The Great Automatic Grammatizator 15 страница
"There's another thing about yews," Sir Basil said. "In the early summer when the young shoots come out… " At that moment he paused and sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward, and I could sense his whole body suddenly stiffening.
"Yes," I said, "when the young shoots come out?"
The man had taken the photograph, but the woman still had her head through the hole, and now I saw him put both hands (as well as the camera) behind his back and advance towards her. Then he bent forward so his face was close to hers, touching it, and he held it there while he gave her, I suppose, a few kisses or something like that. In the stillness that followed, I fancied I heard a faint faraway tinkle of female laughter coming to us through the sunlight across the garden.
"Shall we go back to the house?" I asked.
"Back to the house?"
"Yes, shall we go back and have a drink before lunch?"
"A drink? Yes, we'll have a drink." But he didn't move. He sat very still, gone far away from me now, staring intently at the two figures. I also was staring at them. I couldn't take my eyes away; I had to look. It was like seeing a dangerous little ballet in miniature from a great distance, and you knew the dancers and the music but not the end of the story, not the choreography, nor what they were going to do next, and you were fascinated, and you had to look.
"Gaudier Brzeska," I said. "How great do you think he might've become if he hadn't died so young?"
"Who?"
"Gaudier Brzeska."
"Yes," he said. "Of course."
I noticed now that something queer was happening. The woman still had her head through the hole, but she was beginning to wriggle her body from side to side in a slow unusual manner, and the man was standing motionless, a pace or so away watching her. He seemed suddenly uneasy the way he stood there, and I could tell by the drop of the head and by the stiff intent set of the body that there was no laughter in him any more. For a while he remained still, then I saw him place his camera on the ground and go forward to the woman, taking her head in his hands; and all at once it was more like a puppet show than a ballet, with tiny wooden figures performing tiny, jerky movements, crazy and unreal, on a faraway sunlit stage. We sat quietly together on the white bench, and we watched while the tiny puppet man began to manipulate the woman's head with his hands. He was doing it gently, there was no doubt about that, slowly and gently, stepping back every now and then to think about it some more, and several times crouching down to survey the situation from another angle. Whenever he left her alone the woman would start to wriggle her body, and the peculiar way she did it reminded me of a dog that feels a collar round its neck for the first time.
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"She's stuck," Sir Basil said.
And now the man was walking to the other side of the carving, the side where the woman's body was, and he put out his hands and began trying to do something with her neck. Then, as though suddenly exasperated, he gave the neck two or three jerky pulls, and this time the sound of a woman's voice, raised high in anger, or pain, or both, came back to us small and clear through the sunlight.
Out of the corner of one eye I could see Sir Basil nodding his head quietly up and down. "I got my fist caught in a jar of boiled sweets once," he said, "and I couldn't get it out."
The man retreated a few yards, and was standing with hands on hips, head up, looking furious and sullen. The woman, from her uncomfortable position, appeared to be talking to him, or rather shouting at him, and although the body itself was pretty firmly fixed and could only wriggle, the legs were free and did a good deal of moving and stamping. "I broke the jar with a hammer and told my mother I'd knocked it off the shelf by mistake." He seemed calmer now, not tense at all, although his voice was curiously flat. "I suppose we'd better go down and see if we can help."
"Perhaps we should."
But still he didn't move. He took out a cigarette and lit it, putting the used match carefully back in the box.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Will you have one?"
"Thanks, I think I will." He made a little ceremony of giving me the cigarette and lighting it for me, and again he put the used match back in the box. Then we got up and walked slowly down the grass slope.
We came upon them silently, through an archway in the yew hedge, and it was naturally quite a surprise.
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"What's the matter here?" Sir Basil asked. He spoke softly, with a dangerous softness that I'm sure his wife had never heard before.
"She's gone and put her head through the hole and now she can't get it out," Major Haddock said. "Just for a lark, you know."
"For a what?"
"Basil!" Lady Turton shouted, "Don't be such a damn fool! Do something, can't you!" She may not have been able to move much, but she could still talk.
