A Fine and Private Place

Chapter 8

Hills had no meaning for Laura any more. She remembered them; in the cemetery there were roads that arched up suddenly, curved and hung, and then dipped to rise again, coiling on themselves like toads' tongues, and these she accepted as hills. Even now, if she thought hard, she could remember what it had been like to climb hills. But the actual rise and fall of land under her feet as she walked did not reach her. Roads and walking she remembered; so under her feet there were pavement and gravel and yellow-brown dirt, pebbles, weeds, grass, even the stunted star that she had been told lived at the center of the earth. Where Laura walked there existed only what Laura remembered, and Laura had forgotten about up and down. So there was no up and down now, exactly as there is no up and down in space, and Laura walked a flat, submissive road that her feet never quite touched.

Actually, she was walking up a small hill, a momentary shoulder-hunch of a road that wound through the poorer section of the cemetery. It was no potter's field; the Yorkchester view was that excessive poverty was just as ostentatious as excessive wealth. The graves were well kept and neat, and the ivy that covered most of them was closely trimmed, but there were so many of them. Headstones crowded within six inches of one another, and statues touched elbows. There were enough Christs, Madonnas, and angels standing in the field to people a thousand heavens, and the short grass that grew between them had a tentative look about it.

The ragged blanket of earth had been stretched about as far as it would go, Laura thought. Sooner or later it would rip down the middle with a sound like fire, and the dead would be revealed, blinking in the light, lying feet to head and feet to head, kicking out with their legs for room to be dead. Get your feet out of my eyes, friend, and quit that talking to yourself. I don't want to hear you. Leave me alone. We're dead. I don't have to be your brother now.

There were a lot of people in the cemetery today. Was it a weekend? Didn't they have anything else to do with their holidays but come out here and stand around a piece of stone with their hats off? She was glad that her parents weren't here. They had sense enough to realize that there is a little dignity in death but none at all in mourning.

To them all—to the middle-aged man laying flowers at the feet of a trim and perfect statue; to the pregnant woman who had brought a wooden folding chair with her; to the three old women who got out of a big car, wept, got back into the car, and drove away; to the yellow-haired young man who sat down on the grass in the middle of a family plot and spoke politely in Italian to all the gravestones—to them all, she said aloud, "Do you think your dead can hear you, do you think they know you weep? They're not here, not one of them, and if they were they wouldn't know you. They're a long way gone and they wouldn't come back if they could. Go home and talk to each other, if you know how. We don't want you here. You didn't want us when we were alive, and now we don't want you. Go away. Tell your bodies to take you home." And although they could not hear her, she felt for a moment that she was more than Laura, that the absent dead had truly chosen her to speak for them.

But then she saw a man standing before the statue of a boy reading a book. The boy's face had the picture-book impersonality of the Christs that flanked him, but something—the round chin, perhaps, or the big ears—made him look young and human. The unlined slickness of marble had trapped a little of that youth. On the front of the bench there was an inscription. Below it were two dates.

The boy himself was sitting on the bench, next to the statue. He was smaller than the statue and very thin and tenuous; a thin line marking a boy's shape in the air. Against the stained marble of his statue and with the sun behind him, he was nearly invisible. The man in front of his grave spoke softly and foolishly, and the boy never moved.

The man reached out a hand to touch the statue and Laura was quickly and completely jealous. She thought, Oh, this is bad, this is really bad. Leave him alone. Must you even envy dead children? You were better alive, when you didn't dare let people see how jealous you were. The familiar swelling ache was in her, for this is an ache of the mind that does not need the body to express itself.

"He comes to see you now," she said to the boy, "to show everyone how much he misses you. But he'll stop coming someday. What will you do then?"

The boy did not turn to her and this infuriated her. It was as if he too were alive and she were the only one of them who could not be heard.

"You'll sit and wait," she said. "He'll never come, but you'll sit and wait for him. People will come to see every grave in the cemetery, but not yours. You wait and look up whenever anyone passes by, but they don't come. They never come. You think you have him now, but you've no one but me, no one but Laura to talk to you and be with you. You're dead now, and you have only me."

But the man murmured softly to the statue, and the boy listened, and the statue continued to read its stone story.

