City (23 page)

“Good.”

“Side-splitting, really.”

“Good.”

“He has hands like yours.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, he has the same fingers.”

“Funny.”

“Why?, he's your son, right?”

“Yes, naturally, I meant it's funny that there's a boy, somewhere in the world, who goes around with your hands, hands like yours. It's a strange thing. Would you like that?”

“Yes.”

“It will happen. When you have children.”

“Yes.”

“You should make children, instead of Westerns.”

“What?”

“Or children along with the Westerns.”

“Maybe it's an idea.”

“Think about it.”

“Yes.”

“Have friends?”

“Me?”

“No, I meant . . . Gould.”

“Gould? Well . . .”

“He must need friends.”

“Well . . . he has Diesel and Poomerang.”

“I mean real friends.”

“They love him very much, truly.”

“Yes, but they're not real.”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

“I find them very sympathetic.”

“Ruth said that, too.”

“You see?”

“Yes, but they don't
exist,
Miss Shell. He invented them.”

“Yes, but . . .”

“It's not normal, is it?”

“It is a bit odd, but there's no harm in it, they're good for him.”

“You don't find them frightening?”

“Me? No.”

“You don't find it frightening that a child spends all his time with two friends who don't exist?”

“No, why?”

“It frightened me, I remember it was one of the things about Gould that frightened me. Diesel and Poomerang. I was afraid of them.”

“Are you kidding? They wouldn't hurt a fly, and they could make you die laughing. I swear I miss them, aside from Gould, I mean, but I liked it better when those two were around.”

“You mean the giant and the mute have also vanished?”

“Yes, they went with him.”

Gould's father began to laugh softly, shaking his head.

He said

“It's crazy.”

and then he said again

“It's crazy.”

“Don't worry, General, Gould will manage.”

“I hope so.”

“You must just have faith in him.”

“Of course.”

“But he will manage. That kid is strong. He may not seem like it, but he's strong.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes.”

“He has so much potential, so much talent, there's the risk that he's throwing it all away.”

“He's simply doing what he wants to do. And he's not a fool.”

“He has always liked studying. At Couverney they were going to pay him to do it, there was no reason to run away. Doesn't it seem to you strange for him to disappear just now?”

“I don't know.”

“Is it possible that he didn't explain anything to you, on the telephone?”

“He didn't explain much.”

“He must have said something.”

“About the money.”

“And nothing else?”

“I don't know, he wasn't feeling well.”

“It was a phone booth, on the street?”

“At one point he said something about the fact that he had kicked a ball.”

“Fantastic.”

“I didn't understand him very well, though.”

“You didn't understand him?”

“No.”

Gould's father began to smile again, shaking his head. But without saying

“Nuts.”

This time he said

“You really won't help me find him?”

“You won't look for him, General.”

“No?”

“No.”

“And how do you know?”

“I wasn't sure before, but I am now.”

“Really?”

“Yes, now that I've seen you I'm sure of it.”

“. . .”

“You won't look for him.”

Gould's father got up, and began to wander around the room. He went over to the television. It looked like wood, but then, who knows, it might very well have been plastic that looked like wood.

“Did you buy it?”

“No, Poomerang stole it from a Japanese guy.”

“Oh.”

Gould's father took the remote and turned it on. Nothing happened. He tried to push the buttons, but still nothing happened.

“Tell me something, Miss Shell. Truthfully.”

“What?”

“Weren't you afraid living with a child like Gould?”

“Only once.”

“Once when?”

“Once when he began to talk about his mother. He said that his mother had gone insane, and he began to tell the whole story. It wasn't so much what he said; it was his
voice
that was frightening. It was like the voice of an old man. Of someone who had known everything forever, and who also knew how things would end up. An old man.”

“. . .”

“He needed someone who would help him be a little child.”

“. . .”

“He didn't believe that you could be a child in real life without someone taking advantage of you and killing you, or something like that.”

“. . .”

“He thought he was lucky to be a genius because it was a way of saving his life.”

“. . .”

“A way of not seeming a child.”

“. . .”

“I don't know. I think it was his dream, to be a child.”

“. . .”

“I mean: I think it
is
his dream. I think now that he is grown-up, he will finally be able to be a child, for his whole life.”

