner of his illness was a subtle one. He had perhaps been ill for years. Would it have been good to know of the illness? Loring asked. Could it have been averted? No, no. The illness is inc
urable. It is best not to know. What has happened so far, in some sense, is for the best. Loring was crying, and Ezra was holding the quilt that was over his knees. The woodsman remained toppled, although that, in and of itself, was meaningless.

  This continued through the next days: Loring would cry. Ezra would sit quietly, or console her. In truth, the joy that had grasped him at first had simply grown and grown. He felt very keenly the pleasure of life, and told her that she must under no circumstance cry. He kissed her and they went again on walks by the canal. The cough faded and was gone. A beautiful weather descended on the town. Such a fall…those who lived through it remember it always. They were as they had been when they had met, this old couple, feeling on the verge of discovery. Each represented to the other all that was new and unknown about life, all that had been promised.

  On the thirtieth day, Loring woke and Ezra did not. His eyes were shut, and his hands were at his side. He had gone to sleep with his clothes on, like some pharaoh. Somehow, Loring had not noticed.

  Although it may seem to those of you who have only heard of such things that it would be strange to sit for a long while in a room with a dead person, it is quite common, I must tell you. If the person is dead, then there is no particular reason to call anyone. And besides, one feels in some way that nothing matters at all, and that any action is as good as any other. Then, to simply sit and look again and again upon the countenance of the one who died, it is what passes. And in this way it is not really an uninterrupted staring. It is a series of glances, each one as full of surprise as when one hears a noise and turns. One is expecting something, and can’t say what—yet when one sees it, one knows what one knew, what one knew and couldn’t say. It is this way with death. It is in our nature to feel the extent of it when we face it, and to have it fall away the moment we turn.

  And so she went on there in the bedroom, looking at her husband, and looking away, looking at him and looking away, and wondering what was left, and why.

  The Funeral

  But of what we are capable, we seldom know. Friends came and the matter was arranged. The day was set for a funeral, and although Ezra had in his possession better clothes, Loring insisted he be buried in the clothes he had worn. For who better to clothe one for death than one’s own hand, galvanized by an originless joy?

  He was buried on the top of a hill in a cemetery in that town. There had been talk of removing him to a far city, the place of his birth, where his chess playing was perhaps best remembered. Yet Loring had made her wish known, that he should lie in the nearest cemetery, and that is what they did.

  A file of black-clad men and women, on a rainy morning, threading their way up a hill, to where a grave had been dug. His body was put in, and then everyone was gone away.

  To Loring it seemed that suddenly everyone was gone away. It was a week later. It was month later. She found herself again and again there by the grave, and it was as though the funeral had just ended, and yet no one was there. His death was still so fresh that she could remember how they had been standing by the bedroom door, and he had observed the way the floor was uneven. The bed, he had said, is uneven because the floor is uneven. And she had said, perhaps the whole house is uneven. And he had said, unsmiling, do not blame the house. It is a good house. He had never been one to smile when laughing. And then they had gone to sleep.

  Many worried that Loring would not be able to get along after Ezra’s death, but those fears proved groundless. Neighbors saw her each morning on the walks she had once taken by his side, and they saw at her evening, returning from the market. The signboard was still posted by the house, and she continued to take students, and to teach them well.

  To her the grief did not diminish, but for the rest—it was soon old news. Life is always presenting new things that distract us from the old. After a while, no one asked her anymore about her husband, was she missing him. She came and went and it was for others as though he had not been. Yet each day she went to the cemetery, and renewed the freshness of his loss, and kept it close. For where he had been the largeness of her life, now his loss was; his loss was, and the worth of what he had been: those two things together became the core. And in that she was admitted into her own secret, and she went about as a person in a cloak and comforted thereby.

  Five Years Later

  A knock came at the door of Loring’s house. When she went to see to it, there were two there: a boy and his mother. The boy’s name was Stan. His mother said things like, he is a prodigy, and, he can already read nearly anything, and, well, listen to him speak—it is just like talking to an adult.

  Loring looked at this Stan. Will you speak? He spoke a bit, not much. I can play chess, he said. Will we play?

  Who has he played? Loring asked. Nearly everyone, the answer was. He’s beaten them all, his father, his uncle, a man in the town square. I see, said Loring. How old is he? Five, five years old, or will be within the month.

  Set up the board, she said to the boy. The board, though, was already set up. So, she disordered the pieces and pushed them all off. Set it up, she ordered. Be quick about it. To the mother, she said, it is often telling how a person does this.

  He stumbled a bit and was clumsy, for the pieces were large. But soon he had the board all set up properly.

  They sat down to play, and this is how it was: There was a mother standing by a door, dressed nicely in the sort of clothes one wears for a visit. There was a little boy sitting on a chair much too big for him before a chess set. And there was an old woman in clothes she had worn these many years, in a chair she had sat in this many years, before a chess set she had used for many years.

  The first game the boy lost quickly. It was over as soon as it had begun. But the second—in the second, a very odd thing happened. He played an actual opening, and played it properly—and the opening was that that had been conceived by Loring’s husband, the Wesley-Fetz Counter Gambit. It was not much used. Ezra had used it, but few others. And now here, this boy was playing it.

  He looked up suddenly from the board and his gaze met hers. She was sitting there, this old woman, sitting there with a child, and yet when he looked at her then, his eyes were like leaden impressions. They riveted her. She, hand still outstretched, having taken the bishop, was frozen, peering at him, and to her it seemed terrifying: as though she could see her husband, staring at her through the child’s face.

  She coughed several times and looked away, set the bishop down. He made some move. She looked back at him and it was gone. He was simply a boy, some boy. She made a move and he would be forced to exchange queens. The boy resigned, and looked steadily out the window.

  —I accept him as a student, said Loring.

  They set up the board and stood.

  —He is a prodigy, his mother said again. I am sure you can teach him a lot.

  —We shall see, said Loring. Perhaps there is not much to teach.

  —I don’t know what you mean.

  Then she and the mother made arrangements, and the cost was established. The boy would come seven times over the course of the summer, once a week on Tuesdays, and stay the day. The mother gave some deposit and rose to go to the door.

  —Until next week, she said.

  —Goodbye, said Loring.

  The boy looked at her and said nothing. Loring shut the door and then went and stood by the chessboard. Her heart was beating very fast, and she felt that something was happening, but she couldn’t say what. There was a photograph of her husband on the wall of that parlor, but in that moment Loring would not look at it. This feeling, that she could not do so—what did it mean? She could not say, and troubled, she went out of the house and shut the door.

  While it was true that she was often seeing her husband, or having the feeling he had just left a place where she was arriving, still rarely had she seen him so clearly.

  If a person were to die and be born again into a new body, in what way would that happen? In what way would the previous life inhabit the n
ew life? Who knows such answers and may be trusted to speak truthfully?

  The First Visit

  Tuesday morning came.

  And soon the sound of the knocker.

  Loring opened the door and held it partway. In with the boy. Some pleasantries with the mother there by the door, and then the departure. Loring came from the hall to the parlor where the boy was waiting.

  —Your mother and I have made a bargain. But you and I have made no bargain at all.

  This was the sort of manner she had always adopted.

  The boy watched her.

  She sat in a high-backed chair by the fireplace. Her back was to the boy.

  —I offer you also a bargain. I will teach you things about chess that will be helpful to you in your play. In return for that, you will do your best to listen to what I tell you. I don’t like to repeat myself, and in fact, I won’t. That’s how it is.

  The boy came around and sat on the hearth rug.

  —Shall I say what I want?

  He really didn’t look very much like a child at all.

  —That’s what a bargain is, replied Loring.