CHAPTER VI

1

Life was very satisfactory to David Solner. To begin with, he spent a great deal of time away from the shop, delivering bundles of basted coat lining ... a pleasant occupation since it gave him liberty to roam around and observe things. Then he had been specially fortunate some time ago in witnessing the scene on the street, when the police disbanded the gathering around the man who was peddling knives. And lastly he had made the acquaintance of Leopold Crayle, who had been greatly impressed with what he said, had taken his card, and came very often to visit him. Recalling this, David stepped along briskly and smiled to himself, hardly aware of all the complicated machinery of his walking. He felt on playful terms with his leg, and gave it an extra shake while he was crossing the street. But this caused him to loose his balance, and he careened towards a team of horses that was rounding the curb. In terror he glanced at the huge heads tossing above him, he heard an outcry of hoofs and the voices of people shouting. Then he felt himself thrown to the paving, where he lay and waited. But finding that nothing happened, he righted himself with great dignity and sat down at the curb. Slowly he looked around. A crowd had gathered, the driver standing in the foreground, his hands on his hips; and while the driver contemplated him in satirical silence, a street cleaner came, brushed his paste of manure and water under David's legs, walked around him and continued on his way.

All this was very humiliating. The expert on authority looked as though he might burst into tears. He lifted his hands before him, the fingers spread wide, and with an elaborate jerk dropped his head into his outstretched hands. Behind his fingers his eyelids quivered like tiny wings caught behind a screen. At last he parted his fingers a little and looked out. Everyone had gone.

And now it occurred to him that he was late, and that Anna would scold him, and he wished he were alone in a place where he could weep. He wished that Mirelie would see him at this moment, and pity him ... perhaps be kind enough to talk to him. Then they would be friends, and nothing else would matter any more. Yes, if only Mirelie were not afraid of him, if they could only speak to each other, then his whole life would change and he would be happy. And he arose sadly and continued on his way, thinking of her. And now he lifted his arm and held it bent at the elbow, with the hand drooping piteously; and at every step he contorted his face into a grimace of distaste. So Mirelie might see him when he came in, and comfort him at last...

But when he entered the shop it was so dark that he could hardly tell which of the figures sitting and sewing there was Mirelie. He could not see the needles or thread, and the women who were sewing and Anna and Mirelie moved their hands in the air like witches performing a silent spell together. When his footsteps sounded in the doorway, Anna turned her head without looking up; and while he waited for her to speak, David made out the figure of Mirelie. She had put her sewing aside and now looked mournfully toward the window, and by the sad droop of her head and the listless way she held her hands in her lap, David knew that she had been crying. Then the spell had not been a silent one, but done to the rhythm of Anna's scolding ... her voice always balanced on one key, yet with an overtone of hysteria, as if at any moment it might veer away and run amuck over the scale.

"Late, my sweetheart," Anna began. "Two hours late. You take a cripple for an errand boy and that's your reward. A pile of coats waiting to be pressed, and it takes him two hours to run around the corner. Well, turn on the gas..."

David almost skipped across the room, and lit the gas, and set to work as quickly as he could. And now, as he stood on the machine, balancing himself with one foot on the trestle, he could look his fill at Mirelie and notice everything she did. Mirelie was a very thin little girl, with large breasts that swung under her dress every time she moved, and a braid of heavy black hair hanging down her back. Her head always seemed to droop a little, as if she was pulling forward against the weight of her braid; and when she walked on the street she held her thin arms folded in front of her, to hide the swinging of her breasts. Sometimes when he saw her sewing at the table David thought she was a grown woman ... her expression was so serious, her body looked so mature. But there would be a sound on the street ... a hand-organ playing or the whistle of the fire engine, or only the wind ... and she would drop her work and run to the window. And by the way she stood there ... her knees straight and stiff and her hands locked behind her back ... David knew she was still a child. Even now, though he could not hear anything himself, something seemed to startle Mirelie, and she ran to the window listening. "It is good," David said to himself. "She has dreams, even while she is awake."

But Anna had been silent too long. "Look," she said scornfully to the other women, "how fast she runs. A little piece of offal, I tell you, but it has legs."

"Leave off ... leave off, Anna," they whispered to her.

"Now to the window, now to the door, now to that corner, perhaps ... never to the same place twice." She lifted her voice mockingly. "Tell me, Mirelie, is he coming, your sweetheart?"

