by Doug Allyn
Clipton hit the door again.
“Did you hear two raps, Officer? I thought I only heard one.”
“There was just one. It was clear enough. That’s not your night watchman in there. Maybe it’s Mr. Clipton. Give it a try.”
“Are you Mr. Clipton?”
He pounded twice.
“Are you alone?”
Two more blows.
“Then where is Renelle?”
Clipton, trying to do shallow breathing, found himself cursing in a way that used up precious oxygen.
“He can’t answer that yes or no.”
“That’s right. I forgot. I get so excited when I speak with the dead that I sometimes make mistakes.”
“Ask if the night watchman locked him in there.”
“He wouldn’t have done that. He leaves as soon as the day watchman arrives and Mr. Clipton doesn’t open the vault until...”
“Just ask him.”
“Oh, all right. Did Renelle lock you in?”
Clipton pounded twice.
“That sounded like two raps.”
“It was two raps. Your night watchman locked your boss in there and ran away. I’m going to report this to the lieutenant. We’ll look for this Renelle.”
At that point other steps sounded and the officer explained the situation to the lieutenant and a locksmith.
“This is a computerized lock,” a new voice said. “Before we can begin to turn the dials in the usual way, we must feed the key number into the computer. Even then the dials do not drop tumblers in the usual way. I couldn’t detect the tumblers dropping into position. My equipment is useless. We’ll have to blast that vault open.”
“But there’s someone in the vault.”
“That’s too bad. We can’t blast. Who has the combination?”
Henry spoke again. “Mr. Clipton, who is in the vault, is the only one who has the combination except for the chairman of the board, and he’s in Frankfurt, Germany.”
“Can you reach him?”
“I can’t, but I can give you his home phone number. Maybe someone there knows where he is staying.”
Clipton nearly collapsed. He didn’t have long to live. The atmosphere in the vault was becoming fetid. He had only minutes left.
“Mr. Clipton’s wife is here. Shall I let her in?”
“Hello, Mrs. Clipton. We’ll have your husband out shortly. Do you know the combination?”
“No, but he does.”
Henry’s voice interrupted. “He can hear us, but the line out of the vault is broken. I’ll tell him you are here.”
“Henry, get away from that microphone.”
“But I’m his only contact with the outside world.”
“Get away! Edward, what’s the first digit of the key number?”
He pounded twice.
“See, he can only answer yes or no.”
“Shut up, Henry. The first digit is two. What’s the second?”
He pounded three times, then twice, then three times.
“The key number is two, three, two, three.”
“Got it.” The locksmith’s voice. “Now get the combination.”
“Is the first number to the right?”
He pounded twice.
“What is the number?”
He hit the door twenty-seven times. The exertion was overcoming him. It was hard even to hold the shoe but he knew that if he dropped it, he could never bend down and get it back.
“Then how many to the left?”
He struck the door eighteen times, fighting to breathe, fighting to retain consciousness, fighting to summon enough strength to wield the shoe.
“How many to the right?”
Somehow he continued. The frantic pounding on the door died down to a slow and heavy swinging of the shoe, hitting the door, and then resting.
“That’s it, Mrs. Clipton. That’s the last number. I’ll open the door.”
At first he thought he was falling unconscious on the floor. He struggled to stay upright. Then he realized that the vault door was moving. A sudden burst of light almost blinded him. Fresh warm air poured over him like a shower. Instinctively, he stumbled toward his wife and wrapped his arms around her.
But his first words were not for her. His first words were, “Henry, you’re fired!”
The Telephone
by Augusto Mario Delfino
© 1984 by International Cultural Exchange
To celebrate the upcoming Halloween holiday, we offer a tale that skirts the edges of the supernatural. The story also adds to our pantheon of international figures, for it comes from a native of Uruguay and is translated by Donald Yates, an authority on South American literature who has translated eight EQMM stories...
❖
On the low table in the hallway the telephone has been silent since four in the afternoon. Hebe glances at it and says to Berta, her younger sister, “No one has called.”
Berta gives a little shrug and, glancing in turn at the telephone, notices the wilted roses in the crystal vase on the table. They have been there since Hebe brought them the day before. Berta recalls the details of that moment. It was eight-thirty in the evening and Hebe had been out. She returned with the roses wrapped in waxed tissue. Before kissing her mother, who was reading the paper in the living room, and without saying a word to Berta, she got the vase, went to the kitchen to fill it with water, came back, and began arranging the flowers. It was then that the telephone rang. Hebe answered it. Berta heard her say:
“Yes, Papa. Enjoy your dinner. Have a good time.”
Berta approached her sister.
“Did he say he wouldn’t be coming home to eat?”
“A couple of friends have invited him out. Let Mama know.”
At nine-thirty they sat down at the dinner table, just the three of them. They turned on the radio; they rambled on about vague, trivial matters. It was ten o’clock when their brother Alberto arrived. Displaying his characteristic moodiness, which fluctuated between intensity and indifference, he overrode the maid’s annoyance, saying:
“Amelia, serve me everything all together and don’t bother heating anything up. I don’t have much time because this is going to be the most important night of my life.”