"All right," Laura said. "Do you think I care?" And she turned her back on them all and began to walk up the hill that seemed as level as any other road, as all roads. . . .

Thinking again of the boy, she wondered, Why did I do that? What was it I was trying to do? Whom was I trying to hurt? Not him. Not a dead child. I used to be very good with children. It was part of my charm.

God, I was jealous of so much beauty when I was alive. It ought to stop here. This is no place for envy, for wanting to be like the soft-skinned women. We're equal now. They can't bring their good bodies here, or their smooth little faces. No one will wait for them at lunchtime, or take them home at night. Their men can't see them any more, or touch them, or love them. It takes time, but we're equal in the end. There is no difference between us.

Only the difference between you and that stone boy. Someone remembers him.

Michael's grave and her own were in one of the Catholic sections of the cemetery, about half a mile from the gate. It was a middle-class section, meaning that the graves were not as closely crowded together as in the section she had left, and there were a few small mausoleums. One, by which she recognized the area when she came to it, bore a statue of a kneeling woman clinging to a cross. Laura disliked that one. The cross looked smooth and unreachable. She expected it to free itself from the kneeling woman with a quick shrug, and the woman looked as if she expected it also.

Even as she made it perfectly clear to herself that she was passing Michael's grave only because it was on the way to her own, she saw two people standing before it. She stopped for a moment, ready to hide, before she remembered that they could not see her. Then, irritated because she had forgotten this, she walked up to the two and stood beside them as they looked down at the plain square headstone that said MICHAEL MORGAN.

They were a man and a woman. The man was short-legged and heavy-shouldered, a little shorter than the woman. He was hatless, and his face was truculent and tired. The woman was blond, and her head was small and so subtly and gradually tapered that it seemed almost out of place attached to her full-breasted body. But her waist and hips were slim, and she carried herself with the light arrogance of a Jolly Roger.

She's beautiful, Laura thought. Heavens, she's beautiful. If I were alive I'd hate her. No, I wouldn't, either. What would be the point of it? I used to hate the almost-beautiful women, the pretty women, because I felt that I could look like that if I knew what to wear and what sort of make-up to use and how to walk right. I felt that they knew something secret and were keeping it from me, because if I knew it I'd be just as pretty as they and be able to compete with them for the things I wanted. This one is on another level altogether. I'd never even think of competing with her, no matter how pretty I was. Which is damn nice of me.

"The poison is the big thing," the man said. His voice was high and hoarse. "If you didn't buy it, he did. And if I can find out just where he bought it, we've got something to go on."

The woman's voice was just the way Laura had imagined it would sound. "I don't see how you can. Every little hardware store in the country probably carries it." The man chortled triumphantly. "Uh-uh. That's just it. You can't get it in New York."

"I don't see—"

"Look, I took the can to a couple of hardware stores, and they told me the same thing in each one. The stuff isn't marketed in New York because it's mostly for field mice. It's strychnine-based, like the standard brands, but it's supposed to be very effective on field mice. Who's got field mice in New York? You see what I'm getting at?"

There were flowers on the grave, roses. The woman knelt to touch one. "Where did it come from, then?"

"That I don't know," the man said. "But it's made by a little outfit in Greenwich, Connecticut. They distribute to about ten or eleven little weed-killer stores all the hell over New England. The way I figure it, if I spend the next couple of weeks chasing around up there, I might be able to trace the stuff back to wherever it was bought. And they just might remember who they sold it to. They keep records. It's worth a shot."

The woman did not rise or turn her head to him. "It's not very much, is it?"

"It's not that bad," the man said defensively. "The thing is, the stuff isn't moving very well. Most people still buy the standard brands, and this stuff just sits on the shelves. When somebody does buy some, it's a big event. Like Christmas. They remember who buys that brand."

He sighed and seemed to slump from the shoulders down. "Sure it's thin," he said sourly. "It's even thinner than it sounds. If the poison was bought more than a month ago, I'm screwed. They won't remember. But what else can I do? I told you before, I'm no Darrow. I'm just persistent as hell. I do what I can with the tools I've got, and all I've got is that poison. So I'll trace it back as far as I can, and if it doesn't work out, I'll try something else. If I can think of something else to try."

