The Way Through Doors (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jesse Ball

  She picked up the W.F. from out of Claude’s hands and opened it.

  —The true gambler resorts only to gambling when all other avenues have failed. In this he gambles not so much on his own future as on the futures of others. His actions are irrelevant insomuch as his choice is not to include himself but to absent himself from proceedings in order to lend clarity to the parade of events.

  Claude nodded.

  —I have a machine at home that my parents bought for me, she said. It is a combination of sound, smell, and touch that is supposed to simulate the act of sight. I have never used it, though. I wonder if it works.

  —Was it expensive? asked Sif.

  —Very, said Claude. It costs the same amount as an expensive college education.

  —Your parents must have been hopeful that you would use it, said Sif, if it cost that much.

  —No, said Claude. The point is that, now that I have that device, if I want to see, I can. It changes my blindness from an undismissable fact and makes it a sort of choice. Like the gambler. You know?

  —Oh, yeah, said Sif. I guess so. Do you think I could try that thing out sometime?

  —What are you talking about? said Claude. I was lying. There’s no device like that. You couldn’t tell I was lying?

  She smirked and caught up one of Sif’s hands in her own.

  —I’m glad you came by, she said. I have to get back to work, but I will stop by your table in an official capacity several times, and then return to speak to you privately again before the end.

  —Okay, said Sif.

  —By the way, said Claude, that book is pretty swell. It into my face presseth with bold pretense.

  —Thanks, said Sif. I like it too.

  Claude jumped up onto her feet, replaced the chair at its table nearby, tied on her apron, spun about, and approached Sif’s table again.

  —Good afternoon, she said. Her face was now entirely composed and businesslike.

  —Hello, said Sif.

  —Have you had a chance to look at the menu? asked the waitress.

  —Yes, said Sif. I would like a Thai iced coffee, and the spicy noodle with chicken. Please make the spicy noodle very spicy. Tell the cook I want it as spicy as he himself would like to have it.

  —Very good, said the waitress. I’ll go put in your order.

  Sif looked down at the book in her hands. She traced the cover with her fingertips and smiled. It was such an awfully nice-looking book. She reached into her bag and took out the policeman’s letter. What a swell boy, she thought. I hope he is put in charge of the whole city one day.

  In her head then, a play began.

  Two actors dressed as birds wore harnessed costumes that allowed them to flutter here and there throughout a high-ceilinged theater. Their voices were very loud and bright and delightful to listen to. In the theater there sat only Sif and Morris the far walker and tree climber. Morris was up front and very engaged. One could see that already he had made up his mind to grow up as fast as possible so that he too could be a bird flying around on a cable in a theater.

  The more brightly plumed bird said something incomprehensible to the dark-plumed bird, and the dark-plumed bird darkened like an evening sky. He took off and flew to the farthest part of the theater. Thus began an aside on the part of the light-plumed bird.

  —There was a woman, he said, whose husband was a gambler. They lived deep in the countryside, deep in a deep countryside, at such a depth that descending into it and returning from it took a very long time. Sadly, there was in this place no possibility of the gambler making a fortune, or continuing a fortune already held, and so periodically he was forced to leave the side of his wife and go off to a nearby city to gamble and procure for them the money that they needed to live.

  And so, the gambler would go away for days on end, and leave his wife alone. At first there was no difficulty in this. She was a bright and clever girl and filled her time walking the woods of their small estate, discovering here and there in the country small things that she would tell the gambler of upon his return. And so for some time his absences did not pain or trouble her, for she acted and felt as though he were beside her, and when she went dancing through a stream on a wild and sunny afternoon with her skirt pulled up above her knees, she felt that he danced there beside her, and she was glad. And indeed when he was returned from any one of his trips, he would be dancing there beside her, and moving about at her side throughout the panoply of glittering incidents that well befitted their life together.

  However, his trips continued to punctuate their life, and when he was away, a difficult thing began to happen. The woman, Ilsa, began to dream of a man in a green coat, a merchant. She dreamed of him while the gambler was away, and she dreamed of him when the gambler returned, and when the gambler went away again, and stayed away a week, the green-coated man rode up the path to Ilsa’s house. From that moment on her life was torn in two. When the gambler was home, she was as she had been, the gambler’s woman. But when he was away, even so far away as in another room, or on some other part of the property, she was the merchant’s woman, and she felt his hands upon her.

  Forever the merchant would be bringing her things, gifts, jewels, dresses, and Ilsa would have to hide them to keep them from the gambler’s sight. She could not get rid of them, however, for the merchant demanded that she wear the dresses when he was present, that she have on display the tokens of his love. In the gambler’s absence she constructed throughout the house secret places for belongings until almost all the walls were riddled with these secrets, with the gifts that the merchant had brought. In her dreams the merchant had been one man, always the same, and he had been that man when he first arrived, riding up the path. However, as time passed, many men seemed to her to be the merchant, and they would come to her as she lay abed, or as she walked through the rooms of her house, or about the edges of her land. When they did she gave of herself freely, and took of them what they would, and it hurt her only when she thought of the gambler and how he loved her. But already the man she had married was changing. He suspected somehow, though he never could have known, the things that she was doing. He would burst in upon her as she was in the midst of sleeping with an unknown man. She would be upon her back, naked and crying out, and the door would burst open, revealing the gambler.

