A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

Taking a deep breath, shutting his eyes, the American named McGuire turned the key in the switch and stepped on the starter.

The Little Mice

“They’re very odd,” I said. “The little Mexican couple.”

“How do you mean?” asked my wife.

“Never a sound,” I said. “Listen.”

Ours was a house deep back in among tenements, to which another half house had been added. When my wife and I purchased the house, we rented the additional quarters which lay walled up against one side of our parlor. Now, listening at this particular wall, we heard our hearts beat.

“I know they’re home,” I whispered. “But in the three years they’ve lived here I’ve never heard a dropped pan, a spoken word, or the sound of a light switch. Good God, what are they doing in there?”

“I’d never thought,” said my wife. “It is peculiar.”

“Only one light on, that same dim little blue twenty-five-watt bulb they burn in their parlor. If you walk by and peer in their front door, there he is, sitting in his armchair, not saying a word, his hands in his lap. There she is, sitting in the other armchair, looking at him, saying nothing. They don’t move.”

“At first glance I always think they’re not home,” said my wife. “Their parlor’s so dark. But if you stare long enough, your eyes get used to it and you can make them out, sitting there.”

“Some day,” I said, “I’m going to run in, turn on their lights, and yell! My God, if I can’t stand their silence, how can they? They can talk, can’t they?”

“When he pays the rent each month, he says hello.”

“What else?”

“Good-by.”

I shook my head. “When we meet in the alley he smiles and runs.”

My wife and I sat down for an evening of reading, the radio, and talk. “Do they have a radio?”

“No radio, television, telephone. Not a book, magazine, or paper in their house.”

“Ridiculous!”

“Don’t get so excited.”

“I know, but you can’t sit in a dark room two or three years and not speak, not listen to a radio, not read or even eat, can you? I’ve never smelled a steak or an egg frying. Damn it, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard them go to bed!”

“They’re doing it to mystify us, dear.”

“They’re succeeding!”

I went for a walk around the block. It was a nice summer evening. Returning, I glanced idly in their front door. The dark silence was there, and the heavy shapes, sitting, and the little blue light burning. I stood a long time, finishing my cigarette. It was only in turning to go that I saw him in the doorway, looking out with his bland, plump face. He didn’t move. He just stood there, watching me.

“Evening,” I said.

Silence. After a moment, he turned, moving away into the dark room.

In the morning, the little Mexican left the house at seven o’clock, alone, hurrying down the alley, observing the same silence he kept in his rooms. She followed at eight o’clock, walking carefully, all lumpy under her dark coat, a black hat balanced on her frizzy, beauty-parlor hair. They had gone to work this way, remote and silent, for years.

“Where do they work?” I asked at breakfast.

“He’s a blast-furnace man at U.S. Steel here. She sews in a dress loft somewhere.”

“That’s hard work.”

I typed a few pages of my novel, read, idled; typed some more. At five in the afternoon I saw the little Mexican woman come home, unlock her door, hurry inside, hook the screen, and lock the door tight.