It turned out that they stayed up late, talking about wars and Westerns, or sitting quietly, with the radio on, playing ordinary music. Finally Gould's father said that he would like to sleep there, if she didn't mind. Shatzy said that he could do what he wanted, it was his house, and then she didn't mind, in fact she would be glad if he stayed. She said she could make the bed in Gould's room, but he gestured vaguely in the air and said he preferred not to, he would sleep on the sofa, it wasn't a problem, the sofa would do very well.

“It's not too comfortable.”

“It will do very well, believe me.”

So he slept on the sofa. The blue one. Shatzy slept in her room. First she sat on the bed, with the light on, for quite a while. Then she went to sleep.

The next morning they made an arrangement about the money. Then Gould's father asked Shatzy what she was thinking of doing. He meant to say did she want to stay there, or what.

“I don't know, I think I should stay here for a while.”

“I would feel better if you would.”

“Yes.”

“If for some reason Gould should think of coming back, it would be better if he found someone here.”

“Yes.”

“You can telephone me whenever you like.”

“All right.”

“I'll call you.”

“Yes.”

“And if you have any good ideas, tell me right away, OK?”

“Of course.”

Then Gould's father said she was a smart girl. And he thanked her, because she was a smart girl. He also said something else. And finally he asked if there was anything he could do for her.

Shatzy didn't answer immediately. But later, when he was just about to leave, she said that there was one thing he could do for her. She asked him if some day he would take her to meet Ruth. She didn't explain why, she just said that.

“Take you to meet Ruth?”

Gould's father was silent for a moment. Then he said yes.

28

On the prairie the wind bends landscapes and souls to the west, curving Closingtown like a weary old judge returning home after yet another death sentence. Music.

The music was always the same, Shatzy did it with her voice.

Night outside. In the Dolphin sisters' living room, the two of them and the stranger, the one they shot when he came into town.

Logically it was a little odd, but if you tried to tell Shatzy she shrugged her shoulders and kept going.

The stranger's name was Phil Wittacher. Stress on the i. Wittacher.

Phil Wittacher was not a man who relocated willingly. Let's say that he moved only if he was paid more, and in advance. He had received an extremely polite letter from Closingtown: and a thousand dollars for the trouble of reading it. It was a good starting point. The letter said that if he wanted another nine thousand dollars he was to show up at the only red house in town.

The only red house in Closingtown belonged to the Dolphin sisters.

Which was why they were sitting there, in the living room, chatting. All three.

“Why me?” asks the stranger.

“If we consider our problem, you seem, in every respect, the person most suitable to resolve it, Mister Wittacher,” says Julie Dolphin.

“We need the best, and that's you, boy,” says Melissa Dolphin.

They were the same but not the same, said Shatzy. It happens, with twins: physically two drops of water, but then it's like a single soul divided in two, with all the white in one part and the black in the other. Julie was the white. Melissa the black. Hard to imagine one without the other.

They probably wouldn't even exist, the one without the other, said Shatzy.

On the outside of the cup that Julie Dolphin brings to her lips is a curious landscape drawn in blue. A verbena tisane.

“It will not have escaped you that this town simulates a normality that is completely illusory: every day something happens here that one might euphemistically call
irritating
.”

“The towns of the West are all the same, Miss Dolphin.”

“Bullshit,” says Melissa Dolphin.

The stranger smiles.

“I don't think I understand.”

“You will. But I'm afraid we must beg you to have the kindness to listen to some stories. Can we ask you to return tomorrow, at sunset? It will be our pleasure to tell them to you.”

Phil Wittacher was not a man who liked to take a long time about something. If a job was to be done, he preferred to get going.

Julie Dolphin placed on the table a bundle of banknotes that looked as if they had been ironed.

“We are sure that these will help you to consider the inconvenient possibility of staying in town long enough to understand the problem, Mister Wittacher.”

Two thousand dollars.

The stranger makes a little bow, takes the money, and sticks it in his pocket.

He gets up. A stiff leather suitcase, like a kind of violin case, is leaning against the chair. Phil Wittacher is never separated from it.

“With what we're paying, maybe we could take a look?” says Melissa Dolphin.

“My sister means to say that it would be reassuring for us to see your, how to put it, the tools of your trade. Just out of curiosity, of course; you know, we, too, are, in a way, connoisseurs, if we may be allowed such a presumption.”

The stranger smiles.

He places the case on a chair and opens it.

Sparkling metal, oiled and smooth. Mother of pearl inlay.

