"It's Herrin," he cried. "Father, it's Herrin, home."
The door opened, a rattling of the latch, swung inward. His father was in the doorway, his mother beyond, both grayed and older than he remembered; he crossed the threshold, opened his arms although they had never had the habit of touching him, and if they embraced him it would hurt him—he would bear the pain of his ribs to ease that ache inside.
"What happened?" his father asked, looking frightened. "Where did you come from?"
"I'd like a drink. Something to eat."
They looked at him in evident disturbance. He stood still, letting them sort it out slowly, trying to remember as he had always remembered, that they thought differently and less deeply than he. After a moment his mother drew back a chair at the table in front of the door and joined his father who was busy in the small kitchen at the left of the table, virtually one room with the bedroom on the right.
It was small; it was poor; there was so little here that had changed over the years, except there was a new rug on the floor, and it was far newer and brighter than anything else in the room. Dishes rattled comfortingly. Even the feel of the chair was right, the table under his elbows what he remembered it felt like. There was the place on the other side of the door where his bed had stood. A plow leaned there now, probably waiting sharpening. Perrin's bed was still there, beyond theirs. It smelled right, the whole house, as it had always smelled; there was something about the spices they cooked with, that no one in the Residency kitchens and no one in University had the knack of. Food had always tasted better here.
His parents brought him a sandwich and a cup of tea, steaming hot, set it down in front of him. He took half the sandwich up in dust-crusted, bandaged hands and bit into it with a bliss that ran through his body, choked that bite down and handled the tea the same, a delicate sip of purest steaming liquid out of old, familiar dishes; for a moment he felt Sbi's lips and shuddered, and felt the old china again.
He ate, tears welling up from his eyes, because it was chill outside and warm inside, and the inside of him was coming to match it, filled with food and comfort. He could not eat all of it, could not possibly. And that seemed bliss beyond compare, to know that he need not be hungry, or thirsty.
Only then, his belly full to hurting, he began to notice the silence and their eyes, which waited for him, as they had waited in years long before, knowing that reasoning with him was not easy or often possible, on their level. The world had changed; they had not. He looked back at them, frightened by that old silence.
"What happened?" his father asked a second time. They were still waiting for that precise question. "Where did you come from?"
"Kierkegaard. I walked."
Silence. They stared at his face, not his hands, fixedly at his face, without expression on their own beyond a residual fear.
"I've come home," he said.
They said nothing to that.
"Why did you walk?" his mother asked.
"I've quit the University. Mother, there are Outsiders there. The First Citizen is bringing them in. I can't stay there. I don't want to stay there the way things are getting to be."
Fear. He still picked that up in the expressions. And something else, a deeper reserve.
"I need a bath," he said.
Without a word his mother nodded toward the back of the house where the bathroom was, where an old pump produced water with slow patience.
"I'm going to stay," he said.
"Heard you're a great artist, a University Master," his father said.
"Was," he said. "I quit."
There were nods, nothing of warmth, nothing of comfort in his presence.
"I've stopped all that. I don't belong to the University. I have nothing to do with it any longer. I want to stay here, to farm."
Nothing. Their faces were like a wall, shutting him out.
"Perrin's moved out," he asked, "has she?"
Silence.
"Is she here, then?"
"Perrin's dead," his mother said. It hit him in the stomach. Fantasies collapsed, a structure of new beginnings he had imagined with Perrin, an intent to do otherwise than he had done, a half-formed longing to enjoy a closeness he had thrown away without ever knowing it.
"What happened?" he asked.
"She couldn't be you. She killed herself the year you left. Everyone talked about you. Everyone was proud of you. Even when you were gone she had no place for herself. Except here. And that wasn't good enough."
He sat motionless.
"She left a note," his father said. "She said she had never had anything important. It was all for you, for University."
His eyes stung. He stared across the room at the wall while his parents quietly, together, rose from the table and took the dishes back to the kitchen. The tears slipped and slid down his face. He was not sure why, because he did not particularly feel them, more than that stinging and a leaden spot in his stomach which might as likely be the sandwich on an abused digestion, far more food than he should have eaten all at once.
"You're important," his mother said, drying her hands by the counter. "We heard all the way in Camus about that big statue, about how you're the most important man in the University. You can't want to live in Camus."
"I'm not that, anymore." He held up his bandaged hands. "I had an accident. It's all right to say something about it. I can't work anymore, not like that. I've come home to do a different kind of work."
There was dead silence. His parents stood there and stared bleakly at him. After a moment his father shrugged and walked over to the fireside where evening coals were left. "You'll make something important here in Camus . . . better you should go down to the town and work there. There's nothing up here for you."
"You're not listening to me."
"Mind like yours . . . I suppose you've come out here to start a whole new branch of the University. A whole new way. But that's nothing to us."
"Perrin was ours," his mother said. "Perrin was ours. We understood Perrin and she understood us. She wanted so much she didn't have. It wasn't fair. Perrin was ours. Nothing was fair with her. She hated Camus after you'd gone. Talked about Kierkegaard. Wanted to come to University. Couldn't. She wasn't talented like you. That was the way of everything, wasn't it? You're going to start to work in Camus now. What are you going to build there?"
"They're wrong," he said. He stammered on the words. "Everything, everything is wrong. They broke my hands, you hear me? I've walked to this house from Kierkegaard. They've brought in Outsiders from off the planet and they're doing things that are going to change everything and no one sees it. Do you know, these Outsiders pilfer, too? Right off the tables in the market, they walk away and people pretend they don't see because that's what they're supposed to do, and they play the game, but it's a hole to nowhere . . . those goods don't turn up in market again, they don't come back to Kierkegaard, not even to this world. It goes out from here. We've opened the door on something that isn't small enough for us. We think we know what's real and we don't. It's all a structure that's operable only if we all believe it,"
They moved, his mother drying her hands which were already dry, and his father walking back to the kitchen counter as if he had business there.
"They're wrong," Herrin said again. "I've been through the system and I've taught in the system and I know the structure of the whole thing and it's wrong."
"Long wet autumn," his father said to his mother. "I think we've got to expect a cold winter."
"Father," Herrin said. "Mother?"
"Leaves have gone dark," his mother said. She looked through to the wall, still wiping her hands on the towel. "I think it's time to pull some of those tubers, take a look at them."