Falling Out of Time Read Free Page A

abruptly from her kneeling position by a tub of water and stands with her hands dripping. As far as I can see, there is no laboring woman in the room, nor a baby. Only a man’s trousers and shirt float in the tub. The woman freezes. Her neck is a stalk, her face long and gentle. Somewhat rigidly, she turns and walks to the window. Outside it is cold and stormy, and since the chimney emits no smoke—allowing me to peer through it—I assume it is very cold inside, too.
    Her gaze probes the faraway hilltops on the horizon. She is silent, but her fingers rend her mouth apart as if in a scream, until I holdmy breath as well. When she finally sighs, her shoulders collapse, as though her strength has suddenly left her.
    Her husband—barrel-chested, with a reddish shaved skull and three thick folds on the back of his neck—who all this time has sat in the corner cobbling a pair of riding boots, punctuating and vowelizing her silence with the rapid blows of his hammer, hisses through the nails in his mouth:
    COBBLER: Poisoning your soul again?
    MIDWIFE: Y-y-yesterday she w-w-would have been f-f-five.
    COBBLER: I’ve told you a hundred times not to think about these things! Enough, it’s over!
    MIDWIFE: I lit a candle by her p-p-picture and you said n-n-nothing. Don’t you ever think about her?
    COBBLER: What is there to think? How much of a life did she even have? A year?
    MIDWIFE: And a h-h-half.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: The cobbler slams the boot heel with his hammer as hard as he can, curses, and with peculiar lust sucks the blood that spurts from his finger.
    Heavy with thought, I leave. The town is asleep; its streets are empty. At the edge of the old wharf I stop and wait. The leaden clouds almost touch the water. Daybreak will soon come.
    As she did last night, the mute net-mender thrusts her head out of the skein. She looks around, searching, as if a voice had called her. I hide behind a lamppost. She suddenly leaps and runs down the pier with unbelievable speed, past skeletons of boats and rusty anchors, her long nets dragging behind her, floating.
    On the wooden bridge she stops. I can hear her breath whistling. Who knows what is plaguing this miserable creature’s mind? She grabs the railing and rocks it wildly. How much force and fury that little frame contains! I carefully move closer and crouch behind an overturned boat. The lake is turbulent tonight, and it sprays my glasses with droplets. In such moments, Your Highness, I practically curse my blind obedience to your orders. It is hard to see from here, but it seems as though someone is trying to force the mute to turn back and look at the hills, and she fights himand grunts and spits, squirming as her tiny, supple body is tossed from side to side. I write quickly in the dark my hand is trembling I apologize for the handwriting Your Highness perhaps she is about to throw herself into the lake and then what will I do it’s been so many years since I’ve touched anyone and her head at once pulls sharply back maybe there really is someone in the dark breaking her neck—
    Her mouth gapes, teeth exposed, and suddenly all is quiet. How such silence and the lake as if the waves do not
    MUTE WOMAN IN NET:
    Two human specks,
    a mother and her child,
    we glided through the world
    for six whole years.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: Astonished, she plunges once again into the mess of nets. I am exceedingly cold, Your Highness. Such phenomena disquiet me. The lake coming back to life so suddenly, and the boats once again knocking into one another and creaking in mockery. You will ridicule me, too, my lord, but I am willing to swear that I saw a slim band of light coming out of her mouth. Perhapsjust a moonlight apparition. But there is no moon tonight. And the fact that for one moment, when she sang, she was almost beautiful … I am merely reporting. Her voice was clear. I might even venture to say: heavenly. But what do I know? I am tired. This is all so confusing. Perhaps I should take