Census

by Jesse Ball

  My son was singing and I was singing too as we came down over the road into D. I had both dreaded and looked with fond expectation on our imagined arrival into D, however, I was not exactly sure where D was, and so, when we did drive, as I say, down into it, I was unprepared. You see, my father was from D. This was the country of his childhood. My son was singing at the top of his voice, the song is about a cow made out of butter, a cow that is a kind of trick—it is used to trick someone in the song—and the song is very loud by design. He did not really care for being hushed up as we came down into D, but I really had no choice. I was trying to remember things my father had told me thirty years before—things I had most likely forgotten.

  In fact, the town was unremarkable. In a sense, it is possible to feel what wild-horsemen must have felt, riding down upon cities in the dim past: the desire to simply burn these mediocre places and pile the skulls, it rises in the breast when one beholds a paltry place. There is a dream that the place you await does in fact lie in wait for you. This is the dream of being a traveler.

  So when you see some false thing, some shabby town in place of the vale you long for, well, burn it, burn it! Pile the skulls!

  In this case, my father had told me a great deal about this town; I had on my own account learned much about this town, but not to the purpose of learning or knowing about it specifically, rather so that I as a child could know about towns in general, that was my purpose while listening to my father speak. It was for this reason that I could not, trying to remember what my father had told me, remember anything: all my information about this town was embedded in some archetype of the generic. I would have to deconstruct my very notion of town in order to know what my father might have said. It is not an easy thing to do.

  Alternately, I could simply hope that the town would remind me of itself—of the version of itself that had been told to me. Sadly, it did not.

  Nonetheless, as it was a town, we were there for several days going about from house to house. I was told that two hundred and forty people lived there—so we were busy.

  Although it is true that the town was unremarkable, there were still people living there. It is often true in this business of the census that one discovers one lacks the power to call out of the people one meets that which is indeed most peculiar to each. Of course, it is this very task that the census requires, and so my failure to obtain the quintessence of any individual interviewed is a very real failure and one that redounds to me again and again. I must, in speaking to a person, know what is special about that individual, and that data must pass through me back to the offices of the census in such a way that what is most particular, most special about the nation, and indeed of all nations, some aggregate of all the particulars of its human population, that this could be known and felt.

  The first in whom there was a spark, we found him on the second day. The second and third on the fourth day. The house of the first was a narrow building by a square. There was a fountain there entirely covered in moss. We knocked on the door. He answered it: a man with a great black beard. I explained our business. He ushered us in to a wide room filled with tables. All of the tables were piled high with wooden puzzles, cutting tools, board blanks, pegs, polishing instruments, paints and brushes, coils of string, wire and gut.

  I am a craftsman, he explained. You make wooden puzzles? Yes, I make them.

  They were beautiful, and quite beyond me. I have always been the very worst one at solving puzzles. I think it is because I give up right at the start. Right at the very beginning, when you would think you should muster up your forcefulness and make a powerful start, it is just at that time that I give up. It is just at that moment that I am handing the puzzle to someone else, or even, more sadly, it is at that time that I begin to handle the puzzle in an ineffectual way, in such a way that it is obvious I am not even really trying any more to solve it, but only expressing a kind of interest in it on someone else’s behalf. If it happens that, by accident, at that moment, at the moment at which, in handling the puzzle in a ginger mincing useless way, I end up making inroads towards a solution—let us say, the first portion of the puzzle falls open, as does in fact sometimes happen—then when a person who is watching me, a person who also wants to have something to do with a puzzle, when that person reaches out to touch the puzzle, seeing that we have moved closer to its solution, as such people always do at times like that, my reaction is, rather than to pull back, as would be the proper thing to do—in an attempt to prolong the puzzle-solving—I on the other hand, demonstrating my poverty of nature, give the puzzle over immediately, that is what I do, I give the puzzle over immediately, despite the puzzle perhaps being virtually solved at the time. This is even more ridiculous when you consider that the profession of my life has been surgery—and that I was accounted for a very long time one of the chief surgeons of the area in which I lived. Nearly any operation that could be done to a person, I have been called upon to do, and for the most part, I have had success. Yet, in this business of puzzles, my determination can make no progress.

  None of this did I say to the puzzle-maker, who, while I ruminated, was staring intently at my son who was moving around the room touching the different puzzles.

  Is it all right for me to speak to him? He won’t mind? He can understand?

  Oh, yes, I said.

  I mean, he won’t go into a fit or something.

  No, nothing like that. You’ll see.

  The man went over and spoke to my son, using lots of hand gestures, lots of expression. They had a pretty good time of it, looking at the puzzles, and an even finer time in the next room in the workshop. In fact, the man found some things for my son to do, to help him with in the workshop, and so, as I went about in the town those days on the census, my son worked in the shop with the man, and in exchange for that work, took with him a kind of drill when he left. I don’t know what the drill was for, nor did he. I think not knowing was what made it emblematic of the puzzle-maker’s shop. Although, my son’s understanding of that shop was doubtless very different than my own—for I was only there an hour or so.