The two sisters lean over to look.

“Good heavens.”

“Real jewels, if I may say so.”

“Are they wound?”

The stranger nods.

“Naturally.”

Melissa Dolphin looks at the stranger.

“Then why are they stopped?”

Phil Wittacher arches his eyebrows slightly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My sister wonders why these splendid clocks of yours are stopped, since you assure us that you have wound them.”

The stranger approaches the case, leans over to look. He observes the three dials carefully, one by one. Then he straightens up again.

“They've stopped,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Miss Dolphin, I assure you that it is impossible.”

“Not here, in this town,” says Julie Dolphin. She closes the case and hands it to the stranger.

“As I was saying, it would be extremely useful if you would have the kindness to listen to what we have to tell you.”

Phil Wittacher takes the case, puts on his duster, recovers his hat, and heads for the door. Before he opens it he turns, takes out his pocket watch, glances at it, puts it back in its place, and looks up at the Dolphin sisters, his face slightly pale.

“Excuse me, can you tell me what time it is?”

His tone is that of a man who has been shipwrecked and asks how much drinking water is left.

“Can you tell me what time it is?”

Julie Dolphin smiles.

“Naturally no. It's been thirty-four years, two months, and eleven days since anyone in Closingtown has known what time it is, Mister Wittacher.”

At that point she burst out laughing. Shatzy. She started laughing. You could see that she really liked this story, she enjoyed telling it, she could have gone on doing it for a lifetime. It made her happy, that was it.

“Until tomorrow, Mister Wittacher.”

29

No gun—over his heart, in the pocket, business cards that say

Wittacher & Son.
Construction and repair of clocks and watches.
Medal of the Senate, Chicago Universal Exposition.

Suitcase in hand, he walks in the wind to the very edge of town, a red house, the Dolphins' house—three steps, the door, Julie Dolphin, the living room, odor of wood and vegetables, two guns hanging over the stove, Melissa Dolphin, dust that creaks under your shoes, everywhere, a strange town, dust everywhere, no rain, a strange town, good evening, Mister Wittacher.

Good evening.

For five days—every day at sunset—Phil Wittacher went to the Dolphin sisters', to listen. They told him the story of Pat Cobhan, who killed himself in a gunfight, at Stonewall, for love of a whore, and the story of Sheriff Wister, who left Closingtown innocent and returned to Closingtown guilty. They asked if he had met an old man, half blind, the two guns in his gunbelt polished to a shine. No. You will meet him. His name is Bird. This is his story. And they told him about old Wallace, and his wealth. They told him about the Christiansons, a love story, from beginning to end. On the fifth day they told him again about Bill and Mary. Then they said

“Maybe that's enough.”

Phil Wittacher puts out his cigar in a blue glass dish.

“Good stories,” he says.

“It depends,” says Melissa Dolphin.

“We are rather inclined to consider them horrendous stories,” says Julie Dolphin.

Phil Wittacher gets up, goes to the window, looks out into the darkness. He says

“All right, what's the problem?”

“It's not so easy to explain. But if there's anyone who can understand it's you.”

They ask if he has noticed that all the stories have one thing in common.

Wittacher thinks.

Death, he says.

Something else, they say.

Wittacher thinks.

The wind, he says.

Exactly.

The wind.

Wittacher is silent.

Again he sees Pat Cobhan, after days of travel, get off his horse, pick up a handful of dust, let it slide slowly through his fingers, and think: no wind, here. And at last is allowed to die.

There was no wind where Sheriff Wister surrendered to Bear. Desert, sun. No wind.

Wittacher thinks.

He's been in this town for six days, and the wind hasn't stopped blowing for an instant, in a frenzy. Dust everywhere.

“Why?” asks Phil Wittacher.

“The wind is the curse,” says Melissa Dolphin.

“The wind is a wound of time,” says Julie Dolphin. “That's what the Indians think, did you know that? They say that when the wind rises it means that the great mantle of time has been torn. Then all men lose their way, and as long as the wind blows they will never find it. They are left without destiny, lost in a tempest of dust. The Indians say that only a few men know the art of tearing time. They fear such men, and call them ‘assassins of time.' One of them tore the time in Closingtown: it happened thirty-four years, two months, and sixteen days ago. On that day, Mister Wittacher, each of us lost our destiny in a wind that rose suddenly in the sky over town, and hasn't ceased.”

