by Jesse Ball
—CAN I, the water.
The examiner sat quietly looking at the claimant. She said nothing.
—Can you give me the water?
His words were clear and distinct.
She picked up the pitcher of water with both hands and gravely presented it to him.
—Here you are, she said.
—Thank you, said the claimant.
The examiner nodded and went back to what she had been doing as if nothing remarkable at all had just happened.
SHE DID NOT begin to speak to him until two days had passed. Until then, she would answer him when he spoke, and speak to confirm the sense of what he had done.
But, when she began, she spoke with full diction and clarity.
—I am the examiner, she said. It is my purpose to help you. I have no purpose but that. I live here in this house. This house is the place where you live. We live in this house together. We are together in completing something. The thing that we are completing is your recovery. You were very sick. You were totally incapacitated by an illness. You almost died. When you were on the point of death, you were rescued, and now you are being brought back to health. There is every reason to have real optimism about your chances. I feel certain that things will go well for you, and though you do not know what lies ahead, you may rely on me.
—Where…
He swallowed.
—Where are we?
—We are in the house where we live. Where else would we be? How could it be possible to be anywhere else but where we are? How silly.
—How do you know me?
—I am the person who knows you. I am the only one. And you, you know me. We create a world through that, through knowing one another. You need not worry yourself about that. We have this house that we live in, and in it we do the things we need to do to live. We cook and eat, we clean ourselves, we practice our tasks. You will have many tasks to learn and do.
—I feel, I feel very sad.
—It isn’t sadness that you feel. Sadness is a feeling of loss. There is something one wanted, and one doesn’t have it—or there is a way one wanted things to be, and things aren’t that way. That is sadness. Instead, you feel rootlessness. You have not attached yourself to the things around you. By doing so, you will find that your happiness can grow.
She led him over to a wall.
—Let us begin here. What do you see?
—Two, two…
—Pictures. They are called pictures. But you knew that. You know many words. They will return to you soon enough. Let us try—what is the top one called? What sort of picture is it?
—A painting.
—That’s right. And the bottom one?
—A picture.
—It is a picture, but what sort?
—A photograph.
—That’s right. Tell me about these pictures.
The man looked at the pictures for a very long time. After he had done so, he went and sat back down in the dining room with his head in his hands. The old woman followed him and sat beside him, with one hand on his shoulder. The rest of the day, they spoke very little, and whenever he looked up, her eyes were there, hard upon his, full of reassurance and strength.
THE NEXT DAY, she led him back to that wall.
—Tell me about these pictures, she said.
He looked at them and looked at them. Then he went into the dining room. There was a pad of paper there, and a pen. The old woman had left it there, in the middle of the table, and said nothing about it.
The man took the pad and began to draw. He drew and drew. An hour passed. He looked up. He had done a very rudimentary drawing of a farmhand feeding some chickens. With some difficulty one could perceive that that is what it was.
The old woman came over.
—Very good, she said, very good. I think…
She went into the kitchen and then came again and stood by him.
—In fact, I am sure of it. I like yours more. Sometimes sketches of things are to be preferred to paintings. I find that I often prefer artists’ sketchbooks. Such books are like this—
She drew a notebook from the wall, a loose leather fold with blank paper stitched into it. A pencil was tied to a string that hung from the side.
—You can have this one, she said. Draw in it as much as you like.
He took the book under his arm and sat intently in the chair, looking at nothing insomuch as he was looking at anything.
ONE DAY, the claimant began to write things down. He wrote things on the paper in between his drawings. The writing was not involved. He would write, This is a drawing, or, This is an idea for a drawing, or, A dog, or, The third one like this. Whenever he used the paper, he tore it out of the notebook and put it in a pile. The examiner never read any of his writing while he was awake, but in the night, she went through the pile of his drawings, very slowly and meticulously, missing nothing.
From these drawings, she learned many things. For instance, he had been in a gentlest village before. This did not surprise her in the slightest.
I wonder, she thought, which of my fellow examiners dealt with him?
Of course, she did not know all of the examiners. In fact, she knew but a tiny sliver of the total number. And if the news was to be believed, the Process of Villages was growing all the time. Soon, it would be everywhere.
She sat at the table, turning over the drawings one at a time. There was a drawing of a tower, and of a bird. These were imitations from children’s books she had shown him. In her mind’s eye she could see the originals.
But here was one she had not seen. It was a drawing of a room, and in the room there was a bed. It looked almost like a coffin. A woman lay in it, with her eyes shut and her hands folded. He had crossed out the woman repeatedly, but she could still be made out.
The old woman flipped through the sheets from the previous day. Another—the same image, with the woman crossed out. Another, and another, and another. He had been drawing all afternoon. All afternoon, he had drawn this same scene and crossed it out. There was no text with any of these.
