by Jane Langton
“Oh, shit,” said Betsy, breaking off in midflight. “I forgot the worms.”
“It’s all right,” said Vick. “Just start over. And this time don’t come down so hard on the appoggiatura. Just let it happen by itself. Did you want something, Homer?”
“Oh, no. Excuse me, I was just listening.” Homer stood up and grinned and waved his hand and went out, as Betsy put her hands in her back pockets, threw her head back and began lobbing clear notes into the vault high over her head again. “And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
Her voice flowed after Homer out of the hall in a cascading waterfall. He was still half transported. So it didn’t surprise him at all to see the golden vision of the crucified Christ on the little balcony above the entrance to the great hall. In fact, it took him a full three seconds to realize that the little balcony did not usually support a vision, that Handel’s Messiah was not usually accompanied by visual effects in pantomime. But there it was, a living picture. Someone was standing on the balcony in a white robe with his arms outspread in the attitude of the cross, his hair puffed out around his head: He was staring through a pair of thick glasses at the opposite wall.
“Jesus,” gasped Homer. “Jesus X. Christ.”
Homer didn’t mean anything in particular by this exclamation, but instantly a spasm shook the body of the vision on the balcony, and it turned its head to look down at Homer tenderly. “I am,” said the vision in a gentle voice: “You see, I am.”
“Say, listen here,” said Homer. “I saw you there before. How did you get there? Oh, I know. It’s that staircase on the other side, isn’t it? One of those stairways to the balconies in the great hall, right?”
The smile on the face of the vision faded. He picked up his white skirts and scuttled through the door at the back of the shallow balcony.
He couldn’t go far. Homer ran across the creamy new cement of the floor under the balcony, just as the bell in the tower began to chime for noon. The bell sent hollow spheres of sound clanging throughout the building, declaring the end of class all up and down Oxford Street. Homer could imagine professors picking up their briefcases while their students billowed up the stairs of the amphitheaters in the Science Center and down the stairs in the Lowell Lecture Hall, tugging on coats and jackets against the early November chill, pouring along the sidewalks in the direction of the Student Union or Elsie’s or the Wursthaus or other eating places around Harvard Square, or heading for dining halls in the river houses or the dorms in the Radcliffe Quad. Homer felt a pang in his own insides. He was starving. Mary would be there to meet him in a minute, and then they’d walk the long mile home for lunch. He really didn’t have time to pursue this fool. But he ran into the great hall anyway, and looked around. The enormous room was empty, but he could hear a pattering scramble on the balcony over his head, then the sound of something falling over, and then silence.
Homer galloped up the stairs. The first balcony was a dusty place, cluttered with broken chairs. The Jesus vision was nowhere in sight, but the chair he had knocked over was lying on its side. The door to the tiny balcony over the memorial corridor was ajar. Homer wandered out onto it and looked down at students coming and going on the floor below. There was very little room on the balcony, only enough space for an orator making a speech, or a row of trumpeters blowing ruffles and flourishes. In Homer’s brief acquaintance with Memorial Hall the little balcony had so far been unoccupied. He turned to go, but then he noticed something wedged in the shadows in the corner. It was a shoe. A man’s shoe. Big and black with a buckle on its side. The Jesus vision had rushed away like Cinderella, leaving his glass slipper behind him. Well, he couldn’t have rushed far.
Homer carried the shoe back out onto the big balcony over the great hall and looked left and right. Then he remembered the turret rooms at either side. He moved softly into the alcove at one side of the balcony and peered into its hollow depths. At the other end of the little hall there was a door, and through the stained glass in the window of the door shone the light of day.
Homer rattled the knob. The door was locked. “Hello, in there,” he said loudly. Immediately he heard a bump on the other side of the door and then a scurrying noise like a mouse in the wall. Then silence.
“Hey, in there, open up.” Homer shook the door handle. Then he noticed a white card on the door frame.
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTINT
said the white card.
“Hey, open up in there,” thundered Homer, knocking on the glass. “I require administrative assistance.”
