A Noise Downstairs(18)

“This is so funny,” he said. “I was just thinking about one of these old typewriters.”

“Seriously?” Charlotte asked. “I’m like a mind reader. Why were—”

Paul shook his head to suggest it didn’t matter. Besides, he was too busy inspecting the machine to reply.

It was an Underwood. The name was stenciled onto the black metal just above the keys and, in much bigger letters, across the back shelf that would prop up a sheet of paper, had one been rolled in. The machine was almost entirely black, except for the keypad— Paul wondered if that was strictly a computer term—but anyway, all those keys, marked with letters and numbers and punctuation marks, each one perfectly ringed in silver.

“What does it do?” Josh asked.

Above the keys, a semicircular opening that afforded a view of the— Paul wasn’t even sure what they were called, those perfectly arrayed metal arms that struck paper as one pounded on the keys. But there was a kind of beauty in how they were arranged, like the inside of a very tiny opera house. Those keys were the people, the paper the stage.

“It writes things,” Paul said.

“How?”

“Grab a sheet of paper from the printer.”

Charlotte said, “I tried it. There’s still some ink in the ribbon, but I don’t know if you can even buy typewriter ribbons anymore.”

“Ribbons?” Josh said, handing a sheet of paper to his father.

“Okay,” he said, taking the sheet and inserting it into the back of the machine. He twisted the roller at the end of the cylinder, feeding the paper into the typewriter until it appeared on the other side, just above where the keys would hit it.

“I don’t get this at all,” Josh said.

“Watch,” Paul said. “I’m going to type your name.”

He raised his two index fingers over the keys.

Chit chit chit chit.

“God, I love that sound,” Paul said.

Josh watched, open-mouthed, as JOSH appeared, faintly, on the sheet of paper. “Whoa,” he said as his father pulled the sheet out and handed it to him. “That’s cool. But I still don’t get it.”

“This is what we used before computers,” Paul said. “When we wanted to write something, we used this. And you didn’t have to print out what you wrote, because you were printing it as you wrote it, one letter at a time.”

Josh studied the machine. “But how does it go onto the Net? Where do you see stuff? Where’s the screen?”

Charlotte laughed. Josh looked at her, not getting the joke.

Paul struggled to explain. “You know how if you want to write something on the computer, like, you use Word or whatever. That’s what you would use this for. But that’s all it did. You didn’t surf the Web with it. There was no Web. You didn’t figure out your mortgage on it, you didn’t use it to read the Huffington Post or watch a show or look at cat videos or—”

“But what does it do?” Josh asked.

“This machine does one thing and one thing only. It lets you write stuff.”

Josh was unable to conceal his disappointment. “So it’s kind of useless, then. How old is it?”

Paul shook his head. “I’ve got no idea.”

Charlotte said, “I looked all over it for a date and couldn’t find one. But I’m guessing maybe the nineteen thirties, forties?”

Paul shook his head in wonder. “Who knows. But it’s older than any of us in this room, that’s for sure.”

“Even Charlotte?” Josh asked.

“Josh!” Paul said, and shot his wife a look of apology.

“I’ll get you for that,” she said, giving the boy a grin.

Paul asked Charlotte, “What made you . . . why did you get this?”

She smiled. “I told you, I wanted to inspire you. How many times have we been in an antique shop and you’ve stopped and looked adoringly at one of these? I know you love these old gadgets.”

His eyes misted. “When I was a kid, we had a typewriter like this, well, it was a Royal, not an Underwood. But just like this, it weighed about as much as a Volkswagen.”

“I can attest to that,” Charlotte said. “I think there’s more steel in that thing than in our stove.”

Paul continued. “I liked to write stories, but writing them out by hand took so long. When I was ten, before every house had a computer, I asked my dad to show me how to use the typewriter. I got the world’s fastest lesson. Your fingers go here, this one hits this key, this one hits that key, and so on. I remember him holding his hands over mine.”

He put a hand over his mouth, took a moment to compose himself.

“Anyway, that was it. That was my lesson. Been typing ever since.” He smiled wistfully. “All the bad habits I learned at that age, I still have.” He ran his hand over the top of the typewriter. “Just think of all the things that may have been written on this. School essays, love notes, maybe letters from a mother to her soldier son fighting somewhere in France or Germany, if she wasn’t into handwriting. A machine like this, it has a soul, you know?”

“What does that mean?” Josh asked.

Paul struggled to find a way to explain. He turned his son so he was standing directly in front of him.