The Curfew - Jesse Ball [3]
She took his hand in both of hers.
—I do wish you could have met Paul. You would have liked him, and he would have liked you.
—I believe it, said William. I feel sure of that.
He got to his feet, closed his notebook, put it in his pocket. The pencil he snapped in half and put in the other pocket. He used each pencil exactly once, for one epitaph. He brought as many pencils as there were appointments, and he sharpened each one as he began.
—Goodbye, he said. We will send you a proof of what the stone will look like, and you can initial it.
—Thank you so much. Goodbye.
He stood and headed for the tile passage.
She called after him:
—And do you know what? He was a friend of cats. He really was. He really was.
He looked back at the woman, but she was now occupied with something in her lap, a box of some sort and its contents. She did not look up.
Next he came to a gate. A man he knew, Oscar, was there. He stood next to Oscar for a minute.
A crowd of schoolchildren went through Oscar’s gate, shepherded by a matron in a severe smock.
Oscar laughed.
—When I was a kid, you know, I had a tremendous fear of horses. I felt very uncomfortable about their shape, and I was horrified that I was completely alone in this. Once, I read about a war a long time ago where thousands and thousands of horses were killed by machine-gun fire. I felt very comfortable about that. There was a black and white photograph in the book of a field of dead men and dead horses. The perspective of the book was that the horses were not to be blamed.
—But you felt differently.
—I felt differently.
An old man drove up in a car with a rattling engine. His car was licensed to a different city. It was stuffed with belongings. He looked very tired, and slowed down very little. He came very near to running someone over as his car emerged on the other side.
The man who had been nearly run over had fallen. He got to his feet and came through the gate.
—That man has something in his pocket that looks like a gun but is probably a piece of fruit. If he should be shot for a piece of fruit it would be very unfortunate.
—How do you think they know, the secret police, who else is or is not secret police? For instance, this man with the fruit—if it was a gun, how would they know to shoot or not shoot him?
—But it is a piece of fruit.
—And if he was shot for it?
—It is a good idea to eat fruit when you buy it and not carry it around, my friend. Anyway—it is far nicer to stand nearby a fruit stand and eat the fruit than to carry it home and put it on a counter.
—I disagree.
—With this, William Drysdale, you cannot disagree. It is the way of things. I have never seen you carrying fruit in your pocket.
—Because I am afraid of being shot.
—Well, we will all be shot for something. I have a gold nose that I bought once, do you know that? This was many years ago. Apparently people used to lose their noses from syphilis and then they would sometimes have gold noses.
—This is a very clumsy way of changing the subject, Oscar. There is not even a single gold nose in sight to act as a segue.
—Well, I thought I saw one. A man is coming now with a very shiny nose. He should be careful, with such a shiny nose. It could mean trouble for him.
On then to the next appointment. This was a row house where houses were all slate-roofed. Every window in the street had bars across it. At that moment the sky was tremendously blue. For the first time in a long while, William looked down and saw his hands. If you have had this experience, you’ll know just what I mean.
He knocked on the door.
After a minute, he could hear footsteps. The door opened. A man and woman were standing there. They appeared to be husband and wife.
—I’m from the mason.
—Yes, we’ve been expecting you. Won’t you come in?
They brought him through the dark low-slung house