Census

by Jesse Ball

  So the typical work of the census, then, I abdicated. Other census takers, more literal minded than myself, perhaps would come to know the precise population of these regions. I, who have in some ways always misbehaved, even as a surgeon, would misbehave going forward, I decided. I would go into each house and home, each town and village, and try to discover what was worthy of note.

  I realize in a way that it is vaguely ridiculous, no, just plainly ridiculous, for me to behave as though this were some new method. In fact, travelers of the past, Herodotus, Tacitus, Marco Polo, behaved in just this fashion. So, those were the sandals in which we marched on.

  Although, it should be said—we are not looking for any of the things those legendary danger-seekers looked for. We prefer the small, the overlooked. This is not the same world into which they were born.

  What is it Herbert says about the world we live in, a world in which the divine is not on any map?

  But now thou dost thyself immure and close in some one corner of a chambered heart.

  Isn’t that what he said? Our census will look there . . .

  The next town was known for its rope factory. In this place was made the very largest and strongest rope, rope used to tie ships to docks and anchors, rope for the lifting of impossibly heavy things through the air. Other ropes were made too, slender and smooth ropes, harsh and frictive ropes, wet ropes, spiced ropes, even strings and twines.

  The foreman at the rope factory made an interesting statement in my presence. He said, there have been no accidents today.

  Ah, no accident, not today.

  No.

  Is it often the case that there are accidents?

  We walked to a chart placed on the wall. It detailed the history of accidents at the factory in the ten year period previous.

  Mostly six per day.

  Bad accidents?

  We keep a doctor on hand, so they don’t usually die, but it does change a person to be struck by a breaking rope.

  Does the doctor have a moment to speak with us?

  ››

  The doctor had a moment to speak to us, and so he did.

  The doctor had a face like a leading man, and he spoke his lines like an actor.

  The doctor wore a very white coat, as doctors often do, but this coat was even more white than that. It was whiter even than I say here.

  The doctor acknowledged us with what I can perhaps call a speech—one he must have been waiting some years to give. Or perhaps it was extemporaneous; it is so hard to know these things. He was going to tell us about the rope factory, and so he did, and in a manner perfectly fitting his person and position.

  He began,

  The power of a bowstring has in times past been sufficient to kill a man at a distance of several hundred meters. What then a rope a thousand times as thick? The floor of the rope factory is knee deep in the blood that has been shed here. I hate this place, I hate the rope itself. I work here only because my father did, and my grandfather, my mother and my grandmother. Every one of them lost their lives here. So I went to the army and learned to be a medic, and then when I returned I went to medical school and learned to be a doctor, and then I avoided any lucrative employment and came here, where I work without pay helping these terrible fools.

  We looked out through the broad window of the sickroom onto the factory floor. It was crisscrossed with thousands of ropes, ropes so long they could encircle the earth any number of times. Machines whirled this way and that, the sound was like clock-sound, but bent by tremendous whirring, like a dopplered clock flung past you and returned, flung past you and returned, but continuous, each tick, each tock, somehow stretched. It was a wild sound—I say finally it was like the gnashing of teeth.

  Here and there small figures ran back and forth beneath the great ropes, some carrying implements, some pulling carts of one sort or another. Others stood in groups awaiting instructions. Their uniforms bore many different colors.

  I asked the doctor about it.

  It is important to know if anyone is out of place. Everyone in the factory must stay in particular areas, and keep their feet fixed to exact corridors.

  The floor of the factory was covered with just such delineated paths, in varied paints.

  Is it the case that the people who come here maimed, the victims, that they have been where they weren’t supposed to be?

  Behind me, one of the patients started to object.

  The doctor hushed him. He had a sort of priestly power over everyone in the infirmary. His expression as he turned to me was harsh.

  On the contrary, as you yourself say, they are victims. The workers take their daily endeavors so seriously that almost no one is ever out of place. In fact, it is true that the working of the machines takes into account a necessary recklessness. That is to say, the rope machines cannot be operated safely. It is impossible for any factory on earth to safely make rope. Behind the factory, if you should go there, you will find a field of poles. On each pole there is a knot in glass. This is the cemetery for the factory workers. When they take their breaks, when they eat their half-day rations, it is there that they do it. It is an old custom, designed to remind them of how close death is—how certain. I thought when I was a boy that I would work in the rope factory. I was certain of it. In fact, it was a matter of pride. I wanted nothing more than that. But, my father anticipated me. He took me out back of the house one day, and using a cigar cutter he did this.

  The doctor showed me his hands. Where the thumbs should be there were two pale rounded bumps.

  He touched the bump of one absent thumb with his forefinger. You see, I will never make rope. Never. At the time, a few other families did the same—and it was this action, that led to some of the conditions improving at the factory. At the time, at the time things had gone too far.

  Several of the patients had come and were huddled around us listening.

  But how can you do the work of a doctor? I asked. Doesn’t it make it difficult?

