Gravity Box and Other Spaces Page 7

  He sat down, clasping his hands around his knees. “In Florence I found a woman who had a gift for healing. She’d look at someone and talk to them, people who suffered fits and rages, the possessed. I remembered times when those kind of people were killed, run off. Then they just got locked away. But she just talked to them, softly, no one else could hear what she said, and they’d quiet down, and after a time they’d start leading worthwhile lives.

  “I asked her how she did it, and she told me she just showed them who they really were. I asked, ‘You mean, you tell them their names?’ and she said ‘yes, something like that.’ ‘What’s my name?’ I asked. She told me I wasn’t sick, that I didn’t need healing. Didn’t matter, I needed a name, but she never got to give me one. They came and arrested her one day. I never saw her again. I ran before they arrested me. I’d been seen in her company and people pointed at me.

  “I always thought about that, though, that she said I wasn’t sick, and I wondered what that had to do with it. I had need. That can make you sick, having need, never finding what you must have, never knowing what it is. I must’ve become sick. I wandered all over, not remembering one place from another, but I had an idea, then.

  “I didn’t have a name, so I took one. I was in a graveyard once, somewhere—big stones, beautiful, deeply carved, and I took a name. Don’t know how I got there. The first time I ever remembered stealing. I took a name from a tomb and claimed it for my own. It wasn’t mine, though, and it got me into trouble more often than not, but a little bit at a time I started changing it on my own, until I found a sound and a shape that got me into towns and let me live. I chipped at that name over the years, worked it like stone, and remade it until it felt more like my own. At least it was my creation, something I had made.”

  “What was it? Jude?”

  “You know better. I won’t tell you. I gave it away eventually, gave to someone else, because I started finding people who could help me find my real name. Horapollus—I never knew him, only his book, but that was the start. I found it first in the possession of Alciati. He was working on his own book then, and everyone was fascinated with ancient knowledge and wisdom and finding the true language, the original tongue, the way we spoke before Babel, and Alciati had a gift for decipherment.

  “It was from him that I learned about the ones who might have helped—Horapollus, sure, but Isidore of Seville and Origen and Ambrose. But Alciati wasn’t interested in naming anything or helping me. He was in love with his own thoughts, his own ideas, his own interpretations. He feared me finally and ran me off, but not before I found the trait, the telltale.

  “I followed them, then, the namers, the illuminators, the lexicographers, the iconographers, the ones who see past the surfaces of things into what is. I followed them one after another, from Valariono to Ficino to Mirandola, to Bruno and Webb and Leibniz, Campanella and, yes, Athanasius Kircher, and on through Bacon and Delgarno, Lodwick, and Wilkins, Foigny and Vairasse, up through Rousseau and Diderot and Champollion.

  “All of them possessed the trait, the talent, the gift, whatever you want to call it, but every damn one of them was more concerned with some lost forgotten primal tongue than with finding a truth right in front of them—or it was politics or it was religion or it was money or it was fame. None of them could tell me what I needed to know. A simple question—what is my name? I could do something if I only had myself. I could act. I could become what I needed to become, but I had to know what that was and for that I needed to know who I am called.

  “I borrowed names, concocted bits, used the scraps from the workbenches of these geniuses to try to cobble one together, and now and then I’d get close. I get so close and for a short while I could do something. People would know who I was. I could change things. I could act. But they were always temporary, names that worked for a year or a decade, and then the power would fade, and I’d realize that I still didn’t have it right, and I’d try again.”

  “Did you ever figure out where you came from?”

  “Somewhere near the heart of the world. I told you I came out of the Levant, the Holy Land. I was beaten and burned and scarred and my mind was numb. I’d been hanged once, I think. Something had happened—for a while I thought maybe I was Icarus. I couldn’t even speak then, as if I had been dropped whole into a storm that had ripped all memory from me and tore me into a thousand pieces and scattered me. I was left, not dead, somewhere—and I started wandering. I needed. That’s all I knew, and it took me time to learn what I needed and sort through some of what I might have known.” He stared at Devon. “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been the same places I’ve been, haven’t you?”

  “Every one of them. Been to some of them first.”

  Jude leaned close to Devon. “People follow me. Look at this bunch here. They’ve been with me now for weeks, and they’ll come with me when I move and I can get more. Look at Lucy. She gives me whatever I want just for the asking, and I never had to ask more than once. Here I’m Jude, and they’ll follow and others will follow. I could gather an army up this way. I could change things, make the world into something new. I can do that. But it’s only for now, only for a short while, because I still don’t have the right name, I still don’t know what I am. Once I have my name, they’ll know it too, and they’ll follow forever.”

  “And what would you change? What would you do?”

  Jude laughed. “Just look around! Look at what the world does! You can walk into town right here, Achilles, Kansas, and see all the things that could be different!”

  “You don’t think you’d make things worse?”

  “How could anything get worse?”

  Devon smiled at him. “Oh, it can always get worse.”

  “Maybe. Yes, I can see that. But it can get worse without any help, too, in fact worse because there’s no help.”

