by Jesse Ball
For the first time the guess artist lowered his head sadly, ashamed at the poorness of his guess. Selah felt chastened by his sadness.
—I’m sorry, he said. Perhaps I was a little curt. Your guesses are always either correct or worth listening to, and mostly both.
The guess artist brightened up. Out of the other room then came the sailmaker carrying three little cups brimming with some odd Romanian aperitif.
—Drink up, he said.
They all downed it in one go.
—Here is your payment, said Selah.
He stretched his shoulders, stretched his wrists, and then delivered himself of the following verse as payment in trade.
Birds that talk as men do
and make of their lives a human mess
drown quickly in the shallow pools
I’ll see to when I die.
The sailmaker’s face brightened.
—How awful! he said. How wonderful! How awful! And can I say it to myself often?
—As often as you like, said Selah. It’s yours now. I thought you would like it. I’ve been saving it to say to someone of your macabre persuasion.
—Also, said the guess artist, you can mutter it quietly when someone you don’t want to speak to is near.
—That’s true, said the sailmaker, who had sat down again and begun to stitch once more the massive sail that stretched across the loft floor.
—Until next time, said the guess artist.
—So long, said Selah.
—À bientôt, said the sailmaker, with the careful accent of one who has spent time in a French penal colony.
Outside, the street came right up to the sailmaker’s loft. It had waited the whole time they were inside speaking to him, and now that they were done, it was ready to go along with them someplace else.
—I was once wrong, you know, more often than two times in three, said the guess artist as they walked.
—What was that like? asked Selah.
They passed by a small shop that sold derelict buttons for trousers and coats and also the right to call yourself a milliner or haberdasher. An old man was sitting in a chair in the shopwindow. At first it seemed that he was dead, but then his nose moved slightly.
—Where does one get that sort of authority? asked the guess artist, examining the man in the window.
—Presumably, said Selah, there is some sort of credential process. Involving perhaps the kissing of a royal hand, and being raised up, etc.
They continued.
—In answer to your question, said the guess artist, it was taxing. People are often offended by wrong guesses as to their thoughts. At the moment, the effect of this is bearable. Often I manage to get only one wrong guess prior to the right one. However, when I had to guess five or six times, the customer would many times stalk off or say cruel things. I never liked that.
—Perhaps we should hire a car, said Selah. After all, there isn’t much time.
Just then a car pulled up, an old roadster from the thirties. A woman who looked very much like Sif was driving it.
—Need a lift? she asked.
—Yeah, said Selah. What a neat car!
The woman smiled at him through her enormous driving goggles.
—I’ll sit in the front, said the guess artist.
They got in, and the car zoomed away at an incredible speed.
A moment later it began to rain. It rained very hard, and people began to close their windows. Those caught outside sheltered beneath the eaves of houses or the awnings of shops. The rain clouds made a broad shadow that stood in every direction for quite a ways. Beyond that, the light of the sun could be seen like a curtain. In a nearby square a girl stood, dressed in a short jacket, a long skirt, and espadrilles, with her hair in a braid. She was in the middle of the square when the rain came, and she had not moved, for someone was to meet her there, and he had not come yet, and she worried that if she moved, then perhaps he would not find her, and it was more important to her to be found than it was to be dry.
And so Mora Klein became a very wet and sad girl as the rain continued and no one came for her. The rain continued, and the inhabitants of that square moved around the edges like small furtive animals, attending to their immediate needs. After a while it ceased, but the sky was still dark. An old man made his way out to the middle of the square where Mora stood. He walked on three legs, two of his own and one made of wood. Mora was crying very hard, and her face was perhaps more wet from tears than from the rain shower.
He came up and patted her on the shoulder.
—There, there, he said. I’m sure it’s all right.
—But it isn’t, she said. It isn’t at all. He’s not here, and he should be, and I’ve been waiting for simply hours, and I can’t imagine where he could be, and oh, but it’s useless.
She started to cry again.
The old man took out an extraordinarily beautiful and elegant handkerchief and gave it to her to dry her tears. It was the sort of handkerchief that one might be content to be judged by if it was all that remained of one after one’s death.
Mora didn’t especially look at it, but held it in her hands and used it to cover her face a moment.
—He’s probably been held up somewhere, said the old man. It happens all the time. One wants to be somewhere, but one has first one thing to attend to and then another. Not to mention the fact that it isn’t in the first place easy to get from here to there, even when one knows where here is and where there is. Not presupposing such a knowledge, how can we be surprised when a person fails to get from one location on our broad-domed earth to another? And furthermore, there are opponents, men, women, beasts, objects, streets, buildings, lairs, condescensions, militancies, a hundred ways and means that oppose any kind of successful action, and most especially the sort of special action that would bring a likely young fellow to your side. For he is a likely young fellow, isn’t he?
—The likeliest sort, said Mora, sobbing.
