‘You will. Here we are,’ said the father.
They had stopped at the closed door of a large cabin. The father tapped three times and then twice, in a code. The door opened and the light in the cabin went out and there was a whisper of voices.
‘Go on in, son,’ said the father.
‘It’s dark.’
‘I’ll hold your hand. Come on, mama.’
They stepped into the room and the door shut, and the room was very dark indeed. And before them loomed a great glass eye, the porthole, a window four feet high and six feet wide, from which they could look out into space.
The boy gasped.
Behind him, the father and the mother gasped with him, and then in the dark room some people began to sing.
‘Merry Christmas, son,’ said the father.
And the voices in the room sang the old, the familiar carols, and the boy moved forward slowly until his face was pressed against the cool glass of the port. And he stood there for a long long time, just looking and looking out into space and the deep night at the burning and the burning of ten billion billion white and lovely candles….
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 quarter which lay walled up against one side of our parlour. 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 25-watt bulb they burn in the parlour. 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 parlour’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-bye.’
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.’