5r
Whatever device this odd mechanism activated seemed to perform its desired function. In less than a minute the heavy door swung open and a man appeared in the opening. He examined his visitor wordlessly.
The man was much like the building and the cliffs be-hind it solid, no-nonsense, worn, lined and graying. But he had resisted the years even as he showed ‘their marks upon him. His back was as straight as any young man’s and his knob-knuckled hands bad a look of determined strength. Blue were his eyes and very much the color of the water falling endlessly, thunderously, on the far side of the building. He wore knee-high fisherman’s boots, plain corduroy pants and a soiled gray sweater. His face did not change expression as he waved Carter into the building.
When the thick door had ‘been swung shut and the many sealing bars shoved back into place the silence in the house took on a quality of its own. Carter had known absence of sound elsewhere here was a positive state-ment of no-sound, a bubble of peace pushed right up against the very base of the all-sound of The Falls. He was momentarily deafened and he knew it. But he was not so deaf that he did not know that the hammering thunder of The Falls bad ‘been shut ‘outside. The other man must have sensed how ‘his visitor felt. He nodded in a reassuring manner as he took Carter’s coat, then painted to a comfortable chair set by the deal table near the fire.
Carter sank gratefully into the cushions. His host turned away and vanished, to return a moment later with a tray bearing a decanter and two glasses. He poured a measure of wine into each glass and set one down before Carter, who nodded and seized it ‘in both hands to steady their shaking. After a first large gulp he sipped at it while the tremors died and his hearing slowly returned. His host moved about the room on various tasks and presently Carter found himself much recovered. He looked up.
“I must thank you for your hospitality. When I came in I was shaken.”
“How are you now? Has the wine helped?” the man said loudly, almost shouting, and Carter realized that his own words bad not ‘been heard. Of course, the man must be hard of hearing. It was a wonder he was not stone deaf.
“Very good, thank you,” Carter shouted back. “Very kind of you indeed. My name is Carter, I’m a reporter, which is why I have come to see you.”
The man nodded, smiling slightly.
“My name is Bodum. You must know that ‘if you have come here to talk to me. You write for the newspaper?”
“I was sent here.” Carter coughed the shouting was irritating his throat. “And I of course know you, Mr.
Bodum—that is I know you by reputation. You’re the Man by The Falls.”
“Forty-three years now,” Bodum said with solid pride, “I’ve lived here and have never been away for a single night. Not that it has been easy. When ‘the wind is wrong the spray is blown over the house for days and it is hard to breathe—even the fire goes out. I built the chimney myself—there is a bend part way up with baffles and doors. The smoke goes up but if water comes down the baffles stop it and its weight opens the doors and it drains away through a pipe to the outside. I can show you Where it drains—black with soot the wall is there.”
While Bodum talked Carter looked ‘around the room at the dim furniture shapes barely seen in the wavering light from the fire and at the two windows set into the wall.
“Those windows,” he said. “You put them in yourself?
May I look out?”
“Took a year apiece, each one. Stand ‘on that bench.
It will bring you to the right level. They’re armored glass, specially made, ‘solid as the wall around ‘them now that I have them anchored well. Don’t be afraid. Go right up to it. The window’s safe. Look how ‘the glass is anchored.”
Carter was not looking at the glass but at The Falls outside. He had not realized how close the building was to ‘the falling water. It was perched on the very edge of the diff and nothing was to be seen from this vantage point except the wall of blackened wet granite to his right and the foaming maelstrom of the bay far below. And before him, above him, filling space, The Falls. All the thickness of wall and glass could not cut out their sound completely and when he touched the heavy pane with his fingertips he could feel The vibration of the waiter’s impact.