The Long Hour

Letter 16 of the Book of Forgetting

The morning came in grey, and I was at my bench when Jael Kfir walked in. She was Liesl's sister, a guard with a narrow face and the same unblinking stare. She held her helmet under one arm.

"They turned me back," she said. "At the north line."

"I heard," I said. "Guard duty."

"Not guard duty." She set the helmet on my bench. "I walked to the end of the road. I wanted to see it. The fog. Just see it. Yarom was there, and he reminded me the Council prefers people to stay at their work."

"Yarom said that?"

"He said it like he meant it." She picked up a screw from my dish, turned it, set it down. "Miriam Harel got the same at the south road. Same hour. Same words."

I sat back. "Two guards, two roads, one morning."

"Two guards, two roads, one morning." She looked at me. "I've stood at that line a hundred times. I've watched people walk into it and come back out. I've never wanted to go in. This morning I did."

"What stopped you?"

"Yarom's hand on my shoulder." She picked up the helmet. "And the fog. It was quiet. Too quiet. Like it was waiting for me to make up my mind."

She left. I sat a moment, then walked to the square.

Jethro Ronen was at his cafe, setting chairs out. He was a thin man of about fifty, grey at the temples, and he moved slowly, like a man who had been ill.

"Jethro," I said.

"Fernando." He straightened. "You heard about the fever."

"Three days," I said.

"Three days." He wiped a chair with his sleeve. "I lost them. No dreams, no sleep. Just nothing. I woke up in my own bed with no memory of lying down." He paused. "And I said the words."

"The words?"

"'The fog is just fog.'" He looked at me. "I said them before I knew I was awake. My wife heard me. She asked me what I meant. I didn't know."

I sat down at a table. "Rimon Gilad said the same."

"I heard." He set a chair down. "A mechanic and a cafe owner, both saying the same thing after three days of nothing." He shook his head. "I don't know what it means. But I've been here fifty years, and I've never lost a day before."

Gavriel Dagan came over from the square, a big man who ran the lumber yard. He pulled up a chair and sat down without asking.

"Jethro," he said. "You're up."

"I'm up."

"Good." Gavriel looked at me. "You know about the stone blocks."

"The seventh," I said.

"The seventh." He leaned forward. "Joel Gefen found it in the quarry yesterday. Kenan Amir found one this morning. Two people, two days, same discovery. The survey lists six."

"The survey lists six," I said.

"Six blocks, measured and numbered. I helped move them myself." He tapped the table. "There are seven now. And no one can say where the seventh came from."

"Maybe the survey was wrong," Jethro said.

"The survey wasn't wrong. I counted the blocks last spring. Six." Gavriel sat back. "Now there are seven. And the babies are talking, and the line measures different going out than coming back, and Jethro lost three days to a fever that left him with a sentence in his mouth."

We sat there in the grey light. A bird crossed the square, low and fast, and vanished toward the fog.

"Two old ones died last night," Jethro said quietly. "Yael Hadar, the orchard keeper. Eighty-eight. And Hannah Gefen, the welder. A hundred and five."

"Both in their sleep," Gavriel said. "People said they just didn't wake."

"My grandmother died like that," Jethro said. "When I was a boy. She was a hundred and nine. She lay down after supper and didn't wake. We thought it was peaceful." He paused. "I don't know if I think that anymore."

I walked back to my workshop and opened the Book of Forgetting. I wrote: A guard and a map seller turned back at the fog line, same hour. A cafe owner lost three days and woke speaking the sentence. A teacher and a shopkeeper found a seventh stone block in the quarry. Two old ones died in their sleep, the orchard keeper and the welder.

I closed the book. The grey pressed at the window. Somewhere a baby woke and spoke, and I did not know what it meant.