Bradbury Stories 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales Part 121

He listened. There was the calling again. Like the last cricket of the year, like the last rustle of the last oak leaf of the season. At the front door, at the back, at the bay windows. Oh, there would be a million slow footprints in the meadow lawn tomorrow when the sun rose.

Was she listening?

"Ann, Ann, oh, Ann!" was that what he called? "Ann, can you hear me, Ann?"-was that what you called when you came back very late in the day?

And then, suddenly, Mr. Widmer stood up.

Suppose she didn't hear him? How could he be sure that she was still able to hear? Seventy years make for spider webs in the ears, gray waddings of time which dull everything for some people until they live in a universe of cotton and wool and silence. n.o.body had spoken to her in thirty years save to open their mouths to say h.e.l.lo. What if she were deaf, lying there in her cold bed now like a little girl playing out a long and lonely game, never even aware that someone was tapping on the rattling windows, someone was calling through her flake-painted door, someone was walking on the soft gra.s.s round her locked house? Perhaps not pride but a physical inability prevented her from answering!

In the living room, Mr. Widmer quietly took the 'phone off the hook, watching the bedroom door to be certain he hadn't wakened his wife. To the operator he said, "Helen? Give me 729."

"That you, Mr. Widmer? Funny time of night to call her."

"Never mind."

"All right, but she won't answer, never has. Don't recall she ever has used her 'phone in all the years after she had it put in."

The 'phone rang. It rang six times, and nothing happened.

"Keep trying, Helen."

The 'phone rang twelve times more. His face was streaming perspiration. Someone picked up the 'phone at the other end.

"Miss Bidwell!" cried Mr. Widmer, almost collapsing in relief. "Miss Bid-well?" he lowered his voice. "This is Mr. Widmer, the grocer, calling."

No answer. She was on the other end, in her house, standing in the dark. Through his window he could see that her house was still unlit. She hadn't switched on any lights to find the 'phone.

"Miss Bidwell, do you hear me?" he asked.

Silence.

"Miss Bidwell, I want you to do me a favor," he said.

Click.

"I want you to open your front door and look out," he said.

"She's hung up," said Helen. "Want me to call her again?"

"No thanks." He put the receiver back on the hook.

There was the house, in the morning sun, in the afternoon sun, and in the twilight-silent. Here was the grocery, with Mr. Widmer in it, thinking: she's a fool. No matter what, she's a fool. It's never too late. No matter how old, wrinkled hands are better than none. He's traveled a long way, and, by his look, he's never married but always traveled, as some men do, crazy to change their scenery every week, every month, every year, until they reach an age where they find they are collecting nothing at all but a lot of empty trips and a lot of towns with no more substance to them than movie sets and a lot of people in those towns who are about as real as wax dummies seen in lighted windows late at night as you pa.s.s by on a slow, black train.

He's been living with a world of people who didn't care about him because he never stayed anywhere long enough to make anyone worry whether he would rise in the morning or whether he had turned to dust. And then he got to thinking about her and decided that she was the one real person he'd ever known. And just a little too late, he took a train and got off and walked up here, and there he is on her lawn, feeling like a fool, and one more night of this and he won't come back at all.

This was the third night. Mr. Widmer thought of going over, of setting fire to the porch of Miss Bidwell's house, and of causing the firemen to roar up. That would bring her out, right into the old man's arms, by Jupiter!

But wait! Ah, but wait.

Mr. Widmer's eyes went to the ceiling. Up there, in the attic-wasn't there a weapon there to be used against pride and time? In all that dust, wasn't there something with which to strike out? Something as old as all of them-Mr. Widmer, the old man, the old lady? How long since the attic has been cleaned out? Never.

But it was too ridiculous. He wouldn't dare!

And yet, this was the last night. A weapon must be provided.

Ten minutes later, he heard his wife cry out to him, "Tom, Tom! What's that noise! What are you doing in the attic?"

At eleven-thirty, there was the old man. He stood in front of the stepless house as if not knowing what to try next. And then he took a quick step and looked down.

Mr. Widmer, from his upstairs window, whispered, "Yes, yes, go ahead."

The old man bent over.

"Pick it up!" cried Mr. Widmer to himself.

