The Silent Father
(on the Jacquet-Droz automata)
All Henri's father ever said was,
, -
, ...
which wasn't so unusual, because they could not speak his language at table. And this wasn't so unusual, because he only saw his father at table. They would sit at opposite ends, his father and he, of a table of quite some length, of sturdy mahogany, into whose polished depths Henri could gaze when the air grew silent. Which it often did.
The cave was just behind them at this time, but they didn't concern themselves with that, not Henri, nor his mother, nor his father. It was like any other frame people find themselves sitting within. Life has its edges. They may well have been at the edge of a cave.
Henri would have liked to preface many of the things he said at table with "Father”:
"Father, I cannot bear the way the rain pounds on the roof when I'm trying to read”;
"Father, I still can't seem to get the hang of that move in chess”;
"Father, today I thought about how all worries stem from our consciousness of life's having an ending”;
but he knew there was little point in forming such statements into an address. Besides, no sooner had he made one of these headless observations than an answer to them came fully formed into his mind, and he felt he need not have wasted breath. The rain is necessary to make the flowers; the chess move can be easily carried off, like so; all human thought, not just worries, can be traced to consciousness of an eventual ending, we have known this for centuries. Then his mother would nod, as if she'd heard all these thoughts in her head, too, and that was an end to the matter.
how long until how far how many
how the distance draws on how long how far away
Could it be that his father meant for him to understand that the rain on his roof, the rain that made the flowers, was of much greater importance than his reading, which made nothing spring up but questions? Henri was not the centre of the world and the world did not emanate from his every thought; he knew that. Impossible to think he was, when here sat his mother in the centre, the middle of this sturdy mahogany table of quite some length, and his father opposite. It was something young boys had to realise, that they were not all of the world in themselves. Henri was fortunate in seeing his position quite clearly.
how long how far
diagonal hexagonal dodecagonal
strokes brush and
fifteen
and and
"Are you finding it cold, my little Henri?”
"No, Mother.”
"If there is a draft, I can -”
It was nothing out of the ordinary, to feel this way.
Toutou mon Toutou mon Toutou
wings butterfly by drawn
motion in arrow and bow Cupid's
toutou
"Your father has had a busy day.”
"Yes, Mother.”
The hand raises; an ending hangs in the balance. It goes down as easily as it came up; he is free to get down from the table.
Henri only saw his father at table. During the days, when his father was busy at his work, Henri went to school, in the usual way, and drew pictures, as boys do, of centurions in chariots pulled by mythical forces, of rulers draped in jewels and quiet command, of battles waged on the brink of cavernous gorges and soldiers succumbing to their depths.
"We'll make a draughtsman of you yet,” said his mother, securing the picture with a pin on the wall of the corridor outside the dining-room.
"Father,” Henri didn't say, "what is a draughtsman?”
Henri's father didn't raise his hand.
The cave didn't seem as far away as before. Something – they, or it – had grown closer.
The next day, at table, Henri stared through the silent air at his father's hands as if he had never really seen them before. They grasped very properly a fork, on the left, and a knife, on the right, quite sharp. It didn't feel dangerous to see his father wielding a knife like this because Henri knew that he knew just how to use it, with careful precision, to slice the meat on his plate into thin strips, then push each one onto his fork. This was when his father would open his mouth. This was how Henri had learned to use a knife and fork.
"Father,” Henri didn't say, but then he did say: "hands are made of bone and muscle and skin.”
His mother nodded.
He continued, answering the next question in his mind: "Hands are useful for eating at table, but you can also use them for work.”
It went without saying that work was different to the things one did at table; he knew that. That was why he saw his father at table and not during the day.
"When people say they've been worked to the bone, it is because they've been working with their hands and hands are made of bone, as well as muscles and skin.”
sentence phrase word letter character digit
paper across ink
"When people work with their hands they usually make something which is real.”
"And what is real, little Henri?” asked his mother.
"Real, like this table,” Henri replied, and then he thought some more, and said: "This table will probably last a long time. But you can make things with your hands which are not real which still last a long time. Hands are useful for writing.”
His mother nodded, as a knife screeched across a plate. It was no cause for alarm; sometimes patterns could deviate, precision could slip. All the same, Henri looked over at his father's plate, where the knife was lying sideways, the right hand lolling at the edge of the plate.
"Tomorrow at school, we are going to read a very old book written by someone who isn't alive now. The teacher says I can read it to the class because I'm so marvellous at reading.”
mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux
"It all comes so naturally to you, my little one,” said his mother with a smile. "Your father gave you that. It's him you have to thank.”
Still, no words were to be said directly; he knew that. The air was still, across the table, because there was his work to think of, the following morning, something, somewhere. He was not to be disturbed. It wasn't so unusual to carry silence around. It was more unusual not to be silent, to burst out with uncontrollable words, as if something inside had stopped working properly.
mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux
Like so. The next day, Henri decided there was no reason he shouldn't sit on this side of the table, perhaps feeling this way because at school everyone had said how marvellous he was at reading. He could write too, just the same word over and over, to practise the letters, but it was a start.
There was no spoken or written reason that he shouldn't sit on this side of the table.
He wasn't opposite to his father any more.
Mon Toutou Louis Cupid scratch
mervéilleux mervéilleux mervéilleux scratch
item, organ console manual keyboard sixty-one pedal board thirty-two pipes stops stop
great swell
great swell mervéilleux
how many are how loud soft
how the distance draws breath
At this proximity to his father, Henri could see the pattern of veins on his hands like rivulets under the skin.
"Father,” he didn't say, "hands are also made of blood.”
At this proximity to his father, Henri could see the rise and fall of these hands on their journeys to and from the plate, like his own, falling into a rhythm with his breathing, like so, like so. Could it be that his father meant for him to understand that it was necessary to take one's time over certain things? People worry about time because they think it is something they won't be given back; he knew that. They worry about taking so much of it that they come to the end and find that it has all gone to waste.
That wasn't so unusual. That was why some people did things again and again; it felt like time coming back. At this table, every other dinner-time came back. All until this one, when Henri sat beside his father and watched the rise and fall of his hands like breathing.
Toutou mon Toutou mon Cupid mon Louis
how many times
Father yes son
how long
Henri raised his hand, like so, and reached out, like so, and it met his father's in mid-air. He grasped it, very properly, and set both hands down on the sturdy mahogany table.
His father's mouth opened, in the usual way. At once, the air hummed, as it never had before, with a new kind of sound, whose rise and fall was like breathing. Notes piled one on top of the other, growing and swelling, then fell away again. First one, then two, then three; it was not possible to count the variations of notes, to trace their repetitions, before they changed and took on new patterns.
They had not concerned themselves with the cave, which now surrounded them entirely. Notes bounced off its walls, rippling towards the table and then back again to the walls, forward and back, over and over, until it seemed impossible to tell whether the music were coming from the mouth of man or cave. How many times this might happen, how long this could go on, Henri could not see much point in asking: perhaps, forever.
Author Bio
Victoria C. Roskams writes short fiction about the arts and the uncanny, exploring the strange lives and afterlives of artists and artworks. These stories have appeared in publications including Fiction on the Web, Jerry Jazz Musician, and Fatal Flaw Lit. Beyond writing fiction, Roskams pursues academic research in writing about music, especially the intersections of fictional and non-fictional writing, with a focus on the nineteenth century. Roskams lives and works in Oxford.