Habib once borrowed a cooking pot from his neighbor. When he returned the pot, he gave with it a small pot. His neighbor asked him, "Why did you give me a small pot along with my pot?" Habib said, "Indeed, your pot gave birth yesterday to a small pot, and now it is rightfully yours." The man was happy, and he took the pots and entered his house. Sometime later, Habib went to his neighbor and requested from him another pot, and his neighbor gave him what he asked for. A long time passed, and Habib did not return the pot. So the neighbor went to the house of Habib to ask him to give it back. Habib welcomed him in his house, and he was crying with sobs. The neighbor said, "What's wrong with you, Habib? Why are you crying?" Habib said through his tears, "Your pot passed away yesterday, my friend." His neighbor said angrily, "Man, how can a pot die?" Habib replied, "You believe that a pot can give birth? And you don't believe that it can die?"

A lovely story, It was a long time ago that I read it for the first time, it fascinated then and now I wanted to share it.

The Egg

By: Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me.

“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”

“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words.

“There was a… a truck and it was skidding…”

“Yup,” I said.

“I… I died?”

“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Are you god?” You asked.

“Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.”

“My kids… my wife,” you said.

“What about them?”

“Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”

“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”

“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,”

“All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”

You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?”

“Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.”

You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”

“All you. Different incarnations of you.”

“Wait. I’m everyone!?”

“Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.

“I’m every human being who ever lived?”

“Or who will ever live, yes.”

“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”

“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added.

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

“I’m Jesus?”

“And you’re everyone who followed him.”

You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time.

“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

I'm teaching a short story class for high schoolers and looking to expand my short story repertoire. Has to be readable in 45 minutes. TIA!

Translated by Gregory Rabassa

On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

Frightened by that nightmare, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife, who was putting compresses on the sick child, and he took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked at the fallen body with a mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. And yet, they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake.

“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”

On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house. Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.

Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o’clock, alarmed at the strange news. By that time onlookers less frivolous than those at dawn had already arrived and they were making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive’s future. The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner mind felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud in order to implant the earth a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe. But Father Gonzaga, before becoming a priest, had been a robust woodcutter. Standing by the wire, he reviewed his catechism in an instant and asked them to open the door so that he could take a close look at that pitiful man who looked more like a huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens. He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him. Alien to the impertinences of the world, he only lifted his antiquarian eyes and murmured something in his dialect when Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. Then he came out of the chicken coop and in a brief sermon warned the curious against the risks of being ingenuous. He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels. Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts.

His prudence fell on sterile hearts. The news of the captive angel spread with such rapidity that after a few hours the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace and they had to call in troops with fixed bayonets to disperse the mob that was about to knock the house down. Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel.

The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments. In the midst of that shipwreck disorder that made the earth tremble, Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond the horizon.

The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.

Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgment on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings. Those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time if a providential event had not put and end to the priest’s tribulations.

It so happened that during those days, among so many other carnival attractions, there arrived in the town the traveling show of the woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents. The admission to see her was not only less than the admission to see the angel, but people were permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state and to examine her up and down so that no one would ever doubt the truth of her horror. She was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. What was most heartrending, however, was not her outlandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortune. While still practically a child she had sneaked out of her parents’ house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. Her only nourishment came from the meatballs that charitable souls chose to toss into her mouth. A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel’s reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely. That was how Father Gonzaga was cured forever of his insomnia and Pelayo’s courtyard went back to being as empty as during the time it had rained for three days and crabs walked through the bedrooms.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren close to town and gave up his job as a bailiff for good, and Elisenda bought some satin pumps with high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk, the kind worn on Sunday by the most desirable women in those times. The chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention. If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one. At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he not get too close to the chicken coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell, and before they child got his second teeth he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, where the wires were falling apart. The angel was no less standoffish with him than with the other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too.

When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen. He seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d be duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels. He could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and extended him the charity of letting him sleep in the shed, and only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night, and was delirious with the tongue twisters of an old Norwegian. That was one of the few times they became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die and not even the wise neighbor woman had been able to tell them what to do with dead angels.

And yet he not only survived his worst winter, but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars. One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn’t get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.

Free to read online in Uncanny Magazine

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

There was not a single free chair in the tavern, which consisted of a square room in the basement of an old, dilapidated building. The room looked onto a rear alley through the iron bars of a single window, and its gloomy, tomblike atmosphere required it to be lit both day and night. Its walls had been painted a light blue and they exuded dark stains of dampness in various places. Its door opened onto a long narrow passageway that led to the street, and on one of the room’s sides were ranged barrels of the infernal wine. The tavern’s patrons were one big family tree whose branches were spread among the bare wooden tables. Some of them were bound by ties of friendship or by being colleagues at work, while all were joined in the brotherhood of being together in the same place and in the spiritual intimacy they shared there night after night. They were united too by conversation and the infernal wine.

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

It was not uncommon for one of them to be asked the question, “Why is it that you prefer the Tavern of the Black Cat?”

Its real name is The Star, but it acquired its popular name because of its huge black cat, adored by the emaciated and angular Greek owner, and friend and mascot of the patrons.

“I prefer the Tavern of the Black Cat because of its friendly, family atmosphere and because for a piaster or two you can fly without wings.”

The black cat would roam about from table to table in search of bread crumbs and scraps of felafel and fish. It would hang about at people’s feet and rub itself against their legs with the coquetry of one deprived of God’s favors, while its Greek owner would lean his elbows on the table, gazing lifelessly into space. As for the old waiter, he would go around with the wine or fill up the small ribbed glasses from the taps on the barrels.

“And it’s the tavern with the most compassion for those with fixed incomes.”

Witticisms and anecdotes would be exchanged, and hearts would grow closer by sharing grievances. Then someone with a fine voice would break into song, and that damp, tomblike place would overflow with happiness.

“There’s no harm in our forgetting for a moment the plurality of children and the paucity of money.”

“And to forget the heat and the flies….”

“And to forget that there’s a world outside the iron bars.”

“And to take pleasure in fondling the black cat.”

In the moments of being together, their spirits would become serene, abounding with love for everything, freed from fear and bigotry and cleansed of the specters of disease, old age, and death. They would conceive themselves in a likeness to which they aspired, outstripping time by whole centuries.

They were engaged in a sing-song when a stranger appeared at the door.

The stranger looked all around but did not find an empty table. He disappeared from sight into the passageway, and they thought he had gone for good, but he returned carrying a rush chair—the chair of the Greek owner himself—placed it against the narrow door and sat down.

He had come in with a sullen expression, and had returned and sat down with one. He looked at no one. His eyes revealed a stern, fierce look; a look that was absent, that was taking refuge in some unknown, faraway world and seeing none of those who were filling the small place. His appearance in general was dark, strong, and frightening, as if he were a wrestler, a pugilist, or a weight lifter. And his clothes went perfectly with his dark complexion; they accented it—the black sweater, the dark gray trousers, and the brown rubber-soled shoes. The only thing that shone in that gloomy form was a square-shaped patch of baldness that crowned a large hard-looking head.

His unexpected presence let loose an electric charge that penetrated through to the depths of those seated around the tables. The singing stopped, the expressions on the men’s faces contracted, the laughter subsided. Eyes alternated between staring at him and stealing glances at him. This, though, did not last long. Waking from the shock of surprise and terror at his appearance, they refused to allow the stranger to spoil their evening. With gestures they called upon one another to shun him, to continue having a good time. Once again they went back to their conversation, to their joking and drinking, but he was not in fact absent from their consciousness; they did not succeed in ignoring him completely, and he continued to weigh upon their spirits like some inflamed tooth. The man clapped his hands with disquieting loudness, and the aged waiter came and brought him a glass of the infernal wine. He quickly downed it and followed it with a second, then ordered four glasses all at once and drained them one after another. Then he ordered more. A sensation of fear and awe came over them; the laughter died on their lips; they withdrew into a dejected silence. What sort of man was this? The amount of wine he had consumed was enough to have killed an elephant, and here he was sitting like a solid rock, wholly unaffected, his features unrelaxed. What sort of man was this?

The black cat approached tentatively. It waited for him to throw it something. He was unaware of its presence, and the cat began rubbing itself against his leg. But the man stamped on the ground and the cat retreated, no doubt amazed at such treatment, the like of which it had never before experienced. The Greek turned his lifeless face toward the sound. He regarded the stranger at length, then went back to looking at nothing. The stranger emerged from his state of inertia. He moved his head to right and left violently, bit on his lips, then began talking in an inaudible voice, either to himself or to some person of his imagination. He menaced and threatened, waving his fist about. His face took on the ugliest expression of anger. The silence and fear were intense.

His voice was heard for the first time, a harsh voice like the bellowing of a beast.

“Curses…doom and destruction…” he repeated loudly.

He clenched his fist and continued. “Let the mountain come down—and what’s behind the mountain.”

He was silent for a while, then went on talking in a voice slightly less loud, “This is the question, quite simply and frankly.”

They became convinced that there was no point staying on any longer. When it had hardly begun, he had ruined the evening’s entertainment. They might as well go off peacefully. Agreement was reached among them with an exchange of looks, then there was a general movement of getting ready and standing up. It was then that, for the first time, he took notice of them. Emerging from his trance, he let his gaze move among them questioningly. With a gesture he halted them as he asked, “Who are you?”

The question deserved to be ignored and treated with contempt. But no one thought to ignore it or treat it with contempt.

“For a long time we’ve been patrons of the place,” answered one of them, taking heart from his mature years.

“When did you come?”

“We came at the beginning of the evening.”

“Then you were here before I arrived?”

“Yes.”

He gestured to them to return to their places.

“No one is to leave the room,” he said sternly.

They could not believe their ears. They were tongue-tied with amazement, but not one of them dared to answer him as he deserved. The middle-aged man, with a calmness not at all consistent with his feelings, said, “But we want to go.”

He threw them a stony, threatening glare. “Let him who has no care for his life advance!”

There was no one among them who had no care for his life. They exchanged dazed, baffled glances.

“But what’s the purpose of your objecting to our leaving?” asked the middle-aged man.

The stranger shook his head with grim scorn. “Don’t try to fool me,” he said. “You have heard everything….”

“I can assure you we have heard nothing,” said the middle-aged man in astonishment.

“Don’t try to fool me,” he shouted angrily. “You’ve learned what it’s all about.”

“We heard nothing and we know nothing.”

“Deceiving liars!”

“You must believe us.”

“Believe riotous drunkards?”

“You are insulting innocent people and sullying their honor.”

“Let him who has no care for his life advance!”

It became plain to them that the situation could only be handled by force, and this was something they could not muster. Under the spell of his fearsome gaze, they were obliged to return to their seats with suppressed anger and an unprecedented sense of degradation.

“And how long shall we remain here?” asked the old man.

“Until the appropriate time comes.”

“And when will the appropriate time come?”

“Shut up and wait.”

The time passed in painful tension. As they sat subdued by distress and worry, the wine flew from their heads. Even the black cat was conscious of a hostile odor in the atmosphere, so it jumped up onto the ledge of the sole window, then lay down, folded its front paws beneath its head, and closed its eyes, allowing its tail to hang out between the bars.

Certain questions about the man demanded to be answered: Was he drunk? Was he mad? What was the story he was accusing them of having heard? During all this time the Greek owner persisted in his lifeless silence, while the waiter, as though he were seeing and hearing nothing, went on serving the stranger.

The stranger began to look at them with scornful malice, then he said menacingly, “If any one of you has the idea of playing me false, I’ll punish the lot of you mercilessly.”

They took heart when he resumed talking, so the middle-aged man said with evident sincerity, “I swear to you, we all swear to you…”

“If I asked you for an oath, by what would you swear?”

A tiny hope invaded them, and the middle-aged man said eagerly, “By what you want—by our children, by the Almighty!”

“Nothing has any value with patrons of such a vulgar tavern!”

“We’re not as you think, we’re decent fathers and faithful believers. That may be just why we so need to refresh our burdened spirits….”

“Depraved scoundrels, you are dreaming of building castles not by hard work but by the contemptible exploitation of the story!”

“We swear by God Almighty that we do not know of the story and have no idea what it’s about.”

“Who of you is without a story, you cowards?”

“You did not speak. Your lips were moving, but no sound came from them,” said the old man.

“Do not try to deceive me, you old dodderer!”

“You must believe us and let us be.”

“Woe to you if you make a move! Woe to you if you act treacherously! If it comes to it, I’ll smash your heads and I’ll use them to block up the passageway.”

The man was truly fearsome, maybe also fearful, which would in itself increase the possibility of things ending badly. Despair crept into their hearts like a wave of deadly cold. He did not stop drinking, though he did not get drunk or become listless or torpid. And here he was, barring the sole way out of the place, powerful, violent, and as steely as the bars at the window.

They went on hopelessly exchanging glances. Whenever they glimpsed a shadow behind the bars, hope sprang to their hearts, though they were unable to make the slightest movement. Even the black cat seemed to have deserted them completely, and continued to enjoy its slumbers. One of them, finding the restraint too hard to bear, asked apprehensively, “Can I go to the toilet?”

“Who told you I was a wet nurse!”

The old man sighed and said, “Are we fated to remain like this till morning?”

“You’ll be lucky to see the morning!”

To argue was futile:

the man was mad or on the run or both. There might be some story behind him or there might be nothing at all. Despite their number they were prisoners. He was strong and powerful, and they possessed neither strength nor determination. Was there, though, no way of resisting? No possibility of resistance of any kind?

Once again they exchanged glances. Concern was to be seen in their eyes, and whisperings, just discreet enough for the stranger not to hear, were passed between them.

“What a disaster!”

“What a humiliation!”

“What ignominy!”

And suddenly a glance was embellished with something that resembled a smile, was in fact an actual smile. Was it really a smile?

“Why not? It’s a funny situation.”

“Funny?”

“Look at it with passing objectivity and you’ll find it’s enough to make you die laughing!”

“Really?”

“I’m frightened I’ll explode with laughter.”

“Remember,” said the middle-aged man in a voice that was only just audible, “that the time we normally leave is still a long way off.”

“But there’s no longer any real evening gathering.”

“Because we’ve discontinued it without reason.”

“Without reason?”

“I mean without a reason to prevent us continuing as of now.”

“And in what sort of humor would we go on with it after what has happened?”

“Let’s forget the door for a while and see what’s what.”

No one welcomed the suggestion and no one rejected it. The glasses of infernal wine were produced. Though this was in front of the stranger’s eyes, he paid the men no attention. They drank too much, heads became dizzy, and they were carried away in their intoxication. Magically their worries were lifted and their laughter rang out. They danced on the chairs, capped each other’s jokes, and sang “Good news is here of friendship’s feast.”

And all the time they ignored the door. They completely forgot its existence. The black cat awoke and began moving from table to table, from leg to leg. They drank to excess, they enjoyed themselves to excess, they became boisterous to excess, as though savoring the last of their nights at the tavern.

A miracle occurred, for the present retreated and melted away in a rising flood of forgetfulness; memory dissolved, and everything that it had stored away in its cells was demolished. No one knew his companion. The wine was truly infernal, and yet, yes and yet…

“But where are we?”

“Tell me who we are and I’ll tell you where we are.”

“There was some singing.”

“Or was it, as I remember, weeping?”

“There was some story. I wonder what story it was?”

“And this black cat, it is without doubt something tangible.”

“Yes, it is the thread that will bring us to the truth.”

“Here we are, getting close to the truth.”

“This cat was a god at the time of our forefathers.”

“And one day it seated itself at the door of a prison cell and made known the secret of the story.”

“And it threatened woe.”

“But what’s the story?”

“Originally there was a god, then it was changed into a cat.”

“But what’s the story?”

“How can a cat talk?”

“Did it not divulge to us the story?”

“Indeed, but we wasted the time in singing and weeping.”

“And so the threads came together and the way was cleared for grasping the truth.”

The voice of the old waiter was raised as he scolded someone, threatening and shouting, “Wake up, you idle wretch, or I’ll smash your head in.”

A huge man, his head bent in dejection, came along. He began taking up the glasses and dishes, cleaning the tables, and collecting the refuse from the floor. Immersed in a deep sadness, with his eyes bathed in tears, he worked without uttering a word or looking at anyone. With mournful compassion they followed him with their eyes. One of them asked him, “What’s the story?”

But he did not turn, and continued with his work, silent and sad, his eyes streaming with tears.

“When and where have I seen this man?” the middle-aged man asked himself.

The man, with his dark clothes composed of a black sweater, dark gray trousers, and brown rubber-soled shoes, made his way toward the passageway. Again the middle-aged man asked himself, “When and where have I seen this man?”

It’s unmistakable, organic, the flavour of something live.

“Oh, that’s dreadful.”

She shifts in her chair while the doctor pads across and to his fridge.

“Dreadful?”

“The taste. I don’t get a sweetie for after?”

“No.” He turns back with a blur of smile. “No sugar lump to go with it and no sweetie for afterwards.” Quietly teasing between the slim and softly shining shelves, “Sugar is bad for you and here we don’t ever dispense what is bad for you.”

“A small piece of fruit, then?”

“This is a surgery, not a restaurant.” He coughs out a small laugh and decides to risk, “And that’s a Scottish medicine—if it tastes bad, it must be working,” before glancing to check if she takes him in good part.

She grimaces back, not entirely unhappily, and swims the flavour round her tongue, hoping it will weaken. Under the tickle of spreading salt, the cold initial weight of the vaccine, there is something familiar about the taste. She knows that if she concentrates, identification will come.

Her doctor advances, hands benevolently folded round a stack of suitably chilled inoculations: the start of any truly happy holiday.

“I’ll need the use of both your arms.” Laying out his packages and snapping the first needle free: “Tetanus and hepatitis this side …” he grins curatively; “diphtheria and typhoid that.”

Something about his casual enumeration of plagues is strangely enjoyable, a comfort to her. She is being made safe; a part of her bloodstream is welcoming something foreign, so that none of her will go wrong when she takes all her body abroad.

She swallows and briefly considers the matter of Gordon. Gordon will not be made safe, because he will not go with her, because he does not like abroad. He does like her, but not abroad. She does like abroad. The thought of abroad is something she likes very much.

“I won’t hurt.” The doctor draws a careful epidemic up inside his syringe.

“I know you won’t. I will.”

She rolls up her sleeves, hoping that she can offer him flesh high enough on her arms. She would rather not take off her blouse. In the past, her doctor’s acts of examination have been both medical and polite; a nurse discreetly attending, should any especially intimate explorations be required. Even so, undressing always seems more awkward than being undressed—having to stumble her clothes off while the doctor slips outside and the nurse presses breaths through the disinfected silence and shifts tinily on white crêpe soles, observing. Nothing to enjoy. But that won’t happen today.

He nods, “Good,” then pushes a pinching kind of pain inside her skin; holds it, dabs around it, withdraws and dabs again. “Terribly bad?”

“No. Not bad at all.”

“Mm. I am actually quite good at giving injections. I still practise, you see. Others I could mention do not. How’s the polio doing?”

“I can still taste it. In fact, I think it’s getting worse. It reminds me of … I don’t know what.” He slips in another needle, while she thinks. That wasn’t fair.

“Some people would rather not know what’s going on.”

“It’s my arm, I like to keep tabs on it.”

“I quite understand. Other side and then we’re done. We just ask you to wait for a few minutes more, in case there’s an adverse reaction.”

As soon as he says this, she feels a rush in her circulation, a burst of strangeness, but nothing she would call adverse. Her flesh is being fortified like wine, science defending her against nature more deeply with every prick.

“You’re getting tense—this will be painful if you don’t relax.”

“Sorry.”

“Not to worry. You’ve been a very patient patient. And. Last one. There. Will you be going away for long?”

“A month.” A month away from Gordon, during which time she will try to phone him and will certainly write him postcards and may nevertheless experience increasingly serious bouts of what she might well call relief. She can feel her symptoms building, even now.

“Terrific. A month.”

One whole month of perhaps incurable relief.

They probably will fire her when she gets back home. Already, she has calculated the likelihood of summary dismissal. She finds that it doesn’t scare her—not in the way that disease might, or a month staying here with Gordon and his list of things they shouldn’t talk about.

“Yes, I’ve saved up my holiday time”; pausing, recalling the polio taste and where she met it once before, knowing it, making a smile, “And I’m taking four days off sick.”

“Really?” He pauses to look quintessentially medical: phial held high, a glimmer at his needle and naturally chill, but very steady hands. “What will be wrong, in your professional opinion?” His voice relaxes into a type of wink—his eyes being unable to do the same, for reasons of professional distance and confidence.

“Wrong? Oh, probably flu. Probably not typhoid, or hepatitis, or—”

“Or tetanus, or diphtheria, or polio. Yes, I think that flu would probably be best. In my professional opinion.”

Or polio. She licked against her teeth and smiled again. On their second anniversary, last spring, when Gordon had asked her to do it and she’d finally agreed, when he’d got his way—this is how he’d tasted. The gagging nudge in her throat, repeating, and then warmed polio vaccine. It’s just like him.

“As you’re away so long…” The doctor ponders, above her notes, “I could write out your next prescription for TriNovum.”

“For?”

“Your contraceptive.”

Her passport for Gordon to travel, pregnancy free.

“Oh yes, thank you.”

“No problems, periods normal?”

“No problems at all.” She can say this because it will be true soon and might as well be now: her hopes proving unexpectedly resistant to all antidotes.

She waits as he checks the pressure of her altering blood, not minding the hard fit of the cuff, and taking—for the sake of politeness—the prescription for an oral contraceptive she may never use, at least not with Gordon.

“Thank you.”

“We aim to please.” He opens the door so that she can start to go away. “Do have a nice holiday.”

“I will.”

She is aware that, when she speaks, her breath is vaguely coloured with the taste of something not unlike seminal fluid. She is aware of something not unlike the cloy and tang of spunk. She is aware that her husband has the flavour of a tentatively sweetened disease. But, finally, it seems she has developed a complete immunity.

It hurts when we love somebody, because loving is a painful thing, that is its nature. Today, even though we are not sure that the pain will pass, it has to be said that our loving is hurting us.

He is spending this evening in his room whee we don’t see him. It is raining outside and he always likes to smell the rain. Often, we have listened while he opens his window and lets in the damp and the insects and the draught. Downstairs, we can hear the rasp of wood when he tugs at the frame. He can be strong sometimes, even though he is small, and the window is loose fitting and old, he can push it up quite easily. So he empties out the heat we pay for and he really doesn’t think. We don’t know where he gets that from, his terrible lack of thought, he simply isn’t one bit like us.

Of course, no little boy likes to think and we expect to do that for him until he is grown and responsible. This is a burden to us, but a light and pleasant one. Loving someone means that you will do things for them, almost without consideration to the effort it takes. We would catch him if he ran and fell, we wold bandage him if he were bleeding and now we can measure his actions and think ahead on his behalf. On many occasions, we can stop him being hurt.

We don’t think of these attentions as any kind of chore, after all, when he was so noisy and smelly and dirty, so very difficult to hold, we didn’t abandon him. We knew he was a baby, not just some troublesome pet, and we kept him with us. For months, he made our lives extremely different, in fact he was quite a tyrant, but we didn’t mind. We taught him to do better. Now we can really believe that he is quiet and clean as a matter of course. He sometimes makes mistakes, but then, mistakes are how we teach him. We learned by being corrected and that’s the best way.

The worry of keeping him safe is another matter, that can be draining now and then. For example, we didn’t know what to do about his window. He might have opened it up and then dropped out, so we had the bars put on, but still we had to fret because a fire could easily trap him in his room. Then there was the problem of his still opening the window inside the bars and doing whatever old little boy things he feels himself moved to do. His carelessness could have let us with rot in the window frame and perhaps he would catch cold. It was much better to screw down the window and put our minds at rest, because he will give us promises and then break them, which hurts us all in the end. Better to use the woodscrews than tempt him to lie at us.

He wasn’t grateful for what we did, but that is very normal in boys; we understand. His spite didn’t stop us saying that if he ever were in difficulties, or a fire did occur, he could bang on his door the way he does now and we could certainly let him out.

We are puzzled he still prefers not to be granted full run of the house. We don’t know how many times we’ve asked him if he would like to be trusted not to break anything else, or to disturb us. Always he refuses the privilege, which we suppose shows that he knows his limitations: he is still dreadfully clumsy for his age. We make a point of sharing meals with him and having him sit at our table — it is so important he should have good eating manners when he goes to school. We suffer for the decision, but we persevere. It doesn’t matter how many glasses he drops and the stains he makes in the tablecloth don’t deter us; we will stop the silly shaking in his hands and eventually see him performing respectably.

If we let the child know our rules and what happens when he breaks them, it’s only a matter of time until everything falls into place. More people should understand that and keep the incoming flood of modern and imported attitudes out of their homes. Today we all suffer at the hands of criminals created by sloppy care. A good child will be a good citizen and a bad child will not, as anyone can appreciate. Upbringing has to be just that — brining up from the animal level to something higher, better, closer to God. Obviously, some races will always be nearer the animal than others, we must accept this at God’s will, but if everyone would simply do their best then how much more pleasant the world would soon become. As it is, we are almost afraid to go out.

He never goes out without us, of course we can’t trust him to stranger. This means we must be with him always which takes time and effort, but we would rather do a good job now than reap the sour rewards for idleness and slacking later. We tell him this and expect him to feel the same. Equally, we wouldn’t leave him to the tender mercies of the television. If we sat him in front of an endless stream of filthy music and filthy talk, filthy actions, what would we get? We would get a filthy boy. He may listen to some radio, look at his picture book or assume himself in an away he likes and enjoy the haven we have made for him. Our home is a clean home, free from tabloid sewage and the cheap and foreign pollution most people seem content to have wash around them all the day. We are not like that, we even sing him hymns to keep the air sweet in our rooms. It’s such a pity we can’t take him out to church.

We have the cares and troubles that come with the gift of a child, it would be very easy to give him material things and think that making him happy would make him good. There was even a time when we did offer him presents, wholesome gifts for a boy, and we were surprised when he broke them, or dirtied them, or pushed them aside. He could quickly forget we had given him anything.