The old man extended his hands.

"Brush it off! I know, I know it's dusty; but it's still fair enough. Brush it off, use it!"

In the moonlight, the old man held a guitar in his hands. It had been lying in the middle of the lawn. There was a period of long waiting while the old man turned it over with his fingers.

"Go on!" said Mr. Widmer, silently.

There was a tentative chord of music.

"Go on!" said Mr. Widmer. "What voices can't do, music can. That's it. Play! You're right, try it!" urged Mr. Widmer.

And he thought: sing under the windows, sing under the apple trees and near the back porch, sing until the guitar notes shake her, sing until she starts to cry. You get a woman to crying, and you're on safe ground. Her pride will all wash away; and the best thing to start the dissolving and crying is music. Sing songs, sing "Genevieve, Sweet Genevieve, the years may come the years may go," and sing "Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland," and sing "We Were Sailing Along on Moonlight Bay," and sing "There's a Long, Long Trail Awinding," and sing all those old summer songs and old-time songs, any song that's old and quiet and lovely; sing soft and light, with a few notes of the guitar; sing and play and perhaps you'll hear the key turn in the lock!

He listened.

As pure as drops of water falling in the night, the guitar played, softly, softly, and it was half an hour before the old man began to sing, and it was so faint that no one could hear; no one except someone behind a wall in that house, in a bed, or standing in the dark behind a shaded window.

Mr. Widmer went to bed, numb, and lay there for an hour, hearing the far-away guitar.

The next morning, Mrs. Terle said, "I seen that prowler."

"Yes?"

"He was there all night. Playing a guitar. Can you imagine? How silly can old people get? Who is he, anyway?"

"I'm sure I don't know," said Mr. Widmer.

"Well, him and his guitar went away down the street at six this morning," said Mrs. Terle.

"Didn't the door open for him?"

"No. Should it?"

"I suppose not. He'll be back tonight."

Tonight will do it, thought Mr. Widmer. Tonight, just one more night. He's not the sort to give up now. Now that he has the guitar, he'll be back, and tonight will do it. Mr. Widmer whistled, moving about the shop.

A van drove up outside, and Mr. Frank Henderson climbed out, a kit of hammers and nails and a saw in his hands. He went round the van and took out a couple of dozen fresh-cut new pieces of raw, good-smelling timber.

"Morning, Frank," called Mr. Widmer. "How's the carpentry business?"

"Picking up this morning," said Frank. He sorted out the good yellow wood and the bright steel nails. "Got a job."

"Where?"

"Miss Bidwell's."

"Yes?" Mr. Widmer felt his heart begin the familiar pounding.

"Yes. She 'phoned an hour ago. Wants me to build a new set of steps on to her front porch. Wants it done today."

Mr. Widmer stood looking at the carpenter's hands, at the hammers and nails, and the good, fresh, clean wood. The sun was rising higher and the day was bright.

"Here," said Mr. Widmer, picking up some of the wood. "Let me help."

They walked together, carrying the fine timber, across the green lawn, under the trees, toward the waiting house and the waiting, stepless porch. And they were smiling.

THE CISTERN.

IT WAS AN AFTERNOON OF RAIN, and lamps lighted against the gray. For a long while the two sisters had been in the dining room. One of them, Juliet, embroidered tablecloths; the younger, Anna, sat quietly on the window seat, staring out at the dark street and the dark sky.

Anna kept her brow pressed against the pane, but her lips moved and after reflecting a long moment, she said, "I never thought of that before."

"Of what?" asked Juliet.

"It just came to me. There's actually a city under a city. A dead city, right here, right under our feet."

Juliet poked her needle in and out the white cloth. "Come away from the window. That rain's done something to you."

"No, really. Didn't you ever think of the cisterns before? They're all through the town, there's one for every street, and you can walk in them without b.u.mping your head, and they go everywhere and finally go down to the sea," said Anna, fascinated with the rain on the asphalt pavement out there and the rain falling from the sky and vanis.h.i.+ng down the gratings at each corner of the distant intersection. "Wouldn't you like to live in a cistern?"

"I would not!"

