When he went to bed, the numbers changed a little.
While he was calculating at the table, he thought he had left nothing out, but when he turned off the light and lay down, another line on the receipt he had read that day came to mind. Had he added that? Had he only added this month’s? The same money would go out next month, too. Jude switched on his phone and checked his balance. He entered amounts in the calculator, then moved on to job listings. He had to find something he could do now. It would be better than doing nothing.
But as he read the listings, he found himself wondering first how long he could keep doing a job he had begun only because it was better than nothing. What if he quit after three months again? This time he had to see it through. How long was through? Until they no longer needed him there? Jude read the job description again. There would be a lot to learn at first. Wondering whether he could keep going in while he was still no good at it, whether he would find some other reason to quit, he could not bring himself to open the application.
See at least one thing through. The words came to him even on nights when he did not hear his father’s voice. There had been times when he sat up to check whether he had really heard it. But no more sounds followed. Lying there looking at the ceiling, he seemed to have thought of his father’s next words himself. How long are you going to go on living like this? What do you intend to do from now on? Some were things he had often heard; others were words he had added silently whenever he heard them. At night, thinking of one brought the other after it.
His father had said he had to be good at whatever he did. If you were going to do it at all, shouldn’t you be the best? Then Jude would cut short his accounts of what he had achieved. He would find himself explaining what he still had not done before saying how far he had come. If he was pleased now and failed to do better later, he felt he would have to take responsibility even for the moment his father became disappointed. So even when something good happened, he thought about what he should do next. If there was anything he still lacked, it was better to mention it first.
He had to be the best. At the very least, he had to be good enough that no one would think of replacing him. If someone else could do better for the same money, there was no reason to keep him, was there? Being called a good person would not pay his living expenses. Even if he came home having been told he had worked hard, the same amount of money would leave his account the next day. Jude looked at the salary in the listing and read what the job required. The parts he did not think he could manage properly stayed with him longer than the parts he thought he could do.
Now he did not even have a chance to do well. To write an application, he had to begin by explaining why he had quit. If he wrote that it had been difficult to keep working there, he felt he would come across as someone without patience. If he wrote that he had wanted to try something else, he felt they would ask what he had been doing all this time. Either way, it sounded like the excuses he had made to his father. Jude wrote a sentence and deleted it. It seemed he might look like a different person if he phrased the reason a little differently, but however many times he rewrote it, the fact that he had left after three months remained.
The deadline passed for a listing he had not applied to. The next day, a similar one appeared. Even as he thought that this time he had to send an application, he began by comparing the conditions with the previous listing. While he searched for somewhere a little better, places he might have been able to go right away were disappearing. By the early hours, he no longer had the strength to look into any of it. That did not mean he could sleep.
There had been nights when he kept the light on late while his father was alive, too. He remembered his father’s face as he stood at the open door, asking why Jude was still up. If Jude did not answer, his father would look around the room once and leave. Footsteps down the hall, then the sound of water being poured in the kitchen. Back then, Jude had thought those sounds broke his concentration. Now there was no sound outside his room. Lying there with the light on, Jude wished his father would walk past just once more.
Then he was angry again. Walk past to say what? What are you doing now, can you make a living from that, how long are you going to go on like this? Couldn’t he stop asking and give him an answer? What did he have to do to see something through? How much did he have to earn before he could stop worrying? Who did he have to be better than before he could stop comparing himself? Jude imagined the answer his father might give. He would probably say Jude had to work those things out for himself. Then there was something else to answer. If he had to work them out for himself, couldn’t his father have given him a little time to do it?
Sentences that would have been cut short while his father lived could now be thought through to the end. He imagined the objections his father might make and answered those, too. He was alone in the room, so whatever he said, what came back next was something he had thought of himself. After a long time spent like that, what remained was less a feeling of having won than the thought that he had been angry at his father for too long. Had they talked like this the last time they met, too? Jude tried to remember his father’s face that day.
The lectures were so clear, but the face that had smiled briefly at something he said blurred the longer he tried to look at it. Jude searched through the photos on his phone, but the face he wanted was not there. In most of them, his father was looking at the camera. What Jude was trying to remember was a moment when he had been looking somewhere else and turned toward him. The face that smiled a little late, once he understood what Jude had said. He wished he had found it all a little less bothersome then. Even if he had not kept a photograph, he could at least have spent longer looking at him.
Jude put down his phone. If his father had been alive, they might have fought over the same thing again. Thinking that made even the things he regretted now seem a little inevitable. But once he used it as a reason, it meant that even if his father came back, Jude would be no different. He did not know what to do with the way he could miss his father and still be angry over the same things. It was not a lie that he wanted to see him. Yet he did not think he could accept everything his father said this time, if he returned.