"Leave off, Anna. There are always things for a child to see."

"Then you don't believe that she has a sweetheart? Listen..." She paused and looked around impressively. "Some day our Mirelie will get married."

At this they all laughed, and Anna nodded her head triumphantly. "What makes her run to the window that way? What does she think about, all the time that she sits there sewing without saying a word? Oh, she's a sly one, keeping him all to herself. But some day she'll fool us all, and come marching in with a husband on her arm. Yes, there's a mate for everyone in this world, even for Mirelie."

The others worked away silently, but Anna was not through yet. She folded her sewing and drew the rocking chair closer to the table, and settled herself comfortably.

"I'll tell you how it is," she began, as if it were going to be a very long story. "All her strength goes into her hair. Hair grows best on deformed things ... I've always noticed that. In the woods near our town there used to be a dead tree. The lightning struck it once and sliced right into the trunk, and it never blossomed after that. But this very tree, mind you, had fine green hair growing out of the trunk year after year ... so long that you could braid it. And everything else in that forest died after a while, except the hair growing out of the tree."

"Really, Anna ... But the hair must have died too."

"No, but it didn't," Anna retorted. "And I remember that there was a dwarf in our town, and he had long hair hanging down his back, just like a girl's. Yes, it's quite true," she added thoughtfully, "hair grows best on deformed things."

Meanwhile Mirelie slipped back to her place, and sat looking at Anna with eyes that seemed hypnotized. She pretended that all the witches from the fairy-tales were sitting around her and sewing, and weaving a spell upon her, and the steady flow of Anna's words was the terrible incantation. She looked furtively at Anna's hands, and saw the balls of her fingers like large full-fleshed petals, and it terrified her that they were so large. It terrified her when Anna laughed, throwing her head far back and letting it fall forward again, as if it was too heavy with laughter. But while she watched this Mirelie pricked her finger, and Anna noticed her sucking her thumb.

"Handy one," she said. "Come here and let me squeeze it for you." Timidly Mirelie extended her hand, and Anna examined it curiously. "No blood ... not enough blood there to flow when she pricks her thumb. Well, never mind the sewing, Mirelie, since you're so good at it. See whether you can sweep."

But as Mirelie took the broom from the corner and began to sweep, tears came to her eyes. Her broom turned up fine white threads that clung to the cracks in the floor, and would not come out unless she stooped down and plucked them with her fingers. It was as if an invisible basting of the floor was being ripped, and she said to herself: "The floor was only basted together and now it will come apart. Let it." And she bent lower to hide her tears.

* * * * * * *

After a while the two women put their sewing away and went home, and Anna and David and Mirelie had supper. Then David and Mirelie went back to the shop and were alone there, yet they did not speak to each other. It was as if they had started to play a game ... a silent game, in which there was some penalty if they were caught looking at each other. But though this was the rule of the game, Mirelie could tell each minute exactly what David was doing. With sly glances she followed him about the room, watched him when he lit the gas ... turning the jet cautiously at first, so that the flame showed thin and tight as a bud; then with a quick twist of his hand flaring it up into a leaf, and looking at her triumphantly. All evening David was busy pressing things, and she watched him dancing up and down on the machine, and listened to the sound of the boards hissing against each other. If they stayed together for a long time she could hear all sorts of melodies coming from them, and the pressing machine seemed like a queer hurdy gurdy that could play by shutting its lips tightly. But if David noticed her she would look away quickly, and amuse herself by trying to guess what sort of a person it would be to buy each suit hanging in the window. There was one suit especially ... blue with faint gray stripes ... that made her think of David. She could even imagine it was David hanging in the window, with his arms drooping limply at his sides, and the short curve of hanger for his head; and often when she was alone in the shop, she wanted to turn down the cuff of the right trouser, and shake it in the air like David's long leg. But after a while David would look away, and Mirelie could watch him again as he worked and bent his head forward into the light. Then she would notice the long coarse hairs standing out from his eyebrows like the stringy roots of something growing inside his head, and she would try to count them. Most of the time David did not seem to notice her, and went about his work like a blind person who has no need to stop and look around. But there always came one time in the course of the evening ... and always after he had leaped on the machine and was standing there, lightly bouncing his body up and down ... when he would turn and survey the shop with an air of great surprise. And that was the moment when he looked fully at Mirelie and their eyes met, and all their careful playing of the game was spoiled. Seeing her, David would purse his lips and frown. But that only frightened Mirelie. At that moment she was afraid that the machine would suddenly begin to move, and he would ride toward her.