  At which point, strangely enough, as though she were protected by some power, she would be removed already in a moment to the chair by the window, her dress done up and some bit of sewing placed into her lap. The man would be gone, and there would be only the gambler’s rage, and her sudden fear and confusion.

  Events continued, and her husband’s fits of rage grew, until the two parts of her tore wholly the one from the other, and she no longer loved her gambler husband, for he had gone away entirely, replaced by this pale, ruinous man who himself had been ruined by the fates he had once held so easily in his hand. It was at this time that she fled their home, leaving in the company of a girl she had met upon the road, a strange girl who told her a story that made her heart light for a moment.

  It was the first time in what seemed like years that Ilsa’s heart had been light, and so she treasured the girl and took seriously all that she said. The girl said,

  —Come with me to the inn in Som. There are few places left where you may be safe. But that is one.

  And she wept and said to the girl that she was terrified, and no longer understood herself or even such facts as the brevity of life (for to her life now seemed stretched and distended, a creature that would linger and linger on long past all sufferance). To which the girl said:

  —Nonsense, Ilsa. Nonsense, or the truth. It is no matter. Come along. We have no need even of your things. There are things enough where we are going.

  And they fled together down the road.

  When they arrived at the inn in Som there was a tall black-bearded man awaiting them, and he told them to go upstairs to a certain room, and they knew that beneath his hand they would be she
ltered from the green dream of the merchant that had so twisted her life.

  —Go upstairs, said he, and I will attend to the rest.

  Ilsa began up the stairs, and the girl along with her, but the bearded man called out,

  —Mora, stay a moment. I would speak with you.

  She came back down the steps to hear what he would say.

  —You have gone very far from yourself, wandering in these dissipate geographies.

  —I cannot tell one hand from the other, said Mora. I do not remember who I am, but only what I must do.

  —That is as it should be, said the bearded man. But you shall learn more of yourself in time. Someone is looking for you, even now.

  —If he should come here, said Mora, do not admit him until he has come thrice, and by three different paths. No matter what he brings me, or how hard has been his passage.

  —This was my thought too, said the bearded man, and you have shared in it. It will be so. The tale is never forward, but always round-about. Your young man must crowd the avenues in his search, and learn to cut doors through pages, through thoughts and guesses.

  Mora’s face was sad, for she was afraid that he would never come, but she mounted the stairs then and went to the comfort of the gambler’s wife, and the bearded man returned to the common room. A large dog was walking about on hind legs and playing the fiddle. The bearded man began to laugh.

  —None of your business, now, he said. You of all present since the beginning shall not be allowed upstairs.

  —Then tell me some news, said the dog, playing a neat little jig, and giving a good show with his feet.

  —News, asked the bearded man, of what?

  —Of the search for Mora, said the dog. I was listening while you spoke to her upon the stairs.

  —The search for Mora…murmured the black-bearded man to himself. I do not have news to tell.

  Just at that moment, a young man burst through the door, brandishing a bat. He was wearing a very finely tailored gray-blue suit.

  —Where is she! he snarled.

  —That’s the spirit, said the dog, and played a long wailing note on his fiddle.

  —Enough of that, said the black-bearded man. Selah Morse! Leave the bat by the door and come sit down. There is much still to be told.

  Selah tossed the bat back the way he had come. It flipped in the air, bounced, righted itself, and settled upright into a corner. Selah did not look back at it.

  —Not bad, said the dog.

  —You can’t go upstairs, you know, the black-bearded man told Selah. She isn’t ready to see you yet. You can’t find her here until you’ve found her somewhere else first.

  At this, the dog jumped up and began to caper about, for he had never before heard the black-bearded man tell a lie.

  —Sit down, said the black-bearded man crossly. We can’t have you capering about all the time. Now, Selah, tell us where you have been.

  Selah leaned back and took a sip of the black-bearded man’s pint of ale, which had been offered him a moment before.

  —I’m afraid, he said, I promised not to speak of it. However, there are others who are not thus bound.

  He called out in Russian, and after a moment another man entered and took his seat beside Selah.

  —This, said Selah, is the guess artist.

  The dog did a pretty bow and sat again. The black-bearded man inclined his head.

  —We are all old friends, he said. Are we not?

  —These two, said the guess artist, have plagued me from the first.

  But he said it in a kind way.

  —What shall I do with this? he asked, taking from his coat the polished skull of a cat.

  Selah picked it up and handed it to the black-bearded man.

  —It is this, he said, that we have brought to barter for our passage upstairs.

  The black-bearded man threw back his head, and his laughter shook the inn. The dog jumped up onto the table, upsetting the drinks, and broke the violin in two over his own knee.

  —Never in my life, he said, have I seen such a perfect passage paid.

  —But it will do no good, said the black-bearded man.

  —Tell them how we came, said Selah to the guess artist.

