“Besides, you would be reading me
He nodded. It was something that he had felt as well, but never expressed.
“What does it look like?”
He took out his wallet and showed her a dollar bill and a five. “Like these, except for the pictures. They’ll be women’s pictures instead of men’s.” He paused. Women and men thought different things important; it was something he had understood half his life, because of his job. Now it seemed to him that it might be important in itself: women would not care as much about cars; women would care far more about children’s loneliness, and their education. Women in power might even see to it that there were dolls like Tina.
“Pictures of ladies,” she prompted him.
“Really it doesn’t matter. Pieces of paper that look like this. Money.” He found he associated the money with the smell of roses, though he could not have said why. He was not certain there had been much left—but if he found Lara’s world again, even a few dollars might be useful.
“I’ll start by looking under things. I’m built for that. When I’m through, I’ll need a bath. Then you’ll have to pull out the drawers for me, so I can get inside.”
He protested that he could look in drawers as well as she could.
“No, you can’t,” she told him. “I can go inside and poke around. It’s not the same at all. Now read me a story while I look under the dresser.”
He had fewer than a dozen books, all of them inherited from his mother, and little idea what might be in any. At random he pulled a faded red volume from the shelf and flipped through it until he discovered what appeared to be the beginning of a fresh narrative.
“Once upon a time,” he read, “there were two brothers who lived by themselves in a little house deep in the Black Forest. Their names were Joseph and Jacob, and Jacob was blind.”
Tina emerged from beneath the dresser pushing a dust ball almost as large as herself and coughing histrionically. “You don’t dust under here
“Joseph took good care of his brother, and Jacob did all he could to help, and because they loved each other they were very happy.”
“I’ll look under the bed now,” Tina announced. “Then you’ll have to go into the living room so I can look in there.”
“But they had little money, and their situation became more precarious every year.”
“It’s dusty under here, too.” Tina’s voice sounded faint and hollow.
“Because so much snow falls in the Black Forest during the winter, making it a white forest for whole months at a time, the brothers had to buy enough food in autumn to last until spring. And after several years had gone by, there came an autumn when it could be seen that they could not.”
Tina called, “Here’s a button. A shiny one!”
He decided she must have spun around with it as a full-sized woman would have thrown a discus; it came flying out like a bullet.
“One day Jacob said, ‘Joseph, do you recall how beautifully I used to write?’ And when Joseph replied, ‘Indeed I do!’ Jacob showed him a frame he had made to hold a sheet of paper, a frame with violin strings stretched across it and spaced so that a man might barely have thrust his thumb between them.”
“Here’s a dime!” The dime shot out like the button and rolled until it struck the wall.
“‘With this,’ Jacob explained, ‘and you, dear brother, to sharpen my pen for me now and then, I can write just as I used to. Perhaps the
“That’s all there is under there,” Tina told him, “except for a lot more dust. Don’t I look like a chimney sweep?”
In fact she looked like a long-lost toy that had just been found and was about to be thrown away because it would be too much trouble to clean it, but he nodded and smiled, and followed her docilely into the living room.
“So Joseph sharpened a gray goose-quill with Jacob’s little knife. He put paper into the frame and made sure there was ink in the inkwell. That done, he went about his work, leaving his brother alone to write.”
“Nothing under the couch or the big chair but a lot more dust,” Tina reported. “Now take me into the bathroom and run some warm water into the bowl. It would be better if you left it running.”
He put his hand down so she could step into the palm and did as she asked. When he was seated on the lid of the commode with the red book open on his lap, he noticed that the light was actually better in the bathroom than it had been in the bedroom and the living room.
No one reads anymore, he thought, but men still shave.
“But when Joseph returned, there were only a few words on Jacob’s paper, and Jacob was drumming his fingers on the table. ‘I can’t write,’ he said. ‘I used to look out of the window to write. Then I had no difficulty. But now …’Jacob lifted his shoulders and let them fall.”
Tina pointed to her hair, not wanting to interrupt the story. He poured out a drop of shampoo for her.
“‘Perhaps I could look out of the window for you, dear brother,’ Joseph suggested.
“Jacob nodded slowly. ‘It’s worth trying. Look outside and tell me what you see.’
“So Joseph looked, but there were only trees waving their arms in the wind. ‘Hmm,’ he said.
