Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (23 page)

 
          
 
Just that very trite thing—the wind?

 
          
 
No. The people are all here. They have been
here for many years. And tomorrow?

 
          
 
The old man stops, presses his hands to his
chest.

 
          
 
They will not be here any more.

 
          
 
A horn blows!

 
          
 
Outside the barbed-wire gate—the enemy!
Outside the gate a small black police car and a large black limousine from the
studio itself, three miles away.

 
          
 
The horn blares!

 
          
 
The old man seizes the rungs of a ladder and
climbs, the sound of the horn pushing him higher and higher. The gate crashes
wide; the enemy roars in.

 
          
 
"There he goes!"

 
          
 
The glaring lights of the police shine in upon
the cities of the meadow; the lights reveal the stark canvas set-pieces of
Manhattan, Chicago, and Chungking! The light glitters on the imitation stone
towers of Notre Dame Cathedral, fixes on a tiny figure balancing on the
catwalks of Notre Dame, climbing and climbing up where the night and the stars
are turning slowly by.

 
          
 
"There he is, Mr. Douglas, at the
top!"

 
          
 
"Good God. It's getting so a man can't
spend an evening at a quiet party without—"

 
          
 
"He's striking a match! Call the fire
department!"

 
          
 
On top of Notre Dame, the night watchman,
looking down, shielding the match from the softly blowing wind, sees the
police, the workmen, and the producer in a dark suit, a big man, gazing up at
him. Then the night watchman slowly turns the match, cupping it, applies it to
the tip of his cigar. He lights the cigar in slow puffs.

 
          
 
He calls: "Is Mr. Douglas down
there?"

 
          
 
A voice calls back: "What do you want
with me?"

 
          
 
The old man smiles. "Come up, alone!
Bring a gun if you want! I just want a little talk!"

 
          
 
The voices echo in the vast churchyard:

 
          
 
"Don't do it, Mr. Douglas!"

 
          
 
"Give me your gun. Let's get this over
with so I can get back to the party. Keep me covered, I'll play it safe. I
don't want these sets burned. There's two million dollars in lumber alone here.
Ready? I'm on my way."

 
          
 
The producer climbs high on the night ladders,
up through the half shell of Notre Dame to where the old man leans against a
plaster gargoyle, quietly smoking a cigar. The producer stops, gun pointed,
half through an open trap door.

 
          
 
"All right, Smith. Stay where you
are."

 
          
 
Smith removes the cigar from his mouth
quietly. "Don't you be afraid of me. I'm all right."

 
          
 
"I wouldn't bet money on that."

 
          
 
"Mr. Douglas," says the night
watchman, "did you ever read that story about the man who traveled to the
future and found everyone there insane? Everyone, But since they were all
insane they didn't know they were insane. They all acted alike and so they
thought themselves normal. And since our hero was the only sane one among them,
he was abnormal; therefore, he was the insane one. To them, at least. Yes, Mr.
Douglas, insanity is relative. It all depends on who has who locked in what
cage."

 
          
 
The producer swears under his breath. "I
didn't climb up here to talk all night. What do you want?"

 
          
 
"I want to talk with the Creator. That's
you, Mr. Douglas. You created all this. You came here one day and struck the
earth with a magical checkbook and cried, 'Let there be Paris!' And there was
Paris: streets, bistros, flowers, wine, outdoor bookshops and all. And you
clapped your hands again: 'Let there be Constantinople!' And there it was! You
clapped your hands a thousand times, and each time made something new, and now
you think just by clapping your hands one last time you can drop it all down in
ruins. But, Mr. Douglas, it's not as easy as that!"

 
          
 
"I own fifty-one per cent of the stock in
this studio!"

 
          
 
"But did the studio ever belong to you,
really? Did you ever think to drive here late some night and climb up on this
cathedral and see what a wonderful world you created? Did you ever wonder if it
might not be a good idea for you to sit up here with me and my friends and have
a cup of amontillado sherry with us? All right—so the amontillado smells and
looks and tastes like coffee. Imagination, Mr. Creator, imagination. But no,
you never came around, you never climbed up, you never looked or listened or
cared. There was always a party somewhere else. And now, very late, without
asking us, you want to destroy it all. You may own fifty-one per cent of the
studio stock, but you don't own them"

 
          
 
"Them!" cries the producer.
"What's all this business about 'them'?"