  Devon looked at the four hobos nearby, each one studying the dirt at his feet, and wondered what they made of the rant Jude had just delivered. Maybe they would follow him just because of his vision.

  “Jeffin,” Devon said. The man looked up. “Jeffin. That’s not quite right, is it? Almost. Jeff—Jeff—Jeffrin? Jeffrid. That’s your name. Jeffrid.”

  Jeffin-now-Jeffrid stared at Devon, eyes large and seized and suddenly alive and frightened and grateful all at once. Devon looked at the man beside him.

  “You. I know you, too. Corum. And you, you’re Perrinok. Right?”

  Jude frowned. “What are you doing?”

  Devon addressed the last hobo. “And you.” The man stood abruptly as if about to run. “Linfor.” The hobo stopped, stared at Devon. “Am I right? Linfor sounds right.”

  The four hobos stood as one, then, waiting, watching Devon.

  “Untie me,” Devon said. “Jeffrid?”

  Jeffrid opened a penknife and cut the cord. Devon rubbed his wrists where the rope had left a deep indentation that looked black in the lantern glow.

  “What about me?” Jude asked.

  “Jude should be good enough,” Devon said. He stood. “I think you shouldn’t tolerate this man in your company.” He pointed at Jude. “He’ll bring you nothing but pain.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “How do you know? You don’t even know your own name. You don’t know what you might be, but I do.” He glanced around at the hobos. “He should be cast out.”

  “Wait—!”

  The four men fell on Jude, who fought more than Devon. His face, already fluid, writhed in the flickering light. Spittle blew from his lips and a stream of incoherent, guttural clicks and growls emerged. Scales seemed to appear and vanish over his face and hands, down his neck.

  “See?” Devon said reasonably. “He’s already showing his real nature.”

  “Should we kill him?” one of the hobos—Linfor—asked.

  “No. I’m not sure you could. But strip him and beat him and leave him far from here.”

  Spitting and scr
eaming, Jude was dragged away from the light. Devon stood quietly, listening until he could no longer hear Jude’s rage, and after a time the crickets started singing again.

  There’s always a reason to go somewhere, he thought.

  He lifted the lantern and returned to the hovel.

  Elle looked up, frightened, when Devon entered. She hugged her baby more closely, then relaxed when she saw who it was.

  “Where’s Jude?”

  “Gone. He won’t be back.”

  She frowned and for a moment Devon thought she might argue. “He wasn’t a bad sort. He just—assumed a lot, I guess. Took care of us, but I always knew he’d leave someday, that he had somethin’ else to do.” She watched Devon shrug out of his coat. “Did you tell him his name?”

  “No. We’re all better off if he doesn’t know it.”

  “But I thought—”

  Devon lifted the can of coffee. It had cooled now, though it tasted worse.

  “What did you think? That I give everyone their proper name? Now what kind of a world would it be if everyone knew who and what they were?” He smiled at her. “I only give names to people who make no difference, who are harmless. People who will never change anything, never matter, never have a say in how the world works. Once they know their names, they stop complaining so much and accept their lot in life. And they’re grateful. Someday I’ll have made enough of them grateful—”

  Elle stared at him now and he could see the open fear. “For what?” she asked in a near whisper. “Grateful enough for what?”

  He considered for a moment telling her. What could she do with the knowledge that the Named and the Namers came in all kinds, with ambitions and appetites that often conflicted? Nothing, probably. Still—

  “I like the world as it is,” he said.

  “But it don’t work right.”

  “You noticed that, did you?” He leaned close to her and drew back the blanket from her daughter’s face. He gazed at the infant for a long time, then sat back.

  “Does she have a name?” Elle asked.

  Devon nodded.

  “You gonna tell me what it is?”

  “Oh,” Devon said, and drained the can of bitter coffee in a long draught, “I think you can do just as well as I. Like I said, you have to be careful about handing out names.”

  She swallowed hard. “I thought you were somebody else.”

  “Yeah, a lot of people get me confused with somebody else. I don’t know what to do about that, if anything.”

  He lifted the lantern then and blew out the light. In the darkness, chaos maintained.

  Private Words

  May, 1936

  “Conny, he’s asking for you.”

  She blinked in the bright wash of morning light and looked up at Geoffrey. His face was pale, making the scar across his cheek look like a slight fold of skin.

  Conny sat forward in the overstuffed chair. It had seemed the most comfortable chair in the house the night before, but now her back ached. She rubbed sleepers from her eyes. “What time is it?”

  “A little past seven.” He stepped back, hands in pockets. “He’s been awake less than half an hour. The nurse is with him.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not good.”

  Conny stood and her head swam. She remembered dreaming and a half-real tingle in her abdomen. The sensation startled her, and she almost asked if William had been writing, but the images had fled like ghosts as soon as she tried to capture them.

  She went to the window, stretching, and gazed out at the slope of land that ended at the river a hundred yards below. No dream. They had returned to the house, her house now. She had smelled the traces of her uncle’s cherry tobacco when they arrived last night, surprisingly clear after all this time.

  “I called Dr. Ludi,” Geoffrey said. “I still think we should have taken him to the hospital.”

  “That’s not what he wanted. Is there coffee?”

