Mummy opened the door when Ben knocked. She looked at me right away, concerned.

“I can’t keep track of him,” Ben said. “He’s erasing and bending things.”

Mummy told me to go to my room, and she continued speaking with Ben by the door.

In my room, I looked at the flowers on my wall. Each one had five petals. Except for the one near my bed. It only had four. I always knew about the four-petal-flower. Only the blueprints can explain it. Then I can press it from metal.

I heard when Totty came home. Then Shim’l’s voice. Mummy opened the door to my room and gave me a hug. She said nothing and left.

Totty spoke to me later. He told me that I would have to pay for all of the flipped brackets. I would pay with my Chanukah gelt.

After supper, I went to Shim’l’s room. I wanted to speak to him. He closed the door.

The next day, when I walked into the classroom, everyone was looking at me.

Reb Leib’s desk was interesting. The bottoms of its feet were curved outward, like wheels, or the tail of a seahorse.

“Hashem looked in the Torah and created the world,” Reb Leib said. “Everything we see, the land, the sea. The birds, the mountains. Was all in the Torah.”

His beard was black and it was a square.

That night at home, an hour after Mummy went to sleep, I walked out of my room and went up to the attic.

I held a candle in one hand. Everything around me glowed yellow. The box sat exactly where I saw it last — on the floor on the right.

I picked it up. I pushed my finger against the keyhole. I didn’t have the key. Totty had moved it, and I wasn’t able to find it.

On the floor under the box, I saw a small piece of paper. It was one of Shim’l’s coupons.

The next day after school, I put the coupon on Shim’l’s bed. Then I noticed a dark blue folder on top of his cupboard, which I hadn’t seen before.

I opened it. There were two blue papers, the top two pages of the blueprints.

As I walked out of the room, Shim’l saw me. He went in right away, and picked up the coupon.

“What did you draw on the coupons?” “I tried copying the blueprints.” “Why did you take my coupons?” “I’m sorry, Shim’l, I’m not going to do that again,” I said slowly. “How can I know?” I wanted to say ‘You can’t really, but I am still sorry.’ But I didn’t. I just looked down. “Also,” I said, “there’s a special machine to understand the blueprints.” “Really?” He went to get the folder. “Mummy gave this to me yesterday.”

The white designs, lines and shapes. This was for Shim’l, but he didn’t understand it. I rubbed my finger over the lines, it wasn’t like regular paper. Shim’l needs to understand it. He needs to see it painted nicely.

“Daucel might still be in the factory. What if he puts them into the machine?” I said.

He shook his head.

For weeks he shook his head, not wanting to speak about the blueprints. Anything else, yes. Blueprints, no.

Then I stopped asking. And one day after school he came to me. “Last night, I was looking at them,” Shim’l said, “I wondered what it meant.” He got the folder and put it on my bed. When I left the house, I heard the door open again behind me.

On the way to the factory, I heard steps behind me from time to time, and when I turned around I saw a shadow. Short shadow. Elter zeidie was with me. I entered through a back door, and went up the steps.

Daucel was sitting there, in the same position as the first time I saw him.

“Oh, hello,” he said. “Can you put the blueprints in your machine?” “Hmm. Each run costs about half a crown. I do them for testing. So, I mean…”

“We are also testing,” I heard Shim’l say. 

“Here,” I said, and gave Daucel the blueprints.

“What are these?” he said, bringing the blueprint very close to his face.

“Well, I suppose I can call it a ‘trial’,” he said. “Let me run them.”

He put the first one inside and pushed the lever, and the machine made a loud noise, louder than the one I heard the first time.

When it came out, it was improved. It was the big steel factory. The white bubbles on the edges of the water. The brown beams of the dock. White puffy clouds were surrounding it, with a deep yellow sun behind.

I picked it up, and it felt like regular paper. I flipped it over, the back was white. Daucel looked at it from behind me.

“Oh, this is a little—,” he said under his breath. He had sweat on his forehead.

He did the next one. And this one had a large bridge. The bridge stretched very long and it had one big arch. The ropes draped and under them I saw brackets. It was Tod’s bridge.

Each bracket looked like a square. It didn’t close, but it didn’t have the wrong corner.

“Next time bring some money, lad.”

When we came home, I put them on the table for Mummy and Totty, in the middle, face up, where the napkins usually were. The one with the water was on top.

Totty sat by the end of the table, with his Sefer. He looked up. Then Mummy came from behind holding a cup of water.

First, the water, the bright silver specks pulsing along the many little waves. The seagulls in the bright blue sky.

Totty’s eyes were on the red cranes hanging over the ships with pulley ropes dangling under. The dock’s ropes, woven together on the sides, bobbing with the water.

Look, Totty, this is the blueprint, you can finally see. Daucel helped me bring them to life.

“This,” Totty said, “is not a blueprint.”

Yes, exactly. It’s a blueprint made into life. “A living one,” I think I said.

Totty closed his eyes tightly, creating deep creases above his nose. He put his hand on his face, and his face became red.

“No.”

