Bellman & Black

  William shifted the rope on his shoulder and made to move on.

  “Might you feel better for a talk?” the man suggested.

  “So that’s how it goes! I stay for a chat with you now and in the morning my body is discovered here in this graveyard? Is that it?”

  The stranger’s eye lingered for a moment on the rope that William was carrying. Then his gaze, gentle and ironic, moved to William.

  He knows, William thought.

  But the man in black made a gesture as though to brush that idea right away.

  “No, no, no. I can see you’ve got me all wrong. I’ve come to help you—or rather to ask you to help me. It amounts to the same thing. Why don’t you put that down”—he nodded at the rope—“and take a seat.”

  Wearily William dropped the rope and slumped on a tombstone on the far side of Rose’s grave from the man in black.

  “Look at this, Mr. Bellman.” The man raised a cloaked arm and swept it to take in the entire graveyard. “Tell me what you see.”

  “What I see?”

  Before them were graves. The older ones had their statues and their tombstones, their angels and their crosses and their urns. The newer ones had bare earth still. Flowers gleamed white on Rose’s grave. New graves waited empty, ready for tomorrow and the next day. One would be Dora’s.

  Anger fired up in William, through the drink. “What do I see? I’ll tell you what I see! I see my wife. I see three of my children. I see them dead. I see that grave there, cold and empty, waiting for my last child, who is dying now. I see misery and suffering and despair. I see the futility of everything I have ever done and everything I may ever do! I see every reason to do away with myself right here and now, and be finished with it! Forever!”

  William collapsed onto the tomb. He shrank into a ball and pulled at his hair, face contorting so powerfully it was as if his skin wanted to come away from the bone. He waited for the pain to submerge him, to sweep him away and deposit him in some other place, but it did not happen. The agony remained, unaltering, unending, unendurable, and here. He craved escape, but the only thing that could escape was the cry from his lips, an expulsion of feeling, a howl, a bellow. It set up a welcome vibration in his head.

  The ringing in his head died down. Perhaps the man was gone by now. Perhaps he had never been there in the first place? Could he go and do the thing he intended to do? Bellman raised his eyes.

  Still there. Standing, hands clasped behind his back, chest out, unperturbable.

  He glanced down at William. “Good! Good!” he said, encouragingly.

  William scowled. Was he talking to a madman?

  “Well. It’s early days.” He unclasped his hands, thought better of it and clasped them again. “I see things differently, you know.”

  “I suppose you would.” William’s voice was weakened from the bellowing.

  “Yes. What I see here, in front of me”—he took a deep breath, as though drawing on a particularly expensive and exotic cigar, and exhaled it with relish—“is an opportunity.”

  William stared. The fellow was unhinged. Then something rang a bell in his mind.

  What was it?

  Agree terms, sell, hide, collaborate.

  Collaborate.

  He thought of Dora.

  He nodded once. “You’ve got a deal.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Chill morning air entered his nostrils. A pause. Warmer air, stalely scented with liquor emerged from his mouth.

  Was he awake? This was like waking. He had been asleep, then.

  With the slowness of Lazarus he gathered his senses to him. His head ached. His chest felt bruised, as if his lungs had been in a battle all night. He was lying in a cold, hard place and something damp and coarse was scratching his cheek. He opened an eye. Ah! He was in the churchyard. A tombstone for a bed and a pillow of rope. A new grave was nearby. Rose’s grave.

  He closed the eye to think. It had been his wife’s funeral. He had gone to the Red Lion. Drunk too much. And then? The feathered end of something stroked his consciousness . . .

  . . . and was gone again.

  Then a very clear and urgent thought barged into his mind.

  Dora!

  With clumsy urgency, he swung himself up, got to his feet.

  He must go home.

  Without a glance at the coil of rope behind him, he set off, his mind full of his child and the things that must be done to safeguard her life. For she would live. He was persuaded of that now. She would live! And—though he did not think of this—so would he.

