The Curfew

by Jesse Ball

  There was no difference between any one day and any other. The weekend had been abolished. It had been a sick way of going about things, that was the idea, a sort of illness that had led to widespread moral decay. Many of the ways that things had been gone about were weak, and had to be changed.

  *There was a new teacher in school today.

  —A woman?

  *A man.

  —Old?

  *Rather not.

  —Handsome?

  Molly made a face.

  —That bad?

  *He wrote a book about history. The history of the country.

  —And how did that go over?

  *Jim spat on him and then they took Jim in the next room for a while.

  —So, Jim, he’s a history lover?

  Molly did the thing that she did when she would have laughed but wasn’t laughing.

  William laughed as well.

  *He just spits on teachers.

  A ripple came and then subsided in the lake, as though a fish had surfaced, but none did.

  —There is a game, William said, where you try to throw a stone high up in the air and have it make just that noise, the noise of a fish at the water’s surface. It is not easy to do.

  William threw a stone high up in the air, but when it hit the water it made a decidedly stone-like sound.

  *You see, he gestured.

  *Read to me from the newspaper.

  She nudged his arm.

  *Don’t want to.

  *Come on. Over here. It’s very nice, look.

  —All right, all right.

  He sat down by the tree. This was a game they had. He unfolded the newspaper. Molly sat with her back against him.

  —On the fourteenth of July, a man was discovered walking about in a daze near the courthouse. He claims to have been asleep inside a hill for the last fifteen years.

  *Twenty is better.

  —All right, twenty years, the last twenty years. He was greatly confused by the gray banners everywhere, and by the change in administration. He has been taken by the police for questioning. It is believed he is pretending, and that he didn’t actually sleep inside a hill.

  *That’s no good, said Molly. Don’t have it be pretending.

  —All right, let’s try it again.

  He removed his hat and set it on the ground next to him, then cleared his throat.

  —On the fifteenth of July, a man was found in a confused state near the courthouse building. He claims to have been asleep inside a hill for the last twenty years. Upon further investigation into the matter, authorities have discovered the hill in question, and, within it, a sort of foxhole. The man refused to comply with any questioning, and escaped through the faucet of a sink. Beware!

  Molly smoothed her dress, but did not smile. It wasn’t her habit to smile at things that were funny.

  *That’s the news, then.

  And all of a sudden it was becoming dark. The lights bloomed automatically all along the streets, and at the edges of the lake. A bell rang, and it was a shift change. Workers could be seen exiting houses, and beginning on their way to the factories at the outskirts of the town.

  *I wish you could play for me a piece where you can hear the curtains blowing. Where you scrape the strings and the curtains move.

  —Don’t talk like that.

  Molly pushed against him.

  They threaded a path in a homeward direction, he murmuring, she gesturing, he peering at her hands in the dim evening.

  When they reached the street there was a crowd formed around a man who seemed to be asleep on the ground. He was in a mime’s regalia, with painted face and thin gloves. Suddenly he sprang up and froze at attention.

  In the street, another mime, marching as a soldier, passed by. Marching, marching, marching, and on the sixteenth step, he went on all fours and loped as a pack of wolves does, grimacing and showing row after row of teeth. He turned upon the crowd and made for them! Shouting and confusion. The single mime began to conduct an orchestra, and of a sudden, the soldier-mime was playing instruments of every description, alternating in rows on invisible seats with invisible instruments. The conductor mime sat in the invisible audience, dabbing a handkerchief at tear after tear.

  A shout then,

  —They are coming!

  —Watch out! Run!

  The orchestra threw its instruments in the air and careened madly off into the park. Yes, two men in shabby clothing ran off into the trees.

  *Will they get away?

  Molly’s hand was very tight clutching at William’s coat.

  *Will they get away?

  —They have gotten away. That’s how they did it in the first place. That’s why, even if they get caught, they can’t be caught. It wouldn’t mean anything, other than to show that they are what they say they are.

  Molly frowned.

  —They are students, said William. It is their resistance and has at its heart their youth. Catching them only makes others join them. So, in a sense, they want to be caught. Or be at the edge of being caught, always.

  *They don’t want to get away?

  —No, not really.

  *But if they were caught, wouldn’t they be …

  —Yes, it is a choice they are making, to be alive and unrepentant.

  *Unrepentant?

  —They don’t want to have to ask permission for anything, least of all for being alive.

  *But could they win? What would that be, if they won?

  Molly looked at William inquisitively.

  —There are always different types of resistance. These are of one type. Their resistance is both to the government and to the world in general, to existence, to just being, also. There are others who want to …

  He leaned in close and whispered in Molly’s ear.

  —overthrow the government directly and put something else in its place. That’s why so many people have been dying.

  *What would they change?

  —For one thing, you wouldn’t have to go to that particular school anymore.

  Molly clapped her hands together excitedly.

  *When do you think it will happen?

  —Oh, I don’t know. Something terrible would have to happen first.

