The Curfew by Jesse Ball Read Free Book Online

father worry. You do not do anything to make him worry, do you? No, I thought not. I thought not. Well, would you like something to eat? Come with me.

THE CURFEW
    had been in place both when the police could be seen and now when they were unseen. One could not be about in the nighttime past a certain hour. What hour that was many could not say. They simply stayed put in their houses and waited for the morning. There were others who went about secretly, skulking. Were some caught? Yes, and never seen again. The consensus was this: on a clear night, the point at which the moon becomes clear against the night sky—from this point on you were to be indoors. On a cloudy night, there was perhaps less latitude.
    The government’s official word on the matter was nonexistent. There was no curfew. There was simply the declaration, GOOD CITIZENS PASS THEIR NIGHTS ABED .

In the street, the lamplight made avenues beyond the door and paths within the walks beneath the trees.
    William walked there and he thought of Louisa, and of the plans they had made. What does dying do to plans one makes with one’s beloved? It is the advent of lost causes, of pointless journeys, empty rooms, quiet hours. He said this to himself, and he felt it was not right. It was true, but not right. We were to have a house ringed about by trees in the country, and we were to live there with no one nearby, and raise a daughter.
    He had never seen Louisa dead. She had been removed, taken from the street. Her father had been a politician. He had always guessed that was the reason.
    All his inquiries to find her had met with no success. Louisa Drysdale? We have no record of a Louisa Drysdale.
    The day she disappeared it seemed impossible. He walked up and down in the house. He sat in the stairwell. He went down to the street and up again. He turned on the stove and turned it off. Finally, it happened that he was asleep, and then it was the morning and he woke and at first thought it was a dream, but it was not, and then he was looking for her again, but there was nowhere to look, and all the while he was terrified of trying too hard, of pushing too hard, and of being taken away himself and leaving Molly with no one. So, there had been days of waiting, expecting that she would return at any moment. But Louisa had not returned.

There was a redness on the right.
    He came closer.
    A building was on fire. Men were running out of it. It was a police station, it must be. The police no longer wore uniforms, but one could tell who they were, and whenever they stayed for a while in a single building, it was assumed that that building was a police station, and then someone set fire to it.
    One could assume, therefore, that if a building was on fire then it might well be a police station.

One thinks of the age when people died in winter, often, for no reason—or when children simply passed away without explanation or grief.
    But is it true? Were they so hard who placed those small bodies in the earth? It is disputed—and though one may say, all is the same and relative, yet still clearly, there are some who are followed in the street by vengeful anger, a clothing they may never remove.
    I said—life begins for some when it ends for others and in another century I might have died an infant. What sort of riddle is it to suppose the grief my death would have entailed? Is it not on the ground over that very grave that my life proceeds?

—We tire differently if we love or love not. I was never tired when playing violin. I became exhausted. I fainted occasionally from practicing without eating and drinking. But I was never tired. Now I am almost always tired.
    But he wasn’t tired then, was he? No, not at all. He was a bit nervous. He was talking to himself. He passed a few streets, and found the right one.
    There were lights on in the windows of the houses. He was in a neighborhood he hadn’t been to before. It was all brick, lane houses and the like. No one was in the