I raised my hand, listening, concentrating. 'Did you hear something?' I asked him. 'A voice? Somebody saying "John?" '
'A voice?' asked Mr Bedford.
I hesitated, but there was nothing else to be heard except the traffic outside Mr Bedford's office window, and the rumbling of typewriters in nearby rooms. 'No,' I said at last. 'I must have been imagining things.'
'You're all right? You don't want to see Dr Rosen again?'
'No, of course not. I mean, no thank you. I'm fine.'
'You're sure? You don't look very well. I thought you didn't look too well when you came in here this morning.'
'Sleepless night,' I told him.
He rested his hand on my back not so much as if he wanted to reassure me that we would all get over our grief, given time; but as if he temporarily needed somewhere to rest his hand.
'Mrs Bedford will be very appreciative about the necklace,' he told me.
Three
Before lunch, I took a solitary walk across Salem Common, the collar of my coat turned up against the cold, my breath fluttering like smoke. All around the Common, the bare trees stood in the silent fright of winter, like a gaggle of Salem witches, and the grass was silver-faced with dew. I went as far as the bandstand, with its cupola dome, and sat down on the stone steps, while a little way away from me, two young children played on the grass, tumbling and running, leaving figure-eight tracks of green across the lawns. Two children like ours might have been: Nathaniel, the boy who had died in his mother's womb. What else could you call a boy who was going to be born within sight of the House of the Seven Gables? And Jessica, the girl who was never even conceived.
I was still sitting there when an old woman appeared, in a bundled-up Thrift Store coat and a shapeless felt hat, carrying a carpet-bag that was more backing than carpet, and a red umbrella, which she inexplicably opened, and left beside the steps. She sat down only four or five feet away from me, although she could have sat anywhere.
'Well, now,' she said, as she opened a brown paper bag, and took out a liver-sausage sandwich.
I looked at her cautiously. She probably wasn't as old as she had first appeared to be, 50 or 55 maybe; but she was so shabbily dressed and her hair was so white and frayed that she could have been mistaken for 70. She began to eat her sandwich, with such neatness and gentility that I couldn't take my eyes off her.
That was how it was, for almost twenty minutes, on the steps of the cupola bandstand on Salem Common, on that cold March morning; the woman eating her sandwich and me covertly watching her, and people passing us by along the radial paths which crossed the Common, some strolling, some intent on business, but every one of them chilly, and every one of them accompanied by their own personal mouth-ghost of frozen breath.
At five before twelve, I decided it was time to leave. But before I went, I reached into my coat pocket and took out four quarters, and held them out to her, and said, 'Please. Just do me a favour, will you?'
She stared at the money and then she stared at me. 'People in your position shouldn't be giving silver to witches,' she smiled.
'You're a witch?' I asked her, not very seriously. 'Don't I look like a witch?'
'I don't know,' I smiled. 'I've never seen a witch before. I always thought that witches carried broomsticks, and black cats on their shoulders.'
'Oh, superstition,' the old woman said. 'Well, I'll take your money, if you're not too worried about the consequences.'
'What consequences?'
'People in your position always have to suffer consequences.'
'What position is that?'
The woman rummaged in her bag and eventually produced an apple, which she polished on the lapel of her coat. 'Alone, aren't you?' she asked me, and then bit into it, chewing on one side of her mouth like a Disney chipmunk. 'Not long alone, but alone nonetheless.'
'Perhaps,' I said, evasively. I was beginning to feel that this conversation was heavily laden with unspoken implications; as if this woman and I had met on Salem Common for some predestined purpose, and that the people who walked all around us along the common's radiating pathways were like chesspieces. Anonymous, but there for a special reason.
'Well, you know the best of that,' the woman told me. She took another bite of apple. 'But that's the way I see it, and I'm not often wrong. It's a mystic talent, some people say. But I don't see any harm in calling it for what it is, especially here in Salem. Good witch territory, Salem; best in the country. Perhaps not a place to be alone, though.'
'What do you mean by that?' I asked her.
She looked up at me. Her eyes were a peculiar pellucid blue, and there was a scar on her forehead like an arrow, or an upside-down crucifix, in the faintest glistening red.
'Everybody has to die sometime, that's what I mean by that,' she said. 'But it's the place you die, not the time, that makes the difference. There are spheres of influence; and sometimes you can die within them, and sometimes you can die without them.'
'I'm sorry,' I told her. 'I don't really understand what you're saying.'
'Suppose you died in Salem,' the old woman smiled. 'Salem is the root, heart, bowels, and belly. Salem is the witch's boiling-pot. What do you believe those witch-trials were really all about? And why do you think they stopped so sudden? Have you known anybody show such remorse, so quick? Not I. I never did. Not as quick as that. The influence came, and then the influence fled; but there are days when I believe that it didn't flee for good and all. It depends.'
'Depends on what?' I wanted to know.
She smiled again, and winked, and said, 'All kind of things.' She raised her head to the sky, and revealed around her throat a neck-band that looked as if it were made of braided hair, fastened with silver and turquoise. 'The weather, the price of goose fat. It depends.'
I suddenly felt like a complete tourist. Here I was, letting some half-dotty woman string me along with stories about 'spheres of influence' and witches, and actually taking her seriously. She was probably going to offer to tell my fortune next, if the price was right. In Salem, where the local Chamber of Commerce enthusiastically exploits the witch-trials of 1692 as a major commercial attraction ('Stop by for a Spell,' they entreat you) it was hardly surprising that even the panhandlers should use witchcraft as a selling-angle.
'Listen,' I told the woman, 'just have a good day, all right?'
'You're going?' she asked me.
'I'm going. It's been nice talking to you. Very interesting.'
'Interesting, but not believable?'
'Oh, I believe you,' I said. 'The weather, the price of goose fat. By the way, what is the price of goose fat?'
She ignored my facetious question and stood up, brushing the crumbs off her worn-out coat with a hand that was blue-veined like cheese. 'You think that I'm begging for money?' she demanded. 'Is that it? You think I'm a beggar?'
'Not at all. I just have to go, that's all.'
A passer-by stopped to watch us as if he could sense that an interesting confrontation was about to develop. Then two more stopped, one of them a woman, her curly hair turned into a strangely radiant halo by the winter sun.
'I will tell you two things,' the woman said, in a trembly voice. 'I shouldn't tell you either, but I will. You will have to decide for yourself if they are warnings or riddles or nothing but nonsense. You cannot be helped, you know; for the life we lead on this earth is a life without help.'
I said nothing, but stood warily watching her, trying to work out if she was a simple lunatic or a not-so-simple con-artist.
'The first thing is,' she said, 'you are not alone, the way you believe yourself to be, and you will never be alone, not for evermore, although you will pray to God sometimes to release you from your companionship. The second thing is, you must stay away from the place where no birds fly.'