Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight: The Village's First Between-Time

The village gathered at five.

Margaret had arranged the chairs in the weight-bearing room — not many chairs, the chairs of a beginning, twelve chairs in the room that could hold thirty. The October light had moved by five o'clock. The south window now held the lower October angle, the light on the limestone at the long angle, the room receiving the late afternoon in its first late afternoon.

He stood at the side of the weight-bearing room and watched the village come in.

He had been to openings before. He had stood at the side of the three-generation house on the first day and the library extension on the first day and the school at the coast on the day the windows received their first coastal light. He knew the inside view of the opening — the attending witness, the practice in its correct position.

He watched them come through the door.

An older woman came in first. She came in the way of someone who had been to the building in its construction — she looked at the ceiling height immediately, the body already calibrated to the space. She found a chair without looking for one. She sat and looked at the south window.

A man came in behind her with two children — the children ahead of him before he had finished coming through the door. The children went directly to the corner. He had expected this. He had drawn the corner for the children of the between-time, for the children brought by the between-time people, and the children found it as the children at Patrick's school had found it: directly, without instruction, the body knowing the corner before the mind had assembled the question.

He watched one of the children sit on the bench in the corner and look through the north window.

He thought about Joseph's corner children finding the corner. He thought about the child always knowing what it needed before the adult had found the word for it. He thought about the practice drawing the corner for the child not yet arrived, the child finding the drawing and recognising it.

He thought: the corner receives the children on the first day.

He thought: the section drew this.

Margaret began.

She stood in the weight-bearing room in front of the south window and spoke about the between-time — not the building, the between-time. She spoke about the village's between-time, the years of the community centre closing and the gap in the village's ordinary days, the accumulated between-time of a village that had no room for it. She spoke about the gap not as a problem that had been solved but as a condition that had been waiting for its room.

He thought about the gap as a condition waiting for its room. He thought about the between-time as something the village had always known — Raymond's thirty years and Margaret's eleven years and the older woman who had come in first and the man with the two children and all of them already knowing the between-time before the room was prepared for it.

He thought: the practice had not been invented the between-time. The practice had found it and drawn it.

After Margaret spoke, Raymond went to the kitchen.

He watched Raymond go to the kitchen and stand at the counter and begin. He watched the village in the weight-bearing room — the chairs filling, more people arriving, the room finding its October afternoon proportion. He watched the children in the corner. He watched the older woman at the south window, her chair moved slightly, the body wanting the October light at the closer range.

He thought about the section — the October south light at the angle the section had drawn, the room receiving it now on the first day. He thought about the section as the practice's most honest drawing and the room as the building's most honest day and the two of them now coincide.

He thought: the section knew this October.

Raymond appeared at the hatch.

The room changed when Raymond appeared at the hatch. He felt it — the subtle shift, the room attending to the hatch as the threshold through which the between-time would pass. He watched the village orient to the hatch the way the children had oriented to the corner: without instruction, the body already knew.

A woman rose from her chair and went to the hatch. Raymond passed her the cup.

He watched her receive the cup and turn back into the room with it — the cup held in both hands, the warmth of it, the returning to her chair with the tea made in the between-time kitchen and the field in the peripheral and the October light still on the limestone floor.

He thought: this is what the letters described.

He thought: thirty years of Raymond's between-time and eleven years of Margaret's and all the between-times of all the people in this room and the village's accumulated knowledge of what this room should hold, and now the room holding it, the correspondence complete.

He stood at the side of the weight-bearing room and watched the village's first between-time and did not speak and was in the correct position and thought about all the drawings that had arrived at this October afternoon — the six sections and the pocket notebooks and the coastal vocabulary and the hatch drawn at the height of the passed cup and the corner drawn for the children and the south window drawn at forty centimetres and the between-time window drawn for the peripheral field.

He thought: all of it was drawn for this.

He thought about the correspondence. He thought about the letters — Raymond's letters and Margaret's letters and the village's knowledge and the children who had shown him the corner and the girl who had given him the coastal vocabulary and the library seven-year-old drawing the year of the attending. He thought about all of them as the practice's correspondents, the people who had written the building before it was drawn.

He thought: the practice is a correspondence.

He thought: the rooms are the answers to the letters.

He wrote in the pocket notebook before he and Ellie drove home that evening: The village's first between-time. Raymond at the hatch. The children in the corner on the first day. The older woman and the south window. The section knew this October. The practice is a correspondence. The rooms are the answers to the letters. The letters are beginning.

He looked at what he had written.

He was glad.

End of Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Eight