Ensemble

his poor hollow wooden head.

  So aunties and uncles—such kind dears, really it wasn’t necessary—scooped ice cream high and pressed books and books and yet more books upon one, a tower of them wrapped in expensive shimmering paper that might have been hammered out of gold or silver, until the weight of all those words caused them to tumble right across the carpet—but the god of the oriental carpet with the daintily curled fringes was pleased. It’s not as if we’re not coming right back, Mar said, looking her party best with saltwater-blue eyes she took from a paint box of her own. Everyone spoke now in a hush, looking at one sideways, as if one were soon to be taken by the trolls, into their labyrinthine caves and secret abysses, the way some stories described things, instead of up, up! into the air to the other side of the blue and luminous globe. Underground, story-books said, clocks ran by whims of their own—they might chime only once or twice in a lifetime—and even a king might take centuries to return to his subjects in the world above. Instead of among trees people lived among their mighty roots, and instead of stars, those were diamonds the trolls mined in perpetual twilight. Everyone beneath the earth spoke in whispers, for a simple cough could cause an earthquake, and so you would be blessed if born mute. The good king lay sleeping in the farthest, deepest chamber, sacrificing speech and action to save the world above, until one day—and now let’s put down that book, Mar was saying as she tucked in the blankets. Which she needn’t have said at all, for already one had fallen into the great, heavy book and closed the covers after, and already, with belly full, one was half-dreaming, half too tired to dream…

  Ah, here’s a bonny bright child, the big doctor had sung out in a strange high voice, for already it was clear that these people spoke another language, though they used words one already knew. The doctor’s enormous hands, so threatening and so black like the roots of a tree, were in fact girlishly graceful as they dared to prod two fingers big as carrots right into one’s mouth. So gentle one didn’t even choke, even as he commanded one to make nonsense sounds, now like a pussy-cat, now like a doggy who’s quite cross with you. The doctor—who was big and bald, something like a giant and something like a baby—grinned a big toothless grin which really meant a frown, so that one saw right away that nothing he said could be believed at all. And so one didn’t: good meant bad, good good meant very bad, and nothing said at all meant you are a terrible beast of a child, why won’t you admit you can talk? Still, however, the soft dark fingers caressed even one’s most secret parts, still it took a large needle applied to the tip of one’s most innocent finger before one was forced to shriek like the Devil’s own cat, as Far’s mustache apologized and a ghostlike nurse cracked the door to see if she was needed—but still no words were set loose. How could words really express such pain, after all, and why did words have to exist anywhere outside of books? Why should they have to clutter up the world, which was already so full of its gods and treasures? It was better to contain words, make them orderly, in neat rows on crisp white pages, long lines of them ready to be slurped up like noodles. Must the characters that formed words and the words that formed sentences limit themselves to one pronunciation, one meaning? Saying nothing at all, one knew now more than ever, was… somehow… better.

  There was a kind of clock on the wall which anybody would have instantly recognized as the nest of a small wooden bird. But the shy creature refused to show itself and time didn’t seem to pass in this office with its tropical clouds pressing the windows, grumbling for admittance with the force of a mob, and its many dour books standing by on the shelves—one wondered how very long it must have been since even one of them had last spoken—and the god of clocks did not seem fit to let even one hour pass. One’s little left-hand finger was still bleeding. Pitiful martyr, with its ruby solitaire. At last one must suck it, taste that taste which is the essence of oneself, more so than tears or the salt of skin. And one must close one’s eyes, make the adults blind so they wouldn’t see and would go away. This doctor in the guise of an overgrown baby was different from the rest, however; he had no colorful cards or toy trucks with labels that read Green or Red, but he had promised a lolly if one was good and one so wanted to know what this thing called a lolly was, though perhaps it was the trolls’ magic way to break the spell and trick one into talking.

