LITMIR.BIZ

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normally. It leaped from point to point, but by what rules? John shut his right eye and put his finger on the lid and with his left eye explored the High Street of Spilsby. As his eye went roaming, always picking up something new, it landed at last on the father in the window. Who said, ‘There he comes, the blockhead.’ Perhaps he was right: John’s shirt was torn, his knee was skinned, his smock bloodied, and there he stood facing the market cross, staring and touching his eye. That was bound to offend Father: ‘To do that to your mother!’ John heard, and already the thrashing had begun. ‘Hurts,’ John confirmed, for the father had to know whether his efforts were successful. The father thought his youngest had to be properly thrashed so he’d wake up. People who can’t fight, yet expect to be fed, will become a burden on the community. One could see that in Sherard’s parents, and they weren’t even slow. Perhaps he could get work spinning, perhaps field work with a bent back. Father was surely right.

      In bed, John sorted out the pains of the day. He loved quietude, but one should also be able to do the hurried things. If he couldn’t keep up, everything would go against him. So he had to catch up. John sat up in bed, hands on his knees, letting his tongue examine the wound left by his lost tooth, in order to think better. So he had to study being quick the way other people studied the Bible or deer tracks. Someday he’d be quicker than all those who were now stronger. I’d really like to be able to race, he thought, to be like the sun, which only seems to wander slowly across the sky, yet whose rays are as quick as the blink of an eye. Early in the morning they reach in one instant the most distant mountains. ‘Quick as the sun,’ he said aloud and permitted himself to drop back onto the pillows.

      In his dream he saw Peregrine Bertie, that marble Lord of Willoughby. He held Tom Barker tight in his grip, so that he would have to listen to John. Tom didn’t get free. His quickness was only enough for a few tiny movements. John watched him for a while and thought again and again what he might say to him.

       2

       The Ten-year-old and the Shore

      What was the trouble? Perhaps it was a kind of cold. Humans and animals became stiff when they froze. Or was it like the people from Ing Ming who were hungry? His movements dragged, so some special food was lacking. He had to find it and eat it. John sat up high in the tree beside the Partney Road when he thought this. The sun was shining on Spilsby’s chimney pots, and the clock of St James’s, which had just been reset, showed four hours past noon. Large animals, John thought, move more slowly than mice and wasps. Perhaps he was secretly a giant. But it seemed he was as small as the others and he’d do well to move cautiously to keep from squashing anyone to death.

      He climbed down and then up again. It was really too slow: his hand reached for the branch and found that it held. He should have had his eye on the next branch long ago. But what did the eye do? It remained fixed on the hand. So it was all a matter of looking. He knew the tree pretty well, but that didn’t make it any faster. His eyes refused to be rushed.

      Again he sat in the fork of the tree. Quarter past four. He still had time. No one was looking for him – at most Sherard, and he wouldn’t find him. The carriage that morning! With rigid stares his brothers and sisters had watched him climb aboard, for they were impatient and didn’t enjoy being his brothers and sisters. John knew he looked odd when he did anything in a hurry. Those wide-open eyes, to begin with. For him, the door handle could suddenly turn into a wheel spoke or a horse’s tail. Tongue in the corner of his mouth, tense forehead, panting – ‘He’s spelling again,’ said the others. That’s what they called the way he moved. Father himself had thought up that expression.

      He made out things too slowly. Blind, it might work better. He had an idea. He climbed down again, lay on his back, and learned the entire tree by heart from below – every branch, every handhold. Then he tied a stocking round his eyes, groped for the lowest branch, and moved his body from memory while counting out loud. The method was good but a bit dangerous. He didn’t yet know the tree precisely; mistakes happened. He was determined to become fast, so fast that his mouth wouldn’t be able to keep up with the counting.

      Five hours past noon. He sat, panting and sweating, in the fork of the tree and pushed the stocking up on his forehead. No time to lose; just catch a little breath. Soon he would be the fastest man in the world, but he’d make believe slyly that nothing had changed. For the sake of appearance, he’d still seem sluggish about his hearing; his speech would drag; he’d walk as though he were spelling and lag behind everywhere pitifully. But then there would be a public performance: ‘No one is faster than John Franklin!’ At the horse fair at Horncastle he’d have them put up a tent. They’d all come to have a good laugh at him, the Barkers from Spilsby, the Tennysons from Market Rasen, the sour-faced apothecary Flinders from Donington, the Cracrofts – in short, all of them from this morning. He’d show first that he could follow the fastest talker, even with completely unfamiliar phrases, and then he’d answer so fast that nobody would be able to understand a word. He’d juggle playing-cards and balls until everyone’s head swam. Once more John memorised the branches and climbed down. He missed the last foothold and fell. He lifted the blindfold: always the right knee.

      At noon Father had talked about a dictator in France who had been toppled and lost his head. When Father had drunk a lot of Luther and Calvin, John understood well what he was saying. His walk, too, became different, as if he feared that the earth might suddenly give way or the weather might turn round. What a dictator was, John still had to find out. Once he understood a word, he also wanted to know what it meant. Luther and Calvin – that was beer and gin.

      He got up. Now he wanted to practise playing ball. During the next hour he wanted to throw the ball against a wall and catch it again. But an hour later he hadn’t caught the ball a single time and instead had drawn a thrashing and made entirely new resolutions. He cowered on the doorstep of the Franklin house and thought it all over strenuously.

      He had almost succeeded in catching the ball, for he had invented a helpful device: the fixed look. He didn’t, as might be expected, follow the ball with his eyes as it rose and swooped down, but rather kept his eyes on a fixed point on the wall. He knew: he couldn’t catch the ball if he followed it, only if he lay in wait for it. A few times the ball almost fell into the trap, but then one mishap followed another. First he heard the words ‘gap tooth’ – that’s what he was called since yesterday. Tom and the others were there and just wanted to look on a bit. Then came the smiling game. If one smiled at John, he had to smile back. He couldn’t suppress it. Even if meanwhile someone pulled his hair or kicked his shins, he couldn’t get rid of the smile fast enough. That’s what Tom had fun with, and there was nothing Sherard could do to change it. Then they stole the ball.

      In the covered passage next to the Franklin house all noise was forbidden. The shouting brought Mother Hannah to the scene, for she was worried about Father’s mood. John’s enemies noted that she walked and talked just like John. She, too, couldn’t get angry and so let her opponents become insolent. Mother demanded the ball back and they threw it to her but so violently that she couldn’t catch it. The boys had grown big; they didn’t obey a grown-up when she was slow. Now came Father Franklin. Whom did he scold? Mother. Whom did he thrash? John. He told an astonished Sherard never to let himself be seen there again. That’s how it went.

      The fixed look was well suited to reflection. At first John saw only the market cross. Then more was added round the centre: steps, houses, carriages; he surveyed them all without letting his eye leap or race. At the same time, a vast vision about all misfortune formed inside his head, composing itself like a painting, with steps and houses and the horizon forming the background.

      In this place they knew him and were aware of how hard he had to strain. He would rather be among strangers who might possibly be more like himself. There had to be such people – perhaps far, far away. And there he might be able to learn more easily how to be fast. Besides, he very much wanted to see the ocean. Here he would make nothing of himself. John was determined: that very night. Mother couldn’t protect him, nor could he protect her,

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