Samedi the Deafness (14 page)

James raced along the passage, padding softly on his bare feet. He came to the hall door and eased it open. Out it he looked carefully. No one was there.

Good, he thought, this is going to work.

He stepped out into the hall and cautiously made for the stairs.

A cough, then, from the shadows.

One of the maids, an older woman, perhaps forty-five or fifty, stood holding a broom.

—Good evening, she said. Are you lost?

—No, said James. Good-bye.

—Good-bye, said the maid softly, as if she were patting a kept field mouse upon its furry head before closing the cardboard box of its home. Good-bye.

Back in the room, James slid into bed beside Grieve. She too was still naked. His arrival did not seem to disturb her, however.

There was a note in the pillowcase. James climbed back out of bed and went to the window. The light that had entered the small room returned to him there and then, and he looked with it upon the note.

James Leslie is the same as James Carlyle.

He and Grieve (Lily Violet) were once promised to each other.

Well, I knew
that
already, thought James. Though not the first bit. On the back of the note there was more writing.

Carlyle gave me a note which I delivered to Grieve's father. I couldn't read the note, since it was in cipher, but I recognized your name.

I'm sorry about before. But what was I to do? And it isn't true anyway. I just want to help you.

James thought this over. He returned to bed and curled against Grieve's warm sleep, which crept over him even as he surrendered himself to it. It was like a wooden puzzle, and all the people were distinct oblong shards of wood jutting out. Pull one, pull all, and none would move. But there
was
one, one special shard, that could be pulled. And after that, another, and after that, another. But who to trust?

He could hear Grieve mumbling in her sleep. She had done it last night too. But the words didn't make any sense. He listened now, and marked well in his mind what she said.

James lay on his side and looked at Grieve. He turned onto his back and looked at the ceiling. His eyes crept about the room. No. 17, he thought. The room I have been given, complete with observatory.

He wondered whether all the rooms had such observatories. No, of course not. Of course not.

He realized suddenly that he had left the elephant drawing of himself on the floor in the tiny room. This worried him immensely. A gift like that certainly should not be left on the floor.

But that room is composed solely of floor. Floor and pillows and nothing in between. There was nowhere else I could have put it, he thought.

But he knew that this logic would not hold up. The man must not see that James had left his drawing discarded on the floor. Yes, he would go first thing in the morning to fetch the drawing. What he would do with it, he could not say. He would like to bury it along with the mask. But apparently the police had the mask.

He pictured in his mind the sallow man climbing out of bed, opening the door that was almost as large as the room itself, going out into the hall, turning left, opening the door to the passage, going along the passage, up the ladder, and finding then his drawing discarded. It was terrible, terrible.

And then he would be at the aperture, listening and watching. James looked towards where the fourth window should have been. There was no way to know if the man was there now watching him.

I will walk about in the halls and see what comes of it, he thought.

An afternoon and wind in fields. He knelt in the middle of a path.

Something or someone had set off the trap. The metal teeth were closed tight. James tested its action, opening it with all his strength, cocking it, laying it again on the ground, and shoving a long stick through to the trigger.

SNAP! The stick was snapped clean through.

James set the trap once more, satisfied with its workings, between an oak and a sycamore, in a little drop of land.

—They won't see that, he said. Not though they're standing over it. Not till they're in it.

And the little boy danced off chuckling and stomping along the road and looked back twice from the crest of each increasing hill.

—To speak of observation, and observation holes,
I
was watching you through the argot, said Grieve. What were you doing in the kitchens last night?

—I was looking for a bit of chocolate and a bowl of milk, said James.

—Not on your life, said Grieve. You can't lie to me.

—All right, said James. I was looking for the egg room.

—The egg room! said Grieve, exclaiming. The egg room, the egg room!

—But what were you, said James, doing in the room beneath the argot?

—It's a cemetery, said Grieve. We call it Mount Auburn. My brother is there in a fold of grass. I covered him with thirty-nine stones but one went missing. Where could it be?

James drew from his pocket a book, drew from the book a pressed flower, and shook from the flower a bit of stone shaped like a crescent moon.

—Here it is, he said. I found it in the passage by the cellar.

They were both silent. Grieve took the stone.

—You mustn't go there again, she said. You might meet me there, and then we would be through.

A dark name like a walking stick broken in anger.

—When I am out on the wind, said Grieve, I wear four arms and the trails of my dress consume me.

—Before you say any more, said James, say no more.

And so no more was said.

The fact of the matter, James decided, was that a theory was not a good theory because it was right or wrong. A theory was good for entirely other reasons. Because it presumed to be right? Presumed to be wrong? A theory could be very good that presumed to be wrong. And certainly there were theories that presumed only to be helpful in small ways. So many theories are peculiar to their centuries, and never get a second go around the merry-go-round.

My theory, James thought, is that SAMEDI decided long ago to do whatever it is he is going to do and that nothing can stop it. The trigger has already been pulled, the knife set in motion, somewhere far from here. And though we here may be affected by it, we can do nothing to alter it, nothing to stop it.

James felt very much that this was a correct theory. Of course, it was not a useful theory.

What theory would be useful? James thought for a moment.

A useful theory, ah—that Grieve's father was not Samedi, and that everyone in the house was delightful because this was the beginning of a new and unexplainable life.

It was late in the morning when James woke. Grieve was still there. She was reading from the newspaper.

—You won't believe it, she said. This wacko has sent another suicide.

There was an odd tone to her voice.

—What? asked James carefully.

—This madman, said Grieve, this Samedi. It just means Saturday in French; what kind of name is that? Anyway, he's sent men to suicide in the capital, one every day this week.

—What does the note say? James asked.

—It's the same thing every day, said Grieve. He's going to murder us all, somehow.

She turned a little pale. That was odd, thought James.

—What do you think? he asked.