Voices in the Night

by Steven Millhauser

  Half a block away, a long section of sidewalk had been closed off by an orange mesh fence, forcing Levinson to walk on a narrow strip of street bordered by a low wall of concrete blocks. Behind the mesh fence he saw a bucket truck, a few men in lime-green vests and white hard hats, piles of bricks and lumber, a man in a T-shirt and safety goggles standing on the platform of a scissor lift, and an orange safety cone with a small American flag stuck in the hole at the top.

  After another block, Levinson turned left onto West Broad and walked over to one of his favorite spots: a fenced-off construction site on the corner of Maplewood. Here the foundation was being dug for an apartment building with ground-floor retail spaces, on land formerly occupied by the parking lot of a small department store. Through an open door in the wooden fence, Levinson looked down at the reddish earth, at the blue cab and silver drum of a concrete mixer, at piles of mint-green plastic sewer pipes. He watched with pleasure as a yellow backhoe lifted a jawful of earth and debris into the bed of a high-piled dump truck, which immediately started up a dirt slope that led to the street.

  One thing Levinson liked about his adopted town was the way you could follow its daily evolution, chart its changes, pay close attention to every detail, without feeling, as you did in the city, that your head was about to crack open. Sleepy villages held no charm for him. His interest had quickened when the realtor told him about high-tech businesses coming to town, bidding wars being waged for prime locations, fancy condos on the way. The housing market was on the upswing. Lately he’d been noticing even more activity than usual, as shops and restaurants changed hands, apartment complexes sprang up, old buildings came crashing down. Fields of shrubs and weed-clumps sent up clouds of brown dirt under the blades of dozers.

  As Levinson crossed Main and headed back toward his neighborhood, he felt the familiar sensation of downtown trickling away in two blocks of bars and restaurants, and then, as if suddenly, you found yourself in a world of tree-lined streets and two-story houses with shutters and front porches. For a moment it seemed that he’d come to another, quieter town. The impression quickly gave way to a sharper sense of things: a man stood on a ladder slapping paint onto the side of a house, workmen on a roof were laying the rafters of a new dormer, and, in yard after yard, people were planting bushes, trimming trees, scraping paint from window frames, rushing to open doors as deliverymen carried couches, refrigerators, and dining room tables along front walks and up steps.

  When Levinson reached his block, he waved to old Mrs. Breyer, sitting on her wicker settee on the broad front porch. “Nice work,” he said, pointing to the new ceiling, with its glistening walnut stain, and the freshly painted porch posts. She relaxed into one of her wide, girlish smiles, keeping her teeth covered by her lips. Levinson passed a freshly laid driveway that still gave off a smell of tar, stopped to examine a red flagstone walk that only a week ago had been squares of concrete, and, stepping aside to let a neighbor girl in a brilliant pink helmet ride past on her training bike, he climbed his front steps and sank into one of the two cushioned chairs beside the round iron table.

  In the warm shade, Levinson half-closed his eyes. Tomorrow, Sunday, he was flying down to Miami for two weeks to stay with his sister and nephews and visit his mother in assisted living. It would be good to see the family, good to get away for a while. When you liked a place, you liked leaving it so that you could look forward to coming back. It was his town now, his home. Sometimes he wished he’d taken up another line of work, like civil engineering or town planning; he enjoyed thinking about large spaces, about putting things in them, arranging them in significant relations. Levinson felt the muscles of his neck relaxing. As he drifted toward sleep, he was aware of the sounds of his neighborhood: the clatter of skateboard wheels, the zzzroom zzzroom of a chain saw, the dull rumble of a closing garage door, a burst of laughter, and always the chorus of hand mowers and riding mowers, of hedge trimmers and pressure washers, of electric edgers and power pruners, and, beneath or above them all, like the beat at the hidden heart of things, the ring of hammers through the summer air.

