Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (30 page)

 
          
 
"Hush! Did you imagine, family, so many
people, two hundred, would pay to give us their opinion?"

 
          
 
"Yes," said Mrs. Wilkes. 'Wives,
husbands, children, are deaf to each other. So people gladly pay to have
someone listen. Poor things, each today thought he and he alone knew quinsy,
dropsy, glanders, could tell the slaver from the hives. So tonight we are rich
and two hundred people are happy, having unloaded their full medical kit at our
door."

 
          
 
"Gods, instead of quelling the riot, we
had to drive them off snapping like pups."

 
          
 
"Read us the list. Father," said
Jamie, "of two hundred remedies. Which one is true?"

 
          
 
"I care not," whispered Camillia,
sighing. "It grows dark. My stomach is queasy from listening to the names!
May I be taken upstairs?"

 
          
 
“Yes, dear. Jamie, lift!"

 
          
 
"Please," said a voice.

 
          
 
Half-bent, the men looked up.

 
          
 
There stood a Dustman of no particular size or
shape, his face masked with soot from which shone water-blue eyes and a white
slot of an ivory smile. Dust sifted from his sleeves and his pants as he moved,
as he talked quietly, nodding.

 
          
 
"I couldn't get through the mob
earlier," he said, holding his dirty cap in his hands. "Now, going home,
here I am. Must I pay?"

 
          
 
"No, Dustman, you need not," said
Camillia gently.

 
          
 
"Hold on—" protested Mr. Wilkes.

 
          
 
But Camillia gave him a soft look and he grew
silent.

 
          
 
"Thank you, ma'am." The Dustman's
smile flashed like warm sunlight in the growing dusk. "I have but one
advice."

 
          
 
He gazed at Camillia. She gazed at him.

 
          
 
"Be this Saint Bosco's Eve, sir,
ma'am?"

 
          
 
"Who knows? Not me, sir!" said Mr.
Wilkes.

 
          
 
"I think it is Saint Bosco's Eve, sir.
Also, it is the night of the Full Moon. So," said the Dustman humbly,
unable to take his eyes from the lovely haunted girl, "you must leave your
daughter out in the light of that rising moon."

 
          
 
"Out under the moon!" said Mrs.
Wilkes.

 
          
 
"Doesn't that make the lunatic?"
asked Jamie.

 
          
 
"Beg pardon, sir." The Dustman
bowed. "But the full moon soothes all sick animal, be they human or plain
field beast. There is a serenity of color, a quietude of touch, a sweet
sculpturing of mind and body in full moonlight."

 
          
 
"It may rain—" said the mother
uneasily.

 
          
 
"I swear," said the Dustman quickly.
"My sister suffered this same swooning paleness. We set her like a potted
lily out one spring night with the moon. She lives today in Sussex, the soul of
reconstituted health!"

 
          
 
"Reconstituted!
Moonlight! And will cost us not one penny of the four hundred we collected this
day, Mother, Jamie, Camillia."

 
          
 
"No!" said Mrs. Wilkes. "I
won't have it!"

 
          
 
"Mother," said Camillia.

 
          
 
She looked earnestly at the Dustman.

 
          
 
From his grimed face the Dustman gazed back,
his smile like a little scimitar in the dark.

 
          
 
"Mother," said Camillia. "I
feel it. The moon will cure me, it will, it will. . . ."

 
          
 
The mother sighed. "This is not my day,
nor night. Let me kiss you for the last time, then. There."

 
          
 
And the mother went upstairs.

 
          
 
Now the Dustman backed off, bowing courteously
to all.

 
          
 
"All night, now, remember, beneath the
moon, not the slightest disturbance until dawn. Sleep well, young lady. Dream,
and dream the best. Good night."

 
          
 
Soot was lost in soot; the man was gone.

 
          
 
Mr. Wilkes and Jamie kissed Camillia's brow.

 
          
 
"Father, Jamie," she said.
"Don't worry."

 
          
 
And she was left alone to stare off where at a
great distance she thought she saw a smile hung by itself in the dark blink off
and on, then go round a comer, vanishing.

 
          
 
She waited for the rising of the moon.

 
          
 
Night in London, the voices growing drowsier
in the inns, the slamming of doors, drunken farewells, clocks chiming, Camillia
saw a cat like a woman stroll by in her furs, saw a woman like a cat stroll by,
both wise, both Egyptian, both smelling of spice. Every quarter hour or so a
voice drifted down from above:

 
          
 
"You all right, child?"