Tonight, however, David seemed especially preoccupied. He kept glancing at the clock or going to the door and looking up and down the crowded street. When at last there was a knock at the door he bounded off the machine. Poldy came in and stood uncertainly in the center of the room.

"I'll be ready for you in a minute," David said gaily, raising his forefinger to Poldy. He leaped up on the machine again and nodded brightly to his visitor. "Sit down on the couch."

Poldy sat down without a word, and after a moment's thought, stretched himself full length and closed his eyes, conscious for the moment before he closed them of Mirelie's solemn scrutiny. Mirelie, noting with pleasure his dark hair and white face, wondered whether this was the lover that Anna had foretold for her. Often she speculated on what it was to be married, and when Anna accused her of thinking of a sweetheart her heart thumped as if they had caught her stealing. Now she sat stealthily watching the stranger; but as soon as David was through with his work she was frightened of his speaking to her, and she rose and slipped out of the room. David went over to Poldy and tapped him on the shoulder, but Poldy did not stir. "Asleep..." David commented, as he bent closer to look into his face. He stood for a while frowning. "Oh, very well, then..." he said, and shrugged his shoulders. He went to the door that separated the shop from Mirelie's room and shut it softly, very softly. And as soon as he had done this anger seized him. All day it had been waiting, and the soft shutting of the door was the cue for it.

2

It burst from the swollen veins of his throat and flooded through his body, and beat against the flesh of his palms. It set his body trembling so that he stood with hands clenched against it, with fingers clenched and defiant, trying to drive back the tide of his rage. Meanwhile they ranged themselves about him ... the beings who seek out mortals to strike bargains with them, wherever there is a ransom to give: disease or deformity or genius ... shadows that he could hardly see in the dark, with the naked bodies of gigantic men; save where a focus of more ancient flesh, still virulent, gave off a wing or a curved fin, or webbed their long toes together. They came and alighted with the rustling motion of birds, and folded their limbs under them, and perched in a semi-circle on the floor ... watching him. And now he thought it must come ... that mysterious accession of strength that he brooded over day and night. Now he felt it was coming upon him, while the potent flow of anger was still in his body ... a wild chaotic strength, to lift terrible weights and hurl them great distances, so that everyone would look with astonishment, and thousands of people would marvel at him and utter his name with fear. "Is it too much?" he whispered scornfully, "is it too much?" But they only shifted their limbs with a noiseless motion, and the tide of his rage recoiled on itself, and flowed back into its secret channels again. He stood there exhausted, peering bewilderedly into the darkness.

After a while an idea came to him. He nodded to himself. "Yes," he said, "I have been too hasty. I have asked for it too openly, and besides I have asked for the impossible. Perhaps they do not know what I mean. Perhaps I can trick them into something else. I will be very reasonable in my demands, and I will appear innocent and take them off their guard."

So he turned on the light and took his ocarina from the box, and sat down on the bed, his feet curled easily round each other ... He began to play ... sad, wayward trills that slipped impulsively from one note to another; and while he played he watched them craftily to see what they did, noticing how they were moved by his music, how they shifted imperceptibly into postures of sadness. To himself, then, he said: "To play so that everyone will listen and be unable to go away ... to play so that they will laugh or weep as I wish; or perhaps..." he added in a conciliatory tone, "let only Mirelie hear, and look at me solemnly. Yes, we will let it go at that ... that only Mirelie should hear." But though he looked towards the door for a long time, though he looked and played, Mirelie did not come in. He ended his playing and remained sitting on the bed, resting his head in his hands.

But now the tallest of the figures perching on the floor ... the one who held the center of the circle and was their spokesman ... sighed lengthily. He had been sitting with his knees drawn up and his head sleeping on his folded arms; but now he raised his head a little so that one bright eye was visible, looking solemnly at David. Brightly it glowed for a long time, yet he did not speak.

"Well?" David asked impatiently.

The eye continued to regard him.