  When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find that he was no longer sitting in the shade of his front porch. For some reason he was lying in a bed, in a room with a dark bureau slashed by a stripe of sun. As he stared at the bureau, it seemed to him that it was becoming more familiar, as if, at any moment, he might discover why it was there. Ah, he was in his bedroom—the sun was shining between the shade and the window frame. How had it happened? Levinson tried to remember. The walk along Main, the return to the front porch, the flight to Miami, his mother’s frail hands—of course. He’d returned from Miami and hurled himself into a frantic week of work, staying late at the office and collapsing into bed immediately after dinner. Now it was Saturday; he’d slept later than usual. It was time for his morning routine—breakfast, the lawn, the calls to his sister, his mother, and his brother, Murray, in San Diego, the cleanup of the garage—before the walk into town for his bagel and iced cappuccino. Then dinner with a few friends at eight.

  As Levinson stepped onto his front walk, he noticed with surprise that the Mazowskis’ house, across the street, had grown larger. It stretched out on both sides, almost to the property lines. When he turned right and set off for town, he saw that the house of his neighbors the Sandlers was stucco instead of white shingle. It all must have happened while he was away. Walking along, he was struck by other changes: the Jorgensen house had a second porch above the first, in front of what’s-his-name’s place a tall hedge with a latticed entrance gate had replaced a row of forsythia bushes, and as Levinson gave a wave to Mrs. Breyer, sitting on her porch, he saw, high overhead, a third story, with an octagonal tower at one end.

  On block after block, the houses were escaping their old forms, turning into something new. He passed a half-finished side porch propped up on brick piers; men in hard hats were pacing the blond floorboards. A nearby house had big bay windows and an attached garage that Levinson didn’t recall seeing before. On one corner the sidewalk was closed to pedestrians; beyond a portable chain-link fence, a small white house with a red roof stood entirely enclosed by the studs, beams, and rafters of a much larger house, which was being constructed around it. Levinson tried to imagine what would happen to the original house—would it remain inside, a house within a house?—but his attention was distracted by the neighboring house, a new two-and-a-half-story mansion faced in stone, with a roof garden where a couple sat dining in the shade of an arbor.

  Forcing himself to lower his eyes, because there was only so much you could take in before exhaustion struck you down, Levinson stared at the familiar sidewalk as he climbed the steep street leading to Main. When he reached the corner, he looked up and stopped in bewilderment. A five-story department store with immense display windows rose before him. It stood in the place once occupied by Jimmy’s News Corner, Antique Choices, and the Main Street Marketplace. Next to the new building was a deep courtyard crowded with tables, where people sat drinking dark beer; a sign said GRAND OPENING.

  Everywhere Levinson looked, he saw new shops, new buildings—an ad agency, a Moroccan restaurant, a hair boutique, a gelato parlor. There was even a roofed arcade, with a row of shops stretching back on each side. The old savings bank was still there, with its high front steps and its fluted columns, but it stood two stories taller and was connected to a new building by a walkway enclosed in glass, in a space occupied three weeks earlier by a men’s clothing store and a wine shop; and though City Hall still stood across from the bank, one wall was covered by scaffolding and the front steps were concealed behind a plywood fence, through which he could hear sounds of drilling and smashing.

  As Levinson made his way toward his iced cappuccino, he did his best to take it all in. The Vietnamese restaurant, which three weeks ago had replaced the Chinese takeout, was now a shop specializing in fancy chocolates. The old Vanderheyden Hotel looked like a Renaissance palazzo. The nail salon was a Swedish-furniture store.
And Levinson’s sidewalk café, his Saturday retreat, with its iron railing and fringed umbrellas, the place he had longed for in Miami, was now Louise’s Dress Shoppe, with racks of sale dresses and silk scarves standing outside, under an awning.