By daybreak, Jude had still not escaped those thoughts.
◇
On a day when the voice returned, Jude said he understood. He had said he understood last time, too. Should he explain it differently this time? While he was trying to start again with his reasons for quitting, his father moved on to the next sentence. Jude could not tell whether he was hearing the same things because he had answered wrong, or whether the same words would come back from the beginning no matter what he said. He tried waiting before answering as well, but as he listened, he found himself saying things he had already said.
“I told you I understood.”
Even after the sound stopped, Jude sat there for a while. If he had waited a little longer, he might have heard something else. Should he not have said it like that? He tried calling to his father again, but there was no answer. When he could hear it, he wanted it to stop; when he could not, he worried about the tone in which he had last answered. Even starting something else, deciding it was over, took time. That night, too, he went to bed late.
During the day, he would read papers and find himself back on the same line. He had read the names and dates, but could not remember what the sentence had told him to do. When his mother asked if something was wrong, he answered louder than he needed to. Only after adding that nothing was wrong did he realize there had been no need to answer like that. But when he tried to apologize, his first worry was whether his father’s voice had come in the meantime. It was the same even on days when he had not heard it. There was no way to check a sound that had passed while he was answering.
His messages to Maeve grew shorter. Heard him again today. Same thing this time, too. He’s not speaking now. Jude started to add what he had been doing while he heard it, then stopped. It was not much different from last time. When no reply came, he thought Maeve must still be working, yet opened the conversation again. Only when he looked at the times he had sent them did he realize they were all messages from the same night.
The next time Maeve came, she did not stay long. She said she was on her way back to the workshop. Remembering how he had tried to keep her last time, Jude told her she could go. Maeve said she had not even sat down yet and pulled over a chair. When she asked if he was getting any sleep, Jude said it was not as though he never slept. There had been times when he closed his eyes in the morning and woke in the middle of the day, and times when he dozed in his chair over the paperwork. That much ought to count as sleep. He did not want Maeve to know that he was trying somehow to answer his father when he was not even getting proper sleep himself.
Maeve asked nothing more, and left after talking with him for a little while. Jude thought he ought to get a little sleep before next time, too. But that night, once again, he did not turn off the light. Rather than lie down and think, it seemed better to read a little more of what he had been working on. Dawn came without his remembering how many pages he had read.
◇
The next time Maeve came, Jude was dividing the papers spread out on the table into three piles.
“What time did you go to sleep last night?”
“Late.”
“About what time?”
“Three, maybe. Around then.”
“Your messages came after five.”
“After that, then.”
“How much sleep did you get?”
“I’m not sure.”
Once he had answered, he felt like someone deliberately evading the question. He had lain down. He had closed his eyes, too. But the things he thought about after closing them had continued until after he got up, and he did not know where in between sleep had begun. Whenever he checked the time, he was opening his eyes again, so he must have slept a little at a time. Jude was about to explain it that way, then stopped. In the end, it seemed no different from saying he did not know how much he had slept.
Maeve put her tool bag at her feet and sat down. This time she did not open it. If she took out the thing she had brought as she had last time, Jude meant to move his papers aside a little. But with Maeve sitting there quietly, it seemed something must have happened to her.
“Is something wrong?”
“You don’t seem to be sleeping.”
“I’ve got a lot to do.”
“I know.”
“I can sleep when I’ve finished all this.”
Maeve looked at the table. Jude felt as though she were counting the papers. He had been sitting at the same table for days, yet it probably looked as though the piles had not shrunk at all. He knew that, too. Separating his father’s documents from the papers he had written himself made it look a little more organized, but it did not reduce the work he had to finish. Afraid Maeve would see it that way as well, he wanted to explain first what he had done.
“It’s not as though I’m doing nothing.”
“I didn’t say that.”
He knew. Maeve had not even asked what he had done yet. But without explaining, he felt he would look like someone who had simply sat there all this time. Even when he was told to sleep, Jude had to begin by explaining why he had not slept yet.
“I have to work out what’s going out this month. There are things we spend money on at home, too. It doesn’t end once I’ve sorted out my father’s things. It all goes out again next month. I’m looking into places to apply, too. I’ve nearly finished applications for a few of them. It’s just that if I send them now, I first have to check when I can go for interviews.”
Maeve was listening. Jude tried to explain how many places there were and what he still had to do. As he talked, he was no longer sure whether he was explaining why he had not slept or why he had not sent the applications yet. Still, if he stopped, he felt Maeve would tell him to sleep again.
