Desmond

The lamps went on in the same second.

It was ten to six on the Monday, the first Monday of classes, and Frederick had been awake since twenty to, lying on the bed by the window with his eyes open, listening to the chillers on the roof and waiting for it to be late enough to be morning; and he put his hand out to the lamp on the window desk and turned it on, and across the room, at the same instant, with the same small click, the lamp on the desk by the door came on too.

They looked at each other across the room.

Alexander was sitting up in the bed by the door with the sheet folded down to his waist in a straight line, as though somebody had measured it. He had his reading glasses in one hand, folded.

“Good morning,” said Alexander.

“Good morning.”

“I wake at a quarter to six.”

“So do I.”

“I know,” said Alexander. “It was on the questionnaire.” He put the glasses on the desk, parallel to the edge. “I had thought it was a thing people said.”

---

The shower was at the end of the corridor, past the water fountain and the noticeboard and the fire door, and there were three of them in a row, of which two worked and one had a sign on it in Callum’s handwriting that said OUT OF ORDER (SORRY!!) with two exclamation marks, as though he were personally responsible.

They got there together. Frederick with his towel over his shoulder; Alexander with his towel folded over his forearm, like a waiter, and a sponge bag in the other hand, leather, with a monogram on it that he had turned to face his own wrist.

The first shower was running. A boy from the far end of the floor was in it, singing.

They stood in front of the second.

“After you,” said Frederick.

“No. After you.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

“Nor am I. I have allowed twelve minutes.”

“Then you’ve got time to go first.”

“So have you,” said Alexander. “That is the difficulty.”

They stood there. The boy in the first shower sang the same line of something four times, and got it wrong in the same place every time.

A freshman came round the corner in flip-flops, with a towel round his neck and his eyes nearly shut, a tall thin boy with hair standing straight up at the back, and he looked at the two of them standing in front of an empty shower, the King in a T-shirt and the German Emperor in dark blue pyjamas buttoned to the neck, not going in.

“Are you guys in line?”

“No,” said Frederick.

“Yes,” said Alexander.

The freshman looked from one to the other. Then he said, “Cool,” and went past them both into the second shower and shut the curtain, and turned it on, and after a moment began, very quietly, to sing the same line as the boy in the first one, and get it wrong in the same place.

Alexander looked at the curtain for some time.

“I shall allow fifteen,” he said.

---

The thermostat was on the wall by the door, a small beige box with a dial and a little window with a number in it, and on the questionnaire, which Alexander had printed out and which was now in a folder on his shelf with a label on the spine that said FRAGEBOGEN, both of them had written 68.

It was not a war. Frederick wanted to be clear about that, afterwards, to Theo, to Jack, to anybody. It could not be a war, because nobody disagreed. The room was sixty-eight degrees when he went to bed and sixty-eight degrees when he woke up and sixty-eight at every hour of the day in between.

The difficulty was the dial.

On Monday night, at twenty-nine minutes past ten, Alexander got out of bed, and went to the box by the door, and looked at it, and turned the dial a very small distance one way and back again, the width of a fingernail, so that the number in the window went to 69 and then to 68, and got back into bed.

“It was sixty-eight,” said Frederick.

“Yes.”

“It was already sixty-eight.”

“I know,” said Alexander. “I checked it.”

On Tuesday Frederick came back from Spanish at four, and went to the box before he had put his bag down, and turned the dial the width of a fingernail and back.

Alexander, at the desk by the door, did not look up from the Charter.

“It was sixty-eight,” he said.

“I checked it.”

On Wednesday they both got to it at the same time, at twenty-nine minutes past ten, and stood in front of it in the dark, side by side, and neither of them touched it, and after a while Alexander said “Good night,” and got back into bed, and so did Frederick, and lay awake for some time listening to the box not being touched.

---

The programme was on the desk every morning when he came back from the shower.

It was written the night before, after the light was off, by the light of the telephone, which Frederick knew because he had watched him do it, through his eyelashes, on the Tuesday: the telephone held flat in one hand and the pen in the other and the paper on a book on his knees. It was on the paper of the Neues Palais, thick and cream, with the eagle embossed at the top, very small and uncoloured, and he wrote on it in black ink in a hand so upright and even that it looked like a typeface somebody had made by hand to see if it could be done.

Montag, 21. August.

