Specimen Days (6 page)

The workday passed. Align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect. In the afternoon Lucas began to discern a faint sound as the teeth of the machine bit down, a lesser noise within the machine's greater one. He wondered if it was a new sound or simply an aspect of the machine's usual noise, inaudible to him until he'd grown accustomed to the machine's complexities of being. He listened more carefully. Yes, there it was amid the crunching of the metal teeth into the softer metal of the plate, all but lost in the slalom of the rollers, the swish of the belt there was another sound, barely more than a whisper. Lucas leaned in close. The whisper seemed to emanate from deep within, from the dark place under the turning wheel, just past the point at which teeth embedded themselves in iron.

He leaned in closer still. He could hear it but not quite hear it. From behind him, Tom said, "Somethin' wrong with yer machine, there?"

Lucas righted himself. He hadn't thought Tom noticed him at all. It was surprising to know he was so visible.

"No, sir," he said. Quickly, with a show of diligence, he loaded another plate.

He didn't see Jack until day's end, when Jack came to him, said, "All right, then," spoke to Dan, and went into the chamber of the vaults. Lucas passed through a moment of dreamlike confusion he thought he had reentered the previous day, had only imagined it was Thursday and not Wednesday. In his bafflement he forgot to ask Jack when he would be paid. He resolved to ask tomorrow.

He left the works and made his way home. On Rivington he passed a madman who screamed about a rain (or was it a reign?) of fire. He passed a bone that lay in the gutter, knobbed at either end, ivory-colored, offering itself like something precious.

He wanted to go to Catherine again but forced himself home instead. When he let himself into the apartment, he found his mother standing in the middle of the parlor, on the carpet she had paid too much for. It seemed for a moment only a moment that she was herself again, that she had made supper and put the kettle on.

She stood transfixed in her nightgown. Her hair flowed to her shoulders; wisps of it stood around her head in wiry confusion. He had never seen her so, in the parlor with her hair undone. He remained dumbly at the entrance, uncertain of what to do or say. He saw that his father stood at the window with his breathing machine, looking not out at the street but into the room. He saw that his father was frightened and confused.

He said, "Mother?"

She stared at him. Her eyes were not her own.

"It's Lucas," he said. "It's only Lucas."

Her voice, when she spoke, was low. She might have feared being overheard. She said, "He mustn't sing to me no more."

Lucas glanced helplessly at his father, who remained standing at the window, looking into the room, watching intently the empty air before his eyes.

His mother hesitated, searching Lucas's face. She seemed to be struggling to remember him. Then, abruptly, as if pushed from behind, she fell forward. Lucas caught her in his arms and held her as best he could, awkwardly, with one hand under her left arm and the other on her right shoulder. He could feel the weight of her breasts. They were like old plums loosely held in sacks.

"It's all right," he said to her. "Don't worry, it's all right."

He got a better purchase on her limp form. He worked his right arm around her waist.

She said, "I know what language you sing in now." "Come back to bed. Come along, now." "It isn't right. It isn't fair." "Hush. Hush."

"We done what we could. We didn't know what'd happen."

"Come, now."

Lucas snaked his arm farther around her, supporting her under her opposite armpit. At his direction, she walked unsteadily with him into the bedroom. He set her down on the bed. He pulled her legs up, arranged her as best he could, with her head on the pillow. He drew the counterpane over her.

"You'll feel better if you sleep," he said.

"I can't sleep, I never will. Not with that voice in my ears."

"Lie quietly, then. Nothing will happen." "Something will. Something does."

He stroked her hot, dry forehead. It was as impossible to tell time in the bedroom as it was at the works. When she was quiet, when she slept or did not sleep but was quiet and breathing steadily, he went out of the room.

His father hadn't moved. Lucas went to the window and stood beside him. His father continued staring at the empty air. Lucas saw that the seven pennies still lay on the tabletop, untouched.

He said, "Father, are you hungry?"