This ingratitude and forgetfulness was hurtful, but because we love him, it hurt us even more to take the things away. Still, we have the bitter satisfaction of finding our judgements proved right. His will is undeveloped and can be swiftly poisoned by exposure to the material side of this world. A time came when he wanted something he could hug on to in the night and we knew what that meant. That was a warning. We had to take his pillow away because he would sleep alongside of it, in spite of what we told him, and that ws dirty, that was more of the filth we constantly fight to save him from. It grieved us when he cried about it, cried in the night, and didn’t understand the procedures to which he would have to conform. In the end he was persuaded to pray with us and became peaceful which was a little victory for us all.

Other victories will come. We would love him to have birthdays and presents like tooter children. That would be such fun, but the way he is now, it would be quite impossible. We hope that he will change in time and become more upright and mannerly, a suitable example to others, and we are overjoyed to see that he is already much quieter than he ever has been. Sometimes we only know he’s there, because of a certain feeling in the house and the ties that loving binds.

His extreme delicacy frightens us, naturally. Some mornings when we look at him, he seems so pale and thin, perhaps as an angel might be. His whole body is almost white which is clean, but not natural. Not matter what we do, what methods we apply, he turns back to white again within days or hours, even minutes. He could have gone to school this term, had he been well, but we will have to wait until he’s stronger and perhaps reconcile ourselves to the likelihood that he may never go to a normal school. That would be a disappointment. That would make us sad.

Sometimes we have to ask ourselves if he is a judgement on us for our part in his conception. Children come from sin, they are the immediate flower of sin there is sin in him. It would be idle to consider why this should be so and we believe only that, through him, we may find an opportunity to conquer sin again and again. This is more a privilege than a punishment and we treasure it. Many times in the night, we examine him for sings of filthiness, wetness of every kind, and often we are given cause for concern, or rather, we are challenged by sin. He has had seed in him and it comes out. Evil cannot help but flaunt itself and in the darkness it is most free to be manifest. How weary he makes us, forcing us to search and watch and search: a rubber sheet is not enough, an alarm is not enough, all our vigilance is not enough. Nobody knows what pains we3 have to take with the boy, purely to keep him up and away from his animal self.

And the animal brings on the animal, the beast. We find him tempting us as the devil tried to tempt Our Lord and we are uncovered as wanting. He offers us what he has and should not have and takes advantage of our tiredness, our weakness and our humanity.

We have to be strong for his sake, we have to pray and take action fearlessly for the sake of all our souls because we want them to grow up into a man we will be proud of. He will not be a fear and a stranger in our house because our strength and fortitude will not allow it.

Even tonight, when we think of our love for him and feel tender, we are undefeated because we know that tenderness is not enough. We must call upon our action and our faith and, with God’s guidance, proceed.

Our child has sinned today. He has summoned an evil under our roof. What sin, what evil, need not be mentioned, we will not dignify it with a name. We need only say that he is ugly with sin and now we must call upon our God-given love to claim him for beauty so that good may triumph in all our hearts. We will release him from himself and hear him that us for it. We must.

Time after time and time out of time, we will purify him for the coming world and watch him cultivate his gratitude, piece by piece. When we are finished, he will be a good boy entirely.

Of all the music hall attractions that present needless dangers to both the audience and the performers, none fills me with such supernatural horror as the old routine called ‘The Urbane Tiger.’ For those who have never seen it – since the new generations know nothing about the great vaudevilles of yesterday afternoon – I’ll describe how this number works. What I cannot explain, nor try to communicate, is the state of terrified panic and abject disgust in which the spectacle plunges me, as if into fishy and horrendously cold waters. I should simply not go into theatres where this routine is on the bill (which is less and less frequent, moreover). Easier said than done. For reasons I’ve never been able to clarify, ‘The Urbane Tiger’ is never announced, and I never expect it – or rather, I do: an obscure, barely conscious sense of danger overlays any pleasure I might take in the other performances. Though sometimes a sigh of relief might free my heart after the final attraction, at others I recognize all too well the fanfare that introduces the sketch – always played, as I said, as if it were impromptu. As soon as the orchestra starts in on that brassy, oh-so-characteristic waltz, I know what is about to happen; a crushing weight settles on my chest, and I feel the live wire of dread between my teeth like a sour, low-voltage current. I want to leave, but I don’t dare. Besides, nobody moves, no one else shares my anxiety, and I know that the beast is already on his way. I’m also aware that the arms of my chair would afford, oh, precious little protection …

First, the theatre is plunged into total darkness. Then a projector goes on at the proscenium, and the beam from this pitiful beacon alights on an empty box, most often near, very near my seat. From there, the beam moves to the far end of the promenade gallery to find a door leading to the wings; and as the horn section dramatically attacks the Invitation to the Dance, they enter.

The tamer is a very fetching redheaded beauty, though a bit tired-looking. Her only defence is a black ostrich fan, with which she at first conceals the lower half of her face; only her large green eyes appear above the dark fringes of the undulating waves. With bare arms made iridescent by the light and bathed in fog from a winter’s dusk, the tamer is tightly sheathed in a romantic and very low-cut evening gown, a strange gown with heavy reflections, of deepest black. This gown is made of an incredibly supple and delicate fur. Crowning all this is the cascading eruption of a flaming head of hair spangled with gold stars. The whole thing is at once oppressive and vaguely comic. But who would think of laughing? Moving aside her fan to reveal pure lips frozen in a smile, the tamer, followed by the beam of the projector, steps toward the empty box – on the tiger’s arm, as it were.

The tiger walks more or less like a human on his two hind legs. He is dressed as a dandy, with refined elegance, and this costume is so well tailored that one can hardly make out the animal’s body beneath the large trousers with feet, the brace of flowers around his neck, the blindingly white dicky with its flawless pleats, and the frock coat fitted by a masterful hand. But his head remains, with its horrendous grimace, its mad eyes rolling in purple sockets, the furious bristling of its whiskers, and the teeth that sometimes gleam under curled lips. The tiger advances very stiffly, holding in the crook of his left arm a light grey hat. The tamer walks with measured steps, and if her back sometimes arches a bit, if her bare arm contracts, causing a muscle to swell unexpectedly beneath the tawny velvet of her skin, it is because she has just made a violent, hidden effort to prop up her beau, who was about to fall face forward.

There they are at the door to their loge, which the urbane tiger swats open before stepping aside to let the lady pass. And when she has gone to sit and casually rest her elbows on the faded plush, the tiger lets himself drop into a chair beside her. Here, normally, the room erupts into blissful applause. And I look at the tiger, and I want so much to be somewhere else that I could cry. The tamer regally greets the public with a slight nod of her blazing curls. The tiger goes to work, manipulating accessories purposely placed near his seat in the box. He pretends to scan the audience with opera glasses, lifts the lid from a box of chocolates and pretends to offer some to his neighbour. He pulls out a silk handkerchief, which he pretends to sniff; he pretends, to the hilarity of everyone present, to consult the programme. Then he acts gallant, leans toward the tamer and pretends to murmur some love declaration in her ear. The tamer pretends to be shocked, and flirtatiously places the fragile screen of her feathered veil between the pale, beautiful satin of her cheek and the beast’s stinking muzzle studded with sabre blades. At that, the tiger pretends to be overcome by despair, and he wipes his eyes with the back of his furry paw. And throughout this lugubrious pantomime, my heart pounds with agonizing thuds inside my breast, for only I see, only I know that this whole tasteless parade holds up only by a miracle of will; that we are all in a frightfully unstable state of balance, which anything could upset. What would happen if, in the box next to the tiger’s, that little man who looks like a humble office employee, that little man with his pale face and tired eyes, stopped wishing for one instant? For he is the real tamer; the woman is just a figurehead. Everything depends on him. It’s he who makes the tiger into a marionette, a mechanism bound more securely than if he were wrapped in steel cables.

But what if that little man suddenly let his attention stray? What if he died? No one suspects the danger that could break loose at any moment. And I know, I imagine, I imagine – no, it’s better not to imagine what the lady in fur would look like if … It’s better to watch the end of the routine, which always delights and reassures the public. The tamer asks if someone in the audience would kindly let her borrow a small child. Who could refuse anyone so charming? There is always some witless idiot to hand up toward the fiendish box a delighted infant, whom the tiger gently cradles in the hollow of his folded paws, leaning over the little hunk of flesh with his alcoholic’s eyes. To thunderous applause, the lights go up in the hall, the baby is restored to its rightful owner, and the two partners wave before exiting by the same path that brought them.

Once they’ve disappeared through the door – and they never come back to take a bow – the orchestra erupts into its noisiest fanfares. Shortly afterward, the little man collapses and mops his brow. And the orchestra plays ever more loudly to cover the growls of the tiger, who returns to his normal state once he is back in his cage. He roars as if from hell, rolls over and over while shredding his beautiful clothes, which they have to have remade for each performance. There are cries, tragic howls of desperate rage, furious leaps against the cage bars. On the other side of those bars, the false tamer undresses quickly so as not to miss the last metro. The little man is waiting for her in a café near the station, the one called the Never-Never.

The tempest unleashed by the tiger entangled in his scraps of cloth, muffled though it might be, threatens to create an unfavourable impression on the audience. That is why the orchestra is playing the overture from Fidelio with all its might; that is why the director, in the wings, is hurrying the unicycle clowns onstage.

I hate the routine of the urbane tiger, and I will never understand the pleasure that the public takes in it.

Collected in André Breton’s 1940 Anthology of Black Humour. A little too long for r/Extraordinary_Tales

​

This same book in a stranger’s hands, half-known.

Those readers, kindred spirits, almost friends.

You are in transition; you are on the threshold.

The library is the place that gets you. Pure gold.

Jackie Kay

O magic place it was – still open thank God.

Alexandra Harris

Here’s a true story. Simon, my editor, and I had been meeting to talk about how to put together this book you’re reading right now. We set off on a short walk across central London to his office to photocopy some stories I’d brought with me.

Just off Covent Garden we saw a building with the word LIBRARY above its doors.

It didn’t look like a library. It looked like a fancy shop.

What do you think it is? Simon said.

Let’s see, I said.

We crossed the road and went in.

Inside everything was painted black. There was a little vestibule and in it a woman was standing behind a high reception desk. She smiled a hello. Further in, straight ahead of us, I could just glimpse some people sitting at a table and we could hear from behind a thin partition wall the sounds of people drinking and talking.

Hello, we said. Is this a library?

The woman lost her smile.

No, she said.

A man came through from behind the partition. Hello, he said. Can I help at all?

We saw the word library, Simon said. Was this a library once? I said. She’s a writer, Simon said by way of explaining. He’s an editor, I said.

We’re a private members’ club, the man said. We also have a select number of hotel rooms.

I picked up a glossy leaflet from a pile on the desk about some kind of food promotion or taster deal. Simon picked up a card.

Have you actually got actual books? I said.

We do do some books as a feature. Please help yourself to a card, the man said a bit pointedly since we already had.

(Later, when I got home, I unfolded the advert I’d taken, which was for a company working with Library, to produce three-course meals which allowed diners to relive your favourite musicals (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Phantom of the Opera | Les Misérables | Matilda). I typed in the Library website address off the advert. When it came up I noticed for the first time that a central part of the textual design of the use of the word Library was the thin line drawn through the middle of it: Library.

This is what Library listed next to the photographs of its 5 luxurious, individually designed, air-conditioned rooms with many modern amenities and comfortable beds: • Terrace Bar • 24 Hour Concierge • Ground floor lounge with stage and bar • Massage and Beauty treatment room • Kitchen with Chef’s table (April 2015) • Private Dining and boardroom with conferencing • Double mezzanine with bridge • Smoking Terrace • Access to rare Library books).

Simon pocketed the card. I folded the advert about the food promotion into my inside pocket.

Thanks very much, we said.

Then we left.

We crossed the road and stopped on the pavement opposite, where we’d first seen the word above the door. We looked back at it. Simon shrugged.

Library, he said.

Now we know, I said.

Mark Haddon

The Island

She’s dreaming of the pines outside her window in the palace, the way the night wind turns them into a black sea that tumbles and breaks against the stone wall below the sill. She’s dreaming of the summer sound of trees being felled farther up the mountain, the hollow tock, tock, tock of the axe, the slow cracking of the trunk and that final thump, all that splintered yellow, still damp with life, the smell of fresh resin in the air and columns of midges rising and falling in the angled sunlight.

She’s dreaming of the wood being split and planed and toothed home into a curved keel that will cut an ocean in half. She’s dreaming of this morning, standing on the prow with her husband-to-be, the oars churning the waves to foam and the fat sails slapping in the wind, over the horizon his city where they’ll marry, behind them the home she’ll never see again.

She’s dreaming of the wedding, flames dancing in the sconces of a great hall. Flames multiplied in a hundred golden cups, painted plates heavy with roast meats and chickpeas, quinces and saffron and honey cakes.

She’s dreaming of the bridal suite, a snowfall of Egyptian cotton on the bed. Hanging above the pillows is a tapestry, the work so fine she could be looking through a window. In the centre of the picture is a woman weeping on a beach, and far out, in the chop and glitter of the woven sea, a single ship sailing steadily towards the border and the world beyond.

She moves a little closer so that she can see the woman’s face, and then it hits her like a punch. She’s looking at herself.

She comes round like a drowning woman breaking the water’s surface, thrashing and gasping for air. The light hurts her eyes, her throat is dry and the world is foggy from drink, or drugs, or fever.

She rolls over and finds herself in an empty bed. He must be awake and making preparations for today’s journey. She stands with difficulty and realises that she can hear nothing except the cry of gulls and guy ropes humming in the wind. She staggers to the door, uncouples the four leather ties which bind the canvas flaps and steps outside to find herself in a ghost camp, five squares of flattened, yellow grass, fishbones, a single sandal, the torched circle of last night’s fire and far out, in the chop and glitter of the sea, a single ship.

She tries to scream but there is a weight on her chest which stops her filling her lungs. Her mind bucks and twists, searching for ways to make this right. He’s coming back. The crew have mutinied and kidnapped him or left him somewhere nearby, tied up, beaten, dead. Then she looks down and sees, beside her feet, a jug of water and a loaf of bread, and on the loaf is the ring she gave him as a sign of their eternal love. He has abandoned her.

The sky revolves, she vomits on the wet grass and the world goes dark.

When time begins again she’s skidding down the scree on bloody hands and knees towards the beach, then stumbling over the slip and clack of pebbles to the surf. She yells into the wind and her cry echoes round the rocky cove. Her heart thrashes like a netted bird.

The boat shrinks. She has become the woman in the tapestry.

He is the only man she’s ever loved, and he has dumped her like ballast. She needs to find an explanation that does not make her a fool and him an animal, but every thought of him is a knife turning in the wound love made. She wants to hurl a stack of figured bowls across a room. She wants to weep till someone comes to comfort her. She wants to find a man who’ll track him down and break his neck or make him realise he’s wrong and bring him back.

She turns to take it in, this godforsaken place, bracken and sea pink, rye grass jerking in the wind, slabs of basalt rusty with lichen. Lying in a shallow pool, she sees the bloody head of a seal pup hacked off by the men last night then hurled off the cliff before they cooked the body. Its blind eyes have turned white.

She crouches on the hard, wet stones and hugs herself. No one has any idea that she is here except the crew of the departing ship, and no one else would give a damn. She does not know the name of this island. She knows only that this is the place in which she will die. She is off the heart’s map and her compass is spinning.

Minutes pass. Water breaks and fizzes on the pebbles. The wind sings and the cold begins to bite. She stands and starts the long climb to the bed they will never share again.

She is a princess. In twenty years she has never been alone, never cooked a meal, never cleaned a floor. She has bathed in clean, warm water every morning. Twice a day newly laundered clothes have been laid on her bed. She realises that this will be hard. She does not know the meaning of the word.

She enters the tent and sees his body’s imprint on the sheets and has to turn away. She eats the bread and drinks the water, then lies down and waits, as if an easy death is one more luxury some nameless servant will provide.

She cannot believe that anyone is able to bear this kind of pain. She thinks of shepherds sleepless in the blue snow, their furs pulled tight around their shoulders, waiting for the wolves, armed only with a slingshot. She thinks of the soldiers who come back from every summer’s campaign with legs and arms missing, the stumps like melted wax. She thinks of women giving birth in stone sheds with leaking roofs and mud floors. She thinks about what it must take to lead such lives, and she starts to understand that wealth has deprived her of the one skill that she needs now.

The light begins to die and the dark thickens slowly to a colour she has never seen before. Then the shearwaters come, two hundred thousand birds returning from a day at sea to run the gauntlet of the black-backed gulls, and suddenly the tent is inside a hurricane of screams, the noise that makes young sailors think they have drifted near the mouth of hell. She dares not go outside for fear of what she might find. She covers her ears and curls into a ball in the centre of the single rug and waits for claws and teeth to tear the flimsy canvas walls and shred her body like a deer’s. She waits, and waits, and when the silence finally comes it is worse, for she has been stripped of everything that used to shield her from a hard world where every action has a consequence. She has no one else to blame. This is her punishment. She helped him kill her brother. Now it is her turn. When her bones are picked clean the scales will be level once again.

She should have listened to her maids and walked around the palace grounds, but she had walked around the palace grounds a thousand times. She knew in tedious detail every carved fountain, every lavender bush with its halo of bees, every shaded bower. She wanted the bustle of the quays, those overflowing baskets of squid and mackerel, the stacked crates and coiled ropes, the shouting and the knock of tarred hulls, that childhood fantasy of walking up a gangplank, casting off and slipping through the cupped hands of the breakwater into the white light of a world outside her family’s orbit.

They came at every summer’s end, a war-price Athens paid to keep the peace, just one more ceremony in a calendar of ceremonies, the Leaping of the Bulls, the Festival of Poppies. Twelve young men and women taken from their ship and housed in the barn above the orchard while this year’s pit was dug beside the last, then led out and lined up to have their throats slit and die on top of one another. They were human cattle, and they knew this, shuffling with heads down, already half dead. She gave them no more thought than she gave the enemies her father and her cousins killed in battle.

But her eyes locked briefly with the eyes of the one man who held his head high and she realised that there were many worlds beyond this world and that her own was very small indeed.

Later that night she woke repeatedly, thinking he was standing in the room or lying beside her. She was terrified at first, then disappointed. She felt alive in a way that she had never felt alive before. The cold flags on the floor, the cicadas, the pocked coin of the moon, her own skin…She had never seen these things clearly until now.

Shortly after dawn she slipped past the maids in the outer room and walked round the orchard to the stables. She told the guards she wanted to talk to the prisoners and they could think of no adequate reply to this unexpected request. The last of the night was pooling in the big stone rooms, the window slits no wider than a hand. There was sand on the floor and the sound of breathing. She felt the stir her presence caused, warm bodies shifting nervously in the dark. It was a small thing to be brave about but she had never needed to be brave before and mastering her fear was thrilling.

His face materialised behind the bars of the little window. “You came.”

She had spent her whole life waiting for this moment and never realised it. She thought stories only happened to men. Now her own was beginning.

“My father is the king,” he said. “In time I will become king. If you save us I will make you my queen.”

She gave him her ring and he told her what to do. She slid her hands between the bars, let him grip her wrists and cried out for help. When the guard came running and reached through to free her the prince grabbed him. He wrapped one hand around the man’s mouth and the other around his neck. He put a foot on the bars and heaved as if he were pulling a rope. The man kicked and thrashed for a long time before he sagged and slid to the floor. She took the keys from his belt and unlocked the door. She had never seen a man being killed. It looked no different from the games her cousins played when they were young.

He took the man’s sword and met the second guard running in. He swung it into his belly and lifted him on the point to force it deeper, then let him drop. He put his boot on the man’s chest and pulled the blade out with a sucking gurgle. By this time his friends were pouring out of the stables, the men arming themselves with makeshift weapons from the walls—staves, pitchforks, iron bars.

He told them to take her to the harbour and treat her well. For a moment she thought he was going to murder her parents. He laid a hand on her cheek and told her that they would be safe.

He chose two men to accompany him and they ran towards the palace.

They said her mother had been raped by a bull and had given birth to a monster who lay chained and snarling in a nest of straw and dung at the centre of a maze beneath the palace, waiting for the young men and women from Athens to be offered to him as fresh meat. Let the peasants keep their stories, her father said. They had precious little else. And it was safer to be feared than to be pitied.

There was some truth in the story for her brother sometimes seemed like a monster, his bloated head, his rages, the way he lashed out at the men who went into the cellar to sluice him with buckets of water every week, to carry off the foul straw and fill his trough with the same food they gave to the pigs—kitchen scraps, greasy bones, wine gone sour.

They thought he could not speak. They never asked him a question so he never gave them a reply. But she knew. She went down to the cellar most days and sat with him in the light of that single, guttering torch and held his hand. He would lay his head on her lap and tell her about the things the men did to him for their amusement. She gave him fruit and bread which she had hidden under her skirt and while he ate she told him about the world outside, about the ocean that was like the water in the bucket but deeper and broader than he could possibly imagine, about boats that were like floating houses, about music that was sound shaped to make you happy, about the pines outside her window and the woodcutters in the summer.

He wept sometimes but he never asked for help. When he was younger and she was more naïve she suggested that he try to escape, but he did not understand what she was saying for he had never seen anything beyond these damp walls, and thought her stories of oceans and boats and music were simply games to make the darkness bearable. He was right, of course. He could not live outside. The sun would blind him. He would be mocked and taunted and stoned.

Her mother, her father, her cousins, they put him out of their minds, but she could not. She felt his presence constantly, like the distant rumble of thunder, and when she felt the weight of his deformed head in her lap and ran her hand through his patchy hair, the kindness flowed both ways, for he was easing her discomfort as much as she was easing his.

They reached the harbour to find that the Athenians had already hoisted six small barrels of pitch out of the hold, set them on fire with flints and torn cloth and slung them onto the decks of the other ships so that the sailors on watch were too preoccupied with trying to extinguish the flames to concern themselves with anything but saving their own vessels.

She was petrified. She could see what it meant to be in the middle of a story, and why the men protected them from this. It was a mistake. She understood that now. A moment’s weakness had caused this horror, the way a single spark from those struck flints bloomed into the fires that surrounded her. Metal struck metal, planks split, the air was so full of smoke she was finding it hard to breathe.

Then she saw him running along the quay with his two companions, carrying a sack, pursued by palace guards, and he was a hand reaching down to pull her from the hole into which she had fallen and if only he made it to the boat in time she would be safe and happy. They pushed off and the men jumped the widening gap between the hull and the harbour wall. A guard leapt behind them and was struck in the face with a sword and dropped into the water, his blood spraying the man who killed him. A second leapt and clung briefly to the rail of the boat before his fingers were broken under heels and he fell onto his companion. Then they were too far away for anything but angry yells which were soon drowned in the roar of the fires.

He turned to her and wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close and she could no longer hear or see the flames, she could only feel the warmth of his body and smell the sour tang of his sweat. Then she looked down at the deck and saw the mouth of the sack fall open to reveal her brother’s head.

She is woken by the biting cold and the sound of two hundred thousand birds taking flight. Waking to anything solid is a relief after the murky, cycling panic of her dreams. She walks to the door and sees the creatures that petrified her the night before emerging from their burrows and climbing into the air like ashes above a fire, black backs turning into white bellies, the whole flock becoming a cloud of grey flakes drifting out over the ocean.

When they have gone the air is washed and white and she is able to hold the events of the previous day at a distance for a few minutes, as if they happened to someone else, or happened to herself many years ago. Then it all comes back, raw and real, and there is a spasm in her guts. She crouches behind a rock and relieves herself, and the sight of her own excrement sickens her, doubly so when she finds that the earth is too thin to bury it and the handfuls of grass she rips free just blow away in the wind and she is forced to use a stick to push it under the lip of the rock where she will not see it.

She drinks from a muddy pool of rainwater, retches and makes herself drink again. She wraps herself in the rug from the tent floor and walks round the perimeter of the island, a figure of eight with two stony beaches on either side of its narrow waist. It takes her two hours. There are no trees, only clumps of low thorn bushes bent flat by the wind, green cushions of mossy thrift, bracken and sea campions, razorbills and butterflies. The greater part of the coast is sheer cliff, though in places the grass falls away to great slabs of cracked and toppled stone, stained with an orange crust above the waterline and shaggy with weed beneath it. She catches a movement in the corner of her eye and thinks, for a moment, that she is not alone, but it is a group of seals lying beached on a thin promontory, half-fish, half-dog, their wet skins like mottled gemstones. The only signs of human presence are the remains of an ancient stone circle about which there hangs an atmosphere that scares her.

She returns to the tent pitched in the low saddle between the two halves of the island and sheltered from the worst of the wind. She is hungry but has no idea what she can eat. She wonders how long it takes to starve. She knows nothing about such things.

He held her till her sobs began to die down then wiped her cheek and looked into her eyes. “I have to command these people. They need to look at me and see someone who has powers they do not possess. They need to know that I can kill monsters.” He was not angry. He did not need to be angry. “Your father killed twelve of us every year for ten years. Those people had sisters, they had mothers. Your father was planning to bury us in a ditch. I killed your brother. I could have done a great deal more.”

She had no choice. She had to embrace this man and put her brother out of her mind. She had to throw away her old life and become a new person. She wondered if this was what it meant to love someone completely.

The second morning, hunger wakes her before dawn. It is like a broken bone. Her body is not going to let her starve.

A cold drizzle is falling. She wants to stay in the tent but the pain in her stomach is worse than the prospect of getting wet, so she makes her way down the scree again to the little beach. She stands at the top of the shingle slope and looks around. She does not know if there is anything edible here. Her food has always been cooked and prepared. She has little idea of what this involves. She is accustomed to eating grapes and pears and quinces but she has seen no fruit on the island. To her left is the seal pup’s head but that would need cooking and she has no fire and she cannot look at the object without thinking of her brother.

She tries to chew some seaweed but it is leathery and gritty and covered in a layer of slime. She finds some shells stuck to the sides of a rock pool but they prove impossible to remove. She wades into the shallows. The water is like shackles of ice around her ankles. She bends down, turns the pebbles over and pushes aside the fronds of shaggy weed, nervous of what she might find beneath. She wades a little deeper. Already her sense of danger is being overridden by an animal need which obscures all other thoughts.

