Three to Five

QUIET HOUR, DAY 6. 41 degrees. Grandma asleep. My door is still open one hand. It did not move today.

"Who is 'it'?" Rosa said, over his shoulder.

Hugo jumped. "You're meant to be asleep till five."

"It's five past. Who is 'it'?"

"Nobody. It's for my channel. 612 followers. I need a thousand before school starts."

"You were talking. I heard you through the wall."

"I was whispering."

"From three to five, this house does not whisper. We lie down, we close our eyes, we say nothing. Six days I've told you." She pointed. "And why is your door open?"

"It's been open since yesterday."

"Then shut it."

"I'm not touching it."

"And the kitchen curtain? Look at it. Swinging. The shutters have been down since noon, there's no air in this flat, and those beads are swinging like somebody just walked through. You whisper, and it hears you. You see?"

"Ask it," said Hugo.

"Don't be clever with me."

"I'm not. It goes back in there at five, every day. That's how I know it's five."

"Delete that video."

"No."

---

Dinner was cold soup on the balcony, after dark, with Triana loud below them.

"Where's the rule even from?" Hugo said. "Nobody at school has a quiet hour. Mum never made me do one."

"Your mother never listened to me about anything."

"So who made it up?"

"My mother. Your great grandmother. This was her flat." Rosa pushed the bread at him. "She was six in 1918. The fever came down this street that autumn, door by door."

"The Spanish flu. We did it in history."

"It wasn't Spanish. The countries at war hid it. Their papers printed nothing, to keep spirits up. We weren't at war, so our papers printed it. So the whole world called it ours. One of our own officials even said it wasn't born here. Nobody listened. Nobody listens to the one who talks."

"So they blamed whoever talked."

"They blamed whoever talked."

"And the rule?"

"My mother had a little brother. Pepe. Four years old. He could not nap alone, not ever. He'd climb in with whoever was lying down. The maid, the dog, his granny. He died that October, in the afternoon."

Hugo put his spoon down.

"After that my mother kept the house silent from three to five," Rosa said. "You lie down. You face the wall. You don't turn round till five. And it goes past you."

"Did it go past you?"

"I'm here, aren't I? I still sleep facing the wall, at 79."

"Did you ever ask her about it?"

"You didn't ask my mother things. She gave you a look that stopped clocks." Rosa wiped her bowl with the bread. "She never called it the flu, you know. She called it Pepe's fever. As if it was his."

Her phone buzzed on the table. Ana. Rosa put it on speaker.

"Mamá, I have exams all day tomorrow, so I can't fight tonight. Did you look at the brochure?"

"The fruit bowl is sitting on it."

"They have a pool."

"They have a man with a piano who makes you clap."

"You fell in May."

"I tripped in May. Your son talks all through the quiet hour."

"He talks through everything. He gets it from you." Ana sighed down the line. "You moved into Granny's flat and put that radio on, and you haven't turned it off since the funeral. Talk shows, all night, every night. Hugo says he can hear it through the wall."

"I turn it off for him, for two hours. I give him peace, and he can't give me two minutes back."

Hugo looked at the dark hall and said nothing.

---

On day seven Rosa held out her hand at five to three.

"Phone."

"Grandma..."

"Phone, or I ring your mother in her exam."

He handed it over. She put it face down on her bedside table.

"You said it was at your door," she said. "Fine. Then you keep quiet, and it goes past you. That's what the rule is for."

"That's not how it works. Grandma, listen..."

"Not one word, Hugo."

"It's right there in the hall. You don't have to make me quiet. Just don't go to sleep."

"I'm 79. At three o'clock I sleep. That's a rule too."

"Then leave your radio on. Just today."

"That radio is men shouting about football. It is not for a boy at three in the afternoon."

"Please, Grandma."

"In," she said.

His face went the colour of the wall. He shut himself in, and she heard him slide down to the floor behind his door.

The fridge ticked. The fan swung left, then right. Upstairs, the neighbour's television went off.

She shut her door, lay down on her side and faced the wall. The first real quiet in a week. Her mother would have been pleased with her. Her mother, who spent the quiet hour behind her own shut door, and came at five to rub Rosa's feet. They were always like ice, even in August.

At ten past four the phone lit up behind her. A thin glow crept up the wall.

Then Hugo's voice came out of it, very soft and very close.

"Shh, Grandma. Sleep now."

You don't answer. You don't turn round. Behind her, her own door opened. No click. Just wood brushing slowly over tile.

The mattress went down behind her.

A small weight settled against her back, knees first, the way a child gets comfortable. Then something took hold of her shoulder. It was the size of a hand. It was cold right through her nightdress.

Face the wall, Rosa. Don't turn round till five.

Across the hall a door crashed open.

"GRANDMA! I'M TALKING! I'M TALKING, I'M TALKING!" A saucepan rang like a bell. "Two times two is four! Two times three is six! Say something! Say anything!"

The weight lifted off the bed.

At the end of the hall the bead curtain rattled hard, as if somebody had run through it.

---

Hugo stood in her doorway with the pan and a wooden spoon, crying, and he would not stop talking.

"Keep talking. Say the rule. Say anything. Please, Grandma."

"From three to five," Rosa said. Her voice shook. "This house is silent."

"No. Not any more." He grabbed his phone off her table and pushed it at her. "Look. I filmed the hall every day. Day 3, you made me stop at twenty to four. Watch the beads."

On the screen the hall was dim and empty. Then the bead curtain parted by itself, low down, as if somebody small had stepped through.

"Day 4, I hummed for two hours. Nothing moved. Day 5, you sent me to my room. I tried to be good, and my door opened. Yesterday I whispered the whole time. Nothing." He swiped and swiped. "It doesn't come for the noise, Grandma. It comes in the quiet. It only moves when nobody's talking."

"Your phone told me to sleep. In your voice."

"It wants you quiet. It said that to me on day 2, from the kitchen."

"It was at your door, Hugo."

"It went past my door! It was never coming for me. I'm never asleep. You are."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I did! Every day! You said, not one word!"

"And today?"

"Today you took the phone, and I got scared of you, and I was quiet." He was shaking. "I was good for an hour, Grandma. I'm sorry. I was so good."

"Where does it go? When you shout?"

"Back in the kitchen. Behind the beads. It goes back every time somebody talks, and every day at five when you get up and bang the pans."

"Pepe's cot was in the kitchen," Rosa said slowly. "By the stove. My mother told me once. The warmest place in the house."

"What happens when it gets all the way to you?"

Rosa looked at her bed. "My mother died in that bed. Four o'clock, in August. I was in the kitchen, keeping quiet for her."

Hugo wiped his face with his wrist. "Who is it?"

"Give me my phone."

Ana's phone went to voicemail. Rosa talked anyway.

"It's me. Book me the visit. The place with the piano. I want a room with somebody else in it, and a television that never goes off." Her voice cracked. "Tell the piano man I'll clap."

Hugo stared at her. "You'll hate it there."

"I'll hate it out loud." She nodded at his phone. "Are you going to post that?"

"612 people will say it's fake."

"Post it anyway. Let them talk."

She slid the brochure out from under the fruit bowl, and stopped. A little boy who could not nap alone. A mother behind a shut door every afternoon. Small cold feet in August.

"She wasn't keeping it out," Rosa said.

"What?"

"My mother. She wasn't keeping the fever out of the house. She was keeping a bed warm for her brother."

"Whose bed?"

Rosa looked down the hall at her own door.

"Mine," she said. "Every afternoon. For 12 years. She'd stand right there at three o'clock, kind as bread, and say the same thing."

Face the wall, Rosa. Don't turn round till five.