Tightrope Walker Read Free

guess I was murdered. Why did I sign that paper last night? I was so hungry and tired but this morning I knew I should never have signed it. Whatever it was it was my death warrant.
    But to die so strangely, a prisoner in my own house! WHY HASN’T SOMEONE COME? What have these two clever faceless ones told Nora, or even Robin, to explain my silence? Never mind, what has to be faced now is Death. Perhaps I could hide these words somewhere in a different place in the hope that one day someone will find them—that would make Death less lonely. And so—should anyone ever find this—my name is Hannah.…
    The last letter collapsed under my eyes, the
h
ending in a long shaken stroke that dropped several inches below the line, as if the pen had slipped, as if a voice had been heard, or a step approaching.… I pictured this unknown Hannah trembling—as I was trembling now—folding up this paper, holding it a moment, wide-eyed as she looked around a room for a hiding-place, and then the quick move to the hurdy-gurdy with itsloose back panel, and the slipping of it through the crack.
    What kind of person would own a hurdy-gurdy? The paper on which the words were written was faded but it was the kind of cheap yellow paper you can buy in any stationery store, a ream of it for two or three dollars, called “seconds.” Cheap yellow fades fast, so that didn’t mean a great deal. The handwriting looked sensible, and it was certainly legible, even if the words ran together a little toward the end. There was that paragraph, too; I didn’t think I would have bothered with a paragraph if I knew I was going to be murdered any minute. The handwriting was a little small but not cramped. What kind of person was this? I wanted to know. My wanting was so strong it astonished me.
    Sometimes when I’m in a certain mood I’ve looked at life from a great distance, like peering at it through the small end of a pair of binoculars, and I wonder about it. The whole business seems very strange to me, just one shot at threescore years and ten, and for what? I mean, there has to be a reason for being here; even no reason is a reason. One of Amman Singh’s stories is that we’re on this planet because there are gods and demons in the universe who are numb to feeling, and so they send us here to watch our antics and feel violence through us, vicariously, because it’s violence that feeds them and keeps them alive. And the only way to escape being “eaten,” as he calls it, is to study violent emotions, detach oneself from them, and so cheat the gods and demons. Well, why not? People do seem to make such a botch of living: killing and squabbling and rejecting and hating, as if life’s some kind of toy to play with or destroy. Somehow we all end up victims, and the horror of it is that we’re victims of each other.
    And now I was meeting another victim.
    What kind of paper had they wanted her to sign?
    She couldn’t still be alive. The hurdy-gurdy had been mine for several weeks and before that it had belonged to Mr. Georgerakis.
    This woman didn’t know me, and I didn’t know her, but she must have gone to her death thinking about me, taking comfort from the thought that she had left these words behind her and that someone would find them. It said so right here: “that would make Death less lonely.” She wouldn’t mean death itself, she would mean those frightening moments just before it happens, when a person feels nakedly alone and unknowing. She must have clung to the thought of me then as one last final hope, a small candle flame in her midnight.
    How had they kidded her, these people she called the clever faceless ones? Had they really managed her death so that no one knew she’d been murdered?
    Would that be possible?
    I placed the piece of yellow paper on the table and walked into the kitchen and poured water into a pan and measured instant coffee into a mug. I felt really shaken, finding a thing like that in the hurdy-gurdy. The