"Eleven stores make it difficult," the woman said. She straightened up, brushing dirt and grass from her skirt. "Even if one of them did sell the poison to Michael, they might not remember him."

This is Sandra, Laura realized. This is Michael's wife. She came closer to the woman and stared at her, unconsciously trying to see her less beautiful. She searched the gently pointed face for a skin blemish, tried to will the gray eyes smaller and the nose overlarge. As close as a woman has ever stood to another woman Laura stood to Sandra and, invisibly, felt nakedly ugly by comparison.

"They treating you all right there?" the man asked. He slouched as he stood there. Occasionally he would look sideways at the slim woman beside him and make an effort to straighten his slumped shoulders.

"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Very well. They're very polite." She smiled absently, looking at the grave. "I wonder what Michael would think if he knew I was in jail. Michael was always very protective."

"Yeah," the man said. "That reminds me, fighting with him at the party wasn't a hell of a good idea. The D.A.'ll have everybody who was there in court, and there won't be very much I can do about it. I wish you'd waited until you got home."

The woman turned slowly to face him. "He was drunk. You don't know how it was. He was drunk, and he made a complete fool of himself in front of the chancellor. He told jokes, and he sang, and he kept starting stupid arguments with the chancellor. All the women were looking at me, because I was his wife and I couldn't stop him, and all the men were figuring how they could get closer to the chancellor by taking his side against Michael. Everything I ever worked for went out the window that night. We'd have had to go somewhere else and start all over again. And they write letters about you when something like this happens. I know they do. All the things Michael could have been—"

The man interrupted her, harshly and deliberately. "You see why I didn't let you go before the grand jury? You get all worked up like this and you sound as if you could have killed somebody. Take it easy. You do that in court and you'll make the D.A.'s case for him. At least let's make him work a little."

"You still believe I might have killed Michael." There was a soft and plaintive dignity to the woman's voice that Laura admired, although she knew perfectly well that it was artificial. Women make better innocent victims than men, she thought. They see the drama in the role. Men see only the injustice happening to them, and they howl.

"I think you could have done it," the man said. "I'm pretty sure you didn't. But I'm never really sure of anything."

"That must be sad."

"It's kept me from being married, killed, and disbarred. It's only sad if you think there's one thing sure in the world and you have to keep looking for it. Otherwise it holds up pretty well. Keeps you from spending much time in places like this."

"Michael was my husband," the woman murmured. There was a sleepy, smug look about her eyes, the look one often sees in the eyes of women who have just given birth. "I had to come. I wouldn't have felt right if I hadn't come here today."

"Why? If you're trying to impress the D.A.'s tails, forget it. They're waiting outside. And if you're trying to convince me that you loved your husband, I'll take you home whenever you're ready."

"I loved him as much as I could." The woman stared down at the grave. "Sometimes I wonder if I'm able to give love. I don't think I am. Michael wouldn't have committed suicide if I was."

"That's getting to be a pretty fashionable position," the man said. "Used to be people wrote books about women who slept with the iceman because they were overflowing with love for humanity and they had to start somewhere. Now it's the other way around. Everybody's sorry for the woman who can't love anybody. Now she sleeps with the iceman because she's trying to destroy herself. Doesn't make a hell of a lot of difference to the iceman. Anyway, I wouldn't feel too bad about not loving your husband. He didn't love you."

The woman turned on him so fast that she kicked one of the roses. "That's not so. Michael loved me. If he loved anything in the world, he loved me. He told me so a dozen times a day. It used to frighten me because I knew I didn't deserve that kind of love. I used to warn him not to love me so much." The soft voice had gotten higher, and the narrow face was quite pale. "Don't you ever say Michael didn't love me. There's a lot you don't know about Michael, or about me."

"Ain't it the truth," the stocky man said amiably. "You ready to go now?"

"Not yet," the woman said. She had regained control of herself as quickly as she had thrown it away, but her hands were still clenched and pressed against her sides. "I just want to stand here quietly for a moment. Don't say anything. I shouldn't have let you come with me. Be quiet."