There was more scuffling. Then more silence. Then a shape loomed up in the glass and opened the door slowly. A frowzy head looked out, the wispy strands of hair around it catching the sunlight like an aureole. The thick glasses peered out into the dim corridor. The narrow face was in shadow. “May I help you?” said the administrative assistant, speaking softly through the crack.
Homer waggled the big black shoe at him and said the first thing that came into his head. “I am—ah—looking for assistance from the curriculum committee of the university faculty of general education and the fellowship for undergraduate health services,” he said, letting his eyes rove from the pale face downward to the too-large sweater and the trousers, which were strangely wadded and bulging. The corner of a white sheet trailed from one pant leg. The orange sneakers were very small. The big glass slipper would never fit those tiny feet. This was not Cinderella, after all. Homer stuck the big shoe back under his arm.
“Oh, of course,” said Jesus. “You want Bellweather Hall. The second floor. Room 242.” He was nodding his head up and down in the kindliest way.
“I’ve already been there,” said Homer. “They told me to come here.” Behind the frowzy head he could see an untidy sleeping bag on the floor. An open can of SpaghettiOs stood on a large box trunk. One of the windows was propped open with a stick, and on the sill stood (aha!) a carton of milk.
“Oh, so many people make that mistake.” Jesus smiled. “But we don’t take care of that kind of thing in here any more. Perhaps it is Muggleby Hall now. Muggleby, you see. Not Memorial Hall.” He pointed vaguely over Homer’s shoulder in the direction of a possible Muggleby Hall, and began closing the door. “I remember now. There was some talk of moving that committee from Bellweather to Muggleby. Yes, I feel sure that must be the case. Just proceed down Oxford Street. You’ll find Muggleby on the left-hand side. A big yellow-brick building.” He was nodding through the crack. The door was closing. “You can’t miss it.” The door clicked shut.
Homer was enchanted. He stood staring at the blurry shape of Jesus as it faded away from the door on the other side of the glass. The man was living there. He had found a home complete with heat and light and a magnificent view of Harvard Yard and the traffic swarming around Cambridge Common. Free, free! But the question was, had he been manufacturing bombs in there in his spare time? Had he blown up a chunk of Memorial Hall as a portent of the wrath to come? Homer rapped on the door again. “Now look here, friend, No nonsense, now. Open up.”
Once more the door opened. Again the round glasses blinked amiably at Homer.
“I want to know what you think you’re up to. What were you doing out there on the balcony? Just what the hell is going on?”
“But you heard.”
“I heard? What did I hear? Go ahead. Tell me what I heard.”
“You know. The music. What they were singing.”
“Singing? You mean in Sanders Theatre? You mean, the Messiah? Handel’s Messiah?”
Jesus smiled modestly. “Exactly. You see, I was handing out pamphlets out there on the street one day last week, and I heard them singing. So I came in to listen. Because, you see, I am. I told you.”
“You said that before. You am. You mean, you personally am? You am what?”
“The Messiah. Reborn into this generation. Come back to earth. I am only awaiting the moment. The right moment to announce my return.”
“Oh,
go on,” said Homer. “You don’t really mean it.”
“Why, certainly. Certainly I do. You see, the Messiah is reborn into every generation. It is a fact. There have been others. Many others. But in this generation—”
“In this generation it just happens to be you, is that it? Oh, look here, now,” said Homer, “that’s the nuttiest thing I ever—”
“Listen. Listen to the music!”
Faintly from Sanders Theatre the voice of the tenor soloist wavered upward: Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow. The wispy-haired Messiah lifted his arms to right and left and stood in the position of the cross, beaming at Homer, the ragged edges of his hair and the fluffy sleeves of his sweater and the knobby silhouette of his trousers outlined in the yellow light of broad noonday. Homer was appalled. Between them as they stood staring at one another floated the melancholy rising sevenths and the lost bereft dyings away of the tenor aria, casting into outrageous perspective the callow posturings of the self-styled Messiah of Memorial Hall.
Homer closed his eyes. “Oh, no. Oh, no, I can’t stand it. Oh, Jesus Christ.”