  At last one was dismissed to the small adjoining room with its monumental nurse, who was so tall and so dark and had so white of a uniform that she must have been the god of all nurses, and Far seethed through smiling teeth that one must now sit very still and very quiet—as if there were any other way to sit!—and his mustache was so terrible even the towering nurse looked momentarily afraid. Then Far was gone. Doors sealed in the quiet. The nurse sat down again, stealthily embroidering—she, too had enormous root-like hands, so of course she must be the doctor’s wife—and one would have to wait on the hard iron bench like this, it seemed, forever, or until the incantatory whispers on the other side of the wall stopped and the door swung open.

  It might have been better if Mar were here, but she was sleeping—she had said she would, anyway, for a hundred years—on the hotel bed in a hotel pink as the inside of a seashell, with a strange pink beach miles below their balcony. The waves there made the sound one heard inside seashells, and ever since they had kissed her goodbye that morning it seemed she had been left very far away, curled inside the center of an enormous seashell on a vast, barren beach. They should go to her now before she was swept out to sea and drowned. They shouldn’t be wasting any more time here.

  Putting down her needle and tambour, the nurse smiled a gigantic smile that betrayed nothing except that she could probably read minds and said she must pop out for just a moment to see a man about a unicorn, so one must stay right here or one’s father might never come back and then one would have to live with this giant couple forever.

  Much more than a moment—however exactly long a moment is—did pass, and tiny gnomish figures, male and female in wooden shoes, came out their old-fashioned house on this room’s wall and struck miniature anvils with miniature mallets three times, while a cuckoo answered them from the other side, and the men’s voices continued rising and falling, and the clouds rearranged themselves in a jigsaw sky, and it rained and then the sun came out, and still she did not come back… so it was no use but to go find her and tell her that one’s mother could wait no longer. For who knew, maybe the nurse had not really just gone to the lavatory, and maybe she, too, was lost in the winding, multiplying hallways which now lay ahead, any one of which might contain white stones leading to a castle and a princess and a real unicorn, after all.

  How long one had been in this forest was impossible to guess, for there were no clocks to chime or shriek hanging from the gargantuan trees, which grew so much taller than the ones at home, and so close together one could see just glints of sun shifting among the leaves, like a myriad blinking eyes. Writhing under the trees, in the green and gray half-light, thick roots and vines like great sleepy serpents did their best to trip and tangle one’s feet; the sticky heat made everything seem as if it were dripping and melting—and from between mossy trunks, through gnat-clouded eyes, hospital doorways and corridors loomed, and weird birds carried aloft the voices of doctors or imitated precisely the cries of a hundred lost parents. In this country all one’s old familiar gods had been abandoned, yet one was not really afraid—and most of all, one had no real desire any longer to go back to doctor giants and doctors’ games and doctors’ needles. Did much time pass the further one ran and stumbled and ran again? No, for here it was obvious the trolls would stop any clock they might find.

  When one first saw them on a sandy rise above cracked yellow mudflats—for the giants’ forest was not endless, after all, but gradually dissolved into the reeds of a flooded marsh or marshy cove—it was as if they had always been expecting a stranger to appear suddenly in their midst. And as if one had been expecting them, as well.

  The tallest and dirtiest g
irl spoke first. We all be pirates, she said, indicating the ragged black and brown children trailing her, and now you one of us, or you sorry. Again, although she used words one knew, it was obvious she was speaking a different language where meanings did not match things or actions. Pirates, after all, looked very different in books—and these children’s swords were merely pointed sticks. Nevertheless, one followed them without any hesitation down to the muddy bank, where tree stumps stepped right into a watery distance lost in fog. Here, on the summit of a beached and capsized boat, the children surrounded oneself— not smiling, but not frowning, either.

  The girl shook muddy locks out of her eyes; she was very skinny and probably far too tall for her age. There was only one boy almost as tall as she, but she would not let him or anyone else speak just yet. Around her waist she had tied some dripping seaweed like a pirate’s sash. We want to know, she announced, as if she had consulted the other children, if you be boy or girl. At this, the other children, most of them nearly as muddy and