Janie turned her head to look into the bassinet. ‘Feed him.’ The man nodded and began fiddling around the fire.
Meanwhile, the little Negro girl had been standing in the one spot with her big eyes right out on her cheekbones, looking at me. Janie went back to her painting and the baby just lay there same as always, so I stared right back at the little Negro girl. I snapped, ‘What the hell are you gawking at?’
She grinned at me. ‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said, and disappeared. I mean she really disappeared, went out like a light, leaving her clothes where she had been. Her little dress billowed in the air and fell in a heap where she had been, and that was that. She was gone.
‘Gerry hee-hee,’ I heard. I looked up, and there she was, stark naked, wedged in a space where a little outcropping on the rock wall stuck out just below the ceiling. The second I saw her she disappeared again.
‘Gerry ho-ho,’ she said. Now she was on top of the row of boxes they used as storage shelves, over on the other side of the room.
‘Gerry hee-hee!’ Now she was under the table. ‘Gerry ho-ho!’ This time she was right in the corner with me, crowding me.
I yelped and tried to get out of the way and bumped the stool. I was afraid of it, so I shrank back again and the little girl was gone.
The man glanced over his shoulder from where he was working at the fire. ‘Cut it out, you kids,’ he said.
There was a silence, and then the girl came slowly out from the bottom row of shelves. She walked across to her dress and put it on.
‘How did you do that?’ I wanted to know.
‘Ho-ho,’ she said.
Janie said, ‘It’s easy. She’s really twins.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Then another girl, exactly the same, came from somewhere in the shadows and stood beside the first. They were identical. They stood side by side and stared at me. This time I let them stare.
‘That’s Bonnie and Beanie,’ said the painter. ‘This is Baby and that—‘she indicated the man—‘that’s Lone. And I’m Janie.’
I couldn’t think of what to say, so I said, ‘Yeah.’
Lone said,’ Water, Janie.’ He held up a pot. I heard water trickling, but didn’t see anything. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, and hung the pot on a crane. He picked up a cracked china plate and brought it over to me. It was full of stew with great big lumps of meat in it and thick gravy and dumplings and carrots. ‘Here, Gerry. Sit down.’
I looked at the stool. ‘On that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Not me,’ I said. I took the plate and hunkered down against the wall.
‘Hey,’ he said after a time. ‘Take it easy. We’ve all had chow. No one’s going to snatch it away from you. Slow down!’
I ate even faster than before. I was almost finished when I threw it all up. Then for some reason my head hit the edge of the stool. I dropped the plate and spoon and slumped there. I felt real bad.
Lone came over and looked at me. ‘Sorry, kid,’ he said. ‘Clean up, will you, Janie?’
Right in front of my eyes, the mess on the floor disappeared. I didn’t care about that or anything else just then. I felt the man’s hand on the side of my neck. Then he tousled my hair.
‘Beanie, get him a blanket. Let’s all go to sleep. He ought to rest a while.’
I felt the blanket go around me, and I think I was asleep before he put me down.
I don’t know how much later it was when I woke up. I didn’t know where I was and that scared me. I raised my head and saw the dull glow of the embers in the fireplace. Lone was stretched out on it in his clothes. Janie’s easel stood in the reddish blackness like some great preying insect. I saw the baby’s head pop up out of the bassinet, but I couldn’t tell whether he was looking straight at me or away. Janie was lying on the floor near the door and the twins were on the old table. Nothing moved except the baby’s head, bobbing a little.
I got to my feet and looked around the room. Just a room, only the one door. I tiptoed towards it. When I passed Janie, she opened her eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ she whispered.
‘None of your business,’ I told her. I went to the door as if I didn’t care, but I watched her. She didn’t do anything. The door was as solid tight closed as when I’d tried it before.
I went back to Janie. She just looked up at me. She wasn’t scared. I told her, ‘I got to go to the john.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Why’n’t you say so?’
Suddenly I grunted and grabbed my guts. The feeling I had I can’t begin to talk about. I acted as if it was a pain, but it wasn’t. It was like nothing else that ever happened to me before. Something went splop on the snow outside.
‘Okay,’ Janie said. ‘Go on back to bed.’
‘But I got to—’
‘You got to what?’
‘Nothing.’ It was true. I didn’t have to go no place.
‘Next tune tell me right away. I don’t mind.’
I didn’t say anything. I went back to my blanket.
‘That’s all?’ said Stern. I lay on the couch and looked up at the grey ceiling. He asked, ‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen,’ I said dreamily. He waited until, for me, the grey ceiling acquired walls on a floor, a rug and lamps and a desk and a chair with Stern in it. I sat up and held my head a second, and then I looked at him. He was fooling with his pipe and looking at me. ‘What did you do to me?’
‘I told you. I don’t do anything here. You do it.’
‘You hypnotized me.’
‘I did not.’ His voice was quiet, but he really meant it.
‘What was all that, then? It was… it was like it was happening for real all over again.’
‘Feel anything?’
‘Everything.’ I shuddered. ‘Every damn thing. What was it?’
‘Anyone doing it feels better afterwards. You can go over it all again now any time you want to, and every time you do, the hurt in it will be less. You’ll see.’
It was the first thing to amaze me in years. I chewed on it and then asked, ‘If I did it by myself, how come it never happened before?’
‘It needs someone to listen.’
‘Listen? Was I talking?’
‘A blue streak.’
‘Everything that happened?’
‘How can I know? I wasn’t there. You were.’
‘You don’t believe it happened, do you? Those disappearing kids and the footstool and all?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m not in the business of believing or not believing. Was it real to you?’
‘Oh, hell, yes!’
‘Well, then, that’s all that matters. Is that where you live, with those people?’
I bit off a fingernail that had been bothering me. ‘ Not for a long time. Not since Baby was three.’ I looked at him. ‘You remind me of Lone.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. No, you don’t.’ I added suddenly. ‘I don’t know what made me say that.’ I lay down abruptly.
The ceiling was grey and the lamps were dim. I heard the pipe-stem click against his teeth. I lay there for a long time.
‘Nothing happens,’ I told him.
‘What did you expect to happen?’
‘Like before.’
‘There’s something there that wants out. Just let it come.’
It was as if there was a revolving drum in my head, and on it were photographed the places and things and people I was after. And it was as if the drum was spinning very fast, so fast I couldn’t tell one picture from another. I made it stop, and it stopped at a blank segment. I spun it again, and stopped it again.
‘Nothing happens,’ I said.
‘Baby is three,’ he repeated.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That.’ I closed my eyes.
That might be it. Might, sight, night, light. I might have the sight of a light in the night. Maybe the baby. Maybe the sight of the baby at night because of the light…