Specimen Days

For a moment Lucas thought she meant the box that was in the earth across the river, until she looked wistfully down at her lap. She meant the music box.

He said, "Simon isn't there, Mother."

She lifted the box in both hands and held it out to him. "You listen," she said. "Listen to what he says."

"You haven't wound it." "Listen," she said again.

Lucas turned the crank. The small music started up from within the box. It was "Oh, Breathe Not His Name."

"There he is," Mother said. "Do you hear him now?"

"It's only the music, Mother."

"Oh, sweet child, ye don't know, do ye?"

Lucas was all but overcome by a weariness that struck him like fever. He wanted only to sleep. The music box, playing its little tune, felt impossibly heavy. He thought he would sink to the floor and lie there, curled up like a dog, so fast asleep that no one and nothing could wake him.

He was responsible for the music box, because he had so wanted the horse on wheels. He'd lost himself, contemplating it. The horse was white. Where must it be now? It was long gone from Niedermeyer's window. It looked steadily forward with round black eyes. Its face bore an expression of stately gravity. Its wheels were red. He'd gazed at it every day, until one afternoon, passing Niedermeyer's with his mother, he gave over to his desire for the horse as he gave himself over to the book, and wept like a lover. His mother had put her arm tenderly over his shoulders; she'd held him close. They'd stood there together as they might on a train platform, watching a locomotive bear its travelers away. Lucas's mother had stood patiently with him, holding him as he wept for the horse. The next day she'd gone out and bought the music box, an extravagance his father said would be the ruin of them. His mother had laughed bitterly, told him he was miserly and fearful, insisted that they needed music, they deserved a bit of cheer every now and then, and a music box would not spell the end of the world no matter what it cost. Later, Father turned to leather, and the machine took Simon, and Mother went into her room.

Lucas said, "It's only music, Mother."

"I know what he's saying now. I know the language he speaks."

"You should go back to sleep," Lucas told her. "I'm going to put the music box in the parlor for a while."

"He's all alone in a strange land."

"I must go. I can't be late for work."

"We brung him here from Dingle. It's only right we should go to him where he is now."

"Goodbye, Mother. I'm off."

"Farewell."

"Farewell."

He left the bedroom and put the music box on the parlor table, where his father still sat, awaiting breakfast. "Goodbye, Father," he said.

His father nodded. He had acquired an infinite patience. He would come to table at the appointed hours, eat if food was offered him, not eat if food was not.

At the works, Lucas had to struggle to pay proper attention. His mind wanted to wander. He aligned a plate, pulled the lever, and then was at the back of the machine, inspecting the impressions, with no memory of having gotten there. It was dangerous, a dangerous condition to bring to the machine, and yet he could not seem to do otherwise. Trying to think only of his work align, clamp, pull, pull again, inspect was like trying to remain awake when sleep was overwhelming. Inattention took him like dreams.

To steady himself he set his mind to the whisper in the machine. He listened carefully. It might have been the squeak of an unoiled bearing, but it sounded more like a voice, a tiny voice, though its words were indistinguishable. It had the rhythm of a voice, the rise and fall and rise again suggesting intention rather than accident, the tone implying a certain urgency more human than mechanical, as if the sound were being made by some entity struggling to be heard. Lucas knew well enough what it was to speak a language no one understood.

He fed it another plate and another and another.

The nature of the machine's song didn't disclose itself until afternoon. The song wasn't sung in language, not in a language Lucas recognized, but gradually, over time, the song began making itself clear, even though its words remained obscure.

It was Simon's voice.

Could it be? Lucas listened more carefully. Simon's voice had been deep and raucous. He had sung not well but with bravado, with the rampant soaring tunelessness of someone who cared less about sounding beautiful than about creating a sound big enough to reach the sky. This seemed, in fact, to be Simon's voice, rendered mechanical. It had that reckless, unapologetic atonality.

The song was familiar. Lucas had heard it elsewhere, at a time and place that hovered on the outer edge of memory. It was a song of melancholy and yearning, a sad song, full of loneliness and a thread of hope. It was one of the old ballads. Simon had known hundreds of them.