“So if you tell me to sleep, who’s going to do all this in the meantime?”
Only when he finished did Jude realize it had sounded as though he were asking Maeve to do it. He had not meant to. She could not do it for him, either. He had only wanted to say that he did not understand how stopping now would help, when the work would still be there after he woke.
“I didn’t say I’d do it for you. I’m only asking because I’m worried about you.”
Jude could not answer at once. Since she had said she was worried, he could just say he was all right. But if he said that, he felt he would have to answer again why he could not sleep. If he said he was not all right, how much would he have to explain? He did not want to list things he could not entrust to Maeve, then ask her to worry about him anyway.
“When I lie down to sleep, I think about it more.”
“Your father?”
“That, too.”
Living expenses, messages he had not answered yet, the things his family would say they needed next—when he lay down, they came to him one by one. This time he had to find somewhere he could stay for a long time. But simply staying a long time did not seem as though it would be enough. If he started something, he had to be good at it, and if someone else outdid him, he would have to start all over again. What would happen when he was older than he was now, with less money left? Explaining why he had left after three months, and why he had not started another job straight after, kept taking more and more time as well.
“You have to be good, wherever you go.”
“Are you talking about the job you quit?”
“Anything. If there’s someone better than me, they can just use that person.”
“Where did they tell you that?”
It was not something he had heard in any one place. It was not written in the listings, either. But when people hired someone, they would choose the better one. Then he had to be the better person. If someone better than that came along, he had to rise above them again. To Jude, it was obvious without anyone having to tell him.
“Everywhere.”
“You don’t even know where you’re going yet.”
For some reason, this irritated him. He was like this because there was nowhere for him to go. Writing even one line of an application took so long because he did not know whether he could do well once he got there, whether he would quit again. Maeve had work to do today. Work she could carry around in a bag, give her time to, and return when it was finished. At least you have work. The words almost came out, then stopped. He remembered her talking about whether to move workshops. Her face when he asked why she did not go somewhere bigger, and she asked whether he would pay the rent for her. Back then, even telling her he could not had been enough to make them both smile.
“Sorry.”
Maeve shook her head a little. When Jude said nothing more, she asked whether he could hear his father’s voice right now.
“No.”
“Then do you want to lie down for a bit?”
“Once I’ve done a little more of this.”
Maeve did not press him. But she did not start talking about something else, either. Jude read the paper he had been working on again. A moment ago he had known which pile he meant to put it in, but now he could not remember. Reading the first line twice made no difference. Jude put down the paper and leaned against the back of his chair. Maeve was still sitting there without having opened her bag.
“What about you?”
“I’ll have to go in a little while, too. If you’re going to get some rest, I’ll just leave.”
“No, I’m not going to sleep yet.”
Even as he answered, Jude closed his eyes. It felt strange to sit like that by himself while someone was beside him. He meant to open them at once if Maeve said anything. But she took out her phone and answered the messages that had accumulated. Now and then, he heard fingers tapping the screen. For as long as he did not have to find something to say, Jude leaned back a little longer.
Though he had put down the papers, the amounts he had been calculating came to mind. If it was something they really needed, they had to buy it. Then where could he spend less, and how much? Could he start work next month? When he tried to stop thinking, it felt as though he were resting while forgetting work he had not yet finished. He thought, too, that he would have to open his eyes as soon as his father’s voice came. He wished it would stop, while readying himself to call again if his father truly said nothing. Even with his eyes shut, Jude thought he did not know how to rest.
When he finally opened his eyes again, Maeve was watching him.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Maeve did not ask whether he was having trouble sleeping. She finished her reply and put down her phone for a moment. Jude moved as though he ought to get up now, then stayed seated. Failing to fall asleep did not mean he had to pick up the papers again. Since Maeve said nothing, he did not have to explain why he had been unable to sleep, either. As he sat there a little longer, he did not reach for the table.
Even when it was time for Maeve to leave, Jude had not managed to sleep. He followed her to the door, where she spoke as she put on her shoes.
“You can message me. Just bear in mind that sometimes I won’t see it until morning.”
“I know.”
“And don’t just tell me about the voice. Let me know if you’ve had some sleep, too. Take care of yourself.”
He did not know when a night would come after which he could say he had slept well. Still, that was something he could tell her regardless of what his father said. Thinking he now had something to send even if he did not hear the voice, Jude could answer at once this time.
“Yeah.”
