Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (38 page)

 
          
 
"What are you doing out of bed?" he
demanded of the boy. He tapped his thin chest, took his pulse and temperature.
"Absolutely amazing! Normal.
Normal, by God!"

 
          
 
"I shall never be sick again in my
life," declared the boy, quietly, standing there, looking out the wide
window. "Never."

 
          
 
"I hope not. Why, you're looking fine,
Charles."

 
          
 
"Doctor?"

 
          
 
"Yes, Charles?"

 
          
 
"Can I go to school now?" asked
Charles.

 
          
 
"Tomorrow will be time enough. You sound
positively eager."

 
          
 
"I am. I like school. All the kids. I
want to play with them and wrestle with them, and spit on them and play with
the girls' pigtails and shake the teacher's hand, and rub my hands on all the
cloaks in the cloakroom, and I want to grow up and travel and shake hands with
people all over the world, and be married and have lots of children, and go to
libraries and handle books and—all of that I want to!" said the boy,
looking off into the September morning. "What's the name you called
me?"

 
          
 
"What?" The doctor puzzled. "I
called you nothing but Charles."

 
          
 
"It's better than no name at all, I
guess." The boy shrugged.

 
          
 
"I'm glad you want to go back to school,”
said the doctor.

 
          
 
"I really anticipate it," smiled the
boy. "Thank you for your help, Doctor. Shake hands."

 
          
 
"Glad to."

 
          
 
They shook hands gravely, and the clear wind
blew through the open window. They shook hands for almost a minute, the boy
smiling up at the old man and thanking him.

 
          
 
Then, laughing, the boy raced the doctor
downstairs and out to his car. His mother and father followed for the happy
farewell.

 
          
 
"Fit as a fiddle!" said the doctor.
"Incredible!"

 
          
 
"And strong," said the father.
"He got out of his straps himself during the night. Didn't you,
Charles?"

 
          
 
"Did I?" said the boy.

 
          
 
"You did! How?"

 
          
 
"Oh," the boy said, "that was a
long time ago."

 
          
 
"A long time ago!"

 
          
 
They all laughed, and while they were
laughing, the quiet boy moved his bare foot on the sidewalk and merely touched,
brushed against a number of red ants that were scurrying about on the sidewalk.
Secretly, his eyes shining, while his parents chatted with the old man, he saw
the ants hesitate, quiver, and lie still on the cement. He sensed they were cold
now.

 
          
 
"Good-by!"

 
          
 
The doctor drove away, waving.

 
          
 
The boy walked ahead of his parents. As he
walked he looked away toward the town and began to hum "School Days"
under his breath.

 
          
 
"It's good to have him well again,"
said the father.

 
          
 
"Listen to him. He's so looking forward
to school!"

 
          
 
The boy turned quietly. He gave each of his
parents a crushing hug. He kissed them both several times.

 
          
 
Then without a word he bounded up the steps
into the house.

 
          
 
In the parlor, before the others entered, he
quickly opened the bird cage, thrust his hand in, and petted the yellow canary,
once.

 
          
 
Then he shut the cage door, stood back, and
waited.

 
          
 
In the sun the headboard was like a fountain, tossing
up plumes of clear light. It was carved with lions and gargoyles and bearded
goats. It was an awe-inspiring object even at midnight, as Antonio sat on the
bed and unlaced his shoes and put his large calloused hand out to touch its
shimmering harp. Then he rolled over into this fabulous machine for dreaming,
and he lay breathing heavily, his eyes beginning to close.

 
          
 
"Every night," his wife's voice
said, "we sleep in the mouth of a calliope."

 
          
 
Her complaint shocked him. He lay a long while
before daring to reach up his hard-tipped fingers to stroke the cold metal of
the intricate headboard, the threads of this lyre that had sung many wild and
beautiful songs down the years.

 
          
 
"This is no calliope," he said.

 
          
 
"It cries like one," Maria said.
"A billion people on this world tonight have beds. Why, I ask the saints,
not us?"