His father nodded, breathed, and nodded again.

Lucas stood with his father at the window. The ashman ambled by, dragging his bin. Mr. Cain shouted, "No place, everyplace, where's the string of pearls?"

"I'll get you something," Lucas said.

He took the pennies, went out, and found a man selling a cabbage for three cents, and a woman selling a hen's egg that, after some argument, she let him have for four. It seemed it might be propitious that his mother had asked after chickens and he had gone out and found an egg.

He cooked the egg and boiled the cabbage, and set a plate before his father. He was seized by an urge to take his father's head in his hands and knock it sharply against the table's edge, as Dan did with his machine at the works, knocking it when it threatened to seize up, ringing his wrench against its side. Lucas imagined that if he tapped his father's head against the wood with precisely the correct force he might jar him back to himself. It would be not violence but kindness. It would be a cure. He laid one hand on his father's smooth head but only caressed it. His father made noises when he ate, ordinary slurpings combined with low moans, as if feeding were painful to him. He lifted a spoonful of cabbage to his mouth. A pallid green string dangled from the spoon. He slurped, moaned, and swallowed. He took a breath, then ate again. Lucas thought, Four across, six down.

Lucas read his passage. He put out the lamp but could not sleep. He lay awake in the room. There were the walls. There was the ceiling, with its black triangles of missing plaster and its stain in the shape of a chrysanthemum. There were the pegs on which the clothes hung, his and Simon's.

He rose and went to the window. Emily's light was on. Emily was lazy and cross, Catherine said so. Her stitches had sometimes to be resewn, but she remained sullen, unrepentant.

And still, Simon had gone to her. Only Lucas knew. Once, a month or more ago, he had looked out the window and seen Simon there, with Emily, who'd left her curtains open. It had seemed impossible at first. Simon had said he was going out for his pint. He was promised to Catherine. How could he be in Emily's room? For a moment Lucas had thought that some other Simon, his living ghost, had gone there to haunt Emily, because she was lazy and cross, because her stitches were sloppy. He'd watched as Emily stood slightly apart from that other Simon and removed her bodice. He'd watched her breasts tumble out, huge and lax, with aureoles the color of lilacs going dark with age. He'd seen Simon reach for her.

Emily had gone to the window then, to draw the curtains, and seen Lucas watching her. They'd regarded each other across the empty air. She had nodded to him. She had smiled lewdly. Then she'd closed the curtains.

Lucas had wished Simon dead that night. No, not dead. Brought low. Brought to justice. He'd imagined consoling Catherine. He hadn't asked for what happened to Simon. He hadn't meant to ask for that.

He stood now at the window. Behind her curtains Emily was still alive, still fat and lewd, still eating Turkish delight from the tin. Lucas wondered why he'd wished harm to Simon and not to Emily, who was more at fault, who had surely lured Simon with some trick. Lucas struggled now to wish her well, or at any rate to wish her no ill fortune. He stood for a while at the window, wishing her a long and uneventful life.

In the morning, there was nothing to give his father for breakfast. His father sat at table, waiting. Lucas didn't speak to him about food. He kissed his father's forehead and went into the bedroom to see how his mother had passed the night.

He found her sitting up in bed, holding the music box on her lap.

"Good morning, Mother," Lucas said.

"Oh, Simon," she said. "We're sorry."

"It's Lucas, Mother. Only Lucas."

"I was speakin' to your brother, dear. In the box."

For a moment Lucas thought she meant the box that was in the earth across the river, until she looked wistfully down at her lap. She meant the music box.

He said, "Simon isn't there, Mother."

She lifted the box in both hands and held it out to him. "You listen," she said. "Listen to what he says."

"You haven't wound it." "Listen," she said again.

Lucas turned the crank. The small music started up from within the box. It was "Oh, Breathe Not His Name."

"There he is," Mother said. "Do you hear him now?"

"It's only the music, Mother."

"Oh, sweet child, ye don't know, do ye?"

