He doesn’t see the face watching him through the window, the cretinous grin under the shapeless straw hat full of holes. The village idiot peeps in round the post of the open door, grows bold seeing the old man so absorbed, and cautiously tiptoes into the room. The idiot boy advances in shambling stealth a little nearer the table where something is spluttering over a burner; cunningly keeps his eye on the reader; jerks himself nearer still. He is attracted by the bubbling mess in the tube; then fascinated by it; his hand stretches slyly towards it, draws back, fumbles to it again; he twitches in violent excitement, grimacing at it; clutches it.
The whole bag of tricks flashes up at his touch in an explosion of glittering dust. There’s a split second’s glimpse of the vast sad blackness of infinity before the perfectly bare void is spattered by this glittering exsurgence, this bursting fountain of molecules, instantly crystallizing to sequins of differing size. And now at once begins the fiery development of comets, suns, planets, nebulae; constellations are clotted together; worlds rush forth on their immense navigations; the monstrous efflorescence of the universe burgeons in the flick of an eyelash. Creation is under way. The solar system is off. Larger and more brilliant blaze the globes, the stars roar past like stratoliners to destinations not checked in quadrillions. The billiard-ball earth swings up and flattens colossally underfoot. The thunderous revving of the cosmic machines settles to the steady beat of eternity.
Right in the middle of all this, in a quiet place, the little girl B sits reading a book. She is sitting on short fresh green grass, leaning against a tree, where it is quiet and cool. Everything here is springlike and very much simplified; just the grass and the innocent green tree and the child. Before long several other children appear and begin to play with red and green bean bags. They stand in two rows and each child throws the bag over his shoulder to be caught and passed on by the child behind. Their conduct is orderly, ritualistic, almost obsessional. They are completely concentrated on their serious attention to the rules of the game, their occasional subdued exclamations barely disturb the hush. Under the tree, B puts down her book and looks on. It’s clear that she would like to join in, but she feels shy and needs some encouragement. The others pay no attention to her, they are quite absorbed in their game. At last B gets up and goes towards them. Play stops for a moment. A boy with a polite blank public-school face steps out and gravely invites her into the game.
Perhaps B is nervous, perhaps she doesn’t understand the rules, perhaps she just means to introduce an innovation. Anyway, when it comes to her turn, she throws the red bean bag forward instead of back. The game breaks up at once, as if by telepathic agreement. The faces of the other children grow astonished and hostile. The polite boy in particular wears an outraged expression as he marshalls his companions away.
Left alone, B stands bewildered, looking in the direction where the players have vanished. After a moment, quickly and hopefully, her eyes are drawn to a man (it’s her father, as a matter of fact) who walks along fast, dressed in dark town clothes and carrying a dispatch case and an umbrella. Her face turns upwards in expectation. But he is in too much of a hurry to notice her, he has important things on his mind, he passes on and scurries into an enormous office building which at this moment snaps up like an opera hat out of the ground to the right of the tree. As soon as he’s in, the ornate double doors close behind him; but still, through the wrought-iron scrolls, he can be seen diminishing down room after room full of clerks, typists, desks, telephones, green-shaded lamps; door after transparent door shutting behind his back, till he is at last inaccessibly entombed as if in the heart of a gigantic formicary.
B, who has taken a few steps towards the building as if she meant to follow him, drifts back to the tree, on the other side of which a plain stone wall with a door in the centre has now erected itself. From some distance off, A approaches aloofly, her hand already outstretched to the door. On this narrow door, with her left hand, with a blue-flashing ring, she raps in a deliberate fashion. While she is waiting for the door to open she turns her eyes slowly upon the child, at whom she looks directly and pensively. Then her eyes move, sliding without eagerness to the door which, opening, displays a dark space where it is just possible to distinguish the sculptured pallor of urns in the deep shadow. A goes inside. With two final, distinct clicks, the door is shut and locked. The little girl watches with the acceptance of perfectly uncomprehending fatalism, then sits down in her original place at the foot of the tree. As she picks up her book and starts reading, the wall and the office building dissolve unobtrusively, restoring the dream picture as it was to begin with. The only difference being that its vernal simplicity now holds a definite suggestion of loneliness, isolation.
WHEN my mother died I knew why the house had always been quiet. The house had been waiting and watching from the beginning, listening to the steps my mother danced with her death.
My father never told me about what had happened. No one said anything to me about the death of my mother and I never asked anyone. It was a question which could not possibly ever be asked. But I often wondered. At night, especially, I used to wonder. Sometimes I got afraid in the night, wondering about death and myself and my mother, and wishing that I could ask someone. But of course I knew I would never be able to ask such a question. My mother’s death was the one thing I would never be able to speak of to anyone, no matter how frightened I was. That was the last thing Iz would ever do.
DAY TIME. Night time. Night the dark time: the time for wonder; the time for the question in daylight not to be spoken.
The question starts under the chest of drawers. At first it’s impossible to be sure; there’s still the chance that it may be something else. Perhaps a moth is attacking the thick winter sweater that’s kept in the bottom drawer. The tough coarse ropes of wool are almost too much for him, but he won’t give in, he won’t admit that it’s one too many for him, he tussles on in really heroic style, not taking abrasions and setbacks into any account at all. Or perhaps a beetle is boring into the wood. The bottom drawer sticks, it has to be pulled quite hard before it will open, and after a specially sharp tug a sprinkle of powdery shavings falls from the soft wood. A worm or a beetle could certainly dig himself in very cosily there; and without having to work unduly hard either.
However, it is not a moth in the bottom drawer, it isn’t a beetle, it isn’t the floor-boards stretching themselves in the dark. It’s the question moving under the chest of drawers. It moves a little way on its belly, then craftily keeps still for a while like a tiger waiting to spring. Like a tiger the question crouches under the chest of drawers; a tiny tiger about the size of a mouse, and its striped coat black as velvet instead of tawny. Now it’s moving again, flattened against the floor. Out in the room it crouches, expanding, accumulating its force. Soon it will be ready to pounce; its muscles bunch and ripple fearfully inside its skin. Larger and larger it grows: easily, beautifully, the tautened muscles levitate, launch the dark body into the air. The awful, lovely, stylized bow of the spring; effortless, almost languid, inevitable.