“Can I bother you for a few minutes?” I asked him.
“Of course,” he replied. “Come and sit with me here.” I tiptoed through the silver on the floor and sat down on the bed. “There are some valuable pieces here,” he said. “Things you could never find now.” He made a half turn in his chair to face me.
“Do you think so? My mother loved them at any rate.”
“They’re certainly worth the effort it takes to keep them polished. The more care you take with them, the more gratifying they are.”
“Gratifying? How so?”
“The film of age gets peeled away and their luster returns—it isn’t grand, but something humble, even solitary. When you hold them in your hands, it seems as though you’re holding light itself. I feel they’re telling me a story.”
“I’d never realized silver could have that effect,” I said, glancing at the dark blue polishing cloth crumpled in a ball on the desk. He opened and closed his hands to stretch his tired fingers. “I’ve heard that wealthy families used to employ whole teams of servants just to keep the silver polished,” I continued. “I imagine them working day and night in a stone building off a courtyard, with no other job than polishing. There would have been a long, narrow table in the middle of the room, and the servants sat there on both sides of it with their daily quota of polishing stacked in front of them. They were strictly forbidden to speak, lest their breath cloud the silver, so the work took place in absolute silence. The room was always chilly, and even in the middle of the day, the sun never shone in, meaning that the sole source of light was a single sputtering lamp. Apparently it was only possible to tell that the silver had been properly polished by viewing it in the lowest of lights. A servant of slightly higher rank—the one responsible for kitchen utensils—would carefully check everything as it was finished. He would hold up each piece under the lamp, with the stone wall in the background, and examine it from every angle. The slightest smudge would mean starting over from the beginning—and a doubling of the next day’s quota for the servant, which would keep him polishing through the next night. So the servants sat, heads bowed in fear, as the inspection was taking place… But I’m sorry, this isn’t the right time or place for this story.”
I realized I’d said too much on the subject of silver polishing.
“No, not at all,” he said.
“I’m afraid I’ve bored you.”
“Anything but,” he said, shaking his head.
Up close, I could see even more clearly how frail R had grown. When I’d known him in the outside world, he had been much sturdier, more balanced. Each part of his body had played its proper role, giving the whole a sense of cohesion. There had been no chinks in his armor. But now it seemed that the smallest tap of my finger on his chest would have sent him collapsing into pieces, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“The thing that I found most surprising,” I said, taking up the story, “was that over time, the servants who did this work lost the power of speech. After many long days, dawn to dusk, rubbing their cloths in that stone room, they actually became mute. They had no fear of clouding the silver with their words, for even after they finished work and left the room, they could no longer recall the sound of their own voices. But these were poor, uneducated people who were unlikely to find work elsewhere, so they continued polishing year after year, willing to sacrifice their voices for a steady income. And the room became quieter and quieter as one after another lost the power of speech, with nothing to be heard but the muffled sound of cloth on silver. But I wonder how it got to that point.”
I picked up a large dessert plate that had been sitting on the floor and set it on my lap. It was one my mother had used at parties to serve chocolate, something I was never allowed to eat. My nanny had told me that bugs came to infect the chests of children who ate chocolate. The border around the edge of the plate had a raised design of grapes—which R had apparently not yet polished, since the grooves were dark and tarnished.
“I suppose it’s hard to know,” R said after a pause. His voice sounded weak, as though he had nothing more to say.
The funnel that served as the speaker on his intercom had rolled out by his pillow. The bedcover was freshly washed and starched. X’s had been drawn on the calendar on the wall to mark the passing days. I had the impression that the shelves by the bed, which had been empty when R moved into the room, were gradually filling each time I saw them.
“There’s no need to hurry with the polishing, you know,” I said, after I’d looked around the room for a moment. “You can take your time.”
“Thanks, I understand,” he said.
“And it would be terrible if you lost your voice.”
“No danger there,” he replied. “You forget, I’m the one who never loses anything.”
“I see what you mean,” I said. Our eyes met and we smiled.
When it was time to leave, I gave him the things his wife had left in the box at the school. He looked at the baby’s picture in silence. I thought I should say something, but I couldn’t think what it would be.
But he didn’t seem to be overly emotional. He simply sat quietly, his eyes lowered, just as he did when reading my manuscript or polishing silver.
“Congratulations,” I said at last, unable to stand the silence.
“Of course, photographs have already disappeared,” he murmured.
“Photographs?” I said, not understanding what he meant. Then, after repeating the word to myself, I finally realized I had a vague memory that there had once been smooth pieces of paper that captured someone’s image. “Yes, now that you mention it, they must have disappeared.”
He turned over the card and began reading the note.
“He’s beautiful,” I said, when I thought he had finished reading. “The photographs are all gone, but there must still be some frames somewhere. I’ll find you one.” I rested my foot at the bottom of the ladder.
“Thank you,” he said, without looking up.
Chapter 15
Something annoying happened. One morning, my typewriter suddenly broke. No matter how hard I tapped the keys, the levers wouldn’t move to strike the paper. They just vibrated slightly, like the twitch of a cicada’s leg. From A to Z, from 1 to 0, none of them worked, not the comma nor the period nor the question mark.
Up until I’d typed “Good night” to him the night before, the typewriter had functioned normally, and I hadn’t dropped or bumped it in the interim. How could it be that I was now unable to type a single character? Of course, I’d had minor repairs done in the past—straightening a bent key or oiling the rollers—but it had always been a sturdy, reliable machine.
So, thinking I might still be able to fix it, I rested the typewriter on my lap and started pressing each key with as much force as I could manage. He knelt next to me, watching as I hit the keys… A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K. As I reached L, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
“You’ll just make it worse, treating it like that,” he said, taking the typewriter from me. “Let me have a look.” He opened the cover and gently prodded and pulled on various parts.
“Is it broken?” I wanted to ask, but my voice was as frozen as the keys. Only my fingers continued to tap into space as though I were still a typing student.
“It’s serious,” he said. “It might need major repairs.”
What should I do? my look said to him.
“We need to take it up to the room in the steeple. The church lets me use it as a repair shop. I’ve got the right tools there, and if we can’t fix it we can always get you another machine from the school. Don’t worry, they have plenty of extras.”