I finished writing up that day』s notes. All dozen pencils were blunt now; I had some serious sharpening to do. One by one, I ied the lead ends into the sharpener. If you turn the handle slowly and evenly you sometimes get the coil of lead-edged wood to twist and dangle in a single drop all the way to the paper bin, but tonight I was tired, and they kept breaking uheir ow.
I thought about the story. I had warmed to the Missus and John-the-dig. Charlie and Isabelle made me nervous. The doctor and his wife had the best of motives, but I suspected their intervention in the lives of the twins would e to no good.
The twins themselves puzzled me. I knew what other people thought of them. John-the-dig thought they couldn』t speak properly; the Missus believed they didn』t uand other people were alive; the villagers thought they were wrong in the head. What I didn』t know— and this was more than curious—was what the storyteller thought. In telliale, Miss Winter was like the light that illuminates everything but itself. She was the disappearing point at the heart of the narrative. She spoke of they; more retly she had spoken of we; the absehat perplexed me was I. What could it be that had caused her to distance herself from her story in this way?
If I were to ask her about it, I knew what she would say. 「Miss Lea, we made an agreement.」 Already I had asked her questions about one or two details of the story, and though from time to time she would answer, when she didn』t want to, she would remind me of our first meeting. 「No cheating. No looking ahead. No questions.」
I reciled myself to remaining curious for a long time, a, as it happened, something happehat very evening that cast a certain illumination oter.
I had tidied my desk and was setting about my pag when there came a tap on my door. I ope to find Judith in the corridor.
『Miss Winter wonders whether you have time to see her for a moment.「
This was Judith』s polite translation of a more abrupt Fetch Miss Lea, I was in no doubt.
I finished folding a blouse a down to the library.
Miss Winter was seated in her usual position and the fire was blazing, but otherwise the room was in darkness.
『Would you like me to put some lights on?「 I asked from the doorway.
『No.「 Her answer came distantly to my ears, and so I walked down the aisle toward her. The shutters were open, and the dark sky, pricked all over with stars, was reflected in the mirrors.
When I arrived beside her, the dang light from the fire showed me that Miss Winter was distracted. In silence I sat in my place, lulled by the warmth of the fire, staring into the night sky reflected in the library mirrors. A quarter of an hour passed while she ruminated, and I waited.
Then she spoke.
『Have you ever seen that picture of Dis in his study? It』s by a man called Buss, I believe. I』ve a reprodu of it somewhere, I』ll look it out for you. Anyway, in the picture, he has pushed his chair back from his desk and is drowsing, eyes closed, bearded o. He is wearing his slippers. Around his head, characters from his books are drifting in the air like cigar smoke; some throng above the papers on the desk, others have drifted behind him, or floated downward as though they believe themselves capable of walking on their own two feet on the floor. And why not? They are presented with the same firm lines as the writer himself, so why should they not be as real as him? They ar