She put the drawings back exactly where they had been and went upstairs to write her report.
—SOMETIMES I WILL TELL YOU STORIES, said the examiner. They may be full of things that you do not understand. That is not important. It isn’t important that you understand what I say. What’s important is that you behave as a human being should when someone is telling a story. So, listen properly, make noises at appropriate times, and enjoy the fact that I am speaking to you. If it is your turn to tell a story, remember that it is not very important that you are understood as long as you give the person the happiness of being told a story, and of being near you while listening to a story. Much of the speech we do is largely meaningless and is just meant to communicate and validate small emotional contracts. Are you ready?
The claimant waited to see if she was done talking and then he nodded slowly.
—We shall go for a walk and during the walk I will suddenly begin a story. Will you know how to act?
—We shall go for a walk, she repeated. During the walk, I will suddenly begin a story. Will you know how to act?
—WHEN I WAS A YOUNG WOMAN, she said to the claimant, I lived a very wild life.
He sat beside her in the square at the center of the town. There was a carousel, and they sat on its edge, leaning on the poles from which rose the horses, the carriages, the leaping fish.
—Oh, I could tell you, she said, a story or two from that time. I had an old uncle who had fought in a war. Did we speak about that? People killing each other for land or money? Yes? War. Anyway, this was before the republic, so there were still wars. He said he and his fellow soldiers were set to guard a road. So, that is—anyone who came down the road was to be killed. They had tools, guns, with which to do it. Well, there was a general who was trying to escape the province. Apparently he had been hemmed in, and was surrounded. They were intent on capturing him. Anyway, they were sitting there at the c
rossroads, and it was a hot day, and they were feeling a bit sleepy, and a man comes down the road out of the distance, a fiddler, playing away as he walks. He comes right up to them, a real ragamuffin, and plays for them awhile. Then off he goes on up the road. Thing is—the next day, the orders come down for the general’s capture, and they include a picture of him. Guess what?
The old woman slapped her leg.
—The fiddler was the general. He had put on some old clothes and used a musical talent everyone had forgotten he had. Thing is—my uncle and his fellow soldiers were petrified. They figured the news of his escape would come out and they’d all be court-martialed. But it didn’t happen that way.
—How did it happen?
—How did what happen?
—Things—how did they go?
—Oh, ha, well, no one ever heard of the general again. So, here’s my opinion. I think the general found out that it was a better life being an itinerant fiddler than it was being a general, and I think he didn’t want to go back.
The claimant thought about that for a while.
—Anyway, said the old woman, I always consider that, I always do, whenever I try out a new role, or put on some costume, even if it’s just a new way of thinking about something. There are some doors—when you go through them, they close behind you.
In the square, it was becoming dark. The claimant liked the carousel, and so, he and the examiner would go there every evening. Every afternoon when the sun was by the trees, they would walk down, and they would sit there talking until the lights were on in all the houses and the street lamps were pulsing. Then they would walk back along the street and look into the houses. Sometimes they would see people inside, and they would talk about them, and about how their lives seemed.
The claimant had been surprised to see that there was only ever one person in any given house. None of the people ever went beyond the fence that surrounded each house, and he never saw them speaking or calling out. The examiner said that it was natural. There are people, she said, who require no more than that it rains sometimes.
He asked her if it was like this everywhere. To that, she replied, where is this everywhere? And when he had been quiet for a while, she said, there are many places where people live together with other people. It is to a place like that—it’s to such a place you are headed.
ONE DAY, the examiner came into the claimant’s room as he was turning down the lamp.
—Shall I tell you about tomorrow, she asked.
—Please.
—Tomorrow we will wake. You will wake and I will wake. You will dress and I will dress. We will convene downstairs in the kitchen, and whoever is there first will put the kettle on to boil. We will sit and listen for the kettle, and make tea, and have some small breakfast. Then we will go out on the porch, where a great business will occur. Tomorrow, we shall speak about names.
—Names?
—For now, I will say no more, save this: think as you go off to sleep—why does any thing have any particular name?
—NAMES, SAID THE EXAMINER. Names. What is this?
—A spoon.
—And this?
—A shoe.
—And what of me?
—You are the examiner.
—Is that my name?
The claimant waited.
—What is your name? she asked.
—I don’t have a name.
—You once had a name, she said. When you were sick, you had a name. But that name was forfeited—given up. Now you shall have a new name, but not a real name, a practice name. Do you know why you shall have a practice name? It is because tomorrow we shall go to another village. We are going to live in a new place, and there you will meet people.
She saw his expression change, and altered her tone.
—Oh, don’t worry about that. You are concerned. You have become tied to this house, is that it?
He nodded.