"But first, ladies and gentlemen," the man muttered, "our national anthem." The woman gave him a look of calm disgust and turned away to stare at Michael's grave. Her head was bowed and her hands, open now, seemed conscious of their futility. A breeze ruffled a loose lock of her blond hair, and she did not raise a hand to pat it back into place. All sexuality was gone from her in that moment. She might have been a nun at evening. Even the heavy-shouldered man seemed on the verge of being impressed.

Laura saw the woman's lips move to shape Michael's name, and she thought, Michael's Sandra, you're a hypocrite and you may be a murderess just as naturally. I hope you are. Forgive me that, and forgive my envy of the golden planes of your face, but I hope, and, because I hope, believe, that you killed your husband. Please understand me. I have nothing against you as a person except that you had to warn a man not to love you so much. This seems a waste of natural resources to me, whose hair was straight and dull and who danced like the Washington Monument. My attitude may seem unfair and incomprehensible, but you would understand if you had known me when I was alive. If I were on your jury I would fight to see you set free, but I know you're guilty. That's the way my mind works, or at least that's the way I remember its working. I have to find you guilty because I'm not dishonest enough to find you ugly, and I have to dislike you to keep myself from wanting to be like you. If you knew me you'd understand.

Is that all? she wondered. Is there anything else to say? I have a feeling there is, the same feeling of something left out I've had ever since I came to this place. You try so hard to be honest with yourself and you wind up by making lies a little less pleasant to the taste.

"We can go now," the woman said.

You're forgetting the rose you kicked, Laura told her. Put it back the way it was. It just has to be straightened out a little. I'd do it myself and save you the trouble, but I can't. Would you, please? Thank you.

As if she had heard, the woman knelt gracefully and put the rose back into line with the other flowers. Her long fingers had a slight tint of lemon to them, but her nails were the same shade as the roses. A little darker, perhaps; roses after rain.

Thank you Sandra, Laura said. Good-by. She wondered where Michael was.

"How much time do we have?" the woman asked. She and the man began to walk away from Michael's grave.

"The trial's down for August eighth," the man answered. "Gives us almost a month."

"That's not much time." The soft voice sounded a little worried.

"Time enough. If there's anything for me to find, I'll have it in a month. If I can't turn up anything—" He shrugged heavily. "We can always appeal."

The woman stopped with her hand on the man's arm. "I didn't kill Michael. I won't suffer for something I didn't do."

The man's high chuckle was like sand rattling into a tin pail. He started walking again, and the woman followed him. "Why not? Why should you be different from the rest of us?"

"That isn't funny, damn you," the woman said.

They passed out of Laura's sight, although she could still hear their voices. The man's answer was amused and easy. "That's called gallows humor, lady. It'll get funnier as time passes." From that point on, the voices became blurred, partly because Laura was not listening very hard.

I suppose I could follow them, she thought. I was going to visit my own grave, after all, not Michael's. The trouble is, I don't really want to follow them. I don't want to see them. What do I want with the living? I'm not going to depend on them. If I do that I'll never forget life, never get to sleep. And I've got to stop letting myself be distracted. If I can't be alive, I want to be dead. Dead, as in dead. I don't like this in-between state. It's too much like life and not enough like it. I have to stop looking at live things and being interested in them. Even the scurrying of an ant is treachery, even a dandelion is deceitful and seductive. And that reminds me, I wish I could blow on one of those fat white dandelions. If you make a wish and blow all the fluff off in one breath, the wish comes true. I know. I was never able to do it all in one breath, and my wishes never came true.

The dead have nothing to do with dandelions, and the dead don't make wishes. I'll go to my own grave and lie down again.

Then she heard whistling, and she turned to see Michael coming down the road she had walked. The whistling of a ghost is like no other sound in a fistful of universes, because it is woven of all the whistles the ghost has ever heard, and so it usually includes train moans, lunch whistles, fire alarms, and the affronted-virgin screaming of tea kettles. To all of these components Michael had added an extra memory: the agonized yowl of a car stopping very suddenly in a very short space. It all made for a tuneless and unmelodic sort of sound, but ghosts have no interest in melody. The production of sound is all that interests them. Michael seemed quite pleased with his whistling.