—There was a time, said the old man, when I kept an inn in Som. I had a bird there that would sing to me. It sang very quietly, but sometimes it would sing human songs, and it was those songs that I liked best. Here is one now.
The old man began to sing. His voice was very lovely and obviously a part of something that the world had disposed of in its haste, evidence of a grander, kinder past.
Now as I rode out over London Bridge
On a misty morning early
I overheard a fair pretty maid
A cry for the life of her Geordie
Go bridle to me a milk white steed
Bridle me a pony
I’ll ride down to London town
And I’ll plead for the life of my Geordie
Mora closed her eyes and felt her way in the darkness of her head. It was a song! Such a fine song. She never had been given such a fine song all alone in a square.
For he never stole ox he never stole ass
He never murdered any
He stole sixteen of the King’s wild deer
He sold them in Bohenny
Oh I wish I had you in yonder grove
Where times I have been many
With my broadsword and a pistol too
I’d fight you for the life of me Geordie.
The old man sang for a while, and Mora felt in her head the beginning of a long siege. A wilderness had crept up around a walled town, and the darkness of old woods and far-off places began to grow then, even within sight of where men walked together.
By this she meant in her heart that all the useless things one remembers well just before waking and forgets just after were in fact very important and perhaps all that stood now between herself and oblivion.
A small bird, a sparrow, in no wise capable of the song the old man had been singing, flew down and snagged a hair out of Mora’s braid with its sharp little beak. She opened her eyes in shock and slapped at it with her hand, but it dodged sideways in the air and flew off before she could manage another b
low.
—How fortunate! said the old man. If that had happened to a Roman general, a great victory would have followed.
But even then the bird was flying off over the rooftops. It flew west across the rooftops to the river, and headed south along the river until it came to a place where not one but two bridges cross. It flew down beneath the first, and landed upon a stoop. A Chinese man was sitting in a plastic chair. It landed on his right knee, dropped the hair into his hand, and flew off.
Just then a car sailed out of the right side of the picture and pulled up before the stoop. Two men leaped out and the car whisked away. One was very well dressed in a fine suit. The other wore the simple attire of the sort of person perhaps who researches sin in the depths of the Vatican but is not a priest at all and goes often flower picking in the country by himself, never speaking to anyone he sees there.
—Hello, he said in Cantonese.
—Hello, returned the municipal inspector.
In the man’s head then, the idea of the bird landing on his knee and dropping the hair. This idea only partly in Cantonese and partly in the contusions of the man’s thought.
—(This idea said out loud in just that way by the guess artist.)
The man understood immediately. He held up the hair for them to look at. He gave it to the municipal inspector because he liked his suit very much. The municipal inspector understood and took the hair. He did not understand that it was Mora’s hair. The Cantonese man snatched the hair back when he saw that the municipal inspector was going to put it into his pocket the way it was. Very neatly and rapidly, he fashioned the hair into a tiny sculpture of a rabbit, knotting and reknotting it. The hair had not seemed to be very long or thick until the man did this. When finished, he handed the little hair-rabbit to the municipal inspector, who held it proudly upon the palm of his hand.
—Not bad, said the guess artist.
The man gestured with his hand that if they chose, they might enter the building. This they did. It was an ordinary-enough-looking building, a rather downtrodden three-story affair on a dim street, and above, the westward beginnings of the Manhattan Bridge (which lent a darkness to the whole affair).
Inside, there was a filthy sort of passage that led to either a stair or a hall to the building’s rear. As the stair only went up, and presumably the larger portion of what they hoped for was down, they took the hall. It was lined with doors whose filthiness equaled that of their surroundings.
On then to the back of the hall. At the back of the hall there was a large round trapdoor made of malachite.
The two looked at each other in shock.
—How will we ever lift that? said Selah.
The guess artist reached down and tried to lift it at the edge. It didn’t budge. Both tried then to lift it at the edges. Still nothing.
Selah drew out the map once more.
—It seems we must go downstairs in order to go upstairs, he said. In fact, I drew a staircase and pushed so hard with the crayon that the paper is broken. It doesn’t say anything about a malachite door.
—What if we both jump on it?
They tried that. It made a loud, hollow sound, but nothing happened other than that the noise of their jumping attracted the Chinese man, who came down the hall. He shook his head at them and said something to them in Cantonese. They did not know what he had said, but they got off the malachite plug and stood dutifully patient by the near wall.
He knelt down and pushed on one section of the malachite. The disc spun up then, revealing a ladder on one side leading down. Selah inclined his head to the Chinese man in thanks, and the guess artist bowed. Then down the ladder they went. It is a curious thing about such ladders. One doesn’t know what is at the bottom, but because there is a ladder, one feels comfortable enough to go. Were there simply a craggy cliff face that was perhaps just as easy to climb as a ladder, the whole affair would seem more forbidding. But the fact that a human being has put in place a system for getting up and down in some way pleases, gratifies, and comforts us. Which it shouldn’t, as men are the ones most likely to construct difficult and irrational traps, having as their purpose only to confound us.