  · · ·

  When Bellman entered the sickroom, Mrs. Lane did not comment on the rope furrows impressed in his cheek, nor the smell of drink and the grave upon him, but only opened the door and ushered him in. All could be forgiven a man in his circumstances.

  It appeared to be the final movement: Dora was gripped by the great convulsions. This time Bellman did not flinch nor clutch at his hair. His eyes did not roam the room in desperate search of salvation. He stood by, face unchanged, still as a tombstone.

  The quiet period of ever-shallower breathing began. Mrs. Lane folded the girl’s hands over her breast and knelt by the bed, where she began to whisper the Lord’s Prayer.

  Bellman spoke it with her. His voice was steady and unwavering.

  When they had finished the prayer, flickers of life danced about her lips, unextinguished. Mildly perturbed, Mrs. Lane began the prayer again. “Our Father . . .”

  At Amen the girl was breathing still.

  A faint embarrassment took hold of Mrs. Lane. She glanced uncertainly at Bellman, was struck by the calm of his expression.

  “Does it seem to you, Mr. Bellman, that her breathing is freer?” she asked.

  “It does.”

  They leaned over the girl, peering into the white face. Mrs. Lane lifted an eyelid with her gentle thumb, then took the girl’s hands, uncrossed them, and began to warm them in her own. “Lord in thy mercy,” she began and, ambushed by her own astonishment, got no further.

  Dora’s breathing remained shallow but grew more regular. Degree by degree her hands thawed. Her pallor diminished fractionally. Mrs. Lane shifted her ministrations away from the girl’s soul and back to the body. An hour or so after the crisis, Dora seemed to stir. She did not wake but resettled into something that appeared more like sleep than coma.

  Bellman did not move. He appeared neither to see nor to hear Mrs. Lane. He stared fixedly at his daughter, yet it was not certain that he saw her either.

  After Sanderson had called and shaken his head in astonishment at the miracle, Bellman at last allowed himself to rest. He tossed Rose’s dress to the floor, lay down fully dressed, and sank instantly into a deep slumber.

  · · ·

  Last night. A handshake—or as good as—over a grave, in the dark, with a man he could hardly see. Today. His daughter returned from the dead.

  Into his sleep there crept not the faintest chink of light to illuminate the unmaking and the remaking of the mind of William Bellman.

  Something had ended. Something was about to begin.

  Part II

  SOCRATES: Let us suppose that every mind contains

  a kind of aviary stocked with birds of every sort,

  some in flocks apart from the rest, some in small groups

  and some solitary, flying in any direction among them all.

  THEAETETUS: Be it so. What follows?

  —PLATO, FROM THEAETETUS

  CHAPTER ONE

  At five to eleven, Bellman entered his daughter’s room and Mrs. Lane stood ready to leave it.

  “The gong?” she asked.

  “As you like.”

  Downstairs she went to her daughter, Mary, in the kitchen.

  “What is it to be today, Mother?”

  “Whatever we choose.”

  “Can we not let off the pistol out the kitchen window?”

  Her mother frowned. “Mary, this is not for your entertainment. What ha
ve we done lately? Pans yesterday and the gong on Tuesday. What did we do on Monday?”

  “The piano?”

  “He can’t expect us always to think of new things. I’d throw the dessert plates down the stairs, if it would do any good but—Good heavens, it’s time!”

  They dashed to the reception room and lifted the lid of the grand piano. Mrs. Lane sat down with an air of sad futility, her daughter beside her full of relish. They raised four hands, watched the clock, and on the stroke of eleven, brought ten fingers heavily down on the keys.

  “There!” Mary exclaimed, satisfied. “If she can’t hear that, she can’t hear nothing!”

  Upstairs, watch in hand, Bellman stood over Dora, scrutinizing her face as the vibrations from the piano strings reverberated unmusically through the house.

  He made a one word note in his book. Unresponsive.