"Hello, Michael," Laura said when he seemed about to pass by without seeing her.

Michael stopped and looked up. "Hello, Laura. Listen, and I'll whistle your name."

He whistled a brief passage of notes that made Laura think of a kite caught in a hurricane. It stopped suddenly, and she said, "Is that all?"

"You ought to have a longer name," Michael said. "Longer and harsher. That's the best I can do with Laura Durand." He sat down in the middle of the road and beckoned her to join him. "I've been doing this all morning—whistling up names for things. Like leitmotivs. You name it and I'll whistle it. Go on."

"Dandelions," Laura said promptly.

"Dandelions. Right." Michael whistled a few bars of a crashing march tune. "Dandelions."

"Not to me. It sounded like dinner music at an American Legion picnic."

"That's the way I see dandelions," Michael said firmly. "I'm an impressionist. If you want program music, get yourself one of those hundred-and-fifty-violin orchestras. Whistling is a very personal kind of music."

"All right," Laura said. "I leave you your integrity. Do Mr. Rebeck."

"I haven't got him yet. I've been trying on and off, but it never comes out. I'm still new at this, remember. Try something else."

For a moment Laura considered saying, "Sandra. What kind of Sandra-music do you have?" She gave up the idea only because she was afraid he might actually have a melody for the name.

At that moment Michael noticed the bright flowers on his grave. "Hey," he said. "Somebody dropped something." He got up and went over to look closely at the roses.

"I'll be damned," he said. "I've got a secret admirer."

"Your wife left them," Laura said. "She was here a few minutes ago."

Michael was silent, his back to her. She could see through to the small marble headstone shining in the sun.

"Very fresh, too," he said after a moment. "And expensive. Eight or ten dollars a dozen. I always wondered why one kind of rose should be worth more than another."

"She just left a minute or so before you came," Laura said doggedly. I'm getting mean again, she thought, and in a way it's worse than with the boy.

"I heard you," Michael said. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"I don't know. She's your wife."

"Nope. Not any more. Death us parted. We are annulled. There's a really terrifying word for you. Annulled."

"You could follow her, I suppose," Laura said. "She was walking very slowly."

"I don't want to, God damn it!" She felt oddly satisfied that she had made him shout. "I don't want to see her. I have nothing to say to her, and if I had she couldn't hear me. She was my wife and she murdered me, and my feelings are understandably hurt about the whole thing. Stop talking about her. I don't want to hear anything about her. Stop talking about her or go away. One or the other."

He had stepped on the roses in his anger. They lay unharmed under his feet, dark red, their outer petals already beginning to curl in the heat of the morning. They had not yet begun to change color. That would come later.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she was, though she did not quite know for what. "I'm very sorry, Michael."

"Forget it," Michael said.

"I get like this once in a while. I don't know why. I never used to when I was alive."

"It's all right," Michael said. "Don't talk about it. Look, are you doing anything right now?" In the same breath he said, "That is conceivably the most stupid thing I ever said, in life or in death."

"No," Laura said. She did not laugh. "I'm not doing anything special. I was just walking around."

"Come with me, then, if you feel like walking. I was heading down to the gate to look at people."

Laura hesitated before she spoke. "I usually stay away from the gate. I used to go down regularly, like going for the mail, but it's begun to depress me. The people and the guards and the cars, and the gate so easy for them to pass—I'd rather not, Michael."

"It doesn't bother me much," Michael said. "I like listening to them. But we don't have to go there."

He frowned for a moment. "I found a place a while ago. Maybe you know it. It's a wall." He glanced at her for any sign of recognition.

Laura shook her head. "I don't think I know it."

"It's right at the edge of the cemetery. A low brick wall."

"No," Laura said. "I'm a stranger here."

"Come on, then," Michael said eagerly. "It's not too far—as if that makes any difference. Come on and I'll show you. It's very nice. Looks out over the whole city— all of Yorkchester, anyway. It's a wonderful view."

"I'd like that," Laura said.

"We have to go back where the road forks," Michael said as they walked. "Then it's a straight gravel road with a big hothouse at the end of it. We turn right at the hothouse, and there it is."