05.45. Rise. 05.50. Shower (allow 12). 06.10. Dress. 07.00. Box. 08.30. Box returned. Kessler. 08.45. Tolliver. 09.00. The Charter. Brennan.

And on, down the page, to the bottom:

22.30. Light.

There was a tick beside every item by the end of the day. The tick was small, in pencil, at the left, before the time, and it went in when the thing was done, every time, all day, so that by ten at night the left-hand margin of the page was a column of small identical ticks going all the way down like stitches.

On Monday the shower had a tick beside it.

“You took eighteen minutes,” said Frederick. “The shower. With the queue.”

“Yes.”

“It says twelve.”

“It says allow twelve.” Alexander looked at the tick. “A tick is for the time you were told, not the time it happened. I was told twelve. I went at the time I was told. The shower was the shower’s affair.”

“So it doesn’t matter how long it took.”

“It matters very much,” said Alexander. “It is not what the tick is for.”

On Tuesday the programme said 05.50. Shower (allow 15).

On Wednesday, Frederick noticed, it said 05.48.

---

The red box came at a quarter to seven.

It came as it had come every morning of his first year, across the road in the grey backpack with the broken zip, held shut with two fingers, and Sam brought it up the forty-five steps to 316 and put it on his own desk under the poster of the federal tax brackets, and Frederick did it there in Sam’s chair while Sam ate cereal on the end of his bed and Rhys did something to a shirt.

At seven, through the wall, he heard the knock on 312.

One knock. It was always one. Then the door opening, and a few words in German, low, and the door shutting.

“That’s the other one,” said Sam, through the cereal.

It was grey. Frederick had seen it on Saturday, in the corridor, in Kessler’s hands, on its way past: a flat grey box the size of a large atlas, with a cord round it and a red seal on the cord, which had come from Potsdam every day in Alexander’s life since he was fifteen and had come now by courier from the consulate in Phoenix, and been signed for at the day desk at five to seven by a man the day porter had down on her list as KESSLER, freshman, 314, and carried up. It had never been late. Herr Falkenrath, who carried it in Potsdam, had told Frederick so once, in a corridor of the Neues Palais, as a man tells you the date of a battle.

When the box was in the room, the door of 312 was shut.

Frederick did not mind. That was the arrangement, and it was a good one, and he had a box of his own. But it was strange, coming out of 316 at half past seven with his initials drying in pencil in the top right-hand corner of forty pages about the Realm, to walk two doors down his own corridor and find his own door shut, and to stand outside it for a moment like a man who has come home early.

He knocked.

“One moment,” said Alexander, from inside.

There was a pause, and the sound of a lid, and a key.

“Come in.”

He was at the desk by the door, in his shirt, buttoned to the neck, with the grey box shut in front of him and his hands folded on it and the pencil beside it, laid exactly parallel to the edge of the desk, as it always was when he had finished with it.

“I can go to the lounge,” said Frederick.

“It is your room.”

“It’s your room as well.”

“Yes,” said Alexander. “That is also the difficulty.” He looked at the box. “I am nearly finished. There is one paper about a railway in Pomerania that I have read twice and do not like. I shall read it again at eight. After that it is yours.”

“The room?”

“The railway,” said Alexander, “if you like. I am quite tired of it.”

---

“Two boxes,” said Sam, on Thursday, in 316, with the notebook. “On one floor.”

“Is that a lot?”

“It’s two.” Sam wrote something. “There’s never been two. On a floor. Anywhere.” He looked at the wall, through which, faintly, came the single knock. “I asked the sergeant.”

“What did she say?”

Sam considered it.

“She said not my algorithm,” said Sam. “Again.”

Rhys, on the floor with the iron, made a small noise and turned it into a cough, and ironed a cuff with great care.

---

Tyler came at four.

He came every day now, as he had said he would on Sunday, at about four, with his hood up and a bottle of Glacier in each pocket of the sweatshirt; and he knocked once, and came in without waiting, and said “Hey,” to the room in general, and sat down on the floor between the two beds with his back against the end of Frederick’s, and put the headphones on, and the controller on his knees, and was quiet.

He was not playing anything. Frederick had looked. The headphones were on and the controller was on his knees and his thumbs were resting on it, and nothing was happening on the screen of the telephone propped against his shin except a small grey circle going round.

“Are you playing?”

Tyler lifted one side of the headphones an inch.

“No.”

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Tyler looked at the ceiling. “Brayden’s on the phone to his mom. He’s telling her about Mesa.” He thought. “She lives in Mesa.”