  In any case, I went up and down the streets, census taking, and eventually, came to a basement where two runaways were living. There was the question of whether runaways should be counted. Some would say not. I took a different view.

  The boy was a fast talker. He said that his father was an auctioneer and that’s why. He’s an auctioneer and that’s why, that’s how he said it, explaining the speed of his tongue. The girl said whenever anything goes wrong, he can explain it. I said that was a very useful skill.

  The girl resembled a swan. I squinted my eyes and looked again. Yes, she was very swan-like. I told her that I would call her Polly Vaughn. She did not know anything about that, and so I explained—Polly Vaughn was a girl who went out and was in the bushes with her apron wrapped around her somewhere in England perhaps and her lover thinks she is a swan and shoots her and is put on trial for her murder. What happened then? she asked. Well, he wants to run away, but he gets this advice from his uncle, don’t you leave your own country till your trial be done, for they never will hang you for the killing of a swan. But she wasn’t a swan, said the girl. That’s right, I said. I have always disagreed with the opinion expressed in the song—although some say that what the uncle is actually saying is that whether she is a swan or a girl, it is essentially all the same, and either way he will be acquitted.

  They knew nothing about the census, so I explained it all, we went over everything, and then I marked them. The girl was stoic, but the boy made a cry when the needle marked his side. I asked them about their plans. They explained that they were going to head in the opposite direction that I was going. They were of the opinion that if a place could be found that had as many people in it as possible, then such a place would be for them. They wanted my advice on getting to such a place. I said it is not just about getting there, but also about what to do once you are there. The boy was adamant that his fast ta
lking would be enough. I felt looking at him that it might well be true.

  I told them that my father had left this region some seventy-five years before, and that by following the very plan that they were bent upon he had made his fortune.

  The girl wasn’t really listening, and she suddenly decided to join the conversation. She asked how he was doing, my father. What does he do now? I was confused for a moment. Then I said that he was dead. That seemed to make her feel uncomfortable about their prospects. I explained that he lived a long life prior to dying.

  Oh, she said, when did it happen.

  About seventeen years ago.

  They looked at each other—their eyes pouring something, I don’t know what, pouring it back and forth from one to the other. We weren’t born yet, the girl said. Seventeen years ago, the boy said, she hadn’t been born. And I, I wasn’t born yet either.

  I told them it was important to figure out what things were worth doing—and then to just do those things, don’t do any of the other ones. People will try to convince you, always they will try to convince you to do things you should on no account do. Negotiating these terrible pathways full of bad advice—it is the principal danger of youth. That and suicide.

  She said, she knew about that. She had thought about it a lot. Two of her friends had died that way.

  ››

  The boy spoke up. He said, for children these days, suicide is like falling in love.

  The girl agreed. It is like falling in love. It is like painting a new door on the wall of your bedroom and stepping through it.

  I mean—to imagine that all this time, the door has been right there and you haven’t seen it.

  She was toying with a torn playing card, an eight of spades. She looked up suddenly.

  But, I like being alive. For myself, I keep choosing that.

  She said she knew a lot about plants from her aunt who had a nursery and she could do something like that. She could have a nursery too, just like her aunt. Everything in the nursery is the way it should be. Anything that isn’t is removed from the nursery, so it doesn’t bother the ones growing there. Yes, she could do that. She could sell flowers and plants. The boy said something under his breath, and she hit him.

  That’s small time, he said. Small time.

  She whispered something to him.

  When I left and went outside it had gotten dark. I made my way up the basement steps in the cold. There was a smell of mud, cold mud in the air, and it was dead quiet. I looked back, and I could see them through the broken window of the basement, sitting side by side. She was talking and running her hands through her hair. The boy touched her face and I went away.

  It has always been hard, going places with my son. Much as I love to go places, much as he does, much as my wife did, it is difficult to do so because of the way that people behave towards him. Even something as simple as getting ice cream at an ice cream stand might not be possible. We might arrive at such a place, get in line, and think that things were going well. But time and again, some conversation begins with other people in line, or some children are there, poorly supervised, and they begin to heckle him, or simply everyone stares, and perhaps asks some hideous question, some completely unnecessary question, and although perhaps it is still possible to get ice cream at this ice cream stand, it has ceased to be possible to do so pleasurably, and so we go back to the car, we get into the car, we drive to the house, and at the house we go inside and sit. Every time, my son goes happily to do something in another room, leaving my wife and I full of the sense of it—the way that our human specialty, alienation, expresses itself so gently, so generously, so thoroughly.

  As we got older, we grew used to this. Perhaps we gained a thicker skin. Does that mean caring less? I think it does—but about everything.