  The doctor looked down at his charges as if pondering my question, but when he turned to me, it was as if he had forgotten me. The work of a doctor? This work?

  He said tersely, bending each word like a thread, oh it is no trouble. No trouble at all.

  ››

  We went out, my son and I, behind the factory, and it was true. It was just as the doctor had said. There was a field, near as large as the factory, which is to say, almost the size of a town, stretching away and away. The factory is on an immense hill, the kind of hill that they used to fight battles on, a hill you could line two armies up facing. It is a hill for generals, and for days that will not be forgotten, but are always forgotten, and maybe should be. The factory took up the heights, stretched across them for a mile. Beyond it, down the hill, the cemetery reached. It was so large that no one could possibly keep it as cemeteries are kept. That is to say, there was not grass between the graves, but wild plants of every kind, and if there was grass, it was only by chance and not design. These plants and trees provided an antidote to the unceasing stand of grave poles—which did, as the doctor said, each bear a glass knot of rope. There were more trees and more trees and even undergrowth as the slope proceeded. We walked all the way down, jumping here and there like goats, and we noticed as we went, that the manner of the glass knots changed, and when eventually we reached a point, it must have been three or four miles down, where the knots became stone knots on dirty rusted poles, then from there we could see the outskirts of the next town, some miles off through a thin wood, downhill all the way. I became horribly winded at some point and had to stop and lie down on my back between the overgrown graves. My son thought I was playing and ran off, and it was an hour before I found him, much further on. Eventually, we came through a break of woods to a road, and down that road to a larger road. We’d left the Stafford outside the factory—but after a while we found someone to drive us back to it, some kind soul. The driver’s face is lost to me already. How shocking it is to feel how little on
e can care, in receiving a kindness. I should remember such a face, but I do not. Perhaps my son does.

  One thing nagged at me. I kept wondering as we went, why did the cemetery begin so far from the factory? Shouldn’t it have been the other way? The oldest graves should be beside it. How can such a thing be done backwards? It was a sort of puzzle, and plagued me all the way.

  ››

  I

  I suppose the walk was a mistake—an overreach. I spent the next days in a rented room being fed soup by a kindly old couple. They ran a shop and lived above it. I believe they rented the room once in a while when travelers came through, though it didn’t look to me like it had seen much use. The shop was a milliner’s shop on one side and a general store on the other. I don’t know how many women’s hats you can possibly sell in a town like that. I expect most of their business came from the general store. While I was abed, my son helped out in the shop. They took to him immediately, and knew just the sorts of things he might want to do. When he likes how things are going, he often becomes quiet about them, and he was this way about his work in the shop.

  I couldn’t figure out why they were so kind—not that people need a reason. But many people do have one, and it can pay to look for it, although as they say, it never pays to look too hard. From the moment that we arrived, quite late at night, possibly even waking them up with our knocking (to inquire about the rented room sign above the door), they received us with a gentleness of manner that was unforeseeable.

  Two days later, as I sat by the window of that little room, a room decorated for the most part with nautical pictures, although there was a scythe upon one wall, doubtless to scare off the specter of death with his own armament, the woman sat in a chair across from me. She had given me my bowl of soup, and always before it had been her habit to retire immediately. But now she stayed. She sat down in the chair opposite and put both her hands flat on the table.

  I want to tell you something, she said. My daughter was like your son. She is dead now for many years. But we raised her and she lived here with us, and joined with us in all the things that we did. She liked to sew things, although it was not easy for her, and she liked surprising people. She did not like to be surprised, but no one does. I wanted to tell you about her, because I think there are so few people in these later days who care about the kind of person they are. It even happens that no one has them anymore. I can see from the way you are with him that you see—you see what we saw, that they experience the world just as we do, and maybe even, maybe even in a clearer light.

  I wanted you to know, she said, because there is so little support for this way of thinking. My husband said you knew already, and I needn’t say anything. But, I wanted to. For people to see you two traveling together, and to see how your son can live and take joy—I think you cannot know the good you do. We weren’t travelers like you, we didn’t go that far in showing her the world, but at least we didn’t keep our daughter in our home out of sight. In the mornings she would go out and wander the town, and everyone knew her. There is a kind of understanding that can grow in a place, and then everyone, every last person can be a sort of protector for them. This is a thing she can confer on others—a kind of momentary vocation, and it is a real gift. In large cities, other places, I know, people can be cruel. Some people were cruel to her, but here, something grew. It was a fine place for her to live, and when she died, she was missed.

  The woman stood up. I looked at her.

  The woman went away out of the room and I sat breathing, just breathing until the light left the window.

  J

  Mutter writes about naming that a name is almost always a sort of cowardice—an attempt to confine a thing to being only what it is, rather than what it may be. The progeny of a cormorant cannot still be a cormorant, she writes—at what point does it change enough to be accounted a new species? Who is wise enough to know this? Does this change happen in a generation—between a mother and a daughter, a father and a son? She disliked immensely a name sometimes used for cormorants, shag. The truth is, she didn’t care for the cormorant varieties that go under that title, liking least of all those with crests.