"Pretty obvious we're going to have to break up this lump of wood," the Major said. There was a small smudge of red on his grey moustache, and this, like the single extra touch of colour that ruins a perfect painting, managed somehow to destroy all his manly looks. It made him comic.
"You mean break the Henry Moore?"
"My dear sir, there is no other way of setting the lady free. God knows how she managed to squeeze it in, but I know for a fact that she can't pull it out. It's the ears get in the way."
"Oh dear," Sir Basil said. "What a terrible pity. My beautiful Henry Moore."
At this stage Lady Turton began abusing her husband in a most unpleasant manner, and there's no knowing how long it would have gone on had not Jeiks suddenly appeared out of the shadows. He came sidling silently on to the lawn and stationed himself at a respectful distance from Sir Basil, as though awaiting instructions. His black clothes looked perfectly ridiculous in the morning sunlight, and with his ancient pink‑white face and white hands he was like some small crabby animal that has lived all its life in a hole under the ground.
"Is there anything I can do, Sir Basil?" He kept his voice level, but I didn't think his face was quite straight. When he looked at Lady Turton there was a little exulting glimmer in his eyes.
"Yes Jelks, there is. Go back and get me a saw or something so I can cut out this section of wood."
"Shall I call one of the men, Sir Basil? William is a good carpenter."
"No, I'll do it myself. Just get the tools and hurry."
While they were waiting for Jelks, I strolled away because I didn't want to hear any more of the things that Lady Turton was saying to her husband. But I was back in time to see the butler returning, followed now by the other woman, Carmen La Rosa, who made a rush for the hostess.
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"Nata‑Ji‑a! My dear Nata‑li‑a! What have they done to you?"
"Oh shut up," the hostess said. "And get out of the way, will you."
Sir Basil took up a position close to his lady's head, waiting for Jelks. Jeiks advanced slowly, carrying a saw in one hand, an axe in the other, and he stopped maybe a yard away. Then he held out both implements in front of him so his master could choose, and there was a brief moment–no more than two or three seconds–of silence, and of waiting, and it just happened that I was watching Jelks at this time. I saw the hand that was carrying the axe come forward an extra fraction of an inch towards Sir Basil. It was so slight a movement it was barely noticeable–a tiny pushing forward of the hand, slow and secret, a little offer, a little coaxing offer that was accompanied perhaps by an infinitesimal lift of the eyebrow.
I'm not sure whether Sir Basil saw it, but be hesitated, and again the hand that held the axe came edging forward, and it was almost exactly like that card trick where the man says 'Take one, whichever one you want,' and you always get the one he means you to have. Sir Basil got the axe. I saw him reach out in a dreamy sort of way, accepting it from Jeiks, and then, the instant he felt the handle in his grasp he seemed to realize what was required of him and he sprang to life.
For me, after that, it was like the awful moment when you see a child running out into the road and a car is coming and all you can do is shut your eyes tight and wait until the noise tells you it has happened. The moment of waiting becomes a long lucid period of time with yellow and red spots dancing on a black field, and even if you open your eyes again and find that nobody has been killed or hurt, it makes no difference because so far as you and your stomach were concerned you saw it all.
I saw this one all right, every detail of it, and I didn't open my eyes again until I heard Sir Basil's voice, even softer than usual, calling in gentle protest to the butler.
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"Jeiks," he was saying, and I looked and saw him standing there as calm as you please, still holding the axe. Lady Turton's head was there too, still sticking through the hole, but her face had turned a terrible ashy grey, and the mouth was opening and shutting making a kind of gurgling sound.
"Look here, Jeiks," Sir Basil was saying. "What on earth are you thinking about. This thing's much too dangerous. Give me the saw." And as he exchanged implements I noticed for the first time two little warm roses of colour appearing on his cheeks, and above them, all around the corners of his eyes, the twinkling tiny wrinkles of a smile.
The Sound Machine
IT was a warm summer evening and Klausner walked quickly through the front gate and around the side of the house and into the garden at the back. He went on down the garden until he came to a wooden shed and he unlocked the door, went inside and closed the door behind him.