His mother regarded him reproachfully, as if to say: “When will you stop behaving like a child?” But she said nothing, knowing that Hebe and Berta enjoyed indulging his extravagances.
They had just finished their coffee when the telephone rang. Amelia answered it.
“It’s for you,” she said to Alberto.
“Didn’t I tell you?” he exclaimed boastfully. And he strode from the dining room as if the actual physical presence of one of his girlfriends were awaiting him. The four women heard him utter, “But it’s not possible!” Then they could hear nothing more because he lowered his voice. He reappeared, his face looking drawn and tense.
“Alberto!” his mother demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“A friend, Mama. Maybe my best friend. He’s just had a stroke.”
“Who is it?” asked Berta.
“You don’t know him.”
Hebe said nothing. She rose and went to her room, shutting herself away, while her mother, her sister, the maid, and the cook — women joined together, disturbed over Alberto’s secret somewhere out there in the night and the city — guessed at the identity of the victim, speculated on the degree of seriousness, in somber, fearful tones.
It was after eleven when the telephone rang. Berta went to answer. Hebe, who had been lying on her bed, sat up and listened. Her sister’s voice confirmed her suspicions. When she came out of her room, Berta was saying:
“No, Alberto. You’re hiding something from me.”
“What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” her mother called out as Amelia, wakened by the ringing of the telephone, appeared, wrapped in her bathrobe decorated with large red flowers.
Berta hung up the receiver. She turned her eyes away from her mother and met Hebe’s gaze.
“I knew it,” said Hebe.
Afterwards, there was nothing to do but wait. The mother accepted whatever Amelia said in her effort to cheer her up and allay her fears. She herself sought the consolation of describing a night thirty years earlier. Hebe was then an infant. Her husband had gone out, the first time he had done so at night in seven months. She had fallen asleep in a chair next to the child’s cradle. The telephone awakened her. It was a friend calling to tell her not to be worried, that Juan had suffered a dizzy spell and had been taken to a hospital, and that he would be coming home as soon as the spell passed. When the friend hung up, she cried, cried out loud to the point of alarming the neighbors, who knocked in vain on her door. When Juan came home a short while later, he found her unconscious on the floor with scarcely a pulse. Berta, who had heard the story countless times, listened without paying attention. She was tensely waiting for the telephone to ring. Hebe, who had taken refuge in the bathroom, ran water in the sink to cover the sound of her sobbing.
At daybreak Alberto arrived. He was with two friends. He said nothing. He held out his arms to his mother and wept. Afterwards — Berta remembers this as she watches Hebe pick up the vase and the fallen rose petals from the table — everything was effortless and strange. The morning brought on a feeling of great weariness. And sleepiness, an overpowering sleepiness that she had to struggle against. Amelia arrived with the newspaper, took out the milk bottles, served coffee, raised the blinds. Alberto had gone out. When he returned, he asked about their mother. Hebe said:
“She’s asleep. She had to have another shot.”
Alberto asked the women to stay in their rooms until the wake could be prepared in the living room. An hour — perhaps two — later he said:
“It’s all right now.”
Berta wanted to forget. She wanted to erase the memory of a day and a night and half of the next day, to forget her home full of people, full of flowers, then with only a few persons who spoke in muted voices. She wanted to forget Hebe rejecting the attentions of Horacio, her fiancé, to forget how Hebe, taking her by the arm, led her into the kitchen and there, amidst cups holding the remains of coffee, astonished her by saying:
“Do you remember Enrique Arenal? You must. Of course, you were very young then — twelve or thirteen. He was that boy who lived next door on Serrano Street. I’d like him to be here now.”
What had gotten into Hebe? Was it possible that on a night like this she could be thinking of a man so removed from everything? No doubt it was she who had asked him to come. Enrique Arenal must have been the stranger at the wake who had spoken but a few words with Alberto. How changed Hebe seems! It will be better if she breaks up with Horacio. Why go on with something that would end up making them both unhappy? But it’s all too soon, she thought. Papa liked Horacio. Ending the engagement with him would be like betraying Papa.
Hebe has returned with the empty vase. Berta can wait no longer to ask her not to commit that selfish betrayal.
“Hebe—” she says.
The telephone rings. Like someone snatching a weapon from the hand of a madman, Berta grabs the receiver. Hebe takes it from her firmly, gently.
“I’ll answer it,” she says. “Hello!” She falls silent, turning pale. The words she is hearing seem to bring a throbbing to her cheeks. This accentuates her pallor. Her motionless lips, from which the blood has drained, appear pale even through the glistening red lipstick. Hebe’s gaze falls on Berta, who persists in standing there. With the expression of one who is persuaded after offering great resistance, Hebe concedes:
“Yes, this is Hebe. But of course I recognized you. Your voice is the same. But I can’t believe it. No, I just can’t... No honestly, it makes me happy but very sad at the same time. You’re all right, you say? Well, we’re doing the best we can, considering the terrible thing that has happened. A trip? You’re trying to make me feel better. A trip is different. A trip promises a return. No, I just can’t accept it. Poor Mama... She’s sleeping.”
Hebe lowers her voice. Berta turns to reassure herself that the house is immersed in silence.