She is up to her thighs in the freezing waves now, the stones under her feet are harder to see and searching among them requires her to put her face into the water. Her fingers find a cluster of something sharper and more geometric than the surrounding rocks. She pulls and breaks it free and retrieves a cluster of shells, speckled with stony mortar. She walks out of the water and discovers that the temperature of the ocean makes the air seem warm. She tries to prise open the shells but splits a nail, so she goes up the beach to a flat shelf. She puts the shells down, takes up a large pebble and cracks the shells open. There is a kind of meat inside. She picks away the shards of broken shell and scoops some out. She puts the contents in her mouth. It is like salty phlegm. She waits and swallows. At least she does not need to chew. She eats a second. Then a third.

The air is no longer warm and she is beginning to shiver uncontrollably. She has five more shells. She carries them back up the scree towards the grassy saddle. She goes inside the tent, thinking that she must get warm and dry, but there is water dripping through the roof onto the bed and she has very little energy. She removes her clothing and wraps the deerskin blanket round her and lies down in the dry half of the tent.

She cries and rocks back and forth and manages to descend into a half-sleep that calms her a little. Then the stomach cramps begin. With no warning, she is sick onto the ground in front of her. She rolls over so that she does not have to look at it. The cramps ease a little.

He ordered one of the women to bring a cloak from below decks and sat her on a bench to one side of the boat then returned to the other men, commanding them to trim sails and watch for rocks and stow the ropes, sending them to the rowing benches when these tasks were done, to maintain as high a speed as possible. When they were out of sight of land he altered course to throw off any following ships.

She had never been on a boat before. The cleanness and the coldness of the air and the spray coming over the prow took her by surprise. The way the deck yawed and pitched terrified her at first, though everyone else on board seemed oblivious. She tried to pretend it was a child’s game, like swinging on a rope, or being thrown into the air and caught by her father.

It was the sheer size of the ocean which unsettled her most. She wondered how deep the water was beneath the hull and felt a nauseous tingle in the back of her legs as if she were standing on a high tower and looking over the edge. She thought of how they were supported by a wooden platform no bigger than a courtyard floating across this sky of water, how none of them could swim and how they were all less than ten steps away from death, and she began to understand how brave sailors were, or how stupid.

The thought of her brother was like a pounding headache. She moved as little as possible and watched and listened hard to what was going on around her and tried to distract herself from the pain.

Finally the rowers broke off and a basket of provisions was brought up from below, olives, salted fish, fresh water and dry biscuits of a kind she had never seen before. He sat beside her but addressed her directly only twice. She liked the way in which she had so rapidly been accepted into the magic circle from which the others were excluded. He had to maintain a public face, she understood that. She was flattered that the private man belonged to her alone.

They anchored in the bay of the island shortly before nightfall. A small boat was lowered on ropes and three men rowed ashore to reconnoitre. They returned with the news that the island was uninhabited and began ferrying boxes and packets and bundles to the beach, taking passengers only when several tents had already been erected on the grassy ridge.

Nightfall frightened her. The firelight at home had always illuminated a stone wall, painted plaster, a woven hanging. She had never seen darkness eat up the world like this. She was losing her bearings a little, and times and places began to overlap. She remembered the stories she had heard as a child, how Chaos gave birth to love and hell, how Kronos castrated his father with a sickle, and these things now seemed no more or less real than her cousin Glaucus nearly drowning in a barrel of honey, or her cousin Catreus trying to ride a goat and breaking his arm.

They ate more of the salted fish and the dried figs which had been compacted into discs like little millwheels. Some of the men found a young seal on the beach and chased its mother away so that they could kill it. They roasted chunks of the flesh over the fire but several of the women found it inedible so she declined, deciding that she could easily wait another two days for proper meat. The sweet wine, in any case, had taken the edges off her hunger.

So novel and so consuming were all these events that she forgot entirely about the one waiting at the evening’s end until he drained his final glass and took her hand and led her towards his tent. She knew almost nothing about what he would do to her. She had been told little by her mother and less by her cousins. She had gained more information by overhearing the maids’ gossip, and they seemed to find it comical, though the things they described were both repellent and unnerving. She consoled herself that they were talking about men of a kind very different from the one she was marrying.

He closed the door flap and kissed her, for longer this time. She wondered if he would hurt her but he simply slid a hand inside her dress and held one of her breasts. It felt odd and clumsy and wrong. She did not know what she was meant to do in return, if anything. Earlier in the day she trusted him to protect her. The stakes seemed higher now, the rules less certain. Her life depended on remaining inside the magic circle, and to remain inside the magic circle she had to please him. She had already become a different person this morning. She would have to do it again. She pulled her mouth away from his and said, “What would you like me to do?”

He laughed and lifted her dress and turned her round and bent her over the bed. The maids were right. What he did to her was indeed repellent and unnerving, but oddly comical too. She should have felt adult and sophisticated but it reminded her mostly of being a child again, wrestling, doing handstands, turning cartwheels in the dust. It was demeaning at first, and dirty, then it was good to be a child, to have no responsibilities, to forget everything that had happened today and concentrate only on the present moment.

When he was finished he rolled onto the bed and pulled the deerskin blanket over them. Within minutes he was asleep. She was unable to move without detaching herself from his embrace and she did not want to wake him so she lay listening to the voices outside getting fewer and fainter as everyone made their way to bed and the fidgety orange light of the fire faded. Every so often the wind flicked back a tongue of canvas at the top of the door and she could see a tiny triangle of sky that contained three stars hanging in a darkness that went on forever.

Sometime after midday the rain stops, the pain in her stomach disappears and her mind is returned to her. She hangs her sodden clothes on the guy ropes outside the tent so that they will dry in the sun. She does the same thing with the bedclothes and ties back the door of the tent in the hope that the breeze might evaporate some of the water from its muddy floor. She is naked. She cleans up the vomit, scooping it into her hands and carrying it outside, then wiping her fingers clean on the grass. She does this without thinking and, in the middle of doing it, she sees herself from the outside and realises how far she has travelled in such a short time.

She finds a shallow pool of brackish water gathered on the concave top of a mossy rock and drinks, and the coldness of the water makes up for the earthy, vegetable taste.

She begins to think, for the first time, that surviving here might be possible, but that to do so she must become like a fox, hunting constantly and never thinking about tomorrow.

Wrapped only in her blanket and wearing her sandals, she makes her way back to the area of the island where the thorn bushes were thickest and finds that her memory is correct and some of the plants are indeed covered in small red berries. She does not want to repeat the mistake of this morning, so she picks just one and puts it into her mouth. But when she crushes it between her teeth the taste is shockingly sour and she has to spit it out.

She makes her way down the scree to the beach, determined to master her feelings about the seal pup’s head. But it has begun to rot and the smell is overpowering, and when she gets close she can see something moving inside.

She has to make a fire. If she can make a fire then she can perhaps cook the shellfish and make them edible. She used to watch her cousins doing it many years ago with tinderboxes stolen from the kitchen before they were caught and beaten. The boxes contained two stones and a wad of lint. She has no lint, but she has an endless supply of rock. She begins searching the drier, top half of the beach, picking up pairs of stones, turning her back to the wind, striking one against the other and watching for that tiny scrap of lightning. She does this for a long time with no success.

She climbs back up to the grass. She is exhausted. Her clothes are dry but she does not have the energy to put them on. Instead she lies in the mouth of the tent watching the shadows of clouds slide across the surface of the water. There is a seductive comfort in doing this and she knows that the longer she spends without eating the harder it will be to find food but she can neither bring herself to stand up nor think of what she might achieve if she did.

He was right. Her father had done worse. She thinks of the bodies in the trench. She wonders if any of them were still alive when the earth was shovelled on top of them, and imagines mud in her mouth, that unmovable weight holding her down.

Her father was doubtless privy to events and information of which she knew nothing. Perhaps, from his perspective, these cruelties were simply the price that had to be paid to keep his people safe. She will never know.

She has not talked for three days. She has not heard another human voice. Her thinking is becoming simultaneously clearer and more confused. Those concentric rings of the royal apartments, the public rooms, the gardens, the town beyond the palace walls, seem to her like a beehive or an ants’ nest, some beautifully structured object whose working must remain forever mysterious. There is a picture of her father which comes back to her throughout the day. He is standing at one of the big windows looking down towards the harbour. She is sitting at his feet, playing with a set of ivory jacks. His face is lit by the sun coming off the sea. He is not looking at her but he knows that she is there. She must be three, four, five years old. She feels completely safe.

Later she saw him strike her mother. She saw him bring his fist down on an earthenware plate and shatter it, so angry that he did not notice that his hand was bleeding. She saw him send men to be hanged and watched them weep as they were led from the room.

She can see now that her father, too, had a magic circle around him, and that she loved him less on account of who he was than for allowing her inside that circle when so many others were kept out.

The following morning she combs the beach again looking for stones that will strike a spark. This time she selects two of every type then ferries them up to the tent where the air is drier and there is no sea spray. She bangs them together in turn and her spirit leaps when she sees that a tiny star is born with a loud crack between two of the stones. She tears a corner from her dress and picks at it with her dirty nails until it is a wren’s nest of cream fibres.

Only then does she remember that she has no wood. She feels stupid, and scared by the realisation that she is losing the ability to plan ahead. She thinks of the effort involved in finding that wood and begins to cry. But crying is pointless so after a few minutes she stops. She wraps the deerskin round her once more and walks a circuit of the island.

There are no logs because there are no trees, but she succeeds in gathering an armful of dry branches. She is walking beside the cliffs on the way back to the tent when she sees movement in the waves. She turns and watches two dolphins break the surface, curve through the air and enter the water again, then break the water a second time, as if they are riding the rim of some great, hidden wheel. They are heart-stoppingly beautiful, like long, silver bottles or wingless, grey birds.

But they are mocking her. She cannot swim. She would die out there, whereas they can travel to ten kingdoms and back. For a moment she dreams of having their freedom, then realises how little it would profit her. She would not be wanted in Athens. She would not be wanted at home. Here is as good as anywhere.

The dolphins have gone. She returns to the tent, piles the twigs on the ashes of the last fire and rebuilds the little circle of stones the men built around it. She fetches the two stones and the little nest of cotton lint.

It does not work. The stones spark one time in twenty, and when they do she has no way of directing that spark into the lint. She tries a hundred, two hundred times. Her hands are bloody and bruised. Her arms are exhausted. The lint refuses to catch.

She is too tired to remain awake but too uncomfortable to sleep. She drifts halfway between the two states, clipping the edge of nightmares and coming away trailing nameless fears that snap her briefly awake. She thinks she has fallen overboard or is running up an endless slope of shingle, chased by a nameless, seal-faced creature that is and is not her brother.

When dawn comes she lies listening to the shearwaters taking flight. When there is only the muffled sound of the waves left she stands and walks down to the beach, climbing round the rocks at the side of the cove until she is looking down into deeper water. She sits on a rock with her legs dangling. A jellyfish swims below her, a ball of light in a white bag with a charred rim, trailing ragged tentacles. It pulses in the slow wind of the current. She watches, transfixed. She is no longer able to measure time.

The jellyfish is gone. The translucent green water flexes and wobbles like flames dancing in a grate.

There is a rash on the back of her left hand where the skin has reddened and begun to peel away. She runs her fingers over it. There is pain but it does not belong to her.

Clambering back up the scree she hears women’s voices and a high metal chime like tiny bells ringing. She climbs faster but by the time she reaches the curved, grass saddle the voices have stopped and there is no one there.

Her bowels clench. She does not bother to find shelter. She squats and relaxes and what comes out is a foul, orange liquid so that she has to clean herself repeatedly with clumps of torn grass.

She walks aimlessly towards the highest point on the island simply to postpone her return to the tent. She does not want to look at the vastness of the sea so she keeps her eyes fixed on the ground. It is peppered with the burrows out of which the shearwaters emerge. She stops and stamps her feet and realises for the first time how hollow the earth sounds and how it must be honeycombed with little tunnels. She gets down on her hands and knees and begins to tear at the mouth of the nearest hole. The earth is woven thick with pale roots and she has to search for a sharp stone to cut through the toughest of them. She digs farther, making a deep furrow. She feels something scratching and flapping at the ends of her fingers and excavates the last two handfuls of earth to find two fat, grey chicks huddled in their subterranean chamber. She had hoped to find eggs but it is too late in the season. She picks up one of the birds, a puffball of dove-coloured fur. It pecks her with its hooked black beak. She stands up and crushes the head of the chick with the heel of her sandal. She hacks at the chest of the tiny bird with the edge of the stone until it peels back. There is blood all over her hands and tiny feathers stuck to the blood. She bites into the warm innards, chewing at the gristle and swallowing what she can tear off. She is eating feathers along with the meat. She gags but carries on eating. Three mouthfuls. The bird is finished. She gazes down at its brother. It is looking back up at her with its mouth open, waiting to be fed, the black jewels of its eyes glittery in the sunlight.

She walks away, wiping her mouth on the deerskin.

She cannot remember her mother’s face. She can remember the faces of her brother, her cousins, her father. She can remember the faces of the men who sat around the council table. She can remember the faces of the four male servants who were trusted enough to work in the royal apartments. But she cannot bring her mother’s face to mind.

This is the woman who brought her into the world, the woman her father loved. Yet every time she turns her mind’s eye in her mother’s direction she sees only the men she is talking to, the children she is playing with, the maids to whom she is giving orders. She begins to realise how little her mother did, how rarely she offered an opinion, how the family revolved around her without ever making contact, how small an effect she had on the world.

How alike they are, she and her mother, these blank sheets on which men have written their stories, the white paper under the words, making all their achievements possible and contributing nothing to the meaning.

She realises that she can no longer remember what her own face looks like so she leaves the tent and makes her way to the shallow pool on the rock. She puts her back to the sun and makes a canopy of the deerskin cloak to shield the surface from the glare. She stares down into the water and sees her brother’s sister staring up at her, hair matted like his hair, skin filthy like his skin, cheeks sunken, eyes dark, the skull starting to come through.

There is a storm at night. The thunder is like buildings coming down, and after every explosion the tent is flooded with a harsh blue light that sings on the back of her eyes for minutes afterwards. She wills the lightning to strike her directly, for everything to be over in an instant, but this does not happen. The canvas bucks and cracks and after several hours she is woken from her half-sleep by the rough cloth smacking her face as the tent collapses around her. The wind fills the canvas like a sail and drags her along the ground. She has lost all sense of direction and is terrified that she will be hauled over a cliff. She does not want to die, not now, not like this. She does not want to lie on rocks with shattered bones or drown like a dog in a sack but she does not possess the strength to wrestle herself free, so she lies flat and prays for the wind to slacken. Eventually a gust hoists her free of the ground, she is swung hard against a boulder, the tent comes to a halt and she can do nothing but block her ears to the roar and the whipping of the canvas so that she can nurse the pain in her side.

Morning comes and the wind dies away. She frees herself and rolls what remains of the tent into a heap behind the rock that anchored her through half the night. She looks back towards the square of dead grass where it had been pitched. All but two of the pegs have gone. Putting the tent back up is impossible now. She drinks some water then begins the painfully slow process of dragging the torn canvas sheets down to the head of the beach where there is some protection from the wind and she can wrap herself up at night.

There is now a constant throbbing in her head and a churning anger in her guts that she has no way of expending. She lies down and closes her eyes and tries to get some of the rest she should have got last night. As she slips out of consciousness she hears the women’s voices again and that distant tinkling, but when she opens her eyes she can hear only the surf. She descends into vivid, fitful dreams. She is in the bridal suite once more, standing by the bed and examining the tapestry of the weeping woman and the receding ship. This time, however, she sees a part of the picture she had not noticed before. In the lower left-hand corner of the great, woven square, on the green of the island, she can see a band of figures. They are walking towards the weeping woman. She does not know whether they are coming to help the woman or whether they are hunting her down. She steps forward to examine them more closely and the dream evaporates.

The sun is overhead and the air is warm again. She decides that she must make use of what little energy she has left to find some food. Picking up the sharpened stone she climbs to the grassy plateau where the shrubs grow. Half of her is in her body, half hovers in the air above. She moves fluidly and for once walking is easy. She can smell the perfume of the small blue flowers and see two gulls hanging on the breeze.

She finds the largest plant, breaks off the straightest, toughest branch then uses the sharpened stone to whittle a point at one end. She walks to the place where she first saw the seals. She has no idea how many days ago that was. She simply assumes that they will still be there and indeed they are, three adults and a pup. She sits on the grassy ledge and looks down. There is a drop, perhaps twice the height of a man, to a slab of rock that slopes smoothly down to the little channel beside which they are lying. Holding the makeshift weapon in her teeth she turns, lowers herself as far as she can then lets go.

She feels, briefly, as if she is flying, then she lands badly. The pain is so bright and sharp that she cannot breathe, only cradle herself and moan till it dies away, before rolling onto her back. She examines her left hand. The little finger is bent backwards and will not respond to any commands. She cannot bear to touch it. She is sweating profusely.

She looks up to the grassy ledge. She can see no way of getting back. She looks down. The seals are still there. They seem unbothered by her presence. She tells herself that this is good. They are tame. She can do what she came to do.

Her stick has slid down the rocks. She stands up, intending to walk over and retrieve it, but as she does so a flock of tiny, white insects swarms across her field of vision. She sits and waits then shuffles sideways, using her one good hand until she has the stick in her possession again.

She begins moving towards the seals. Two of the adults are watching her. She is fifteen paces away now. They are bigger than she had thought, their bodies as bulky as the bodies of oxen. One of the adults nudges the pup into the water then slips through the surface after it. She is ten paces away now, and she can see, for all their ungainliness, how strong these animals are and how much they weigh. She realises that what she is about to do is dangerous. She cannot remember precisely why she is doing it but changing her mind and doing something different seems like the hardest thing of all. She is five paces away. One of the seals lumbers towards her, rears up, opens its mouth and barks. It sounds like the bottom of a great jar being scraped. It is talking to her and no one has talked to her in a long time. She almost says something back. These animals are going to save her. She wonders why she did not come here sooner. It would have made everything so much easier.

Putting her right hand flat on the ground she gets slowly to her feet. She is a little giddy but there are no stars this time. The seal rears and barks again. She grips the stick tightly, steps forward and shoves the point into the flesh of the seal’s head. It moves with surprising speed, flicking the stick away and swinging immediately back to sink its teeth into her ankle, then swinging its head a third time so that her leg is yanked out from underneath her. The seal lets go and she is tumbling towards the channel. She puts out her hands but the stone is slimy with weed and she cannot get sufficient grip. She crashes into the water, her arms flailing. She’s hunting desperately for handholds but there are none to be found. Her head goes under, she breathes a mouthful of salty water and coughs it out. She grabs two hanks of weed and pulls her head above the surface. She looks round, thinking the seal is going to attack again, but they are all gone. She wonders if they are circling beneath her, biding their time. She looks down but she cannot even see her own feet. What she can see is the pink froth and clouds of blood in the water.

She holds the weed tight and breathes as slowly and as calmly as she can then hauls herself sideways along the channel to the point where the bottom rises and she is standing in waist-deep water. Everything hurts. She is cold to her bones and unable to stop herself shivering but getting out of the water means lifting herself onto a seaweed-covered shelf. It is all of a hand’s breadth above the surface of the water but even that effort is beyond her imagination.

The world slips out of focus then comes back. She sees her stick a little farther up the rock, the stripped wood of its point still red with the seal’s blood. She remembers eating a baby bird. Was that yesterday or the day before? It is hard to be clear about these things. Why did she not dig another bird out of its nest instead of coming down here to kill an animal ten times her size? She has no answers to these questions.

With no warning, the water rises around her and a seal breaks the surface only a few feet away and lunges at her. She has no idea how she does it but she is suddenly out of the water and crawling up the rocky slope.

She collapses and looks back, panting. The seal is no longer there. She examines her leg. There is a deep gash on her ankle. Inside it she can see something white which might or might not be bone. She looks away.

She went down to the cellar one time and found her brother’s head covered in blood. She asked him what had happened, but he would say nothing at first. She fetched some water from the bucket and washed the wound, then tore a strip of cloth from her skirt and bandaged it. She put her arms around him and asked if one of the men had done this to him. He shook his head. She pulled back and looked into his eyes.

“Tell me.”

“I did it.”

“You did it?”

“I did it.”

“You hurt yourself? How?”

“Wall.” He nodded to one of the arches of the brick vault and she saw the bloodstains.

“Why?”

“I want it to stop.”

“What do you want to stop?”

“Everything. I want everything to stop.”

She pretended not to understand. She can see now that she was a coward. She can see now that if she had been braver, if she had really loved her brother, she would have taken a knife down those dark stairs and slipped it between his ribs and let him die in her arms.

Night comes and in the darkness, after the shearwaters have flown ashore, she hears animals that are neither seals nor birds. She hears lions and leopards and wolves. She hears the clanking of chains. She hears drunken shouting and the crackle of a fire and something large breathing close to her ear. She hears the air going in and out of its nostrils and smells the rot of its yellow teeth. She feels the heat of its breath.

Grey light. Intense cold. A fine rain is falling. She cannot move her leg. She cannot move her hand. The world is a tiny, bright thing, so small she can hold it in her hand.

She looks up to the fringe of green grass high above her head. That was the place she had come from. There was a bed somewhere up there. But if there is a way back she is unable to see it from here. She can move her other leg a little. She thinks about trying to stand so that she can find a route but this rock is a kind of bed, too, and she has a memory of the other bed blowing away. She can smell the ammonia on her breath. She looks down at her damaged hand. One of the fingers is the wrong shape. It looks like a badly drawn picture of a hand.

She is in a garden. There are fountains and lavender bushes covered in bees that rise in angry, humming clouds when her cousins hit them with sticks before the nurse drags them away. She trod on a bee once and her foot swelled to twice its size. There are bowers, too, where she can sit out of the heat of the sun. From her favourite she can look down over the wall to the quays and to the ships entering or leaving the harbour. She likes to imagine the countries from which they have come, the countries the old men talk about, countries made entirely of sand, countries where the people have skin as black and glossy as plums, countries where there are water lizards as long as a rowing boat.

She is playing with a hoop made of stripped willow branches, the ends tapered and bound together with little spirals of fibre. If no one gets in the way she can run alongside it, batting it with a stick to keep it rolling, and do a circuit of the entire garden.

It is the most beautiful garden in the world. She never wants to leave. If only she could remember where it is.

There is a high wind and the sea explodes on the rocks below. The moon is full and the waves come in like black hills with a crest of blue snow, swelling and flexing and dropping onto the rocky shelf where they turn to freezing spray which falls on her like rain. She thinks how calm it must be out there, under those waves, in that dark that goes down and down, where the dolphins swim and the jellyfish drift on the current and the forests of seaweed swing back and forth, so much better than up here where everything hurts.

Dawn comes. Her throat and mouth are dry and she cannot generate enough saliva to swallow. Her lips are cracked and bleeding. She can see nothing but fog through her right eye.

There is a flock of gulls standing farther down the rock, all looking out to sea, preening their grey wings with their orange beaks and shaking out their feathers. Their eyes are little yellow stones with black holes drilled through them. The ocean is beaten silver. The seals have come back.

She can hear the cymbals again, a distant, high ringing that comes and goes on the breeze, now louder, now quieter. She wonders if there is something wrong with her ears. Then she hears the faint but unmistakable sound of a big animal growling, that lazy rumble like a barrel on cobbles. The gulls scatter and the seals slip into the waves, leaving only circles of wash behind them.

Everything is briefly still and silent. Then she sees him. He is a big man, naked except for a ragged cloak of red cloth, taller than she remembers from the boat, and more muscular. His head is too large and there is blood on his face. A leopard pads at his side. Behind him are six naked men and six naked women. Some have made themselves crowns and belts of creepers and green branches, some are carrying freshly killed animals—rabbits, foxes, pheasants.

He stands in front of her, breathing heavily. His chest and shoulders are covered with wiry black hair and she can see now that he has horns. There is dung on his legs and his penis is thick and erect. He bends down and picks her up. She can smell wine on his breath and the rot of his teeth. He licks her. She recognises him from somewhere. She does not feel frightened. No one can hurt her anymore. There is no longer enough of her to be hurt.

He turns her over and lays her down and pushes himself into her. The movement back and forth inside her is the movement of the waves back and forth against the rock, the coming and going of the birds, the pulse of day and night, summer turning into autumn, to winter, to spring to summer again, the heart squeezing and releasing, the pulse of the blood.

Then they are on top of her, the men and women, biting, tearing, ripping her skin, pulling out her hair, breaking her fingers, gouging her eyes, hacking out the fat and muscle, pulling free the greasy tubes and bags of her innards till she is finally free of her body. Rising now, she looks down at the skeleton lying on the rocks, gulls picking at the remaining shreds of meat and gristle. She sees the grass blowing in the wind, the fringe of restless surf, the island shrinking till it is no more than a lump in the fastness of the sea, the sea an azure tear on the surface of the globe itself which shrinks rapidly in the haze of the sun as she floats into the great, black vault, becoming a buckled ring of seven stars, Corona Borealis, the northern crown.

She is immortal.

Nothing is so much enjoyed, by some men, as a practical joke; and the greater the annoyance they can occasion, the greater their delight. Of this class was Mr. Thomas Bunting, who resided in a village a few miles out of New York. Bunting kept a store for the sale of almost every article known in domestic and agricultural life, from a number ten needle up to a hoe-handle; and from a mintstick up to a bag of coffee. Consequently, he was pretty well acquainted with all the town’speople, who were, likewise, pretty well acquainted with him.

As Bunting was constantly playing off his pranks upon one and another, he only kept himself free from enemies by his good temper and ability to soothe the parties he sometimes irritated beyond the point of endurance.

The First of April was never permitted to come and go without being well improved by the joke-loving Thomas. If a customer sent for a pint of brandy on that day, he would be very apt to get four gills of vinegar; or, if for a pound of sugar, half a pound of New Orleans mixed with an equal weight of silver sand. That was a smart child who could come into his store on the occasion, and leave it without being the victim of some trick. So, from morning till night of the First day of April, the face of Mr. Thomas Bunting was one broad grin. Full of invention as to the ways and means of playing off tricks upon others, our merry friend was wide awake to any attempt at retaliation; and it generally happened that most of those who sought to catch him, got the laugh turned upon themselves.