  · · ·

  “Patience,” Sanderson counseled when Bellman showed him the pages of his notebook, with the results of the daily tests. Dora’s breathing was shallow and slow and constant. Her pulse was faint and slow and constant. She saw nothing, heard nothing, spent most of her time in what appeared to be deep sleep, and when her eyes opened, she saw no more than a newborn kitten would. Her hair was not growing back, and every day Mrs. Lane or Mary brushed more fallen eyelashes from her white cheek. Suspended in a place of limbo, Dora had not died, nor did she live.

  “She has been to the brink,” Sanderson said. “Her condition is stable, we must be grateful for that.”

  Bellman had had his miracle; it was unrealistic to expect another. The fever had ravaged the town and Bellman’s family, it had come within a heartbeat of taking Dora, and moments from taking her life, it had receded. In the aftermath of the devastation Bellman did not ask himself why he had been granted this reprieve. He simply contemplated it, stunned.

  · · ·

  Bellman spent all his time at the bedside of his daughter and did not go to the mill. After seven days a small boy knocked at the door with a message. All was well, but should the chief bookkeeper call to report to Mr. Bellman?

  That evening Ned was shown into the study by Mary. Crace was with him. The room struck cold; the fire lit by Mary had not yet cast off the chill of a month’s emptiness. Crace had never been inside Mill House, Ned only rarely. They stood in silence, looking at floorboards and corners of cornices and other such insignificances, their curiosity and compassion at the ready. They were waiting so hard that when the door cracked and Bellman appeared, they jumped. Perhaps they had reason to, for he was changed, though the alteration was not external. Their eyes puzzled over him, as the gaze returns to a spot where something used to be that is now absent.

  They expressed their condolences in the usual terms. Ned knew their faces would say the rest: that sorry was only the smallest part of what they felt, that all in the town knew suffering, but few had suffered as extensively as Bellman had suffered. What had happened at Mill House was beyond measure . . . But Bellman seemed not to see him, hardly to hear him either. Ned glanced at Crace who was similarly perplexed.

  “Sit down,” Bellman said, gesturing vaguely, and they did. He turned the desk chair into the room as if he meant to sit in it, but didn’t. Had he forgotten to sit down? Were they to wait, or to start?

  After a silence, Ned cleared his throat. “Perhaps you would like us to report on the last month?”

  Bellman raised a hand to his unshaven chin and rubbed his stubble. They took it as an invitation and began. The dramatic events in the town had had their impact on mill employees. Despite the turbulent events, over half the orders had been filled as planned. As for the rest, good relations with merchants had made it possible in almost every case to negotiate new delivery dates. There had been few cancellations. All in all things were better than one might expect.

  Bellman now lowered himself wearily into his chair, but there was no sign that he was listening.

  Ned turned a raised eyebrow to Crace, and Crace picked up the narrative. “As to technical and processing matters . . .” He described succinctly the few difficulties that had arisen, explained the action he had taken and why he had acted as he did.

  Bellman stared at his hands, clasped in his lap.

  “We’ve kept a written log that you can look over when . . .”

  Ned offered the sheaf of notes, and when Bellman made no move to take it, he rose and placed it on the desk. Anxious to conclude the awkward meeting, Crace rose with him.

  “And Dora?” Ned asked. One more attempt to reach the man he considered his friend as much as his employer. “Her health improves, I hope?”

  Then Bellman’s eyes met his. The question had stirred something dark in them, but he made no answer.

  Crace proposed that he and Ned would call twice a week to report on events. Absently Bellman nodded, and the men took their leave.

  On their way back to the mill the two men thought of the tragedy behind them and their own griefs. They passed the Red Lion where Crace had celebrated his marriage five months before, and the church where he had buried his wife. Each man followed his own thoughts, knew pretty well what the other was thinking. When the mill gate was in sight and their privacy was coming to an end, Ned said, “He did not offer you condolences.”

  Crace shrugged. “There’s not much help in condolences. He didn’t offer you any either.”

  “My mother was old. It was her time. She knew it and I knew it.” Ned could not apologize on behalf of Bellman but he could, and did, say, “He’s a broken man.”

  Crace’s stride did not alter and he did not look up. “We’re all broken, Ned,” he said grimly. And then, with a twitch of the mouth to take the sting out of his words, “Come on. There’s some can afford to be broken. We’ve got rent to pay.”