  In reading her works, one begins to suspect that she must have had an unfortunate experience at one time or another with a crested thing, whether a bird, a helmet or a hill—for her vitriol knew no end.

  I mention this all because the census is a document that does not care about names. You may have any name or any other name and the census does not know. We merely obtain our precious knowledge from you, we merely mark you so that you will not give it twice, and then we merely go on our way, merely that. We merely do that, and we need not know your name at all.

  It seems to me that there is an excellence in discrimination—in telling one thing apart from another, in being able to break a thing down into parts and see it simultaneously as its parts, and as a whole—and to do this for all things that one sees, to be simultaneously examining both grain and branch, to see the pore the limb the leap all together. But this endeavor is often tied to another—that is, that each part should be named. The naming of each part, and the knowing of these names is then spoken of as being identical to the excellence of discriminating between the parts. In fact, it is useful only in so much as one might choose to speak about any particular part. The wondrousness of felt experience resides in the discrimination, not in the name.

  So I would be speaking for, then, a world without names—wherein we see what is, and are impressed by it—the impressions push into us and change us forever. This is the world I believe my son lives in.

  But for myself, on the other hand, I do love names, and collect them. I like those old thoughts—that names have power; but, even more, I simply like to say names. The naming schemes that run with this language or that—unfathomable to me, can nonetheless be seen and heard to be intensely beautiful. I like nothing better than to see a list of names, or to hear a name said.

  Can we not feel two opposite things at once? To whom is it a crime?

  ››

  The notion that a person may influence another without speaking is an ancient one. All flesh is continuous. This was the iteration of that idea voiced at The Shape School.

  The students would be given feelings—joy, surprise, anger, and be asked to convey those feelings to another student, who was under the burden of doing nothing at all. The second student, as an audience, should not work to oppose what was being done, should not be stoic, but beyond such proscriptions, the task was simply to sit and be a person and feel. Then the first student would come and try to have the second student feel exactly the anger she was feeling.

  A barrier to this is that commonly the bridge of emotion from one to another is not a mirror. This is to say—if a person is angry, sometimes it makes you afraid, or if a person is afraid sometimes it makes you angry, or even delighted. If a person is sad, sometimes it disgusts you. One can’t just be an emotion and expect it to do the work for you. Certainly, a crowd can have the effect of conveying its emotion to a singleton placed upon its edge. A crowd of terrified people is terrifying. I’m sure everyone has felt this. In the same way, a crowd of angry people, if you do not feel you are the prey of this anger, is angry-making. You can easily join in the anger.

  So, in some sense, then, we have a beginning there: the person who wants to send her emotion to someone else must somehow obtain for herself the plurality of a mob, which can perhaps be seen to be one of two things: either that she appears as if in numbers, or that the person she is entreating can be made to feel absolutely small. The latter is not something that would have been acceptable to the proprietresses of The Shape School, as their principles stood against trivializing the lives or injuring the spirits of their audience members, so it left only the former. How then to become a crowd by oneself?

  How indeed?

  ››

  The measures and manner of tutelage of The Shape School turned out to be of great use to my wife when it came to
pass that my son was born. No one really knew how to deal with him, how to teach him, in what way to help him. There was a common wisdom that he should be left to his own devices, in essence, ignored. This approach is practically criminal. Luckily, we were, as I said, not without resources, for my wife was a peculiar individual with a thousand odd thoughts.

  The first thing that a person at The Shape School is taught is patience. In order to affect another person you perform some action. Then, you must be patient enough to wait for its effect. As you learn the signs of these effects, it may come to pass that you do not need to wait as long, but as my wife often said—it can happen that you say or do a thing, and the effect is felt years later, perhaps in a reiteration of the scene within a dream, who can say? Our actions echo—to be human is to tremble!

  In any case, my wife was very patient and she would try a thing with our son, and then wait to see what came of it, and try another thing and wait to see what came of it, always persistently repeating the things, and giving enthusiastic reinforcement. There was no expectation that anything in particular would happen. The main thing was for him to feel that we were all together taking part in a joined project—the project of our life. To be a part of such a thing, he wanted nothing more than that. Indeed, it is what most of us want, isn’t it? Why should he be any different?

  She said to me, often, in the year before her death—it is a pity that she did not have her career as a clown after raising our son, for she felt that her powers of empathy and apprehension were increased a thousandfold by the experience. I can say truly that for me it was the same—I was a better doctor for having had my son, for it left me with a basic stance—that I should not expect anything in particular from anyone, nor should I underestimate anyone, a humility vested not so much in an appraisal of myself, as in a lack of confidence in valuation and prediction. This was the stance, as you know, that led me to the work of the census.