Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (22 page)

 
          
 
And then William knew what to do.

 
          
 
"I," he said, "am going to go
stand with the kids."

 
          
 
And he walked slowly over and stood right
behind the boy and the girl. He stood for a long time there, like a man between
two warm fires on a cool evening, and they warmed him and he breathed easy and
at last let his eyes drift up, let his attention wander easy out toward the
twilight desert and the hoped-for city in the dusk.

 
          
 
And there in the dust softly blown high from
the land, reassembled on the wind into half-shapes of towers and spires and
minarets, was the mirage.

 
          
 
He felt Robert's breath on his neck, close,
whispering, half talking to himself. .

 
          
 
“It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny
pleasure-dome with caves of ice!"

 
          
 
And the city was there.

 
          
 
And the sun set and the first stars came out.

 
          
 
And the city was very clear, as William heard
himself repeat, aloud or perhaps for only his secret pleasure, " 'It was a
miracle of rare device . . .'"

 
          
 
And they stood in the dark until they could
not see.

 
          
 
The cellar was cold cement and the dead man was
cold stone and the air was filled with an invisible fall of rain, while the
people gathered to look at the body as if it had been washed in on an empty
shore at morning. The gravity of the earth was drawn to a focus here in this
single basement room—a gravity so immense that it pulled their faces down, bent
their mouths at the comers and drained their cheeks. Their hands hung weighted
and their feet were planted so they could not move without seeming to walk
under water.

 
          
 
A voice was calling, but nobody listened.

 
          
 
The voice called again and only after a long
time did the people turn and look, momentarily, into the air. They were at the
seashore in November and this was a gull crying over their heads in the gray
color of dawn. It was a sad crying, like the birds going south for the steel
winter to come. It was an ocean sounding the shore so far away that it was only
a whisper of sand and wind in a seashell.

 
          
 
The people in the basement room shifted their
gaze to a table and a golden box resting there, no more than twenty-four inches
long, inscribed with the name riabouchinska. Under the lid of this small coffin
the voice at last settled with finality, and the people stared at the box, and
the dead man lay on the floor, not hearing the soft cry.

 
          
 
"Let me out, let me out, oh, please,
please, someone let me out."

 
          
 
And finally Mr. Fabian, the ventriloquist,
bent and whispered to the golden box, "No, Ria, this is serious business.
Later. Be quiet, now, that's a good girl." He shut his eyes and tried to laugh.

 
          
 
From under the polished lid her calm voice
said, "Please don't laugh. You should be much kinder now after what's
happened."

 
          
 
Detective Lieutenant Krovitch touched Fabian's
arm. "If you don't mind we'll save your dummy act for later. Right now there's
all this to clean up." He glanced at the woman, who had now taken a
folding chair. "Mrs. Fabian." He nodded to the young man sitting next
to her. "Mr. Douglas, you're Mr. Fabian's press agent and manager?"

 
          
 
The young man said he was. Krovitch looked at
the face of the man on the floor. "Fabian, Mrs. Fabian, Mr. Douglas— all
of you say you don't know this man who was murdered here last night, never
heard the name Ockham before. Yet Ockham earlier told the stage manager he knew
Fabian and had to see him about something vitally important"

 
          
 
The voice in the box began again quietly.

 
          
 
Krovitch shouted. "Damn it, Fabian!"

 
          
 
Under the lid, the voice laughed. It was like
a muffled bell ringing.

 
          
 
"Pay no attention to her.
Lieutenant," said Fabian.

 
          
 
"Her? Or you, damn itl What is this? Get
together, you two!"

 
          
 
"We'll never be together," said the
quiet voice, "never again after tonight."

 
          
 
Krovitch put out his hand. "Give me the
key, Fabian."

 
          
 
In the silence there was the rattle of the key
in the small lock, the squeal of the miniature hinges as the lid was opened and
laid back against the table top.

 
          
 
"Thank you," said Riabouchinska.

 
          
 
Krovitch stood motionless, just looking down
and seeing Riabouchinska in her box and not quite believing what he saw.

 
          
 
The face was white and it was cut from marble
or from the whitest wood he had ever seen. It might have been cut from snow.
And the neck that held the head which was as dainty as a porcelain cup with the
sun shining through the thinness of it, the neck was also white. And the hands
could have been ivory and they were thin small things with tiny fingernails and
whorls on the pads of the fingers, little delicate spirals and lines.

 
          
 
She was all white stone, with light pouring
through the stone and light coming out of the dark eyes with blue tones beneath
like fresh mulberries. He was reminded of milk glass and of cream poured into a
crystal tumbler. The brows were arched and black and thin and the cheeks were
hollowed and there was a faint pink vein in each temple and a faint blue vein
barely visible above the slender bridge of the nose, between the shining dark
eyes.

 
          
 
Her lips were half parted and it looked as if
they might be slightly damp, and the nostrils were arched and modeled
perfectly, as were the ears. The hair was black and it was parted in the middle
and drawn back of the ears and it was real—he could see every single strand of
hair. Her gown was as black as her hair and draped in such a fashion as to show
her shoulders, which were carved wood as white as a stone that has lain a long
time in the sun. She was very beautiful. Krovitch felt his throat move and then
he stopped and did not say anything.

 
          
 
Fabian took Riabouchinska from her box.
"My lovely lady" he said. "Carved from the rarest imported
woods. She's appeared in
Paris
,
Rome
,
Istanbul
.
Everyone in the world loves her and thinks she's really human, some sort of
incredibly delicate midget creature. They won't accept that she was once part
of many forests growing far away from cities and idiotic people."

