“Aren’t you curious about what day it is today?”
Speck wriggled into her coat, bidding me to do the same. She led me through the clearing to the highest point near the camp, a ridge that ran along the northwestern edge, a difficult passage over a steep slope of loose shale. My legs ached when we reached the summit, and I was out of breath. She, on the other hand, tapped her foot and told me to be quiet and listen. We were still and waited. Other than the thawing mountains, it was silent.
“What am I supposed to hear?”
“Concentrate,” she said.
I tried, but save for the occasional laugh of a nuthatch and the creak of twigs and branches, nothing reached my ear. I shrugged my shoulders.
“Try harder.”
I listened so intently that a fierce headache knocked inside my skull: her even, relaxed breathing, the beating of her heart, and a far-off rhythmic vibration that at first sounded like the rasp of a file but soon took on a more fixed character. A hum of alternating speeds, a low splash, the occasional horn, tires on pavement, and I realized we were listening to distant traffic.
“Neat,” I told her. “Cars.”
“Pay attention. What do you hear?”
My head was splitting, but I focused. “Lots of cars?” I guessed.
“Right.” She grinned. “Lots and lots of cars. Traffic in the morning.”
I still didn’t get it.
“People going to work. In the city. Schoolbuses and kids. Lots of cars in the morning. That means it’s a workday, not a Sunday. Sundays are quiet and not so many cars speeding by.”
She held her bare finger to the air and then tasted it in her mouth for an instant. “I think it’s a Monday,” she said.
“I’ve seen that trick before. How can you tell?”
“All those cars make smoke, and the factories make smoke. But there aren’t so many cars on the road and the factories are closed on Sundays. You hardly taste any smoke at all. Monday, a bit more. By Friday night, the air tastes like a mouthful of coal.” She licked her finger again. “Definitely a Monday. Now, let me see your letter.”
I handed over the valentine and envelope, which she inspected, pointing to the postmark over the stamp. “Do you remember what day is Valentine’s Day?”
“February fourteenth.” I felt proud, as if I had given the correct answer in math class. An image flashed of a woman, dressed in black and white, writing numbers on a chalkboard.
“That’s right, and you see this?” She pointed to the date on the postmark, which ran in a semicircle: MON FEB 13 ’50 AM. “That’s when your Shakespeare put it in the mailbox. On a Mon. That means Monday morning is when they stamped it.”
“So, today is Valentine’s Day? Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“No, Aniday. You have to learn to read the signs and figure it out. Deduction. How could today be Valentine’s Day if today is a Monday? How can we find a letter the day before it is lost? If I found the letter yesterday, and today is Monday, how could today be Valentine’s Day?”
I was confused and tired. My head ached.
“February thirteenth was last Monday. If this card had been out for more than a week, it would be ruined by now. I found it yesterday and brought it to you. Yesterday was a quiet day—not many cars—a Sunday. Today must be the next Monday.”
She made me question my ability to reason at all.
“It’s simple. Today is Monday, February 20, 1950. You do need a calendar.” She held out her hand for my pencil, which I gladly ceded her. On the back of the card, she drew seven boxes in a row and labeled S-M-T-W-T-F-S for the days of the week. Then she printed all the months of the year in a column on the side, and then on the opposite side, the numerals from 1 to 31. As she drew them, she quizzed me on the proper number of days in each month, singing a familiar song to help me remember, but we forgot about leap years, which would throw me off in time. From her pocket, she took three round metal circles to demonstrate that if I wanted to keep track of time, all I would have to do would be to move the disks to the next space on the calendar each morning, remembering to start over at the end of the week and month.