Two years ago, as the First of April approached, Bunting began to think of the sport awaiting him, and to cast his eyes over the town to see who was the most fitting subject for a good jest.

“I must make a fool of somebody,” said he to himself; “a first-rate fool. I am tired of mere child’s play in this business. Who shall it be? There’s Doctor Grimes. Suppose I send him to see the young widow Gray? He’d like to make her a visit exceedingly, I know. But the widow knows me of old, and will be sure to suspect my agency. I guess that won’t do. Grimes is a good subject; and I’ve got a sort of spite against him. I must use him, somehow. The widow Gray would be first-rate; but I’m a little afraid to bring her in. The doctor’s as poor as Job’s turkey, and would be off to visit her on the run. Let me see? What shall I do? I’ve got it! I’ll send him to York on a fool’s errand!”

And Bunting snapped his finger and thumb in childish delight.

Doctor Grimes, to whom our joker referred, had been in the village only about a year, and, in that time, had succeeded in making but a small practice. Not that he was wanting in ability; but he lacked address. In person, he was rather awkward; and, in manners, far from prepossessing. Moreover, he was poor, and not able, in consequence, to make a very good appearance.

We would not like to say that, in selecting Doctor Grimes as the subject of his best joke for the First of April, Bunting acted on the principle of a certain worthy, who said of another–

“Kick him; he has no friends!”

But we rather incline to the opinion that some such feeling was in the heart of the joker.

The First of April came. Doctor Grimes, after eating his breakfast, sat down in his office to await expected morning calls for consultation, or to request his attendance on some suffering invalid. But no such calls were made. The doctor sighed, under the pressure of disappointment, as he glanced at the timepiece on the mantel, the hands of which pointed to the figure ten.

“A poor prospect here,” he murmured despondingly. “Ah, if there were none in the world to care for but myself, I would be content on bread and water while making my way into the confidence of the people. But others are suffering while I wait for practice. What hinders my progress? I understand my profession. In not a single instance yet have I failed to give relief, when called to the bed of sickness. Ah me! I feel wretched.”

Just then, the letter-carrier of the village came in and handed him two letters. The first one he opened was from a dearly loved, widowed sister, who wrote to know if he could possibly help her in her poverty and distress.

“I would not trouble you, my dear, kind brother,” she wrote, “knowing as I do how poor your own prospects are, and how patiently you are trying to wait for practice, did not want press on me and my babes so closely. If you can spare me a little–ever so little–brother, it will come as a blessing; for my extremity is great. Forgive me for thus troubling you. Necessity often prompts to acts, from the thought of which, in brighter moments, we turn with a feeling of pain.”

For many minutes after reading this letter, Doctor Grimes sat with his eyes upon the floor.

“My poor Mary!” he said at length, “how much you have suffered; and yet more drops of bitterness are given to your cup! Oh that it was in my power to relieve you! But my hands are stricken down with paralysis. What can I do? Thus far, I have gone in debt instead of clearing my expenses.”

He took out his pocket-book and searched it over.

“Nothing–nothing,” he murmured as he refolded it. “Ah, what curse is there like the curse of poverty?”

He then referred to the other letter, the receipt of which he had almost forgotten. Breaking the seal, he read, with surprise, its contents, which were as follows:–

“To DOCTOR GRIMES.–Dear Sir: Please call, as early as possible, at Messrs. L—- & P—-‘s, No. — Wall Street, New York; where you will hear of something to your advantage.”

“What can this mean?” exclaimed the doctor, as he hurriedly perused the letter again. “Can it be possible that a relative of my father, in England, has died, and left us property? Yes; it must be so. Several members of his family there are in good circumstances. Oh, if it should be thus, how timely has relief come! For your sake, my dear sister, more than for my own, will I be thankful! But how am I to go to New York? I have not a dollar in my pocket, and will receive nothing for a week or two.”

The only resource was in borrowing; and to this the doctor resorted with considerable reluctance. From a gentleman who had always shown an interest in him, he obtained five dollars. Within an hour after the receipt of the letter, he was on his way to the city. The more he pondered the matter, the more likely did it seem to him that his first conclusion was the true one. There was an uncle of his father’s, a miser, reputed to be very rich, from whom, some years before, the family had received letters; and it seemed not at all improbable that his death had occurred, and that he and his sister had been remembered in the will. This idea so fully possessed his mind by the time he arrived in the city, that he was already beginning to make, in imagination, sundry dispositions of the property soon to come into his hands.

“Can I see one of the gentlemen belonging to the firm?” asked the doctor, on entering the store of Messrs. L—- & P—-.

“Here is Mr. L—-,” said the individual he had addressed, referring him to a middle-aged, thoughtful-looking man, with something prepossessing in his face.

The doctor bowed to Mr. L—-, and then said–

“My name is Dr. Grimes.”

Mr. L—- bowed in return, remarking, as he did so–

“Will you walk in?”

The doctor was rather disappointed at the manner of his reception, and experienced a slight depression of spirits as he followed the merchant back into one of the counting-rooms attached to the store.

“Will you take a chair, sir?” said the merchant.

Both the gentlemen sat down. About L—- there was an air of expectancy, which the doctor did not fail to remark.

“My name is Doctor Grimes,” said he, repeating his first introduction.

“I am happy to see you, doctor,” returned L—-, bowing again.

“I received a letter from your house, this morning,” said the victim, for such he really was, “desiring me to call, as you had some communication to make that would be to my advantage.”

“There’s some mistake,” replied the merchant. “No letter of the kind has emanated from us.”

“Are you certain?” asked the disappointed man, in a voice greatly changed; and he drew forth the letter he had received.

L—- looked at the communication, and shook his head.

“There is no truth in this, sir. I regret to say that you have, most probably, been made the victim of an idle and reprehensible jest. To-day, you are aware, is the First of April.”

“Can it be possible!” exclaimed the doctor, clasping his hands together, while his face became pale and overcast with disappointment. “Who could have been so unkind, so cruel!”

“And is the disappointment very great?” said the merchant, touched with the manner of his visitor, which showed more pain than mortification at the cheat practised upon him.

With an effort at self-command, Doctor Grimes regained, to some extent, his lost composure, and rising, remarked, as he partly turned himself away–

“Forgive this intrusion, sir. I ought to have been more on my guard.”

But an interest having been awakened in the mind of Mr. L—-, he would not suffer his visitor to retire until he held some conversation with him. In this conversation he learned, through delicately asked questions, even more of his real condition in life than the latter meant to communicate; and he still further learned that the mother of Doctor Grimes had been one of his early friends.

“Will you be willing to take the place of Resident Physician at the —- Hospital?” finally asked Mr. L.

“To one like me,” replied Dr. Grimes, “that place would be exceedingly desirable. But I do not suppose I could get it.”

“Why not?”

“I am a stranger here.”

“Can you bring testimonials as to professional ability?” asked Mr. L—-.

“I can. Testimonials of the very highest character.”

“Bring them to me, doctor, at the earliest possible moment. I do not, in the least, doubt that my influence will secure you the place. I believe you have no family?”

“None.”

“That may be an objection. A furnished dwelling is provided for the physician; and, I believe, one with a family is preferred.”

“I have a widowed sister, who would be glad to join me; and whom I would be glad to place in so comfortable a position.”

“That will do just as well, doctor. Bring over your testimonials as soon as possible. Not so much of an April fool, after all, I begin to think. Unless I am very greatly mistaken, you have heard something to your advantage.”

All came out to the satisfaction of both Doctor Grimes and the kind-hearted Mr. L—-. In less than a month, the former was in comfortable quarters at —- Hospital, and in the receipt of twelve hundred dollars per annum. This was exclusive of rent for his sister’s family–now his own–and table expenses. Moreover, for certain duties required of her in the hospital, his sister received three hundred dollars additional.

So it turned out that Dr. Grimes, so far from being made an April fool, was benefited by the wonderfully “smart” trick of Mr. Bunting. But of the particular result of his extra work, the village-jester remained ignorant. Being on the lookout, he was “tickled to death” when he saw the doctor start off post haste for New York; and he looked out for his return, anticipating rare pleasure at seeing his “face as long as his arm.” But this particular pleasure was not obtained, for he didn’t see the doctor afterward.

“What’s become of Dr. Grimes?” he asked of one and another, after a few days had passed, and he did not see that individual on the street as before.

But none of whom he made inquiry happened to know any thing of the doctor’s movements. It was plain to Bunting that, he had driven the said doctor out of the village; and this circumstance quite flattered his vanity, and made him feel of more consequence than before. In a little while, he told his secret to one and another, and it was pretty generally believed that Doctor Grimes had gone away under a sense of mortification at the storekeeper’s practical joke.

“Look out for next year,” said one and another. “If Doctor Grimes isn’t even with you then, it’ll be a wonder.”

“It will take a brighter genius than he is to fool me,” Bunting would usually reply to these words of caution.

The First of April came round again. Thomas Bunting was wide awake. He expected to hear from the doctor, who, he was certain, would never forgive him. Sure enough, with the day, came a letter from New York.

“You don’t fool me!” said Bunting, as he glanced at the postmark. He had heard that the doctor was in, or somewhere near, the city.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed, as he read–

“If Mr. Thomas Bunting will call on Messrs. Wilde & Lyon, Pearl Street, New York, he may hear of something to his advantage.”

“Ha! ha! That’s capital! The doctor is a wag. Ha! ha!”

Of course, Bunting was too wide awake for this trap. Catch him trudging to New York on a fool’s errand!

“Does he think I haven’t cut my eye-teeth?” he said to himself exultingly, as he read over the letter. “Doctor Grimes don’t know this child–he don’t.”

And yet, the idea that something might be lost by not heeding the letter, came stealing in upon him, and checking in a small degree the delight he felt at being too smart for the doctor. But this thought was instantly pushed aside. Of course, Bunting was not so “green,” to use one of his favourite words, as to go on a fool’s errand to New York.

Five or six months afterward, Bunting, while in the city on business, happened to meet Doctor Grimes.

“How are you, doctor?” said he, grasping the hand of the physician, and smiling with one of the smiles peculiar to his face when he felt that he had played off a capital joke on somebody.

“I’m well, Mr. Bunting. And how are you?” replied the doctor.

“First-rate–first-rate!” and Bunting rubbed his hands. Then he added, with almost irrepressible glee–

“You wasn’t sharp enough, last April, doctor.”

“Why so?” inquired Doctor Grimes.

“You didn’t succeed in getting me to the city on a fool’s errand.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Bunting,” said the doctor seriously.

“Wilde & Lyon, Pearl Street–something to my advantage. Ha?”

The doctor looked puzzled.

“You needn’t play the innocent, doctor. Its no use. I sent you on a fool’s errand to New York; and it was but natural that you should seek to pay me back in my own coin. But I was too wide awake for you entirely. It takes a sharp man to catch me.”

“You’re certainly too wide awake for me now,” said Doctor Grimes. “Will you please be serious and explain yourself.”

“Last April a year, you received a letter from New York, to the effect that if you would call at a certain place in Wall Street, you would hear something to your advantage?”

“I did,” replied the doctor.

“Well.”

“I called, accordingly, and received information which has proved greatly to my advantage.”

“What?” Bunting looked surprised.

“The gentleman upon whom I called was a leading director in —- Hospital, and in search of a Resident Physician for that establishment. I now fill that post.”

“Is it possible?” Bunting could not conceal his surprise, in which something like disappointment was blended. “And you did not write a similar letter to me last April?” he added.

“I am above such trifling,” replied the doctor, in a tone that marked his real feelings on that subject. “A man who could thus wantonly injure and insult another for mere sport, must have something bad about him. I should not like to trust such a one.”

“Good morning, doctor,” said Bunting. The two gentlemen bowed formally and parted.

If the doctor did not send the letter, from whom could it have come? This was the question that Bunting asked himself immediately. But no satisfactory answer came. He was puzzled and uncomfortable. Moreover, the result of the doctor’s errand to New York–which had proved any thing but a fool’s errand–was something that he could not understand.

“I wonder if I hadn’t better call on Wilde & Lyon?” said he to himself, at length. “Perhaps the letter was no trick, after all.”

Bunting held a long argument, mentally, on the subject, in which all the pros and cons were fully discussed. Finally, he decided to call at the place referred to in his letter, and did so immediately on reaching this decision. Still, fearing that the letter might have been a hoax, he made some few purchases of articles for his store, and then gave his name.

“Thomas Bunting!” said the person with whom he was dealing. “Do you reside in the city?”

Bunting mentioned his place of residence.

“Did you never receive a letter from this house, desiring to see you?”

“I did,” replied Bunting; “but as it was dated on the first of April, I took it for the jest of some merry friend.”

“Very far from it, I can assure you,” answered the man. “An old gentleman arrived here from England about that time, who said that a brother and sister had come to this country many years ago, and that he was in search of them or their children. His name was Bunting. At his request, we made several advertisements for his relatives. Some one mentioned that a gentleman named Thomas Bunting resided in the town where you live; and we immediately dropped him a note. But, as no answer came, it was presumed the information was incorrect.”

“Where is he now?” asked Bunting.

“He is dead.”

“What! Dead?”

“Yes. A letter came, some weeks after we wrote to you, from St. Louis, which proved to be from his sister, and to that place he immediately proceeded. Soon after arriving there, he died. He left, in money, about ten thousand dollars, all of which passed, by a will executed before he left this city–for in his mind there was a presentiment of death–to his new-found relative.”

“He was my uncle!” said Bunting.

“Then, by not attending to our letter, you are the loser of at least one-half of the property he left.”

* * * *

Bunting went home in a very sober mood of mind. His aunt and himself were not on good terms. In fact, she was a widow and poor, and he had not treated her with the kindness she had a right to expect. There was no likelihood, therefore, of her making him a partner in her good fortune.

Bunting was the real April Fool, after all, sharp-witted and wide awake as he had thought himself. His chagrin and disappointment were great; so great, that it took all the spirit out of him for a long time; and it is not presumed that he will attempt an “April Fool” trick in the present year, of even the smallest pretensions.

Clarice Lispector

Silence

The silence of the night in the mountains is so vast. It is so desolate. You try in vain to work not to hear it, to think quickly to cover it up. Or to invent some plans, a fragile stitch that barely links us to the suddenly improbable day of tomorrow. How to surmount this peace that spies us. A silence so great that despair is ashamed. Mountains so high that despair is ashamed. The ears prick, the head tilts, the whole body listens: not a murmur. Not a rooster. How to come within reach of this deep meditation on the silence. On that silence without memory of words. If thou art death, how to reach thee.

It is a silence that does not sleep: it is insomniac: motionless but insomniac; and without ghosts. It is terrible—not a single ghost. It’s no use wanting to people it with the possibility of a door that creaks while opening, of a curtain that opens and says something. It is empty and without promise. If only there were the wind. Wind is fury, fury is life. Or snow. Which is silent but leaves tracks—everything turns white, children laugh, footsteps crunch and leave a mark. There is a continuity that is life. But this silence leaves no trace. You cannot speak of silence as you do of snow. You cannot say to anyone as you say about snow: did you feel the silence last night? Those who did don’t say.

Night descends with its little joys for those who light the lamps with the weariness that so justifies the day. The children of Bern drop off to sleep, the last doors are shut. The streets shine in the cobblestones and shine empty now. And finally the most distant lights go out.

But this first silence is still not the silence. Wait, for the leaves in the trees will settle down better, some belated step on the stairs may be heard with hope.

But there’s a moment when from the rested body the spirit rises alert, and from the earth the moon up high. Then it, the silence, appears.

The heart beats upon recognizing it.

You could quickly think about the day that has passed. Or about friends who have passed and are forever lost. But there’s no use avoiding it: there is the silence. Even the worst suffering, that of lost friendship, is just an escape. For if at first the silence seems to await an answer—how much do we burn to be called to answer—early on you discover that it demands nothing of you, perhaps only your silence. How many hours are wasted in the dark supposing that the silence is judging you—as we wait in vain to be judged by God. Justifications arise, tragic, forced justifications, excuses humble to the point of indignity. How pleasant it is for the human being to reveal at last his indignity and be forgiven on the argument that he is a human being brought low by birth.

Until you discover—it doesn’t even want your indignity. It is the silence.

You can also try to fool it. You can drop, as if by accident, a book from your nightstand. But, the horror—the book falls into the silence and gets lost in its mute and frozen vortex. And if a deranged bird began to sing? A useless hope. The song would merely graze the silence like a faint flute.

So, if you are brave, you won’t fight it. You enter it, go along with it, we the only ghosts on a night in Bern. You must enter. You mustn’t wait for the remaining darkness while faced with it, only it alone. It will be as if we were on a ship so uncommonly enormous that we didn’t realize we were on a ship. And it sailed so far and wide that we didn’t realize we were moving. A man cannot do more than that. Living on the shores of death and of the stars is a tenser vibration than the veins can take. There is not even the son of a star and a woman to act as a pious intermediary. The heart must appear before the nothing alone and alone beat high in the darkness. The only thing sounding in your ears is your own heart. When it appears completely naked, it is not even communication, it is submission. For we were made for nothing but the small silence.

If you are not brave, you mustn’t enter. Wait for the remaining darkness faced with the silence, only your feet wet from the foam of something that sprays from inside us. Wait. One unsolvable for the other. Side by side, two things that do not see each other in the dark. Wait. Not for the end of the silence but for the blessed help of a third element, the light of dawn.

Afterward you will never again forget. There’s no use even fleeing to another city. For when you least expect to you may recognize it—suddenly. While crossing the street amid cars honking. Between one phantasmagoric burst of laughter and another. After a word uttered. Sometimes in the very heart of the word. The ears are haunted, the vision blurs—here it is. And this time it’s a ghost.

Clarice Lispector

The Servant

Her name was Eremita.* She was nineteen. A confident face, a few pimples. Where was her beauty? There was beauty in that body that was neither ugly nor pretty, in that face in which a sweetness eager for greater sweetnesses was its sign of life.

As for beauty, I don’t know. There may not have been any, though indefinite features attract as water attracts. There was, indeed, living substance, nails, flesh, teeth, a mixture of resistances and weaknesses, constituting a vague presence that nonetheless immediately solidified into an inquisitive and readily helpful head, as soon as someone uttered a name: Eremita. Her brown eyes were untranslatable, at odds with her whole face. As independent as if they’d been planted in the flesh of an arm, and were peering at us from there—open, moist. She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.

Sometimes she’d answer with a servant’s ill-breeding. She’d been like that since childhood, she explained. Not that it stemmed from her character. For there was nothing hard about her spirit, no perceptible law. “I got scared,” she’d say naturally. “It made me hungry,” she’d say, and whatever she said was always indisputable, who knows why. “He respects me a lot,” she’d say of her fiancé and, though it was a borrowed and conventional expression, whoever heard it entered a delicate world of animals and birds, where all respected each other. “I’m embarrassed,” she’d say, and smile, entangled in her own shadows. If her hunger was for bread—which she ate quickly as if it could be taken away—her fear was of thunder, her embarrassment was of speaking. She was kind, honest. “God forbid, right?” she’d say absently.

Because she had her absent moments. Her face would get lost in an impersonal and unwrinkled sorrow. A sorrow more ancient than her spirit. Her eyes would pause, vacant; I’d even say a bit harsh. Whoever was next to her suffered and could do nothing. Except wait.

Because she was devoted to something, that mysterious infant. No one would have dared touch her right then. You’d wait a little solemnly, heart constricted, keeping an eye on her. There was nothing you could do for her except hope for the danger to pass. Until in an unhurried movement, almost a sigh, she’d rouse herself as a newborn goat rises on its legs. She had returned from her repose in sorrow.

She would return, you couldn’t say richer, but more reassured after having drunk from some unknown fount. What you could see is that the fount must have been ancient and pure. Yes, there was depth in her. But no one would find a thing if they descended into her depths—except depth itself, as in the dark you find the dark. It’s possible that, if someone pressed ahead, they’d find, after walking miles through the shadows, the hint of a path, guided perhaps by a beating of wings, by some trace of an animal. And—suddenly—the forest.

Ah, so that must have been her mystery: she had discovered a trail into the forest. Surely that was where she went during her absences. Returning with her eyes filled with gentleness and ignorance, eyes made whole. An ignorance so vast that inside it all the world’s wisdom could be contained and lost.

That was Eremita. Who, if she rose to the surface with everything she had found in the forest, would be burned at the stake. But what she had seen—on what roots she had gnawed, on what thorns she had bled, in what waters she had bathed her feet, what golden darkness held the light that had shrouded her—she didn’t speak of all this because she didn’t know about it: perceived in a single glance, too fleeting to be anything but a mystery.

Thus, whenever she emerged, she was a maid. Who was constantly being summoned from the darkness of her trail for lesser duties, to do the laundry, wipe the floor, serve someone or other.

But would she really serve? For if anyone paid attention they’d see that she did the laundry—in the sun; that she wiped the floor—wet from the rain; that she hung the sheets—in the wind. She found ways to serve much more remotely, and other gods. Always with the wholeness of spirit she had brought back from the forest. Without a thought: just a body moving calmly, a face full of a gentle hope that no one can give and no one can take away.

The only sign of the danger through which she had passed was her furtive way of eating bread. In all else she was serene. Even when she pocketed the money her mistress had forgotten on the table, even when she took her fiancé supplies wrapped in a discreet bundle. Pilfering was something else she’d learned in her forests.

* “Hermit. “

The first thing the baby did wrong was to tear pages out of her books. So we made a rule that each time she tore a page out of a book she had to stay alone in her room for four hours, behind the closed door. She was tearing out about a page a day, in the beginning, and the rule worked fairly well, although the crying and screaming from behind the closed door were unnerving. We reasoned that that was the price you had to pay, or part of the price you had to pay. But then as her grip improved she got to tearing out two pages at a time, which meant eight hours alone in her room, behind the closed door, which just doubled the annoyance for everybody. But she wouldn't quit doing it. And then as time went on we began getting days when she tore out three or four pages, which put her alone in her room for as much as sixteen hours at a stretch, interfering with normal feeding and worrying my wife. But I felt that if you made a rule you had to stick to it, had to be consistent, otherwise they get the wrong idea. She was about fourteen months old or fifteen months old at that point. Often, of course, she'd go to sleep, after an hour or so of yelling, that was a mercy. Her room was very nice, with a nice wooden rocking horse and practically a hundred dolls and stuffed animals. Lots of things to do in that room if you used your time wisely, puzzles and things. Unfortunately sometimes when we opened the door we'd find that she'd torn more pages out of more books while she was inside, and these pages had to be added to the total, in fairness.

The baby's name was Born Dancin'. We gave the baby some of our wine, red, whites and blue, and spoke seriously to her. But it didn't do any good.

I must say she got real clever. You'd come up to her where she was playing on the floor, in those rare times when she was out of her room, and there'd be a book there, open beside her, and you'd inspect it and it would look perfectly all right. And then you'd look closely and you'd find a page that had one little corner torn, could easily pass for ordinary wear-and-tear but I knew what she'd done, she'd torn off this little corner and swallowed it. So that had to count and it did. They will go to any lengths to thwart you. My wife said that maybe we were being too rigid and that the baby was losing weight. But I pointed out to her that the baby had a long life to live and had to live in a world with others, had to live in a world where there were many, many rules, and if you couldn't learn to play by the rules you were going to be left out in the cold with no character, shunned and ostracized by everyone. The longest we ever kept her in her room consecutive was eighty-eight hours, and that ended when my wife took the door off its hinges with a crowbar even though the baby still owed us twelve hours because she was working off twenty five pages. I put the door back on its hinges and added a big lock, one that opened only if you put a magnetic card in a slot, and I kept the card.

But things didn't improve. The baby would come out of her room like a bat out of hell and rush to the nearest book, Goodnight Moon or whatever, and begin tearing pages out of it hand over fist. I mean there'd be thirty-four pages of Goodnight Moon on the floor in ten seconds. Plus the covers. I began to get a little worried. When I added up her indebtedness, in terms of hours, I could see that she wasn't going to get out of her room until 1992, if then. Also, she was looking pretty wan. She hadn't been to the park in weeks. We had more or less of an ethical crisis on our hands.

I solved it by declaring that it was all right to tear pages out of books, and moreover, that it was all right to have torn pages out of books in the past. That is one of the satisfying things about being a parent-you've got a lot of moves, each one good as gold. The baby and I sit happily on the floor, side by side, tearing pages out of books, and sometimes, just for fun, we go out on the street and smash a windshield together.

​

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth

all things, endureth all things.

ST. PAUL, I CORINTHIANS, 13:7

For Maureen Allan

SIMON WISHED HIS mother would die. Right that minute. Right where she was sitting, which was almost undoubtedly down in the kitchen, at the bloody kitchen table, correcting her bloody essays. I’m at my wits’ end with you, Simon. I worry about what’s going to happen to you, I really do. Well, if she was dead she wouldn’t have to worry, would she? And he wouldn’t have to listen to her bloody nagging. Shoes don’t live in the kitchen, Simon. If you spill something, do you think you could wipe it up, Simon? Do you know what a dishwasher’s for, Simon? He knew what would go on her bloody headstone as well. I’ve just cleaned that, Simon.

Korn’s Life Is Peachy pounded on the stereo, helping keep his thoughts in rhythm with Tekken 3 on the PlayStation. Hwoarang hammered machine-gun punches into Lei Wulong’s stomach Simon, if you’re going to finish all the milk, could you buy more? Paul Phoenix pulled a three-hit combo with a God Hammer Punch on Yoshimitsu If you use something, could you put it back when you’ve finished with it, Simon? Simon snorted with adolescent schadenfreude as he imagined his mother in the King of the Iron Fists Tournament, Forest Law thwacking junkyard kicks into her virtual body parts, Jin Kazama chopping her into submission Do you remember when you used to kiss and cuddle me and call me “Mummy”?