"If you've nothing to say," David began petulantly, "then why are you here? You have no bargains to strike today, I see. No, I wouldn't call you a generous lot. Tell me, must I think of something so small that you will shame yourselves and give it to me? Shall I ask that my nails be rosy or my teeth even at the edges? Such things, I've heard, comfort some people. But thank you. I'm not so easily satisfied."

"Why aren't you?" the spokesman asked lazily, and his eye quivered as if he wanted to go back to sleep.

"A fine question that! Why do you pretend that you don't know?"

The spokesman closed his eye and David thought he had gone off into deep slumber. But at length he remarked drowsily, "The trouble is, David, you're too excited about being a cripple."

David bolted up in bed and shot a reproachful glance at him. The spokesman opened his eye and looked back. "Yes, much too excited," he added. "Look at _him_..." he pointed to Poldy. "_He_ doesn't want anything any more. He's ended ... positively ended. But you've been too excited all your life."

"Pretending again!" David retorted. "My friend, you ought to be quite a success at shopping. Yes, I've seen how the women sneer at the wares they want to buy, while their fingers itch to be holding them. Why are you here, then, if it's so little to have found me? I suppose others have better ransoms to give. Why not go to them?"

"It's not such a wonderful ransom..."

"Oh, no ... to be the puppet of my legs, to hop along like a child's grotesque toy. They saw it in the window with the other toys, and brought it home because it would make them all laugh. To carry myself down the street turning every face as I pass, leaving a smoke of faces behind me like a peace offering to my deformity. Could I only have had one moment of my life when I could forget that I was different..."

The spokesman's eye opened wider as he listened. "As for your being different," he began at once, "from the very beginning there have been so many weird shapes on this earth that we cannot justly talk of anything being different. Consider the deformity of all men who go about like the trained horses at the circus reared up so as to make a spectacle of the secret parts of their bodies, and who, because of this vainglorious exhibition, have to twist themselves around every time to look at their dung. Now to pursue the subject further ... have you ever been to the circus?"

"Yes, of course..."

"You may have seen there a dog with two tongues, let us say, or a wolf with a curved horn ... some such trifling thing for people to gape at. Well, all that fuss is really quite ridiculous. All that oh-ing and ah-ing with which they tickle themselves from cage to cage. _They_, of course, cook things up in pots and let them pour to the mould of their dishes, and so they know what to expect. But things were never cooked up in pots to begin with. There's a constant spilling over all the time. Your leg trickled down a little too long. Why be so excited over it?"

"Ah ... that's all very clever. But answer this one: why did it happen to me?"

"What makes you think it happened to you?"

"Oh, come, now..."

"No, don't be impatient. Because if that's what has been bothering you, I think we can arrange it."

"Arrange it?"

"Yes," the spokesman winked solemnly. "If you'll be agreeable, of course, and help me along."

"Very well, go on." David lay down and turned his face to the wall.

"Yes, you sit in the theatre and you think the actor on the stage is looking at you. It's a natural thing now, isn't it..."

"Go on, go on..."

"Now let us assume that it happened to you."

"Nonsense! That's no assumption."

"Well, let us assume that it was _meant_ to happen to you. Is that better?"

"Go on..."

"In that case there had to be somebody to mean it ... to correspond to the actor, let us say."

"Yes..."

"Someone who knew he was looking at you..."

"Yes..."

"And so this glance that the actor gave you is the reason why you are crippled. But if there's a reason for that, then there must also be a reason for the fact, say..."

"That Mirelie has black hair."

"Precisely ... and that Anna has a mole on her face."

"And that Mirelie is thin..."

"Precisely. And that a child was run over the other day."

"In short, a reason for everything."

"Excellent! Excellent! You see it's a game you can never stop. Each thing has a reason, as many reasons as there are separate details which we can comprehend in this world, and yet reasons again for all the infinite happenings that we cannot know about. Ah, but notice. You've cooked, haven't you? You've said: here I shall salt and here and here, until it is all salted. And then the strange thing occurs. You taste it, and nothing is flavored because you have salted everything. Salted, but not salty. And so with your reasons. If everything has a reason..."

David turned around angrily. "Salted but not salty..." he mimicked. "Keep your analogies. Was it my fault that the actor looked at me?"

"Or his fault that you sat where he looked?"