He put the headphone back.

So they sat, the three of them, through Wednesday and Thursday and Friday, from four until about six: Tyler on the floor with the headphones on doing nothing; Frederick on the bed by the window with the Spanish set book, a novel about a man in Seville who was waiting for a letter; and Alexander at the desk by the door with the Charter open at Article Four and the pencil, reading, and every so often making a very small mark in the margin, and laying the pencil down again, parallel.

Frederick had never known 312 so quiet. It was quieter than the library at Windsor. It was quieter than the dome at Potsdam at three in the morning.

At ten to six on Friday Tyler took the headphones off and sat for a while with them in his lap.

“This is so good,” said Tyler.

Nobody said anything.

“Like, nobody’s talking.” Tyler looked at Alexander’s back, and the desk, and the pencil, and the programme beside the Charter with its column of small ticks going down. He watched Alexander put a tick beside 16.00. Article IV, and then, after a moment, a tick beside 17.50. Tyler leaves.

Tyler looked at the second tick for a long time.

“Dude,” he said, “am I on that?”

“Yes,” said Alexander.

“Since when?”

“Since Monday. You come at four and leave at ten to six.” Alexander laid the pencil down. “It is very regular. I find it restful.”

Tyler considered this. He looked at the clock on his telephone, which said 17.50, and at the tick, and at the door.

“That’s kind of a lot of pressure, man,” said Tyler, and got up, and went.

---

Theo rang at seven on Sunday.

He did not take it on the step this time. He took his mother’s calls on the step, under the narrow window on the landing, and Jack’s, and everybody’s; but Theo had said last Sunday what the step meant, and Theo on Sundays was the laptop, and the laptop could be anywhere. So he sat on the bed by the window with the laptop on his knees, as Tyler had once sat there with a keyboard; and Theo’s face came up on the screen very large, too close, with the light of his desk lamp on one side of it and the window of his room behind him dark, because it was ten o’clock at night in New Westminster.

“Freddie.”

“Hello.”

“Hold on. Hold on.” Theo moved the laptop back, and back, until the room came into it: the desk, the books, the corner of the bed, and behind him on his stand by the window, in the draught, grinning, with his left foot of resin and the maroon and gold scarf round where his neck would have been, Desmond. “There. He wanted to see you. He’s been asking.”

“Hello, Desmond.”

Theo took hold of Desmond’s right hand, at the wrist, and lifted it, and made it wave, with a small dry clatter of finger bones.

“He’s twenty-one as well, now,” said Theo. “We think. He doesn’t know his birthday, so he’s having mine.” He sat back down. “Thank you for the card, by the way. It came on the twentieth. One day late, which my mother says is a royal tradition.”

“It went on the eleventh.”

“I know. It’s got a postmark. Mum’s put it on the fridge with the postmark showing.” Theo looked at him through the screen, closely, the way he had looked at him on Sundays since the first one, as though he were reading a chart at the end of a bed. “So.”

“So.”

“A week.”

“A week tomorrow.”

“How is it?”

Frederick thought about it. He thought about the lamps, and the shower, and the box by the door with the dial, and the column of small ticks going down the left-hand side of a page of the Neues Palais like stitches.

“He ticks things,” he said.

Theo looked at him.

“You tick things,” said Theo.

“I don’t.”

“You tick things, Freddie.”

“I do not tick things.”

“You ticked your Christmas list,” said Theo. “In 2029. I saw it. It was on the desk in your room at Columbia, on the Sunday before. You had a list of everybody you had to get something for, in a column, and you’d ticked them. In pencil. Small.” He held up a finger and drew a very small tick in the air. “Like that. All the way down. And there was one at the bottom that wasn’t ticked, and it was me, and you’d got me a book about knots.”

“You liked the book about knots.”

“I loved the book about knots. I can still do a bowline.” Theo leaned in. “You ticked it, Freddie. When you’d wrapped it. I watched you do it. You ticked it and then you put the pencil down.” He sat back. “Parallel.”

Frederick did not say anything.

Across the room, from the bed by the door, came a voice.

“Good evening, Theo,” said Alexander.

He did not look up. Frederick looked over the top of the laptop and saw him on the bed by the door with his back against the wall and his knees up and a book on them, reading, with his glasses on, in a white shirt buttoned to the neck, as though he had not said anything at all.

