Jude went down one floor to see if the ambulance was coming. He looked out into the alley, but it had not arrived yet. Through the rain, he could not see the main road clearly. Jude put a hand on the railing and leaned a little farther out, then went back upstairs. From above, he could still hear counting. The same voice he had heard on his way down. Jude stood beside the door, waiting for the sound of a vehicle entering the alley.
The woman’s eyes were closed. Only a moment ago, she had been asking for just one word, but now she did not answer even when Leo called to her. Whenever Leo stopped his hands, Jude looked at her face. He felt he would recognize it himself if anything changed. But Leo listened to the words coming from the phone and bent over her again, and Jude went on waiting beside the door.
Someone called from the bottom of the stairs.
Jude went to the railing and said they were up here. When people carrying equipment came up, he moved inside the entrance to make room. A paramedic touched Leo’s shoulder and asked him to move aside, but Leo could not get up at once. Even after stopping the compressions, he stayed like that for a moment. Only when Jude took his arm did he move aside.
Jude picked up his phone from the floor. The two of them went down the stairs and stood under the overhang. Leo immediately looked up again. As people moved, they blocked the light from the entrance, but they could not see into the room. Rain fell beyond the overhang, and at the mouth of the alley, the ambulance lights lit up the wet wall.
Leo looked down at his hands.
White dust from the wall remained on his palm. Leo opened his wet fingers, then closed them again. Jude looked at that hand, too. Before, it had been against the wall, and he had not been able to see all the movements of the fingers. Now it held nothing. Watching Leo open his hand again, Jude asked,
“Why didn’t you let go right away?”
Leo looked at Jude.
“I told you they were both out. You even looked back. What else were you trying to do after that?”
“They were standing in front of the door.”
“They were out. Whatever else, they were out.”
“They were right there. The man and the girl. You’d only brought them just outside the door. I thought she’d go after them again if I let go. I was going to let go once they were a little farther down. That’s why I told them to go down. You heard me.”
“She wasn’t even coming outside by then.”
“I…”
“It was going back inside. Under her feet. But your hand was the only thing that wasn’t moving. Didn’t you see what was happening to her arm?”
Leo opened his mouth, then closed it.
“I thought she was pulling to get free. To pull it away from me and go after them again.”
“How would you know that? Did you even know what would happen if you kept holding it? How long you could hold it, whether she’d react the same way you did. Did you know that when you did it?”
“I didn’t.”
Jude waited for what came next. He had not known, but there would be something more. That she had been all right when he grabbed it, that she had been talking normally only moments before. At least he ought to be able to say why he had thought it was all right to keep holding on. Leo, too, had known that the two were out. He had looked back at Jude and even pointed down the stairs. Jude wanted to hear why he had not let go after that, but with only I didn’t know, he did not know what to ask next.
“Why did you keep holding on when you didn’t know? You were only opening the way for a moment. Once they were both out, that was enough. When I said they were out, you should have let go then.”
“I thought she’d be all right if I let go!”
Leo raised his voice.
Jude stopped speaking. Leo, too, closed his mouth for a moment, then spoke again.
“When I held my own, I could move again once I let go. It didn’t hurt, and nothing happened. I thought she’d be the same. If I held her for just a moment, the two of them could get out. I thought I only had to let go after they’d gone all the way down. All I had to do was open my hand, and then…”
Leo opened his right hand. Unable to finish, he looked at his palm. Jude understood what he was trying to explain. Leo had held on to stop the woman following them again, and meant to let go once the two had gone down. But what Jude had seen was not the woman trying to follow the man. It was the woman on her knees on the floor, unable to bring her arm in front of her chest. Even as Jude talked about that difference, Leo kept saying he had thought she would be all right once he let go.
“That’s why I told you to let go.”
“And I did. You told me to, and I let go right away. But I don’t know why it happened, either. It wasn’t as though I was still holding on to something. I opened my hand. I thought she’d be able to move again, too.”
Jude was about to say he should have let go a little earlier. Before the woman’s knees touched the floor; at least when she could not move her arm. But Leo looked up first.
“You said you saw it. You said you saw it going back inside. Then why didn’t you tell me then? If I was doing something wrong, right then…”
Leo stopped speaking.
“I didn’t know, either.”
