The Way Through Doors (Vintage Contemporaries)

by Jesse Ball

  —That was definitely some other girl! How awful.

  —Oh, said the pamphleteer. I thought that was you.

  —No, said Sif. We met at that party, the one given by that photographer who leaves cadavers in public places and photographs the neighborhood on time lapse to see how the patterns of movement change.

  —Cors Vanderwall, said the pamphleteer. That sick bastard.

  —Yes, him. I had met him while hang gliding on Maui. He has a house there.

  —I’m sure he does, said the pamphleteer crossly. He’s had no end of good luck.

  —Anyway, you had met him somewhere, and so we were both at the party. I was out on the terrace smoking a cigarette. Someone inside had started a discussion about the death penalty. Apparently Cors had managed to get the body of a fellow who had been killed by lethal injection in Texas, and he was intending to put the body on the ground either in Times Square or in Astor Place. He hadn’t decided which would be better. The whole thing made me feel sick to my stomach, so I went out to the terrace. You were sitting there, writing in your notebook.

  —The World’s Fair Shorthand, said the pamphleteer proudly. I had just begun it. As a child, they could not keep me from wells.

  —As a child, they could not keep me from wells, eh? said Sif. I read that one too. It’s the last one in that little Irish book.

  —But which book, and which Irishman? asked the pamphleteer.

  Sif shook her head.

  —It doesn’t matter. The words are more important than their author. Anyway, it was then that I asked you to read me what you had been writing, and you told me the most peculiar story about a goat.

  —Oh, my God, said the pamphleteer. I totally forgot about the goat.

  —Do you mean to say, asked Sif, that you didn’t put the goat in?

  —Not yet, said the pamphleteer. But there’s still time. That was the goat that could do puzzles, right?

  —Yes, said Sif. I believe it could also crochet.

  A woman came into the room. She was very tall and wearing a long leather apron. At her side was a large cleaver, hanging from a loop on the apron.

  —Hello, she said. You pay first. One hundred dollars each.

  —A hundred dollars? said the pamphleteer to Sif. Really?

  —Yes, she said. This is a nice place.

  Sif untied a scarf that was wrapped tightly about the smooth upper reaches of her arm and took two hundred dollars out.

  —You can pay next time, she said.

  The woman accepted the two hundred dollars and tucked it behind her ear. She unhooked the cleaver, raised it up in the air, made a loud shouting noise, and slammed it down into the center of the table.

  The pamphleteer and Sif leaped back in their chairs. The cleaver had sunk at least two inches into the tabletop. Now they noticed that upon the tabletop there were many such marks.

  —The meal begins, said the woman in a quiet voice that had only ever been used just after slamming cleavers into wooden tables.

  She left the room and returned a moment later with a beautiful bottle of wine.

  —Chez Margot, she said, and poured them each a glass.

  The pamphleteer tasted it.

  —Lovely, he said. Just lovely.

  The woman disappeared again and returned, this time with figs that had been stuffed with goat cheese and baked while wrapped in thin strips of moist lamb.

  —Not bad, said Sif.

  She took a bite and leaned back in her chair with a happy, distracted look on her face.

  —Did you hear the latest bit of that business with Mora Klein? she asked the pamphleteer.

  —No, he said. Who’s Mora Klein?

  —The artist, Sif said. You know, she does that drawing, like this.

  —I think I’ve seen that before, said the pamphleteer.

  —Yes, well, anyway, said Sif. It turns out that children who are shown this drawing at an early age, and forced to look at it for long periods of time, say by having it on the walls of a nursery, have had their brains develop differently in such a way that they are able, at the age of five or six, to do complicated math and logic problems in their heads. The only strange thing is that they can’t explain how they know the answers; they just know them. Somehow the relationships between numbers make more sense to these children than they do even to the best mathematicians. Scientists who have studied the drawing say that it has to do with the precise angles involved. Facsimiles and copies of Mora’s drawing are not similar enough to the originals to achieve this effect. Only the originals accomplish it. Thus parents have begun to bring their children every day to the Metropolitan Museum to stare at the drawings for a while. The place has been mobbed. There’s been talk of creating a special viewing room. The price of her drawings has shot through the roof. They were already expensive. Now they simply can’t be bought unless you have more money than a bank.