The interior of the shed was an unpainted room. Against one wall, on the left, there was a long wooden workbench, and on it, among a littering of wires and batteries and small sharp tools, there stood a black box about three feet long, the shape of a child's coffin.
Klausner moved across the room to the box. The top of the box was open, and he bent down and began to poke and peer inside it among a mass of different‑coloured wires and silver tubes. He picked up a piece of paper that lay beside the box, studied it carefully, put it down, peered inside the box and started running his fingers along the wires, tugging gently at them to test the connections, glancing back at the paper, then into the box, then at the paper again, checking each wire. He did this for perhaps an hour.
Then he put a hand around to the front of the box where there were three dials, and he began to twiddle them, watching at the same time the movement of the mechanism inside the box. All the while he kept speaking softly to himself, nodding his head, smiling sometimes, his hands always moving, the fingers moving swiftly, deftly, inside the box, his mouth twisting into curious shapes when a thing was delicate or difficult to do, saying, "Yes… Yes… And now this one… Yes… Yes. But is this right? Is it–where's my diagram?… Ah, yes… Of course… Yes, yes… That's right… And now… Good… Good… Yes Yes, yes, yes." His concentration was intense; his movements were quick; there was an air of urgency about the way he worked, of breathlessness, of strong suppressed excitement.
Suddenly he heard footsteps on the gravel path outside and he straightened and turned swiftly as the door opened and a tall man came in. It was Scott. It was only Scott, the doctor.
"Well, well, well," the Doctor said. "So this is where you hide yourself in the evenings."
"Hullo, Scott," Klausner said.
"I happened to be passing," the Doctor told him, "so I dropped in to see how you were. There was no one in the house, so I came on down here. How's that throat of yours been behaving?"
"It's all right. It's fine."
"Now I'm here I might as well have a look at it."
"Please don't trouble. I'm quite cured. I'm fine."
The Doctor began to feel the tension in the room. He looked at the black box on the bench; then he looked at the man. "You've got your hat on)" he said. "Oh, have I?" Klausner reached up, removed the hat and put it on the bench.
The Doctor came up closer and bent down to look into the box. "What's this?" he said. "Making a radio?"
"No, just fooling around."
"It's got rather complicated looking innards."
"Yes." Klausner seemed tense and distracted.
"What is it?" the Doctor asked. "It's rather a frightening‑looking thing, isn't it?"
"It's just an idea."
"Yes?"
"It has to do with sound, that's all."
"Good heavens, man! Don't you get enough of that sort of thing all day in your work?"
"I like sound."
"So it seems." The Doctor went to the door, turned, and said, "Well, I won't disturb you. Glad your throat's not worrying you any more." But he kept standing there looking at the box, intrigued by the remarkable complexity of its inside, curious to know what this strange patient of his was up to. "What's it really for?" he asked. "You've made me inquisitive."
Klausner looked down at the box, then at the Doctor, and he reached up and began gently to scratch the lobe of his right ear. There was a pause. The Doctor stood by the door, waiting, smiling.
"All right, I'll tell you, if you're interested." There was another pause, and the Doctor could see that Klausner was having trouble about how to begin.
He was shifting from one foot to the other, tugging at the lobe of his ear, looking at his feet, and then at last, slowly, he said. "Well, it's like this… the theory is very simple really. The human ear… you know that it can't hear everything. There are sounds that are so low‑pitched or so high‑pitched that it can't hear them."
"Yes," the Doctor said. "Yes."
"Well, speaking very roughly any note so high that it has more than fifteen thousand. vibrations a second–we can't hear it. Dogs have better ears than us. You know you can buy a whistle whose note is so high‑pitched that you can't hear it at all. But a dog can hear it."
"Yes, I've seen one," the Doctor said.
"Of course you have. And up the scale, higher than the note of that whistle, there is another note–a vibration if you like, but I prefer to think of it as a note. You can't hear that one either. And above that there is another and another rising right up the scale for ever and ever and ever, an endless succession of notes an infinity of notes… there is a note–if only our ears could hear it–so high that it vibrates a million times a second… and another a million times as high as that… and on and on, higher and higher, as far as numbers go, which is… infinity… eternity… beyond the stars."