  Scarcely had he registered his disappointment when he noticed a new sidewalk café a few stores down, where dark red fabric stretched between iron posts. Soon he was sitting in the shade of a table umbrella, drinking an iced cappuccino and trying to get a grip on things. The changes were stunning, almost impossible to believe, but a lot could happen in three weeks, especially in a town like this. Levinson was all too familiar with the kind of person who deplored change, who swooned over old buildings and spoke vaguely but reverently of earlier times, and though he was startled and a little dizzied by the sight of the new downtown, which made him wonder whether he had fallen asleep on his front porch and was dreaming it all, he looked out at the street with sharp interest, for he was wide awake, drinking his iced cappuccino on a Saturday afternoon in town, and was not one of those people who, whenever the wrecking ball swung against the side of a building, felt that a country or a civilization was coming to an end.

  Invigorated by his rest, Levinson set off on his Saturday stroll along Main, determined to let nothing escape him. He examined the displays in the windows of new stores, observed the redesigned facades of half-familiar buildings. He passed the granite steps and broad glass doors of something called XQuisiCo Enterprises, where he remembered a jeweler’s and a cigar store. At the end of Main he turned onto West Broad and walked to the corner of Maplewood, to see how his construction site was coming along.

  It was no longer there. Along the entire length of Maplewood, on both sides, five-story brick apartment complexes with broad balconies rose above new stores shaded by ornamental pear trees. Levinson tried to recall the earlier street—the wooden fence with the opening, an office supply store, Nagel’s Dry Cleaning—but he became uncertain, maybe he was leaving out a building or two, it wasn’t a street he knew particularly well. He walked along the new Maplewood, checking the shop windows, looking up at a family having lunch on a fourth-floor balcony hung with baskets of flowers; he passed an opening between buildings, which gave a glimpse of a wide courtyard where a clown with painted tears on his white face stood juggling dinner plates in a circle of seated children holding balloons.

  At the next street he turned left toward Main. He had a clear view of the new sidewalk café, with its red-fabric railing; next door, workmen were replacing brick with stone, under a sign that read COMING SOON. He had a confused sense, as he crossed Main Street, that the stores were no longer the same, that everything had changed again, but surely he was mistaken, an effect of overexcitement in the oppressive afternoon heat.

  Tired now, Levinson began to make his way home. When he reached the tree-lined streets at the outskirts of his neighborhood, he realized that he must have made a wrong turn somewhere, for he was passing houses he had never seen before, though some seemed dimly familiar. Maybe it was a street he knew, whose houses had all received new breezeways, gables, porches, add-ons. Or maybe the old houses had all been torn down and replaced with new ones.

  He hadn’t gone far when a row of orange-and-white-striped barrels blocked his way. Beyond the barrels, people stood watching something in a yard. It seemed to Levinson that between two houses with adjoining lawns, a paver fed by a dump truck was laying asphalt on a new street, leaving only narrow strips of grass on both sides. Levinson turned back. He found another street, where he spotted a porch that he thought he recognized, though he could no longer be sure. He turned right, passed a half-finished house with walls wrapped in pink insulation, and came to a line of sawhorses stretching across the road. He turned onto another street. From a porch, someone waved. It was old Mr. Gillon, who lived on Levinson’s street, a block from his house.

  The heat had exhausted Levinson. His temples throbbed; his forearms glistened. Under familiar branches, unknown housefronts shimmered in the sun. A bike helmet lay sideways on a front lawn, like a gaping mouth. Suddenly his house rose up. Levinson climbed onto the porch, gripping the iron rail. He sank into one of the chairs. His head was hot. Across the street, a large backhoe stood on the front lawn, blocking half of the Mazowskis’ house. In the warm shade, Levinson closed his eyes.

  When he opened his eyes, a light rain was falling. Under the dark gray sky, porch lights were on, windows glowed yellow. On the strip of lawn between his sidewalk and the street, a sawhorse sat next to a safety cone. He imagined them coming closer, advancing along his front walk. In the dusky air, the houses across the way reminded him of a childhood trip he’d taken with his parents, to someplace in Arizona or New Mexico. Through the window of his hotel room he had stared out anxiously at the wrong-looking houses, with their strange chimneys, their make-believe doors. Levinson stiffened: the dinner. It was already 7:25. He wouldn’t have time for a shower—just enough time to towel himself down, change his clothes.