After Maeve left, Jude sat at the table again. The papers were still divided into three piles. Now he remembered which one he had been reading a little earlier. He could reach out and start again. Jude read the first line with his eyes, then left the paper where it was without picking it up this time.
◇
That evening, a message came from Leo asking whether he had a picture of the butterfly. He said he had only just read what Jude had sent about the butterfly and the dreams of his father.
Jude sent the picture Maeve had taken and sent him on her first visit. The butterfly was visible beneath the clock, the tip of its left wing slightly damaged. When he added that he still heard the voice after waking, his phone rang.
“Not while you’re asleep?”
“Yeah. A few days ago, I heard him while Maeve was sitting beside me. She saw me answering, but she said she couldn’t hear my father.”
“You mean you hear it inside your head?”
“I think so. I haven’t tried covering my ears. I don’t know where the sound came from.”
Leo asked whether he had been at home then, too. When Jude said yes, he asked about what time it had been. Jude opened his messages with Maeve. He did not know the exact time, but it had been a good while after she arrived. Leo asked where he had been sitting and what he had heard as well. Those were things he could answer. His father had talked about his quitting his job. Jude told him that part, too, but Leo did not ask why he had quit. He asked whether his father had said the same things when he was alive.
“Almost word for word.”
“Does he go on to the next thing when you answer?”
“It does seem that way.”
“When Maeve came, too?”
“Yeah. But I missed something partway through.”
He could have known if he had heard the next words. Maeve had been looking at him, and he had missed them while worrying about how it sounded to her. Jude did not explain that much. First he repeated what his father had said and what he had answered. Even while he waited for Leo’s next question, he felt he was telling the same story again from the beginning. Still, this time he thought he might be able to ask why he was hearing those things.
Leo liked stories like this. Once he had pointed out the same window frame in a series of ghost photographs, saying the same image had been posted as having been taken in abandoned hospitals in different countries. When Jude asked if he meant it was fake, Leo said one photograph being fake and such phenomena not existing were different things. Looking up material to explain something, he would get a little excited even over a story that did not amount to much. Jude thought of the explanations he had heard then and asked,
“Leo, have you ever read anything like this?”
“There are similar stories. But that doesn’t mean I know if what you’re experiencing is what happened in one of them.”
“What about the shadow? That thing you used to do.”
Once, Leo had been unable to turn his body while holding on to the shadow at his feet. Jude had pushed a water bottle a little farther away as a joke. Leo had laughed that he could not reach it, then let go first. After that, he could turn again and take the bottle. Back then, all it took to end it was lifting one hand. They had not thought of finding out how far they could go before it became dangerous. Even remembering it now, Jude found it hard to see anything in that scene resembling his father’s voice. He simply knew that Leo, too, had experienced something other people had not.
“I don’t know yet. Was the picture taken today?”
“No. When Maeve first came.”
“Is it still there?”
Jude turned to look beneath the clock. There was only the seam in the wallpaper. He got up from his chair and went closer, but the butterfly was gone. It might have fallen to the floor, so he looked under the table. It was not beside the document envelopes or behind the chair legs, either. Leo stayed on the line while Jude searched.
“It’s gone. It was here a little while ago.”
After saying it, he wondered when a little while ago had been. Had he seen it when Maeve left? He looked at the same wall several times a day, but could not recall the last moment he had seen the butterfly clinging to it. Perhaps, because it was always in the same place, he had stopped checking each time he looked. Jude saw that the window was closed and pulled back the curtain a little. It was not between the window frame and the folded fabric, either.
“Couldn’t it have landed somewhere?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t even opened the window.”
“If the voice tells you to go somewhere, don’t just follow it.”
“He hasn’t said anything like that.”
“All right, then. I’m only saying it because I don’t know what this is, either.”
Jude let go of the curtain and stood at the window. He had never heard it tell him to go anywhere. He had never heard it tell him not to go, either. Yet he had spent the whole day in this room, waiting for his father to speak again. He had done it while Maeve was here, and after he was left alone. There was work he should do while the voice was silent, but whenever he began, he worried about words that might pass in the meantime. Even now, talking to Leo, he was checking whether the room was quiet.
“Are you free tomorrow?”
“In the evening. Why?”
“Let’s talk in person.”
“Do you want to come over?”
He would only be leaving home for a little while tomorrow evening. Even so, his first thought was what if his father started speaking while he was gone. Jude remembered that he had already repeated to Leo what he had heard so far. Tomorrow he might hear similar things. If so, he could tell him after coming back. As he had answered Maeve a little earlier when she asked him to tell her whether he had slept, this time, too, he wanted to make the arrangement first.
“Yeah. I’ll come.”
◇