He put his finger on it, the way I did on the blueprints, and moved it across. “It’s just a picture.”

Mummy put the cup down far from the papers. Then she took them by the edges, and turned them over. The white on the back seemed dimmer than the way I saw it with Daucel.

Totty lowered his head back into his Sefer. I watched his eyes go back to the same line he was on before.

Shim’l asked for the original blueprints back. I pointed at the papers on the table. He took them and turned them over, then back. He put them in his folder. I never saw him open the folder again. He went back to his coupons.

That night I heard the chest clack open in the attic. I heard Mummy counting them. She was checking that the rest were waiting for me.

That Chanukah, I gave Totty my gelt for the brackets. In the shop, when I wanted to buy a ruler, I didn’t. The next Chanukah, I gave my money again. And the next one also.

I stopped going to the attic. I stopped asking Totty about the blueprints. I didn’t need to. I knew where Daucel was.

***

At Bar Mitzvah, Totty brought a box that had a red ribbon around it. I knew what was inside.

Toward the end, Totty made a speech. 

“This is not a regular gift. It bridges generations.”

“Berle has proved himself with patience, and he is now ready to receive this heritage.”

Everyone clapped. Totty looked at Ben across the room. Ben touched his moustache. He didn’t nod.

Then Totty bent down and whispered to me.

“I can’t read them, Berle. My father couldn’t either. Someone has to.” Then he held on to the box a moment longer. 

“You won’t give it to anyone, right?”

 I nodded.

He looked at the box for a long moment the way he once looked at the key. Then he let go.

A machine is not a person. The next day I carried the box to the factory. Daucel was in his corner, in the orange jacket. I put the box on his table and untied the red ribbon myself. Then I put my Bar Mitzvah money next to it. He counted it twice. He looked at the stack, then at the door, and he put the money in his pocket.

Shim’l’s two were gone, so the top one was mine. Before I gave it to him, I looked at it. There was the square, with its last line going to the wrong corner. But on this sheet it sat inside something bigger. There was an arch above it, and above the arch a half circle with lines spreading out like a fan. Around it were small rectangles, one on top of two, two on top of one. I had seen this. I held it closer. The lines were starting to lean toward each other, the way they did when Tod drew. I thought that if I waited one more moment I would know it.

Daucel held out his hand.

He pushed the red ball forward and the machine grumbled, louder than I remembered. The blue went in slowly, a corner first. I didn’t watch it go. I watched the other side.

It was my house. The dark red bricks against the grey roof. The fanlight over the door, with sun on the glass. The white oak fence, and our big tree, all yellow, and behind it a sky with clouds that were never on the sheet. The paper was still warm. I looked at the doorway for a long time. I was looking for something, I don’t know what. Everything was there.

“Next,” Daucel said.

After that it went quickly. Mountains. A valley with a river at the bottom. A city with more roofs than I could count. On my left the blue pile got shorter, and on my right the white pile got taller, taller than the blue one ever was, because it was regular paper and regular paper is thick. Daucel had sweat on his forehead and he stopped talking. Once I bent down and looked into the side where the sheets went in. It was dark, and empty. I didn’t ask.

The last one had no lines. It was elter zeidie’s handwriting, from the top to the bottom, small and leaning. I couldn’t read it. The machine would read it for me.

When it came out, it was a picture of an office, with a chair. Sitting on it was an old man. I saw his back. Now I could see you, elter zeidie. I hung it in my room.

When I brought the stack home and put it in the chest, it didn’t close all the way.

It’s been years. Today, I wonder what they looked like raw. Maybe I would even understand them the way they were. And as the condition said, “not to read them until you are ready.” They were improved now, they were ready.

***

I sit here tonight at my desk, in my own home, writing this for you, my children.

It is late, and by my desk lamp my whole city, Liverpool of years bygone, becomes alive. The lamp doesn’t go out. Nobody has to relight it. It is here I can hear Daucel, I can see Ben. They are the walls of my office, their shadows talk, and they bring me back to that world.

On my desk lies a small candle holder. The one that sat by my bed, with the candle Mummy would relight. There is no candle in it.

It is gold, a small pan with a skinny goblet in the middle. Dark brown envelops the edges. It doesn’t sparkle there. Near the candle holder sits a stack of papers. Over the years, the stack gets taller. Each paper has a U shape, and a square inside.

I would draw it every year on Ben’s Yortzheit. I wanted to show him the living blueprints.

I would draw the square by looking at the picture with the waves. And I thought of Ben while I drew it, but when I looked at the square, it wasn’t the same one Ben drew in his notebook. I still can’t draw it the way I saw it in the notebook.

I also have on my table an oval watch. Tod gave it to me as a gift. Whenever I cross Tod’s bridge with his brackets under me, I think of him. I once offered to show him the improved blueprints. He laughed and shook his head, “Mine are over the waters.”

Last night elter zeidie came to me. I saw his back. I knew what that meant.

It is time I pass the living blueprints to you, my children.

They are in a white box, and the code is two thirty eight. Take care of them, cherish them, and understand them.