You had to listen to Shatzy when she explained all this. She said that you had to imagine Closingtown as a man hanging out the window of a stagecoach with the wind in his face. The stagecoach was the World, which was making its nice journey through Time: it went along, grinding out days and miles, and if you stayed inside, sheltered, you didn't feel the air or the speed. But if for some reason you leaned out the window,
zac,
you ended up in another Time, and then the dust and the wind could make you lose your mind. She really did say “lose your mind”: and around here that's not just an expression. She said that Closingtown was a place that was leaning out the window of the World, with Time blowing in its face, blowing dust right in its eyes and confusing everything within. The image wasn't all that easy to understand, but everyone liked it a lot, it had gotten around the hospital, and I think that in some way everyone found in it a story he vaguely recognized, or something like that. Prof. Parmentier himself, once, told me that, if it was helpful, I could think of what was happening in my head as something not very different from Closingtown. Something tears Time, he said to me, and you are no longer punctual about anything. You are always a little bit somewhere else. A little before or a little after. You have a lot of appointments, with emotions, or with things, and you are always chasing them or stupidly arriving ahead of time. He said that that was my illness, if you like. Julie Dolphin called it: losing your own destiny. But that was the West: certain things could still be said. She said them.

“Thirty-four years, two months, and sixteen days ago, Mister Wittacher, each of us lost our destiny in a wind that rose suddenly in the sky over Closingtown, and hasn't ceased. Pat Cobhan was young and the young can't live without destiny. He got on his horse and rode until he reached the land where his was waiting for him. Bear was an Indian: he knew. He led Sheriff Wister far away, to the edge of the wind, and there delivered him to the destiny he deserved. Bird is an old man who doesn't want to die. He curses but he is crouching in this wind where his destiny as a gunfighter will never find him. This is a town from which someone has stolen time, and destiny. You wanted an explanation: is that sufficient?”

Phil Wittacher thinks.

It's completely mad, he says.

Less than you think.

They're legends, he says.

Don't talk nonsense, boy.

It's only wind, he says.

You think so?

Shatzy said that then they made him open his suitcase. Inside were all his tools and his three clocks, perfect and beautiful: inexorably stopped.

“And how do you explain this, Mister Wittacher?”

“Perhaps it's the humidity.”

“Humidity?”

“I mean, it's very dry here, in this town, it's terribly dry, I suppose it's the wind or . . .”

“The wind?”

“It's possible.”

“It's only wind, Mister Wittacher, since when does the wind stop a clock?”

Phil Wittacher smiles.

“Don't corner me: it's one thing to stop a clock, another to stop time.”

Julie Dolphin rises—without hesitation rises—and goes over to the stranger, goes very close, and looks him in the eye, straight in the eye.

“I beg you to believe me: here in Closingtown, they are the same thing.”

“In what sense, Ma'am?”

In what sense, Shatzy? we asked her. Every so often there were five or six of us listening to her stories. She was actually telling them to me, but I didn't mind if the others listened, too. They came to my room, we filled it up, someone would bring cookies. And we listened.

In what sense, Shatzy?

Tomorrow, she said. Tomorrow.

Why?

She said tomorrow, she means tomorrow.

Tomorrow?

Tomorrow.

The first time I saw Shatzy I was downstairs, in the reading room. She came and sat down near me and said

“Everything all right?”

I don't know why, but I mistook her for Jessica, one of those college girls who would come here as interns. I remembered that she had a problem with a grandmother, something like a sick grandmother. So I asked her about her grandmother. She answered and we went on talking. Only after a while, when I looked at her closely, did it occur to me that she wasn't Jessica. Not at all.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Shatzy. Shatzy Shell.”

“Have we ever seen each other before?”

“No.”

“Well, hello, my name is Ruth.”

“Hello.”

“Are you an intern here?”

“No.”

“Are you a nurse?”

“No.”

“Then what do you do in life?”

She stopped to think for a while. Then she said

“Westerns.”

“Westerns?”

I wasn't sure I remembered what they were.

“Yes, Westerns.”

They must be something that had to do with guns.

“And how many have you made?”

“One.”

“Is it good?”

“I like it.”

“Can I see it?”

That's exactly how the stories began. By chance.

Phil Wittacher smiles.

“Don't corner me: it's one thing to stop a clock, another to stop time.”