"What on earth do they have a hothouse for?"

"You know that fungus-like ivy they have on most of the graves?" Laura nodded. "That's where they raise it. They raise some flowers too, in case you come unarmed."

He turned his head to look down at her. "I was thinking about flowers on graves. Isn't it the hell of a barbaric custom? Look at it logically. It wastes perfectly good flowers. They lie there and wither. Nobody should do that with flowers. And it doesn't mean anything to the dead."

"Yes it does," Laura said. "I like it when Marian and Carl leave flowers for me."

"Why? Does it make you feel that somebody remembers you?"

"No, it isn't that."

"Because they don't, you know, after a while. It becomes automatic, something done, like going to church."

"It isn't that," Laura said. "Oh, I suppose it is, a little, but I like flowers. I liked them when I was alive, and I like them now. They please me."

"They please me too, but there's nothing personal in it. Flowers on anybody else's grave please me as much as flowers on my own. I like flowers as flowers, not as symbols of loss. I know I'm generalizing and oversimplifying and, in general, talking like a college sophomore, but I'm also dead, and gestures toward the honoring of my body don't interest me these days. I'd just as soon they'd buried me with my bow and arrows and killed a horse over my grave. A dead horse on my grave would be fine. Distinctive. Be the first in your gang to get one."

"I saw a boy this morning—" Laura began, but Michael rode right over her.

"And my wife," he said delightedly. "Let them bury my wife with me. There's a useful gift to the departing warrior. Never mind the bloody flowers. Skip the bow and arrows and drag that damn horse away. I want my wife. Just drop her in with me and pat down the earth with a shovel. If you hear noises, it'll be us singing the duet from Aida." He grinned at Laura. "There's a personal gift. What do I want with flowers?"

"Your wife is beautiful," Laura said.

He wants to talk about her, she thought. He'd rather forget her altogether, but if he can't do that he'll talk to keep from thinking. I don't mind. I don't think I mind.

"Isn't she, though?" Michael said. There was a touch of grimness in his tone. "In many ways the ranking bitch of the Western world, but, by God, I loved to walk down the street with her. I have to admit that. We used to walk along with our arms around each other's waists—" He broke off the sentence and looked so long at Laura that she became a little nervous and was relieved when he spoke again.

"That's the nicest way of walking I know. Something secure and affectionate about it. Solid."

"I know," Laura said, thinking, I really do know, but I'll bet you don't believe it.

"Anyway," Michael said, "we were walking like that once and we saw ourselves reflected in a store window. I laughed, and she wanted to know why, and I said, 'I was just wondering, What's that bum doing with that good-looking broad?'"

"What did she say?" Laura asked.

"She said, 'I was just thinking the same thing.' We went on walking." Michael sighed. "I wish she hadn't murdered me. We got along well sometimes."

He began to whistle again as they walked along. The sound was high, so high that it would have been inaudible to a human ear. The tune was wailing and mournful, almost flagrantly so, and the total effect was of a heartbroken piccolo being parted forever from its bagpipe lover. But Michael seemed proud of it, and he whistled it contentedly all the way to the gravel path, and when he stopped it was to ask, "She really looked good?"

"Yes," Laura said. "She looked graceful. That's the only word that seems to fit."

"Graceful," Michael said thoughtfully. "It is a good word. Sums her up, in a way. She did everything gracefully."

"There are people like that," Laura said. "People who never look clumsy, no matter what they do. Everything is done just right, everything is said right. If they seemed conscious of it you'd feel better, because you could call them affected and say, 'Well, thank God I'm not like that.' But with these people it's completely natural, like a cat stretching."

She felt that she was stumbling and straining for words, but the sudden curiosity with which Michael was looking at her drove her on. It was like running downhill, arms spread wide, hoping not to fall but expecting it momentarily. She wanted Michael to understand.