Jude’s words came out first.
Leo asked nothing more. Jude could not go on at once, either. When the woman’s shadow moved inward, the first thing he had looked at was Leo’s face. His hand had just got the two of them out of the door, so Jude had thought he must have a reason to keep holding on. Even when he saw the woman’s body being pulled strangely, he had checked what Leo was doing first. Only after her knees touched the floor had he called to him, and only after seeing her open her mouth had he told him to let go. It was not as though he had seen nothing during that time.
“I thought you knew what you were doing.”
Jude spoke.
“So I was watching what you did. Whether it was all right for her to move like that, whether there was a particular moment when you had to let go. Because I didn’t know.”
Leo lowered his head. Watching him, Jude thought back over what he had just said. When he heard Leo say he did not know, he had demanded more explanation, yet after the same words, he himself had added that he thought Leo would have known. That did not change who had been holding the woman. Jude had only tried to explain why he had not spoken at once. But when Leo gave no answer, he found it hard to say more, afraid it had sounded as though he wanted Leo to acknowledge something about him.
There was the sound of equipment being moved upstairs.
Leo raised his head. He looked at the stairs for a moment, then spoke quietly.
“I thought she’d just be able to move again, too. Like me. Once I let go.”
Jude did not answer. Leo started to look down at his hands again, then raised his head at voices from above. Someone called down the stairs for them to move aside. The two of them stepped out from under the overhang.
A stretcher came down the stairs.
Leo went toward it.
“What happened? Is she all right?”
“She’s still unconscious. We’re taking her straight to the hospital.”
The paramedic answered as they carried the stretcher. Leo looked down at the woman, then took a step back.
Between the people carrying her, Jude could see the folded sleeve of her work clothes. A black butterfly was perched on it. Jude stopped in midstep. The butterfly slowly opened its wings. The tip of its left wing was intact. His first thought was that it was not the butterfly from his room.
Then the woman cried.
“I loved you so much. Why did you abandon me?”
Jude looked at her face.
A mask covered her mouth. Her eyes were closed, too. The people supporting the stretcher kept walking, and the one checking the way ahead did not turn around. Jude moved a little alongside the stretcher, waiting for the woman to speak again. Leo, right beside him, showed no reaction, either. It seemed he was the only one who had heard her.
Jude covered one ear. The people’s voices grew quieter. The sound of footsteps on the stairs and the rain outside receded as well. But the woman’s voice stayed the same. Even with his ear covered, he did not have to strain to make out the words.
His father’s voice had been like that, too.
Jude took his hand from his ear and caught Leo’s arm.
“I can hear her. I can hear that woman’s voice.”
Leo’s eyes moved toward the woman, then immediately returned to Jude.
“What’s she saying?”
Jude listened again.
The woman was finishing her words. For a moment it was quiet. Meanwhile, the stretcher passed in front of them toward the ambulance. Jude made room, but kept watching her.
Then he heard the same words from the beginning.
I loved you so much.
Even the brief break in her words as she cried came in the same place.
“She’s asking why he abandoned her.”
“Who is she talking to?”
“It sounds like she’s talking to that man. Saying she loved him.”
Leo pressed his lips together, then asked again.
“Anything else?”
Jude raised his hand a little.
“Wait.”
Leo stopped speaking.
Jude waited for the woman to finish. A moment earlier, he might have missed something in the middle while explaining to Leo. He had to listen again to find out what she had said after saying she loved him, whether there were words he had failed to catch where her crying broke through. People moved beside the stretcher, but Jude did not turn toward them. The woman did not call to the man or speak to anyone else. After asking why he had abandoned her, she fell quiet for a moment.
Jude waited for what came next.
Leo, too, stood there without a word. There was the sound of the stretcher being loaded into the ambulance, and someone asked for the door to be opened. Even among those sounds, the woman’s voice was clear.
The woman spoke again from the beginning.
Jude decided to listen just once more.
◇
The injured man and the girl had left for the hospital first. The vehicle carrying the woman followed them out of the alley.
Jude and Leo stood there until it reached the main road. Leo went back up the stairs, and Jude followed. Without going inside, they stopped in front of the entrance. Wet footprints overlapped on the landing. A few shards of glass Jude had pushed away with his foot lay together beneath the wall, and the woman’s single shoe still remained in the corner.
