Bradbury Stories (90 page)

And all said “aye” to that.

And suddenly it was time to leave.

“But great God!” said Finn, “you just arrived!”

“We found what we came for, there's no need to stay,” announced the tall sad happy old young man. “It's back to the hothouse with the flowers . . . or they wilt overnight. We never stay. We are always flying and jumping and running. We are always on the move.”

The airport being fogged-in, there was nothing for it but the birds cage themselves on the Dun Laoghaire boat bound for England, and there was nothing for it but the inhabitants of Finn's should be down at the dock to watch them pull away in the middle of the evening. There they stood, all six, on the top deck, waving their thin hands down, and there stood Timulty and Nolan and Garrity and the rest waving their thick hands up. And as the boat hooted and pulled away the keeper-of-the-birds nodded once, and winged his right hand on the air and all sang forth:
“As I was walking through Dublin City, about the hour of twelve at night, I saw a maid, so fair was she... combing her hair by candlelight.”

“Jesus,” said Timulty, “do you
hear
?”

“Sopranos, every
one
of them!” cried Nolan.

“Not Irish sopranos, but real
real
sopranos,” said Kelly.

“Damn, why didn't they
say
? If we'd known, we'd have had a good hour of
that
out of them before the boat.”

Timulty nodded and added, listening to the music float over the waters. “Strange. Strange. I hate to see them
go
. Think. Think. For a hundred years or more people have said we had none. But now they have returned, if but for a little time.”

“We had none of
what
?” asked Garrity. “And
what
returned?”

“Why,” said Timulty, “the fairies, of course, the fairies that once lived in Ireland, and live here no more, but who came this day and changed our weather, and there they go again, who once stayed all the while.”

“Ah, shut up!” cried Kilpatrick. “And listen!”

And listen they did, nine men on the end of a dock as the boat sailed out and the voices sang and the fog came in and they did not move for a long time until the boat was far gone and the voices faded like a scent of papaya on the mist.

By the time they walked back to Finn's it had begun to rain.

A
WALL COLLAPSES, FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER
and another; with dull thunder, a city falls into ruin.

The night wind blows.

The world lies silent.

London was torn down during the day. Port Said was destroyed. The nails were pulled out of San Francisco. Glasgow is no more.

They are gone, forever.

Boards clatter softly in the wind, sand whines and trickles in small storms upon the still air.

Along the road toward the colorless ruins comes the old night watchman to unlock the gate in the high barbed-wire fence and stand looking in.

There in the moonlight lie Alexandria and Moscow and New York. There in the moonlight lie Johannesburg and Dublin and Stockholm. And Clearwater, Kansas, and Provincetown, and Rio de Janeiro.

Just this afternoon the old man saw it happen, saw the car roaring outside the barbed-wire fence, saw the lean, sun-tanned men in that car, the men with their luxurious charcoal-flannel suits, and winking gold-mask cuff links, and their burning-gold wristwatches, and eye-blinding rings, lighting their cork-tipped cigarettes with engraved lighters. . . .

“There it is, gentlemen. What a mess. Look what the weather's done to it.”

“Yes, sir, it's bad, Mr. Douglas!”

“We just
might
save Paris.”

“Yes,
sir
!”

“But, hell! The rain's warped it. That's Hollywood for you! Tear it down! Clear it out! We can use that land. Send a wrecking crew in today!”

“Yes,
sir
, Mr. Douglas!”

The car roaring off and gone away.

And now it is night. And the old night watchman stands inside the gate.

He remembers what happened this same still afternoon when the wreckers came.

A hammering, ripping, clattering; a collapse and a roar. Dust and thunder, thunder and dust!

And the whole of the entire world shook loose its nails and lath and plaster and sill and celluloid window as town after town following town banged over flat and lay still.

A shuddering, a thunder fading away, and then, once more, only the quiet wind.

The night watchman now walks slowly forward along the empty streets.

And one moment he is in Baghdad, and beggars loll in wondrous filth, and women with clear sapphire eyes give veiled smiles from high thin windows.

The wind blows sand and confetti.

The women and beggars vanish.

And it is all strutworks again, it is all papier-mâché and oil-painted canvas and props lettered with the name of this studio, and there is nothing behind any of the building fronts but night and space and stars.

The old man pulls a hammer and a few long nails from his tool chest; he peers around in the junk until he finds a dozen good strong boards and some untorn canvas. And he takes the bright steel nails in his blunt fingers, and they are single-headed nails.

And he begins to put London back together again, hammering and hammering, board by board, wall by wall, window by window, hammering, hammering, louder, louder, steel on steel, steel in wood, wood against sky, working the hours toward midnight, with no end to his striking and fixing and striking again.

“Hey there,
you
!”

The old man pauses.

“You, night
watchman
!”

Out of the shadows hurries a stranger in overalls, calling:

“Hey, what's-your-name!”

The old man turns. “The name's Smith.”

“Okay, Smith, what in hell's the idea!”

The watchman eyes the stranger quietly. “Who are
you
?”

“Kelly, foreman of the wrecking gang.”

The old man nods. “Ah. The ones who tear everything down. You've done plenty today. Why aren't you home bragging about it?”

Kelly hawks and spits. “There was some machinery over on the Singapore set I had to check.” He wipes his mouth. . . . “Now, Smith, what in Christ's name you think you're doing? Drop that hammer. You're building it all up again! We tear it down and you put it up. You crazy?”