  Ten minutes later, when Levinson stepped out his front door, the rain had stopped; a crack of pale sky showed through the somber clouds. The streetlights had come on. On his front lawn he saw a length of gleaming steel pipe. Across the street a wire fence ran along the curb, enclosing the front yard and the backhoe. Three men, dark against the evening sky, stood on the roof of the Mazowskis’ house. On the side of the Sandlers’ house rose a two-story scaffold tower that Levinson hadn’t noticed before. A man in a hard hat stood next to it, with his fists on his hips, looking over at him.

  Levinson backed his car out of the drive and headed down his block in the direction of Main. The restaurant where he was meeting his friends was on the far side of town, out by the new mall.

  At the end of the second block, Levinson’s street was closed off. Men in hard hats stood bent over jackhammers as they tore up the road. Levinson turned right. Halfway down the street a large truck with two safety cones on its front bumper stood in the way. A man with an orange stripe across his jacket was waving him to the right, where a narrow lane ran between backyards. At the end of the lane, Levinson turned onto a street that felt unfamiliar, though it couldn’t have been far from his house. The sun had dropped beneath the rooflines; against the darkening sky, a crane was lowering something onto a roof.

  At the next corner he turned again, but he was no longer certain whether he was heading toward Main or away from it. He passed a large house where a crowd of people were laughing on a wraparound porch. Someone raised a glass, as if to him. In an orange glow of sodium vapor lamps, Levinson kept looking for a street that would lead him to the center of town, but he found himself in an unknown neighborhood, where a stretch of half-built houses gave way to a dark field. Behind a chain-link fence, a tower crane rose up beside an immense frame of steel beams.

  Levinson turned around and headed back. It was 7:55. He came to a street of two-story houses with front porches. It seemed to be his own street, though it was hard to tell. At the end of the block, men with lights in their hats were excavating a front yard. Levinson lowered his window. “How do I get to Main?” he shouted. “That way!” one of the men called, waving him to the left. Levinson turned left; in the light of a flickering streetlamp he saw a half-constructed house with roof trusses in place. In the blackness of the next yard he made out a dim foundation covered by floor joists. The street came to an end; an unpaved path led into what appeared to be a forest. A metal sign leaning against a tree read MEN AT WORK. As Levinson followed the path, branches scraped sharply against the side of his car. The path widened, began to rise; guardrails appeared; he was on a ramp; all at once Levinson found himself on a six-lane highway, where ruby taillights rushed away into the distance. On the other side of the divider, yellow headlights came streaming toward him. Under a blue-black sky, Levinson entered the second lane, passed below a sign with a name and exit number he did not recognize, and rode off into the night.

  RAPUNZEL

  Climbing

  Hand over hand, each foo
t lifting above the other and pressing against the rough stone, his back tense, his neck arched, the braided hair tightening in his fists: the Prince is strong, but it’s no easy task to make his way up the face of the tower. The adventure excites him. He thrives on obstacles, perils, impediments of every kind. He is filled with such exhilaration that he would cry out for joy, except that his teeth are clenched and his lips stretched wide in a grimace of exertion. He remembers his first glimpse of her: the window high above, the dark figure below, the hair coming down like a shower of fire. Now he’s climbing that burning hair, which, in the summer dusk, in the shadows of the high pines and firs, is not golden, as he always remembers it, but the color of a bale of hay in the shade of a stable. There is danger in the climb, since at any moment he might fall and crack his neck, break his back. And even if his hold is sure, a second danger threatens from the forest: the sudden return of the sorceress, who will see him trying to reach the forbidden place. The Prince welcomes danger, exults in it, for it’s danger that makes him feel his life. In the late dusk the tower lies in darkness, but up above, where the sky is still pale, the casement window catches the last light. The Prince thinks: If only it could be this way forever!—the pull in his arms, the thrill of the ascent, the scrape of branches against his neck. An owl calls in the forest. The Prince pauses, slaps at an insect, continues climbing. From his upthrust hip, his sword hangs straight down, as if it has stopped suddenly in the act of falling.