Leo stood beside the place on the wall where he had put his hand a little earlier.
“Can you still hear her?”
Jude nodded.
“Just the same words.”
Though the vehicle carrying the woman had left, the voice did not grow distant. Jude had heard it while coming up the stairs, and he heard it after stopping at the door. At the same pitch as when he first heard her, crying broke into her words at the same place. Once the sound of the ambulance was gone, he found himself paying more attention to her words instead. He thought he knew where they ended now. Yet every time they ended, he waited to see whether something else might follow.
Leo took off his glasses. He lifted the hem of his clothes, then let it go when he saw it was wet.
“Does she talk about when I held her?”
“No.”
“Does she say it hurts, or ask to be let go? Nothing like that? She opened her mouth back there. It looked like she was trying to say something, but I couldn’t hear it. What she said then—maybe you…”
The woman’s voice began again.
Jude raised his hand.
Leo closed his mouth. This time, Jude listened carefully even to the part where crying broke through. The words saying she had loved him, and the question of why he had abandoned her. There was a sound in the middle like her drawing breath, but it was not another word. Even after listening from beginning to end, he found nothing that answered what Leo had asked.
“Nothing.”
“Then can’t you ask her? What she was trying to say when I held her. No, not that. Whether she’s all right now, where it hurts. If you ask, she might answer.”
“I don’t know if she answers.”
“Just once, though.”
Jude waited for the woman to finish. When it was quiet for a moment, he asked into the empty entrance,
“What were you trying to say back there?”
The woman spoke again.
I loved you so much.
Jude listened to the end without moving. She might have heard the question but be finishing what she had been saying first. But the woman asked why he had abandoned her, fell quiet for a moment, and said again that she had loved him. Nothing had changed from before Jude asked. After hearing her repeat it once more, Jude looked at Leo.
“What did she say?”
“The same thing.”
“Ask her just once more. Maybe she didn’t understand.”
“I told you I don’t know, either.”
His voice came out louder than he had expected. Leo’s hand stopped. The arm of the glasses he had been about to fold lay caught between his fingers.
Jude saw that Leo was saying nothing more. He could have stopped there. All he had to do was explain once more that he heard only the same words. But when he opened his mouth, it did not end there.
“This is the first time I’ve heard her voice, too. I don’t know why I can hear it, or why she keeps saying the same thing. You asking me doesn’t mean there’s more for me to hear. I’ve been listening to see if somehow she’ll say something different, too. All this time. But when you ask me again, I have to listen to you as well, and then I worry she might have said something else in the meantime, and I end up waiting all over again from the beginning.”
Unable to catch his breath, Jude went on.
“I can hear her now. I heard her while you were talking, and I keep hearing her even while I’m saying this. I wish I could hear what you want to hear, too. I want to know what happened as well. But what am I supposed to do if I can’t hear it? The fact that I can hear her doesn’t mean I can ask her things.”
Leo did not answer. Even after he stopped speaking, Jude went on looking at him for a while. If Leo asked anything more, he felt he would have to give the same answer. Though he had said there was nothing, it felt as though he had not listened enough, and if listening again changed nothing, this time he found himself wondering what he was hearing wrong. He, too, had waited every time the woman finished speaking. Yet when Leo asked him to listen once more, it seemed as though all the listening he had done so far amounted to doing nothing, and it made him angry.
“You said you’re the only one who can hear her.”
Leo spoke.
“That’s why I asked. I have to at least know what I did wrong… No, finding that out wouldn’t change anything now. But you said she keeps talking. If there’s anything she’s saying to me, I’m just standing here without even being able to hear it.”
Leo opened the arm of the glasses caught between his fingers, then folded it again.
“I wasn’t trying to push you. I just wanted to at least know what she was saying. What she said before I let go. Because I didn’t hear it.”
Jude listened to Leo. He heard the woman’s voice as well. Partway through Leo’s words, the woman began again from the beginning, but this time Jude did not raise his hand to stop him. Leo wanted to know what the woman had said before she collapsed. Jude, too, had seen her mouth open then. But he had not heard those words, and they were not among the ones he was hearing now. He wanted Leo to understand that he could explain no more than that.