 
          
 
"This," said Antonio gently,
"is a bed." He plucked a little tune on the imitation brass harp
behind his head. To his ears it was "Santa Lucia."

 
          
 
"This bed has humps like a herd of camels
was under it."

 
          
 
"Now, Mama," Antonio said. He called
her Mama when she was mad, though they had no children. "You were never
this way," he went on, "until five months ago when Mrs. Brancozzi
downstairs bought her new bed."

 
          
 
Maria said wistfully, "Mrs. Brancozzi's
bed. It's like snow. It's all flat and white and smooth."

 
          
 
"I don't want any damn snow, all flat and
white and smooth! These springs-feel them!" he cried angrily. "They
know me. They recognize that this hour of night I lie thus, at two o'clock, so!
Three o'clock this way, four o'clock that. We are like a tumbling
act,
we've worked together for years and know all the holds
and falls."

 
          
 
Maria sighed, and said, "Sometimes I
dream we're in the taffy machine at Bartole's candy store."

 
          
 
"This bed," he announced to the
darkness, "served our family before Garibaldi! From this wellspring alone
came precincts of honest voters, a squad of clean-saluting Army men, two
confectioners, a barber, four second leads for El Trovatore and Rigoletto, and
two geniuses so complex they never could decide what to do in their lifetime!
Not to forget enough beautiful women to provide ballrooms with their finest
decoration. A cornucopia of plenty, this bed! A veritable harvesting
machine!"

 
          
 
"We have been married two years,"
she said with dreadful control over her voice. "Where are our second leads
for Rigoletto, our geniuses, our ballroom decorations?"

 
          
 
"Patience, Mama."

 
          
 
"Don't call me Mama! While this bed is
busy favoring you all night, never once has it done for me. Not even so much as
a baby girl!

 
          
 
He sat up. "You've let these women in
this tenement ruin you with their dollar-down, dollar-a-week talk. Has Mrs.
Brancozzi children? Her and her new bed that she's had for five months?"

 
          
 
"No! But soon! Mrs. Brancozzi says . . .
and her bed, so beautiful."

 
          
 
He slammed himself down and yanked the covers
over him. The bed screamed Hke all the Furies rushing through the night sky,
fading away toward the dawn.

 
          
 
The moon changed the shape of the window
pattern on the floor. Antonio awoke. Maria was not beside him.

 
          
 
He got up and went to peer through the
half-open door of the bathroom. His wife stood at the mirror looking at her
tired face.

 
          
 
"I don't feel well," she said.

 
          
 
"We argued." He put out his hand to
pat her, "I'm sorry. We'll think it over. About the bed, I mean. We'll see
how the money goes. And if you're not well tomorrow, see the doctor, eh? Now,
come back to bed."

 
          
 
At noon the next day, Antonio walked from the
lumberyard to a window where
stood fine new beds
with
their covers invitingly turned back.

 
          
 
"I," he whispered to himself,
"am a beast."

 
          
 
He checked his watch. Maria, at this time,
would be going to the doctor's. She had been like cold milk this morning; he
had told her to go. He walked on to the candy-store window and watched the
taffy machine folding and threading and pulling. Does taffy scream? he
wondered. Perhaps, but so high we cannot hear it. He laughed. Then, in the
stretched taffy, he saw Maria. Frowning, he turned and walked back to the
furniture store. No. Yes. No. Yes! He pressed his nose to the icy window. Bed,
he thought, you in there, new bed, do you know me? Will you be kind to my back,
nights?

 
          
 
He took out his wallet slowly, and peered at
the money. He sighed, gazed for a long time at that flat marbletop, that
unfamiliar enemy, that new bed. Then, shoulders sagging, he walked into the
store, his money held loosely in his hand.

 
          
 
"Maria!" He ran up the steps two at
a time. It was nine o'clock at night and he had managed to beg off in the
middle of his overtime at the lumberyard to rush home. He rushed through the
open doorway, smiling.

