by Jesse Ball
—It was a cold day, and the dogs were dying one by one. As they drew farther into the wilderness, the will of the rider seemingly intensified until the dogs obeyed him even before the desperate pleas of their own ragged frames. They had dragged him for days through that bleak landscape, and now, crossing some invisible barrier in the monochrome world, they all at once set to perishing. And so it was that when the last dog died, the man alit from the dogsled, and continued on foot.
—What is a dogsled? interrupted Stan.
—You know what a dog is?
He frowned at her.
—You know what a sled is?
—Of course.
—Make the dogs pull the sled and you have a dogsled. People say that this really happens in the coldest parts of the world, but I have never seen it. Do I believe there are dogsleds? I don’t believe it or disbelieve it. It does seem unlikely, though, that dogs could be found who would want to do this.
—Is this the second book of a series?
—No.
—Then, how do we know where the man was before?
—We don’t, yet.
—All right. What’s monochrome?
—We’ll get nowhere if I define everything for you. Just listen and pick things up by what they might seem to mean.
She drew a breath and began again.
—The snows began to end, then, as he ascended that final hill. At its crest, the weather broke, and there was green grass, stretched out like a promise. The man fell to his knees there, and tears ran down his face. Then the dogs were licking at his face again, climbing over their own harnesses, to wake him, and he was leaned over the front of the sled, confused by the cold, biting wind cutting into his eyes, and there were miles still to…
Stan was asleep. He was always falling asleep, this one. She moved closer and put her face near his, listening. A small rasping sound accompanied his breathing.
—Would you have stayed awake for the other book? she asked.
Of course, the boy said nothing.
The Second Visit, 5
Customarily, this day was passed by Loring in that upstairs room. Sitting there in the kitchen, with the daylight and the distances the balloons had made just beyond the window, she felt drawn too far out of herself and her habits. She left the boy sleeping and went back upstairs, and sat again.
And now, the problem was before her, presenting itself, like an occasion of laughter, generously and all at once. Should she open the box?
It was in its new place, where the boy had moved it. She did not dare to touch it to move it back. The lines on the table where it had been, faint dust lines, remained. It was almost like there were two boxes now. It troubled her to think of what the difference would be now, in opening it when it had been moved.
She stirred then to open it, but stood instead, and then sat down again. The walls of the little room were a thin color, and she felt that she could see into the distance, despite all evidence to the contrary.
A dog was whining on the street below. She heard its mistress speaking. The woman said,
—The last one is coming. We can see it best from over here. No, no.
And then there was a knocking at the door.
Loring came down the stairs, as swiftly as she could, and looked through the little window to the right of the door, which opened with a flap. There was indeed a woman outside, and holding a dog.
—What do you want?
—Excuse me, excuse me.
—What do you want?
—I live just down the road. I wonder, I know it is far too much to ask, and I would never want to presume, but I have seen this house so many times and thought how lovely it must be inside, and I was wondering, there is the Jubilee, did you know, the Jubilee is this week, and I was wondering if it might be possible to observe the final balloon from your window, as you see, it is heading into the distance there, and can’t really be seen from the street and by the time I got to the top of the hill, it would already be gone. Might I?
—You want to look at the balloon from my window? That’s what you’re saying?
—I hope it isn’t the wrong thing to say? Did I say that, the wrong thing? I’m terribly sorry if I did. My dog, of course, must come, if I come in. I can’t leave him behind. He is so anxious.
Now, here’s the thing. It wasn’t a dog at all. This woman had her husband on a leash.
Loring stared dumbfounded at the pair. From behind her, in the house, a voice came.
—How long was I asleep for?
Stan was there, rubbing his eyes and looking out at the strange scene.
—For a hundred years! yelled the woman.
—For a thousand, barked her husband.
And then there were more of them in the street, all running together, and the woman and man joined them. It was a circus—they were tumblers. They made a human pyramid in the street right there, and the woman was hoisted all the way up to the top.
—In celebration of the wonderful JUBILEE!!! she shouted.
And they all ran off.
Now, Why Do You Think…
—Now, why do you think that woman would ask such a thing?
—What did she ask?
—She wanted to come in and go upstairs to the window. She said the last balloon might still be seen.
—Was it the truth? asked Stan. I bet she just wanted to see the balloon.
—It could be, but these circus people: one never knows what they are up to.
She spat again on the floor. Some of the spit landed on the arm of her threadbare housedress. She wiped it with her hand until it was absorbed. Her look of disgust, though, was clearly for the circus people, and not for having spit on herself. Spitting on oneself: to her it was of no moment.
—Won’t you tell me more about the circus people?
—No.
—Oh, come, Loring, and tell me! If you don’t tell me, who will you tell? It will just be lost.
—Well…
She smiled.