“If I hear anything else, I’ll tell you.”
Jude spoke.
“And if I don’t catch something, I’ll say I didn’t catch it. But right now, there really isn’t anything except those words. I don’t even know if there was more I could have heard and missed. It’s just… that’s what I can hear now.”
Leo nodded. He put his glasses in his pocket and stood beside the wall. Jude said no more, either. The woman’s voice ended again, leaving a brief interval between the two of them in which there was only rain. Leo asked nothing during it, either.
Footsteps came from below the stairs.
An old woman was coming up, holding the railing. The tip of her wet umbrella touched each step. When the two of them moved aside, she came to the entrance and peered into the room.
“Where’s the woman who was here?”
Jude said she had gone to the hospital.
The old woman asked which hospital. Jude thought for a moment, but could not answer. He thought someone had told him a little earlier. He could not even remember whether it was when they put her in the vehicle or before that, while they were moving the stretcher. He could hardly explain that he had been listening to something else during that time, so he answered that he had not heard the hospital’s name.
“Do you know her?”
The old woman did not answer at once. She looked at the single shoe left in the corner of the entrance, then bent down. She set the overturned shoe upright and picked it up again. Putting her fingers inside to straighten the crushed heel, she spoke.
“They called me, so I came.”
Still holding the shoe, she looked into the room again.
“I started by teaching her how to drink water.”
Jude waited for her to go on. Did she mean she had known the woman since she was very small? If so, why had she spoken of that first, out of so many other things? The old woman did not seem to expect an answer. She touched the heel of the shoe once more and waited a moment to see whether someone would come out of the room. Jude looked inside as well. The place where the woman had collapsed was empty, and looking at it gave him nothing more to tell the old woman.
The old woman said she would have to find out where the woman had gone. Gathering the shoe and umbrella in one hand, she took the railing as she had on her way up. Jude moved aside toward the stairs. As she went down one step at a time, other voices sounded from below.
The police were coming up.
Jude stood beside the door, leaving room for the old woman to go down. The man from downstairs came up behind the police as well. He pointed inside the entrance and gave a brief explanation, and after checking the room, an officer asked Leo what had happened.
Leo gave his name and began by explaining why he had come to the house. Up to the point where he said he had received a message asking him to come, the words came readily. He said he had met Jude at the bottom of the stairs, then gone up first when he heard glass breaking above. But once he began describing what had happened after he entered the door, he kept correcting the same phrases twice. The officer waited without interrupting. Leo pointed to where he had stood, then went on.
“She was stopping them from leaving, so I held her for a moment.”
“Where did you hold her?”
Leo pointed to the wall.
Beneath the light, the shadow of the doorframe stretched a long way. Leo lowered his hand, then raised it again.
“What was here.”
The officer looked at the wall, then at Leo.
“Are you saying you held the woman’s body?”
Leo could not answer easily.
Jude, too, was looking at the wall. Leo had not touched the woman’s body. But they could not say he had not held her, either. When Leo’s hand closed, the woman’s shoulder had jerked backward, and when his fingers opened, she had collapsed. Jude had seen both. But now there was only the shadow of the doorframe on the wall. However many times Leo pointed to the same place, to the officer it would look as though he were only explaining where he had put his hand.
Leo looked at Jude.
Meeting his gaze, Jude turned toward the officer. The woman’s voice began again, but this time he did not wait for her to finish.
“I saw it, too.”
“What did you see?”
Jude pointed beside the door.
“When I came up, the woman was standing over there. The man and the girl were over here.”
The officer looked where Jude was pointing. Jude explained that the man and the girl had moved toward the door. The woman’s hand had been down at her side, but the hand cast on the wall had lengthened and blocked the doorway, he said. After speaking, he looked at the officer’s face. The officer checked the wall briefly, then asked what had happened next.
Jude continued from the moment Leo reached out. The two had come out, and Jude had been supporting the girl’s arm. He had told Leo they were both out, but Leo had told them to go a little farther down. Jude began with the events whose order was clear. Sometimes he corrected himself while explaining where he had been looking, and when the officer asked again, he paused to recall the scene.
Throughout it, the woman repeated the same words.
Without waiting for those words to end, Jude went on explaining what he had seen.
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