  Molly thought about that a little and then she thought about that some more, and then they were back at the apartment and William was moving about, switching on the lamps.

  —I am going to meet some people. It’s important, and so I have to do it. You will eat supper with Mrs. Gibbons. I’m going to speak with her now about it.

  Molly said nothing, but stared up at him.

  —You really must go along with it.

  Molly continued simply staring at him.

  —I mean to say, it’s the best thing. We can’t have you here all alone.

  Molly covered her face and, turning her back to him, sat on the floor.

  —See here.

  He picked her up and began to say how there was nothing to worry about, something sweet and meaningless like that. But he did not say it.

  Instead,

  —My dear, we must remember how the elephants behave.

  Molly collected herself and came along immediately, but balked suddenly and threw herself on the floor.

  —What is it?

  *Just remembered something.

  She was pointing her hand at William, while still lying prone on the floor.

  —What did you remember?

  *Elephants are playful. They do not behave. They must not.

  —So what would a compromise be?

  *You know.

  —There isn’t time.

  *Just a short one. Short!

  A SHORT GAME of THIS & THAT

  which is a game of clues hidden among things in the house, woven in messages and riddles.

  It was a family inheritance and Molly adored it above all things.

  —You go sit by the window and ONLY look out.

  Molly grumbled silently.

  —Go o
n.

  *Going.

  William found a pad of paper, a scissors, string, and a pencil. He sat on the edge of the table and surveyed the room.

  How to begin?

  There was a photograph of a little bird falling out of a nest. That’s a good place to start, eh?

  William wrote then the first instruction:

  A person leaves the house by an unfamiliar route. If something

  had been left behind, where would you look? Behind?

  He continued his work, and occasionally the sound of the clock came and hurried him in his labors.

  FINALLY, done! A breeze was entering the room through the window and rushing about inside, giving small notice here and there. William would have smiled then, had he been the sort to smile. One envies such types—who do not smile. The rest of us go around like fools, and these few maintain such dignity! Let us never smile again.

  —Molly.

  (She spun around and hopped down from the windowsill.)

  —Here.

  A piece of paper, neatly drafted.

  THE SIXTH THIS & THAT

  by W. for M. late in the day.

  beginning on the table, you should know

  Molly ran to the table and snatched up the paper.

  It read:

  A person leaves the house by an unfamiliar route. If something

  had been left behind, where would you look? Behind?

  She began to walk up and down the room, brow bent, hand tapping against the skirt of her dress. All the while her other hand chattered to itself.

  *Aha!

  At the photograph of the bird’s nest,

  she stopped. Reaching up, she lifted the frame. A note on a string dropped down. Out she took it.

  It said:

  If dogs were wild once, then I too am wild. If a rifle

  consists of circles within circles, then I too circle. I am an

  old measure, made by a king, and when people speak of me,

  they have forgotten who I am.

  Molly frowned. She looked around suspiciously.

  *Don’t know about this.

  William took an orange from a basket by the stove, peeled it, and ate a section.

  Molly continued in her suspicion. She did not walk this time, but stood moving her head ever so slightly from right to left.

  *Another clue?

  —How many clues do you need?

  *Seems like one more, doesn’t it?

  William ate another piece of orange.

  Molly sat down and immediately jumped up again. From the back of her shoe, she tore the next note and string.

  *You, you stinker.

  This note said:

  Loons out under indelicate skies abate.

  Molly walked slowly to the windowsill and sat. She held the note up to the light. She turned it upside down. She put the corner in her mouth. She pulled it taut. She tossed it in the air and watched it fall. She picked it up again.

  —It’s a good one, don’t you think?

  *Too hard.

  William shook his head. He thought then of his violin teacher, long dead.

  There was a long oaken drive dancing between the road and the house and the shadows were mad for the trees and the sun and raged there as William ran to the house in those emptied years, summers, mornings, days. It was a hard discipline she had, and she would hurt him awfully, and his parents approved of it all, but she made him feel he was her main work, and raised him above all other things, explaining music to him not in terms of other things, but in their absences, in the places where things meet. A sonata is not the passing of geese, it is not a stream’s noise, not the sound of a nightingale. A violin does not speak, does not chatter. The catastrophe of a symphony’s wild end is not a storm breaking upon land. It is not the shuddering and sundering of a house. But it is in part, she would say, the understanding of these things. You must be brutal, terrible, but with great sympathy, sympathy for all things, and yet no mercy. Was that why the government wanted no music? Because music was the only thing with any religion to it?

  In the night (for it was night now) a low keening sound came. William closed his eyes. It was the sound of the bridge vibrating in the distance. The wind must strike it just so, and then …

  *Aha! I know!

  And William was back in the room again.

  Molly ran across, clattering and stamping, to where …

  a PICTURE of LOUISA was on a HOOK.

  And from the picture frame, she pulled a string. And on the string, a note.