—It isn’t their vagrancy that bothers me, but their costumes. I can’t trust people who wear such clothing. I knew a man once, Lemuel Jeffers. He got into a difficulty with circus people, and it didn’t end well. The circus had arrived in the town where he was living, and he went to see it, naturally, for who among us is not curious about a circus, particularly when we live in a town to which a circus comes. There are the posters and the general feeling of excitement, a feeling of excitement that quite possibly precedes the actual arrival of the circus. That is not beyond possibility. So, he went to the circus, and was made a fool of. There was one seat in the circus that the clowns had decided—whoever it is that sits in that seat, he or she will be the butt of all jokes. Lemuel sat there. So, the clowns threw things on him, they tugged at him. He took it all in good grace, but apparently this was the wrong way to behave, for it emboldened them. Finally, they bore him off into the middle of the ring and set a papier-mâché ass’s head on his shoulders. They made him cry out like an ass, like a donkey, and say, Oh my but I am an unfortunate one.
She cleared her throat.
—I don’t mean to overestimate the effects of this, but anyone can see quite clearly that it ruined Lemuel’s reputation in the town. He became very ill thereafter, and retired to a country house owned by his sister. What’s worse is this—the circus felt that the gag was so inspired that they found someone who looked like him at the next show, and humiliated that person, and again at the next show, and so forth. So, the persecution went on from him to everyone who looked like him. A sad state of affairs for Lemuel and for those with his visage.
—Of course, she continued. Of course, I like circuses very much. Don’t let me prejudice you. I have been to at least twenty different circuses, and they have often brought me great pleasure.
—But this one, said Stan. Why does it do that—in the street?
—Perhaps it is a roving circus that landed with some of the balloons. Or perhaps the town paid for it, and paid them to g
o about at the Jubilee, up and down the streets in celebration. The mayor is quite capable of such a thing. In any case, let us get to your lesson, for it is almost time for your parents to arrive.
They went in, and she took all the pieces off the board except the knight.
—How well do you know the knight?
—Pretty well.
—Yes?
—Yes.
—Then, let’s see you start here and go to every square on the board without repeating a single square. Call me when you have it.
The boy sat staring at the board.
Every now and then in the street came a great rushing sound and the circus passed again. It must have gone up and down the street, up and down all the streets (if one guess at a consistency of sorts) at least a dozen times. When the moment for the thirteenth visit of the circus came, instead there was quiet, and a knocking.
—Your mother, I believe, said Loring.
They went to the door and opened it. Indeed, the mother was there, and with her eight other boys and girls. These were Stan’s brothers and sisters, a motley bunch. Many of them wore hand-me-downs and went without food just so they could pay for Stan’s chess lessons.
Of course, that’s not so. The lessons weren’t really very expensive at all, and in fact, these weren’t Stan’s brothers and sisters. They were just a bunch of children who had taken to following Stan’s mother about. She had very fine features and this reassured the street children. They wanted a chance to sit with her and hear her sing. But, of course, she would never sing for them.
—Time to go, she said to Stan, and a hush fell over the children.
The street there by their feet was full of crepe paper and ash from the balloons. Why the balloons would leave a trail of ash was another question entirely. More came, and the group looked up from the doorway. Just ash falling through the open air onto their shoulders! There in the sky, high above, so high one could scarcely make out more than a dot, was the entire flotilla of balloons.
—I wasn’t aware balloons could go so high, said Mrs. Wiling.
—They can’t, said Loring. It will be the death of them. That’s far too close to the sun.
—That’s what the ash is, said Stan. It’s the end of them!
—Sharp, Stan, said his mother, patting him on the head.
The other children were all crestfallen. Why could they not have seen it at once, and said it, and been praised? What a miserable world it was, where poverty meant not only to wear old clothes, but also to lack the bravery to make keen observations about tragedies involving balloons.
—Next week, then, said Loring.
She went inside. A few moments later, she could be seen at the parlor window, this time with a telescope. What she saw is not reported.
A Minor Interpolation
It has often plagued princes that they are known to be more cowardly than other men, despite all the advantages they begin with. Likewise, the most common birds may find themselves disgusted by the behavior of an eagle when it is confronted by a dog. Now, that is not even taking into account whether or not the other birds recognize the eagle (as many men do) to be the preeminent bird. Of course, although I find eagles very special and fine to see and come close to, when it is possible, as in the case of a convalescing eagle with a broken wing, I nevertheless strongly disagree with anyone setting the eagle up as the best bird. Ravens, crows, and owls are far more compelling to me, and I haven’t gotten so far as to mention that magnificent fellow, the Ceraneous Vulture, who looks like nothing so much as a bishop or archimandrite free of his burdensome entourage and set foot upon the common roads with nary a care. I have even, I will tell you, seen a pair of these fine darlings together, quarreling, and the spectacle was something marvelous.
To wit, cowards are odious, and even more so when discovered among the ranks of the strong.