  —Good Lord, said the pamphleteer. What does she have to say about it?

  —She won’t talk to the press. She lives now somewhere downtown in New York City and tries to have an ordinary life, but it’s difficult. Apparently international aid organizations are contacting her, trying to get her to start producing her drawings again, this time for charity.

  —So, said the pamphleteer, the kids who were looking at these drawings while they were growing up can just take numbers and combine them in crazy ways?

  —Yes, said Sif. Although, it doesn’t seem like it will be useful to our mathematics. The kids don’t seem very interested in math. They all think it’s too easy. None of them want to go into it because they don’t understand the way we do math in the first place. They started in a different way, and the ways can’t be combined.

  The woman arrived again in the room, this time with a clay case in which had been baked an entire lamb.

  —This is koucha, said Sif, getting her fork and knife ready.

  The woman returned a moment later with couscous, a little cake, something that looked like ratatouille, and a soup.

  —That’s chakchouka, bouza, brik, and chorba, said Sif, who was obviously very pleased with herself.

  The woman, who now lingered at the room’s edge, also seemed pleased at Sif’s knowledge of Tunisian cuisine.

  —Anyway, said Sif, we were talking on the balcony, the first time we met, and then we left together and went to a different party, the one on the rented subway car.

  —That one, said the pamphleteer. That one I do remember. We rode on the roof when it went over the Williamsburg Bridge.

  —Yeah, that was fun, said Sif. But we got awfully dirty. They don’t clean the roofs really enough, at least not enough to make it a clean business to ride on top of the subway cars. Anyway, I told you that I wanted to show you my place. We got off somewhere and took a taxi. After a while we got back to my place. We had just gotten through the door, and then you said to me:

  —Let’s pretend that we’ve never met before. I just invented a criminal organization that can have two members. I think you should join it. I’ll go back outside, knock twice, then four times, then once. That’ll be the signal for you to whistle. You whistle once. Then I’ll knock once. Then you let me in. I’ll come in, and pretend that we have never kissed before. I’ll touch your face with my hand and run my finger along your cheek. Then you kiss me. Then we talk about what crime we are going to pull off.

  —All right, said the then-Sif.

  And so you went back out the door. I shut it after you and waited. After about five minutes you knocked twice. I waited. You knocked four times. I waited. You knocked once. I tried to whistle, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t; I don’t know why. So I ran to the stove and I put just a small amount of water on to boil. I’m sure you were waiting in the hall, wondering what was going on. Anyway, finally, the water began to boil. I was jumping out of my skin waiting for it. It let out this shrill, shrill whistle. You knocked once more, and I threw open the door.

  Then you came in, looking at me in this funny, I-ha
ve-never-seen-you-before sort of way. I smiled. You reached out and touched my face, and then I came closer to you. I came closer and then closer still and started to kiss you. Your hands moved around me, and I felt bathed in the odd sort of light that I had always hoped would accompany my life. Afterwards we lay out on the roof on blankets and talked of what crimes we would commit.

  —I think, said the pamphleteer, that you’re thinking of a different guy. I’m not that clever.

  —I know who I’m thinking of, said Sif, taking a sip of her wine.

  A little turtle had come into the room. It rubbed up against the pamphleteer’s leg. Somehow there was no longer anything on the table. It had happened, as it sometimes does in good restaurants, that the waiter was able to remove everything from the table without anyone noticing. The pamphleteer lifted the turtle up onto the table. There was a note tied to its leg. He took the note and opened it. The note said,

  Without pause then, the municipal inspector returned to the Seventh Ministry. The streets were loud with winter, that is, loud with the winter sort of quiet that the snow brings. Amidst it, the municipal inspector hurried. He wore over his customary gray-blue suit an overcoat as well as gloves and the sort of hat that a fighter pilot would wear when not in his plane.