"Clever ... very clever. But I'll tell you my friend. You have never played some of the children's games, and that's the trouble with you. You've never looked at the pattern of the wallpaper, saying to yourself: I can look at it this way, and see spades with hearts between; or this way, and see only the hearts in a row. Yes, if you had ever looked at the pattern of wall-paper both ways, you would know what an old trick it is."

"Very well, then," the spokesman said mildly. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to arrange it."

"Besides, since you talk of cooking so much, I'll take the same liberty. Things must be salted and sugared. And some reasons are salt and some are sweet ... we can tell by the flavor of things. So that all your fine arguments only bring us to restate the question. Why was I, so to speak, made salty?"

The spokesman stared at him ... a little stupidly, David thought.

"Salty?" he repeated.

David laughed bitterly. "Ah ... I see all this talk of cooking won't do. Things were never cooked up in pots to begin with. We'll try again. If there is a person who corresponds to the actor, and if he does look at us while he's acting ... what does he want? It's his old lust for sacrifice, and because he does not know whom to choose, he looks and strikes someone with a sign of difference, and then thinks he has something."

At this the spokesman looked up brightly and began to talk with garbling rapidity. "Ah, sacrifice, to be sure. The bleeding heart torn from the living offering by the forthright fingers of the priest. Fire, or the spike, or the cross, as a background for the gesture of agony. A somewhat morbid emphasis on vivisection, I should say, yet in its way a rather pretty pantomime of the real state of affairs. Well, it's very natural for you to feel that way about it, especially since you have the qualification of suffering; and, as I said, it's the right idea though very crudely expressed."

"Then you admit..."

The spokesman shook his head reproachfully. "Patience," he urged, "we must think this out carefully. Now as I mentioned before, these sacrificial offerings were a rather apt pantomime of the real state of affairs. For the whole idea behind a sacrifice is to maintain a balance. Savages, who practiced it, were still alert enough to feel the precarious equilibrium of the universe, they glimpsed the profound truth that everything is in a state of balance that constantly strains towards disruption. And so they made their infinitesimal contribution to preserving that balance ... a rather superfluous attempt, like blowing over the scales."

David raised himself on his elbow and looked at the spokesman. "What makes you think that all things are in balance?"

"Please," the spokesman began peevishly, "don't behave that way. We have to start with something, don't we? I chose that point of beginning because I thought it would be the least offensive."

"Very well, continue." David lay down again. But the next moment he raised his head and asked: "But why was the attempt superfluous?"

"That's just the point." The spokesman's eye quivered his approval. "Because, when the tension of things was first established, it was not left to the accidental activities of human beings to maintain it. All the time, subtly and imperceptibly, there is an adjustment going on that keeps things in balance. As it applies to the human world, we might state it crudely by saying that human beings pay for each other. Invisible currency passes between them which settles all their debts to each other, voids all their accounts. Savages had some inkling of this, when, realizing that they were the debtors of their living sacrifice, they squared their accounts by calling him a god. A little private bribe, you understand, to put him in good humor. And a great game, really ... this keeping things balanced, and ideally suited as a pastime for eternity; because you can't ever find two things that are equal, and so your left hand and your right hand are both kept busy, forever working the scales with alternate motions. And you can't take a rest for a minute, either..."

"I can just picture it," David said admiringly. "However, instance ... instance..."

"We shall come to that. Now let us say that the souls of people are tiny and intricate stones, with points and facets and hollows ... each stone marvelously small, yet convoluted a thousand different ways. And let us say that each stone contains within itself a unique magnetism, to attract that single other stone with which it can articulate. And so all the souls of the world are held together in a chain, no thread going through the chain and yet it can never fall apart. Love is not necessary. It is only the name for a hysterical fear that the souls may fall apart, the fear of those who do not understand the intimate embrace of these tiny stones, who do not know that their intercourse is more profound than the intercourse of love..."

"Well, continue," David interrupted peevishly. "These fancies put me to sleep. You're an ingenious one."

"Now these stones work on each other with a subtle attrition, and though their surfaces may change, they cannot unlock themselves, because they always change _into_ each other. And sometimes one can feel this silent imperceptible rotation of the stones. Slowly it works, as if they were turning in a profound dream."

"Instance..." David repeated, sighing wearily.

"Oh, very well then. Now what happened here a few days ago?"

"A child was run over."

"You remember it?"