These are some of the thoughts that crossed Loring’s mind as she stared upwards through the telescope. I won’t go deeper into it, other than to say that part of the equipage from the balloon procession broke off and fell, and that perhaps even one or more of the children were nearly killed in that way, right in the street.
Of course, they were quick-footed and managed to escape. How glad they were, suddenly after, laughing and examining the wicker crates and leather bindings, the smashed provisions. One found a tricorn hat and started immediately giving orders to the others, who obeyed without question. At some point in these proceedings, Loring went inside and shut the window.
Downstairs in the parlor, she set the pieces up again on the board. He probably hadn’t managed the Knight’s Tour; there hadn’t been very much time. It was likely, though, that he was thinking about it at that moment. Might one say that? That someone else would be thinking of something just then?
She sat down in the chair, the high-backed one, where she often slept. Then she stood and turned Ezra’s photograph about the right way, so it was no longer facing the wall. She sat again, and leaned full back in the chair. She looked at the photograph then, as she had looked at it a thousand times, and it seemed to her to be the mention of her task—to go at once to the cemetery. There was still some light left. She wasn’t really hungry at all, and could eat later. She would go to the cemetery.
The Cemetery & Its Environs
Where the road ended, there was a little path down into a sort of basin, across which one could go with ease, as there was very little underbrush. Beyond this, the wall that surrounded the cemetery could be seen, but there was a place, and it was the place to which the path led, where the wall had fallen down in parts. This was the entrance Loring always used, for she did not often go in through the tall gates that faced the boulevard. In this way, even her entrance into the cemetery was private, and she liked that.
This was not the sort of cemetery where one is allowed to have a real say in what the tombstone will look like. All of these were exactly the same, more like small obelisks, or markers, about two feet high and eight inches square. The writing was very small, very small indeed. What was most interesting perhaps was that, beyond the rule that the stones be of the same sort, there was no rule that they be in lines. So, the stones on these hills were haphazardly placed, and gave an odd impression.
Another fineness of this particular place was the profusion of stone staircases laid on one or another hill. These made good places for sitting, and gave an odd sense of ill-founded purpose to the proceedings.
You can begin to see now why Loring liked this cemetery, and why she had not wanted her husband shipped away to be buried elsewhere. Of course, the niceness of this cemetery probably had nothing to do with that. She just wanted him near.
That a person should treasure the physical body of a dead lover is unsurprising, to say the least. In some sense we define our location in respect to the place where our counterpart stands, when they are still standing. No less then can we define our location in this way when they have perished. And so it is that there is a particular psychological condition, entirely undocumented, which has to do with the malaise and confusion one feels when one has been too long away from the place of burial of the ones one loves.
In no way would Loring, not even knowing the existence of this condition, risk such an issue.
Therefore, not a day passed wherein she did not go to the cemetery, and she had learned its appearance in the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. It was the night she liked best, of course. Wasn’t it an old monastic practice to sleep a night in a cemetery? But she had sprained her ankle falling one black night, and since then, had kept more to the day when she could.
The caretaker was there, and saw her walking. He came up, and with him his wife and daughter.
This wife and this daughter, they were the same person, by a series of odd coincidences, but we will not go into that at the moment. Suffice it to say—do not be prejudiced against Gerard for this simple reason. There is proof that he is not to be blamed!
—Mme. Wesley. I hope you’re we
ll.
—Quite so, Gerard. Hello, Mona.
—Hello, said Mona, looking at her feet.
This was a habit of hers. Mona was not shy, but it was understood in the town that she didn’t like looking at people much.
—I believe there was an accident, said Gerard. The balloon extravaganza caught fire. Everyone perished. I was asked my opinion by a correspondent from a national newspaper. He was here half an hour ago and left. He was looking for the crash site.
—What did you say?
—I said I didn’t think there would be a crash site. Such an accident, at such a height, wouldn’t the debris just spread out across the county?
—I would think so, said Loring. But I’m not a correspondent. I believe that correspondents are supposed to be at the scene when they get their story. Maybe he was worried that it might not count for much if he was elsewhere, even if there was nowhere to be.
—It was odd that he was here in the first place, said Mona. To arrive so soon after it happened? When must he have set out? The correspondents don’t cover the Jubilee. He must have proposed to himself that there would be an accident, and come when there had still not been one.
These are the sort of dark thoughts that Mona had. She had, if anything, been bleaker as a child than now. She had been one of those known as stationary children or stationaries because she refused to move much. This caused endless difficulties for her mother, who eventually perished, for other reasons. Her father kept her on afterwards, in one or another capacity. She was older than he, of course, and so he relied on her advice in order to run the cemetery.
—Did you pass the new plots on your way up the hill?
—I don’t know.
—The ground is still broken a bit around them, hasn’t settled in yet. You didn’t see?
—I suppose I did, said Loring, looking back.