In the attic. It is late, on a summer night. In the Ross attic, light from a streetlamp passes through a window-screen, makes its way past the spinning, misty blades of an exhaust fan, and falls dimly on a narrow stretch of floor flanked by old bookcases filled with childhood toys. One shelf holds an uneven pile of abandoned board games (Sorry, Parcheesi, Pollyanna, Camelot), a puzzle showing on the cover a three-masted ship with billowing sails plunging in black-green waves, a pile of Schaum music books with colored covers and miscellaneous sheet music such as “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “O Mein Papa,” “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” and “Old Black Joe,” and a shoebox with crushed sides that contains wooden red and black checkers pieces embossed with crowns, a notched Viewmaster reel called “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” tin play-money coins, a wooden slice of watermelon the size of a section of orange, a three-lobed puzzle piece showing rich blue sky, an edge of red roof, and a corner of yellow chimney, a small flip-book featuring a mouse who picks up a sledgehammer and cracks open a gigantic egg from which emerges a frowning chicken with a bump on its head that grows longer and longer, a green rubber grasshopper, a blue fifty-dollar Monopoly bill, and Professor Plum. Beyond the bookcases, in the dark part of the attic, Marian’s old German school, a gift from her mother’s mother, Rebecca Altgeld, lies under the slanting front wheel of a fallen bicycle. The teacher sits tilted at her desk with raised arms, the six pupils lean in different directions on three wooden benches. Deeper in the blackness, old wooden barrels stand among cardboard cartons and dress boxes. On the floor Pierrot sits with his head against a barrel, his blouse torn, his face stricken with sadness, dreaming of Columbine beside a trellis in moonlight.
Finale. It is late, and in the mansion a tiredness comes over things. The books in the LIBRARY bookcases have lost their depth, and in their flatness can no longer be removed. The billiard balls and the billiard table form one unbroken surface, smooth as paper to the stroking thumb. In the KITCHEN cupboard a mouse knocks over a fragile upright plate, which begins to fall slowly, as if through water, and dissolves in shadow. Miss Scarlet, alone on the window seat in the melancholy BALLROOM, feels a stiffening in her limbs: she is slowly turning to wood. Colonel Mustard will stop, his arm held out toward Mrs. White, who, already beginning to lean toward the consoling hand, will pause on the threshold of a momentous decision. Mrs. Peacock will enter the DINING ROOM and freeze in an attitude of disdain, Mr. Green will remain with one foot raised in a shadowy corridor, Professor Plum is already fading among his fading passageways.
BEHIND THE BLUE CURTAIN
On Saturday afternoons in summer my father took me to the movies. All morning long I waited for him to come down from his study, frowning at the bowl of his pipe and slapping the stairs with his slipper-moccasins, as though the glossy dark bowl, the slippers, the waiting itself were a necessary part of my long-drawn-out passage into the realm of dark. I savored every stage: the hot summer sunshine outside the ticket booth, the indoor sunlight of the entranceway with its glass-covered Coming Attractions and its velvet rope, the artificial glow of the red lobby, the mysterious dusk of the theater, the swift decisive darkening — and between the blue folds of the curtain, slowly parting, the sudden shining of the screen. Gravely my father had explained to me that the people on the screen were motionless photographs, passing quickly before my eyes. It was like my black-and-white flip-book from the candy store: a smiling mouse leaped from a diving board toward the water as a frowning shark rose up, opening its jaws wider and wider. And when you did it the other way, see! — the sinking jaws close, the upside-down mouse rises through the air and lands on his feet on the high board. My father was never wrong, but I felt he was trying to shield me from darker knowledge. The beings behind the curtain had nothing to do with childish flip-books or the long strips of gray negatives hanging in the kitchen from silver clips. They led their exalted lives beyond mine, in some other realm entirely, shining, desirable, impenetrable.
One Saturday afternoon when my father had to drive to the university on business, and my mother lay on two pillows in her darkened room, rasping with asthma, and my best friend was spending the day at his cousin Valerie’s, it was decided that I could go to the movies alone. I knew that something forbidden was happening, but I greeted it with outward calm. After the second feature I was to go directly to the front of the theater and stand outside under the marquee, where my father would be waiting. I felt that the decision had been arrived at too hastily, that the careful, repeated instructions only revealed the danger in this sudden violation of the usual. I wondered whether I should warn my parents, but I remained silent and watchful. My father dropped me off at the ticket booth, where a short line had formed, and as I watched him drive away I felt an anxious exhilaration, as if in the pride of his knowledge he had failed to reckon with the powers of the dark.
Past the blue velvet rope on its silver post I stepped into the well-lit lobby with its red rug and glass-covered candy counter. The glossy wrappers brilliant under the counter lights, the high popcorn machine with its yellow glass that turned the popcorn butter-yellow, the crimson glow of a nearby exit sign, all these expressed the secret presence of the dark, which here made itself felt by the intensity of the effort to banish it. Behind me, through the open door leading back to the entranceway, I could see sunlight flashing on the glass of a Coming Attraction: in a green-black jungle a man in a pith helmet was taking aim with a rifle at something invisible in the blaze of obscuring light. I turned to the darkening corridor leading away from the candy counter. There the lights grew dim, as if they were candle-flames bending in the wind of the gathering dark, there the world was bathed in a reddish glow. I bought a box of popcorn and made my way along the glowing night of the corridor. The aisle surprised me: it sloped down more sharply than I had remembered. As I passed the arms of seats I felt a slight tugging at my calves, as if I were being pulled forward against my will. Impulsively I chose a row. I slipped past four chair-arms and pulled down a red, sagging seat. I leaned back eagerly, waiting for artificial night to fall, whispers of ushers, the cone of a flashlight beam in the darkened aisle.
Soon the lights went out, on the luminous curtain bright letters danced, the blue folds began to part; and sliding down, far down, I rested my popcorn on my stomach and pressed the back of my head against the fuzzy seat.
And suddenly it was over, the lights came on, people rose to go. Legs pushed past my knees, a coin clinked and someone bent over sharply, slapping at the floor. A foot kicked a popcorn box, a seat came up with a bang. Was it really over? The rolling coin struck something and stopped. A heaviness came over me — I could scarcely drag myself to my feet. Outside my father would be waiting under the marquee: one arm across his stomach, the elbow of the other arm in the palm of the first, the bowl of his pipe supported with thick fingers. I felt that I had let something slip away from me, that I had failed in some way, but my thoughts were sluggish and kept sinking out of sight.