Cause for Wonder by Wright Morris

Author:Wright Morris [Morris, Wright]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: NA
Publisher: UNP - Nebraska
Published: 2017-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Had she hid him away? From a niche in the dark stairwell she took the stub of a candle, twisted the wick with her fingers, then cupped her plump hand over the sputtering flame. Fat as it was, it seemed transparent. A chill, damp draft blew at them from the passage they entered. Quicklime? The smell of it checked Howe’s breathing. “That ain’t changed,” said Spiegel.

“Bitte?” Frau Dulac replied. She held the candle high to get a glimpse of Spiegel, his beaming pumpkin face.

“Nothin’, ma’am,” he said, with a sheepish smile, but he remembered too late that the floor was uneven. As he tripped, he cursed. Frau Dulac and her candle had gone ahead. Light, such as there was, entered the passage beneath the doors at each end. The one ahead suddenly opened. Howe stopped, blinded by the glare. Apples and quicklime scented the air. Frau Dulac, framed in the doorway, reached to place the stub of her candle in the window to the left of her head. Spiegel was the first to stop beneath it, gazing upward. Up and up, the shaft slanted so that one sighted down a barrel. Was it by design one drew a bead on the roof of the bell tower? Shingles were missing. The gabled roof leaked the sky, light splattering on the towheaded wig of a gargoyle. The yellow thatch of hair grew down around the face. It appeared to be streaked and spattered with white, like pigeon dung. Had it been placed there to frighten off birds? Several had gathered on the roof just above it The film of sweat on Howe’s forehead suddenly cooled. He stared as if unable to move his eyes.

It was Frau Dulac who pushed him away. “Dumm- kopf!” she shrieked, putting her head forward as if the slotted window was a megaphone. The cry startled Howe, but not the towhead in the tower. Was it alive? It looked more like a rustic carving. A hand, white as if gloved, raised as if directing traffic. “Idiot! Braying ass!” Frau Dulac cried. Like a jack-in-the-box, the towhead disappeared. A moment later it was back. The white hand held a brush from which the paint was dripping, raised it overhead like a torch, then motioned as if to hurl it at them. Howe, Spiegel, and Frau Dulac ducked. A good thing. Like wind-whipped rain they heard the paint slap on the wall. Familiar as if he had heard it that morning, Howe listened to the wheezing laugh, the slap of a hand on one of his thighs. Something like a moan escaped from Frau Dulac. “Gott im Himmel!” she said, “zwei Kinder!” The way Howe rolled his eyes upward when a jet cracked the sound barrier, Frau Dulac lifted her gaze, then let it fall. If there were two children, the one in the tower seemed to have her number. His wheezy gurgle continued. They could hear the muffled clap of his hands. Frau Dulac let him be, her ear to the door they faced in the hall, eavesdropping.

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