Specimen Days. Michael Cunningham

      “Please,” he said again.

      “You’re the sweetest boy in the world. You truly are. And tomorrow you must return it to the man on Broadway and get your money back.”

      “I can’t,” he said.

      “Would you like me to go with you?”

      “What is a man anyhow? What am I? And what are you?”

      “Please, Lucas. I’m touched, I truly am. But I can’t accept it.”

      “The man is gone.”

      “He’ll return tomorrow.”

      “No. This was his last bowl. He said he was going away.”

      “Oh, poor boy.”

      How could he tell her, what could he say, here in the dark of the hallway (where the goat’s skull still grinned), holding out to her the only treasure he could find, a treasure she didn’t want?

      He said, “The spinning-girl retreats and advances to the hum of the big wheel.”

      “Hush. Hush, now. You’ll disturb the neighbors.”

      He hadn’t meant to speak so loudly. He didn’t mean to speak again, more loudly still.

      “The bride unrumples her white dress, the minute-hand of the clock moves slowly.”

      “Stop. Please. Come inside, you mustn’t rant like this in the hallway.”

      “The prostitute draggles her shawl, her bonnet bobs on her tipsy and pimpled neck. The nine months’ gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing.”

      Catherine paused. She looked at him with a new recognition.

      “What did you say?”

      He didn’t know. She had never before seemed to hear him when he spoke as the book.

      “Lucas, please repeat what you just said.”

      “I’ve forgotten.”

      “You spoke of a spinning-girl. You spoke of a bride, and … a prostitute. And a woman about to give birth.”

       “It was the book.”

      “But why did you say it?”

      “The words come through me. I never know.”

      She leaned closer, gazing into his face as if words were written there, faint but discernible, difficult to read.

      She said, “You really don’t know, do you? Oh, Lucas. I fear for you.”

      “No. Please. You mustn’t fear for me. You must fear for yourself.”

      “You have some gift,” she said softly. “You have some terrible gift, do you know that?”

      He thought for a moment that she meant the bowl. It was in fact a terrible gift. It should have cost nothing, but he’d paid for it with money meant for food. And what use did Catherine have for a bowl like this? Lucas stood with his blood racketing and his hands outstretched. He was the boy who had bought the bowl, and he was the boy who had sold it. Would that boy, the other, be now returning to his own family with food? Lucas could be only this, the one who had bought it. He could only stand before Catherine with a terrible gift in his hands.

      Gently (he thought he had never known such gentleness) she took the bowl from him. She held it in her own hand.

      “What are we to do with you?” she said. “How will your mother and father live?”

      He said, “This hour I tell you things in confidence, things I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

      “Hush, hush.”

      “The dead sing to us through machinery. They are with us still.”

      “Stop. Speak as yourself.”

      “Simon wants to marry you in the land of the dead. He wants you there with him.”

      Sadly, she shook her head. “Listen to me,” she said. “It’s wonderful of you to want to buy me a gift like this. You are a sweet, generous boy. I’m going to keep the bowl safe tonight, and tomorrow I am going to sell it and give you the money. Please, don’t be offended.”

      “You must not trust your sewing machine. You must not listen if it sings to you.”

       “Shh. If we make such a racket every night, we’ll be thrown out.”

      “Do you take it I would astonish? Does the daylight astonish? Or the early redstart twittering through the woods?”

      “Go home now. Come to me tomorrow, after work.”

      “I cannot leave you. I will not.”

      She put her hand on his head. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Be careful until then.”

      “It’s you who must be careful.”

      She seemed not to hear or understand. With a rueful smile she opened the door and went back inside.

      Lucas remained for a while before the door, like a dog waiting to be let in. Then, because he could not bear being like a dog, he went away. He passed the tiny woman, who said, “No mischief, then?” He told her there had been no mischief. But there had been mischief, hadn’t there? There was the bowl and what the bowl had cost. There were other crimes.

      He made his way home, because he had money now (he had some left), and his mother and father must eat. He bought a sausage from the butcher and a potato from an old woman on the street.

      The apartment was as always. His mother slept behind her door. His father sat at table, because it was time to do so. He put his lips to the machine, breathed Simon’s ghost song into his lungs.

      “Hello,” Lucas said. His voice was strange in the quiet room, like a bean rattling in a jar.

      “Hello,” his father said. Had his voice changed slightly, from his chest being filled with Simon? It might have. Lucas could not be sure. Was his father turning into a machine, with Simon inside him?

      Lucas cooked the sausage and the potato. He gave some to his father, took some in to his mother, who slept fitfully but slept. He decided it was best not to disturb her. He left the food on the bedside table, for when she awoke and wanted it.

      After his father had finished, Lucas said, “Father, it’s time for bed.”

      His father nodded, breathed, nodded again. He rose. He took the machine with him.

       Lucas left his father in the doorway to the bedroom. His mother murmured within. His father said, “She cannot stop dreaming.”

      “She sleeps. It’s what’s best for her.”

      “She doesn’t sleep. She only dreams.”

      “Hush. Go to sleep now. Good night, Father.”

      His father went into the dark. The machine’s little feet scraped on the floorboards after him.

      I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women,

      And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps.

      What do you think has become of the young and old men?

      And what do you think has become of the women and children?

      Lucas read his passage. He put out the light and went to sleep.

      He dreamed he was in a room, an enormous room and clangorous. It was the works but not the works. It was full of silvery dusk like the works but empty of all save the noise, a deafening sound, not like what the machines produced, not quite that sound, though it resembled it. Lucas understood that the machines were gone but would return soon, as cattle return to a barn. He was to wait here. He was to see them home.