The Messiah smiled and laid his hand on Homer’s arm in a gesture of gentle blessing. “He stands before you.”
Mr. Crawley came out of his office just as Homer lifted his hand to knock on his door. “Sorry. Gotta go. In a hurry,” said Mr. Crawley.
“Oh, Mr. Crawley, I just wanted to ask you if you know anything about that guy who lives upstairs.”
“Upstairs? There ain’t nobody living upstairs.”
“Haven’t you seen that character in the white sheet who stands up there on the balcony sometimes?”
“Oh, you mean that weirdo.”
“Well, could you tell me how he might have acquired a key to the room above your office, right upstairs?”
“Upstairs? I don’t know about no rooms upstairs. It’s all them little rooms in the basement. Dow, he had a master key. You know, the guy that got his head blowed off. He let them practice all over the basement. There was all this noise coming out all over. Terrible. You couldn’t hardly hear yourself think. Go ahead. Go on down there. See for yourself. Whole place, full of them, like rats in the wall. Coming out of the woodwork.” Crawley pulled his hat down further over his face and shambled off in the direction of the south entry, where he nearly ran into Mary Kelly, who was hurrying in from out of doors.
“Oh, hello, there.” Mary smiled at Mr. Crawley. “Oh, Homer, I’m sorry to be late. Those kids, I don’t know where they all come from. There’s more of them every day.”
“Coming out of the woodwork, right?”
“Exactly. And they all want to talk. They cluster around. They’re all eating lunch down there now. It’s like a picnic. It’s really nice. Oh, Vick, dear, hello.”
“What’s that?” said Vick. She was standing stock-still, her arms full of music, staring at the shoe under Homer’s arm.
“What’s what?” said Homer. “Oh, this? It’s a glass slipper. Cinderella’s glass slipper. No, no. It’s somebody’s shoe. I found it on the balcony up there. I’ll bet it’s Ham Dow’s shoe, blown off his left foot.”
“That’s not Ham’s shoe. Ham would never have worn a shoe like that.”
“He wouldn’t?”
“No. He wore thick laced-up boots. Or sneakers. Not the yachting kind of sneakers. The cheap kind that lace above the ankle. You know, the kind that say ‘Coach.’ We used to kid him about being the coach.”
“Well, what kind was he wearing the day he died?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t remember. But not anything like that one there. He would never have worn anything so sort of yukky and disgusting as that shoe there. Never. Never in a million years.”
“Hello, Mr. Ratchit? This is Homer Kelly. You remember me. I came to see you about the bombing victim at Harvard.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure, sure. I remember you. What’s on your mind?”
“Can you tell me if the man still had both shoes on his feet? I know most of his clothing was blown off or burned in the explosion, but I wondered if his shoes …?”
“Sure, sure, I remember his shoe. He only had the one shoe. The other one was gone. You mean, you got the other shoe? Big shoe, black, with like a buckle on the side? Left shoe? That’s right. That’s it. The right shoe was almost burnt to a crisp, but you could see what it was. Where’d it turn up?”
“On the balcony. It must have blown right up in the air and landed on the floor of the balcony.”
“It’s all run down on the outside, right? That’s it. You get a really overweight individual, they wear their shoes down fast on the side.”
“Well, thanks, Mr. Ratchit. That’s fine. You’re a big help. Thank you very much.”
Women, thought Homer, putting down the phone. They were supposed to be so observant of small detail. Well, this time they hadn’t been. Vick was wrong. Yukky and disgusting or not, the big black shoe with the silver buckle had once belonged to Hamilton Dow.
Homer tapped the shoe on the palm of his hand thoughtfully. There was something else he ought to do. Just out of curiosity. He should explore the basement. He should take a look at the basement and see what the woodwork was like—the woodwork from which the rats were so abundantly pouring.
