what did you do?" "For most of our marriage I treated her as though she didn't matter! I came home only between wars, and left her alone for months at a time! There was always war!" "Did you know that in the last 3,500 years there have been only 230 years of peace throughout the civilized world?" He said, "You tell me which 230 years and I'll believe you!" "I don't know which, but I know it's true." "And where's this civilized world you're referring to!" I asked him what happened to make him stop reporting war. He said, "I realized that what I wanted was to stay in one place with one person!" "So you came home for good?" "I chose her over war! And the first thing I did when I came back, even before I went home, was to go to the park and cut down that tree! It was the middle of the night! I thought someone would try to stop me, but no one did! I brought the pieces home with me! I made that tree into this bed! It was the bed we shared for the last years we had together! I wish I'd understood myself better earlier!" I asked, "Which was your last war?" He said, "Cutting down that tree was my last war!" I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud. He said, "The ax won! It's always that way!" He went up to the bed and put his finger on the head of a nail. "See these!" I try to be a perceptive person who follows the scientific method and is observant, but I hadn't noticed before that the whole bed was completely covered in nails. "I've hammered a nail into the bed every morning since she died! It's the first thing I do after waking! Eight thousand six hundred twenty-nine nails!" I asked him why, which I thought was another nice question, because it would let him tell me about how much he loved her. He said, "I don't know!" I said, "But if you don't know, then why do you do it?" "I suppose it helps! Keeps me going! I know it's nonsense!" "I don't think it's nonsense." "Nails aren't light! One is! A handful are! But they add up!" I told him, "The average human body contains enough iron to make a one-inch nail." He said, "The bed got heavy! I could hear the floor straining, like it was in pain! Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night afraid that everything would go crashing to the apartment below!" "You couldn't sleep because of me." "So I built that column downstairs! Do you know about the library at Indiana University!" "No," I said, but I was still thinking about the column. "It's sinking a little more than an inch a year, because when they built it, they didn't take into account the weight of all of the books! I wrote a piece about it! I didn't make the connection then, but now I'm thinking of Debussy's Sunken Cathedral, one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written! I haven't heard it in years and years! Do you want to eel something!" "OK," I said, because even though I didn't know him, I felt like I knew him. "Open your hand!" he said, so did. He reached into his pocket and took out a paper clip. He pressed it into my hand and said, "Make a fist around it!" o I did. "Now extend your hand!" I extended my hand. "Now open your hand!" The paper clip flew to the bed. t was only then that I observed that the key was reaching toward the bed. Because it was relatively heavy, the effect was small. The string pulled incredibly gently at the back of my neck, while the key floated just a tiny bit off my chest. I thought about all the metal buried in Central Park. Was it being pulled, even if just a little, to the bed? Mr. Black closed his hand around the floating key and said, "I haven't left the apartment in twenty-four years!" "What do you mean?" "Sadly, my boy, I mean exactly what I said! I haven't left the apartment in twenty-four years! My feet haven't touched the round!" "Why not?" "There hasn't been any reason to!" "What about stuff you need?" "What does someone like me eed that he can still get!" "Food. Books. Stuff." "I call in an order for food, and they bring it to me! I call the bookstore for ooks, the video store for movies! Pens, stationery, cleaning supplies, medicine! I even order my clothes over the phone! ee this!" he said, and he showed me his muscle, which went down instead of up. "I was flyweight champion for nine ays!" I asked, "Which nine days?" He said, "Don't you believe me!" I said, "Of course I do." "The world is a big place," he aid, "but so is the inside of an apartment! So's this!" he said, pointing at his head. "But you used to travel so much. You ad so many experiences. Don't you miss the world?" "I do! Very much!" y boots were so heavy that I was glad there was a column underneath us. How could such a lonely person have been iving so close to me my whole life? If I had known, I would have gone up to keep him company. Or I would have made ome jewelry for him. Or told him hilarious jokes. Or given him a private tambourine concert. t made me start to wonder if there were other people so lonely so close. I thought about "Eleanor Rigby." It's true, where o they all come from? And where do they all belong? hat if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, ike your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your ood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you'd turn red, obviously, and if ou felt like shiitake you'd turn brown, and if you were blue you'd turn blue. veryone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you'd never want o tell a person whose skin was purple that you're angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink erson on the back and tell him, "Congratulations!" nother reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of omething, but you don't know what the something is. Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief! Mr. Black said, "I once went to report on a village in Russia, a community of artists who were forced to flee the cities! I'd heard that paintings hung everywhere! I heard you couldn't see the walls through all of the paintings! They'd painted the ceilings, the plates, the windows, the lampshades! Was it an act of rebellion! An act of expression! Were the paintings good, or was that beside the point! I needed to see it for myself, and I needed to tell the world about it! I used to live for reporting like that! Stalin found out about the community and sent his thugs in, just a few days before I got there, to break all of their arms! That was worse than killing them! It was a horrible sight, Oskar: their arms in crude splints, straight in front of them like zombies! They couldn't feed themselves, because they couldn't get their hands to their ouths! So you know what they did!" "They starved?" "They fed each other! That's the difference between heaven and ell! In hell we starve! In heaven we feed each other!" "I don't believe in the afterlife." "Neither do I, but I believe in the story!" And then, all of a sudden, I thought of something. Something enormous. Something wonderful. "Do you want to help e?" "Excuse me!" "With the key." "Help you!" "You could go around with me." "You want my help!" "Yes." "Well, I don't eed anyone's charity!" "Jose," I told him. "You're obviously very smart and knowledgeable, and you know a ton of things hat I don't know, and also it's good just to have company, so please say yes." He closed his eyes and became quiet. I ouldn't tell if he was thinking about what we were talking about, or thinking about something else, or if maybe he'd allen asleep, which I know that old people, like Grandma, sometimes do, because they can't help it. "You don't have to ake a decision right now," I said, because I didn't want him to feel forced. I told him about the 162 million locks, and ow the search would probably take a long time, it might even take the full one and a half years, so if he wanted to think bout it for a while that would be OK, he could just come downstairs and tell me his answer whenever. He kept thinking. Take as long as you want," I said. He kept thinking. I asked him, "Do you have a decision?" e didn't say anything. What do you think, Mr. Black?" othing. Mr. Black?" tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up suddenly. Hello?" e smiled, like I do when Mom finds out about something I did that I shouldn't have done. I've been reading your lips!" "What?" He pointed at his hearing aids, which I hadn't noticed before, even though I was rying as hard as I could to notice everything. "I turned them off a long time ago!" "You turned them off?" "A long, long ime ago!" "On purpose?" "I thought I'd save the batteries!" "For what?" He shrugged his shoulders. "But don't you want o hear things?" He shrugged his shoulders again, in a way so I couldn't tell if he was saying yes or no. And then I thought f something else. Something beautiful. Something true. "Do you want me to turn them on for you?" e looked at me and through me at the same time, like I was a stained-glass window. I asked again, moving my lips slowly nd carefully so I could be sure he understood me: "Do. You. Want. Me. To. Turn. Them. On. For. You?" He kept looking at e. I asked again. He said, "I don't know how to say yes!" I told him, "You don't have to." went behind him and saw a tiny dial on the back of each of his hearing aids. Do it slowly!" he said, almost like he was begging me. "It's been a long, long time!" went back around to his front so he could see my lips, and I promised him I would be as gentle as I could. Then I went ack behind him and turned the dials extremely slowly, a few millimeters at a time. Nothing happened. I turned them a ew more millimeters. And then just a few more. I went around to the front of him. He shrugged, and so did I. I went back round behind him and turned them up just a tiny bit more, until they stopped. I went back in front of him. He shrugged. aybe the hearing aids didn't work anymore, or maybe the batteries had died of old age, or maybe he'd gone completely eaf since he turned them off, which was possible. We looked at each other. Then, out of nowhere, a flock of birds flew by the window, extremely fast and incredibly close. Maybe twenty of them. Maybe more. But they also seemed like just one bird, because somehow they all knew
