Samedi the Deafness

Day the first James Sim rose on a Sunday morning And dressed quietly in the dark. He did not switch on the light before descending the stairs. He did not put on the light in the hall. I came in the front, he said beneath his breath. Best to leave by the side door. It was early yet, and the clouds that had gathered near and made of themselves rain all through the night were now intent on going elsewhere. But it takes the minds of clouds a long time to effect their prodigious actions; the immediate result was solely a sort of paleness, a lightening of countenance. At the nearest market, a balding man with an angry nose was crouched counting in the till. James bought from him a newspaper, folded it under his arm and continued. The change that James gave the man was put on the counter, separate from the business of counting that had been going on. Is it too much to say that there was in James a small sadness for his change kept apart from the rest? Sunday was always the best of days for being the self you had intended to be, but were not, for one or another reason. This was true most of all for those without families, those without friends. He thought, then: We of the mnemonist profession are always discrete in our ways. This pleased him. He said it aloud as he passed again into the morning as though entering some familiar hall. Of course, we of the mnemonist profession are always discrete in our ways. A boy of about eleven was on a footpath soon to join that of James. He looked up as James spoke. The footpaths were passing by a row of houses. In one, another boy was sitting on the edge of a dilapidated sand-box strewn with broken toys and faded color. Farrell is a weakling! Farrell is a weak weak weakling! yelled the boy at James's side. The boy in the yard looked up with pained recognition. Immediately he put his hands over his eyes and hid his face. A weak weak weakling! A weakling! shouted the boy again. Listen, you, said James, raising up the back of his hand. But the first boy had already run off. He was mostly gone in fact. Boys change so quickly at that age, it was hard to say certainly that the boy away now beneath the trees was even the same one. James continued. Behind him, the boy sitting in the yard was lost to sight. Is it crueler to be cruel when alone, or to be cruel in front of others? When alone, perhaps. That's why they say people who are cruel to animals should be punished so badly. For everyone's good. Not really for the animals. James set the newspaper beside him on the bench. The park ran beneath a cliff that hung above a river. Three bridges crossed the air above, and it was his way to sit beneath the third of these on a bench upon a small outcrop of rock. Away to his right a field stretched. Perhaps it was crueler to be cruel when in company. Birds were diving back and forth between the limbs of trees, and an ephemeral greenness cast by the morning hung over the late-autumn park. He would have liked to tie strings to all the birds, to all the branches of trees, to all the whirling leaves and the swells upon the river, and pull with his hand, here and there, the glad enormity of morning, of that very Sunday morning. To take up in his hand the paths across which he had come, the boy running ahead upon the path, the boy behind, face covered, the bald shopkeeper with his regimented monies, the small door in the side of his house . . . But what then would he do with them? A sort of shout came. James looked up. In the field, the figure of a man, bent over. James stood. The man shouted again, and lurched to the closeness of the ground. James looked about him. The park was empty. Leaving the newspaper, the bench, the path, he ran across the flatness of grass. The man was lying in a crumpled fashBall, Jesse is the author of 'Samedi the Deafness ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307278852 and ISBN 0307278859.