  In the picture, Louisa was standing in the foreground, holding a kite. William was sitting in a tree farther in. A long field stretched into the distance.

  Molly was holding the note but looking at the picture.

  *You said it would never fly?

  —Never. We called it the Sledge, because it would always drag along the ground. No one could get it to work. Although to be fair, I never managed to get any kite to work.

  *What about Mom?

  —I never saw her operate a kite. She held one once. Someone else had gotten it into the air, though. I don’t think that counts.

  *Doesn’t.

  Molly opened this note.

  Here we incarcerate the song and the one who makes it.

  Molly spelled it out.

  *Incarcerate?

  —Jail.

  She ran to the birdcage (which was empty) and pulled out the next clue.

  —This is the last one, said William.

  Molly waved him off, and opened the note.

  IT READ:

  Once the province of lords, and at once, a favorite of beasts, I

  delight as sugar does, but sate as water. Skinned, just as you,

  I hang and await my turn, and drop to the merciless ground.

  *Sate?

  —Rid of hunger or thirst.

  *Province?

  —Look it up.

  Molly went to the dictionary, opened it, and found the word.

  *Doesn’t make it much clearer, does it?

  —No complaints now. I have to go. Solve it!

  Molly’s eyes roamed the house and alighted upon the basket of fruit. She ran to it.

  *The orange!

  She picked up the first orange, but there was no note there. Nor on the second.

  Then she spied the orange that William had been eating. He had peeled it perfectly and the round skin sat on the table. She snatched it up and it fell open in connected rings, revealing a white bead made of bone.

  Molly untied the necklace she was wearing and strung the bead onto it. There were five already there. This was the sixth.

  —Time, then, he said, and ran his hand through her hair.

  William went to the door of their apartment and opened it in a slow, sweeping fashion, eyes down. Molly joined him there. He went through, and to the door opposite, and knocked three times.

  Noise came from inside. Someone was coming to the door.

  —Hello?

  The door opened. It was a woman in her seventies.

  —Would you mind, asked William, watching Molly for a few hours? I have to go out, and I can’t take her with me.

  —I will do this, said Mrs. Gibbons. You are a good father and I will do this for you and your daughter because she is very wonderful, a very wonderful young woman and I am always glad to have her here, although she has not come before. There is always a place here in the house for a wonderful young woman who goes around with the name of Molly. But you must be careful, Mr. Drysdale, if you are going out at night, because I will tell you that Mr. Gibbons, who has just come home now this very moment, he told me that he saw a man dead not four streets over, and right in a crowd. So, you have a care. The ones who enforce the curfew, they are all at once watching everyplace both here and there. This man I say was dead, and that is one way that is always the same, dead.

  William looked over his shoulder. Molly’s face was a bit drawn.

  —Dead? he asked.

  —Yes
, hit with a brick. And the one who did it couldn’t be found.

  Molly stamped her foot. William looked over.

  *Be careful!

  She went past him and into Mrs. Gibbons’s apartment.

  —Here is a key, said William, so you can put her to bed.

  Mrs. Gibbons nodded and shut the door.

  He could hear her:

  —A good girl like you should not make your father worry. You do not do anything to make him worry, do you? No, I thought not. I thought not. Well, would you like something to eat? Come with me.

  THE CURFEW

  had been in place both when the police could be seen and now when they were unseen. One could not be about in the nighttime past a certain hour. What hour that was many could not say. They simply stayed put in their houses and waited for the morning. There were others who went about secretly, skulking. Were some caught? Yes, and never seen again. The consensus was this: on a clear night, the point at which the moon becomes clear against the night sky—from this point on you were to be indoors. On a cloudy night, there was perhaps less latitude.

  The government’s official word on the matter was nonexistent. There was no curfew. There was simply the declaration, GOOD CITIZENS PASS THEIR NIGHTS ABED.

  In the street, the lamplight made avenues beyond the door and paths within the walks beneath the trees.

  William walked there and he thought of Louisa, and of the plans they had made. What does dying do to plans one makes with one’s beloved? It is the advent of lost causes, of pointless journeys, empty rooms, quiet hours. He said this to himself, and he felt it was not right. It was true, but not right. We were to have a house ringed about by trees in the country, and we were to live there with no one nearby, and raise a daughter.

  He had never seen Louisa dead. She had been removed, taken from the street. Her father had been a politician. He had always guessed that was the reason.

  All his inquiries to find her had met with no success. Louisa Drysdale? We have no record of a Louisa Drysdale.

  The day she disappeared it seemed impossible. He walked up and down in the house. He sat in the stairwell. He went down to the street and up again. He turned on the stove and turned it off. Finally, it happened that he was asleep, and then it was the morning and he woke and at first thought it was a dream, but it was not, and then he was looking for her again, but there was nowhere to look, and all the while he was terrified of trying too hard, of pushing too hard, and of being taken away himself and leaving Molly with no one. So, there had been days of waiting, expecting that she would return at any moment. But Louisa had not returned.