"I saw it. The mother ran to the curb and screamed at the fellow who was driving the truck, and shook her fist at him. He only curled his head around and looked back curiously, but he didn't stop."

"No, he didn't..."

"She almost stepped on the little girl. Her skirt fell over the child's face, and her foot even touched the flesh of it, but she didn't seem to notice. Then she kept turning around, upbraiding all those who were watching her, because they hadn't stopped the driver. She spun herself round with her arms stretched out under her shawl, and her fingers tearing at the fringes, pleading with them to tell her why no one had stopped him. She only wanted the reason, she said ... that would satisfy her. Then she cursed them because no one had thrown himself in front of the truck to _make_ it stop, and next she asked for the number of the truck, but nobody knew it. They just stood there and looked at her stupidly. And next she caught sight of a little boy who had been playing with her child when it happened..." David broke off and laughed heartily. "You remember those circle games we used to play in kindergarten..." he said. "Somebody stands in the center of the circle and we all sing: 'Come and choose your partner.' For all the world it was just like one of those games." He was silent, chuckling to himself. "Well, suddenly she ran over to this little boy," he resumed briskly, "and stood before him begging him to tell her the number of the truck. The poor little fellow just looked around sheepishly..."

"And the child?"

"Somebody carried it into the house. The mother never seemed to care, though she stopped for a moment and watched the fellow as he picked the little girl up, and fixed her dress and put his hand gently to the back of her head, just as if she were asleep. After a while they brought out a chair and the mother sat down and acted very petulant. If anyone came over to her she shook her shoulders like a peevish young girl. And then--"

"I see that you're a very careful observer," the spokesman interrupted politely. "And can you tell me what's happening on the street now?"

"Why, she's been on the street almost constantly now for the last four days."

"Four days, you say! I must see her."

"No, don't trouble yourself. I can tell you all about it. She's a very important personage now. They say people come from blocks around just to see her."

"Sits and mourns for her child, I suppose..."

"Oh, no, she's forgotten the child entirely. In fact she's quite happy ... looks rosy and bright-eyed. I never thought she could look so pretty. You see, after the child's funeral she went directly to a sign painter, and she had him paint her two large signs. Something to this effect: I shall give a reward to any person who can tell me the license number of the truck that ran over and killed my eight-year-old girl on the morning of ... I forget the date. But she has the date and the place there and the exact time, so that there can't be any mistake. They say that the sign painter composed it for her, and he did a very nice job ... different sized letters, and some letters in red and others in green. The sign is white, I think. And she has these signs attached to her ... one in front and one in back. And all day she parades around near the place where it happened..."

"Mm ... quite a curiosity. It's a liberal reward, I suppose?"

"No, she's poor. Not a thing to give. It's just a figure of speech, this talk of a reward."

"Now that's very interesting ... very." The spokesman nodded judicially. "Her whole case, in fact, hinges on that point. Everything would be different if there _was_ a reward. You see that, I suppose."

"Explain."

"Because," the spokesman said thoughtfully, "if she really wanted to know that license number, there would be a real reward. Which proves, then, that she doesn't want to know it. Looks well, you say?"

"Rises early, fixes herself carefully and dresses in her signs as if she was an actress preparing for her entrance." David paused, suddenly tired of his narrative and feeling very drowsy. He was almost asleep when the spokesman's voice roused him, saying lazily, "Well, now, doesn't that prove it?"

"Prove what..." David asked sleepily. "I've forgotten."

The spokesman's eye narrowed slyly. "That people pay for each other," he said.

"Explain ... explain."

"Now wasn't," the spokesman began in a lazy voice, "wasn't the life of this eight-year-old girl the price that had to be paid first, before the mother could parade herself between her two signs? And didn't the child's death have to come about in just this way? And wasn't it necessary for the driver not to stop? For if he had stopped, then the mother could not have put on her masquerade of signs, and the child would have died for nothing. Now some would say the driver was the villain in the case, but I don't think so, I don't think so at all. Though of course," he added thoughtfully, "it is a rather heavy price for such a trifle. I shouldn't want to argue the point. Though who knows? In the balancing of all things it may not be exorbitant, neither may the mother's parade be such a trifle as it seems."

There was a long silence, but after a while David sat up and looked searchingly at the spokesman.

"It's a lie," he said.

"What is?"