  These thoughts struck me as my son and I stood at the window of an ice cream shop in D. There we stood and I remembered specifically a painful incident that had happened twenty years before. It isn’t worth mentioning, though, because it is like every other such incident. None of them have any character. It is so easy for humans to be cruel, and they leap to it. They love to do it. It is an exercise of all their laughable powers.

  No one in D remembered my father. A common theme was, if the subject came up that my father had lived there a lifetime ago, they would mention someone, now dead, someone they had known, someone who probably would have known him. This is an excellent conversational maneuver, as it seems to establish a semantic bridgehead with which the conversation can go forward, when in fact the progress made is and would be entirely illusory.

  At the beginning of the census, I had the same dream three times. Not since I was a child had this happened to me. In all three cases, the dream was just the same. It begins with an impression of having only then stood up. You have just stood up. You are in a living room. Behind you, there are people sitting, perhaps three or four. You know them so well that their details are not discernable. Someone is knocking at the door and you go to it. The knocking is louder and louder. You go through a set of rooms and down a hall. The knocking is so loud you can scarcely believe it. It sounds like someone is about to knock down the door. But, you feel no fear. You unlock the door. You open the door. Someone is standing there.

  In the dream, it is my son who is standing there, but I am not myself. He doesn’t know me. In fact, it appears to me that he, and I do not know him either in the dream, is looking for someone. But, there is no sound. I realized afterwards that there is no sound in the dream.

  If there is no sound—then how could there have been knocking? I have wondered often about this—and I think it was a sensation of air, of the shuddering of air each time the knocker is struck.

  You may wonder how it can be that we can travel so quickly when the business of the census ordinarily means that we must go quite literally from house to house. The truth is, we dispensed with that almost immediately. I will not say that I have abandoned my office as census taker. In fact, I feel, I take it more and more seriously. What I will say is this: in taking it more seriously, I know more clearly what it is that I am doing as a census taker, and this knowledge leads me to know that I do not any longer need to go to every house.

  Unfortunately, when I explained what it was that we were going to do, I told my son that we would be going to each and every house. Now that our plans have changed, now that, in essence, upon seeing any house, we are faced with the option of either going to the house or not going to the house, my son has become immensely disapproving of the latter decision. Any and all proper formalities are welcomed and embraced by him. The idea that we would fail to do what we set out to do, he likes it not in the least.

  So, we created a sort of pact, which was this—if there was a house that he dearly wanted to go to, we would go to it. However, I put in a caveat—he would need to say this before I stated my intention of going or not going. Otherwise, I am sure that he would simply have insisted upon going to every house.

  ››

  Another problem came up when he wanted to return to a house that we had already been to. My feeling is that he liked the experience that we had in the house. An older couple lived there. They were very friendly. They gave us cider and something, perhaps maple sugar candy. In this case, I went along with it.

  We went back to the house, approached it, knocked. The woman came to the door.

  My son and I gave the impression of not realizing at all that we had been there before, and furthermore, of not remembering that now we were supposed to be acquainted with her. Although I do not believe that she understood this—she did not struggle. Her composure was perfect. She invited us in, and we reenacted the entire measure, cider and all. This time her husband was not present, but a woman, some cousin was, so I suppose it wasn’t for nothing. I believe they thought it was some kind of joke, but decided for reasons of their own to play along.

  This is a sort of proof of something I have long believed: that reason and sensical behavior are n
ot always necessary if there exists some small flood of kindness.

  The country was becoming rougher and rougher as we moved into the mountains. There was pine-forest, precipice, lake and stream, all drawn like lines in white ink. We bathed in a stream under a chalk sky, and it was the cold people sometimes speak of—that rare cold, the one you haven’t felt before, that cold you can only feel once. People say they feel it when a ghost is in the room.

  We stayed for three days at a lodge overlooking a waterfall. I had a Mutter book with me—Geometries of the Dive. It is a series of illustrations, hand-drawn, sometimes employing traced photographs. She took one tree, came to know its exact dimensions, and did the same with the cormorants that lived in the tree. She photographed them and drew them repeatedly. The book is to scale—on each page is the tree, and the pond. She desperately wanted to inhabit the world of the cormorant and she, Mutter, tried by any means necessary to approach it.

  I imagine her, with her black fur hat, crouched on the opposite side of the pond, drawing instrument in hand, frozen in between tabulation, silhouette, longing. Although of course she was a prominent mayor and socially, therefore, extremely adept, although she had many children, three husbands, and indeed was acclaimed at the time as a playwright, I am still completely positive that her real desire was to leave her body and become in absolute terms a cormorant.

  Most of us who want to become animals—what we want, in essence, is to be a human in any animal body. This is not at all what Mutter wanted, not at all. She, I am sure of it, wanted to be an animal that had never been a human. The cormorant that she would have liked to wake one day as, would never have known when it lay to rest the day before, that it had done so as a woman and the mayor of a town. Of course, even if it could be imagined that we could somehow effect a transformation into an animal form, the idea that we somehow would shed totally every last bit, immediately of our humanity—it is hard to feel what that would be.