 
          
 
"It's hard to put in words. The people
who live here." The night watchman moves his hand in the empty air toward
the half cities and the night. "So many films were made here in all the long
years. Extras moved in the streets in costumes, they talked a thousand tongues,
they smoked cigarettes and meerschaums and Persian hookahs, even. Dancing girl
danced. They glittered, oh, how they glittered! Women with veils smiled down
from high balconies. Soldiers marched. Children played. Knights in silver armor
fought. There were orange-tea shops. People sipped tea in them and dropped
their /z's. Gongs were beaten. Viking ships sailed the inland seas."

 
          
 
The producer lifts himself up through the trap
door and sits on the plankings, the gun cradled more easily in his hand. He
seems to be looking at the old man first with one eye, then the other,
listening to him with one ear, then the other, shaking his head a little to
himself.

 
          
 
The night watchman continues:

 
          
 
"And somehow, after the extras and the
men with the cameras and microphones and all the equipment walked away and the
gates were shut and they drove off in big cars, somehow something of all those
thousands of different people remained. The things they had been, or pretended
to be, stayed on. The foreign languages, the costumes, the things they did, the
things they thought about, their religions and their music, all those little
things and big things stayed on. The sights of far places. The smells. The salt
wind. The sea. It's all here tonight—if you listen."

 
          
 
The producer listens and the old man listens
in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes
of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper,
and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and
leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and
green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it
murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in
the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky
to these two men who stand listening and apart.

 
          
 
The producer laughs shortly and shakes his
head.

 
          
 
"You heard," says the night
watchman. "You did hear, didn't you? I see it in your face."

 
          
 
Douglas shoves the gun in his coat pocket.
"Anything you listen for you can hear. I made the mistake of listening.
You should have been a writer. You could throw six of my best ones out of work.
Well, what about it—are you ready to come down out of here now?"

 
          
 
"You sound almost polite," says the
night watchman.

 
          
 
"Don't know why I should. You ruined a
good evening for me.

 
          
 
"Did I? It hasn't been that bad, has it?
A bit different, I should say. Stimulating, maybe."

 
          
 
Douglas laughs quietly. "You're not
dangerous at all. You just need company. It's your job and everything going to
hell and you're lonely. I can't quite figure you, though."

 
          
 
"Don't tell me I've got you thinking?"
asks the old man.

 
          
 
Douglas snorts. "After you've lived in
Hollywood long enough, you meet all kinds. Besides, I've never been up here
before. It's a real view, like you say. But I'll be damned if I can figure why
you should worry about all this junk. What's it to you?"

 
          
 
The night watchman gets down on one knee and
taps one hand into the palm of the other, illustrating his points. "Look.
As I said before, you came here years ago, clapped your hands, and three
hundred cities jumped up! Then you added a half thousand other nations and
states and peoples and religions and political setups inside the barbed-wire
fence. And there was trouble! Oh, nothing you could see. It was all in the wind
and the spaces between. But it was the same kind of trouble the world out there
beyond the fence has—squabbles and riots and invisible wars. But at last the
trouble died out. You want to know why?"

 
          
 
"If I didn't, I wouldn't be sitting up
here freezing."

 
          
 
A little night music, please, thinks the old
man, and moves his hand on the air like someone playing the proper and
beautiful music to background all that he has to tell. . . .

 
          
 
"Because you got Boston joined to
Trinidad," he says softly, "part of Trinidad poking out of Lisbon,
part of Lisbon leaning on Alexandria, Alexandria tacked onto Shanghai, and a
lot of little pegs and nails between, like Chattanooga, Oshkosh, Oslo, Sweet
Water, Soissons, Beirut, Bombay, and Port Arthur. You shoot a man in New York
and he stumbles forward and drops dead in Athens. You take a political bribe in
Chicago and somebody in London goes to jail. You hang a Negro man in Alabama
and the people of Hungary have to bury him. The dead Jews of Poland clutter the
streets of Sydney, Portland, and Tokyo. You push a knife into a man's stomach
in Berlin and it comes out the back of a farmer in Memphis. It's all so close,
so very close. That's why we have peace here. We're all so crowded there has
got to be peace, or nothing would be left! One fire would destroy all of us, no
matter who started it, for what reason. So all of the people, the memories,
whatever you want to call them, that are here, have settled down, and this is
their world, a good world, a fine world."

 
          
 
The old man stops and licks his lips slowly
and takes a breath. "And tomorrow," he says, "you're going to
stomp it down."

