Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 (15 page)

 
          
At
nine-thirty, half an hour late, he rapped on the school door.

 
          
“Good
morning, Teacher!”

 
          
The
door swung open. Teacher waited in her tall gray, thick-clothed monk’s robe,
the
cowl hiding her face. She wore her usual silver
spectacles. Her gray-gloved hands beckoned.

 
          
“You’re
late.”

 
          
Beyond
her the land of books burned in bright colors from the hearth. There were walls
bricked with encyclopedias, and a fireplace in which you could stand without
bumping your head. A log blazed fiercely.

 
          
The
door closed, and there was a warm quiet. Here was the desk, where God had once
sat, he’d walked this carpet, stuffing his pipe with rich tobacco, and scowled
out that vast, stained-glass window. The room smelled of God, rubbed wood,
tobacco, leather, and silver coins. Here, Teacher’s voice sang like a solemn
harp, telling of God, the old days, and the World when it had shaken with God’s
determination, trembled at his wit, when the World was
abuilding
under God’s hand, a blueprint, a cry, and timber rising. God’s fingerprints
still lay like half-melted snowflakes on a dozen sharpened pencils in a locked
glass display. They must
never
never
be touched lest they melt away forever.

 
          
Here,
here in the
Highlands
, to the soft sound of Teacher’s voice
running on, Edwin learned what was expected of him and his body. He was to grow
into a
Presence,
he must fit the odors and the trumpet
voice of God. He must some day stand tall and burning with pale fire at this
high window to shout dust off the beams of the Worlds; he must be God Himself!
Nothing must prevent it. Not the sky or the trees or the Things beyond the
trees.

 
          
Teacher
moved like a vapor in the room.

 
          
“Why
are you late, Edwin?”

 
          
“I
don’t know.”

 
          
“I’ll
ask you again. Edwin why are you late?”

 
          
“One—one
of the forbidden doors was open. . . .”

 
          
He
heard the hiss of Teacher’s breath. He saw her slowly slide back and sink into
the large hand-carved chair, swallowed by darkness, her glasses flashing light
before they vanished. He felt her looking out at him from shadow and her voice
was numbed and so like a voice he heard at night, his own voice crying just
before he woke from some nightmare. “Which door?
Where?” she
said.
“Oh, it must be locked!”

 
          
“The
door by the Dali-Picasso people,” he said, in panic. He and Teacher had always
been friends. Was that finished now? Had he spoiled things? “I climbed the
stair. I had to, I had to! I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please, don’t tell Mother!”

 
          
Teacher
sat lost in the hollow chair, in the hollow cowl. Her glasses made faint
firefly glitters in the well where she moved alone. “And what did you
see
up there?” she murmured.

 
          
“A big blue room!”

 
          
“Did
you?”

 
          
“And
a green one, and ribbons with bugs running on them, but I didn’t, I didn’t stay
long, I swear, I swear!”

 
          
“Green
room, ribbons, yes ribbons, and the little bugs running along them, yes,” she
said, and her voice made him sad.

 
          
He
reached out for her hand, but it fell away to her lap and groped back, in
darkness, to her breast. “I came right down, I locked the door, I won’t go look
again, ever!” he cried.

 
          
Her
voice was so faint he could hardly hear what she said. “But now you’ve seen,
and you’ll want to see more, and you’ll always be curious now.” The cowl moved
slowly back and forth. Its deepness turned toward him, questioning. “Did you—
like
what you saw?”

 
          
“I
was scared. It was big.”

 
          
“Big, yes, too big.
Large, large, so large, Edwin. Not like
our
world.
Big, large,
uncertain.
Oh, why did you do this! You knew it was wrong!”

 
          
The
fire bloomed and withered on the hearth while she waited for his answer and
finally when he could not answer she said, as if her lips were barely moving,
“Is it your Mother?”

 
          
“I
don’t know!”

 
          
“Is
she nervous, is she mean, does she snap at you, does she hold too tight, do you
want time alone, is that it, is that it, is that it?”

 
          
“Yes,
yes!” he sobbed, wildly.

 
          
“Is
that why you ran off, she demands all your time, all your thoughts?”
Lost and sad, her voice.
“Tell
me .
 . .”

 
          
His
hands had gone sticky with tears. “Yes!” He bit his fingers and the backs of
his hands. “Yes!” It was wrong to admit such things, but he didn’t have to say
them now, she said them, she said them, and all he must do is agree, shake his
head, bite his knuckles,
cry
out between sobs.

 
          
Teacher
was a million years old.

 
          
“We
learn,” she said, wearily. Rousing from her chair, she moved with a slow
swaying of gray robes to the desk where her gloved hand searched a long time to
find pen and paper. “We learn, Oh God, but slowly, and with pain, we learn. We
think we do right, but all the time, all the time, we kill the
Plan. . . .” She hissed her breath, jerked her head up suddenly.
The cowl looked completely empty, shivering.

 
          
She
wrote words on the paper.