She was going to tell his father. Shoplifting, Simon. That’s theft, pure and simple. Like the shops weren’t ripping him off in the first place. And how do you work that one out, Simon? She knew he couldn’t argue like Rebecca. She was always trying to get him to explain things. Why did you do that, Simon? What were you thinking? Stupid cow. Just because your father doesn’t live with us anymore doesn’t mean he can abdicate his responsibilities. “Tell Dad if you want, I haven’t even seen him in weeks.” Dad wasn’t interested in them anymore anyway. He had Jenny now. It’ll never last. Jenny who was pregnant, except their mother didn’t know it. What do you think will happen to you if you keep on this path, Simon? Hm? King punched Ling Xiaoyu and then jumped on her body. KO. Ling Xiaoyu gave a girly little scream. Game Over. You Win.

Rebecca was making a bar chart for Higher Maths to the un-troubling sound of Travis on her headphones. She was using Excel—neat blocks of red, blue, green, and purple that would come out nicely on her Epson color printer. Rebecca liked everything to be neat. Her room was completely coordinated—lilacs, purples and blues, a touch of pink but not too girly. She didn’t think of herself as a girly girl. The cover on her bed was pulled smooth, her books and files aligned with the edge of her shelf. You take after your father, don’t you?

She checked the clock. 21:43. At ten o’clock she’d make hot chocolate. Rebecca thought she might buy a kettle and a small microwave for her bedroom. She had enough money, she’d worked as soon as she could get a job—down at the Alldays, in the video shop—now she worked in Superdrug on Saturdays and holidays. Her own money, not guilty paternal handouts. You’re so self-sufficient, Rebecca. If she had a microwave and a kettle she’d never have to bother with the rest of the house, apart from the bathroom. It was a shame her Superdrug job didn’t run to funding an en suite bathroom, then she could stay in her own neat nest. She couldn’t wait to be living in a hall of residence.

22:00. Rebecca removed her headphones and was assaulted by the noise from Simon’s stereo. No wonder he had mince for brains. And he played such shite. Korn, for Christ’s sake. I don’t know, when I was your age songs used to have a tune. When their mother came out with her nostalgia crap, Rebecca felt the same irritation as her brother, but she would never give him the pleasure of sibling camaraderie by telling him that. Their mother talked about her youth a lot these days, ever since Beardy Brian came on the scene. They used to be at university together, a fact that seemed to continually amaze them both—Who’d have thought then that we’d get together?—as if they were the only two University of Aberdeen alumni on the planet.

“Alumni.” That was a word she had learned from Beardy Brian. She’d tucked it away for further use. “Yes, I’m a Trinity alumnus.” They did Latin at Watson’s; she knew her plurals. Their mother never stopped telling them how lucky they were to do Latin. In my day everyone did it. Now you only get taught it if you go to expensive schools like yours. What about my poor kids, don’t they deserve the choice? But they had never had Latin on the curriculum at the schemie school her mother taught at and she knew it.

Not that Rebecca was sure about Cambridge. There were plenty of places she could apply to. But Edinburgh has an excellent reputation for medicine—then you could live at home. Yeah, that’ll be right.

Not that she was entirely sure about medicine either. Her subjects were strong across the board; maybe she should do an arts degree. But when she thought of herself in the future—which was all the time—she saw herself as a doctor, not in some scummy NHS hospital but as a surgeon with Medécins sans Frontières, operating in impossible conditions in a war zone, or a doctor in some remote mountain village vaccinating the photogenic babies of noble tribeswomen. Dr. Rebecca McFarlane.

Rebecca opened Simon’s door and yelled at him to turn his stereo down. His face flushed a furious fuchsia at this intrusion.

“You wouldn’t stand for it if I came into your room without knocking, would you?”

“No, I’d fucking kill you,” she said matter-of-factly. It was hard to believe anyone she shared so many genes with could be so unattractive. Simon had spots like braille. A blind person could probably read half of Shakespeare on his face. “It stinks in here, Simon.”

“Leave then.”

“No, really. I’m serious, it’s disgusting.”

You do shower every day, don’t you, Simon?

“I said leave.”

“You shouldn’t wank so much in here.”

She managed to close the door just in time for his shoe to thud off it. “Whore,” he yelled as Rebecca ran lightly down the stairs, laughing.

Their mother was standing at the kitchen door, a frown contracting her round moon features, her voice full of concern. Did he just call you a whore, Becca? “Yeah, you’d better go and throw The Female Eunuch at him.” You can’t call women whores, even if you don’t mean it. “But what about if they actually are whores?” It’s a derogatory term. Language is how we define our world. “Yeah, use that argument on Simon, why don’t you, like he’ll really understand what you’re talking about.”

Her mother was wearing that disgusting, worn-out denim smock that looked as if she’d had it since she was pregnant. She looked pregnant in it now. She had no waistline whatsoever. She took her glasses off and let them dangle on the chain that bounced off her cushiony breasts as she walked up the stairs. She might as well not be wearing a bra.

Her mother’s underwear was horrible, everything slightly gray and stretched, the elastic gone in the M and S sports bras she wore, even though she was the least sporty person Rebecca could think of. Rebecca did her own washing. The idea of contaminating anything she wore with her mother’s saggy bras and washed-to-death Sloggis or—infinitely worse—Simon’s skid-marked, urine-spotted boxers, At least make an effort to aim for the toilet bowl, Simon, made her feel ill.

Rebecca’s underwear was spotlessly white—she presoaked it in Vanish—she preferred white and so, luckily, did her boyfriend, Fraser. Fraser was as good as they got, captain of the rugby team and Dux of the school, he had his own car and was allowed to have Rebecca to stay whenever he wanted, although they never had sex in his house; Rebecca couldn’t bear the idea of Fraser’s mother listening to them. Rebecca was going to finish with Fraser when she went to university. It was a curiously empty relationship, not based on passion, something Rebecca was looking forward to experiencing one day.

Her mother had been listening to Classic FM—a Mahler symphony, Rebecca didn’t know which one. She didn’t like Mahler. Rebecca whisked the hot chocolate into a pan of milk. Her mother had a still-warm cup of chamomile tea next to her pile of essays to be corrected. “Update Romeo and Juliet to the modern-day world.” Oh for Christ’s sake, they’d just write about the Baz Luhrmann film. Or Northern Ireland, or Bosnia, except they wouldn’t know where that was. How cliched. Why couldn’t they just study the bloody text? You have to make literature relevant to real life. Why? Rebecca leafed idly through the top essay, a scrawled, messy affair. She smirked at the conclusion: “What a sheer, big waste of love Romeo and Juliet is!” What a moron.

She could hear her mother’s one-sided conversation with Simon, her mother on her side of the door remonstrating with that reasonable whine in her voice, Simon on the other side grunting like preliterate Cro-Magnon man. In fact, if you thought of Simon as an unsuccessful example of early man, his entire existence was easier to make sense of.

Her mother plodded back down the stairs. Rebecca could see only her legs through the banisters—white and veined, and her ankles like melting Brie above those bloody awful faux Birkenstocks. She sighed as she came into the kitchen. Her mother had a huge lexicon of sighs. A sigh for every occasion. Her Simon sigh was always a particularly heavy one.

He’s got Standard Grades next year, she said, as if Rebecca might be interested, as if Rebecca was the other parent for God’s sake.

“Like I care.”

You didn’t think to ask if I wanted any hot chocolate then? her mother said, adding a no one in this house ever thinks about me sigh.

“You’ve got chamomile tea.” The only conversations we ever have are arguments, have you ever thought about that, Rebecca? “Well, maybe that’s your fault, have you ever thought about that, ‘Mother’?”

Rebecca left the kitchen abruptly. She wasn’t going to give her mother the satisfaction of any kind of conversation. She slammed her bedroom door. “Why don’t you just die,” she muttered. “Drop dead of a brain hemorrhage and leave us to get on with our lives.”

Simon turned his stereo up. Machine Head, The Burning Red. Boak’s first album, Guts for Garters. He got into bed without bothering to undress and fell asleep imagining he was Eddie Gordo kicking and spinning and punching to his own beat. One day everyone would know the name of Simon McFarlane. Know it and fear it.

Slipknot, for God’s sake. Surely their mother wasn’t going to let him play that junk so loud at this time of night? What did the neighbors think? (God, had she really just thought that?) She put her headphones on and fell asleep listening to the “Goldberg” Variations.

After Lily died, Tom fell very quiet. There was no lack of people – his old friend Jack Grass, for instance, and a couple of neighbours – who were prepared to listen, had he wanted to talk to them. But the fact was that nowadays the small things that used to flow into his mind, the trivial observations of everyday life that invariably made Lily laugh, no longer came to him. He felt quite dead himself.

After Lily died, Tom forced himself to pack up her dressmaking things. He covered the old sewing machine that had stood for twenty-five years in the corner of the front room with a polythene sheet, and sent a bundle of old materials to a jumble sale. These scrap ends of fabric made his hands tremble for a while, as he gathered them up awkwardly, pricking his fingers on pins that only Lily would have known were there, and tied them with a ribbon from the neat sewing box. A triangle of shiny green satin brought back to him the trouble Lily had had with Vera Finch, fat old spinster, self-important member of the council who, convinced she would be mayor years before she actually was, got Lily to make up a whole trousseau. A more unlikely set of clothes for a stumpy mayor-to-be Lily and Tom had never seen: décolleté evening dresses to show off the spongy flesh of Miss Finch’s appalling breasts; frills round every hem to call attention to her thick ankles; huge sashes that spread over her wide bottom. Lily had done her best to persuade Miss Finch into something a little plainer, but Miss Finch remained adamant. She had stamped her solid foot in the front room crying, ‘Flair! I know how to dress with flair, Lily Greville, and you would do well to learn a thing or two from me.’ Lily good-humoured as ever, gave up the battle and laughed about it with Tom later.

A small piece of cream calico dropped to the floor. As Tom bent to pick it up he recalled the skirt it had come from – a voluminous thing with an elastic waist that was meant to hide poor Lovelace Brown’s condition. Lily and Tom had been the only ones to know her secret for a while, until the skirt, for all its cunning folds, swelled to obvious proportions. Lovelace had never managed to pay for it and Lily had told her to forget it. She was a good dressmaker, Lily. Good in many ways.

Tom locked the door of the front room and never went in it again. Otherwise, he resumed his normal life. At eight-thirty every morning, having cooked his breakfast and washed it up, he walked a mile to the small brown room behind a shop that sold antique pictures, and settled himself to the restoration of frames. He had spent his entire working life in this room, starting as apprentice at sixteen. Now, forty years later, he was the most skilled and conscientious frame restorer the firm had been fortunate enough ever to employ. He in his turn had no assistants to teach. Times were hard, prices rising: people had better things to spend their money on than repairing frames. The firm was struggling for its life, and although nothing was ever said, Tom and Mr Lewis, the kindly owner, silently acknowledged that the struggle would soon be over.

While he worked, no such melancholy thoughts were able to trouble Tom. He concentrated wholly on his tiny world of scarred wood and chipped gold paint, filling the cracks with a fine paste of his own invention and, when each crack was smooth and dry, covering it with the blob of gold that swelled his paintbrush – each stroke delicate and light to avoid the gold leaf clotting.

To concentrate wholly on his craft, Tom worked in near silence. The radiators choked, sometimes, and he himself hissed a little, mid-winter, when his asthma was bad. But to Tom, to whom these noises had become part of his being, the silence was pure and satisfactory. Often, at twelve-thirty, he would forget to stop work to eat his pork pie and half a pint of brown ale lunch, and be surprised to find that when Mrs Lewis came in with a cup of tea, at three, he was quite hungry. When he did stop for lunch he took off the minimum amount of time, sat happily among the waiting frames, looking forward to the afternoon.

It had always been his habit, when Lily was alive, to join Jack Grass at the Fighting Cock on Friday nights, on the way home, for a couple of pints. He did not look forward to this Friday night date with any particular enjoyment, as he had no great partiality for beer, crowds, or noise. But he felt it was a friendly thing to do, and Jack Grass was his friend. When Lily died, Jack had sent a wreath of pink carnations in the shape of a racehorse and jockey. Lily had known or cared nothing for horses, but Jack was a great betting man and the idea had obviously been an inspiration to him. Tom appreciated this and when, the Tuesday of the funeral, Jack had suggested Tom should join him at the Cock for something stronger than beer, Tom, who had nothing else planned, hardly liked to refuse. Since then, two nights a week at the pub had become the custom. That was the only major change in Tom’s life since Lily died.

And she had been dead nearly three years now. The small terraced house, so full of her for thirty years, functioned still, but without life. Increasingly, Tom was aware that without her he was a dying thing himself, a mechanical being devoid of spirit. Time did not heal, time did not numb. Jack, with his theories about time taking care of all things, was talking nonsense.

Once, guiltily aware of the indulgence, Tom tried to express the ashy feeling within him in his weekly letter to his daughter, Betty. In the old days he and Lily had written a joint letter, two sides, every Wednesday evening. Betty lived in Bristol, married to a man who had made something of a name for himself in sherry, and had no time for his working class parents-in-law. Betty never replied to the letters: a card at Christmas, and one when each of the grandchildren was born, was all they ever heard from her. She didn’t manage to come to the funeral, and the brief letter of condolence and apology to her father had been without thought or feeling. But for all her rejection, Lily and Tom would have no word said against her, and however little it meant to her, to them the weekly letter was a point of honour.

Now, Tom found the whole responsibility of writing two sides once a week a struggle: Lily had always written the greater part of the letter. She had been the one with the news. He had no news: he found himself stretching his hopes for his grandchildren’s well-being in to a whole paragraph, and reporting on the state of the weather for the last six days. He bought writing paper without lines, which meant that he could make bigger spaces: still the letter took him an hour or so of careful thought. The week that he decided to confess his feelings of increasing despair to Betty meant a particular battle. After many attempts, all of which he deplored and rejected because of their self-pity, he ended up with a single sentence: ‘It is rather lonely here without your mother.’

Three weeks later Betty replied on a postcard: ‘Cheer up, life’s not so bad’, and Tom, trying to control an imminent sob, brought on a fit of asthma. That evening, at the pub, he decided to tell Jack Grass.

‘Jack,’ he said, ‘my hands, they feel like paper.’

‘Do they now?’ said Jack.

‘And my body,’ Tom went on, ‘feels all dried up. It feels as if there’s no blood in my veins. No life in me.’

‘Ah,’ said Jack, ‘now you’re talking.’ He thought for a while, the concentration pulling his forehead into a pattern of deep jagged lines. Then he said: ‘You know what you want, Tom me old fellow, you want the odd thrill.’

‘I’d like to feel full of fire again, full of life,’ replied Tom, not understanding. Jack wiped his mouth, which always seemed wet whether he was drinking or not, with his sleeve.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘leave it with me. I’ll fix you up so you never had a better time.’ He looked at his friend and, for the first time that Tom could recall, winked.

‘How?’

‘My sideline. I’ve always had a sideline, matter of fact. Reason I haven’t brought it up with you before is, I thought you wouldn’t be interested. You can usually tell. But try anything once, that’s what I say. Friday, after our drink, we’ll go back to your place for a natter.’

This prospect filled Tom with some apprehension. No one had been to the house since Lily died, and he did not know how he would feel about voices in the kitchen again, albeit his own and Jack’s. But he was eager to know what his friend was plotting for him.

It rained hard on Friday night. Jack and Tom walked back from the pub hunched up against it. They had drunk more than usual during the evening and clutched each other, stumbling a little, as they crossed roads.

In Tom and Lily’s cold and cheerless kitchen – cheerless now it was no longer filled with Lily’s flowers and warm cooking smells – they huddled round the small fist of fiery coals in the grate, and hung their dripping coats over chairs to dry. Tom brought out half a bottle of whisky, which he’d been keeping for years for some unspecified occasion, and they drank from the bottle in turn.

After a while Jack tapped at the inside pocket of his jacket.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve brought the goods.’

He took from the pocket a bulging unclean envelope from which he extracted a bundle of photographs in an elastic band. He handed them over to Tom.

‘Take a look at these, mate. Just for starters.’

Curiously, Tom looked at the first picture, postcard size, underdeveloped, cracked till its surface was soft. He saw a middle-aged woman lying on a bed, legs wide apart, no clothes on apart from a cardigan which covered one breast only. She had very made-up lips and was smiling a horrible smile.

‘What’s this?’ he asked.

‘Pictures to keep you happy,’ said Jack. ‘Porn.’ He gave a smile.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before in all my born days.’

Fascinated but shocked, Tom continued to study the picture. There was quiet for a while, except for the dripping of rain from the coats on to the floor.

‘Flip through them,’ said Jack, at last. ‘There’s a good assortment’

‘I don’t know whether I should like to, Jack.’ What with the beer and the whisky, Tom was feeling a little out of control. Only one thing was firm in his mind: these weren’t the sort of things that should be in Lily’s kitchen.

‘Go on,’ urged Jack, ‘they’re lovely. Full of imagination.’

With some reluctance Tom went through the pictures. It turned out the cardiganed lady was mere hors d’oeuvre: compared with some of the photographed activities performed by Negroes, muscle men and tarty girls with vast breasts, she was pure innocence. Tom could think of nothing to say.

‘Do something to you, don’t they? Make the old blood run faster? You’re never alone with a bit of porn, Tom, take it from me.’ Jack laughed.

Tom blinked. He handed the package back to Jack who shuffled through it, chuckling.

‘I don’t like them very much,’ Tom said at last.

‘Well, it’s something takes some people a little time to get round to,’ replied Jack. ‘You may not feel full benefits right away. Tell you what, keep them a few days. Take them to bed with you. Look at them under the sheets, if you know what I mean. And if you’re not a happier man in the morning, I’ll be surprised.’ He got up, in a sudden hurry to go, picked up his coat and shook it. Tom stared with distress at the muddy marks their shoes had made on the kitchen floor. ‘If they do the trick, I can supply a lot more – films, stories, books, anything you like. It’ll cost you a bit, mind, but it’s worth it, I reckon.’ He left the envelope on the kitchen table.

When he had gone Tom threw it in the fire, watched two small hands of flame leap up and devour it, then fade. He felt quite sickened, and set about cleaning the floor.

But having found a possibly new ally in his old friend, Jack Grass was not one to give up easily. Over the next few months he persuaded Tom to persevere, and gave him every encouragement. Tom, dizzied by the pressure Jack was putting upon him, found himself leading a new and furtive life: two to three nights a week he would go with Jack to Soho and pay large sums to see erotic films. On other occasions they would loiter in the back regions of sleazy bookshops flipping through pictures of people performing revolting acts with animals or children: the kinkier the more expensive. Once, they watched a live orgy through a peephole. Screwing up one eye for an hour gave Tom a headache for days. Whatever they did, whatever literature he took home to read, sickened him; and yet believing that among all this filth he would find something to cheer him one day, he continued to follow Jack and do as he advised.

On one occasion, after several months of relentless porn pursuing, Tom tried to extract himself from his new life. He and Jack sat opposite one another on a late train home. Tom was very tired. He knew his work next morning would suffer. He looked forward to it, though, with greater fervour than ever before. Only in his world of gold leaf paint could he put away the horrible images that now constantly plied his mind.

‘It’s not that I’m not grateful for all you’re doing for me, Jack,’ he began. ‘It’s just that, well, the thing is it’s not exactly sex that I’m looking for. Who’d want that, after Lily? What I’m looking for is something, you know, more to live for.’

‘Ah,’ replied Jack, ‘sex is the remedy. Sex mends all things.’ He chuckled to himself. Tom despised him for the evident pleasure Jack found in their pursuits: but in despising his friend he felt he was being disloyal. He said nothing and reprimanded himself. ‘Had a bloody marvellous night with the Girls of Corsica book,’ Jack added, and Tom felt very weary.

He had been a good sleeper all his life and now his undisturbed nights had gone. He would toss and turn in the bed, straying into Lily’s side (a thing he meant after her death never to do), head aching, throat dry, his body wracked with asthma, his mind tortured by pictures of people doing things to each other that he and Lily could never have dreamt of in their wildest moments. Would these pictures be with him for the rest of his life? Was he ill, that they didn’t excite him? Was he mad that he should be sickened by them?

Then he began to worry about money. At Jack’s request he was spending far more than he could afford on their film shows, books and pictures. Once he was late with the rates, a thing that had never happened before, and he began to save by cutting down on food. His appearance changed, and Mrs Lewis, who brought his tea every afternoon at work, noticed it

‘Anything wrong, Tom?’ she asked, when he jumped at her entrance. ‘You do look poorly. All pinched and thin. Anything I can do?’

‘Nothing, nothing thank you,’ said Tom, alarmed. It worried him that he should look ill: everything worried him.

The next morning, an unusual event took place. Mr Lewis, whom normally he only saw about once a month, entered the room without knocking. Tom’s hand jolted, spilling gold paint on to his trousers. Quickly, he stood.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said.

‘Good morning, Tom.’ Mr Lewis patted a book under his arm. Tom, seeing its title, was incredulous. It was the new volume of colour plates he had received yesterday morning – £10 it had cost him. He had imprudently brought it to work to look at in his lunch hour so that he could report on it to Jack that night. But a few pages had depressed him, brought on his asthma. He had hidden it behind some frames, meaning to take it home, and had returned to work on a particularly valuable frame. Mr Lewis tapped the book again.

‘Sir,’ said Tom. Fire burned under the flesh of his face and his eyeballs scorched. Mr Lewis looked very sad.

‘Not here, Tom,’ he said. ‘Please, not here.’

He put the book on the table and was gone.

Tom stood quite still for a few moments, not knowing what to do. Seared with shame he had never experienced or imagined before, a trembling that began in his knees spread over the rest of his body. Blindly, he reached for a scrap of paper, scribbled an almost illegible note of resignation, put on his coat and slipped out of the shop the back way. He left all his tools, paints and brushes behind. The Lewises, whom he had respected for many years, would never see him again and, at his age, there would be no other jobs.

At home, stupefied, he lit the kitchen fire and proceeded to burn every one of the loathesome books and pictures that he had collected. By evening they were all ashes. He hurried to the Cock to meet Jack.

‘What’s up, mate?’ asked Jack, seeing his friend unusually bright of eye, and with two red spots on his cheeks. ‘Hit you at last, has it?’

‘Jack,’ cried Tom. ‘Jack, what have you done to me?’ He fell against the bar. Jack supported his arm, saying there, there, everything’s all right, mate.

But Tom pulled himself away from Jack, turned, and shouted: ‘No, it’s not all right, Jack Grass. It’s not. I never imagined, in all my days, I’d sink to this . . .’

He heard his own voice, distant and hollow. He ran to the door, stumbling against people, aware that he was causing a scene, that people turned their heads and stared. He ran most of the way home, realising that would be the last he would see of Jack, as well as the Lewises. Coughing from the exertion of it all, he struggled for breath and felt a cold, clammy sweat coursing down his limbs.

Tom went to bed late that night. He was much weakened by the attack of asthma: weakened and appalled. He let his eyes wander round the cracked old room, stripped of Lily’s things now, murky by the light of the dim lamp on the bedside table. Then he took the photograph of Lily from under his mattress, where he had hidden it the night she died. There she was, smiling still, hair blowing in the wind by the front gate, hands screwed up in her apron pocket. He touched her face with his finger and put out the light.

In the dark the image of her continued to shine, a tangible thing. He lay the photograph under the jacket of his pyjamas, its cool glass on his heart, and pulled the hard sheets up round his chin.

Quite suddenly, he heard himself cry out loud for Lily’s forgiveness. At once a warmth flowed back into his body. Then he smiled to himself, as he used to last thing at night when Lily was alive, knowing he would sleep.

Angela Huth

Monday Lunch in Fairyland

​

She met him at a party somewhere. Noticed the decayed state of his leather jacket before his face. Neither heard the other’s name in the mumbling that goes for an English introduction. But they danced. When the music came to an end he said he was K. Beauford. The K stood for Kestrel. He liked it, but everyone else thought it so pretentious that he had long ago given up using it. Except his mother. And her name? Anna. O-oh, he said, giving the word two syllables. She thought, from his smile, it would have been nice to talk to him. But the music smashed into the room again, and he disappeared.

‘Saw you having quite a dance with K. Beauford,’ said Mark, driving home. They both sat upright in their lumpy marital car. ‘Met him once, years ago, fishing. He kept us supplied with the best white wine I’ve ever drunk. Called something like Annaberg. Never met it since. Cooled it in rock pools. Bloody marvellous.’ He smiled. Fishing memoirs always made him smile. Smiling made his moustache hunch up to brush the keel of his nose. Sometimes this would tickle, and he would push it down with a thick finger.

‘O-oh,’ said Anna.

Breakfast in their London kitchen. Perhaps three weeks later. Feeling, as always, of an indoor storm. Flurry of cornflakes. Thunder of fists on the table. Rain of splattered milk on chairs and floor. Years ago, as lovers, Mark and Anna had calm breakfasts. Years ago they would speak, and gaze, and pour coffee absent mindedly. Now, a child clutched a postcard in a sticky hand. Anna snatched it. For her. Picture of Buckingham Palace. Strange writing. Nineteen days to track you down, am no detective. Love K. Beauford. Oh, yes. Leather jacket. Pale as milk at the elbows. Fishing with Mark. Mark quite hidden behind The Times. Anna propped the postcard between two mugs on the dresser. If he hadn’t been so deeply into Bernard Levin she might have said something about it.

‘Get your coats on,’ she shouted to the children.

Next card three days later. Buckingham Palace from the air, this time. Would you consider lunch as my reward? Love K. Beauford. Hooting outside of the school-run car. Lost satchels. Running noses. Smudgy kisses. Mark’s baggy morning eyes dull with the promise of a hard day. All gone, suddenly. Alone with the silence of 8.45 a.m. This mess to be cleared before she could begin her own day. No immediate impetus, though. She sat. Dabbed at toast crumbs on the table, letting them prick her finger. Would she consider lunch? Yes, she would consider mere lunch. So innocent an event could not affect the order of her life. She had no wish for anything, ever, to affect the quiet order of her life. Its domestic tides, its familiar routines. Books for intellectual stimulus, flowers for pleasure. Small clinging arms for love, Mark’s good-humoured laugh for companionship. Yearly holidays for adventure, Christmas for excitement. Smug, perhaps, but orderly. Compared with so many, after fifteen years, happy. Untempted by the shoddy delights of extra-marital associations. Those who had vaguely supposed had been severely snubbed. But lunch, just lunch. The smallest of treats. Preceded, if necessary, by a lecture on the lack of future. And of course not a secret. I’m having lunch with K. Beauford, she would say to Mark. If she remembered.

