— A painting.
— That’s right. And the bottom one?
— A picture.
— It is a picture, but what sort?
— A photograph.
— That’s right. Tell me about these pictures.
The man looked at the pictures for a very long time. After he had done so, he went and sat back down in the dining room with his head in his hands. The old woman followed him and sat beside him, with one hand on his shoulder. The rest of the day, they spoke very little, and whenever he looked up, her eyes were there, hard upon his, full of reassurance and strength.
~ ~ ~
THE NEXT DAY, she led him back to that wall.
— Tell me about these pictures, she said.
He looked at them and looked at them. Then he went into the dining room. There was a pad of paper there, and a pen. The old woman had left it there, in the middle of the table, and said nothing about it.
The man took the pad and began to draw. He drew and drew. An hour passed. He looked up. He had done a very rudimentary drawing of a farmhand feeding some chickens. With some difficulty one could perceive that that is what it was.
The old woman came over.
— Very good, she said, very good. I think…
She went into the kitchen and then came again and stood by him.
— In fact, I am sure of it. I like yours more. Sometimes sketches of things are to be preferred to paintings. I find that I often prefer artists’ sketchbooks. Such books are like this—
She drew a notebook from the wall, a loose leather fold with blank paper stitched into it. A pencil was tied to a string that hung from the side.
— You can have this one, she said. Draw in it as much as you like.
He took the book under his arm and sat intently in the chair, looking at nothing insomuch as he was looking at anything.
~ ~ ~
ONE DAY, the claimant began to write things down. He wrote things on the paper in between his drawings. The writing was not involved. He would write, This is a drawing, or, This is an idea for a drawing, or, A dog, or, The third one like this. Whenever he used the paper, he tore it out of the notebook and put it in a pile. The examiner never read any of his writing while he was awake, but in the night, she went through the pile of his drawings, very slowly and meticulously, missing nothing.
From these drawings, she learned many things. For instance, he had been in a gentlest village before. This did not surprise her in the slightest.
I wonder, she thought, which of my fellow examiners dealt with him?
Of course, she did not know all of the examiners. In fact, she knew but a tiny sliver of the total number. And if the news was to be believed, the Process of Villages was growing all the time. Soon, it would be everywhere.
She sat at the table, turning over the drawings one at a time. There was a drawing of a tower, and of a bird. These were imitations from children’s books she had shown him. In her mind’s eye she could see the originals.
But here was one she had not seen. It was a drawing of a room, and in the room there was a bed. It looked almost like a coffin. A woman lay in it, with her eyes shut and her hands folded. He had crossed out the woman repeatedly, but she could still be made out.
The old woman flipped through the sheets from the previous day. Another — the same image, with the woman crossed out. Another, and another, and another. He had been drawing all afternoon. All afternoon, he had drawn this same scene and crossed it out. There was no text with any of these.
She put the drawings back exactly where they had been and went upstairs to write her report.
~ ~ ~
— SOMETIMES I WILL TELL YOU STORIES, said the examiner. They may be full of things that you do not understand. That is not important. It isn’t important that you understand what I say. What’s important is that you behave as a human being should when someone is telling a story. So, listen properly, make noises at appropriate times, and enjoy the fact that I am speaking to you. If it is your turn to tell a story, remember that it is not very important that you are understood as long as you give the person the happiness of being told a story, and of being near you while listening to a story. Much of the speech we do is largely meaningless and is just meant to communicate and validate small emotional contracts. Are you ready?
The claimant waited to see if she was done talking and then he nodded slowly.
— We shall go for a walk and during the walk I will suddenly begin a story. Will you know how to act?
— We shall go for a walk, she repeated. During the walk, I will suddenly begin a story. Will you know how to act?
~ ~ ~
— WHEN I WAS A YOUNG WOMAN, she said to the claimant, I lived a very wild life.
He sat beside her in the square at the center of the town. There was a carousel, and they sat on its edge, leaning on the poles from which rose the horses, the carriages, the leaping fish.
— Oh, I could tell you, she said, a story or two from that time. I had an old uncle who had fought in a war. Did we speak about that? People killing each other for land or money? Yes? War. Anyway, this was before the republic, so there were still wars. He said he and his fellow soldiers were set to guard a road. So, that is — anyone who came down the road was to be killed. They had tools, guns, with which to do it. Well, there was a general who was trying to escape the province. Apparently he had been hemmed in, and was surrounded. They were intent on capturing him. Anyway, they were sitting there at the crossroads, and it was a hot day, and they were feeling a bit sleepy, and a man comes down the road out of the distance, a fiddler, playing away as he walks. He comes right up to them, a real ragamuffin, and plays for them awhile. Then off he goes on up the road. Thing is — the next day, the orders come down for the general’s capture, and they include a picture of him. Guess what?
The old woman slapped her leg.
— The fiddler was the general. He had put on some old clothes and used a musical talent everyone had forgotten he had. Thing is — my uncle and his fellow soldiers were petrified. They figured the news of his escape would come out and they’d all be court-martialed. But it didn’t happen that way.
— How did it happen?
— How did what happen?
— Things — how did they go?
— Oh, ha, well, no one ever heard of the general again. So, here’s my opinion. I think the general found out that it was a better life being an itinerant fiddler than it was being a general, and I think he didn’t want to go back.
The claimant thought about that for a while.
— Anyway, said the old woman, I always consider that, I always do, whenever I try out a new role, or put on some costume, even if it’s just a new way of thinking about something. There are some doors — when you go through them, they close behind you.
In the square, it was becoming dark. The claimant liked the carousel, and so, he and the examiner would go there every evening. Every afternoon when the sun was by the trees, they would walk down, and they would sit there talking until the lights were on in all the houses and the street lamps were pulsing. Then they would walk back along the street and look into the houses. Sometimes they would see people inside, and they would talk about them, and about how their lives seemed.