  · · ·

  Bellman’s days were taken up with the care of his child. Along with the balms and oils and medications at her bedside were numerous lists: pulse rate, the length of inhalation, temperature. Her father grew adept in comparing shades of pallor; he watched for the return of color to her cheeks as intently as a sailor watches the horizon for the first sign of land. Bellman fretted over temperatures: Was Dora too warm? Too chilly? Was she lying in a draft? He opened and closed windows, called for extra blankets, and then had them folded away. Bedjackets and mittens and muffs were added to the invalid, then subtracted again. All through the day Mrs. Lane and Mary were on hand, he shared some of this care. At night, he remained alone to nurse his child.

  After the last counting of heartbeats and measuring of temperature at midnight, Bellman sat in the armchair in the corner of Dora’s room and slumbered and dozed until he fell into profound unconsciousness. Later in the night, the totality of blackness receded and he found himself deposited on an unknown gray shore, a place between sleep and wakefulness. In this place, strange and fanciful ideas formed in his mind, and in the dark he reached for his notebook and pencil and turned to some future blank page to scribble fluent and prolific words. Were his notes reasonable? Would they be legible even in the light of day? Questions such as these did not enter his head, they belonged to some other realm: distant, irrelevant, foreign. Then the tide changed; already half-asleep, he put his notebook away and drifted away to oblivion. When he awoke in the morning, it was to be claimed immediately by his charts of figures, today’s tests to be carried out, and behind it all a vague and unimportant sense of having dreamed. And perhaps the faintest recollection of his night in the graveyard, so faint that it escaped his attention.

  · · ·

  For weeks Bellman sought patterns in his figures. He was anxious to detect an underlying upward trend, but his accountant’s exactitude could not be outwitted by his fatherly wishful thinking: the best that could be said was that the average was stable. And then, one Thursday, there came an alteration. All at once, Dora’s condition improved. Bellman fancied that her hand, when he touched it, felt less waxy and more like human skin. Mary agreed with him. Mrs. Lowe counseled cauti
on, but she agreed that her pallor was a little diminished.

  The next day Dora opened her eyes, and for the first time, it was clear that she recognized her father.

  “Look,” Bellman told Sanderson, holding out his notebook, “her pulse is stronger and more regular. Her breathing is deeper. She swallows more broth. Time to try her on something more sustaining, don’t you think? She turns her gaze toward me.”

  The doctor could not deny that there was a change. An improvement. The child was aware. Yet still, he could not look at the patient without feeling a profound unease. Pallor, emaciation, loss of musculature, muteness, alopecia, absence of response to sound, touch, the human voice . . . She was an encyclopedia of symptoms, you could fill a textbook with Dora alone, she ought to be exhibited in the universities. All that to worry about, and the father rejoiced over his tables, and the maid’s great lament was that there was nothing a hairbrush could do to disguise the pink circles of smoothness on the girl’s scalp. Her looks—though he dare not say it—were the least of their worries. The fever had done worse than ruin the girl’s skin and make her bald. He very much feared it had reduced her mind to ashes.

  · · ·

  In the town the fever had run its course and ebbed away.

  Everyone had lost someone. Some had lost everyone.

  People remembered. They wept and they grieved. In the spaces between, they were glad that the leeks and rhubarb were doing well this year, envied the bonnet of the neighbor’s cousin, relished the fragrance of pork roasting in the kitchen on Sunday. There were those that registered the beauty of a pale moon suspended behind the branches of the elms on the ridge. Others took their pleasure in gossiping.

  Being known to all in the town, Bellman and his tragedy were the focus of some of this gossip. Mary’s tongue meant no harm, and she talked to any willing listener. Neighbors, employees, tradespeople, everyone added their ha’penny’s worth to the story: Dora Bellman was a skeleton. She lolled in her bed more dead than alive. She was blind, she was deaf, she was mute. Her body lived but her soul had passed over. She had lost her mind.