The Stenographer’s Story, contd.

I swim up from sleep, frowning, my mouth working—who? who? I cannot remember who I am, where. Open my eyes on a blue barely morning world, the sough of sounder sleepers, ranked bedsteads, the—the dormitory, got it, and I, a student here for some months now, am Grandison, whose first name I cannot pronounce—but it does not matter, here; gone are the routine humiliations of the classroom and its sequelae on the playground—yes, I, Grandison, am waking and telling over the letters of my name like rosary beads. Inside my head it is not quite silent—transmissions are passing through me, radio waves perhaps, looping languidly through the countryside on their way somewhere more important, but more likely ghosts, which are quite a lot like radio announcers, faraway people saying important things, but so quietly that ordinary people cannot hear them no matter how hard they try; but I can.

For I have the knack. And now, unseen inside the cave of my sheets, I exult. No one can any longer persuade me that it is by mistake or deceit that I am here; I belong. My lips move against the coarse bedsheets as I form an O for the pleasure of feeling the words already taking shape in my mouth: “I was standing on the edge when my uncle came up behind me . . .” But I do not even need to move my mouth to hear them. To one with the knack of hearing, the place is reverberant with whispers.

But it seems that not everyone can hear them, even here. Not even the instructors, who stand in front of the beginning students lecturing them on how to speak to ghosts while brushing aside the ghost who is shouting in their ears the whole time, trying desperately, poor dismal creature, to make herself heard.

It was still early. The dormitory was silent except for the whickering of ghosts and the drone and whistle of the sleepers; a soft gray-blue glow filled the ogive windows and delineated the ribs of the slightly arched ceiling, picked out each each humped quilt, each iron headboard, and the shoes set side by side under the bed. Somewhere in the bowels of the building a thump more felt than heard meant a hob of coal dumped down beside the iron stove, a groan was the heavy iron door swinging open so the coal could be shoveled on the banked fire within; I had not seen it done but I heard the same sounds in the same order every morning and had come to imagine the scene thus. A bird lightly bumped the window glass and reeled away, not much hurt, I thought, or a ghost told me, it was not too good if I could not tell the difference between what I thought and what the ghosts said to me but that was the way things were probably going to be here, there was someone talking almost all the time, saying, for instance, “Are you the One?”

“Oh, stuff it!” I said (and a muffled complaint rose from the next cot over): They were always trying to make you feel important, it was one of their tricks. So I brought the wings of the pillow up around my ears and felt the soft rushing of my blood close in around me and grew sleepy once again.

And woke up again with a snort to the muted uproar of a general arising; quilts flung off with the sound of sails snapping in a changing wind; a pell-mell rush to the washroom to the clop and shuffle of untied shoes on bare feet; someone already crying, a slap, a muffled curse. The bright gray light had lost its blue. The ghosts had receded, summoned to a stronger electromagnet, perhaps, such as the Headmistress. Through her mouth a gale of voices blew, so many and so furious it was hard (for me) to see her face; it seemed to be made up only of a rushing, a tending, an intending that was not her own. What she was, herself, was impossible to make out behind or through all that commotion and yet she had a powerful persona that was not only the borrowed authority of the ghosts. It was partly a straight back, broad shoulders, strong jaw, and a dress like the sails of a man-o’-war. But also a partly repressed but palpable emotion more powerful than any ghost could muster (for lack of the requisite glands): perhaps unhappiness, perhaps hate. Or fear . . .

Could the Headmistress be afraid of ghosts? The idea, true or not, made me laugh a little with pleasure as (skipping the icy ablutions to be had in the washroom) I struggled into my wrinkled dress, stamped my feet into my shoes, and followed the others down the stairs and out the door.