Read Falling Out of Time Online
Authors: David Grossman
Falling Out of Time (3 page)
WALKING MAN:
I am not alone, I am not
alone, I whisper
like an oath,
and his breath
through my mouth
clouds the mirror.
I am not alone,
with him I am
not alone—
TOWN CHRONICLER:
He gradually encircles the whole village, then he does so again. He walks by houses, yards, wells, and fields, past barns and paddocks and woodpiles. Dogs bark at him and quickly retreat with a whimper, and he walks.
WALKING MAN:
I am not alone. With him
I am not
one
,
I am alone
with him in all
my thickets, my labyrinths.
He pulses in me, lives
with me, one
with me, with him
I share the vast expanse his death
created in me—
and he surges
and he wanes with me,
unquiet
unquiet
roaming
embittering
redeeming
shackling
healing
purifying,
not letting go,
not letting go,
this
lonely
dead
child.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Night after night after night. Things are happening in your town, my lord, and
I fear I will not have the time to record them all for you.
Right now, at midnight, at the old wharf by the lake, something stirs inside a skein of fishing nets. A head pokes out and glances around. A tiny, supple body pulls itself out of the skein and sits up breathlessly. It is a person, undoubtedly. Frightened eyes gleam white in the filthy face as they scan the hilltops surrounding the town. The gaping mouth turns to look, like a dark third eye.
Now I see: it is the net-mender. You may recall, Your Highness, that years ago, on one of your visits to the harbor, you enjoyed her sharp tongue when she argued with you over the needle tax you had levied, in your benevolence, at the time. A cheerful, curly-haired boy was tied to her chest in a brightly colored sling. He played a game of peekaboo with you, and you gave him a gold coin. I do not know what became of him. From time to time I see her roaming the streets near the harbor, grunting, muttering unintelligible words to herself, encumbered by a tangled web of fishing nets that makes one wonder whether there is a human being inside at all.
She suddenly leaps up as if snakebitten. Her hands rise and she points far away. She groans—
If you are awake, my lord, and would be so kind
as to look out of your window, you, too, will see: a small luminance of sorts encircles the town. A man walks there, up and down the hills.
WALKING MAN:
One step,
another step, another
step,
walking and
walking to you.
I am
an unleashed question,
an open shout
My son
If only
I could
move
you
just
one
step.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
And on the third night watch, in a side alley on the outskirts of town, in a little house with one room, a centaur sits at a
table. That is what the townsfolk call him, Your Highness, and I promise to try to find out why very shortly. His massive head, adorned with snowy-white curls, droops onto his chest. His spectacles have slid down to the edge of his nose, and his snores shake the house. I glance right and left: no one. I rise up on my toes and peer inside. The room is dusky, but I can discern that it is overflowing: strange mounds and heaps that might be dirt or garbage, or piles of old furniture, surround the man and at times reach the ceiling. It is hard to see how he can move in this room.
A dirty blanket is spread out on the desk before him. A few empty beer bottles, pens, pencils, a school notebook, all scattered around. The notebook is open; its pages have thin blue lines. As best I can tell from here, they are all empty.
“Scram before I wring your balls,” the centaur growls without opening his eyes, and I flee for my life.
Only when I reach the fence outside the home of the woman from whom I have exiled myself does my heart recover.
TOWN CHRONICLER’S WIFE:
The passing time
is painful. I have lost
the art
of moving simply,
naturally, within it.
I am swept back
against its flow. Angry, vindictive,
it pierces me
all the time, all the
time
with its
spikes.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
The next evening, in a hut in a slum on the outskirts of town, a young woman—trained as a midwife—gets up abruptly from her kneeling position by a tub of water and stands with her hands dripping. As far as I can see, there is no laboring woman in the room, nor a baby. Only a man’s trousers and shirt float in the tub. The woman freezes. Her neck is a stalk, her face long and gentle. Somewhat rigidly, she turns and walks to the window. Outside it is cold and stormy, and since the chimney emits no smoke—allowing me to peer through it—I assume it is very cold inside, too.
Her gaze probes the faraway hilltops on the horizon. She is silent, but her fingers rend her mouth apart as if in a scream, until I hold
my breath as well. When she finally sighs, her shoulders collapse, as though her strength has suddenly left her.
Her husband—barrel-chested, with a reddish shaved skull and three thick folds on the back of his neck—who all this time has sat in the corner cobbling a pair of riding boots, punctuating and vowelizing her silence with the rapid blows of his hammer, hisses through the nails in his mouth:
COBBLER:
Poisoning your soul again?
MIDWIFE:
Y-y-yesterday she w-w-would have been f-f-five.
COBBLER:
I’ve told you a hundred times not to think about these things! Enough, it’s over!
MIDWIFE:
I lit a candle by her p-p-picture and you said n-n-nothing. Don’t you ever think about her?
COBBLER:
What is there to think? How much of a life did she even have? A year?
MIDWIFE:
And a h-h-half.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
The cobbler slams the boot heel with his hammer as hard as he can, curses, and with peculiar lust sucks the blood that spurts from his finger.
Heavy with thought, I leave. The town is asleep; its streets are empty. At the edge of the old wharf I stop and wait. The leaden clouds almost touch the water. Daybreak will soon come.
As she did last night, the mute net-mender thrusts her head out of the skein. She looks around, searching, as if a voice had called her. I hide behind a lamppost. She suddenly leaps and runs down the pier with unbelievable speed, past skeletons of boats and rusty anchors, her long nets dragging behind her, floating.