Chapter Twenty-three
Lying flat on his back on the floor gazing upward, it occurred to Ham to wonder if he were blind. It was stupid of him not to have thought of it before. Perhaps the reason he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face was not because there was no light, but because he had lost his sight. But if this accident or disaster, whatever it was, had blinded him, then why was there no great pain in his eyes? His eyes felt all right. At least they didn’t hurt any more than any other part of him hurt. It was his head that bothered him most. The knobs on the back of his head. But even his head was feeling a little better. The great lumps were subsiding. They were less like huge swollen eggs. He must have had a concussion of some sort, perhaps even a fractured skull. There had been some kind of disaster or explosion. It must have been an explosion, to have created so much havoc around him, the fallen beam and the litter of brick and the chunks of concrete block, the bits and pieces of rock, the drifts of gritty plaster dust.
Maybe there had been an explosion in the gas line. Maybe all of Cambridge had gone up in smoke, or in some gigantic atomic blast. Maybe the whole city was buried in ruins. Otherwise you would think he’d be hearing picks and shovels, the hangings and hammerings of a rescue party, all his old friends and students digging out their old professor. Even if they thought he was dead, you’d think they’d be trying to remove his body from the rubble.
Well, give them time. Ham wasn’t about to panic. He was going to get out of this somehow. After all, he hadn’t really tried to free himself yet by his own wits. He had found the door, and the door had refused to open, and he had given up in exhaustion. But now he was feeling a little stronger. Ham breathed in great chestfuls of air, and pulled himself to a sitting position. Then he stood up shakily, reached out for the wall, and leaned against it. How long had he been without food? His trousers were hanging slack. He was feeling too ill to be hungry—still, it had been a long time. It occurred to him to wonder what was in his pockets. Maybe there was something useful in his pants pockets, something he could use to open the lock of the door. Carefully he removed the contents of his back pockets. He found his wallet. He put it away again. He found a folded piece of paper. He couldn’t remember what was written on the paper, but as he unfolded it, a picture floated out of the folds and appeared before him in the dark. It was the face of Vick Van Horn. Vick was looking at him in sharp concern. The image was so bright and clear, her glance so full of dread, Ham grunted with surprise. He folded the paper and put it away again. Then he turned his attention to one of his front pockets and found a big lump. What on earth was that? The lump had a crinkled metallic surface. Aha, aha! Ham felt his face stretching in a smile. It was aluminum foil wrapped around a great chunk of Emma E
sterhazy’s peanut brittle. God bless the good Esterhazy! Ham broke off a tiny chunk of the peanut brittle and ate it slowly, savoring the sweet salt juices trickling down his throat. Then he reached out for the pipe, knelt down beside it, ran his finger around the broken rim and washed his brief dinner down. Then he finished off the first meal in his dark prison by wetting his hands and washing his face.
His spirits rose. His mind cleared, and something else occurred to him. Not only did the pipe supply him with fresh water, it might be good for something else. Where did it go? Ham crouched beside it until his ear was pressed against the open end. He could hear faint windy sighings in the pipe, slight tringlings and distant thrumming noises. He turned his head and put his mouth against it. “Hello,” he shouted. “Helloooooo, out there. Can you heeeeeaaaar meeeeee?”
He took his mouth away and turned his head so that his ear was pressed up against the pipe. Again he could hear the windy whistling, the thrumming—but nothing more.
He sat back on his heels and thought about the pipe. Where did it go?
Suppose he were buried somewhere under Memorial Hall. Just suppose. Because the last thing he could remember (except for the insistent picture of the stranger’s face with its look of surprise—and Ham was beginning to think he must have dreamt the stranger’s face, along with all those other crazy things)—the last real thing he could remember was the rehearsal in Sanders Theatre. So perhaps he was walled up in one of those little rooms in the basement. There was no other place he could possibly be. Although for the life of him he couldn’t understand why he didn’t hear people going and coming in the hall outside, if that was where he was. (For the life of him. Well, that was some kind of joke.)
Well, then, if he was under Memorial Hall somewhere, then the pipe could go in any one of ten million directions. It would be part of the enormous interconnecting plumbing system. It might even pass through rooms and passages and corridors where people were actually passing by. By calling through the pipe over and over again, he might eventually be heard.