On the screen Theo’s face did something very fast, and then was perfectly composed.

“Hi, Alex,” said Theo.

He reached behind him without looking, and took Desmond by the wrist, and made him wave.

---

They talked for an hour. Frederick sat on the bed by the window with his back against the wall and the laptop on his knees, and Theo told him about the second year, which was not anatomy any more but pathology, which was what went wrong; and about a lecturer in pharmacology who wore a bow tie and said the dose makes the poison every Tuesday as though it were a new thought; and about his mother, who had taken a week off in August and spent it painting the kitchen a colour called Morning Field, which Theo said was green.

At eight exactly, across the room, Alexander closed his book, and got up, and took a writing case from his shelf, and went out and down the forty-five steps to the lounge, as written.

“And Jack?”

“Jack rang on my birthday at seven in the morning,” said Theo. “His time was noon. He sang. The whole thing. Then he said that’s from Sue, and his mum came on and sang it again.” Theo smiled. “Then he asked how you were, and I said I didn’t know, and he said nor do I, he’s got a German, and hung up.”

“He’s got a German,” said Frederick.

“He’s very pleased about it,” said Theo. “He won’t say so. He’s been saying the German in capitals since Thursday.” He looked at the screen a moment longer, and then past it, a little to one side, the way he looked sometimes now, since he had started the second year, at nothing in particular, as though he were listening to something that was not the words.

“Freddie.”

“Yes.”

“Is he sleeping?”

Frederick looked at the bed by the door, which was empty, with the sheet folded down in its straight line.

“Half past ten,” he said. “Every night. Light off. He’s got it on the programme.”

“And is he asleep at half past ten? Or is the light off at half past ten?”

Frederick thought about it. He thought about the bed by the door in the dark, and the telephone held flat, and the pen.

“He writes the programme after,” he said. “For the next day. Then he’s asleep. I think. I’m usually reading.”

“Okay,” said Theo. He nodded, slowly, and wrote nothing down, because he had nothing to write on; but Frederick watched him make the note somewhere, the way Sam made them. “Okay. Good.” And then, in his own voice: “That’s not medical. That’s just me.”

“I know.”

“Tell him I said goodnight.”

“He’s gone down. He’s writing to his mother.”

“Tell him anyway,” said Theo. “It’s polite.” He picked up Desmond’s wrist again. “Say goodnight, Desmond.”

Desmond waved.

---

At a quarter past eight Frederick shut the laptop and put it on the window desk.

At ten Alexander came back up from the lounge with a letter in an envelope, and sat at the desk by the door with the programme in front of him, the day’s, Sunday’s, Sonntag, 27. August, with its column of small ticks going down the left-hand side of it. He had the pencil in his hand. Frederick, going past to the box by the door, looked at it over his shoulder, because it was on the desk and the desk was by the door, and he could not help it.

16.00. Tyler (Sunday also). 17.50. Tyler leaves. 18.00. Dinner. 19.00. Theo (Frederick). Quiet. 20.00. Letter to Mama.

There was a tick beside 19.00. Theo (Frederick). Quiet.

Frederick stood there with his hand on the box by the door.

“You spoke,” he said.

Alexander looked at the tick.

“Once.”

“It says quiet.”

“It says quiet,” said Alexander, “and it was allowed for.” He laid the pencil down beside the programme, exactly parallel to the edge of the desk. “One cannot be in a room with Theo for an hour and say nothing. It would be very rude. I said good evening once. That was the allowance.” He considered it. “I did not use the whole of it.”

“Theo said goodnight,” said Frederick. “He said to tell you. He said it was polite.”

“Then that was the rest of the allowance,” said Alexander, “and he has used it for me.” He considered the tick. “That is also polite.”

Frederick looked at the dial on the beige box under his hand. It said 68.

He did not touch it. He went to bed.

At twenty-nine minutes past ten Alexander got up, and came to the box by the door, and stood in front of it, and looked at the number in the little window for a while; and then, which he had not done all week, turned round and went back to bed without touching it either, and put his hand out to the lamp.

“Good night, Frederick.”

“Good night.”

The lamp went off. On the desk by the door, in the light from the window and the car park and the dull orange sky over the Valley, the programme lay with its column of small ticks going down it, all the way to the bottom, where it said 22.30. Light; and Frederick, on the bed by the window, with his own lamp still on and his book open on his knees, heard the pencil, very quietly, in the dark, put in the last one.