 
          
 
The apartment was empty.

 
          
 
"Ah," he said disappointedly. He
laid the receipt for the new bed on top of the bureau where Maria might see it
when she entered. On those few evenings when he worked late she visited with
any one of several neighbors downstairs.

 
          
 
I’ll go find her, he thought, and stopped. No.
I want to tell her alone. I'll wait. He sat on the bed. "Old bed," he
said, "good-by to you. I am very sorry." He patted the brass Hons
nervously. He paced the floor. Come on, Maria. He imagined her smile.

 
          
 
He listened for her quick running on the
stair, but he heard only a slow, measured tread. He thought: That's not my
Maria, slow like that, no.

 
          
 
The doorknob turned.

 
          
 
"Maria!"

 
          
 
"You're early!" She smiled happily
at him. Did she guess? Was it written on his face? "I've been
downstairs," she cried, "telling everyone!"

 
          
 
"Telling everyone?"

 
          
 
"The doctor! I saw the doctor!"

 
          
 
"The doctor?" He looked bewildered.
"And?"

 
          
 
"And, Papa, and —"

 
          
 
"Do you mean—Papa?"

 
          
 
"Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa!"

 
          
 
"Oh," he said, gently, "you
walked so carefully on the stairs."

 
          
 
He took hold of her, but not too tight, and he
kissed her cheeks, and he shut his eyes, and he yelled. Then he had to wake a
few neighbors and tell them, shake them, tell them again. There had to be a
little wine and a careful waltz around, an embracing, a trembling, a kissing of
brow, eyelids, nose, lips, temples, ears, hair, chin—and then it was past
midnight.

 
          
 
"A miracle," he sighed.

 
          
 
They were alone in their room again, the air
warm from the people who had been here a minute before, laughing, talking. But
now they were alone again.

 
          
 
Turning out the light, he saw the receipt on
the bureau.

 
          
 
Stunned, he tried to decide in what subtle and
delicious way to break this additional news to her.

 
          
 
Maria sat upon her side of the bed in the
dark, hypnotized with wonder. She moved her hands as if her body was a strange
doll, taken apart, and now to be put back together again, limb by limb, her
motions as slow as if she lived beneath a warm sea at midnight. Now, at last,
careful not to break herself, she lay back upon the pillow.

 
          
 
"Maria, I have something to tell
you."

 
          
 
"Yes?" she said faintly,

 
          
 
"Now that you are as you are." He
squeezed her hand. "You deserve the comfort, the rest, the beauty of a new
bed."

 
          
 
She did not cry out happily or turn to him or
seize him. Her silence was a thinking silence.

 
          
 
He was forced to continue. "This bed is
nothing but a pipe organ, a calliope."

 
          
 
"It is a bed," she said.

 
          
 
"A herd of camels sleep under it."

 
          
 
"No," she said quietly, "from
it will come precincts of honest voters, captains enough for three armies, two
ballerinas, a famous lawyer, a very tall policeman, and seven basso profundos,
altos, and sopranos."

 
          
 
He squinted across the dimly lighted room at
the receipt upon the bureau. He touched the worn mattress under him. The
springs moved softly to recognize each limb, each tired muscle, each aching
bone.

 
          
 
He sighed. "I never argue with you,
little one."

 
          
 
"Mama," she said.

 
          
 
"Mama," he said.

 
          
 
And then as he closed his eyes and drew the
covers to his chest and lay in the darkness by the great fountain, in the sight
of a jury of fierce metal lions and amber goats and smiling gargoyles, he
listened. And he heard it. It was very far away at first, very tentative, but
it came clearer as he listened.

 
          
 
Softly, her arm back over her head, Maria's
finger tips began to tap a little dance on the gleaming harp strings, on the
shimmering brass pipes of the ancient bed. The music was—yes, of course:
"Santa Lucia!" His lips moved to it in a warm whisper. Santa Lucia!
Santa Lucia. It was very beautiful.