Lucas was all but overcome by a weariness that struck him like fever. He wanted only to sleep. The music box, playing its little tune, felt impossibly heavy. He thought he would sink to the floor and lie there, curled up like a dog, so fast asleep that no one and nothing could wake him.

He was responsible for the music box, because he had so wanted the horse on wheels. He'd lost himself, contemplating it. The horse was white. Where must it be now? It was long gone from Niedermeyer's window. It looked steadily forward with round black eyes. Its face bore an expression of stately gravity. Its wheels were red. He'd gazed at it every day, until one afternoon, passing Niedermeyer's with his mother, he gave over to his desire for the horse as he gave himself over to the book, and wept like a lover. His mother had put her arm tenderly over his shoulders; she'd held him close. They'd stood there together as they might on a train platform, watching a locomotive bear its travelers away. Lucas's mother had stood patiently with him, holding him as he wept for the horse. The next day she'd gone out and bought the music box, an extravagance his father said would be the ruin of them. His mother had laughed bitterly, told him he was miserly and fearful, insisted that they needed music, they deserved a bit of cheer every now and then, and a music box would not spell the end of the world no matter what it cost. Later, Father turned to leather, and the machine took Simon, and Mother went into her room.

Lucas said, "It's only music, Mother."

"I know what he's saying now. I know the language he speaks."

"You should go back to sleep," Lucas told her. "I'm going to put the music box in the parlor for a while."

"He's all alone in a strange land."

"I must go. I can't be late for work."

"We brung him here from Dingle. It's only right we should go to him where he is now."

"Goodbye, Mother. I'm off."

"Farewell."

"Farewell."

He left the bedroom and put the music box on the parlor table, where his father still sat, awaiting breakfast. "Goodbye, Father," he said.

His father nodded. He had acquired an infinite patience. He would come to table at the appointed hours, eat if food was offered him, not eat if food was not.

At the works, Lucas had to struggle to pay proper attention. His mind wanted to wander. He aligned a plate, pulled the lever, and then was at the back of the machine, inspecting the impressions, with no memory of having gotten there. It was dangerous, a dangerous condition to bring to the machine, and yet he could not seem to do otherwise. Trying to think only of his work align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect was like trying to remain awake when sleep was overwhelming. Inattention took him like dreams.

To steady himself he set his mind to the whisper in the machine. He listened carefully. It might have been the squeak of an unoiled bearing, but it sounded more like a voice, a tiny voice, though its words were indistinguishable. It had the rhythm of a voice, the rise and fall and rise again suggesting intention rather than accident, the tone implying a certain urgency more human than mechanical, as if the sound were being made by some entity struggling to be heard. Lucas knew well enough what it was to speak a language no one understood.

He fed it another plate and another and another.

The nature of the machine's song didn't disclose itself until afternoon. The song wasn't sung in language, not in a language Lucas recognized, but gradually, over time, the song began making itself clear, even though its words remained obscure.

It was Simon's voice.

Could it be? Lucas listened more carefully. Simon's voice had been deep and raucous. He had sung not well but with bravado, with the rampant soaring tunelessness of someone who cared less about sounding beautiful than about creating a sound big enough to reach the sky. This seemed, in fact, to be Simon's voice, rendered mechanical. It had that reckless, unapologetic atonality.

The song was familiar. Lucas had heard it elsewhere, at a time and place that hovered on the outer edge of memory. It was a song of melancholy and yearning, a sad song, full of loneliness and a thread of hope. It was one of the old ballads. Simon had known hundreds of them.

Simon was imprisoned in the machine. It made sudden, dreadful sense. He was not in heaven or in the pillow; he was not in the grass or in the locket. His ghost had snagged on the machine's inner workings; the machine held it as a dog might hold a man's coat in its jaws after the man himself had escaped. Simon's flesh had been stamped and expelled, but his invisible part remained, trapped among the gears and teeth.