 
          
“Give
this to your mother. It tells her you must have two full hours every afternoon
to yourself, to prowl where you wish.
Anywhere.
Except
out there.
Are you listening, child?”

 
          
“Yes.”
He dried his face. “But—”

 
          
“Go
on.”

 
          
“Did
Mother lie to me about
out there,
and
the Beasts?”

 
          
“Look
at me,” she said. “I’ve been your
friend,
I’ve never
beaten you, as your mother sometimes must. We’re both here to help you
understand and grow so you won’t be destroyed as God was.”

 
          
She
arose, and in rising, turned the cowl such a way that color from the hearth
washed over her face. Swiftly, the firelight erased her many wrinkles.

 
          
Edwin
gasped. His heart gave a jolting thump.
“The fire!”

 
          
Teacher
froze.

 
          
“The fire!”
Edwin looked at the fire and back to her face.
The cowl jerked away from his gaze, the face vanished in the deep well, gone.
“Your face,” said Edwin numbly. “You look like Mother!”

 
          
She
moved swiftly to the books, seized one down. She talked to the shelves in her
high, singing, monotonous voice. “Women look alike, you know that! Forget it!
Here, here!” And she brought him the book. “Read the first chapter! Read the
diary!”

 
          
Edwin
took the book but did not feel its weight in his hands. The fire rumbled and
sucked itself brilliantly up the flue as he began to read and as he read
Teacher sank back down and settled and quieted and the more he read the more
the gray cowl nodded and became serene, the hidden face like a clapper gone
solemn in its bell. Firelight ignited the gold animal lettering of the shelved
books as he read and he spoke the words but was really thinking of these books
from which pages had been
razored
, and clipped,
certain lines erased, certain pictures torn, and leather jaws of some books
glued tight, others like mad dogs, muzzled in hard bronze straps to keep him
away. All this he thought while his lips moved through the fire-quiet:

 
          
“In
the Beginning was God. Who created the Universe, and the Worlds within the
Universe, the Continents within the Worlds and the Lands within the Continents,
and shaped from His mind and hand His loving wife and a child who in time would
be God
Himself .
 . .

 
          
Teacher
nodded slowly. The fire fell softly away to slumbering coals. Edwin read on.

 
          
Down
the banister, breathless, he slid into the Parlor. “Mom, Mom!”

 
          
She
lay in a plump maroon chair, breathless, as if she, too, had run a great way.

 
          
“Mom,
Mom, you’re soaking wet!”

 
          
“Am
I?” she said, as if it was his fault she’d been rushing about. “So I am, so I
am.” She took a deep breath and sighed. Then she took his hands and kissed each
one. She looked at him steadily, her eyes dilating. “Well now, listen here,
I’ve a surprise! Do you know what’s coming tomorrow? You can’t guess!
Your birthday!”

 
          
“But
it’s only been ten months!”

 
          
“Tomorrow
it is! Do us
wonders
, I say. And anything I
say
is so is
really
so, my dear.”

 
          
She
laughed.

 
          
“And
we open another secret room?” He was dazed.

 
          
“The
fourteenth room, yes! Fifteenth room next year, six-
teenth
,
seventeenth, and so on and on till your twenty-first birthday, Edwin! Then, oh,
then we’ll open up the triple-locked doors to the most important room and
you’ll be Man of the House, Father, God, Ruler of the Universe!”

 
          
“Hey,”
he said.
And, “Hey!”
He tossed his books straight up
in the air. They exploded like a great burst of doves, whistling. He laughed.
She laughed. Their laughter flew and fell with the books. He ran to scream down
the banister again.

 
          
At
the bottom of the stairs, she waited, arms wide, to catch him.

 
          
Edwin
lay on his moonlit bed and his fingers pried at the Jack-in-the Box, but the
lid stayed shut; he turned it in his hands, blindly, but did not look down at
it.
Tomorrow, his birthday—but why?
Was he
that
good? No. Why then, should the
birthday come so soon? Well, simply because things had gotten, what word could
you use?
Nervous?
Yes, things had begun to shimmer by
day as well as by night. He saw the white tremor, the moonlight sifting down
and down of an invisible snow in his mother’s face. It would take yet another
of his birthdays to quiet her again.

 
          
“My
birthdays,” he said to the ceiling, “will come quicker from now on. I know, I
know. Mo m laughs so loud, so much, and her eyes are
funny. . . .”

 
          
Would
Teacher be invited to the party? No. Mother and Teacher had never met.
“Why not?”
“Because,” said Mom. “Don’t you
want
to meet Mom, Teacher?” “Some day,”
said Teacher, faintly, blowing off like cobwebs in the hall. “
Some .
 . . day. . . .”

 
          
And
where did Teacher go at night? Did she drift through all those secret mountain
countries high up near the moon where the chandeliers were skinned blind with
dust, or did she wander out beyond the trees that lay beyond the trees that lay
beyond the trees? No, hardly that!