 
          
 
Fabian's wife, Alyce, watched her husband, not
taking her eyes from his mouth. Her eyes did not bhnk once in all the time he
was telling of the doll he held in his arms. He in turn seemed aware of no one
but the doll; the cellar and its people were lost in a mist that settled
everywhere.

 
          
 
But finally the small figure stirred and
quivered. "Please, don't talk about me! You know Alyce doesn't like
it."

 
          
 
"Alyce never has liked it."

 
          
 
"Shh, don't!" cried Riabouchinska.
"Not here, not now." And then, swiftly, she turned to Krovitch and
her tiny lips moved. "How did it all happen? Mr. Ockham, I mean, Mr.
Ockham."

 
          
 
Fabian said, "You'd better go to sleep
now, Ria."

 
          
 
"But I don't want to," she replied.
"I've as much right to listen and talk, I'm as much a part of this murder
as Alyce or—or Mr. Douglas even!"

 
          
 
The press agent threw down his cigarette.
"Don't drag me into this, you—" And he looked at the doll as if it
had suddenly become six feet tall and were breathing there before him.

 
          
 
"It's just that I want the truth to be
told." Riabouchinska turned her head to see all of the room. "And if
I'm locked in my coffin there'll be no truth, for John's a consummate liar and
I must watch after him, isn't that right, John?"

           
 
“Yes," he said, his eyes shut, "I
suppose it is."

 
          
 
"John loves me best of all the women in
the world and I love him and try to understand his wrong way of thinking."

 
          
 
Krovitch hit the table with his fist.
"God damn, oh, God damn it, Fabian! If you think you can—"

 
          
 
"I'm helpless," said Fabian.

 
          
 
"But she's—"

 
          
 
"I know, I know what you want to
say," said Fabian quietly, looking at the detective. "She's in my
throat, is that it? No, no. She's not in my throat. She's somewhere else. I
don't know. Here, or here." He touched his chest, his head.

 
          
 
"She's quick to hide. Sometimes there's
nothing I can do. Sometimes she is only herself, nothing of me at all.
Sometimes she tells me what to do and I must do it. She stands guard, she
reprimands me, is honest where I am dishonest, good when I am wicked as all the
sins that ever were. She lives a life apart She's raised a wall in my head and
lives there, ignoring me if I try to make her say improper things, co-operating
if I suggest the right words and pantomime." Fabian sighed. "So if
you intend going on I'm afraid Ria must be present. Locking her up will do no
good, no good at all."

 
          
 
Lieutenant Krovitch sat silently for the
better part of a minute, then made his decision. "All right. Let her stay.
It just may be, by God, that before the night's over I'll be tired enough to
ask even a ventriloquist's dummy questions."

 
          
 
Krovitch unwrapped a fresh cigar, lit it and
puffed smoke. "So you don't recognize the dead man, Mr. Douglas?”

 
          
 
"He looks vaguely familiar. Could be an actor."

 
          
 
Krovitch swore. "Let's all stop lying,
what do you say? Look at Ockham's shoes, his clothing. It's obvious he needed
money and came here tonight to beg, borrow or steal some. Let me ask you this,
Douglas. Are you in love with Mrs. Fabian?"

 
          
 
"Now, wait just a moment!" cried
Alyce Fabian.

 
          
 
Krovitch motioned her down. "You sit
there, side by side, the two of you. I'm not exactly blind. When a press agent
sits where the husband should be sitting, consoling the wife, well! The way you
look at the marionette's coffin, Mrs. Fabian, holding your breath when she
appears. You make fists when she talks. Hell, you're obvious."

 
          
 
"If you think for one moment I'm jealous
of a stick of wood!"

           
 
"Aren't you?"

 
          
 
"No, no, I'm not!"

 
          
 
Fabian moved. "You needn't tell him
anything, Alyce."

 
          
 
"Let her!"

 
          
 
They all jerked their heads and stared at the
small figurine, whose mouth was now slowly shutting. Even Fabian looked at the
marionette as if it had struck him a blow.

 
          
 
After a long while Alyce Fabian began to
speak.

 
          
 
"I married John seven years ago because
he said he loved me and because I loved him and I loved Riabouchinska. At
first, anyway. But then I began to see that he really lived all of his life and
paid most of his attentions to her and I was a shadow waiting in the wings
every night.

 
          
 
"He spent fifty thousand dollars a year
on her wardrobe —a hundred thousand dollars for a dollhouse with gold and
silver and platinum furniture. He tucked her in a small satin bed each night
and talked to her. I thought it was all an elaborate joke at first and I was
wonderfully amused. But when it finally came to me that I was indeed merely an
assistant in his act I began to feel a vague sort of hatred and distrust—^not
for the marionette, because after all it wasn't her doing, but I felt a
terrible growing dislike and hatred for John, because it was his fault. He,
after all, was the control, and all of his cleverness and natural sadism came
out through his relationship with the wooden doll.

 
          
 
"And when I finally became very jealous,
how silly of me! It was the greatest tribute I could have paid him and the way
he had gone about perfecting the art of throwing his voice. It was all so
idiotic, it was all so strange. And yet I knew that something had hold of John,
just as people who drink have a hungry animal somewhere in them, starving to
death.

 
          
 
"So I moved back and forth from anger to
pity, from jealousy to understanding. There were long periods when I didn't hate
him at all, and I never hated the thing that Ria was in him, for she was the
best half, the good part, the honest and the lovely part of him. She was
everything that he never let himself try to be."