The Curfew (6 page)

The door to the apartment opened. The girl came out. She joined him by the staircase.

William took the pencil from his pocket and opened the notebook.

—There will be two stones, he said. The first will be as they say. You determine the second. You cannot go to it, unless you are sure you are not followed. Do you understand?

Dora murmured yes.

William wrote on a new page:

Jacob Lansher

then beneath it

John ACBLASER

then

John Cable Ras

John Carables

John Sarcable

—Sarcable, he said.

—That’s good.

William leaned against the rail and squinted his eyes. He wrote on the page.

—That’s good, said the girl again. John Sarcable. Elsewhere and beloved.

She smiled.

—One thing, and thank you. White marble, and leave room for his wife, when she dies.

He broke the pencil in half and put the pieces in his pocket.

—Goodbye.

William stopped on the final step, and thought for a moment of the stairs he had been thrown down as a child. It was an accident. A woman thought that he was her son in the darkness of the building and, in great anger, had hurled him headlong. The actual boy was there too, but did not get thrown.

William had broken both his hands, and they had healed in a rather odd way. It was later thought by aficionados that this breaking of his hands was an advantage in his violin playing, and there was an ill-advised spate of hand breaking that went on until it was seen the accident could not be successfully replicated.

The woman was imprisoned and drowned herself in a washbasin. William never heard what happened to the son, but he often felt that if his life were a book, the boy would intercede at some point to take some terrible blow meant for William.

On then to his final appointment. For this he went out of the city gates and a little ways down to a waterfront and harbor that stretched there. He passed a woman who was putting up posters that read, MY HUSBAND HAS DISAPPEARED AND I MUST FIND HIM, with a photograph of a middle-aged man standing in a doorway wearing a prerevolutionary suit. William did not meet her eyes as he passed.

By the last pier, there was a shack with a sign that read:

FISH if you WANT THEM.

He knocked on the door of the shack, which made an awful racket.

—Coming!

A young man came to the door.

—Yes?

—I’m from the mason.

—The mason?

—Yes, about the gravestone.

—Ah, the mason … yes, well. I would ask you to come in, but I imagine you wouldn’t like it at all in here. I mean, I live here and I don’t like it at all. We’d be better to just sit over there on that bench.

He pointed to a bench on a hill overlooking the harbor.

—Sure enough.

The young man shook his hand.

—So, you might think this a bit strange, but the tombstone I want is actually for myself.

William nodded.

—Won’t be a problem. Are you intending to … fill it soon?

—Fill it?

The young man blushed.

—Of course not! I just, well, I will explain it.

They walked up the hill to the bench and sat down. The young man was wearing fisherman’s waxed clothing that was quite dirty. He himself had the sheen of good health and a thin but shining face. He seemed a very happy fellow indeed.

—I have a theory, the young man said, that a person should prepare his or her tombstone at the happiest moment of life. I am right now, for no reason at all, as happy as a person could possibly be, and so I decided, yesterday, to prepare my tombstone. I want nothing of sadness in it. Just rejoicing, you see?

—There is one danger, said William.

—What’s that?

—Well, although you feel now that this is the happiest you can be, what would happen if, in the years to come, you became happier still?

—I would simply make another gravestone! I have done it three times already.

—What did the others say?

—Oh, I can’t tell you that. I don’t want them to influence this one.

—Understood. All right, well, what sort of epitaph are you interested in? Do you want it to be a general address, a private message, a warning, what do you think?

—A warning?

—Well, some people favor something like, Watch Out. Or, Hell Rears Its Head.

The young man burst out in peals of laughter.

—Certainly nothing like that. Perhaps something about my shack. I’ve just gotten it, you know.

William took out his pencil and sharpened it. He opened his notebook. So, your name?

—Stan Milgram.

He wrote:

Stan Milgram

Dweller in shacks

—That’s not quite right, said Stan. It’s just one shack. And anyway, maybe the shack isn’t that important. I just, well, the whole thing came from Death Poems—where some people would prepare a death poem, so that they would know for sure it would turn out well. But then I want it to reflect these brilliant days I have come to now.

—What do you do?

—Fishing, and I sit around there in the shack and read.

—What if it gave a catalog of your day? Tell me about your day, what happened?

Stan told him in detail about the day’s events.

—All right, then.

William turned to a new page.

STAN MILGRAM

4 AM, rose, already dressed, and set out for the boat.

5 AM, out on the water to the shoals.

6 AM, net after net of powerfully squirming fish.

& 7, 8, the same.

9 AM, returned to the docks.

10, 11, read Moore’s Urn Burial; ate an onion, cheese, brown bread.

12, closed eyes for a moment.

4, woke and met with the epitaphorist, and set down this record.

—I would like to see a gravestone like that, said Stan proudly.

—I also, said William.

—The writing will have to be rather small.

—Not in itself a large obstacle.

—It isn’t, is it?

—Nope.

—Let’s settle it, then. Thank you. How did you come by this work, anyway?

—I was always good with puzzles, and I have memorized the complete works of five poets which I can recite on command. Four years ago, when I could no longer do the work that I did before, I saw an advertisement in the paper. It read,
Position requiring: ingenuity, restraint, quiet manner, odd hours, impeccable judgment, and eloquence. Unworthy candidates unwelcome
. I was the only one to apply.

—That sort of thing, said the young man. That sort of thing I understand effortlessly. It seems the way things should work.

William smiled and shook his hand, broke the pencil in half, tucked away his notebook, and set out back towards the gates.