—What I like best, said the guess artist, is when at Coney Island on the boardwalk the farthest distances of the sea come up very close and quietly to the edge of the sand to surprise me. HELLO, they say, and I greet them with a small shyness of smiling and inclining of my hand. Also, then the slanting of the light in deference to the occasion and the sudden and impulsive gladness of the bathers. Naturally they are insensible to the reason for this business of the waves and myself and the sunlight. However, effect always supersedes rationale, and they themselves, basking in the junction of the various elements, grow large in the world’s esteem and are therefore suffused with the pleasure that is at the core of the sweetest and most delectable fruit.
Meanwhile, the municipal inspector was examining the door that was at the bottom of the ladder. It was a very ordinary door and had no molding or other ornament to help it put its best foot forward. Only a key-sized lock and a small gap where it met the floor. Not even a knob awaited them there.
—As I see it, he said, either we have the key to the door or we put something underneath it, a message of some sort. Or we knock. Or we break it down.
—I don’t know, said the guess artist. Perhaps if we wait here someone will come and open it.
Instead, the municipal inspector set his hand upon the door and gave it a little push. It swung gently open, revealing a very fine wood-paneled room. Whereas above there were many different rooms, and the narrow hall down which they had walked, as well as a section including the bottom of the stair, here there was only the ladder’s terminus and one broad room beyond the door that took up the entire space.
It was well furnished in a nineteenth-century American style and looked much like the sort of club that a robber baron might have frequented when in search of a cigar, a whiskey, and a good sit.
—Finally, said the guess artist. I’ve been waiting my whole life to find a place as comfortable as this.
He sat down in one of the chairs and let out a great sigh of pleasure.
Selah sat also. At the far end of the room was another door.
—Do we go there next? he said out loud.
—I wonder why he sent us here, said the guess artist.
—What was he thinking when he said it? asked Selah.
—Nothing much, really, said the guess artist. Something about cornfields and mausoleums.
They sat in silence. On the walls were paintings of the American presidents all the way up to Theodore Roosevelt. The quality of the paintings was very high. Just then they could hear the sound of steps. Then the sound of a key in a lock. The far door opened, and a boy stepped through. His name was Morris. He was concerned with the events that were passing and wanted a part in them very badly. Thus, once before, his father had let him out of the tower in which they lived and which they had sworn never to leave. Now, again, the father had dispatched him on an errand of much importance.
—Hello, he said. My name’s Morris. I’m very good at walking far and at climbing trees.
The guess artist and municipal inspector gave the boy encouraging nods. They both felt very strongly that these two occupations as a boy could lead only to a happy and proper future.
—My father said that you should come down to the bottom. It is a very long way and will take you some time. I brought sandwiches and a thermos of coffee that we can have after a few hours’ walk. Then we can walk awhile more, and sleep for the night. If we get up early we should be able to reach the bottom by midday tomorrow.
Disbelief was evident in the faces of the two visitors.
—No, said Morris. It’s true, as you will very well see. We had best begin now. This way, please.
Morris the far walker and tree climber crossed the room and reopened the far door. He passed through it. After him, then, the two comrades. On the opposite side was a sort of cl
oset with another ladder. Morris was already at the ladder’s bottom. They followed him down. This next story was taken up by the beginnings of a huge circular staircase. Selah went to the edge and looked down. Almost immediately he wished that he hadn’t.
—Good Lord, he said. That’s far.
The guess artist also looked down.
—How can that be? he asked.
Hundreds and hundreds of feet below there was some sort of landing. It was too far down to distinguish really what lay there.
—I could tell you, said Morris, but my father has been waiting some time for visitors, and I shouldn’t ruin his fun.
—How can no one know about this? mused the municipal inspector.
To this Morris said nothing.
He began down the stairs. They were broad and carpeted in the middle. The steps had a fine width and were not too steep or too large for easy walking. The banister on the right was a gorgeous mahogany. It was shaped much like a slide.
The municipal inspector’s eye darted to Morris when he saw this.
—Yes, said Morris. You and I are of the same ilk. I have thought often of sliding down, but I have not yet mustered the courage.
The municipal inspector moved slowly to the banister. He looked down. It curved in a great sweeping circle around and around all the way out of sight. The wood was perfectly polished and smooth. He began to lift himself up onto it. Then he thought better and stood again on the stairs.
—It is the same with me, said Morris. But one day…
They began their walk down. The steps were easy to manage, and the carpet had a fine degree of springiness. The guess artist noticed that Morris was not wearing any shoes. He sat down on a step and removed his shoes also. He set them side by side on the stair.
—Is this the only way out? he asked Morris.
—This and a pine box, said Morris.
—How old are you anyway? asked Selah.
—Nine, said Morris. And a half.