Julie Dolphin rises—without hesitation rises—and goes over to the stranger, goes very close, and looks him in the eye, straight in the eye.

“I beg you to believe me: here in Closingtown, they are the same thing.”

“In what sense, Ma'am?”

Then Julie Dolphin told him.

“You can believe it or not, but thirty-four years, two months, and sixteen days ago someone tore the time in Closingtown. A great wind arose and suddenly all the clocks stopped. There was no way to get them started again. Our brother had mounted an enormous clock on a wooden tower, right in the middle of Main Street, under the water cistern. He was very proud of it, and he went to wind it, personally, every day. There was no other clock so big, in all the West. It was called the Old Man, because it moved slowly and looked wise. It stopped that day, and never started again. Its hands were stuck on the 12 and the 37, and, in that condition, it was like a blind eye that never stopped staring at you. Finally they decided to board it up. At least then it stopped spying on everyone. Now it looks like a smaller water tank, under the big one. But inside it's still there. Stopped. If you think that these are merely legends, listen to this. Eleven years ago people from the railroad come to town. They say that they want to route the tracks through here, to link the Southern line with the great plains. They bought land and drove in stakes. Then they notice something odd: their watches have stopped. They ask around and someone tells them the whole story. So they have an expert come from the capital. A little man who was always in black, and never spoke. He stayed here for nine days. He had some strange tools, he never stopped taking clocks apart and putting them back together. And he measured everything, the light, the humidity, he even studied the sky, at night. And naturally the wind. In the end he said: ‘The clocks do what they can: the fact is that there is no longer Time here.' The little man had almost got it right. He understood something. In reality, time has never stopped existing here. But the truth is that it's not the same time as in the rest of the world. Here it runs a little ahead or a little behind, who can say. What is certain is that it runs in a place where the clocks can't see it. The people from the railroad thought about this for a while. They said it was not ideal to route a railroad through a land where time no longer existed. Probably they imagined trains disappearing into a void and getting lost forever. No one made a big deal of it. People who are used to living without destiny can live perfectly well without a railroad. Nothing has happened since then. In the sense that the wind hasn't stopped blowing for an instant, and no clock has been seen that wasn't stopped. We could go on this way forever, whatever
forever
means in a place where time has been torn. But it's hard. One can live without clocks: it's more complicated to do without destiny, to live a life that has no appointments. We are a city of exiles, of people absent from themselves. It seems that only two possibilities remain to us: to somehow sew up the tear in time, or to go away. We two would like to die here, on a day with no wind: that's why we've called on you.”

Phil Wittacher is silent.

“Let us die at the right time, without dust in our eyes, boy.”

Phil Wittacher smiles.

The world, he thinks, is full of lunatics.

He thinks of the little man in black and can't imagine him anything but drunk, leaning against the bar in the saloon, bewildered by nonsense.

He thinks of the Old Man, and wonders if it really is the biggest clock in the West.

He thinks of his three splendid clocks, with the time in London, San Francisco and Boston. Stopped.

He looks at the two old women, their house in perfect order, certain that they are adrift in a time that is not theirs.

Then he clears his throat.

“All right.”

He says

“What do I do?”

Julie Dolphin smiles.

“Make the clock go again.”

“What clock?”

“The Old Man.”

“Why that one?”

“If it goes, the others will follow.”

“It's only a clock. It won't restore anything to you.”

“You see about making it go. Then what must happen will happen.”

Phil Wittacher thinks.

Phil Wittacher shakes his head.

“It's crazy.”

“What's the matter, boy, you shitting in your pants?”

“My sister wonders if you do not by chance nourish an exaggerated distrust in the possibilities of your . . .”

“I'm not shitting in my pants. I'm only saying that it's crazy.”

“Did you really think that for all that money you'd find yourself doing a
reasonable
job?”

“My sister says that we're not paying you to tell us what's crazy and what isn't. Make the clock go, that's all you have to do.”

Phil Wittacher gets up.

“I imagine it's absolutely idiotic, but I'll do it.”

He says.

Julie Dolphin smiles.

“I'm sure of it, Mister Wittacher. And I am truly grateful to you.”

Melissa Dolphin smiles.

“Whip his ass, that bastard. No pity.”

Phil Wittacher looks at her.

“It's not a gunfight.”

“Of course it is.”

Music.