  “In his room.”

  Conny used the bathroom. Feeling more awake, the dull pain in her back almost gone, she walked down the hall.

  William looked like a miniature—not so much shrunken as reduced, his features etched and pale, like a cameo in ivory—in the mass of pillows and blankets on the huge canopied bed. Small and bleached. The last few months of illness had leached out his features, robbed him of expression, as if sifting him away. His hair lay matted against his skull and his beard needed trimming and combing. The room smelled of sweat and soup. The weak breeze from the open window did little more than stir the air and mix the odors. A tray with pages of marked-up manuscript lay next to him.

  Conny gestured toward the door and the nurse left.

  “I’m sorry,” William said. “Were you sleeping?”

  “No. I can’t sleep in the sunshine for long.”

  “Of course not.” He made a weak attempt at a cough and lifted a blood-stained rag to his mouth. “My letters. You still have them?”

  Conny sat on the edge of the bed and took his free hand. “You mean ‘our’ letters, don’t you? Of course I have them.”

  “Of course. They’re yours. Yours and Geoffrey’s. No one else.”

  “You were working?” She nodded toward the tray.

  “Last words. Notes to you. Something—a closure.”

  “Dr. Ludi’s been called. Geoffrey wants you to go to the hospital.”

  “Shh. Doesn’t matter. The letters. Do you have them?”

  “Yes, I said—”

  “Get them. The first one, anyway. I want to remember.”

  Conny peered out the door. Geoffrey stood in the hallway, leaning on a windowsill. “The trunk,” she said. “Would you bring it?” He nodded and hurried off. Conny glanced at William. He seemed to be sleeping now. Only sleeping, I’d know the difference.

  Then Geoffrey was back, carrying the heavy oak box edged in tarnished brass. He placed it in her arms and went back to the window. He spent as little time as possible with William now; he could not bear the smell and taste and waiting of death. Conny tried not to be angry with him—everyone had weaknesses and flaws—but it would not have hurt him just now to have brought the trunk all the way into the room. She wrestled it to the bed and set it at the foot of the mattress.

  When she looked up, William’s eyes stared at her, bright and feverish. She unlocked the box and pushed up the lid. Within lay neat bundles of papers, each stack tied with a ribbon. Seventeen of them, one for each year until this last. Some loose sheets lay on top. A rich, musky odor escaped, displacing the sickroom stench for a few moments. Conny licked her lips and dug to the bottom of the box. She took out the oldest bundle, bound in a brittle blue band. The pages showed faint yellowing.

  “D’you remember the first one?” William asked. “The first time, really. Here. In this house.”

  She undid the bow and sorted through the handwritten sheets. “Here. Yes.” She read the date. “I’d forgotten it was in March.”

  “Read it to me.”

  March, 1919

  They laughed about it later, the way she kept saying “no” and giggling even as she unbuttoned his vest, his shirt, his pants. Not here, she meant, not in her uncle’s study, in sight of his enormous desk and his books; “no,” while she helped him undo her girdle and roll down her stockings; “no” in a kind of disbelief, while his hands trembled as they brushed her breasts; “no” again until he kissed her and their mouths became busy with other sounds in a different language. She liked the feel of his beard on her skin, the exhilaration of his belly against hers. Not here, she wanted to say. They could sneak up to her room and lock the door, down the hall from where her uncle slept upstairs, morphically coddled by one glass of claret too many. But there was no question of “yes,” not for weeks now.

  She had come from New York to stay with her British relatives, to see Oxford, London, perhaps tour the continent. He had been helping her uncle with a translation of some Latin texts she had been forbidden to see. The tension between the
m had not been immediate. Conny could barely remember that first week when he had been little more than part of the furniture.

  The leather divan had not been intended for sex: The lumpy, squeaking surface seemed to grab at them, refused to let them slide or find comfort fully stretched out, and her head jammed against the arm, bending her neck awkwardly. Before she could find a different position, he was inside her. She closed her eyes and concentrated on each sensation, drawing her legs up and around him, determined to take as much compensation as she could for the guilt she knew she would feel later.

  Too many sensations. The smooth texture of his skin, the pressure of his hands, one on her shoulder, the other on her right breast; the rush of his breathing in her ear; the tension building up deep within, as if someone were holding her inside, a safe, warm embrace. Far too many sensations. She realized that she would have to do this again just to count them all.

  His breathing became ragged, and he moved faster. Sweat slicked their flesh. Suddenly all the stress in his body released, along with five or six sharp breaths. He shuddered then lay still, panting and damp. Finished. He raised himself up on his arms and smiled.

  “We must do that again.”

  Conny laughed, and it sounded timid to her ears. “Of course.” She felt an ill-formed disappointment and wanted to ignore it.

  He gestured across the study. “We’ve made a bit of a mess.”

  Their clothes were everywhere. Conny blushed when she spotted her chemise draped over the green-shelled lamp on the desk. She caught his eye, and they burst out laughing, Conny tapping a finger to her lips and making shushing sounds. “Someone will hear,” she said.

  “Would you mind so much?”

  “No.” Surprised at her own boldness, she reached for him.