  He crossed the small park that adjoined the Seventh Ministry. No one had shoveled the walkway.

  He said to himself then, Either no one is there, which has never happened, or all this snow has fallen since they arrived. Or, he added, they arrived by a different route.

  He opened the door and entered. Rita was sitting behind her desk wearing a strapless thin wool dress with a pair of wool mittens tied together and thrown over her shoulder, one in front, one behind. Her hair was up in a French braid, and she was in the midst of writing out a message.

  —You! she said. You were supposed to meet me yesterday for tea at the Covenant Café in the old subway station. What happened?

  —I’m sorry, said Selah. I was imprisoned in a Victorian house by a cruel man named Patrick and his crueler wife, a woman named Caroline.

  —I don’t believe that at all, said Rita the message-girl. If so, how did you get out?

  —I don’t remember, said Selah. The circumstances are unclear.

  —Ah, said Rita. What if I were to say, The circumstances are unclear; I don’t know what happened to your messages? What if I was to say, the circumstances are unclear, I don’t know what happened to the person who is upstairs waiting in your office? He has been here so long that I had to bring him four cups of tea and four petit fours.

  —You’re a darling, said Selah. I will make it up to you. You remember that Darger original I stole from that Wall Street office? I’ll give it to you. It has the little girls all rolled up in carpets.

  Rita’s eyes flashed with sudden delighted avarice.

  —Really? You will?

  —It’s yours, said Selah.

  After all, he thought to himself, I have three others, and it’s not fair for one person to have that much of a good thing. Not fair at all. I wonder what would happen, he thought, if a child stared at Darger artwork the entire time he was growing up. Would he be able to do a strange mathematics that no one had ever conceived? Or would he just become very good at helping little girls who were engaged in child-slave rebellions?

  —Upstairs, you say? asked Selah.

  —Yes, he’s upstairs, she continued.

  Selah hurried down the hall, climbed up the ladder, and passed through his own fine door into his glorious, comfortable, lovely office, a place he delighted in and was always happy to return to. Seated upon a leather sofa in the center of the room and staring calmly out the window at the falling snow sat Selah’s uncle. He was holding in his hand a copy of a book. On the cover it said:

  WF 7 J 1978

  —Have you read it? cried out Selah suddenly.

  —I have, my young man, said his uncle, standing and giving to Selah a resounding hug, the sort of hug that can be given only in winter when one is wearing a great quantity of clothing.

  —And? asked Selah. Did you like it?

  —My boy, said Selah’s uncle, it is a very fine piece of work, very fine indeed. Nothing like those first stumbling attempts that I heard tell of at the start of your career.

  His uncle flipped through the WORLD’S FAIR. It was filled with diagrams, typographical displays of excellence, painted pages, watercolor glimpses of pyramids from 1912, photographs of French villages in the fifteenth century, names of obscure people who had figured prominently in history without any credit. He flipped through its pages slowly and delicately. Selah could tell by the way that his uncle touched the pamphlet that he had for it a large and careful affection. Selah’s heart swelled.

  —I think, said his uncle, that it was the right thing, the very right and proper thing, to install you here. This Rita is a swell gal. Levkin of course is Levkin, and not to be spoken about save in great need. However, we will note in passing his great importance to the life of the city. And the Seventh Ministry itself, why, I had not been down here in some time. You have made quite a comfortable place for yourselves here.

  Just then the intercom on Selah’s desk started to shake. Selah pressed a button.

  —Selah, it’s Levkin. We’ve got something else for you to see.

  —All right, Mars, said Selah. I’ll be down in a jiffy.

  He released the button and turned back to the room.

  —Make that two jiffies, said his uncle. I have one more thing to tell you.