 
          
 
"Yes, Father."

 
          
 
"Camillia?"

 
          
 
"Mother, Jamie, I'm fine."

 
          
 
And at last. "Good night."

 
          
 
"Good night."

 
          
 
The last lights out.
London
asleep.

 
          
 
The moon rose.

 
          
 
And the higher the moon, the larger grew
Camillia's eyes as she watched the alleys, the courts, the streets, until at
last, at midnight, the moon moved over her to show her like a marble figure
atop an ancient tomb.

 
          
 
A motion in darkness.

 
          
 
Camillia pricked her ears.

 
          
 
A faint melody sprang out on the air.

 
          
 
A man stood in the shadows of the court.

 
          
 
Camillia gasped.

 
          
 
The man stepped forth into moonlight, carrying
a lute which he Strummed softly. He was a man well-dressed, whose face was
handsome and, now anyway, solemn.

 
          
 
"A troubadour," said Camillia aloud.

 
          
 
The man, his finger on his lips, moved slowly
forward and soon stood by her cot.

 
          
 
"What are you doing out so late?"
asked the girl, unafraid but not knowing why.

 
          
 
"A friend sent me to make you well."
He touched the lute strings. They hummed sweetly. He was indeed handsome there
in the silver light.

 
          
 
"That cannot be," she said,
"for it was told me, the moon is my cure."

 
          
 
"And so it will be, maiden."

 
          
 
"What songs do you sing?"

 
          
 
"Songs of spring nights, aches and
ailments without name. Shall I name your fever, maiden?"

 
          
 
"If you know it, yes."

 
          
 
"First, the symptoms: raging
temperatures, sudden cold, heart fast then slow, storms of temper, then sweet
calms, drunkenness from having sipped only well water, dizziness from being
touched only thus —"

 
          
 
He touched her wrist, saw her melt toward
delicious oblivion, drew back.

 
          
 
"Depressions, elations," he went on.
"Dreams—"

 
          
 
"Stop!" she cried, enthralled.
"You know me to the letter. Now, name my ailment!"

 
          
 
"I will." He pressed his lips to the
palm of her hand so she quaked suddenly. "The name of the ailment is
Camillia Wilkes."

 
          
 
"How strange." She shivered, her
eyes glinting lilac fires. "Am I then my own affliction? How sick I make
myself! Even now, feel my heart!"

 
          
 
"I feel it, so."

 
          
 
"My limbs, they bum with summer
heat!"

 
          
 
"Yes. They scorch my fingers."

 
          
 
"But now, the night wind, see how I
shudder, cold! I die, I swear it, I die!"

 
          
 
“I will not let you," he said quietly.

 
          
 
"Are you a doctor, then?"

 
          
 
"No, just your plain, your ordinary physician,
like another who guessed your trouble this day. The girl who would have named
it but ran off in the crowd."

 
          
 
“Yes, I saw in her eyes she knew what had
seized me. But, now, my teeth chatter. And no extra blanket!"

 
          
 
"Give room, please. There. Let me see:
two arms, two legs, head and body. I’m all here!"

 
          
 
"What, sir!"

 
          
 
"To warm you from the night, of
course."

 
          
 
"How like a hearth! Oh, sir, sir, do I
know you? Your name?"

 
          
 
Swiftly above her, his head shadowed hers.
From it his merry clear-water eyes glowed as did his white ivory slot of a
smile.

 
          
 
"Why, Bosco, of course," he said.

 
          
 
“Is there not a saint by that name?"

 
          
 
"Given an hour, you will call me so,
yes."

 
          
 
His head bent closer. Thus soothed my shadow,
she cried with joyous recognition to welcome her Dustman back.

 
          
 
'The world spins! I pass away! The cure, sweet
Doctor, or all is lost!"

 
          
 
"The cure," he said. "And the
cure is this . . "

 
          
 
Somewhere, cats sang. A shoe, shot from a
window, tipped them off a fence. Then all was silence and the moon . . .

 
          
 
"Shh . . ."

 
          
 
Dawn. Tiptoeing downstairs, Mr. and Mrs,
Wilkes peered into their courtyard.

 
          
 
"Frozen stone dead from the terrible
night, I know it!"

 
          
 
''No, wife, look! Alive! Roses in her cheeks!
No, more! Peaches, persimmons! She glows all rosy-milky! Sweet Camillia, alive
and well, made whole again!"

 
          
 
They bent by the slumbering girl.

 
          
 
"She smiles, she dreams; what's that she
says?"