 
          
 
The old man crouches there a moment longer,
then gets to his feet and gazes out at the cities and the thousand shadows in
those cities. The great plaster cathedral whines and sways in the night air, back
and forth, rocking on the summer tides.

 
          
 
"Well," says Douglas at last,
"shall—shall we go down now?"

 
          
 
Smith nods. "I've had my say."

 
          
 
Douglas vanishes, and the watchman listens to
the younger man going down and down through the ladders and catwalks of the
night. Then, after a reasonable hesitation, the old man takes hold of the
ladder, breathes something to himself, and begins the long descent in shadow.

 
          
 
The studio police and the few workers and some
minor executives all drive away. Only one large dark car waits outside the
barbed-wire gate as the two men stand talking in the cities of the meadow.

 
          
 
"What are you going to do now?" asks
Smith.

 
          
 
"Go back to my party, I suppose,"
says the producer.

 
          
 
"Will it be fun?"

 
          
 
"Yes." The producer hesitates.
"Sure, it'll be fun!" He glances at the night watchman's right hand.
"Don't tell me you've found that hammer Kelly told me you were using? You
going to start building again? You don't give up, do you?"

 
          
 
"Would you, if you were the last builder and
everybody else was a wrecker?"

 
          
 
Douglas starts to walk with the old man.
"Well, maybe I'll see you again. Smith."

 
          
 
"No," says Smith, "I won't be
here. This all won't be here. If you come back again, it'll be too late."

 
          
 
Douglas stops. "Hell, hell! What do you
want me to do?"

 
          
 
"A simple thing. Leave all this standing.
Leave these cities up."

 
          
 
"I can't do that! Damn it. Business
reasons. It has to go."

 
          
 
"A man with a real nose for business and
some imagination could think up a profitable reason for it to stay," says
Smith.

 
          
 
"My car's waiting! How do I get out of
here?"

 
          
 
The producer strikes off over a patch of
rubble, cuts through half of a tumbled ruin, kicking boards aside, leaning for
a moment on plaster fagades and strutworks. Dust rains from the sky.

 
          
 
"Watch out!"

 
          
 
The producer stumbles in a thunder of dust and
avalanching brick; he gropes, he topples, he is seized upon by the old man and
yanked forward.

 
          
 
"Jump!"

 
          
 
They jump, and half the building slides to
ruin, crashes into hills and mountains of old paper and lathing. A great bloom
of dust strikes out upon the air.

 
          
 
"You all right?"

 
          
 
"Yes. Thanks. Thanks." The producer
looks at the fallen building. The dust clears. "You probably saved my
life."

 
          
 
"Hardly that. Most of those are
papier-mache bricks. You might have been cut and bruised a little."

 
          
 
"Nevertheless, thanks. What building was
that that fell?"

 
          
 
"Norman village tower, built in 1925.
Don't get near the rest of it; it might go down."

 
          
 
"I'll be careful." The producer
moves carefully in to stand by the set-piece. "Why—I could push this whole
damn building over with one hand." He demonstrates; the building leans and
quivers and groans. The producer steps quickly back. "I could knock it
down in a second."

 
          
 
"But you wouldn't want to do that,"
says the watchman.

 
          
 
"Oh, wouldn't I? What's one French house
more or less, this late in the day?"

 
          
 
The old man takes his arm. "Walk around
here to the other side of the house."

 
          
 
They walk to the other side.

 
          
 
"Read that sign," says Smith.

 
          
 
The producer flicks his cigarette lighter,
holds the fire up to help him squint, and reads:

 
          
 
"'the first national bank, mellin
town.'" He pauses.
" ‘ILLINOIS
,'" he
says, very slowly.

 
          
 
The building stands there in the sharp light
of the stars and the bland light of the moon.

 
          
 
"On one side"—Douglas balances his
hand like a scales—"a French tower. On the other side—" He walks
seven steps to the right, seven steps to the left, peering, "'the first
national BANK.' Bank. Tower. Tower. Bank. Well, I'll be damned"

 
          
 
Smith smiles and says, "Still want to
push the French tower down, Mr. Douglas?"

 
          
 
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on,
hold on," says Douglas, and suddenly begins to see the buildings that stand
before him. He turns in a slow circle; his eyes move up and down and across and
over; his eyes flick here, flick there, see this, see that, examine, file, put
away, and re-examine. He begins to walk in silence. They move in the cities of
the meadow, over grasses and wild flowers, up to and into and through ruins and
half ruins and

 
          
 
Up to and into and through complete avenues
and villages and towns.