“Yes, a lot of drugs to make her sleep. Before that, early in the morning, she acted as if she didn’t understand that something frightful had happened to us all. Anyone would have thought that she wasn’t suffering in the least. Closer to us, do you say? I can’t hear you very well. Yes, I know it’s not the noise. Just the opposite. Your words sound fuzzy. Hello! Hello! There, now I can hear you. How can you say that? Why wouldn’t I forgive you? No, I’m the helpless one, who can’t find the words to tell you what I want to say... But the only thing I want to know is that you are happy, content... There’s a noise now. What is it? Trains? You’re talking from a station. Are you alone? Oh dear, poor thing... Berta’s here, beside me. I’ll tell her. Yes, in those words. No, Alberto has gone out. Something he had to do. Urgent, he said. No, we’re not alone. Aunt Carmen is here, too. She’ll stay with us and spend the night. The Oddone sisters just left a moment ago. Do you remember them? They used to live around the comer on Serrano Street. Maria looks very old, but she’s still the same, the way she used to be. But you should see Elisa. A pound of makeup on her face, like a clown... But how can I be talking about these things now? On a day like this. No, I’m not crying. What makes you think I am? You think that’s funny, don’t you? You think I’m crying and looking ugly the way I did when I was a little girl. But you...”
Hebe is weeping now. The tears roll down her cheeks, forming two glistening streaks.
“I just can’t bring myself to say that word. Afraid, you say? But I always loved you. I love you now. No, what can I expect to find in Horacio? He probably doesn’t realize that he means nothing to me now. I could lean on a chair, on a wall, on anything but him. You have to go? Please don’t, not yet. Don’t leave me alone.” Alone because Hebe cannot see her sister, who is regarding her with surprise, with pity, with scorn. “I have so many things to say to you still. No, it’s not the same. It’s not the same that you already know it. I have to say them to you. Hello! Hello! Can you hear me? It’s terrible, those trains again. What do you care if that man is coming down the platform for you? Be calm. Don’t worry about that. I’m strong and I won’t. What? Not ever again?” She cries out as if she had been struck. “Never again?”
“Hebe, are you out of your mind?” Berta says to her. “Give me the phone. That’s enough!” But she withdraws her gesture when she sees that her sister is smiling, when she sees in her eyes the expression of a tenderness that she does not understand.
“That’s all? Just good night?” says Hebe. “Yes, rest. Rest peacefully.”
She replaces the telephone receiver, but without releasing it. Then her hand opens slowly in the movement of a strange and beautiful creature. Berta is standing there. Hebe sees her once more. Hebe says:
“It was Papa.”
— translated by Donald A. Yates
Satan and the Printer
by Tom Tolnay
A new short story by Tom Tolnay
Another story in honor of Halloween comes to us from small press publisher and printer Tom Tolnay, who reflects here on a potential hazard of his trade. Letterpress printing has become an art kept alive by only a smattering of publishers in the United States and Europe, but it was of course the primary means of printing in the 1830s, when this story takes place...
❖
The printer arrived at daybreak, lifted the iron door latch, and let himself inside. His face was wan, his eyes shot with red. In the faint, frosted light he hung his jerkin on a wooden peg, then wrapped his apron around him. A tug secured the leather visor over his head, which was covered with wiry, rust-colored hair. Motionless as he estimated the number of rough-edged sheets on the shelf, he became part of the stillness around him, nothing more, it seemed to him, than an inanimate implement of his trade.
Since winter had not fully seized the village, and since he was expecting more manus
cript to be brought to him that morning, he decided not to take the time to lay a fire in the stone chimney. He moved sluggishly to the far wall, climbed onto a long-legged stool, and lit the oil lamp. A greenish light hesitated over the work counter before sketching a pale halo, quivering, on the ceiling. He cupped his hands around the glass globe of the lamp. Soon his fingers became warm enough to handle the tiny bits of type without fear of dropping them.
At arm’s length were two galleys of type. Though made up of hundreds of separate elements, they looked like solid rectangles of lead. His hand brushed over the closest galley, pushing down several letters which had worked up higher than the rest. From this evenness he’d often derived a sense of order that helped prepare him for the start of a long workday, but this morning his heart felt as if it were filled with a fistful of the weighty type.
Four months earlier, after a brief courtship, the printer had taken a wife. It was during the time he’d come into his own as a printer, after years of apprenticeship, when he was commissioned to set in type and print stories by a brooding, reclusive author who lived not far from his shop. As soon as the couple had carried their belongings into the white cottage on the leaf-strewn lane, it seemed to the printer that his bride began to behave strangely, often unaware of what went on around her, absorbed in her own thoughts. The groom had become increasingly uneasy, yet he cherished his wife above all else, and desired to reach across the dark gap that seemed to lie between them like a freshly dug grave.
The previous night the printer’s wife had moaned repeatedly in her sleep, and once had even cried out, startling him. A wave of protectiveness had carried over him as he lay beside her under the broad quilt, which had been pieced together as a wedding gift by the patient hands of his mother. But the printer slept very little the rest of the night. His father, with whom he’d served his apprenticeship, slept more peacefully on his hill at the foot of a round-shouldered granite marker.