There were other tables here and there, all of them unoccupied, but most of the park was unused ground covered with a plush, fuzzy kind of turf. In the moonlight this densely woven pile of vegetation turned a soft shade of aquamarine, almost radiant. Beyond the thinning trees, stars were bright but without luster, as if they were made of luminous paper. Around the park, a jagged line of high roofs, black and featureless, crossed the sky like the uneven teeth of an old saw.
Nolon was resting his hands at the edge of the small, nearly circular table. In the middle of the table a piece of candle flickered inside a misshapen bubble of green glass, and Nolon’s face was bathed in a restless green glare. He too was wearing a dark overcoat, unbuttoned at the top to reveal a scarf of lighter shade stuffed inside it. The scarf was wrapped about Nolon’s neck right to the base of his chin. Every so often Nolon glanced up, not to look at Grissul as he proceeded across the park, but to try and catch sight of something in that lighted window across the street: a silhouette which at irregular intervals slipped in and out of view. Above the window was a long, low roof surmounted by a board which appeared to be a sign or marquee.
The lettering on this board was entirely unreadable, perhaps corroded by the elements or even deliberately effaced. But the image of two tall, thin bottles could still be seen, their slender necks angled festively this way and that.
Grissul sat down, facing Nolon at eye level.
“Have you been here long?” he asked.
Nolon calmly pulled out a watch from deep inside his coat. He stared at it for a few moments, tapped the glass once or twice, then gently pushed it back inside his coat.
“Someone must have known I was thinking about seeing you,” Grissul continued, “because I’ve got a little story I could tell.”
Nolon again glanced toward the lighted window across the street. Grissul noticed this and twisted his head around, saying, “Well, someone’s there after all. Do you think tonight we could get, you know, a little service of some kind?”
“Maybe you could go over there yourself and see what our chances are,” Nolon replied.
“All the same to me,” Grissul insisted, twisting his head back to face Nolon.
“I’ve still got my news.”
“Is that specifically why this meeting is taking place?”
To this query Grissul returned a blank expression. “Not that I know of,” he asserted. “As far as I’m concerned, we just met by chance.”
“Of course,” Nolon agreed, smiling a little. Grissul smiled back but with much less subtlety.
“So I was going to tell you,” Grissul began, “that I was out in that field, the one behind those empty buildings at the edge of town where everything just slides away and goes off in all directions. And there’s a marsh by there, makes the ground a little, I don’t know, stringy or something. No trees, though, only a lot of wild grass, reeds, you know where I mean?”
“I now have a good idea,” Nolon replied, a trifle bored or at least pretending to be.
“This was a little before dark that I was there. A little before the stars began to come out. I really wasn’t planning to do anything, let me say that. I just walked some ways out onto the field, changed direction a few times, walked a ways more. Then I saw something through a blind of huge stalks of some kind, skinny as your finger but with these great spiky heads on top. And really very stiff, not bending at all, just sort of wobbling in the breeze. They might well have creaked, I don’t know, when I pushed my way through to see beyond them. Then I knelt down to get a better look at what was there on the ground. I’m telling you, Mr. Nolon, it was right in the ground. It appeared to be a part of it, like—”
“Mr. Grissul, what appeared?”
Grissul remembered himself and found a tone of voice not so exhausting of his own strength, nor so wearing on his listener’s patience.
“The face,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “It was right there, about the size of, I don’t know, a window or a picture hanging on a wall, except that it was in the ground and it was a big oval, not rectangular in any way. Just as if someone had partly buried a giant, or better yet, a giant’s mask. Only the edges of the face seemed not so much buried as, well, woven I guess you would say, right into the ground. The eyes were closed, not shut closed—it didn’t seem to be dead—but relaxed. The same with the lips, very heavy lips rubbing up against each other. Even complexion, ashy gray, and soft cheeks. They looked soft, I mean, because I didn’t actually touch them in any way. I think it was asleep.”
Nolon shifted slightly in his chair and looked straight into Grissul’s eyes.
“Then come and see for yourself,” Grissul insisted. “The moon’s bright enough.”
“That’s not the problem. I’m perfectly willing to go along with you, whatever might be there. But for once I have other plans.”
“Oh, other plans,” repeated Grissul as if some deeply hidden secret had been revealed. “And what other plans would those be, Mr. Nolon?”
“Plans of relatively long standing and not altered since made, if you can conceive of such a thing these days. Are you listening? Oh, I thought you nodded off. Well, Rignolo, that mysterious little creature, has made a rare move. He’s asked if I would like to have a look around his studio. No one’s ever been there that I know of. And no one’s actually seen what he paints.”
“No one that you know of,” added Grissul.
“Of course. Until tonight, that is, a little while from now unless a change of plans is necessary. Otherwise I shall be the first to see what all that talk of his is about. It should really be worth the trouble, and I could invite you to come along.”
Grissul’s lower lip pushed forward a little. “Thank you, Mr. Nolon,” he said, “but that’s more in your line. I thought when I told you about my observation this evening—”
“Of course, your observation is very interesting, extraordinary, Mr. Grissul.
But I think that that sort of thing can wait, don’t you? Besides, I haven’t told you anything of Rignolo’s work”
“You can tell me.”
“Landscapes, Mr. Grissul. Nothing but landscapes. Exclusively his subject, a point he even brags about.”
“That’s very interesting, too.”
“I thought you would say something like that. And you might be even more interested if you had ever heard Rignolo discourse on his canvasses. But… well, you can see and hear for yourself. What do you say, then? First Rignolo’s studio and then straight out to see if we can find that old field again?”
They agreed that these activities, in this sequence, would not be the worst way to fill an evening.
As they got up from the table, Nolon had a last look at the window across the street. The light that once brightened it must have been put out during his conversation with Grissul. So there was no way of knowing whether or not someone was now observing them. Buttoning their overcoats as far as their scarfed necks, the two men walked in silence across the park upon which countless stars stared down like the dead eyes of sculptured faces.