 
          
 
They begin a recital which goes on and on as
they walk, Douglas asking, the night watchman answering, Douglas asking, the
night watchman answering.

 
          
 
"What's this over here?"

 
          
 
"A Buddhist temple."

 
          
 
"And on the other side of it?"

 
          
 
"The log cabin where Lincoln was
born."

 
          
 
"And here?"

 
          
 
"St. Patrick's church. New York."

 
          
 
"And on the reverse?"

 
          
 
"A Russian Orthodox church in
Rostov!"

 
          
 
"What's this?"

 
          
 
"The door of a castle on the Rhine!"

 
          
 
"And insider

 
          
 
"A Kansas City soda fountain!"

 
          
 
"And here? And here? And over there? And
what's that?" asks Douglas. "What's this! What about that one! And
over there!"

 
          
 
It seems as if they are running and rushing
and yelling all through the cities, here, there, everywhere, up, down, in, out,
climbing, descending, poking, stirring, opening-shutting doors.

 
          
 
"And this, and this, and this, and
this!"

 
          
 
The night watchman tells all there is to tell.

 
          
 
Their shadows run ahead in narrow alleys, and
avenues as broad as rivers made of stone and sand.

 
          
 
They make a great talking circle; they hurry
all around and back to where they started.

 
          
 
They are quiet again. The old man is quiet
from having said what there was to say, and the producer is quiet from
listening and remembering and fitting it all together in his mind. He stands,
absent-mindedly fumbling for his cigarette case. It takes him a full minute to open
it, examining every action, thinking about it, and to offer the case to the
watchman.

 
          
 
"Thanks."

 
          
 
They light up thoughtfully. They puff on their
cigarettes and watch the smoke blow away.

 
          
 
Douglas says, "Where's that damned hammer
of yours?"

 
          
 
"Here," says Smith.

 
          
 
"You got your nails with you?"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir."

 
          
 
Douglas takes a deep drag on his cigarette and
exhales. "Okay, Smith, get to work."

 
          
 
"What?"

 
          
 
"You heard me. Nail what you can back up,
on your own time. Most of the stuff that's already torn down is a complete
loss. But any bits and pieces that fit and will look decent, put 'em together.
Thank God there's a lot still standing. It took me a long time to get it
through my head. A man with a nose for business and some imagination, you said.
This is the world, you said. I should have seen it years ago. Here it all is
inside the fence, and me too blind to see what could be done with it. The World
Federation in my own back yard and me kicking it over. So help me God, we need
more crazy people and night watchmen."

 
          
 
"You know," says the night watchman,
"I'm getting old and I'm getting strange. You wouldn't be fooling an old
and a strange man, would you?"

 
          
 
"I'll make no promises I can't
keep," says the producer. "I'll only promise to try. There's a good
chance we can go ahead. It would make a beautiful film, there's no doubt of
that. We could make it all here, inside the fence, photograph it ten ways from
Christmas. There's no doubt about a story, either. You provided it. It's yours.
It wouldn't be hard to put some writers to work on it. Good writers. Perhaps
only a short subject, twenty minutes, but we could show all the cities and
countries here, leaning on and holding each other up. I like the idea. I like
it very much, believe me. We could show a film like that to anyone anywhere in
the world and they'd like it. They couldn't pass it up, it would be too
important."

 
          
 
"It's good to hear you talk this
way."

 
          
 
"I hope I keep on talking this way,"
says the producer. "I can't be trusted. I don't trust myself. Hell, I get
excited, up one day, down the next. Maybe you'll have to hit me on the head
with that hammer to keep me going."

 
          
 
"I'd be pleased," says Smith.

 
          
 
"And so we do the film," says the
younger man, "I suppose you could help. You know the sets, probably better
than anyone. Any suggestions you might want to make, we'd be glad to have.
Then, after we do the film, I suppose you won't mind letting us tear the rest
of the world down, right?"

 
          
 
"I'd give my permission," says the
watchman.

 
          
 
"Well, I'll call off the hounds for a few
days and see what happens. Send out a camera crew tomorrow to see what we can
line up for shots. Send out some writers. Maybe you can all gab. Hell, hell.
We'll work it out." Douglas turns toward the gate. "In the meantime,
use your hammer all you want. I'll be seeing you. My God, I'm freezing!"