  Selah pressed down the intercom again.

  —Make that two shakes of a cat’s tail, he said. Rather than a jiffy.

  —Noted, said Levkin. Over and out.

  Selah’s uncle had gone over to the window. He pressed his hands up against the cold glass. He could feel the cold of the streets now on his fingers, the cold of this city that was his, he felt, more than any man’s. For it was to some degree this man’s power that infused the city and ran it from day to day, although he was no mayor, and he went unnamed each day down the avenues. In his head he thought, When I was a young boy, out in the lots and playgrounds of my small town, I never dreamed that there would be so many worlds between that day and this.

  Selah took his coat off, hung his hat on a hook, folded his suit coat and settled it over the back of a chair, rolled up first his left sleeve, then his right, leaving his left sleeve less rolled, and joined his uncle by the window.

  —What more? he asked.

  —A dog would lie and tell you that it has not been petted yet on a given day no matter how many times you were to pet it. This is the way with dogs. They want to be petted, to be joined by their master and let live in his radius. What is a lie to a dog? They do not place things in human places. To a dog, whatever brings his master close by is good, and whatever keeps him away is bad. This is how all morals work.

  —I believe as you, said Selah, though I did not know it was your way.

  —Or let us say that a bird decides one day that it can be a man. Well, already it is walking upon two legs. Is it so far for the bird to learn to speak as a man does, to learn to wear clothing, to handle its wings as a man handles his arms, to learn to grasp objects in hands, to come of one’s own accord in and out of human spheres, counting oneself a human being?

  —It is far, said Selah. How far I do not know.

  —Not far, said his uncle. If only you knew the things I know.

  He rested his great head against the wood of the molding. He now seemed not like to Selah’s uncle, or indeed to any uncle, but more like to Aslan, the fabled lion of Narnia. Selah longed to be cast through the air by his soft breath, to be told the certain wonders of a bewondered world by this impeccable, imponderable beast.

  —There are three ways, Selah. Three ways that you can go if you want to find the vanished Mora Klein. You must go by the inn. That is the same, no matter which way you choose. The first way is to go and speak with Levkin. He is the start of the first path. You will gain M
ora more easily, but you will lose someone else forever.

  Selah looked at him wordlessly.

  —The second way is to come with me. I will take you somewhere where there may be a way forward. But that way is uncertain, and may not even exist.

  —And the third way? asked Selah.

  —The third way?

  His uncle looked at him with a puzzled expression.

  —You just said there were three ways. I heard you.

  —I never said that. There are only two ways. But if you thought you heard of a third way…

  His uncle’s face looked like the seventh whisker of a devil-cat intent upon the stalking of its prey.

  —If you heard of a third way, then perhaps you should take it.

  —But that’s the thing, said Selah. I don’t know the third way. I only heard of it from you.

  —Well, I must be going, said Selah’s uncle, who still resembled very much an enormous lion. Are you coming?

  —I don’t think so, said Selah.

  He pulled out his desk chair and sat down in it. His uncle left the room more quietly than Selah would have thought was possible, and Selah was one who took pride in moving quietly.

  Selah looked first at one of his hands and then at the other. Hands, he thought. Ordinary hands. What can I do with them? How can I find Mora Klein? He looked up at the wall. Posted there was a drawing.

  How well he had forecast his own fate. Selah rose and went into the bathroom. The clocks! He had forgotten entirely about the clocks. Selah rushed back into the room and buzzed down to Rita.

  —Yes, she said.

  —Rita, could you come up here for a moment?

  —One minute, she said.

  Selah counted out the minute slowly. On the sixtieth second, the door swung open and Rita waltzed in.

  —Rita, said Selah. I don’t think the clocks are three hours ahead. Why did you tell me they were?

  —Because, said Rita, I like to perplex you. Everyone does. You’re good at not being perplexed, and so everyone wants to ruin your unperplexability.

  —Ah, said Selah. Thank you.