by Jesse Ball
—I am going to get some breakfast for us. I will be back in a minute.
—Then we will meet over there, said Mora, pointing to a place on the beach. Let us agree to say when you return with our breakfast that you have been gone a month. This month to come will be my secret month, one of the two months that Eila Amblin slept. For even a girl without a memory should have secrets that she knows. She of all people for whom everything is a secret.
—But how will you live for a month? asked Selah.
He felt the hot morning sun on his face, and it was good. He could feel the circumstances all around him easing. And before him, this trick-some, winsome girl.
—A month is not so long when it is morning time, she said. Go get breakfast, and I will sit here looking out to sea like a widow whose sailor husband died in a storm long ago, although she is still young.
—Grand, said Selah. That is just what I was thinking it would be like.
He handed her the pamphlet, WF 7 J 1978, which he had in his pocket.
—Here is something to read, he said. I haven’t finished it yet. Mostly there are just schematics, no writing.
Mora was still wearing the dress that she had worn when the car had struck her, when he had first seen her standing staring up at the apartment. It was a fine affair, and left her shoulders bare. This drew him to her like a magnet. He kissed her again.
—Good-bye, she said. One month, don’t forget. And maybe buy one of those parasols while you’re at it.
She ran down a short stair to the sand. Away across the sand she went and sat upon the beach, staring out to sea.
One month, thought Selah to himself, and walked off down the boardwalk.
Mora looked after him as he went, a serious young man in a gray-blue suit walking along the wooden planks as quietly as he could.
She found a good spot and sat down. It was slightly different from the spot she had chosen from far away. She wondered if Selah would notice. Probably he would. The sand was very fine and smooth and even. She moved her finger across the surface and made a little drawing like this:
Then she swept the sand away and drew the drawing again. It was exactly the same. Staggeringly so.
Mora smiled to herself and looked back over her shoulder. Selah was farther down the boardwalk now, standing at a booth, talking to someone. Who was he talking to? She couldn’t see the person’s face; it was too far away. Selah was holding a parasol and swinging it in a slow circle. She felt certain of him.
—He was right about me, she said to herself.
Her hand moved then rapidly over the sand, drawing her sigil again and again and again. All around her the sand and the boardwalk and the beach drew close up around her, then Coney Island crept, and beyond it on one side New York, on the other the vast Atlantic. The vicinity of Mora Klein became crowded, as though it were a recital being held in a small room when the piano takes up all of the space, but everyone nonetheless refuses to be kept away. Yes, everyone hurried away from what they were doing elsewhere to come here where a girl was sitting and drawing with the tips of her fingers. Everyone came to stand near, and each one held his breath to see what would happen next.
Pau, Jul. 2005
Thanks To
The well situated L’Aragon of Pau, France, where this book was written.
Dimitri Dover, composer of the Devil’s fiddle piece.
Gerry Riemer.
Jenny Jackson.
Billy Kingsland.
Martin Carthy (for the folk song, “Geordie”).
Jesse Ball
The Way Through Doors
Jesse Ball (1978–) is an American poet and novelist. He is the author of Samedi the Deafness, published last year by Vintage Books and shortlisted for the 2007 Believer Book Award. His first volume, March Book, appeared in 2004, followed by Vera & Linus (2006), and Parables and Lies (2008). His drawings were published in 2006 in Iceland in the volume Og svo kom nôttin. He won the Plimpton Prize in 2008 for his novella, The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp & Carr. His verse appeared in The Best American Poetry 2006. He is an assistant professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Also by Jesse Ball
Samedi the Deafness
A VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES ORIGINAL, FEBRUARY 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Jesse Ball
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks and Vintage Contemporaries is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ball, Jesse, 1978–
The way through doors : a novel by Jesse Ball.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-47264-9
1. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3602.A596W39 2009
813'6—dc22
2008022852
www.vintagebooks.com
v1.0