"It's a lie," he repeated angrily, "that people pay for each other. And it's clever, very clever, my friend, since you cannot understand words, but only numbers, to set yourself up in bookkeeping. If you knew the meaning of words, if only one word could be made clear to you, then you would laugh at your pretentious bookkeeping, you would laugh at everything you've said tonight. A number must be balanced all the time by another number. But a word does not need to be balanced. Let us say it was the mother's grief."

"Now don't excite yourself. Let's remain friends. For all I know," the spokesman added blandly, "it may be a lie. But what makes you think so?" His eyebrow moved toward the center of his forehead, to meet the invisible puckering of the other eye, an effect so comical that David had to laugh.

"Well, have you read the fairy tales?" he asked more kindly.

"Which fairy tales? Please be specific."

"All of them ... any one of them ... they're all true, any way. But I was referring to the one where the prince is supposed to go forth on dangerous adventures. But while he keeps in his hand a small round mirror and gazes at his reflection in it, nothing can harm him, neither can he see all the horrors through which he must pass."

"A very magic mirror."

"No, there you're mistaken. For the mirror is an ordinary piece of looking-glass, a broken piece that the goose-girl in his father's palace begged him to take. But still, while he looks into it he does not see the terrors that surround him."

"A charming story," the spokesman yawned. "How does it apply?"

"Why, the mother," David said slowly, "has found a mirror. And while she looks into it, she will not know that her child is dead. It was often a plant that had to be tended..."

"Really?" The spokesman yawned again and closed his eye. "Well, I wanted to arrange it," he said drowsily. "I heard you saying one time, 'They owe me something."

"Ah ... that afternoon ... to him. To that fool who sleeps, and who is, as you say, ended. Wasn't that the word?"

"Precisely..."

"Tell me, did he believe it?"

"Believe what?"

"You know what I mean," David said impatiently. "About my being an expert on authority."

The spokesman opened his eye that quivered with sleepiness. "Do _you_ believe it?"

David was silent, intently regarding him.

"It's confusing now, isn't it..."

David did not answer.

"You pretend to enjoy it, but you don't. And that means you don't believe it. Isn't that so? Isn't it true," the spokesman coaxed, "that if you don't enjoy a thing, then you really don't believe it?"

Still David was silent. At last he spoke softly. "So you too thought of that."

"Oh, yes," the spokesman said cheerfully, "I think of everything. But is it true?" he asked, and looked at David, his eye glistening with eagerness ... "that you need the whole human race for a payment? Now suppose they offered _you_ a sacrifice..."

"Well, what? What would they give me?" David asked sharply.

"You said," the spokesman continued smoothly, "that he strikes someone with a sign of difference, and in that way he chooses a sacrifice. Now suppose _you_ were to try it."

Again there was a long silence, the spokesman's eye closing slowly, so that David wondered whether he had fallen asleep. At last David broke the silence, but his voice sounded far away, as if he too were asleep.

"Yes ... suppose it is Mirelie," he said softly. "Whom you must strike with the sign of difference."

"But Mirelie..." David said, and his voice was troubled. "She is not like others."

"Why not?"

"She is not like others," David repeated, a note of pleading in his voice.

"Do you think she is too bright for you, then? Do you think she is too proud and too free? Yet in every person in the world there is the secret power for shame. There is no one so wilful or proud or free that he has lost it. And in nature there is death. Death was provided, in order that all things might be shamed. In nature there is no bird or insect or flower so bright that it cannot die. Besides," he added craftily, "she belongs to you."

He waited for David to speak, and when there was no answer he continued, his voice low and thoughtful. "She belongs to you. It is you who have the expert knowledge of degradation ... you who have sounded the depths of it and searched through all its intricate disguises. Each person walks before you with his entrails exposed ... a crowded, convoluted circle, like dainties in a box that one sees through a little circle of transparent paper. I tell you that _because_ Mirelie is so bright and free, she can be more humiliated ... she is capable of greater degradation. And then consider," the spokesman finished with a little laugh, "she looked a long time at your friend there. He's attractive."

David only stared at the floor and said nothing.

"Lastly," the spokesman's voice was now so drowsy that David could hardly hear it, "as we said before, people pay for each other. It will balance ... it will balance," the voice sang softly. "She will even love her shame." And as he went off to sleep he mused to himself. "For it must be that the body loves everything that happens to it ... it must be that..."