  —By the forest route, said the guess artist. There was a storm in the caverns, and the sea had taken to wearing petticoats and bartering like a bandit with the ships that sought to pass across. We wanted nothing to do with that sort of trouble.

  —Really tell them how we came, said Selah.

  —But do you know to whom you’re speaking? asked the guess artist.

  —I am aware, said Selah. Nonetheless…

  —Then there should be no need, said the guess artist.

  —And yet, said the dog, we too are limited by events.

  —Then I should say, said the guess artist, that it was a bright and angry morning when the sailmaker looked up in his loft to see the guess artist and municipal inspector making their way towards him in great haste. The municipal inspector was holding a sheet of paper covered in scrawled crayon, and nodding with certainty to the guess artist. It seemed to be some kind of map.

  The sailmaker had been sewing all night, and his hands were large and swollen from the effort of his work. His needles were very sharp and very long, and he stitched stronger and faster and more steadily than any man before or since, yet even he, after his long labor, was tired, and thought now only of his bed, and no longer of the ship that would soon be making its way across the skin of the water, having as its strength only whatever his own will might bestow.

  —Sir, said the municipal inspector. He approached the man as one might some wary animal that moves very rapidly with only death in reply.

  The sailmaker looked them up and down. By this we mean that he did not like what he saw.

  —This reminds me, said he, of a short story called The Arcadist. There was a man, a stone-mason, in that book who never wanted to be disturbed, and yet everyone was always disturbing him, and so in his town he built a sort of zocalo or center, with the most beautiful arcades that anyone had ever seen. Except that they were poisoned. It never said how, but people would go into the arcades and simply be gone. It was something to do with the color of the stone and the hour of day. At least, that’s the sense I got.

  —We are looking for a way to get upstairs, said the municipal inspector. It is widely thought that you are the wisest man who still consents to talk.

  —I do consent, don’t I? said the sailmaker-who-wished-he-were-an-arcadist.

  —Certainly, said the guess artist.

  —Fortunately, said the municipal inspector.

  —If I tell you where to go, then what do I get out of it? asked the sailmaker. I have been sewing this sail all of yesterday through to today. Now you come and ask for more work out of me. You will have to pay dearly.

  To the municipal inspector the sailmaker resembled the hibernating bear of Eskimo legend that tells all the secrets of the world while still in its behusked sleep.

  —I will give you something of equal value, said the municipal inspector. I can be trusted, he said with a curt nod. I am a municipal inspector.

  —Are you now? asked the sailmaker with a disbelieving look. I thought there was only one. An older man.

  —Once there was only Levkin, said the guess artist. Now there is Levkin and also M. Selah Morse.

  —Oh, you are Selah Morse, said the sailmaker. I have heard of you. You get around.

  At that moment everyone turned and looked out an enormous window that stood just to their left. Something huge was moving rapidly across the sky. It was an old Victorian house, shuttling in and out of the clouds.

  —It was true, then, said the municipal inspector.

  —It is all true, said the guess artist and the sailmaker, each to himself. None of them heard the others.

  After a minute, the Victorian house had gone so far west that it was no longer visible. The sailmaker spoke.

  —If you want to g
et upstairs it is very difficult, but not entirely impossible. You have to go first, here in our city, to the tallest building.

  —The Empire State Building? asked the guess artist.

  —No, said the sailmaker. This is another building, much taller than that. It has long been the tallest, but no one has ever known it, because it is in a very deep hole.

  —Oh, said the municipal inspector. How nice.

  —It is under the Manhattan Bridge, continued the sailmaker. No. Six Quince Street. A man will be sitting outside. Say virtually anything to him in Cantonese and he will let you by.

  —I don’t speak Cantonese, said Selah to the guess artist. Do you?

  —No, said the guess artist, but if he is saying something to himself in his head, then I can guess it.

  Both men nodded to each other. They turned back to the sailmaker, who was still paused, needle in hand. It was a very long, very thick, and very sharp needle. The sort of needle that might be used to sew your heart shut with rope. Then the thought, What would they pay him? To this end, the municipal inspector spoke.

  —I have in mind your payment.

  —And a good thing too, said the sailmaker. Excuse me.

  He went into a little room behind a wall. For five minutes he was gone, and all that could be heard was the distinct clacking of the second hand of a clock upon the wall. Selah was deep in thought. The guess artist was attempting to figure out what Selah intended to do as payment.

  —You are intending, he said, to leave me here as the sailmaker’s indentured servant. I would live for five years and then die of tar poisoning, because the sailmaker’s sails are poisonous and kill everyone who stays too long at their side.

  —The sails aren’t poisonous, said Selah. He only wants them to be. And no, you’re too important in helping me to search for me to leave you here as someone’s indentured servant. Besides, this poor man just wants to be alone. And you can’t even make a decent pot of tea. Who wants an indentured servant who can’t make a pot of tea? And furthermore, only struggling families in old books sell their children as indentured servants. The proper documents for such a transaction don’t even exist anymore. And you know as well as I that such men as the sailmaker and myself only do things the proper way.