Voices in the Night (30 page)

And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel
. Commentators disagree about the meaning of the word “stood.” Some say that the Lord assumes a bodily presence before Samuel. Others argue that the Lord never takes on a bodily form and that therefore the voice has drawn closer to Samuel, so that the effect is of a person drawing closer in the dark. In one version of this argument, the boy hears the voice and imagines a form standing beside him. All this, the Author thinks, can be left to the interpreters. What matters to us is that the voice of the Lord calls Samuel’s name. After all, Eli had said: “If he call thee.” For it was not inevitable that the voice, which had called three times and not received an answer, would call again. Now the boy Samuel has heard the voice a fourth time and knows who is calling him. He doesn’t yet know why the Lord is calling him, but he knows how to answer, for Eli has told him exactly what to say: “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth.” Samuel resists, the words refuse to come, then he says it aloud: “Speak; for thy servant heareth.” He hears his words clearly in the dark: “Speak; for thy servant heareth.” There is no doubt: he has said “Speak” and not “Speak, Lord,” as he was instructed to do. Was he so frightened
of uttering the sacred name? He feels a rush of self-reproach, before commanding himself to be still and listen. He lies motionless, alert all over his body, fiercely calm. He has served in the temple of Shiloh ever since early childhood, but nothing has prepared him for this moment. He does not try to imagine what the Lord will tell him, but he readies himself to remember every word, in the order of speaking. Eli is awake, waiting in the next chamber. Eli will ask him what the Lord has said. Though the voice of the Lord is strong, Samuel knows it cannot be heard by Eli, and not because Eli is too far away to hear. The voice is for him alone. He knows this without arrogance. And he will remember. He has a good memory, he’s proud of his memory, though he watches over his pride so that it doesn’t become vanity. Words read to him or heard by him remain unchanged inside him. It has always been that way. Now the Lord speaks, and Samuel listens. There is nothing in the world but these words. The words are harsh. The house of Eli will be judged for its iniquity. The sons of Eli are wicked and Eli has not restrained them. Therefore the Lord will perform against Eli all things which he has spoken concerning his house. The sons of Eli will die on the same day. The House of Eli will come to an end. When the Lord departs, it is like the silence after thunder. Samuel lies awake in the dark. It seems to him that the dark has become darker, a dark so dark that it is like the darkness upon the face of the deep, before the Lord moved upon the face of the waters. The words have shaken him like a wind. He can feel Eli lying awake in his chamber, waiting for Samuel to tell him what the Lord has said. But Samuel cannot bring himself to leave his bed and go to Eli’s chamber. If Eli asks him, and Eli will certainly ask him, he will speak the truth, but he does not want to speak the truth unbidden. Samuel lies in the dark a long time, listening for the Lord, listening for Eli, but all is silent. Has the darkness become less dark? Can darkness be less dark and still be dark? The darkness is growing lighter. Soon it will be time to open the temple doors. Eli will ask what the Lord has
said, and Samuel will repeat the terrible words. Samuel understands that nothing will ever be the same. But now, as the darkness is fading, without yet losing its quality of darkness, he wants to lie in his bed as if he could be a child forever, he wants to lie there as if his name had not been called in the night.

It’s the fourth night, and by now the boy in Stratford knows he’ll never hear his name. Still, he’s awake, and in case he’s wrong he’s still listening, no harm in that, though at the same time he makes fun of himself for lying there, waiting, and for what? His name? It’s only a story in a book. You might as well lie awake waiting for a genie to rise up out of a lamp. And even if it isn’t only a story, why would the Lord call his name? Samuel was an attendant of the high priest of the temple, Samuel was already favored by the Lord. The boy in Stratford goes to the Jewish Community Center on Sunday for two hours and skips Hebrew lessons. He doesn’t make the sign of the cross in front of Holy Name Church, but he looks forward to Christmas as if it’s the greatest day of winter. No crosses or angels on his tree, no lit-up statues of Mary blinking on the front lawn, but still, stockings, colored tree-lights, glittery tinsel, presents piled high. Christmas: a holiday celebrating the end of the year. Rosh Hashanah: a holiday he can’t pronounce, celebrating something he can’t remember. The Lord, if he’s even up there, shouldn’t call his name. And that’s fine with him. He doesn’t want his name to be called. If your name is called, everything changes. It would be like going to Sunday school all week long. He likes the way things are: catching fly balls and grounders in the backyard, walking in the hot sand at Short Beach, firecrackers on the Fourth of July, sitting in front of the fireplace in winter reading a book while his father grades papers at one end of the couch and his
mother reads at the other end, birthday parties, reading
The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins
to his sister, playing double solitaire with Grandma Lena, watching the black-and-white pictures rise into the white paper in the developing tray in his father’s darkroom, riding slowly in the boat through the Old Mill at Pleasure Beach. He doesn’t want to leave his family, doesn’t want to leave his room with the two windows looking down at the backyard, the big record-player in the living room where he and his sister listen to
Peter and the Wolf
. His mother looking at him one day, touching him, her eyes shining: “Oh, my firstborn.” His father answering all his questions with that serious look, as if nothing is more important than those questions. What happens when you die? What is God? What is the most important thing in the world? He doesn’t want to leave it all for the temple of Shiloh. School starts in a few weeks, he’s still got lots of summer left, picnics by the river, drives into Bridgeport, the smell of hot roasted nuts in Morrow’s Nut House, the elevator operators in their maroon jackets and white gloves in Read’s department store, the wooden ships with rigging in the window of Blinn’s. He’s done with Samuel, done with the voice in the night, but now, as he feels sleep coming on, he gives a final listen, just in case, straining his ears, holding his breath, listening for the voice that came to Samuel in that old story that’s only a story but one he knows he’ll never forget, no matter how hard he tries.

