Falling Out of Time Read Free Page B

a nap in one of the boats
    Wait—
    Like a quick little animal she burrows into her nets and is gone. According to the records in my possession she has not uttered a single word for upward of nine years.
    And now, Your Highness, it is finally dawn.
    DUKE:
    Dawn!
    From within the loathsome night,
    from the theater
    of its nightmares, I once again
    extract and
    collect myself piece
    by piece, a monarch-mosaic:
    here is my hand
    outstretched for bread,
    and its fresh smell
    and warm body,
    but first, first
    my eye
    goes to the window,
    drawn to two birds in a puddle,
    to a dawn rising
    sanguine. Look,
    my lord, you are blessed:
    here on a platter
    is a newborn day,
    its teeth not yet emerged—
    But for a week now, far away
    on the hilltops, a man
    like an open razor blade walks
    and cuts, his head
    in the sky.
    WALKING MAN:
    And yet
    I shall move you,
    my rootless child,
    my cold,
    fruitless child.
    Every day it gets
    harder, every day you grow
    more hardened, more
    and more taxing.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: Every time the midwife leaves the room, the cobbler jumps up to the window. His eyes dart over the hills, his lips seem to chew up insults and curses. Hammer in hand.
    He notices me in his yard now, behind an empty chicken coop. He does not come out or banish me; he doesn’t even threaten me with his hammer. I carefully show him my notebook and pen. I believe I see him nod.
    MIDWIFE:
    Opposite my bed
    on the w-w-wall
    is an ancient round
    c-c-clock.
    It is old and weak,
    with hands s-s-stuck
    on the same hour
    and the same m-m-minute
    for more than a y-y-year—
    TOWN CHRONICLER: Her voice, soft and flat, comes from the next room. The cobbler moves away from the window. He walks backward. Backward? Strange: as if sleepwalking, he probes around until his back touches the wall. Both arms slowly rise on either side. His shaved red headslams against the wall to the beat of the words from the other room.
    MIDWIFE:
    And only
    the thin s-s-second
    hand keeps fluttering
    p-p-pouncing all the time
    all the time that’s
    left, all the time
    that was given,
    p-p-pounces and lurches
    back
    unw-w-wavering,
    storming
    fighting
    to pass
    to cross
    or just
    t-t- to be,
    to be one sheer full simple second no more no less
    just that, God,
    just be.
    DUKE:
    And here, in the palace,
    in the private chamber,
    a whistling kettle and steaming
    coffee. I am serene and slow
    and limp, undoubtedly:
    an exemplary duke—
    no.
    No.
    A man not-himself
    has awoken from this night—
    all hollow bones,
    hah, the gravity
    of tragedy. (You thought
    you were safe, m’lord, you thought you were
    immune. Your troops
    cover the land, a thousand hussars
    on a thousand horses, and you in
    shattered shards.) But he rises,
    he rises to his day,
    silently puts on the slough
    of his name, inwardly
    fans the dim embers, does his best
    to convince himself that he still remembers
    what it was like to
    just
    be;
    how to stare, for example,
    how to stare
? How
    does a person just stare
    innocently, how does he
    for one instant forget
    what is seared inside him
    by affliction?
    In short—
    an impostor of sorts, a sham,
    pretending to be an everyman
    whose eye
    is drawn to the open window, whose hand
    reaches simply
    for bread—
    Amid all this, I suddenly
    plummet,
    plunge,
    a mere
    shadow
    of he who walks there
    alone, of he who,
    with heavy steps,
    chisels the verdict
    on my land:
    all that is,
    all that is
    (oh, my child,
    my sweet, my lost one) —
    all that is
    will now
    echo
    what is not.
    TOWN CHRONICLER: “It’s like a murmur,” the centaur explains when I pass by his window the next evening. “A murmur, or a sort of dry rustle inside your head, and it never stops.”
    Not willingly, Your Highness, does he give his testimony. Only after I show him the royal edict with your seal and portrait does he realize that he has no choice but to collaborate.
    CENTAUR: “
Veritably
”? You need to know what’s going on with me? You’re telling me the duke could give two