—Well, what if I were to tell you that we have already moved twice in the time that I have known you? What if I were to tell you that this is the third village we have been in—and now we are going to the fourth?
—The third? But…
—In the first village, there was just a house. The first village is just a single house. When we were there, we never left. It is called the gentlest village, because it is a house, and everything that can be seen from that house. The second village was the place from which we walked out one day. You may remember it—you picked a daisy and cried when I told you that you’d killed it. Then we put it in a vase in the kitchen and it lived for a week very beautifully before shriveling to nothing. Do you remember that?
He nodded.
—Well, in that place, you recall, we occasionally saw a person through a window. How is it that things are here?
—We see people through windows, and in the yards.
—That’s so. And do you not see that there are many many more people than there were before?
He nodded.
—Even, once, he said, I spoke to someone.
—You did, she said. You approached one of the gardeners where he was working, and you spoke out loud to him. Do you remember what happened then?
—He didn’t reply.
—No, he didn’t, he couldn’t reply. He was a person who no longer wants to speak. His labor is enough for him. But, listen. In the next village, the people you speak to, they will speak back to you. But, listen, she said again. This is how it will be in the next village: you shall be called Martin Rueger. That is your name. It is not your final name. It is a name for you to wear like a fine new coat. If it is ill suited, or if you spoil it, we shall go to another place and try again with another name. We are testing the waters and learning things. We are learning how you may do with others. Do you see?
—Martin, he said. Martin Rueger. It is a good name. And…
—Yes?
—What is your name?
—For now it will be Emma Moran.
—If someone looks like me, does that mean it is likely their name…
He sat a moment, working the thought out in his head.
—Does it mean their name will be somewhat like mine? Like spoons or knives?
—Each person has a name. The point of it is this—to make it easier to talk about things, especially things that aren’t present. Names are much less important than people think. They aren’t really important at all. You and I get by for instance most of the time without talking at all—isn’t that so?
The claimant nodded.
—But for you, it is a very nice thing now, to receive a name. That’s because it is the occasion of our move to a new village where you will meet other people. The name is a symbol of your progress.
—How will I remember it?
—I will remember it for you—just point to your ear if you want me to use it in a sentence.
3
THE EXAMINER and the claimant were sitting in a room. It was a large room, a sort of town hall. There were some tables with food on them. There was a band set up at one end playing music. There were some couples dancing. On one side of the claimant there was a large fat man who had said a few things out loud to the claimant. The claimant had not said anything back. The man was using suspenders on his pants, and the claimant was having some thought about suspenders, and also trying to stay as near to the wall as possible. The examiner would tap his chair occasionally to remind him that she was there.
In fact, right at that moment, two people were standing in front of them. A man and a woman were standing there. The man was about the same age as the claimant, and the woman was younger. They were both very handsome. The man’s arms and legs were strong and his hair was very full. The woman was very slender and her face had many possibilities. Looking at her, one could imagine many scenes.
These people had been standing there some time. The examiner was speaking to them.
At some point, the claimant realized that they had been addressing him. Many of the question
s had been directed at him. The conversation had been going on for some time, and he had been failing to be a part of it.
At that moment, the old woman tapped his chair and the conversation began again from the beginning.
—Hello, said the claimant.
—Martin, said the young woman, I believe we met before, the other day in the market? Do you remember my name?
The claimant looked at her.
—It’s Hilda. Hilda.
She repeated it and her tongue leapt off the a of Hilda in a pleasing sort of way.
—Hilda, he said.
—That’s right. And this is Martin, my husband.
The claimant looked at Martin in confusion.
—Yes, said Martin, we have the same name. Sort of a coincidence, I’d say.
He reached out and shook the claimant’s hand. This shaking of hands was strange but pleasant. When the man had taken his hand back, Martin reached out and took it again to shake it some more. He shook it a bit and everyone laughed.
—You see, said Hilda, it made it easy for me to remember your name. All I have to do is remember, Martin, and I have two places to use it. I can use it for you, she said, indicating the claimant, and for you, smiling at the man.
—But there are so few Hildas, said her husband. I don’t get much use out of your name.
—Stop it, you! she said.
She kissed her husband on the cheek.
The claimant looked away in embarrassment.
Then the examiner was tapping his chair. He looked up.
Martin repeated the question he had been asking.
—Do you like fishing?
—I don’t know.
—Doesn’t know if he likes fishing, well. Well. If you do, or if you want to find out—you can come along. I go out most weekends, early in the day—just in a rowboat on the lake. You’re welcome to come, be assured. Twenty-three Juniper Lane. Just knock on the door some day, Martin Rueger, and tell us you’d like to go fishing.
The claimant felt he was still looking at them. He was thinking about the conversation and what he would say next, but then he looked up and he realized they had gone. They had been gone for some time.