"Sometimes you walk along the street and you see someone coming, somebody you know. He hasn't seen you yet, but you know he'll wave and smile and say something as soon as he sees you. And all at once, in the moment before he sees you, you think, I'm going to foul this up. I don't quite know how, but I'm going to. I can hardly wait to see how I do it. Will I stop and stick out my hand when he expects me to wave and pass by, and will we stand there, a little island of embarrassment in the middle of the street, with people jostling us and our hands sticky? Will I let go of his hand before he is ready to let go of mine, or will it be the other way around? What will I say when he calls, 'How's it going?' Will I just grunt like an idiot, or will I stop and tell him? Am I brave enough to walk on and pretend I don't see him? What terrible thing is going to happen in the next five seconds? . . . So you wait five seconds and find out."

That was pretty good, she thought. I never said it that way when I was alive. And he's looking at me and thinking about it. Maybe it was worth saying.

Two white butterflies danced across the path with the rambling abandon of ribbons in the wind. They spun around each other, like a double star, broke apart, and fled away down the gravel path, one close behind the other.

"Anyway, that doesn't ever happen to the graceful people," she said. "I don't know why, but it doesn't. Maybe it's due to a gene or a lack of one."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," Michael said, and she gasped with shock. "I'm not feeling sorry for myself! I never do. That's one of the things I learned very early—it's useless to feel sorry for yourself, and it's ugly besides. I haven't pitied myself in years."

"All right," Michael. "Keep up the good work."

His calm amusement angered her. "And I don't hang on to things—life or people or objects or anything. I told you that once. I let things go. It might do you a lot of good."

"Maybe," Michael said. "That's where we differ. What I love I hang on to. With both hands, and my teeth, if I can get a good grip."

"Even if it doesn't love you?" Laura demanded.

"Even then. Especially then. Anybody can love something that loves you back. The other way takes a certain amount of effort."

"We see things differently, then," she said, and they walked on silently.

The gravel road made a gradual turn, and they saw the hothouse. Michael pointed at the greenness that crowded against its glass sides.

"See," he said. "That's the ivy. Unprepossessing, isn't it?"

Laura nodded. The ivy seemed squat and sullen in the glass house. "I wonder," she said aloud, "if that's the same type of ivy that's supposed to grow on college walls."

"Might be," Michael said. "It has the same arrogantly useless look. I wouldn't be surprised."

He pointed again. "And the wall's right over there. Can you see it?"

"Yes," Laura said. The wall was about as high as her shoulders, and perhaps seventy-five feet long. The gravel road ended in a kind of dusty hollow, and the wall fenced off the open end of the hollow. It was made of reddish-brown bricks, and it had been made with too much mortar. As they approached it they could see the hardened cement bulging and spilling thickly between the individual bricks.

Michael stopped at the wall and turned to her. "Do you know how to jump?"

"I guess so," she said dubiously. "What do you do?"

"Like this," Michael said. He flickered out of sight for an instant and reappeared sitting cross-legged on top of the wall.

"It's like thinking yourself places," he explained, "only it's for such a short distance that you have to be careful not to overshoot. Concentrate on getting the jump just right and forget about being visible for a moment. Be careful. It's tricky the first few times."

Laura made it on the fourth try and sat beside him on the wall. "I'd feel excited and breathless," she said, "if I had any breath to lose. That's the great disadvantage of not having a body. You forget what it's like to rest when you're tired."

"You're never satisfied," Michael said, but he smiled. "Look now. Look over there."

Below the wall the land fell away abruptly to a last field of cheap, chalky headstones. Beyond the field she saw the great fence that ran all around the cemetery, and beyond the fence there was the hard grillwork of the city.

"I never saw this," she said. "I was never here before."

From where they sat on the wall they could see almost all of Yorkchester. The buildings stood up in pinkness, differing from one another only in the number of television aerials that they wore like hairpins. Between them, cars clustered in the streets like bunches of a sour fruit. The flat wind of summer slid across the city, lifting skirts without any real interest, and the people moved slowly in the streets. On the skyline there rose the proudly naked skeleton of what would probably be a housing project. There was movement on it, and Laura was sure she could hear the workmen shouting. A three-lane highway ran parallel to the city, agreeable to keeping it company for a little, but sleekly separate even when the streets of the city ran into it.

Michael saw Laura looking at the highway and said, "There was a river there before the highway. First they thinned it down to a trickle. Then they changed its course three or four times. Finally the damn thing just disappeared. Died of frustration, I think."

