Somewhere during her talking into the recorder I fell asleep.
When I woke up this morning she was gone. At first I was alarmed to think she might have left. But I looked in the rooms along the hallway and, after opening a few that were empty, found her. She was curled up in the center of the room, on the heavy orange carpet, sleeping like a child. My heart warmed toward her. I felt like… like a father. And a lover too.
Then I came back to my office and had breakfast, and began writing this.
When I finish I will wake her up and we will go out to a restaurant for lunch.
DAY FORTY-THREE
After I woke her up I took her up Fifth Avenue on the conveyor belt and we had lunch at a vegetable restaurant. We had spinach and beans.
The two of us had not taken any pills or smoked any dope and it was surprising to notice how dazed and drugged everyone else seemed to be. Except, of course, for the robots who waited on us. An older couple at a table nearby kept repeating themselves in a kind of aimless imitation of a conversation. He would say, “Florida’s the best place,” and she would say, “I didn’t catch your name,” and he would say, “I like Florida,” and she would say, “It’s Arthur, isn’t it?” and it just went on like that throughout the meal. They must have had a sexual connection, but could not connect any other way. Such talk had never been uncommon, but there with Mary Lou, where we each had things to say to the other, and with our heads clear and wide-awake, it was especially noticeable. And saddening.
DAY FORTY-SIX
Mary Lou has been here three days now. For the first two of them she slept until noon, after telling me not to disturb her. I spent the mornings working on a film about men who were bare to the waist and who lived on the kind of sailboats that could cross an ocean. Mostly the men fought one another with knives and swords. They would say things like “Zounds!” and “I am master of the seas.” It was interesting; but Mary Lou was too much in my thoughts for me to pay it close attention.
I worked only in the mornings for those two days, since I was for some reason reluctant to let her see me at work. I don’t know why; but I did not want her to know about the reading.
And then on the third morning she came into my room and she was carrying a book in her hand. The sight of her was striking: she was wearing a pair of the pajamas I had given her, and the top was unbuttoned so that I could see the place between her breasts. She was wearing a cross around her neck. I could see her naveL “Hey, look!” she said. “Look what I found.” She held the book out to me.
Her pajama top adjusted itself to the gesture, and one of her nipples was briefly visible. I was confused, and must have looked like a fool standing there trying not to stare. I noticed that she was barefoot.
“Take it,” she said, and practically forced the book into my hand.
After another moment of confusion I took it. It was a small book, without the stiff cover that I thought books were supposed to have.
I looked at the cover. The picture on it—faded yellow and blue —made no sense. It was a pattern of dark and light squares, with odd-looking shapes sitting on some of them. The title was Basic Chess Endings and the author’s name was Reuben Fine.
I opened it up. The paper was yellow, and there were little diagrams of black and white squares and a lot of writing that did not seem to make sense.
I looked back to Mary Lou, having regained my calmness a bit. She must have noticed the way I had acted, because she had buttoned her pajama top. She was running her fingers through her hair, trying to comb it.
“Where did you get this?” I said.
She looked at me thoughtfully. Then she said, “Is it… Is it a book?”
“Yes,” I said. “Where did you find it?”
She was staring at it, in my hands. Then she said, “Jesus Christ!”
“What?”
“It’s just an expression,” she said. Then she took my hand and said, “Come on. I’ll show you where I found it.”
I followed along with her like a child, holding her hand. I was embarrassed by her touch and wanted to let go but did not know how. She seemed full of purpose and strength; I was confused and disoriented.
She took me down the hall farther than I had ever been before, around a corner and through a double door and then down another hall. There were doorways all along, and some of them were open. The rooms seemed to be empty.
She seemed to guess what I was thinking. “Have you been down this far before?” she said.
Somehow I felt ashamed that I hadn’t. But I had never thought of looking in all those rooms. It didn’t seem proper. I didn’t answer and she said, “I’ll close those doors later,” and then, “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up after a while and started exploring.” She laughed. “Simon always said, ‘Check out your surroundings, sweetheart.’ So I’ve been wandering around the halls like Lady Macbeth opening doors. Most of the rooms were empty.”
“What’s Lady Macbeth?” I said, trying to make conversation.
“A person who walks around in pajamas,” she said.
At the end of the new hall we were in was a big red door, standing open. She led me to it, and as we walked into the room, finally let go of my hand.
I stared around me. The steel walls of the room were covered with shelves that were apparently made for books. I had seen a room somewhat like this in a film—except that there were big pictures on one of the walls of that room and tables and lamps. This one had nothing in it but shelves. Most of them were empty and covered with thick dust. There was a red carpet on the floor, with big spots of mold. But one wall, at the back of the room, had what must have been a hundred books.
“Look!” Mary Lou said, and ran over to the shelf. She ran a hand, very gently, along one of them. “Simon told me there were books. But I had no idea there were so many.”
Since I knew something about books already, it made me feel more comfortable—more in charge of things—to go over slowly and inspect them. I took one out of a shelf. The cover had a different version of that same pattern of squares, and the title read: Paul Morphy and the Golden Age of Chess. Inside were the same diagrams as in the first, but more writing of the ordinary kind.
I was holding the book open, trying to guess at what the word “chess” might mean, when Mary Lou spoke. “What is it exactly that you do with a book?”
“You read it.”
“Oh,” she said. And then, “What does ‘read’ mean?”
I nodded. Then I began turning the pages of the book I was holding and said, “Some of these markings here represent sounds. And the sounds make words. You look at the marks and sounds come into your mind and, after you practice long enough, they begin to sound like hearing a person talking. Talking—but silently.”
She stared at me for a long time. Then she took a book from the shelf, somewhat awkwardly, and opened it. She was finding it a strange and complicated thing to handle, as I had a yellow before. She looked at the pages, felt of them with her fingers, and then handed the book back to me, her face blank. “I don’t understand,” she said.
I started to explain it again. Then I said, “I can say aloud what I am reading. It’s what I do in my work—reading and then saying it aloud.”
She frowned. “I still don’t understand.” She looked at me and then at the books on the steel shelves, and then at the moldy carpet on the floor at her feet. “Your work is… reading. Books?”
“No. I read something else. Something called silent films.” I took the book from her. “I’ll say aloud, if I can, what I read. Maybe that will make it understandable.”