On the wooden bridge she stops. I can hear her breath whistling. Who knows what is plaguing this miserable creature’s mind? She grabs the railing and rocks it wildly. How much force and fury that little frame contains! I carefully move closer and crouch behind an overturned boat. The lake is turbulent tonight, and it sprays my glasses with droplets. In such moments, Your Highness, I practically curse my blind obedience to your orders. It is hard to see from here, but it seems as though someone is trying to force the mute to turn back and look at the hills, and she fights him
and grunts and spits, squirming as her tiny, supple body is tossed from side to side. I write quickly in the dark my hand is trembling I apologize for the handwriting Your Highness perhaps she is about to throw herself into the lake and then what will I do it’s been so many years since I’ve touched anyone and her head at once pulls sharply back maybe there really is someone in the dark breaking her neck—
Her mouth gapes, teeth exposed, and suddenly all is quiet. How such silence and the lake as if the waves do not
MUTE WOMAN IN NET:
Two human specks,
a mother and her child,
we glided through the world
for six whole years.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Astonished, she plunges once again into the mess of nets. I am exceedingly cold, Your Highness. Such phenomena disquiet me. The lake coming back to life so suddenly, and the boats once again knocking into one another and creaking in mockery. You will ridicule me, too, my lord, but I am willing to swear that I saw a slim band of light coming out of her mouth. Perhaps
just a moonlight apparition. But there is no moon tonight. And the fact that for one moment, when she sang, she was almost beautiful … I am merely reporting. Her voice was clear. I might even venture to say: heavenly. But what do I know? I am tired. This is all so confusing. Perhaps I should take a nap in one of the boats
Wait—
Like a quick little animal she burrows into her nets and is gone. According to the records in my possession she has not uttered a single word for upward of nine years.
And now, Your Highness, it is finally dawn.
DUKE:
Dawn!
From within the loathsome night,
from the theater
of its nightmares, I once again
extract and
collect myself piece
by piece, a monarch-mosaic:
here is my hand
outstretched for bread,
and its fresh smell
and warm body,
but first, first
my eye
goes to the window,
drawn to two birds in a puddle,
to a dawn rising
sanguine. Look,
my lord, you are blessed:
here on a platter
is a newborn day,
its teeth not yet emerged—
But for a week now, far away
on the hilltops, a man
like an open razor blade walks
and cuts, his head
in the sky.
WALKING MAN:
And yet
I shall move you,
my rootless child,
my cold,
fruitless child.
Every day it gets
harder, every day you grow
more hardened, more
and more taxing.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Every time the midwife leaves the room, the cobbler jumps up to the window. His eyes dart over the hills, his lips seem to chew up insults and curses. Hammer in hand.
He notices me in his yard now, behind an empty chicken coop. He does not come out or banish me; he doesn’t even threaten me with his hammer. I carefully show him my notebook and pen. I believe I see him nod.
MIDWIFE:
Opposite my bed
on the w-w-wall
is an ancient round
c-c-clock.
It is old and weak,
with hands s-s-stuck
on the same hour
and the same m-m-minute
for more than a y-y-year—
TOWN CHRONICLER:
Her voice, soft and flat, comes from the next room. The cobbler moves away from the window. He walks backward. Backward? Strange: as if sleepwalking, he probes around until his back touches the wall. Both arms slowly rise on either side. His shaved red head
slams against the wall to the beat of the words from the other room.
MIDWIFE:
And only
the thin s-s-second
hand keeps fluttering
p-p-pouncing all the time
all the time that’s
left, all the time
that was given,
p-p-pounces and lurches
back
unw-w-wavering,
storming
fighting
to pass
to cross
or just
t-t- to be,
to be one sheer full simple second no more no less
just that, God,
just be.
DUKE:
And here, in the palace,
in the private chamber,
a whistling kettle and steaming
coffee. I am serene and slow
and limp, undoubtedly:
an exemplary duke—
no.
No.
A man not-himself
has awoken from this night—
all hollow bones,
hah, the gravity
of tragedy. (You thought
you were safe, m’lord, you thought you were
immune. Your troops
cover the land, a thousand hussars
on a thousand horses, and you in
shattered shards.) But he rises,
he rises to his day,
silently puts on the slough
of his name, inwardly
fans the dim embers, does his best
to convince himself that he still remembers
what it was like to
just
be;
how to stare, for example,
how to stare
? How
does a person just stare
innocently, how does he
for one instant forget
what is seared inside him
by affliction?
In short—
an impostor of sorts, a sham,
pretending to be an everyman
whose eye
is drawn to the open window, whose hand
reaches simply
for bread—
Amid all this, I suddenly
plummet,
plunge,
a mere
shadow
of he who walks there
alone, of he who,
with heavy steps,
chisels the verdict
on my land:
all that is,
all that is
(oh, my child,
my sweet, my lost one) —
all that is
will now
echo
what is not.
TOWN CHRONICLER:
“It’s like a murmur,” the centaur explains when I pass by his window the next evening. “A murmur, or a sort of dry rustle inside your head, and it never stops.”
Not willingly, Your Highness, does he give his testimony. Only after I show him the royal edict with your seal and portrait does he realize that he has no choice but to collaborate.
CENTAUR:
“
Veritably
”? You need to know what’s going on with me? You’re telling me the duke could give two shits about what is
veritably
buzzing around in my head? Okay, then, gird your gonads and do some chronicling. Write down that it’s, let’s say, like dry leaves. What are you ogling at like an idiot? Leaves! But dry ones, right? Crumbling. Dead. Did you get that? And someone keeps stepping on them, over and over again … So? Is that
veritable
enough for you? Will the duke be pleased? Will his face glisten with delight?