David thought the spokesman was growing somewhat repetitious, and he was glad when the voice stopped. He rose then and turned off the light. "So you do strike bargains," he observed to the spokesman's sleeping figure. In the dark he went to Mirelie's door and opened it softly.

3

Mirelie lay in bed with her eyes wide open. She saw the bureau where her ribbons hung, and the chair with her clothes folded away, and the white posts of her bed; and she was terrified at the thought that she was seeing these things in the dark, instead of being asleep. Besides, there was a shadow swaying on the floor, that made her heart stop beating whenever she looked at it. "Because," she said to herself, "it might be David standing there."

"Anna," she called, when she could stand it no longer, "I'm not asleep."

"Well, then, turn over on the other side."

Mirelie turned as quietly as she could and waited.

"Anna," she called again in a terrified whisper. "Why can't I sleep?"

Anna's voice sounded angrily from the next room. "Sleep, Mirelie," she said. "Your lover won't come tonight."

After that Mirelie did not dare to speak again, and she lay in bed thinking of the day when she would be married ... wondering why Anna always laughed when she spoke of it. It was true, of course. Some day she _would_ get married, everyone did. Even Anna had once been married. She wore a wide gold ring on her left hand, and whenever she was angry she made a rapping sound with it on the table. There was also the picture of a little man with whiskers in her bedroom....

But in the midst of these thoughts Mirelie heard the sound of music coming from the shop. "That's David playing the ocarina," she said to herself, and she wanted to tell someone about it. She thought it would be a great pleasure just to say aloud that David was playing; and at last, though she was afraid that Anna would scold her, she remarked softly, "That's David playing..." But Anna did not answer.

How mournful it sounded and far away. Things must be very sad for David to make him play that way, and she wished she were not afraid of him, but could go to him and comfort him. But now the music stopped and she heard David walking across the room to put the ocarina away. Only it wasn't really hearing his footsteps. No, she felt each step in her heart, as though her heart had changed its rhythm and kept time with the swaying of David's body ... the same thing that happens when you're walking down the street, and a friend catches up with you, walking faster. Then your feet are confused for a moment, but in the end they go faster too, step for step with your friend. So it was every time Mirelie saw David walking toward her ... her heart had been marching its own way, but after its moment of confusion it kept time with the swaying of David's body.

And now Mirelie wondered whether anyone could tell that this happened. If David knew, what would he think of her? And if Anna knew, she would say that David was her sweetheart. Yes, if she could look into Mirelie's heart and see how it changed step whenever David came near her, she would surely say, "So it is David." Yet why should David be her sweetheart, just because her heart changed step that way? And as Mirelie brooded over this, she understood that David was her sweetheart because she was ashamed of that feeling; and because she could make it come whenever she pleased, even when David was far away; and because it went through her whole body and out at her finger-tips. Thinking of it now in bed, Mirelie felt her cheeks grow red, and she wished she could run away and never see David again.

Then Mirelie dozed off and had a dream of a boy and a girl she had seen that day, jumping rope in front of the shop. They looked at each other all the time as their bodies went up and down in the circling frame of the rope ... and near them was an old man who was stroking his cheeks with one hand, as if he was trying to brush away invisible webs that kept gathering around him. Though she watched him for a long time, never once did he stop stroking his cheeks. "He can't stop it, I suppose," she said to herself, and that made her afraid of the old man. But after a while Mirelie was aware that something terrible was about to happen, and the old man also knew it, and stroked his cheeks faster. Mirelie wanted to cry out ... to warn the boy and the girl who were jumping rope together. But her voice would not come and she could only stand there helplessly watching. And at last she knew it had happened, by the way the old man's fingers stretched themselves ... longer and longer, as long as rulers, and laid themselves daintily and stiffly to his cheek; by the way he smiled at the boy and the girl, and turning to Mirelie, said, "They are married." Then she awoke, trembling and fearful, and saw that the door to the shop was open, and David was standing there. "Mirelie," he called softly, "Mirelie..."

But in that moment she was no longer afraid, neither afraid of David nor of the old man in her dream. She heard David laughing with a strange intense gaiety as he came to her. She lifted her arms to him and felt his face close to hers, and his eyelashes fluttering against her cheek.