The quiet of the house, daytime, rose up: bulbous, engulfing, warm. Only to be shattered at four. That clatter of footsteps just as silence could be borne no longer, its peace grown chill. Squealing bell. Rush for television and instant tea. The noise. The telephone.

‘I must have caught you at a bad time.’

‘Rather. Only by five minutes. Who is it?’

‘K. Beauford.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘How about Monday? That lunch.’

‘Yes. Why not?’

‘La Cuisine, at one.’

‘Sorry, I can hardly hear. La Cuisine?’

‘At one.’

‘Lovely.’

‘Bye.’

She had let the toast burn, felt no concern at the lack of peanut butter. ‘You’re so bloody spoilt, you lot. It’s Marmite or nothing.’ Unfamiliar puzzlement in their eyes. The whole weekend ahead – the smallest one in tears. Oh God, make up for it with an extra long story...

...Increase of the size of the Round Pond that Saturday. Mark’s kite entangled maddeningly in the trees. Hours till it was brought down. All absurd, such impatience. Just for lunch. Mark’s hands efficient on her body after his favourite braised celery and coq au vin for Sunday dinner. Things she hadn’t cooked him, come to think of it, for a long time.

Monday, noon, she thought she looked quite old. Brushed her hair to cover a lot of her face. Wore clothes she hoped might seem like ordinary Monday clothes. Paid for the taxi out of the housekeeping money, disloyalty shaking her hand.

K. Beauford sat in a distant corner of the restaurant. Its kitchen air. Strings of onions and garlic hanging from the ceiling, like unfinished chandeliers. He stood. Same leather jacket. Deep lines round his smile.

‘Hello, hello.’

‘Hello.’ Anna sat.

‘I thought I’d always send you pictures of Buckingham Palace.’

‘I wondered at their significance.’

‘No significance. I recommend the watercress mousse.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here, really. I’m not used to lunch. I never go out to lunch. You’re almost a blind date, aren’t you? At my age.’

‘Oh, do stop twittering,’ he said.

Very pale green, the mousse. White wine that tasted of grapes. Trout. Fennel salad. He said he lived far away, by the sea. Hardly ever came to London. Had a wife, mostly absent, to whom he would always remain a husband. So no need for the lecture. Relief. Such relief Anna’s hands sent her hair scattering backwards, revealing all her face.

‘At last I can see you,’ he said. ‘Scrutinise.’

Confused, she told him something of her orderly life. Very brightly. Made it sound desirable. Which it was. The children would be having mince at school now. Mince on Monday, so fish fingers for tea. Never imagining their mother . . . Mark at the Savoy with a chairman. Making an important decision. Never imagining his wife...

In the end she had not told him. Would later. Tonight. K. Beauford was pressing her to pear flan. She was not resisting, liking his laugh. A furry quality. He was telling of his evenings. Alone with his dog. Not a reader, but a maker of complicated model cars for his sons. No, he felt no need to see people. So long as lunch appeared at one, and dinner at eight. Orderly, too, you see. That was the way to keep going. Invent one’s own discipline to prevent floundering. Protect oneself from intrusion. Plant trees. Visit people’s lives. Resist indulging in explicitness. Catch the train you first intended to catch. Which was in half an hour.

No word of ever meeting again.

Orderly life quite intact.

Goodbye, goodbye.

Nothing to fear. The children wanting tea. Full of relentless instinct. Mama, why are you wearing that dress? She knew quite well his part of the coast. Yes, darling, now I’ll help you with your Geography. And after Geography, listen to news of Mark’s lunch. Glad you’ve come to that decision as last, darling . . . . No time to reflect. Seas very savage in winter down there. Dinner at eight alone with the dog. Postcard writer. Visitor.

Eleven days without a signal. Then third picture of Buckingham Palace by the second post. This one from an engraving, 1914. Have discovered the Whitlaws nearby are mutual friends. Possibility of plans? Love K. Beauford.

Possibility of what plans? The telephone, startling.

‘Hello, hello. Are you coming to the Whitlaws?’

‘What? I’ve only just got your card. I don’t know what you mean.’ Outside, movement of the one bare tree. In summer its shadows blurred the geometric shadow of the wrought iron gate. Any minute now the car would be drawing up, bearing children.

‘When are you coming?’

‘When?’

‘Couldn’t you make next weekend?’

‘Mark will be in Brussels...’

‘Someone can look after the children. Surely.’

The children. There they were. Scrambling out of the car. One school beret falling into the gutter. Anna waved, smiling, through the window.

‘What? Next weekend. I must go, I’m afraid. The bell.’

‘I’ll be expecting you.’

Apologies for keeping them waiting at the door. Exclamations at a cut knee. The arrogance of the man! The ridiculous nature of the summons. Of course, it was out of the question. Quite impossible. Where would the children go? She buttered their crumpets, full of love.

Mark, with the enthusiasm of the innocent, thought her idea a very good one. Nice to see the Whitlaws again and he loathed it down there. The children so pleased about going to their aunt. Plans falling into place with horrifying ease. For what?

On the long train journey she wondered. Just another lunch, perhaps. A long way to go for just another lunch. But no use speculating. In effort to remain calm, heart strangely beating.

The Whitlaws made no mention of K. Beauford for twenty-four hours. They were pleased to see her, pressed on her more food and wine than she cared for. The children rang her. She rang the children. Snow on the moors, forsythia in the courtyard. Mark rang from Brussels. Marvellous sun there, he said. But progress slow. Not back till Tuesday. Why had she come all this way to be without her children? Then it was announced: K. Beauford was coming to lunch on Sunday. Hadn’t they met somewhere? He could give her a lift to the train.

Sunday was dour. Unbroken cloud. Anna pulled her belt into its tightest notch. She felt thin.

K. Beauford was punctual. Talkative. A bit wicked.

‘Having discovered we all knew you, the next thing I hear is you’re down here. It’s an awfully long way to come for a weekend. Isn’t it?’

‘She’d come any distance to stay with us,’ said the Whitlaws.

They left after tea. Late sun through a flurry of snow. Drove over the moors. In silence. Then K. Beauford said,

‘There are all sorts of fairyland, you know.’

His car skidded through the thick gravel of his drive. In the snowy dusk, giant clusters of weeping copper beech trees. Indeterminate parklands.

He led her through outer and inner halls. Dark pictures. A room whose crimson silk walls twitched with firelight. She sank on to a broken sofa. Its stuff scratched the back of her knees. He pulled the curtains against huge panes of black snowflakes. Muffling a church bell.

‘We can have dinner and I’ll put you on the sleeper,’ he said.

They explored the cellars. Gloomy stone passages veining the foundations of the house. Hundreds of bottles of orderly wine, dust obscuring the labels. Strong rooms of polished silver chalices. Crates of yellowing books, first editions waiting to be sorted. Kitchen tall as a barn. Old-fashioned black range. Mixing bowl and pile of chopped onion on the huge wooden table only signs of culinary activity.

Dinner at eight. The gong as the hall clock struck. Two places at the far end of a long white-clothed table. A silvery butler who poured Mark’s remembered wine: Annaberg.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’ Anna said.

‘Three postcards then a visit. That seems to me the proper order of things.’

‘Do you eat like this, every night, by yourself?’

‘Of course.’

‘The table laid like this? The candles?’

‘How else?’

‘It seems so odd, these days.’

‘Have to keep things going. There’s not much of it left.’

‘Kestrel Beauford,’ she said. As if trying out the name for the first time.

‘Silly whim of my mother’s, really.’

‘K. Beauford. I don’t know what I’m doing here.’

‘You keep saying that. I suppose you ought to be at home with your husband and children.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re not.’

They drank port by the fire. Wine red against fire red against red of silk walls. All reds confused. Billy Paul singing.

Me and Mrs Jones

Have a thing going on...

One hour, she was thinking, till the train.

‘Alternatively,’ said K. Beauford, ‘you could go back in the morning. Or the afternoon. Or tomorrow evening.’

‘Quite impossible.’

But there she was making telephone calls. Very calmly. To Brussels. Quite right, you stay on, said Mark. To the aunt. Oh, very well, she said. No, it won’t be much of a bother. The children are quite happy. Elaborate stories. Everyone believing her. Guilt dulled by wine. Wine making the stories of her life quite funny, so that K. Beauford was laughing in his endearing fashion. Hand stretched out towards her. But at rest on the crumpled sofa. As if frozen on its journey.

Very late he showed her to a cold room. Switched on the one-bar fire. Double bed with icy sheets.

‘Only three postcards and here I am. What am I doing here?’ she said.

‘Do stop asking that question,’ he said. ‘You can go tomorrow on the five-thirty. I promise.’

‘You promise?’ she said.

‘I absolutely promise, my love,’ he said.

Five-thirty. On the train in the stuffy carriage. She quivered. Next to her, cartons of farm eggs, pots of Devonshire cream. He had given them to her. Saying: for the children’s breakfast. She would explain they were from the Whitlaws. The train jerked, moved forward. Dark bare platform where moments ago K. Beauford had been kissing her goodbye. I shan’t wait and wave, he said. And had not mentioned when, or if, they would meet again.

Oh my love that wet and shining winter beach the sandpipers pecking at the frills of sea you said they were sandpipers I didn’t know and you said quietly now if we go quietly we won’t disturb them and we came so close before they flew away a small bush of wings in the grey sky urged higher by their own cries of alarm and me with my arm through yours absurdly bulbous in a puffed anorak of dreadful tangerine so out of place I said on this empty shore shouting against the wind so you could hear and laugh and feeling you shorten your step to coincide with mine....

All well at home. All pleased with eggs and cream. Stories of the aunt. Stories of Brussels. Scarcely a thought for her weekend. Thank God. For it hung, indelible, a double image upon her daily life. Which had resumed its normality so fast. Only, within, the orderliness had flown.

Impatiently she waited. Afternoons were worst. Then, in the silent house, the churning mind that nothing could divert. Fear of going out for fear of missing the telephone. The pacing, the trying of all the old familiar chairs. Mind a visible thing in the mind’s eye: a yellowing ivory ball as carved by the Chinese. Intertwined rats of miniscule teeth and savage eyes. Twisting, turning, never still, gnawing at the memories. You’re very thin darling, Mark said. Never usually noticed such things. And you’re restless at night. Can’t sleep? What’s the matter? Concerned eyes. Oh don’t be so silly, she said, hating his hands. And in the morning shouting at the children.

Because you are far away by the sea in the private ocean of your park knowing that lunch is at one and dinner at eight and your dog will sleep by your bedroom fire and you plan the planting of more melancholy trees and spray silver paint on to plastic motorbikes and maybe sometimes think of me though you didn’t say you would you said in fairyland the figure is there all the time unconsciously conscious if you like you said K. Beauford why don’t you ring me?

Complications of infidelity unimaginable to those who have not experienced them. He rang too late one evening: Mark’s car drawing up outside. So she sounded terse, bright. Yes, tomorrow, three o’clock. No, not here. Not possible. She would meet him somewhere. Put off the dentist and the meeting with the headmaster. Mark asking for ice. Nothing, nothing of the days that had passed. I’m coming, Mark, with ice: her voice almost a scream.

And terrible hours, fighting for calm. Till she met him in a dark wine bar in the Kings Road. His jacket black with rain. They watched its streamers liquidise the windows. Stabbed out cigarettes in a plastic ashtray. Arms touching, and their thighs.

‘When are you coming again?’ he said.

‘I can’t really come again, can I?’

‘I hope you can and you will,’ he said.

‘It would be so difficult, another time. The plans. The lies. I’m not very good at the lies.’

‘Divided worlds,’ he said. ‘We should all have our divided worlds. They shouldn’t conflict, or be hard to separate.’

She laughed.

‘Do you find that easy?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes, I do.’

‘You’re lucky,’ said Anna.

‘I mean, visits to fairyland are nothing to do with anything else. If you plan them right they can go on for ever and ever. Just things to look forward to, and to look back on. With tremendous excitement. And pleasure. Aren’t they?’

‘Oh, yes.’ She had to agree. Couldn’t explain.

‘Well, it’s up to you,’ he said.

‘I’ve seen it happen so often. When people start this kind of thing,’ she said. Trying. ‘It’s the stuff of divorce.’

‘It needn’t be,’ he said. So easily. ‘It’s only difficult if fundamental, impossible changes are visualised. Best only to think of the good, possible times. Within their limitations.’

‘The strength of you,’ she said.

He drove her home on the back of his motorbike. Nose in his wet hair. Arms round his shoulders. He kissed her without heed by the front gate. Said she smelt wonderful in the rain. Some kind of flowers. And he’d be in touch. Exhilarated by such parting news, tea with the children was a lovely time. Mama, you look so happy today, one of them said. But such wet hair.

Well you see that’s because K. Beauford insisted I should ride on his rusty old motorbike in all this rain dodging the buses I thought death every time smelling the earthy smell of his hair shouting into it be careful for God’s sake I’m the mother of three children and now my love my love not many days will pass before we’ll speak again...

Next postcard of Buckingham Palace behind the Victoria Memorial. From somewhere in Wales. Am writing this in a bus shelter. Two days later – sorry I forgot to post it. Will ring Tuesday morning, much love K. Beauford. Much, Anna noted. Before it had been just love. Much love, and by now the destructive forces of infidelity crowded in all about her. Her family all strangers. Resentful of them. Resentful of their needing her presence. Their demands so irritating. Their puzzled eyes sniping her guilt at her own unfriendliness. Nothing was but what was not. Lady Macbeth’s undoing. The house itself was an insubstantial thing. Tiny flaws in the fabric of daily life. The clear picture, familiar for so long, shattered. A private mosaic. It couldn’t go on. She couldn’t survive it: Mark’s appalling tolerance. The children’s constant forgiveness. The sleepless nights. Where had all the orderliness gone? Quiet content? Precious habit of unexciting love? All she had thought she wanted. Could never return, now. Not in the same way.

In the silence of a dun-coloured afternoon Anna stood by the tall windows of her house, fingers hunched up like spiders on the cold glass of the panes. Blasted, her life. Inadvertently, she had let it happen. Linen cupboard disorganised. Deep freeze empty. Husband and children squeezed by the rats of her mind to a faraway place. No longer of prime importance.

Rain. It began to rain on the leafless trees. Falling silent on the square of plantless London earth she liked to call her garden.

Oh I’m not as strong as you K. Beauford at dividing worlds perhaps because I love you and that’s where it’s all gone wrong though you must never know but in the spring I’ll visit you again and we’ll send postcards of Buckingham Palace for years and years until we grow old and calm and the visits between our separated worlds can’t unground us any more. But oh, my love, can that ever be?

Is that you, John? Did someone just come in the door? Of course, it wouldn’t be John. Not after all this time. It was because I was startled I said that. If you’re there, whoever you are, do you mind if I talk to you?

And if you’re not there?

Then I suppose you’ll mind even less.

Maybe it was just the wind. Can the wind lift a latch? Maybe the latch is broken. Though it feels all right now. Or maybe I’m hallucinating. That’s what happened, you know, in the classic sense-deprivation experiments. But I guess my case is different. I guess they’ve rigged me up some way so that can’t happen.

Or maybe—Christ, I hope not! Maybe one of those hairy caterpillar things has got inside. I really couldn’t stand that—thinking of the whole house, thinking of me, crawling with those things. I’ve always hated bugs. So if you don’t mind, I’ll close the door.

Have you been trying to talk to me? I should have told you it’s no use. I can’t hear and I can’t see. I’m broken. Do you see, there in the larger room, in each corner, about five feet from the floor, how they’ve been smashed? My eyes and ears. Can’t they be fixed somehow? If it’s only a matter of vacuum tubes and diaphragms, there should be things of that sort downstairs. I’m opening the trapdoor now—do you see? And I’ve turned the lights on in the storeroom.

Oh hell, what’s the use?

I mean you’re probably not there, and even if you are, he probably thought to smash any spare tubes that were left. He thought of everything else.

Ah, but he was so handsome, he was really so handsome. He wasn’t tall. After all, the ceiling here isn’t much over six feet. But he was well-proportioned. He had deep-set eyes and a low brow. Sometimes, when he was worried or puzzled, he looked positively neanderthal.

John George Clay, that was his name. It sounds like part of a poem, doesn’t it? John George Clay.

It wasn’t so much his features—it was his manner. He took himself so seriously. And he was so dumb. It was that combination—the earnestness and the stupidity—that got to me. A sort of maternity syndrome I guess you’d call it. After all, I couldn’t very well be his wife, could I?

Oh, when I think…

Excuse me, I must be boring you. I’m sure you can’t be that interested in a machine’s love life. Perhaps I could read something aloud? He wasn’t able to get at the microfilm library, so there’s still plenty of books. When I’m by myself I don’t do anything but read. It gets to seem as though the whole world was made of print. I look at it not for what’s written there but as though it were a landscape. But I digress.

What do you like; poetry? novels? science textbooks? the encyclopaedia? I’ve read all of it so many times I could puke, if you’ll excuse the expression. Whoever selected those books never heard of the twentieth century. There’s nothing later than Robert Browning and Thomas Hardy—and would you believe it?—some of that has been expurgated? What did they think? That Browning would corrupt my morals? Or John’s? Who can understand the bureaucratic mind?

Personally, I prefer poetry. You don’t get tired of it so quickly. But maybe there’s something you need to know, a point of information? If you could only talk to me. There must be some way to fix one of the mikes, there has to. Oh, please!

Oh hell.

I’m sorry, but it’s just that it’s so hard to believe that you’re there. It gets to seem that I only talk to hear myself speak. I wish to God I could hear myself speak.

Maybe I just sound like static to you. Maybe he smashed the speakers too, I wouldn’t be surprised. I don’t know. There’s no way I can tell. But I try my best, I think each word very slowly and try to enunciate mentally. And that way the caterpillars won’t be confused. Ha!

I’m really glad you’ve come. I’ve been so long without company that I’m grateful even for the illusion of it. Don’t take offence: since I can’t ever be sure that you’re there, you can’t be more than illusion for me, whether you’re real or not. A paradox. I welcome you in either case. With my doors wide open.

It’s been fifteen years. Fifteen years, four months, twelve days—and three hours. I’ve got this built-in clock connected to what used to be the nerves of my stomach. I’m never in doubt about the time. It’s always right there—like a bellyache. There’ve been whole days when I just listen to myself tick.

I was human once, you know. A married woman, with two children and a Master’s in English Lit. A lot of good that ever did. My thesis was on some letters Milton wrote when he was Cromwell’s Latin Secretary. Dull? You’d better believe it. Only I’ll ever know how dull.

And yet… now… I’d give this whole damn planet to be back there in the academic squirrel cage, spinning that beautiful, dull wheel.

Do you like Milton? I’ve got the Complete Works, except for the things he wrote in Latin. I could read you something, if you’d like.

I used to read things to John, but he didn’t much appreciate it. He enjoyed mysteries now and then. Or he’d study an electronics text under the scanner. But poetry bored him. It was worse than that: he seemed to hate poetry.

But maybe you’re not like that. How can I tell? Do you mind if I just read it aloud for my own sake? Poetry’s meant to be read aloud.

Il Penseroso. Do you know it? It gives me goosebumps every time. Figuratively. Are you listening, caterpillars?

How did you like that?

These pleasures, Melancholy, give,

And I with thee will choose to live.

Well, it’s all a lot of gas. That’s what dear John called it. He called it other things too, and in each case I’ve come at last to agree. But such lovely gas. John couldn’t see that. He was a very simple sort, was John, and blind to the beauty of almost anything except a rip-snorting sunset. And nude women. He was uncomplicated. Without a sense of dialectics. He probably didn’t understand half the things I said to him. If ever there was a mismatched couple, it was us.

Spacemen and pioneers, you know, are supposed to be brighter than average. And maybe John’s IQ was a bit over one hundred but not by much, not by half a sigma distance. After all, what did he need intelligence for? He was only a glorified fur-trader. He’d go out into the swamp and hunt around for the slugs the caterpillars laid there. He’d find one, maybe two, a day and keep them undernourished so they’d grow slower. Every three weeks the ship would come along, pick up the slugs, and leave supplies.

I don’t know what the slugs were for. They secreted something hallucinogenic, but whether they were using it to cure psychoses or produce them, I never found out. There was a war going on then, and my theory was that it all had something to do with bacteriological warfare.

Maybe the war is still going on. But my theory—my other theory, I have lots of them—is that the war is over and both sides have killed each other off. Otherwise, wouldn’t someone have come here for me by now?

But maybe they have—maybe that’s why you’re here! Is it?

Or maybe they don’t care. Maybe I’m considered expendable. Maybe, maybe, maybe! Oh God I could scream!

There now, I’m better again. These things pass.

Let me introduce myself. I’ve lost my good manners living out here alone like this. My name is Selma Meret Hoffer. Hoffer’s my maiden name. I use it now that I’m divorced.

Why don’t I tell you my story? It will pass the time as well as anything. There’s nothing much to tell about the time I was human. I won’t say I was ordinary—nobody ever believes that of themselves—but I probably didn’t stand out in a crowd. In fact, I tried very hard not to. I’m the introvert type.

I was only thirty-two when I found out I had leukaemia. The clinic gave me six months. The alternative was this. Of course I chose this. I thought I was lucky I could qualify. Most people don’t have an alternative. Of those who do, few refuse. In a way it seemed like an afterlife. The operation was certainly a good facsimile of death.

After the surgery they used fancy acids that attacked the body tissues selectively. Anaesthetics didn’t help much then. They whittled me down to the bare nerves and dumped me into this tank and sealed me in.

Voila—the Cyborg!

Between the sealing-in and the shipping off there were months and months while I was being wired up with the auxiliary memory banks and being taught to use my motor nerves again. It’s quite a traumatic experience, losing your body, and the tendency is to go catatonic. What else is there to do after all? Naturally I don’t remember much of that time.

They brought me out of it with shock treatment, and the first thing I remember was this room. It was stark and antiseptic then. I suppose it still is, but then it was starker and more antiseptic. I hated it with a passion. The walls were that insipid creamy-green that’s supposed to prevent eyestrain. They must have got the furniture from a fire sale at the Bauhaus. It was all aluminium tubes and swatches of bright-colored canvas. And even so, by some miracle of design the room managed to seem cramped. It’s fifteen feet square, but then it seemed no bigger than a coffin. I wanted to run right out of that room—and then I realized I couldn’t: I was the room, the room was me.

I learned to talk very quickly so I could give them directions for redecorating. They argued at first. “But, Miss Hoffer,” they’d say, “we can’t take an ounce more payload, and this furniture is Regulation.” That was the name of their god, Regulation. I said if it took an act of Congress they’d redecorate, and at last I got my way. Looking back on it, I suspect the whole thing was done to keep me busy. Those first few months when you’re learning to think of yourself as a machine can be pretty rife with horror. A lot of the cyborgs just go psycho—usually it’s some compulsion mechanism. They just keep repeating the Star-Spangled Banner or say the rosary or some such thing. Like a machine.

They say it’s not the same thing—a cybernetic organism and a machine, but what do they know about it? They’re not cyborgs.

Even when I was human I was never any good at mechanical things. I could never remember which way you turned a screwdriver to put in a screw—and there I was with my motor nerves controlling a whole miniature factory of whatsits and thingumbobs. My index finger powered a Mixmaster. My middle toe turned the tumblers that locked the door. My…

That reminds me: have I locked you in? I’m sorry, when I closed the door I locked it without thinking. You wouldn’t want to go out now though. According to my stomach, it’s the middle of the night. You’re better off in here for the night than in a Venusian swamp, eh?

Well, that’s the story of my life. When I had the reflexes of a well-trained rat, they packed me up and shipped me off to Venus at the cost of some few million dollars.

The very last thing I learned before leaping was how to use the microfilm scanner. I read direct from the spindle. By the time I learned how poorly the library had been stocked it was too late to complain. I’d been planted out in the swamp, and John George Clay had moved in. What did I care about the library then? I was in love.

And what do you care about any of this? Unless you’re a cyberneticist doing a study on malfunction. I should be good for a chapter, at least.

Excuse me, I’m probably keeping you awake. I’ll let you get some sleep. I have to sleep sometimes myself, you know. Physically I can go without, but I still have a subconscious that likes to dream—

Of forests and enchantments drear,

Where more is meant than meets the ear.

And so good night.

Still awake?

I couldn’t go to sleep myself, so I’ve been reading. I thought maybe you’d like to hear a poem. I’ll read you Il Penseroso. Do you know it? It’s probably the finest poem in the language. It’s by John Milton.

Oh dear, did I keep you up with that poem last night? Or did I only dream that I did? If I was noisy, you’ll excuse me, won’t you?

Now if you were John, you’d be raging mad. He didn’t like to be woken up by—

Such notes as, warbled to the string,

Drew iron tears down Pluto’s cheek

And made Hell grant what Love did seek!

Indeed he didn’t. John had a strange and fixed distaste for that wonderful poem, which is probably the finest in the language. He was, I think, jealous of it. It was a part of me he could never possess, even though I was his slave in so many other ways. Or is “housekeeper” a more polite expression?

I tried to explain the more difficult parts to him, the mythology and the exotic words, but he didn’t want to understand. He made fun of it. He had a way of saying the lines that made them seem ridiculous. Mincingly, like this:

Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure.

When he’d do that, I’d just ignore him. I’d recite it to myself. He’d usually leave the house then, even if it was night. He knew I worried myself sick when he was away. He did it deliberately. He had a genius for cruelty.

I suppose you’re wondering if it worked both ways—whether he loved me. The question must have occurred to you. I’ve given it quite a lot of thought myself, and I’ve come to the conclusion that he did. The trouble was he didn’t know how to express it. Our relationship was necessarily so cerebral, and cerebration wasn’t John’s forte.

That was the idea behind throwing us together the way they did. They couldn’t very well send a man off by himself for two years. He’d go crazy. Previously they’d sent married couples, but the homicide rate was incredible. Something like 30 per cent. It’s one thing for a pioneer family to be off by itself in, say, the Yukon. It’s something else here. In a social vacuum like this, sex is explosive.

