The Dress Lodger (45 page)

Your skills are monopolized by cholera again in 18^3, then in 1866, but when it comes for a final time in 1892, you are not around to see it. With Dr. Koch’s discovery of the cholera vibrio, the disease that would define the nineteenth century is identified and conquered, just as you close your eyes and come to us. Cholera morbus has served its purpose; it has taught the rich to fear the poor, and that fear more than anything else will have led to all the subsequent reforms in sanitation. The cholera that began its westward career in the very year you were born lays down its head the year you die. You are one of the lucky ones: you die at home, surrounded by friends, of ripe old age. Yours has been the life span of a pandemic.

The Eye’s lips cease to move. The genius of vision has spoken. She has foreseen as absolute truth all that shall come to pass, and imparted it as best she could. Escape, a family, and long life for Gustine. A new start, true love, and something akin to happiness. But is all this in Gustine’s power to fulfill, or are these words nothing more than the ramblings of a delirious dying woman? It is all the same to the girl, who lays her head on the cold gray breast and weeps. What are you trying to tell me? she asks. I can’t understand a word you say.

The Eye is tired of talking. Dawn breaks through the nailed and shuttered windows; outside it is a perfectly clear and cloudless morning, one of the rare days like those she knew as a girl, before the factories struggled out of the mud and the bridges clamped down upon the banks. No yellow smoke to smudge the windows, no soot to catch in the teeth; even the normally dun brown Wear runs with water the color of the living dress. She finds herself on the bank of the river, where on either side of her men and women throw themselves into the water, swim across, then run wet and shining to the field of green beyond. Where is this place? wonders Eye, who thought she knew every nook and cranny of the city. It is separated off by a pretty white picket fence, low and inviting, behind which stretches a dirt path leading where she cannot see.

Eye squints across the water, trying to make out a small, hand-painted sign hung on the white fence’s latch. Three simple words she sees that will open the gate and allow her inside. As she watches, a baby crawls toward her across the meadow, happy and fat, its heart beating joyously. All she can hear is his heartbeat pounding in her ears. He laughs and stops by the gate, and though he is not old enough to speak, she thinks she hears him say, Come. Come to the place we have prepared for those who learn to love only in their last days.

Men and women race past Eye, reading the simple sign and entering. It seems to her that she has seen these words someplace before—yes, now she remembers. They were carved into every door and windowsill in Sunderland, like a secret code, worked into the fabric of everyday clothes and written into beads of sweat running down a pint of ale. Funny she never realized before now; the words—the blessing and the curse of all poor men and women, the words they live and die by—were everywhere she looked.

The Eye’s gray lips move; the dress lodger leans in closer.

She is not talking, says the doctor, pulling Gustine back from what might be the Eye’s fatal breath. It is only the spasms affecting her cheeks and lips. Look, he points out. Her feet are moving, too, like she is running. You don’t believe she is really running, do you?

No, says Gustine through her tears. I don’t suppose I do.

Then don’t endanger yourself further by thinking she has something to say.

Gustine sits back, depleted and so very, very sick. She knows the doctor is right—it was all the cholera talking. And yet, when those dry lips moved and her breath like the soft creaking of a gate passed through them, Gustine could have sworn she distinctively heard a voice inside the hinges. The Eye saw all that was and all that was to come, and though she could not make Gustine understand, she did not wholly fail. You heard her correctly, Gustine. Take up the short sentence of your inheritance. Go and live a happier life. All the Eye foresaw can be yours, if you but remember the words upon the gate.

“Nothing without labour.”