Klausner was becoming more animated every Moment. He was a frail man, nervous and twitchy, with always moving hands. His large head inclined towards his left shoulder as though his neck were not quite strong enough to support it rigidly. His face was smooth and pale, almost white, and the pale‑grey eyes that blinked and peered from behind a pair of steel spectacles were bewildered, unfocused, remote. He was a frail, nervous, twitchy little man, a moth of a man, dreamy and distracted; suddenly fluttering and animated; and now the Doctor, looking at that strange pale face and those pale‑grey eyes, felt that somehow there was about this little person a quality of distance, of immense immeasurable distance, as though the mind were far away from where the body was.
The Doctor waited for him to go on. Klausner sighed and clasped his hands tightly together. "I believe," he said, speaking more slowly now, "that there is a whole world of sound about us all the time that we cannot hear. It is possible that up there in those high‑pitched inaudible regions there is a new exciting music being made, with subtle harmonies and fierce grinding discords, a music so powerful that it would drive us mad if only our ears were tuned to hear the sound of it. There may be anything… for all we know there may–" "Yes," the Doctor said. "But it's not very probable."
"Why not? Why not?" Klausner pointed to a fly sitting on a small roll of copper wire on the workbench. "You see that fly? What sort of noise is that fly making now? None–that one can hear. But for all we know the creature may be whistling like mad on a very high note, or barking or croaking or singing a song. It's got a mouth, hasn't it? It's got a throat?" The Doctor looked at the fly and he smiled. He was still standing by the door with his hands on the doorknob. "Well," he said. "So you're going to check up on that?"
,, Some time ago," Klausner said, "I made a simple instrument that proved to me the existence of many odd inaudible sounds. Often I have sat and watched the needle of my instrument recording the presence of sound vibrations in the air when I myself could hear nothing. And those are the sounds I want to listen to. I want to know where they come from and who or what is making them."
"And that machine on the table there," the Doctor said, "is that going to allow you to hear these noises?"
"It may. Who knows? So far, I've had no luck. But I've made some changes in it and tonight I'm ready for another trial. This machine," he said, touching it with his hands, "is designed to pick up sound vibrations that are too highpitched for reception by the human ear, and to convert them to a scale of audible tones. I tune it in, almost like a radio."
"How d'you mean?"
"It isn't complicated. Say I wish to listen to the squeak of a bat. That's a fairly high‑pitched sound–about thirty thousand vibrations a second The average human ear can't quite hear it. Now, if there were a bat flying around this room and I tuned in to thirty thousand on my machine, I would hear the squeaking of that bat very clearly. I would even hear the correct note F sharp, or B flat, or whatever it might be–but merely at a much lower pitch. Don't you understand?"
The Doctor looked at the long, black coffinbox. "And you're going to try it tonight?"
"Yes."
"Well, I wish you luck." He glanced at his watch. "My goodness!" he said. "I must fly. Good‑bye, and thank you for telling me. I must call again sometime and find out what happened." The Doctor went out and closed the door behind him.
For a while longer, Klausner fussed about with the wires in the black box; then he straightened up and in a soft excited whisper said, "Now we'll try again… We'll take it out into the garden this time… and then perhaps perhaps… the reception will be better. Lift it up now… carefully… Oh, my God, it's heavy!" He carried the box to the door, found that he couldn't open the door without putting it down, carried it back, put it on the bench, opened the door, and then carried it with some difficulty into the garden. He placed the box carefully on a small wooden table that stood on the lawn. He returned to the shed and fetched a pair of earphones. He plugged the wire connections from the earphones into the machine and put the earphones over his ears. The movements of his hands were quick and precise. He was excited, and breathed loudly and quickly through his mouth. He kept on talking to himself with little words of comfort and encouragement, as though he were afraid–afraid that the machine might not work and afraid also of what might happen if it did.
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