"But wouldn't it be fun-I mean, very secret? To live in the cistern and peek up at people through the slots and see them and them not see you? Like when you were a child and played hide-and-seek and n.o.body found you, and there you were in their midst all the time, all sheltered and hidden and warm and excited. I'd like that. That's what it must be like to live in the cistern."

Juliet looked slowly up from her work. "You are my sister, aren't you, Anna? You were born, weren't you? Sometimes, the way you talk, I think Mother found you under a tree one day and brought you home and planted you in a pot and grew you to this size and there you are, and you'll never change."

Anna didn't reply, so Juliet went back to her needle. There was no color in the room; neither of the two sisters added any color to it. Anna held her head to the window for five minutes. Then she looked way off into the distance and said, "I guess you'd call it a dream. While I've been here, the last hour, I mean. Thinking. Yes, Juliet, it was a dream."

Now it was Juliet's turn not to answer.

Anna whispered. "All this water put me to sleep a while, I guess, and then I began to think about the rain and where it came from and where it went and how it went down those little slots in the curb, and then I thought about deep under, and suddenly there they were. A man . . . and a woman. Down in that cistern, under the road."

"What would they be doing there?" asked Juliet.

Anna said, "Must they have a reason?"

"No, not if they're insane, no," said Juliet. "In that case no reasons are necessary. There they are in their cistern, and let them stay."

"But they aren't just in the cistern," said Anna, knowingly, her head to one side, her eyes moving under the half-down lids. "No, they're in love, these two."

"For heaven's sake," said Juliet, "did love make them crawl down there?"

"No, they've been there for years and years," said Anna.

"You can't tell me they've been in that cistern for years, living together," protested Juliet.

"Did I say they were alive?" asked Anna, surprised. "Oh, but no. They're dead."

The rain scrambled in wild, pus.h.i.+ng pellets down the window. Drops came and joined with others and made streaks.

"Oh," said Juliet.

"Yes," said Anna, pleasantly. "Dead. He's dead and she's dead." This seemed to satisfy her; it was a nice discovery, and she was proud of it. "He looks like a very lonely man who never traveled in all his life."

"How do you know?"

"He looks like the kind of man who never traveled but wanted to. You know by his eyes."

"You know what he looks like, then?"

"Yes. Very ill and very handsome. You know how it is with a man made handsome by illness? Illness brings out the bones in the face."

"And he's dead?" asked the older sister.

"For five years." Anna talked softly, with her eyelids rising and falling, as if she were about to tell a long story and knew it and wanted to work into it slowly, and then faster and then faster, until the very momentum of the story would carry her on, with her eyes wide and her lips parted. But now it was slowly, with only a slight fever to the telling. "Five years ago this man was walking along a street and he knew he'd been walking the same street on many nights and he'd go on walking it, so he came to a manhole cover, one of those big iron waffles in the center of the street, and he heard the river rus.h.i.+ng under his feet, under the metal cover, rus.h.i.+ng toward the sea." Anna put out her right hand. "And he bent slowly and lifted up the cistern lid and looked down at the rus.h.i.+ng foam and the water, and he thought of someone he wanted to love and couldn't, and then he swung himself onto the iron rungs and walked down them until he was all gone. . . ."

"And what about her?" asked Juliet, busy. "When'd she die?"

"I'm not sure. She's new. She's just dead, now. But she is dead. Beautifully, beautifully dead." Anna admired the image she had in her mind. "It takes death to make a woman really beautiful, and it takes death by drowning to make her most beautiful of all. Then all the stiffness is taken out of her, and her hair hangs up on the water like a drift of smoke." She nodded her head, amusedly. "All the schools and etiquettes and teachings in the world can't make a woman move with this dreamy ease, supple and ripply and fine." Anna tried to show how fine, how ripply, how graceful, with her broad, coa.r.s.e hand.

"He'd been waiting for her, for five years. But she hadn't known where he was till now. So there they are, and will be, from now on. . . . In the rainy season they'll live. But in the dry seasons-that's sometimes months-they'll have long rest periods, they'll lie in little hidden niches, like those j.a.panese water flowers, all dry and compact and old and quiet."

Juliet got up and turned on yet another little lamp in the corner of the dining room. "I wish you wouldn't talk about it."