Again. Enough already. But hey, look on the bright side: four in the morning, three hours of sleep instead of one. The long walk after dinner, over an hour, hoping to outwit insomnia. Walk for one hour, wake up at four. Walk for two hours, wake up at five. Walk for three hours, wake up at six. Walk for four hours, drop dead of a heart attack. His flab-armed father’s muscular calves. Walked all over Manhattan in his
City College days, late 1920s, Harlem to the Battery. A safe city. The boy in Stratford walking up Canaan Road to the White Walk Market, walking to school along Franklin Avenue and Collins Street and the street that led past Holy Name. Calves skinny as forearms. His father walking a mile to the bus stop each morning to catch the bus to Bridgeport, no car till the boy is in second grade: city people don’t drive. No television till fifth grade: TV is for people who don’t read. Last in the neighborhood. Back from Manhattan with a ten-inch box, an Air King, set up on a table next to the piano. The feverish pleasure of black-and-white cartoons. Czerny exercises and Farmer Al Falfa. Mozart and Mighty Mouse. His mother playing Schumann and laughing with him at
The Merry Mailman
. His grave father bent over the Scrooge McDuck comic, praising the diving board in the money bin. Reading
Tootle
to him, telling him how good the first sentence is. “Far, far to the west of everywhere is the village of Lower Trainswitch.” Far, far to the west of everywhere. His father said, “There are three great opening sentences in all of literature. The first is ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ The second is ‘Call me Ishmael.’ The third is ‘Far, far to the west of everywhere is the village of Lower Trainswitch.’ ” A father who’s serious and funny: you have to watch his face carefully. The book about the whale: he knows where it is on the shelf, he’s held it in his hands, thinking, When I’m older. The whale, God: when he’s older. Books, always books. Ten years old: his father lashing out at Eisenhower. “He doesn’t open a book!” The trip to Spain after Columbia, one-way ticket, two pieces of luggage: one for clothes, one for books. The boy in Stratford lying awake at night because of a story in a book. What’s a story? A demon in the night. He wants to protect the boy, warn him before it’s too late. Don’t listen to stories! They’ll keep you awake at night, suck out your blood, leave teeth marks in your skin. Let him sleep! Let him live! His New York Jew parents in working-class Stratford, with their books and their piano. The professor who doesn’t do work with his
hands. Joey’s father a machinist at the helicopter plant, Mike’s father a carpenter who builds his own house in the vacant lot on the other side of the hedge. Joey turning to him with a fighting look: “Can your father make a wheel?” The old sun-browned Italian men working in their gardens. The grapevines growing all over Jimmy Stoccatore’s high fence, the bunches of purple grapes, heavy in the hand. Old man Ciccarelli chasing kids out of his lot. Eenie meenie miney mo, catch a tiger by the toe. Not in this house. The Jewish Boy Scout troop, where he learned to tie a sheepshank but never could identify poison sumac. His refusal to be Jesus in the Sunday-school play. Mrs. Kraus’s shocked surprise. “But why?” “Because Jesus betrayed the Jews.” Her confusion, fear. “I never taught you that!” His father: “Jesus was a great teacher.” Sixty years later, awake at night, at the mercy of memory. Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair! And the Lord came, and stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. The boy in Stratford, listening. Thank you, Old Man of the Sky, for not calling his name. Better for all concerned. He can’t really have believed it, can he? Working himself up into a temporary blaze of half-belief, a possibility: a ghost in the dark. Better for him to stay out of the temple of Shiloh, better to go play in the green backyards of Stratford, grow up in a world of family excursions and shelves of books until the writing fever seized him and claimed him for life. A calling. Not Samuel’s call, but another. Not that way, but this way. Samuel ministering unto the Lord, his teacher-father ministering unto the generations. And the son? What about him? Far, far to the west of everywhere, ministering unto the Muse. Thanks, Old Sea-Parter, for leaving me be. Tired now. Soon we’ll all sleep.

Steven Millhauser is the author of numerous works of fiction, including
Martin Dressler
, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1997, and, most recently,
We Others: New and Selected Stories
, winner of the Story Prize and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work has been translated into seventeen languages, and his story “Eisenheim the Illusionist” was the basis of the 2006 film
The Illusionist
. He teaches at Skidmore College and lives in Saratoga Springs, New York.