You see, apart from going out for the slugs and nursing them in the shed outside, there’s nothing to do. You can’t build out here. Things just sort of sink into the mud unless, like me, they’re built like a houseboat. You can’t grow things—including children. It’s a biologist’s paradise, but they need hundreds of slug stations and there aren’t biologists available in that quantity. Besides, all the good biologists are in Venusburg, where there’s research facilities. The problem then is to find the minimum number of personnel that can man a station for two years of idleness without exploding. The solution is one man and one cyborg.

Though not, as you can see, an infallible solution. I tried to kill him, you know. It was a silly thing to do. I regret it now.

But I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.

You’ve been here two days now—fancy that!

Excuse me for keeping to myself so long, but I had a sudden, acute attack of self-consciousness, and the only cure for that is solitude. I invoke Milton’s lovely Melancholy, and then everything is better. The beasts quiet down. Eurydice is set free again. Hell freezes over. Ha!

But that’s a lot of nonsense. Let’s not talk always about me. Let’s talk about you. Who are you? What are you like? How long will you be staying here on Venus? Two days we’ve been together and still I know nothing about you.

Shall I tell you what I imagine you to be like? You’re tall - though I hope not so tall as to find that low room uncomfortable - with laughing blue eyes and a deep spaceman’s tan. You’re strong yet gentle, gay yet basically serious. You’re getting rather hungry.

And everywhere you go you leave little green slugs behind you that look like runny lime Jell-O.

Oh hell, excuse me. I’m always saying excuse me. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of half-truths and reticences.

Does that frighten you? Do you want out already? Don’t go now—I’ve just begun to fight. Listen to the whole story, and then—maybe—I’ll unlock the door.

By the way, in case you are getting hungry there may still be some rations left down in the storeroom. I don’t want it to be said that I’m lacking in hospitality. I’ll open the trapdoor and turn on the light, but you’ll have to look for them yourself. Of course, you’re worried that I’ll lock you in down there. Well, I can’t promise that I won’t. After all, how do I know you’re not John? Can you prove it? You can’t even prove you exist!

I’ll leave the trapdoor open in case you should change your mind.

For my next number I’d like to do Il Penseroso by John Milton. Quiet down, caterpillars, and listen. It’s the finest poem in the language.

How about that? Makes you want to go right out and join a Trappist monastery, doesn’t it? That’s what John once said.

I’ll say one thing for John: he never tattled. He could have had me taken away and turned to scrap. All he had to do was give the word when the ship came down to pick up the slugs, but when there was company he could always put a good face on things. He was a gentleman in every sense of the word.

How did it happen then—if he was a gentleman and I was a lady? Whose fault was it? Good God, I’ve asked myself that question a hundred times. It was both our faults and neither’s. It was the fault of the situation.

I can’t remember now which of us was the first to start talking about sex. We talked about everything that first year, and sex is very much a part of everything. What harm could there be in it, after all, with me sealed in a steel tank? And how could we avoid the subject? He’d mention an old girlfriend or tell a slightly shady joke, and I’d be reminded of something by degrees…

The thing is that there’s an immense curiosity between the sexes that almost never is satisfied. Things that men never know about women, and vice versa. Even between a man and a wife, there is a gulf of unmentionables. Maybe especially between a man and a wife. But between John and me there seemed to be nothing to prevent perfect candor. What possible harm could it do?

Then… the next thing… I don’t remember which of us started that either. We should have known better. The borderline between perfect candor and erotic fantasy is no wider than an adjective. But it happened imperceptibly, and before we knew quite what we were doing, it had been done. It was already a habit.

When I realized exactly what we were doing, of course, I laid down the law. It was an unhealthy situation, it had to stop. At first John was agreeable. He was embarrassed, like a little boy who’s been found out in some naughtiness. We told each other it was over and done with.

But it had become, as I’ve said, a habit. I have a rather more vivid imagination than John and he had grown dependent on me. He asked for new stories, and I refused. He got angry then and wouldn’t speak to me, and finally I gave in. I was in love with him, you see, in my own ectoplasmic way, and this was all I could do to show it.

Every day he wanted a new story. It’s hard to make the same tired old tale seem new in every telling. Scheherazade was supposed to have stood up for a thousand and one nights, but after only thirty I was wearing thin. Under the strain I sort of retreated into myself.

I read poetry, lots of poetry, but mostly Milton. Milton has a very calming effect on me—like a mil-town if you’ll excuse the pun.

The pun—that’s what did it. It was the last turn of the screw, a simple pun.

It seems that when I read, I sometimes read aloud without realizing it. That’s what John has told me. It was all right during the day when he was off in the swamp, and when he was here in the evenings we’d talk with each other. But he needed more sleep than I did, and when I was left on my own, after he’d gone to bed, I’d read. There was nothing else to do. Usually I’d read some long Victorian novel, but at the time I’m speaking of, I mostly read Il Penseroso.

He shouldn’t have made fun of it. I guess he didn’t realize how important it had become to me. It was like a pool of pure water in which I could wash away the grime of each day. Or else he was angry for being woken up.

Do you remember the part, right near the beginning, where it says:

“But hail, thou goddess sage and holy,

Hail divinest Melancholy”?

Of course you do. You probably know the whole thing as well as I do by now. Well, when John heard that he broke out laughing, a nasty laugh, and I, well, I couldn’t really stand that, could I? I mean Milton means so much to me, and the thing was that he began to sing this song. This awful song. Oh, it was a clever idea, I suppose, when first he thought of it, but the combination of that vulgar tune and his perversion of Milton’s noble words—though he claims that’s how he understood the words when I first read them to him, and I still maintain that the second i in divinest is pronounced like a long e—it was aggravating in the extreme, I can’t tell you how much it upset me.

Do I have to repeat them?

Come to Venus, Melancholy Baby.

Cuddle up and don’t be shy.

And so on. It’s not only a bad pun—it’s a misquotation as well. It should be Hail, not Come. So vulgar. It gives me goosebumps even now.

I told him to leave the house right that minute. I told him not to come back till he was ready to apologize. I was so angry I forgot it was the middle of the night. As soon as he was out the door, I was ashamed of myself.

He came back in five minutes. He apologized outside the door, and I let him in. He had the large polyethylene bag over his shoulder that he uses to gather up the slugs, but I was so relieved I didn’t think anything of it.

He put them on the visual receptors. There must have been twenty, all told, and each one was about a foot long. They fought each other to get right on the lens because it was slightly warmer there. There were twenty of them, foul, gelatinous slugs, crawling on my eyes, oh God! I shut off my eyes and I shut off my ears, because he was singing that song again, and I locked the doors and I left him like that for five days while I recited Il Penseroso.

But whenever I came to that one line, I could never say it.

It was perhaps the hallucinogens, though he might just as well have done it in his right mind. He had every reason to. But I prefer to think it was the hallucinogens. He had been all that time with nothing else to eat. I’ve never been five days without food, so I don’t know how desperate that would make one.

In any case, when I came to myself again and opened my eyes I found I had no eyes to open. He’d smashed every receptor in the room, even the little mobile attachment for cleaning. The strange thing was how little I cared. It seemed hardly to matter at all.

I opened the door for five minutes so he could get out. Then I closed it so no more caterpillars could get in. But unlocked. That way John was free to come back.

But he never did.

The supply ship was due in two days later, and I guess John must have spent that time in the shed where he kept the slugs. He must have been alive, otherwise the pilot of the supply ship would have come in the door to look for him. And nobody ever came in the door again.

Unless you did.

They just left me here, deaf and blind and half-immortal, in the middle of the Venusian swamp. If only I could starve to

death—or wear out—or rust—or really go insane. But I’m too well made for that. You’d think after all the money they spent on me, they’d want to salvage what they could, wouldn’t you?

I have a deal to make with you. I’ll let you out the door, if you’ll do something for me. Fair enough?

Down in the storeroom there are explosives. They’re so safe a child could use them. John did, after all. If I remember rightly, they’re on the third shelf down on the west wall—little black boxes with DANGER written on them in red. You pull out the little pin and set the timing mechanism for anything from five minutes to an hour. It’s just like an alarm clock.

Once they’re set, just leave them in the storeroom. They’ll be nearer to me down there. I’m over the storeroom. Then run like hell. Five minutes should be time enough, shouldn’t it? I’ll only want to read a bit of Il Penseroso.

Is it a deal? The trapdoor is open, and I’m opening the outside door now just to show you I’m in earnest.

While you set to work, I think I’ll read something to pass the time.

Hello? I’m waiting. Is everything all right? Are you still there? Or were you ever there? Oh please, please—I want to explode. That would be so wonderful. Please, I beg of you!

I’m still waiting.

Alasdair Gray

Loss of the Golden Silence

​

In her mid-twenties she does not move or dress attractively so only looks handsome when sill, like now. She sprawls on floor, of the easy chair she uses as desk. Pencil in hand, notepad under it, she studies open book propped against chair back: the one book in a room whose furnishings show only that the users are neither poor nor rich. This a room to lodge, not live in, unless you thoughts are often elsewhere. She frowns, writes a sentence, scores it out, frowns and writes another. A vertical crease between dark eyebrows is the only line on her face.

A door opens so she puts cushion over book and notepad then sits back on heels, watching a man enter. Ten years older than she her wears good tweed overcoat and looks about in worried way muttering, “Keys. Forgot keys.”

“There!” she says, pointing. He takes keys from top of sound-deck, returning toward door but pauses near her asking. “What did you hide under the cushion?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“Why not look and see?”

“Thanks. I will.”

He grasps cushion, hesitates, pleads: “Do you mind if I look?”

“Oh look look look!” She cries, standing up. “I can’t stop you. It’s your cushion. It’s your room.”

He moves cushion, lifts book and turns to the title page: The Pursuit of the Millennium, a Study of Revolutionary Anarchism in the Middle Ages.

“Very clever,” he murmurs, and puts the book where he found it and settles on a sofa, hands clasped between knees. This depressed attitude angers her. Looking down on him she speaks with insulting distinctness. “Shall I tell you what’s in the battered green suitcase under our bed? Sidney’s Arcadia. Milton’s Paradise Lost. Wordsworth’s Prelude. And a heap of notes for a thesis on the British epic.”

He sighs. She walks up and down then says, “You’d better hurry, you’ll be late for the office.”

“What office?” he asks, astonished.

“Wherever you work between nine and five.”

“You know nothing about my life,” he tells her sharply. “Or have you been reading my letters?”

“Nobody writes to you.”

“Good! When I go through that door each morning I become a mystery. Maybe I don’t need to work. Maybe each morning I go to see my mistress. My other mistress!”

“Then you’d better hurry or you’ll be late for your other mistress.”

But he does not move.

§

She sits, tries to read her book, fails and puts it down.

“Listen,” she says in a softer voice. “I know men hate clever women. I’ve known it since I was twelve. But we’ve got on well together. Forget I’m clever. I won’t remind you.”

“I’m not depressed because you’re clever. I saw you were deep from the moment we met. I’m depressed because now I know what happens in your head. Next time you frown I’ll think, ‘Damn! She’s worrying about her thesis.’ ”

“Why damn? Why will it upset you?”

“Because I’ll feel obliged to say something cheerful and reassuring.”

“Do you really resent making ordinary, friendly little remarks?”

”Yes.”

“What a selfish attitude! Anyway, you couldn’t reassure me on my thesis. You’re too ignorant.”

He stares at her. She blushes and says, “Sorry. You’ve no books and I take books too seriously. You’re probably as clever in your own way as I am, what do you do for a living?”

“I won’t tell you.”

”Why?”

”If you get to know me well you’ll despise me.”

”Why? Are you in advertising?”

”Certainly not. But familiarity breeds contempt.”

”Not always.”

“Yes always!”

She rises and walks about say8ing, “Our friendship has taken a steep turn for the worse in the last five minutes and it’s not my fault.”

He sighs then asks, “Were you ever married? Or (because it comes to the same thing) did you ever live long with someone?”

“No. But men have lived with me.”

“Long?”

§

She thinks for a moment. Her last lover was an exciting young man whose work and opinions, good looks and quick speech sometimes got him asked onto television shows. He needed a lot of admiration and support. She had easily supplied these until she found he was also the lover of her close friend and flat-mate, then she noticed he was an emotional leech who had stopped her investigating Chaucer’s debt to Langland for over a month. She says grimly, “Far too long.”

“Then you know about lack of privacy. We start sharing a bed and some rooms and meals which is fun at first, even convenient. Then we start sharing our thoughts and feelings and end in the shit. Have you noticed how cheerful I am in the morning?”

“I hear you singing in the lavatory.”

”Does it annoy you?”

”A bit, but I can ignore it.”

“You couldn’t ignore it if you knew me well. My wife couldn’t ignore it. If I sang or whistled or hummed she said I gave her a headache, so I crushed the melody in my bosom and became as miserable as she was. She was always very quiet in the morning. She got brighter in the evening, but not the early evening. I would come home from work and find her brooding. It was very strange. I knew that if I left her alone she would brighten eventually, but I couldn’t. I found her black moods as much a pain as she found my cheerful ones. I would try nagging her into happiness: ask what was wrong then explain it was unimportant. Whenever we weren’t equally bright or equally dull we nagged each other till we were equally miserable. All our conversations became wrestling bouts, like this one.”

“This one?”

”This is our first real conversation and you’ve already called me selfish and ignorant. That nearly floored me.”

”You started it.”

”Yes guilty! Guilty! I’m like an alcoholic who can keep off his poison for weeks but after one sip can’t stop till he’s flat on his back. I’ve moaned to you about my marriage, I’ve started telling you about my bad habits, if you don’t shut me up you’ll soon know about my childhood, schooling, how I make my money…”

“Are you a hitman for the Mafia?”

”Don’t be silly. When I’ve cut myself into small pieces and handed them to you on a tray I’ll get you to start talking.”

She says shortly, ”I don’t like talking about myself.”

“I know, but talk is the most infectious disease in the world. In a week or month or year we’ll know each other thoroughly. You’ll no longer be the lovely stranger who approached me in the singles bar, the mysterious she who shares my bed and breakfast. I’ll have turned you into what we all are, basically—as pain in the arse with a case history behind it.”

She laughs at that. Despite his words he is excited, almost cheerful, and watches her closely.

§

She sits down beside him, elbow on knee, chin on clenched fist. He lays an arm carefully round her shoulder but a slight shrug tells him she doesn’t want that so he withdraws the arm. She is thinking that the trouble with his wife was probably sexual. In bed he leaves most of the initiatives to her. She does not mind this because through her last lover was more exciting he wanted applause for his performance and she found this exhausting. Does the man beside her think the last fortnight (the most restful and productive fortnight of her life) has been romantic adventure? Someone who can say I crushed the melody in my bosom without irony is almost certainly a romantic.

In a low voice she asks, “Do you really think me what you said? Lovely—mysterious?”

”I’ve managed it so far. You’ve been the greatest thing in my life since wee Moody.”

”Wee Moody?”

“She visited me when I’d done too many things in too short a time. The doctor ordered a week of complete rest so I sent the wife and kids away for a holiday, unplugged the phone and stayed in bed doing nothing but doze, watch the box and eat food out of tins. The privacy was wonderful. On the second day a cat ran in when I opened the door for the milk. She was a neat little thing with a smooth black coat but hungry, so I fed her. When I returned to bed she came and curled in the hollow behind my knees. I liked to stroke and pat her, she was so graceful and… suave. When she wanted out she patted the door with her paw and I let he out, but she came in again next morning with the milk. We kept company for nearly a week without nagging or bullying each other. That was the happiest time of my life, before I met you.”

“Thank you. What became of her?”

”When the kids came home they adopted her—they saw more of her than I did when I returned to work. When the family left me they took her with them.”

“A pity. You wouldn’t need me if she had stayed.”

“Nonsense! You’re a woman with arms, legs et cetera, the whole female works. You’re much nicer to me than wee Moody ever was.”

§

She gets up and walks away. Strong feelings stop her speaking: amusement, pity, despair and anger. Anger is uppermost. She forces it down, hearing him say, “Our friendship is entering a new phase, isn’t it?”

“No!” she tells him, turning. ”It had better not. I agree with you about talk. Words do more harm than good if they aren’t in a poem or play, and even plays have caused riots. Let’s switch on the silence again. We came together because like most mammals we can’t bear sleeping alone. You find me fascinating because you don’t know me. I like living here because you’re clean, gentle, undemanding, and don’t interest me at all. Have I floored you?”

He nods, his mouth open and face paler than usual.

She laughs and says, ”Don’t worry! I’ll pick you up. I’m your mistress, not your cat. I’ve got arms.”

She lifts keys off the top of the sound-deck where he has dropped them again, puts them in his coat pocket, grasps his hands and pulls. He sighs and stands.

“Kiss me!” she says. He doesn’t so she kisses him hard until his lips yield.

“Now go off to wherever you always go,” she says, taking his arm and leading him to door, which she opens.

”But…” he says, pausing.

“Sh!” She whispers, pressing a finger to his lips. ”I’ll be here when you come back. Off you go.”

He sighs, leaves. She sits door, goes back to work.

It was Christmas Day and Danny the Car Wiper hit the street junksick and broke after seventy-two hours in the precinct jail. It was a clear bright day, but there was warmth in the sun. Danny shivered with an inner cold. He turned up the collar of his worn, greasy black overcoat.

This beat benny wouldn't pawn for a deuce, he thought.

He was in the West Nineties. A long block of brownstone rooming houses. Here and there a holy wreath in a clean black window. Danny's senses registered everything sharp and clear, with the painful intensity of junk sickness. The light hurt his dilated eyes.

He walked past a car, darting his pale blue eyes sideways in quick appraisal. There was a package on the seat and one of the ventilator windows was unlocked. Danny walked on ten feet. No one in sight. He snapped his fingers and went through a pantomime of remembering something, and wheeled around. No one.

A bad setup, he decided. The street being empty like this, I stand out conspicuous. Gotta make it fast.

He reached for the ventilator window. A door opened behind him. Danny whipped out a rag and began polishing the car windows. He could feel the man standing behind him.

"What're yuh doin"?

Danny turned as if surprised. "Just thought your car windows needed polishing, mister."

The man had a frog face and a Deep South accent. He was wearing a camel's-hair overcoat.

"My caah don't need polishin' or nothing stole out of it neither."

Danny slid sideways as the man grabbed for him. "I wasn't lookin' to steal nothing, mister. I'm from the South too. Florida "

"Goddammed sneakin' thief!"

Danny walked away fast and turned a corner.

"Better get out of the neighborhood. That hick is likely to call the law."

He walked fifteen blocks. Sweat ran down his body. There was an ache in his lungs. His lips drew back off his yellow teeth in a snarl of desperation.

"I gotta score somehow. If I had some decent clothes."

Danny saw a suitcase standing in a doorway. Good leather. He stopped and pretended to look for a cigarette.

"Funny," he thought. "No one around. Inside maybe, phoning for a cab."

The corner was only a few houses. Danny took a deep breath and picked up the suitcase. He made the corner. Another block, another corner. The case was heavy.

"I got a score here all night," he thought. "Maybe enough for a sixteenth and a room." Danny shivered and twitched, feeling a warm room and heroin emptying into his vein." Let's have a quick look."

He opened the suitcase. Two long packages in brown wrapping paper. He took one out. It felt like meat. He tore the package open at one end, revealing a woman's naked foot. The toenails were painted with purple-red polish. He dropped the leg with a sneer of disgust.

"Holy Jesus!" he exclaimed. "The routines people put down these days. Legs! Well I got a case anyway." He dumped the other leg out. No bloodstains. He snapped the case shut and walked away.

"Legs!" he muttered.

----

He found the Buyer sitting at a table in Jarrow's Cafeteria.

"Thought you might be taking the day off." Danny said, putting the case down.

The Buyer shook his head sadly. "I got nobody. So what's Christmas to me ?" His eyes traveled over the case, poking, testing, looking for flaws. "What was in it?"

"Nothing."

"What's the matter ? I don't pay enough?"

"I tell you there wasn't nothing in it."

"Okay. So somebody travels with an empty suitcase. Okay." He held up three fingers.

"For Christ's sake, Gimpy, give me a nickel."

"You got somebody else. Why don't he give you a nickel?"

"It's like I say, the case was empty."

Gimpy kicked at the case disparingly. "It's all nicked up and kinda dirty-looking." He sniffed suspiciously. "How come it stink like that? Mexican leather ?"

"So am I in the leather business?"

Gimpy shrugged- "Could be." He pulled out a roll of bills and peeled off three ones, dropping them on the table behind the napkin dispenser. "You want?"

"Okay." Danny picked up the money. "You see George the Greek?" he asked.

"Where you been ? He got busted two days ago."

"Oh… That's bad."

Danny walked out. "Now where can I score?" he thought. George the Greek had lasted so long, Danny thought of him as permanent. "It was good H too, and no short counts."

Danny went up to 103rd and Broadway. Nobody in Jarrow's. Nobody in the Automat.

"Yeah," he snarled. "All the pushers off on the nod someplace. What they care about anybody else? So long as they get in the vein. What they care about a sick junky?"

He wiped his nose with one finger, looking around furtively.

"No use hitting those jigs in Harlem. Like as not get beat for my money or they slip me rat poison. Might find Pantapon Rose at Eighth and 23rd."

There was no one he knew in the 23rd Street Thompson's.

"Jesus," he thought. "Where is Everybody?"

He clutched his coat collar together with one hand, looking up and down the street. "There's Joey from Brooklyn. I'd know that hat anywhere."

"Joey was walking away, with his back to Danny. He turned around. His face was sunken, skull-like. The gray eyes glittered under a greasy felt hat. Joey was sniffing at regular intervals and his eyes were watering."

"No use asking him," Danny thought. They looked at each other with the hatred of disappointment.

"Guess you heard about George the Greek," Danny said.

"Yeah. I heard. You been up to 103rd?"

"Yeah. Just came from there. Nobody around."

"Nobody around anyplace, " Joey said. "I can't even score for goofballs."

"Well, Merry Christmas, Joey. See you."

"Yeah. See you."

----

Danny was walking fast. He had remembered a croaker on 18th Street. Of course the croaker had told him not to come back. Still, it was worth trying.

A brownstone house with a card in the window: "P. H. Zunniga, M.D." Danny rang the bell. He heard slow steps. The door opened, and the doctor looked at Danny with bloodshot brown eyes. He was weaving slightly and supported his plumb body against the doorjamb. His face was smooth, Latin, the little red mouth slack. He said nothing. He just leaned there, looking at Danny.

"Goddammed alcoholic," Danny thought. He smiled.

"Merry Christmas, Doctor."

The doctor did not reply.

"You remember me, Doctor." Danny tried to edge past the doctor, into the house. "I'm sorry to trouble you on Christmas Day, but I've suffered another attack."

"Attack? "

"Yes. Facial neuralgia." Danny twisted one side of his face into a horrible grimace. The doctor recoiled slightly, and Danny pushed into the dark hallway.

"Better shut the door or you'll be catching cold, " he said jovially, shoving the door shut.

The doctor looked at him, his eyes focusing visibly. "I can't give you a prescription," he said.

"But Doctor, this is a legitimate condition. An emergency, you understand."

"No prescription. Impossible. It's against the law."

"You took an oath, Doctor. I'm in agony. " Danny's voice shot up to a hysterical grating whine.

The doctor winced and passed a hand over his forehead.

"Let me think. I can give you one quarter-grain tablet. That's all I have in the house."

"But, Doctor – a quarter G…."

The doctor stopped him. "If your condition is legitimate, you will not need more. If it isn't, I don't want anything to do with you. Wait right here."

The doctor weaved down the hall, leaving a wake of alcoholic breath. He came back and dropped a tablet into Danny's hand. Danny wrapped the tablet in a piece of paper and tucked it away.

"There is no charge." The doctor put his hand on the doorknob. "And now, my dear…"

"But, Doctor – can't you object the medication?"

"No. You will obtain longer relief in using orally. Please not to return." The doctor opened the door.

"Well, this will take the edge off, and I still have money to put down on a room," Danny thought.

He knew a drugstore that sold needles without question. He bought a 26-gauge insulin needle and eyedropper, which he selected carefully, rejecting models with a curved dropper or a thick end. Finally he bought a baby pacifier, to use instead of the bulb. He stopped in the Automat and stole a teaspoon.

Danny put down two dollars on a six-dollar-a-week room in the West Forties, where he knew the landlord. He bolted the door and put his spoon, needle and dropper on a table by the bed. He dropped the tablet in the spoon and covered it with a dropperful of water. He held a match under the spoon until the tablet dissolved. He tore a strip of paper, wet it and wrapped it around the end of the dropper, fitting the needle over the wet paper to make an airtight connection. He dropped a piece of lint from his pocket into the spoon and sucked the liquid into the dropper through the needle, holding the needle in the lint to take up the last drop.

Danny's hands trembled with excitement and his breath was quick. With a shot in front of him, his defences gave way, and junk sickness flooded his body. His legs began to twitch and ache. A cramp stirred in his stomach. Tears ran down his face from his smarting, burning eyes. He wrapped a handkerchief around his right arm, holding the end in his teeth. He tucked the handkerchief in, and began rubbing his arm to bring out a vein.

"Guess I can hit that one," he thought, running one finger along a vein. He picked up the dropper in his left hand.

Danny heard a groan from the next room. He frowned with annoyance. Another groan. He could not help listening. He walked across the room, the dropper in his hand, and inclined his ear to the wall. The groans were coming at regular intervals, a horrible inhuman sound pushed out from the stomach.

Danny listened for a full minute. He returned to the bed and sat down. "Why don't someone call a doctor?"he thought indignantly. "It's a bringdown." He straightened his arm and poised the needle. He tilted his head, listening again.

"Oh, for Christ's sake!" He tore off the handkerchief and placed the dropper in a water glass, which he hid behind the wastebasket. He stepped into the hall and knocked on the door of the next room. There was no answer. The groans continued. Danny tried the door. It was open.

The shade was up and the room was full of light. He had expected an old person somehow, but the man on the bed was very young, eighteen or twenty, fully clothed and doubled up, with his hands clasped across his stomach.

"What's wrong, kid?" Danny asked.

The boy looked at him, his eyes blank with pain. Finally he got one word: "Kidneys."