She could hear every sound in the city, Laura thought. She heard the car horns, and the curses in the streets, and the children crying in the heat, and the clicking of light switches in the office buildings. She heard the thrumming of the electric fans in the subway trains, and the sounds that different kinds of heels make on different kinds of pavements, and the bouncing of rubber balls against the sides of buildings, and the shrill yells of the workmen on the housing project. She even heard the clear clatter of coins in the money machines of buses.

Beside her, Michael murmured, "And the devil took Faust up on a high place and showed him all the cities of the world."

Laura reluctantly took her eyes off the city before her. "Is that Faust? There's something like it in the Bible, about Christ."

"Both, I think," Michael said. "Faust gave in and Christ didn't, that's all. The devil couldn't meet Christ's price, and so Christ went uncorrupted. There are honest people in the world, but only because the devil considers their asking prices ridiculous."

Laura laughed. "Now you sound a little like that man who was with your wife."

"What man?" Michael asked sharply.

"I don't know his name. I think he's her lawyer."

"Oh," Michael said slowly.

After a moment he said, "Excuse me for snapping at you."

"I didn't notice," Laura said. She looked out at the city again. "Anyway, this isn't exactly all the world. It's only Yorkchester."

"It's all we've got. Hell, it's more than we've got. If the devil offered it to me right now—" He left the sentence unfinished.

"Michael," Laura said suddenly.

"Uh-huh?"

She began to tell him about the statue of the boy she had seen in the morning. She told it carefully, putting in every detail she could remember, including the statue's book and the things the man had said as he stood there. When she came to the parts where she had threatened the boy and told him that nobody would come to see him, she faltered a little and looked away from Michael, but she told him everything that she remembered. He listened quietly, never smiling or interrupting her.

"I don't know why I did it," she finished. "Every time I think about it I get more and more ashamed of myself. I never did that sort of thing while I was alive, Michael, no matter what I felt. Why should I do it now? What did I think I was gaining from it?"

Michael shrugged. "I don't know, Laura. I don't know you well enough. Maybe you just got tired of being sweet and shy. This happens. It's a bastardly role to play. It doesn't matter. You didn't hurt him."

Deliberately and openly he changed the subject by pointing a third time toward Yorkchester. "Do you like it? Are you glad I brought you here?"

"Yes," Laura said quickly, glad for the opportunity to stop talking about the boy. "I love sitting and looking at it. I could sit here all day."

"I have. You should see it at night. Like a birthday cake."

"I love the sounds. Probably because the cemetery's so quiet. I find myself going in search of noises."

"Tell me some," Michael said. "What do you hear?"

"People talking," Laura began, "and traffic, and airplanes overhead—" She stopped and turned to him. "Why do you ask me? Can't you hear them yourself?"

Michael shook his head. "Not a sound. Never, since I died."

"I don't understand," Laura said slowly. "You can hear me, can't you?"

"Loud and clear. I hear whoever I'm talking to, and I hear whatever sounds you can hear in a cemetery. But I can't hear a thing from that damn city."

He smiled wryly at her puzzlement. "All the sounds we hear are sounds we remember. We know how talk and trains and running water should sound, and if we're a little off in remembering, a little sharp or flat, nobody notices. But I just don't remember how Yorkchester sounded, all in all. I didn't pay very much attention, I think."

"I'm sorry—" Laura said awkwardly.

"Never mind being sorry. You and I waste entirely too much effort apologizing to each other. Just tell me some of the sounds you hear. I'll listen."

Laura hesitated. "I don't really know where to begin. There's a pile driver working over by that new building."

"What does it sound like?" When she did not speak, he added, "It's all right. Tell me what it sounds like to you."

"Like a heartbeat," Laura said. "Very heavy and regular. A slow, slamming heartbeat."

"Uh-huh. What about subway trains? Can you tell me about those?"

"Not right now," Laura said. "I'll tell you as soon as one comes. I can tell you about buses in the meantime."

"All right," Michael said. "Fine. Tell me how buses sound."

So Laura told him about buses, and they sat on the wall all that summer day, listening to the city and the trains.