The old man nods. “Maybe I am. But somebody has to put it up again.”

“Look, Smith. I do
my
work, you do yours, everyone's happy. But I can't have you messing, see? I'm turning you in to Mr. Douglas.”

The old man goes on with his hammering. “Call him up. Send him around. I want to talk to him.
He's
the crazy one.”

Kelly laughs. “You kidding? Douglas don't see nobody.” He jerks his hand, then bends to examine Smith's newly finished work. “Hey, wait a minute! What
kind
of nails you using? Single-heads! Now,
cut that
! It'll be hell to pay tomorrow, trying to pull 'em out!”

Smith turns his head and looks for a moment at the other man swaying there. “Well, it stands to reason you can't put the world together with double-headed nails. They're too easy to yank out. You got to use single-headed nails and hammer 'em way in. Like
this
!”

He gives a steel nail one tremendous blow that buries it completely in the wood.

Kelly works his hands on his hips. “I'll give you one more chance. Quit putting things back together and I'll play ball with you.”

“Young man,” says the night watchman, and keeps on hammering while he talks, and thinks about it, and talks some more, “I was here long before you were born. I was here when all
this
was only a meadow. And there was a wind set the meadow running in waves. For more than thirty years I watched it grow, until it was all of the world together. I lived here
with
it. I lived nice. This is the
real
world to me now. That world out there, beyond the fence, is where I spend time sleeping. I got a little room on a little street, and I see headlines and read about wars and strange, bad people. But here? Here I have the whole world together and it's all peace. I been walking through the cities of
this
world since 1920. Any night I feel like it, I have a one-o'clock snack at a bar on the Champs Élysées! I can get me some fine amontillado sherry at a sidewalk café in Madrid, if I want. Or else me and the stone gargoyles, high up there—you
see
them, on top Notre Dame?—we can turn over great state matters and reach big political decisions!”

“Yeah, Pop, sure.” Kelly waves impatiently.

“And now you come and kick it down and leave only that world out there which hasn't learned the
first thing
about peace that I know from seeing this land here inside the barbed wire. And so you come and rip it up and there's no peace anymore, anywhere. You and your wreckers so proud of your wrecking. Pulling down towns and cities and whole lands!”

“A guy's got to live,” says Kelly. “I got a wife and kids.”

“That's what they all say. They got wives and kids. And they go on, pulling apart, tearing down, killing. They had
orders
! Somebody
told
them. They
had
to do it!”

“Shut up and gimme that hammer!”

“Don't come any closer!”

“Why, you crazy old—”

“This hammer's good for more than nails!” The old man whistles the hammer through the air; the wrecker jumps back.

“Hell,” says Kelly, “you're insane! I'm putting a call through to the main studio; we'll get some cops here quick. My God, one minute you're building things up and talking crazy, but how do I know two minutes from now you won't run wild and start pouring kerosene and lighting matches!”

“I wouldn't harm the smallest piece of kindling in this place, and you know it,” says the old man.

“Might burn the whole goddam place down, hell,” says Kelly. “Listen, old man, you just wait right
there
!”

The wrecker spins about and runs off into the villages and the ruined cities and the sleeping two-dimensional towns of this night world, and after his footsteps fade there is a music that the wind plays on the long silver barbed wires of the fence, and the old man hammering and hammering and selecting long boards and rearing walls until a time finally comes when his mouth is gasping, his heart is exploding; the hammer drops from his open fingers, steel nails tinkle like coins on the pavement, and the old man cries out to himself alone:

“It's no use, no use. I can't put it all back up before they come. I need so very much help I don't know what to do.”

The old man leaves his hammer lying on the road and begins to walk with no direction, with no purpose, it seems, save that he is thinking to make one last round and take one last look at everything and say good-bye to whatever there is or was in this world to say good-bye to. And so he walks with the shadows all around and the shadows all through this land where time has grown late indeed, and the shadows are of all kinds and types and sizes, shadows of buildings, and shadows of people. And he doesn't look straight
at
them, no, because if he looked at them straight, they would all blow away. No, he just walks, down the middle of Piccadilly Circus . . .the echo of his steps . . . or the Rue de la Paix . . . the sound of him clearing his throat . . . or Fifth Avenue... and he doesn't look right or left. And all around him, in dark doorways and empty windows, are his many friends, his good friends, his
very
good friends. Far away there are the hiss and steam and soft whispering of a
caffè espresso
machine, all silver and chrome, and soft Italian singing . . . the flutter of hands in darkness over the open mouths of balalaikas, the rustle of palm trees, a touching of drums with the chimes chiming and small bells belling, and a sound of summer apples dropped in soft night grass which are not apples at all but the motion of women's bared feet slowly dancing a circle to the chimes' faint chiming and the belling of the tiny golden bells. There is the munch of maize kernels crushed on black volcanic stone, the sizzle of tortillas drowned in hot fat, the whisk of charcoals tossing up a thousand fireflies of spark at the blowing of a mouth and the wave of a papaya frond; everywhere faces and forms, everywhere stirs and gestures and ghost fires which float the magical torch-colored faces of Spanish gypsies in air as on a fiery water, the mouths crying out the songs that tell of the oddness and the strangeness and the sadness of living. Everywhere shadows and people, everywhere people and shadows and singing to music.

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 anymore.

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.