第4章 The Neighbour Who Does Not Ask

Nyall Hallowfen came to the door at the ninth hour with a jar of the last of her own apples and a piece of cloth for the window that was letting in the wind, and she set the jar on the sill and she set the cloth on the table, and she did not ask the question, and she did not look at the arm. "I will make it now," Nyall said. "Then make it." "The cloth will not hold. I will make it and you will say it will not hold and I will make it again." "That is how we have done it for nineteen years." "Not this time. Not this time." She had the cloth in both hands and she was folding it, and her fingers were the same fingers that had folded it in the spring and in the autumn of every year since Avelin came to Vail Street, and they did not tremble. "You are going to sit with me while I make it." "I am going to hold the ladder." "You are going to sit on the step." "You are going to fall." "Then you will hold me and it will be a use of you I have wanted for nineteen years." Nyall went up the ladder. Avelin sat on the step and held the ladder and she did not read a single leaf of the window's frame and she did not weigh the cloth and she did not hold the Nyall in mid-air with her Reach at three feet, because she wanted, for the length of this one job, to be a person with an arm that could hold a ladder and nothing more. "Your hand is loose," Nyall said from the top. "It is not." "It is. Your hand was tight when I climbed up and it is loose now. You are letting go on purpose." "I am breathing." "Then breathe and hold the ladder." "I am holding the ladder." "Better. I can tell the difference." She put the cloth in place, and it held, and she came down the ladder, and she sat on the step with Avelin and put the jar of apples on the step between them and opened it, and they ate the apples with their fingers and the juice ran down Nyall's thumb and she did not wipe it. "Nineteen years," Nyall said. "Nineteen." "You know the number of them." "I have counted." "So have I, and I have never asked you how you were doing it." "I know." "That is not an answer." "No." "Then give me an answer." Avelin put the last of the apple in her mouth and chewed it and swallowed it, and she looked at the sky above the long street, which was going grey at the edges and blue in the middle, and she thought about the question she had been given all her life, which was *how much have you paid*, and the question she had been given since the Overdrawn, which was *how much is left*, and she thought about the fact that in nineteen years her neighbour had asked neither. "Because you never once asked me for one," Avelin said. "Not a single Hour. You asked me for a ladder. You asked me for a child from a floor. You asked me to carry your husband's box up three flights the week he died and you did not say thank you and you did not say a word and you carried your own basket down the same stair and you did not look at my arm once, and then you came next door, and in nineteen years you have asked me for eleven things and you have never asked one of them for what it cost." "That is because I never knew what it cost." "I never told you." "No. You never told me. And I am glad of it." "You are not, I think." "I am." Nyall closed the jar and put it on the step. "Because if I had known, I would have asked less, and then I would have had less, and I would have had to explain the less to my children, and my children would have gone away with an explanation in their pockets and an explanation is a heavier thing to carry than a box." Outside, on the long street, a cart was going up to the Yard and the Yard was striking its bell and the bell was one bell and not two, and Avelin looked at Nyall and thought that the second measure was moving and that it had never been spoken of in the whole of the time Nyall had lived next door. "I have eight things," Avelin said. "What?" "I have eight things I can still do, and one of them is holding a ladder." Nyall looked at her. She did not move her face. "Seven," Nyall said. "Seven." "Then hold the ladder for me for six more years." "You will not live six more years." "Neither will I, and I am going to be next to you for as many of them as the stair allows, and I am going to eat the apples, and I am going to ask you for the ladder, and you are going to hold it, and if you drop me I will say you dropped me." She got up off the step. She picked up the jar. She went in the door and she did not look back and she did not turn on the lamp, and Avelin sat on the step in the last of the light with her arm reading 1268 on a card Mabry had made and eleven hundred and seventy-four on the House's, and she held nothing, and she let the wind through the cloth Nyall had put on the window, and the cloth held, and the wind went through it all the way down the long street, and no one in Draymoor stopped to listen. ---