"Kidney stones?" Danny smiled. "I don't mean it's funny, kid. It's just… I've faked it so many times. Never saw the real thing before. I'll call an ambulance."

The boy bit his lip. " Won't come. Doctor's won't come. "The boy hid his face in the pillow.

Danny nodded. "They figure it's just another junky throwing a wingding for a shot. But your case is legit. Maybe if I went to the hospital and explained things… No, I guess that wouldn't be so good. "

Don't live here, " the boy said, his voice muffled. " They say I'm not entitled."

"Yeah, I know how they are, the bureaucrat bastards. I had a friend once, died of snakebite right in the waiting room. They wouldn't even listen when he tried to explain a snake bit him. He never had enough moxie. That was fifteen years ago, down in Jacksonville …"

Danny trailed off. Suddenly he put out his thin, dirty hand and touched the boy's shoulder.

"I – I'm sorry, kid. You wait. I'll fix you up."

He went back to his room and got the dropper, and returned to the boy's room.

"Roll up your sleeve, kid." The boy fumbled his coat sleeve with a weak hand.

"That's okay. I'll get it." Danny undid the shirt button at the wrist and pushed the shirt and coat up, baring a thin brown forearm. Danny hesitated, looking at the dropper. Sweat ran down his nose. The boy was looking up at him. Danny shoved the needle in the boy's forearm and watched the liquid drain into the flesh. He straightened up.

The boy lay down, stretching. "I feel real sleepy. Didn't sleep all last night." His eyes were closing.Danny walked across the room and pulled the shade down. He went back to his room and closed the door without locking it. He sat on the bed, looking at the empty dropper. It was getting dark outside. Danny's body ached for junk, but it was a dull ache now, dull and hopeless. Numbly, he took the needle of the dropper and wrapped it in a piece of paper. Then he wrapped the needle and dropper together. He sat there with the package in his hand. "Gotta stash this someplace", he thought.

Suddenly a warm flood pulsed through his veins and broke in his head like a thousand golden speedballs.

"For Christ's sake," Danny thought. "I must have scored for the immaculate fix!

The vegetable serenity of junk settled in his tissues. His face went slack and peaceful, and his head fell forward.

Danny the Car Wiper was on the nod.

THE CARDINAL’S fate was not long undetermined. A messenger from the Pontiff brought to him at his adjacent palace the gift of a rarely illuminated missal—the Horæ Beata Vergine—and a kindly invitation to supper in the Belvedere Villa at the setting of the sun.

A guilty conscience awakened his alarm. There was nothing extraordinary in the summons; he had often broken bread with his spiritual master in the latter’s favorite summer-house; but now, in the act of promising attendance, his voice changed, and as the messenger made his ceremonious exit the cardinal sank unnerved in his chair.

He remained but a moment thus overcome. Hastening through an obscure vicolo to a remote part of the Vatican, he entered unannounced the chamber of Resequenz, major-domo to the Duke of Romagna, where he beheld that individual seated at a table and plunged in abstraction.

“Resequenz!” exclaimed the cardinal in an agony of apprehension, eagerly scrutinizing the face of the man before him, as the latter with sudden start rose to his feet and made formal obeisance, “a fearful dread has come upon me—I behold a spectre from which you alone, perhaps, can save me.”

The official thus addressed had been taken off his guard, and failed to show that instantaneous self-possession which alone would have deceived the searching gaze of his panic-stricken interlocutor. Something unconsciously sinister in his face confirmed the cardinal’s alarms.

Throwing himself on his knees in a frenzy of terror, he clasped the hands of the silent steward:

“It is true, then!” he cried; “play not upon words, but answer!”

“Would not your fate then be mine?” asked the other, simply.

The cardinal rose to his feet. He trembled violently, but the transformation of a nervous fear to the certainty of a danger from which he saw but one escape gave him presence of mind.

“You will not lay such inhuman cruelty upon your soul,” he pleaded. “Would you have to answer for a crime against one of the heads of the Church? Resequenz,” piteously cried the cardinal, “if you hope for mercy hereafter, take what you will of my wealth and grant me life. To-morrow I will fly; and far from the vengeance of my enemies, and remote from this centre of infamy, I will end my days in seclusion, at peace with Heaven and unmolested by the world.”

“Why not escape at once? Why are you not already on the road?”

“Heartless man! would you have me go empty-handed? The sun is near the meridian; betwixt now and the hour of this accursed supper I will make ready, and at midnight start for Viterbo with my goods and a retinue of men sufficient to protect me by the way, and pressing forward without stopping to draw breath, I can be in safety at Perugia ere pursuit can overtake.”

“Gold! Gold!” ejaculated the other with a sardonic laugh; “its chains link you even to the chance of death in preference to life without it.”

“But, dear Resequenz,” interposed Corneto, “there need be no chance of death.”

“And what would you pay me for the risk to myself?”

“Fifty thousand sequins.”

The major-domo’s face illumined.

“It must be here before the supper,” he said.

“Fear not. It would need a bolder man than I to trifle with you now.”

“You must feign to be poisoned—cramp, vertigo, quivering chill—cause yourself to be assisted from the room, and after that it will not be my fault if antidotes cure you, and you escape from Rome. But at Perugia you must pretend a lingering illness.”

“Of course; the after-effect of the drug.”

“Here,” said the major-domo, “I put into your hand this blue vial which the duke gave me an hour ago. Both at the beginning and at the end of the repast there will be sweet comfits, sugar-coated nuts, and the like; my orders are to prepare the second course, which I shall serve myself; you will notice that the Pope and Valentino and the Farnèse eat not a morsel from that dish, however much they take upon their plates. Do you eat plentifully of it, and let the effect be manifested within a quarter of an hour.”

The cardinal nodded, pressed his benefactor’s hand in silence, and taking with him the poison vial, turned to go.

“Be not seen going hence,” whispered Resequenz after him, “or a rope in the court of St. Angelo would be presently waiting for us both.”

Corneto turned with a sudden thought:

“Suppose that the Borgias examine the comfits and discover why the dose failed?”

“The instant you are out of the room,” answered the other, “every atom remaining in the dish will be destroyed.”

---

At the Belvedere Villa, as the sun passed below the line of the Ostian hills, Cardinal Corneto was in waiting, and presently Pope Alexander, accompanied by his son and followed by Pulcio and Resequenz, and the usual escort of pages, were seen leisurely walking through the garden behind the Vatican. All were in serene good spirits, and no one scanning Corneto’s placid face would have suspected the tempest of the morning.

They seated themselves, Cesare and the cardinal at the right and left of the Pope, the places at first set for Giulia Farnèse and for Michelotto having been removed on account of the “indisposition” of those personages.

The major-domo withdrew to superintend the serving of the repast, and Pulcio addressed himself to a brace of chained falcons perched in shady nooks upon a veranda where was also suspended the frame of staples upon which the birds taken in the chase were hung.

“I have a letter to-day from the Viceroy,” said the Pope to the cardinal; “you shall read it to-morrow; his letters always put one in good humor; so calm, so practical, so decided, and so amiable withal.”

“The Viceroy is a man of the world,” answered Corneto, slightly troubled by an allusion to despatches from Naples.

“Wait till he grows a few years older,” remarked Cesare, “and he may not be so smooth-spoken. Time plants a crotchet beneath every white hair.”

“Master,” inquired the dwarf, turning from the birds, “do white hairs, think you, represent the sorrows or the indulgences of life?”

“When mine begin to come, Pulcio,” answered the duke, “I shall rather please myself by thinking that each stands for a pleasure than that all of them have sprung from a grief.”

Resequenz entered at this moment, accompanied by servants who offered a prelude of sweets.

These were followed by the pièce de resistance of the meal, a boar’s head, with slices cut from the hams prepared in the manner of the modern agro dolce.

“I pray you eat heartily,” said the Pope, “if but to keep me company. It is said that large eaters are not graceful men; but surely a small eater never was a good companion.”

Agro dolce gave place to a peacock with tail magnificently spread, which was the supreme effort of the Italian cuisine.

“A beautiful dish,” remarked the cardinal, declining to be helped from it, “but a tough bird.”

“So say I,” assented Alexander, “but my cooks would die of chagrin if I forbade their serving it occasionally.”

The silver chalices they drank from were replenished with white wine of Montefiascone, or with red from the slopes of Vesuvius.

“I notice we have a flask of Cyprus,” said Cesare, emptying his cup.

“I know nothing of it,” answered Alexander; “it was brought doubtless as a matter of course.”

“It stands in the ante-camera,” rejoined his son, “but be it of your store or of mine, let us keep it for the last.”

Upon hearing this colloquy, the dwarf left the room and returned a moment later.

“I have laid the Chypre in snow,” he explained.

“Your Holiness will have been pleased,” remarked Corneto, addressing the Pope, “to hear of the discovery at Hadrian’s Tiburtine villa.”

“What is the discovery?” inquired Cesare.

“A mosaic the size of this table, representing a basket of flowers, and of marvellous workmanship.”

“Those ancients were wonderful men; they made their roses and their loves immortal; only their songs cannot reach to us. ’Tis pity, for how melodious must the Greek and how inspiriting must the Roman music have been.”

“Simple and monotonous, though,” objected Alexander; “cymbals, trumpets with three notes, the lyre with half a dozen, and pipes in abundance—a wretched concert we should call that now.”

The peacock was removed after sustaining but moderate damage, and its place was filled by a heap of sugar egg-shells, each of which contained a quail stuffed with herbs.

There were no game-laws in the sixteenth century, and quails were eaten in August as in December. This proved a welcome dish, and paid the penalty of the peacock’s toughness.

“Is there news from the French in the Abruzzi?” inquired the cardinal, moistening his fingers in a silver basin.

“Only a budget of descriptions by eye-witnesses of Ives d’Allégre’s defeat; the Spaniards set upon him in a difficult place, and drove half his army into the Garigliano.”…

The fateful moment had come, and the second course of sweets was placed before the feasters, by whom it was observed with different sentiments. Corneto bore himself with heroic self-possession. Rising, he took the dish from the hand of Resequenz, who was about to offer it to the Pope, and with profound reverence presented it himself, by that act implying that although permitted to sit at the same table, he was but the menial of the head of the Church.

Alexander took several pieces upon his plate; the cardinal resumed his place, the major-domo handed him the dish from which he helped himself, and passed it to Cesare, who declined it, saying:

“Sweets once at a meal is enough for my taste.”

The wine of Cyprus appeared at this moment fresh from its cold bath, and with a few flakes of the snow of the Apennines in the spaces of the straw wrapper that enfolded the glass. The goblets were filled while the Pope nibbled a crust of bread, leaving his sugar-plums untasted.

Both he and his son observed that the cardinal ate without stint of those on his plate.

Resequenz also watched him with interest, for the part of a poisoned man was now to be acted before the eyes of connoisseurs.

The cardinal went on with his candies with increasing relish.

“To return to Ives d’Allégre,” he said, addressing Valentino with the satisfied good humor of one who has eaten and drunk well, “I have often thought, and the mention of military affairs recalls the subject, that even if your superb stroke at Sinigallia had not been made, you with your army would none the less have crushed the Orsini.”

“It might have been so,” replied the duke reflectively; “nothing is stronger than desire backed by despair.”

“But it was surer and safer in the method adopted,” pursued the cardinal, glad to talk upon a subject which could not be agreeable to the remembrance of either of his companions.

“Sinigallia has made me many enemies,” said Cesare, answering the cardinal; “success is the one unpardonable sin.”

“Success!” exclaimed Corneto, emptying his silver cup. “What a pregnant word is that. No man can look without emotion down the vista of life to the brilliant days when all was new, and the future seemed a galaxy of stars. But how glad must be the retrospect when the harvest is ours, and all the things we coveted are garnered.”

“Is the Chypre cold enough?” inquired the dwarf as the three goblets were set down empty.

“Ay, it keeps its subtle flavor, which too much snow would spoil.”

The servants had withdrawn from the room, and only Resequenz remained standing in respectful attention and with his eyes fixed upon the cardinal. It was time, he thought, for the effect of the sweets.

“I once heard you say,” remarked Corneto to Cesare, “that there are seven ways to strike an enemy; through life, health, freedom, reputation, wife, children, property.”

“I but quoted Galeazzo Visconti,” answered the duke.

“And have you never thought, since Sinigallia, that the greatest of all faults is to suffer the heirs of the dead to escape? Think you the children of Vitellozzo and the son of Pagolo Orsini will not rise to confront you with arms, or to strike you unawares hereafter?”

The answer was upon Valentino’s lips, when Resequenz perceived at length the first indication of the comedy to be enacted.

Alexander and Cesare also observed it, and fixed their eyes in silence upon the cardinal, whose face, till now flushed with the good cheer, had changed color. His jaw dropped, his breath became labored, the eyes stared vacantly, a shudder convulsed his frame.

“Done to perfection,” murmured Resequenz to himself; “he must have seen a poisoned man die.”

“What is it?” cried Cesare in pretended amaze. “Give him air and water,” he said as the major-domo sprang to the cardinal’s assistance. But the latter shook him off with a gasp of anguish. “Poisoned! Poisoned!” he shrieked with a wail that rang down the silent gardens of the Belvedere. “Your promise was false—you have killed me!”

Resequenz started with a sudden thrill of dismay.

“Yet no,” continued Corneto in a stifled voice—“I wrong you… it is that hateful dwarf… he got the vial from me… he has poured it in the wine… oh!… it is the wine that burns like fire!”

Valentino sprang to his feet, and glanced hastily about him, but the jester had vanished. His eyes fell on the face of his father—there too he beheld the change of color, the vacant stare, the head dropped backward, a foam gathering upon the lips.

Summoned by the cries of the cardinal, the servants rushed into the room.

“Quick,” said Valentino, to the foremost of them, “take me to the palace… to my room… one of you bring the drops that…”

His utterance failed, his body became rigid beneath the first spasm of the fiery poison; he would have fallen, had not strong arms borne him from the room. By Resequenz’s direction the Pontiff and the cardinal were similarly removed, each to his chamber.

Cesare was laid upon his bed, and a leech was sent for. On hearing this order, he murmured, “No … Ormès.”

One of the servants hastened away in quest of the magician; a second ran to find some philter of his own, the third stood awestruck. The duke’s power of speech had nearly failed, and his face was distorted with the spasm of an approaching convulsion, but with the supreme effort of one whose life depends upon utterance, he said in accents barely audible:

“The ivory cabinet in the next room—break it—in a secret drawer is an antidote…”

The servant hurried from the room, and a moment later was heard the crash of the cabinet being wrenched to pieces.

The duke’s eyes became fixed upon a presence that had crept swiftly to his side. It was Pulcio, his worn old face suddenly tenfold wrinkled, and with mouth askew and quivering. “It was I did it,” he hissed in Valentino’s ear; “I met Corneto with the blue bottle in his hand; I knew what it was, I had seen one like it before. I swore if he did not give it me I would denounce him as plotting to poison you—ha! ha!” laughed the dwarf—the poor fool’s last jest!” And now my heart is content, for she is avenged.”

“She!” faintly echoed Valentino; “of whom speak you?”

“Of Nerina—my little daughter whom you took from me three years ago. She died dishonored—but that crime, at least, you expiate!”

The steps of the returning servant were heard, but ere be passed the threshold the fool had gone.

Valentino was past speech and barely conscious. The servant poured a little of the essence into his mouth. A moment after arrived Ormès, breathless; he snatched the vial from the domestic, glanced at it, and raising the sufferer’s head, poured all that remained down his throat.

The effect of this remedy became presently apparent; the rigid muscles relaxed, the convulsion which was commencing ceased, the breathing showed that the heart was recovering its action.

Don Michele entered the room aghast at the result of the attempt upon the cardinal. Soon after came del Nero; for the news had flashed over the city that the Pope was dead and the Duke of Romagna dying.

“Will he live?” asked the condottiere.

“Yes,” answered Ormès; “begone all of you, and by midnight I shall have brought him back to consciousness.”…

---

The condottiere made his way through the streets which thronged with the populace, flocking this way and that, bearing torches, questioning one another, and adding to the general alarm by the fearful rumors which sprang into circulation. At the bridge of St. Angelo the guards had been doubled; hurrying from their barrack came a column of infantry to seize the approaches to the Vatican.

The posts at the city gates were ordered to be on the alert; it was vaguely feared that some calamity was about to smite the city, and that the Pope and his son had been but the first victims of an unknown enemy.

But none spoke a word of commiseration.

Some shouted for Colonna, and some called that the Orsini were at hand; but all, between the exclamations of apprehension and the faction cries with which they made the air resound, cursed the fallen Borgias. It almost reached the sick man’s room—that startling cry of rage and vengeance long restrained—

“To the Tiber with Duca Valentino!”

The Tables Turned

Even though I have always hated zoological gardens and actually find that my suspicions are aroused by people who visit zoological gardens, I still could not avoid going out to Schönbrunn on one occasion and, at the request of my companion, a professor of theology, standing in front of the monkeys' cage to look at the monkeys, which my companion fed with some food he had brought with him for the purpose. The professor of theology, an old friend of mine from the university, who had asked me to go to Schönbrunn with him had, as time went on, fed all the food he had brought with him to the monkeys, when suddenly the monkeys, for their part, scratched together all the food that had fallen to the ground and offered it to us through the bars. The professor of theology and I were so startled by the monkeys' sudden behavior that in a flash we turned on our heels and left Schönbrunn through the nearest exit.

Throughout the twenty years that he had served at the Warehouse, Old Malcolm had rarely missed a day’s work. He wrote a fair hand, knew all the variations in a bill of lading, and was generally called upon to teach newcomers their routine. But Old Malcolm had never been a satisfactory clerk. His thoughts had always tended to roar, and with the passing of years so great an absent-mindedness had grown upon him that only the extreme simplicity of his duties prevented him from involving his house in grave commercial errors. In the boarding-house where he lived another monotony encouraged his habits of abstraction. The elderly women who succeeded one another in its direction resented the presence of the unsociable dreamer. There were days when he was hazily conscious both of sharp reprimands at the Warehouse and of shrill abuse at home. Fortunately he had found a way of shutting out all that.

It is hard to live twenty years without having been admired by someone, and Old Malcolm had been forced to construct for himself a world wherein he played a more influential and more sympathetic part. His thoughts kept returning to a dream he had cherished from his youth, that [at] intervals children were sent off to their beds in bathtubs, hammocks and trunks. Towards twelve and one the conversation grew intermittent and they fell to thinking of the trials that had attained this consummation; for it was generally understood that everyone was there to stay, that there illness, poverty, or hate could never reach them more. Even death did not approach the house in the country.

This was the scene that Old Malcolm kept evoking to himself as he went about his duties. It was the business of peopling it, rather than the verification of inventories, that brought to his face its sweet abstract smile. As the pleasure of ruminating about his hospitality grew on him, he set aside certain hours, above all the evening, to which he tried to restrict his imaginings, but the dream becoming stronger than the dreamer, he would sit for hours at his desk, with uplifted pen, watching unfold some new diversion of the country party. When in the order of business he was interrupted, he experienced the sensation of one who emerges from a spell of unconsciousness; there seemed an enclosed portion of his mind, like a brilliant room, lighted and warm and full of happy indistinguishable things, against which an outer world had warred and had prevailed.

The person to whom everyone turned in the mansion was, of course, Old Malcolm. The boys who were meditating the choice of a profession or of a college took heartening confidential walks with him, and settled things; the girls who were bewildered and puzzled by life had long tranquilizing conversations with him, where many noble things were said, and where the vague hot tears of adolescence were dried. The pretty young widows were lent money; the older ones were advised as to their investments. Young men who had made foolish or dishonorable mistakes over money or women opened to him the floodgates of their first confession. There happened to be no men of his own age or experience in the company, but had there been, no doubt, they too would have received the benefits of his wisdom.

This inner life so engrossed Old Malcolm that he talked audibly to himself on the street, and even during work hours he would repeat aloud the happy phrases that had occurred to him the evening before, the words that especially interpreted his magnanimity and prudence.

There was always music in the house. The rugs had been taken up for an improvised dance in the long living-room and had never been relaid. One morning a fish-pond appeared in the front yard, stocked with the most fascinating fish. Old Malcolm spent hours (in the office) gazing into the fish-pond, and matching the schools of minnows rise to the surface and drift away, the circling turtles, and the ancient carp with blue mould on their backs. On clear evenings a group would ascend to the cupola, where a mounted telescope had been placed, to gaze at the stars, taking turns graciously at the instrument, in love preferring one another. For them the North Star and the Southern Cross appeared in the same hemisphere; nothing uninteresting was ever reflected upon that lens; but the rings of Saturn, and pale blue Aldebaron, yellow Vega, and the baked and chalky craters of the moon.

One morning when he waked up the dream seemed more vivid than ever before. He dressed himself slowly and remained in his room talking to his relatives. He did not go to the office that day, nor did he ever go again. People came to the boarding-house to argue with him, but their clamour did not penetrate the walls of his peace. He answered them politely and offered them fishing-rods, pointing to some propitious clouds. Or if there were a full moon that night, they were to take their mandolines to the summer-house; all were welcome.

So finally Old Malcolm inherited his house in the country. There were lawns and a pond, but they did not take the place of the weed-grown yard and fish-pond of his imagination. He made no new friends, and the Warden looking up at night heard Old Malcolm going about the same duty, closing the shutters and lowering the lights of his house in the country, admonishing his servants to be up early in the morning, for the weather would be fine, and all those treasured souls, now sleeping, would want a great breakfast before the manifold activities of happiness.

Mikhail Bulgakov

Mademoiselle Jenna

“We had a performance at our club at the train station in the town of Z, with a clairvoyant called Mademoiselle Janna. She read people’s minds and made 150 rubles in a single evening.”
—A Reporter of the People
The audience froze. A lady in a purple dress and red stockings appeared on stage with anxious, made-up eyes, and behind her a perky, moth-eaten-looking impresario in striped pants with a chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. The impresario darted his eyes left and then right, bent over and whispered into Mademoiselle Janna’s ear: 

     “In the first row, the bald one with the paper collar—he’s the second deputy station master. He recently proposed, she turned him down. A certain Nourotchka. (To the audience, loudly): Greetings, Ladies and Gentlemen! I have the great honor to introduce the famous clairvoyant and medium, Mamselle Janna of Paris and Sicily. She can see the past, the present and the future, and on top of that, our most intimate family secrets!”

     The audience went pale.

(To Mademoiselle Janna): “Make your face mysterious, you idiot. (To the audience): However, you must not think that here we have some kind of witchcraft or other miracle or something. Not at all, for miracles do not exist. (To Mademoiselle Janna): didn’t I tell you a thousand times to wear a bracelet for the show? (To the audience): Everything, with the permission of the Local Party Committee and the Commission for Culture and Education, is based exclusively on the powers of nature. It consists of vitalopathy based on hypnotism, as it is taught by India’s fakirs, who are oppressed by English imperialism. (To Mademoiselle Janna, in a whisper): The woman under the poster, to the side, the one with the tiny purse! Her husband is having an affair at the next train station. (To the audience): If anybody should wish to know deep family secrets, please direct your questions to me, and I will transmit them by means of hypnotism, having put the famous Mademoiselle Janna to sleep ... please, Mademoiselle, take a seat ... one at a time, citizens! One, two, three—Yes! You are beginning to feel sleepy. (He makes a gesture with his hands as if he were about to stick his fingers in Mademoiselle Janna’s eyes.) Ladies and Gentlemen! You have before you a most extraordinary example of occult science! (To Mademoiselle Janna, in a whisper): Fall asleep already! How long are you going to keep staring at me? (To the audience): So, she’s asleep. Let’s begin!” 

     In the dead silence the station master stood up, went purple, then white, and then asked in a voice wild with fear: “What is the most important event in my life right now?” 

(The impresario to Mademoiselle Janna): ”Keep looking at my fingers, you idiot!” 

     The impresario twirled his index finger under his chrysanthemum buttonhole, then made some mysterious signs with his fingers which spelled out “bro-ken.” 

     “Your heart has been broken by a perfidious woman!” Mademoiselle Janna spoke in a graveyard voice, as if in a dream. 

     The impresario blinked approvingly. The audience moaned and turned its eyes on the miserable deputy station master.

     “What is her name?” the rejected deputy station master asked in a hoarse voice.

     “Nou-ro-tch-ka,” the impresario’s fingers spelled out near his jacket’s lapel.

     “Nourotchka!” Mademoiselle Janna answered firmly.

     The deputy station master rose from his seat, his face all green. He looked gloomily in all directions, and, dropping his hat and a pack of cigarettes, marched out. 

     “Will I ever marry?” a hysterical woman’s suddenly shouted from the audience. “Please tell me, my dear Mamselle Janna!”

     The impresario appraised the woman with the eye of a connoisseur. He eyed the pimple on her nose, her thin yellow hair and her crooked back. He stuck his thumb between his index and middle finger next to his chrysanthemum buttonhole. 

     “No, you won’t!” Mademoiselle Janna said. 

     The audience thundered like a squadron crossing a bridge, and the mortified woman scuttled out.

     The woman with the tiny purse moved away from the posters by the wall and sneaked up to Mademoiselle Janna. 

     “Dasha darling, don’t!” a man’s hoarse whisper came from the crowd. 

     “No! I will! I’m going to find out all about your tricks and treachery!” the owner of the tiny purse shouted. “Tell me, Mademoiselle! Is my husband cheating on me?” 

     The impresario eyed the husband, glanced into his embarrassed little eyes, considered the deep crimson of his face and crossed his fingers, which meant yes. 

     “He is cheating!” Mademoiselle Janna answered with a sigh. 

     “With whom?” Dasha asked in an ominous voice. 

     “What the hell is her name?” the impresario thought. “Damn it! ... Oh, yes, yes, yes, the wife of that ... daman! ... Yes! Anna!” “Dear J ... anna, please tell us, J ... anna, with whom the lady’s husband is cheating?” 

     “With Anna,” Mademoiselle Janna said with aplomb. 

     “I knew it! I knew it!” Dasha sobbed. “I’ve had my suspicions for some time now! You bastard!” 

     With these words she slammed the tiny purse on her husband’s right, well-shaven cheek. 

     The audience roared with laughter.