Part: 4/4 read part one
Wordcount: 1,051
Synopsis: Late one night, the breakthrough finally comes.
For the next few days, the house was very quiet.
They rarely saw the mute during that time. Occasionally, Falke would glance out the window and see him for a moment in the back garden. But the moment he looked away, he would vanish like a ghost. One night, vary late, he found him in the kitchen, staring into the glowing flames of the stove, perfectly still and unresponsive to anything in the present moment.
Neither did he have tantrums anymore. He didn’t kick a single doorframe or knock so much as a paperweight off Metzdorff’s desk. Falke became almost panic-stricken several times when he couldn’t find the patient anywhere he looked. The house was large and easy to hide in for one who knew it well, but Falke was so concerned about the state of Camille’s silent mind that his dramatic imagination carried him away quickly. In spite of this, he fought with Metzdorff only once over the decision to deny Camille his thread. From then on, he was silent as Camille on the matter. Metzdorff insisted that the patient was no longer distressed, and had probably forgotten the whole episode.
Then, two weeks later, something very strange happened. Metzdorff and Falke had spent the evening reading in the study. It grew dark outside, and a gusty wind wuthered around the Gothic peaks of the Metzdorff estate. As Falke sat, half reading, half listening to the unnerving rattling and whistling at the windows, the door opened and Camille was there. Both doctors looked up at him. He hadn’t willingly been in the same room with them since they burned the last of the thread. He entered and quietly went to sit by the window–the window with the jackdaw in it—and then, he was still.
The doctors slowly went back to their reading. A heavy sigh of wind trailed off into quiet for a minute and there was another sound from outside. In a tree near the window there was a nightingale. It huddled against the dripping branch in the cold, dark wind, and sung its clear chirping call into the inky night. It sung again and again, the soft voice echoing out into the stifling wind. Falke looked up from his book, scowling pensively. “Do they often sing on nights this stormy?” he asked.
“Who?”
“Nightingales.”
Metzdorf turned a page. “They’ll sing whenever another nightingale’s near enough to hear them, I suppose.” Falke sat listening to the bird out in the darkness, having forgotten the book on his lap. After several minutes, the nightingale stopped singing, or perhaps flew into the woods nearby for better shelter, and more company. Leastwise, the wind was the only sound again. Falke looked toward the window and his eyes settled on Camille.
Camille was gazing up into the blackness of the sky. His eyes were wide and searching. A tension had come into his face that Falke had never seen before. The young doctor rose. “Camille, are you alright?” As he spoke, a tear plummeted downthe mute’s cheek, and he hid his face. Quickly, Falke came to him and gripped his shoulder. “What’s the matter?” Suddenly, the tragedy of it all seized him. Perhaps…Camille really couldn’t tell them. They would never know. Whatever made him suffer assailed him in his own world, in isolation and silence, somewhere too far away for the rest of humanity to hear him scream.
Metzdorff now rose from his seat and stood scowling across the room, holding his book by the cover, forgotten. Then, very quietly, Camille started to cry vocally. That voice had been unheard for at least two decades. The two doctors stood for some time, paralyzed and thunderstruck. At last, Camille lifted his head again, staring once more out at the thrashing night. He sighed…and half a minute passed.
Then, Falke said, “What’s wrong, Camille? What is it?”
The wind died. Camille breathed heavily or a few minutes, staring out the window. He swallowed once, blinking liquidly. “The string,” he breathed.
Falke almost choked on his breath. “You want more thread? Is that it?”
Camille swallowed, nodding slightly.
Falke’s eyes, enormously earnest, went to Metzdorf. “By all means!” the German burst out. “Give the man his string!” He seized Falke’s shoulder. “Falke–”
“I’ll go tonight. I don’t mind walking in the rain.”
“No, don’t go all the way to town, go to the neighbors. If they’re asleep wake them up. Tell them I sent you—and we’ve got to have thread.”
When morning came, the sky was still, and overcast.The light came softly, and expectantly, through the windows. The doctors came down the stairway together, cordial for the first time since they had cleared away the webs. Falke reached out his hand and stopped Metzdorf halfway down and they stood gazing at the room below. It was shrouded in Camille’s webs. The newborn sunlight filtered through weavings of gold and red and royal blue that decorated the windows, and a half-rosette of black and silver radiated from the banister. The doctors wandered through the gallery in silence, staring.
Then there was a foot step behind them. They turned back. There stood Camille, a new spool of fawn-colored thread in his hand. He led them to the door and opened it to the misty morning. They followed him outside. For a moment, he stared at the grove of whispering willows, reviewing the distances between them. Then he leapt off the porch and ran out to them, anchoring his thread. He started to spin.
They watched him for nearly an hour. At last he finished, thrilled and exulting in his work. He drifted back to the porch where they stood, still frozen where they had been when he started. As he went into the house he turned back to face them. He looked from one to the other, and then his eyes settled on Metzdorf. He smiled and closed the door behind him.
“Do you suppose he’ll ever speak again?” asked Falke, at length.
“Who knows?”
Falke laughed to himself and started down the porch steps, going out to the willows. Metzdorf glanced back at the door, and then stared after him. Then his eyes re-focused to a ghostly orb of spider-silk, rippling gently, and shimmering with tiny globes of dew. He sighed. “Very strange.”
THE END